Head 01 Hot Head (22 page)

Griff felt a weird holow torn in his gut. Something took a bite deep inside him, leaving a shredded space. A shark, it felt like, maybe; the whole world was

underwater.

Mask off, Watson was shaking his head and spitting. No response on the walkie.

Time slowed down til Griff could hear his heartbeat as two completely separate and distinct sounds.

- Lub… dub…. -

The crew was staring at the chief. For what seemed like an hour, they waited for the chief to give an order.

- Lub… dub…. -

Griff did not. He didn’t know what happened, realy. He didn’t even think; he just saw it happen because he was somewhere else with a view. Suddenly, the

legs under him were moving, fast, but they were somebody else’s legs. With the detachment of a hawk, he watched some big pale stranger in his gear sprinting

through that burning door, headed back for the B-stairs he’d just left.

- Lub… dub…. -

Someone else’s breath whooshed in ears that didn’t feel like his. He felt the stolen legs underneath the gear pump as they pushed toward his best friend

suffocating upstairs, or worse. Like the air wasn’t hot, gray-orange soup. Like rancid smoke didn’t curl in front of the mask.

- Lub… dub…. -

Only when he was alone did Griff force himself into his own skin, into the fire. Everything moved slowly around him.
Think, idiot.
They’d been up on four when Watson made the grab. He climbed the steps into the inferno. Cinders floated in the air around him.

Upstairs, he stayed low and made his way down the smoking halway.

Please.

“Dante?” Under the mutter of the fire, he listened for Dante’s radio. “C’mon, you fucking idiot.” There was only the hum of the fire turned loose on al that

cardboard and plastic, the prefab furniture popping and buckling, glass breaking. Metal beams growning overhead. Dante wasn’t anywhere.

Griff’s panic rose in him, paralyzing him as he spun in place, straining for a sign, a sound, a clue in the roaring dark.

- Lub… dub…. -

Finaly, at the north end, he heard an electronic squawk on the other side of the wal. He put his hand against the baking sheetrock, straining to listen.

Siluski’s voice was faint and staticky, but nearby. “Anastagio!”

Griff didn’t hesitate. He hefted his axe and hacked a man-sized gap between the struts. The hot air slammed into his face, scorching his lashes. He swung his

hooligan hard and tore his way inside, ramming in with his shoulders.
Football in Hell
. The heat roled out, broiling the air in his lungs. Hunting for Dante, it was September 11th al over again.

Mask
. He felt stupid for not having it on, but he wasn’t going to waste time now. Dante wasn’t wearing his either, which was worse. Inside the room, a table had flipped. Dante’s helmet was flipped on the floor, and he scooped it up. He was walking on broken plastic and charred cardboard. He heard Siluski saying

Dante’s name on the radio again and flung the table behind him.

There!
Against the wal, a reflective strip caught the beam from his chest and bounced it back. —STAGIO. He’d never been happier to see the fluorescent tail of that jacket.

Dante’s pop had once told him that their family name, Anastagio, meant “divine” or “reborn.” In this scalding room, seeing the reflective letters crumpled

together protecting his friend, that sounded just about right.

Better than 9/11; at least we’re here together.

Griff dropped the helmet and crossed the blazing room.

I’d rather die with him. He won’t be alone this time.

Against the wal, Dante was crumpled half-buried under masonry and part of the ceiling, snug against a pile of huge corrugated boxes. A beam had clipped

him and stunned him long enough to fil his lungs with the suffocating smoke. His scalp was bleeding pretty badly, but he didn’t seem burned or broken. His nose was crusty with toasted insulation and soot, but his breath was steady if shalow.
Alive.

Dante groaned and shifted; his hands flexed. Spine was sound,
thank Christ
.

“Dante?” Griff crouched under the smoke and roled the body, puling off one glove to check him—no cuts, strong pulse. Head wound of some kind, but no

time for a colar or a flatboard. They had to get the hel out of the heat that was baking the room around them before they both suffocated.

Flecks of burning paper floated down onto the two of them like angry moths. Griff fumbled for his rebreather and held the sweet, metalic air over Dante’s

nose and mouth for a moment. Griff kept low to the ground beside him, their faces about three inches apart. He saw Dante’s eye move under the delicate lid.

Across the room, Griff heard a window explode with the heat. His own lungs were scorched. Down in the street, sirens and people shouting. He took another lungful of canned oxygen and then strapped his mask onto his friend’s bloody face. Déjà vu watching Dante near death; he’d done this before.

Time to go
.

Griffin shook his head. “Hang on, buddy.” On autopilot he leaned down, put a shoulder low, and scooped Dante up, bracing his powerful legs against the

weight.

Not dead weight. Not dead weight
.

With a shout, Griff hefted Dante into a tight cradle and strode for the gap he’d made in the wal, kicking and shouldering his way through.

- Lub…. -

He turned for the fire door and tried not to inhale.

- Dub…. -

His chest cramped and his arms burned with Dante’s weight.

Please-please-please, God. I’ll do anything.

Things were easier in the stairwel; with gravity on his side, he was able to brace against the wal a couple times as he stumbled his way back down to the

street. Fire was starting to seep down the wals.

- Lub…. -

As Griff picked his way down the steps, trying not to drop his precious burden, a memory came to him: the two of them getting trashed on Jägermeister shots

the summer before they’d started at the fire academy on Randal Island. They’d been “watching” the Anastagios’ house, and Dante had gotten wasted with three

girls and had a couple hours of weird sex while Griff passed out on the couch.

For reasons Dante never could explain, he had let the trio scribble al over his long body with paint pens before passing out. When he woke up the paint had

dried, blue and red gibberish on every square inch of his body that wouldn’t come off without scrubbing.

In the morning, without thinking twice, Griff had stripped down, picked up Dante, and climbed into the shower with a hard brush and literaly scoured his best

friend head to toe, both of them laughing, so they could make it to church for some cousin’s christening. That was the only other time in their lives he’d carried Dante.

- Dub…. -

I could never do that now
. Carry him naked. Then again, Dante would never do that now. Would he?

Griff could see the bottom of the stairs, could taste the first hint of cold air. His eyelashes were burning. With the last strength he had, he squeezed Dante to his chest and slammed out the door.

Then they were in the street and he could breathe and everyone was yeling at him. He was nearly blind with the smoke, and the whole world was a stinging

blur. His nose was caked with ash and his eyebrows were singed.

“Down! Put him down!” The EMTs peeled his grip loose and lifted Dante onto the gurney. Tommy leaned over him, checking pulse and giving low instructions to the other paramedics. A beefy black woman was suctioning his airways and muttering.

Dante took a loud gasping breath. Reborn. And Griff knew the exact music of his breath.
Thank you, God.

Griff tried to see him but went to his knees, hacking and retching. The blackened spit ran from his mouth in long, poisonous ribbons on the pavement.

Now I know what broiled television tastes like.

More windows burst high above them, and an enormous chunk of ceiling gave on one of the upper floors, sending a bilion cinders spiraling into the air. A

colossal
whoomp
of flame licked at the sky
.

That could have been him.

“What in the hel were you doing, Muir?” Someone was beside him, yeling down. Briggs. “Almost got your fat ass broiled.”

Fuck you.
Griff spat again. He couldn’t get the taste out of his throat, or the sight of Dante crumpled against the wal. What the hel had Dante been doing?

Umm, his job? He’s a fireman too.

Dante hacked and coughed as Tommy put an oxygen line under his nose and made him breathe, checking for damage with gentle hands.

Thank you, Tommy.

A freckled paramedic held his eyelid up and ran a penlight over the pupil, muttering something to the others. Tommy nodded and looked at Griff… and

nodded. It would be okay.

Next round at the Pipe Room is on me.

Briggs was pissed. “Fuckwit, we had a ladder on the way. You couldn’t wait three goddamn minutes for your fucking girlfriend?”

Like that, Griff was on his feet, fist raised to pound Brigg’s face into pulp right there in the street when Siluski caught hold of his arm and yanked him back like a Rottweiler.

The chief stepped in front of Briggs, holding up a hand. “Leave it, Briggs! It’s his brother.”

“If you say—” Briggs took another step, and Watson put a hand on his chest.

“I just did. That’s why I’m wearing the white shirt, dipshit.” The chief stepped forward. “That’s why I got officer bars on my chest. Cool off.”

Griff knew he was breathing too fast and tried to slow his gasping so he didn’t hyperventilate and pass out. As the medicos cut Dante out of his turnout gear, Griff could see the block letters on Dante’s navy T-shirt: “KEEP 200 FEET BACK.”

Try and make me.

Siluski put a hand on his arm, snapping him back to the sidewalk in front of the smoking building. “C’mon, kid. They got him.”

Griff looked down at the hand on his sleeve, feeling like his massive arm didn’t belong to him. The muscles were stil shaking and cramped. “Yessir.”

Griff let some volunteer ambulance chick steer him to the side of the EMS van and administer pointless first aid to him, just so he didn’t murder and mutilate Briggs in a public place.

After they’d finished playing doctor, Griff walked on robot feet to the truck. He needed to cal Dante’s parents. Above them, the building smoldered under

the one good hose.

Fucking city. Fucking Republicans. Fucking budget cuts.

The chief handed him Dante’s helmet. “Gidwitz found this.”

“Thanks.” Griff gathered it against his chest like an infant.

“The hel were you doing?!”

“It wasn’t me realy. I mean, I didn’t think.” Griff coughed. God, it stank.
“I didn’t….” He felt powerless, mad for no reason. He wanted to crush Briggs’s skul for caling Dante his girlfriend, for picking that moment to be an asshole, for trying to shame him.

“No. You did good. He could’ve died up there.” Chief nodded. “I’m stil writing you up, but off the record? That was a good thing.”

Griff cradled the helmet and breathed. Blinking felt weird; he realized his eyelashes had been singed short and blunt.

The ambulance carrying Dante puled away at high speed and Griff felt his heart go with it, unspooling-unspooling from his chest like a long thread that wouldn’t break.

THE Slick Wilie’s fire gave in after about three hours. Finaly, Engine 361 showed up from the other Red Hook house, thank Christ, and they hammered at the

bitch til she gave in. They tapped another hydrant that wasn’t vandalized, and the other men went back in. The engine soaked the facade with water, then ran

another line inside to hose the hotspots.

After getting his ass chewed, Griff sat the rest out, staying down on the street trying to get air into his scalded lungs. Everyone could fuck off. Not one thing he would have done differently. The medics told him that if he’d been a smoker, he probably would have suffocated. For the milionth time, he was glad Dante hated tobacco in his house.

When the blaze had died down, the other guys went back up to do a floor-by-floor in the soupy ash and charred appliances and smoldering cardboard.

Once they’d given an al clear, everyone was more than ready to ditch this shitbox.

In the end there were no “roasts” at al; no one had died in the building. The fire marshal would do a walkthrough in the morning because “multiple points of

origin” was pretty much a flashing “insurance fraud” sign. Evil idiots.

Dante wound up being the only serious medical situation, and it was his own damn fault. Tommy was pretty sure he had a head injury, but he was responsive,

so Griff didn’t have a good excuse to go with them to the hospital.

On the rig the guys were silent. They’d been lucky and Griff had been stupid. ’Nuff said. No one was going to blame him for saving a life, especialy one of

theirs.

Jostled by the pitted road and riding backward, Griff checked the other faces. Was anyone looking at him weird? Had they paid attention to Briggs’s bulshit?

No. Everyone knew that he was an honorary Anastagio. They were letting him panic in peace.

Where was Dante now?

“I’m getting too old for this shit.” Griff tried to swalow. His hands were shaking. He was soaking wet under his gear. He stil wasn’t sure he hadn’t pissed his pants when he’d found Dante unconscious and burning.

Siluski shook his head and wiped his mouth. “Nah. Seems to me you’re just old enough, kid.”

Griff closed his eyes and rested inside the rocking truck, ignoring everyone else. Facing backward like that—not being able to see where he was headed—

always made him a little queasy. His eyes burned and he cried a little in relief, but who could tel under the scorched grime. He wanted a shower, a drink, and a nap. He needed to sit down and talk about everything and nothing with the only person who turned him inside out without even trying.