Page 62 of Combust
She shook her head. “No way,” she said, firmly. “I don’t have any spare PPE.”
He scowled, clearly preparing to argue with her. But she didn’t have the time, not with precious seconds ticking away.
“Cade, I have to do this! I promise that I’ll stay in radio contact with Dad and the other BPRFD members at all times while I’m in the building.” Then something occurred to her. “Besides, I need you out here to administer first aid when I get those people out. And someone needs to be here when the other firefighters arrive.”
He gave her a fierce glare from beneath his black brows, but mercifully, he didn’t argue. “Okay. Be careful, darlin’.”
That “darlin’” warmed her as she slid open the barn door, a firefighter’s ax in one hand and a flashlight in the other. If worse came to worst and she found herself cut off from the exits, she would try to chop a hole in one of the walls and escape that way.
She entered, and instantly moved from a bright winter afternoon into a murky twilight. The building was filled with dense smoke that blotted out most of the light.
Cautiously, she made her way forward.
Her world shrank to the cocoon of her protective gear. At first, the only sounds she could hear was the Darth Vader-like heavy breathing from the SCBA mask fitted tightly over her face.
The beam of her flashlight looked solid in the smoke. It reminded Maggie of a lightsaber.
She directed it around the barn’s interior, and her blood ran cold at what she discovered.
The space was stuffed to the rafters with stacks of conifers packaged in netting sleeves, a mountain of resinous fuel waiting to explode into an inferno.
Oh, shit.
“Guys,” she said into the radio. “This is Maggie Swanson. I’m inside the structure, and you are not going to believe this. I think I just found all of the missing Christmas trees.”
“Maggie? This is Chief Dane,” her father’s voice replied. “Please don’t tell me that you went in there by yourself!”
Maggie decided to ignore him in favor of reporting on the conditions inside the barn, so that the other firefighters would know what to expect.
As she described her surroundings, she continued deeper into the smoke-filled gloom.
Then she heard the pair of voices again, screaming, “Emily! Emily! Where are you?” and the fainter sound of a crying child.
Tracking the calls, she proceeded further into the building, moving as quickly as she dared.
The place was a maze of narrow aisles between wooden pallets stacked high with firs and spruce and pines, all of them baled in netting like tree-mummies.
With every step, she kept swiveling her head, looking behind her and above her for any signs of flames closing in. Her helmet and SCBA mask severely limited her peripheral vision, and her instructor had warned her that fire could sneak up on you before you saw them.
The darkness and the swirling clouds of smoke were disorienting. Without a partner to back her up, she couldn’t afford to lose her bearings. If she did, she might end up trapped in here with the people she was trying to rescue, and they could all suffocate or burn to death.
Then she emerged into a clear area. She saw a collection of bulky equipment, including a forklift, a circular tree baler, and a stack of large, fluffy looking cartridges of netting.
The calls of, “Emily! Emily! Where are you?” were much closer now.
Maggie swung her flashlight beam around, trying to locate the voices.
Then she spotted the figures of a man, a woman, and a little boy huddled together off to one side. Her light gleamed on a pair of hand-held fire extinguishers in the adults’ arms.
They seemed to be uninjured, but they were coughing heavily between frantic calls for Emily.
The boy was crouched on the straw-covered floorboards, sobbing his heart out.
The couple appeared startled to see Maggie emerge from the smoke. The man whirled and actually pointed his extinguisher at her like a weapon.
Maggie froze. “Located three individuals, two adults, one child,” she reported on her radio.
Then she addressed the couple. “Sir, ma’am, I’m from the Bearpaw Ridge Fire Department. You need to get out of this barn right now.”
