Night Resurrected
Night Resurrected
Joss Ware
This book is dedicated to the memory of
Nora Ephron,
who wrote one of my all-time favorite
screenplays.
Contents
June 2010
A suburb of Denver, Colorado
W
yatt adjusted his facemask as the
black wall of smoke surrounded him.
The sounds of his breathing, forced
through the regulator he clamped
between his teeth, were barely audible
beneath the loud roar from the fire.
Glowing flames rose in a hot, angry
blaze and cast eerie shadows that
danced on the ceiling and along the top
of a long sofa. His protective gear
helped shield him from the heat and
smoke, but once inside an inferno, it was
impossible to see.
Yet, with the aid of his TIC, Wyatt
could use the thermal imaging device to
make out vague shapes in the living
room. No sign of the woman here. Her
husband waited in the front yard of their
blazing home, hysterical and half dead
from smoke inhalation himself. If his
wife was closed up in one of the rooms
—a bedroom, or better yet, a bathroom
—there was a chance she’d come out
alive.
The loud crash behind him had Wyatt
dodging as a chunk of ceiling fell in a
flaming mass. A new wave of heat
shimmered in the eerie blue light of the
camera lens. He felt his helmet jolt and
then the skim of hot pain over his back
as a second piece fell.
Fuck.
Got me.
Wyatt grabbed Handlemann and
gestured toward the dark hall, relieved
the flames hadn’t spread here yet.
Cheech McDermott hadn’t wanted his
boss to go in after the woman. He’d
planted himself in front of Wyatt in a
wide stance as he adjusted his helmet.
“It’s too damn late for her, Chief. You
know it is.”
But Wyatt and Handlemann went in
anyway. If there was a chance, and even
if there wasn’t, he’d go in. Just like if
there was any chance of dragging a
member of his platoon out of the
remnants of an explosion in Iraq, he’d
take it.
He’d want someone to do the same
for any member of his family.
Love you, Cath. Love you, Abby.
Love you, David.
Take care of them for me if I don’t
make it out.
Only moments ago he’d sent up this
silent prayer as he stepped onto the
porch of the burning house, Handlemann
behind him.
Now he started down the hall,
moving as quickly as possible in the
dark. The smoke was thick and his
breath rasped in his ears, but it was half
a degree cooler over here at least. Sweat
trickled down his spine and cheeks. A
noise-dulled shout from behind had him
spinning in time to see a chunk of
flaming wall collapse.
Handlemann ducked out of the way,
but now there was burning drywall and
wood flaring between them. Flames
skipped in a riotous orange fence. Wyatt
pressed the button on the mic clipped to
his collar and said, “H, I’m going on.”
He took two more steps and the floor
gave out.
Christ.
Pain shot up his leg and
he knew he’d scraped the shit out of it,
probably burned it too. He was up to his
hips, one foot dangling into the basement
below, the other miraculously stopped
against a ceiling beam. Now the flames
were coming along the hallway fast, and
he had to pull himself out.
But it was like dragging yourself out
of a broken patch of ice . . . the floor
kept shattering every time he put any
pressure on it.
This could be it
.
No, not yet. Not yet by a long shot.
Wyatt forced himself to ignore the
throb in his leg and the same ache in his
back. Focus. He needed leverage.
There.
The underside of a closed bedroom
door.
His fingers curling up beneath the
bottom of the door, he gripped the wood,
and leveraging with his one stable foot,
pushed up and pulled with his hands.
With one hard, sharp movement, he
launched himself out of the hole and
tumbled onto the ground.
Christ.
He staggered to his feet, a flash of
panic whipping through him. The hall
was choked with flames behind him and
in front loomed darkness . . . but not for
long.
He still had his TIC strapped around
him and he lifted it as he felt for the knob
of the door that had just saved his life.
The brass knob was warm even through
his gloves, and Wyatt knew he had less
than a couple minutes to get the hell out,
woman or no woman. Or his wife would
be a widow and his children would
grow up without a father.
But not this day. No, not this damned
day.
He twisted the knob and stumbled
through the door as yet another chunk of
something crashed to the floor. The
bedroom was filled with smoke, and he
looked through the viewer of the imaging
device, searching for the shape of a
human body. Then he saw it—the lump
on the floor by the window.
A window. With fresh air on the
other side, and a streetlight streaming
through. Flashing red and blue lights
from the trucks strobed in the darkness.
Hot damn.
Wyatt staggered over, his leg still
screaming with pain, his back scraped
and already blistering, and scooped up
the body. She moved weakly and he felt
a blast of relief.
He smashed the window with his axe
and didn’t even have to wait; his crew
was outside. Ready.
Curling his arm around the woman,
he climbed out the window.
T
hree hours later Wyatt wandered into
the kitchen at the fire station. His back
was bandaged up, the first degree burn
medicated and protected. His leg, the
skin peeled off in a three-inch wide
swath, was not burned and had been
attended to by the paramedics on-site.
He kept his limp to a minimum,
practicing for when he got home.
“Yo, Chief, you about done being a
hero and want some chili now?” Cheech
looked up from the pot he was stirring.
“If it’s Bev’s chili, you’re damn right
I want some.” Wyatt settled gingerly
onto a chair, careful not to press his
tender back against it. He could have
gone home, but the injuries were mild,
relatively speaking. And he only had two
more hours on his twenty-four-hour shift.
He’d be home for a day, then take off for
the weekend to Arizona with his
buddies. Elliott and Quent were two of
his closest friends, their bond forged
when they met doing hurricane relief in
Haiti a decade ago. This was going to be
a fun trip, though—an all-guy getaway,
where the only danger was running out
of beer or hiking too long and too hard
and having to sleep on tough ground. He
couldn’t wait.
Besides, if he went home early,
Cathy would be all upset and probably
make even more of a fuss about him
going away this weekend if he was
injured. Better to power through it. This
was nothing compared to the time he
ended up beneath half a car in Iraq. Or
nearly fried in the fire at a dry cleaner’s.
And then there was the time he fell on
his ass into an iced-over lake, trying to
extricate a hunting dog . . .
The chili was damn good. Spicy as
hell and filled with chunks of tender
beef, and accompanied by a hunk of corn
bread. The only thing that would make it
better was a cold one to go with it—but
not while on duty.
“The wife tonight—she gonna be all
right?” Cheech asked, settling at the
table with his own bowl. He scooped up
a bite before his ass even touched the
chair. “Damn, this is good.”
“Your Bev makes the best,” Wyatt
agreed, shoveling in another bite. “And
yeah, the wife’s gonna live. Close one,
that.”
“You’re telling me. Handlemann
thought you weren’t going to make it
out.”
“
I
thought I wasn’t going to make it
out. But I did. I sure as hell wasn’t going
to miss this weekend,” he added with a
grin. “First all-guy getaway in three
years. We’re going on an extreme hiking
trip deep in the Sedona caves in
Arizona. Just us and the outdoors. Think
you can hold the fort while I’m gone?”
Cheech snorted. He was the assistant
chief, and because their department was
so small, both of them worked normal
twenty-four-hour shifts at the fire station
while managing the department. Wyatt