Page 66 of Xavier

I brandished my axe to the two men, noticing one of them had a pair of heavy duty diving goggles on his head. “Let me borrow those!”

Either I was presenting with a ‘don’t question me’ attitude, or they were glad to have someone leading this thing, because soon I had a pair of goggles shoved into my hands and two guys ready to take orders.

While snapping the lenses over my head, I yelled at them both to get everyone off this side of the street so that when the trucks finally arrived, they were trying to crowd manage and get their lines hooked up to the fire hydrant at the same time.

They nodded at me and then sprinted off in opposite directions, corralling people as soon as they got close enough to them. The goggles were tight on my head, but gave enough suction that I wouldn’t be tearing up from the smoke burning my eyes.

Getting up to the house, sweat began to pour down my back and arms. Since the top window had already blown out and was creating a vacuum to suck all of the heat out of the top, breaking down this door wouldn’t run the risk of causing any kind of backdraft once I got it off its hinges.

My axe cut through the wood solidly, tearing off chunks with each blow. Thankfully, the entire house was old as dirt and gave way easily to a little bit of force from a sharp weapon.

As I pried the door open, smoke began to billow out around me, choking me even through the shirt tied tightly around my nose and mouth.

I stepped back to let the place air out for a few seconds, clearing out as much as possible before moving back toward the opening again.

“Hello!” I called out, carefully stepping inside.

The bottom floor was lit with smoldering embers. Pieces of furniture and all that was left of the carpet were still on fire but had a yellow-y golden hue to them and not the blue-hot like the top floor.

“Hello! Anyone in here!”

Barely above the crackling of the wood around me, I heard a soft cough.

Following it, I almost stepped on him—a man laying face down on the floor.

Tucking the handle of my axe into my belt loop, I bent and scooped my hands under his armpits. He was light compared to what I’d been expecting, clearly much frailer than his height suggested. He coughed again as I dragged him out, kicking back through the chunks of roof that had fallen onto the floor.

Where I found him wasn’t that far from the doorway, thankfully, and soon enough, we were back out onto the street.

My lungs burned as I sucked in fresh clean air.

The man in my arms choked and gagged when I set him down. His skin was blackened from the fire and ash that had been coating him by the time I’d found him.

“M... my,” the older man let out a deep, chest-y cough. “My wife...”

Behind me a truck docked, several firefighters jumping off and running over to me.

“Cruz!” One of them yelled. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

I wiped at my goggles, spotting Eddie, one of my old co-workers at the fire station. “Take care of him, I think there’s one more inside!”

“Hey, wait!” he yelled.

Before he could catch me and wrangle me back in, I sprinted for the open doorway once more, ignoring my training in waiting for my geared up co-workers to take it from here. There was something in me that was telling me that any more time wasted out here catching everyone up to speed was time wasted in pulling this man’s wife out of the wreckage alive.

Call it my intuition or hubris.

I slipped the axe up into my hands again and carefully ducked back into the house. There was no sign of the man’s wife anywhere, even as I traveled to the spot I’d found him at.

“Hello!” Calling out got me nothing, not even when I heard the telltale signs of water beginning to hit the side of the house to put it out.

“Xavier!” someone yelled into the house from the doorway.

Ignoring them, I continued further, choking as more smoke made it harder to breathe. If there was anyone following after me, I couldn’t tell. The sound of the wood paneling was loud as it burned, near ear piercing and making it impossible to think straight.

There was a doorway that led into a small kitchen, almost completely untouched from the rest of the fire by the awkward angle of the house’s layout. My heart picked up when I spotted a woman laying face down on the floor, facing away from me.

“Ma’am!” Setting my axe down onto the floor, I rolled her over to pat her face a few times. She didn’t flinch at all, not even so much as moved a damn muscle.

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