Chief Protection

“Hey, Chief?”

Lance glanced up from the files on his desk to see Kevin, the newest volunteer fireman on his crew, standing in the doorway of his office. “Kevin, what can I do for ya?”

Kevin hesitantly stepped into the small office, looking around sheepishly. “Well, sir. I was wondering if we had a spare fire coat laying around.”

The fire chief arched his brow, as he eyed the younger man. “Why would you wanna know that?”

Kevin scrunched up his face. “It’s for me, sir. My girlfriend just got a new dog. A puppy. And well. He ain’t house trained. I cleaned my coat but – well it still stinks, sir. I’ve sent it off to get professionally cleaned. But it just happened yesterday, so I don’t have it back for my shift this week.” Kevin lowered his gaze to the floor, waiting for a lecture about not being prepared for the job.

Lance leaned back, his office chair creaking loudly. He eyed Kevin for a few moments. The guy was young, barely twenty-one years old. Right around the same age that Lance had completed fire training. Lance had been on the fire crew for almost forty years, had been fire chief for the last ten of those forty years.

He watched Kevin squirm under his stern gaze.

“I’ll tell ya what, Kev. My wife brought home a puppy once. He’s a big fat lazy mutt now. A part of the family. But he was a nuisance those first few months. Especially before we got him house trained.” Lance rose out of his seat and walked across the room to a small locker in the corner. He opened it up and pulled out his old fire coat. “This is the one I used before I became chief. It’s older but it’s still a good coat. Got me through some tough fires. You can borrow this one ‘til yours gets back from the cleaners.” He held the coat out to Kevin, with a fatherly smile softening his features.

“Thank you, sir. I’ll take good care of it. Thanks for understanding.” He turned to leave the office, putting the coat on to be sure it fit as he went. Something glinted in the light as he swung the coat around himself. Curious, Kevin paused to inspect the shiny charm sewn to the inside breast of the coat. It was a silver eye, with an amber gem in the center. The charm seemed to draw Kevin in as he looked at it. Reaching a hand up to touch the eye, Kevin felt a static charge shock his finger before he ever reached the item. Shrugging off the strangeness of it, Kevin took the coat to his locker to put it with the rest of his gear.

A few hours later, Kevin was sitting out on the back patio of the fire station, watching the birds nesting in the small copse of trees a few yards away. He leaned back in the cushioned patio chair, feeling sleepy and hoping to catch a quick nap while all was quiet. His eyes drifted closed. He wasn’t there long when the hair on the back of his neck stood up and he had the eerie feeling that he was being watched. Kevin opened his eyes and looked around. He caught a glimpse of a woman in the doorway of the station. It was a middle aged woman, with her blonde hair in a bun and a flowery sundress draped over a slim figure. Kevin moved to get out of his chair to greet her, thinking she was looking for someone. But when he looked back to the spot, she was gone. Figuring his mind was playing tricks on him from lack of sleep, he sat back down and closed his eyes again.

The sirens blared a few minutes later, jerking Kevin awake. Jumping from his seat, he ran to his locker and joined the rest of the crew in gearing up for a structure fire. A house in a nearby neighborhood had smoke rising out of the roof vent and a neighbor could see flames through a window. It was time to work.

Wearing his borrowed fire coat, Kevin drove the fire truck out of the station’s bay. As he waited for the traffic to stop so he could pull out into the street, he swore he saw the woman again, standing across the street. She was looking straight at him with a very serious look on her face. Kevin blinked a few times to clear his head. She was gone when he looked back.

Kevin pulled the truck on scene of the fire less than ten minutes later. The police were already there keeping the onlookers at bay and making sure the surrounding houses were empty just in case. The fire crew jumped out and off the truck and quickly got the hoses stretched and began pumping the water onto the base of the flames.

Kevin eyed the building as he went to join them. Something nagged at him. Something was wrong. He saw the woman again. This time she was inside the burning building.

“Someone’s in there!” he yelled to the chief.

Lance cursed under his breath. They’d been told on the radio that the house was empty. Had been so for months. But the look on Kevin’s face said he wouldn’t listen to that. He was going in.

“Peter!” Lance waved over a man that had been on his crew for a few more years, was more experienced than Kevin. “Kevin saw someone in the house. He’s gearing up, you go with him”

Kevin lead the way into the blaze. The flames climbing higher. Heat and smoke rising faster than it should be. Lance watched the house with baited breath as he directed the rest of his crew.

Kevin paused in the front room of the house. Peter stood just behind him. The house was empty.

“Where are they?” Peter glanced around, not seeing anyone.

Kevin spotted the woman again as she ran down the hall away from them. “Wait!” He called out to her but she seemed not to hear.

Peter looked at Kevin in confusion. “There’s no one there, man.”

Kevin shook his head. He knew he saw someone. Not waiting for Peter, he headed for the hallway. He used his booted feet to open all the doors he passed, they were all standing cracked open as he approached. All the rooms were empty except for the flames and smoke. He came to a door at the end of the hall. It was locked. The woman was suddenly next to him again. But now he saw that she wasn’t quite solid. She pointed to the locked door with an urgent look on her face.

Peter ran up next to Kevin just then, coming to stand right where the woman was. Kevin, blinked, stunned. He just stared at Peter. He’d just seen a ghost! Peter clapped him on the shoulder to get his attention. Kevin realized Peter had been talking. He shook his head to get his bearings.

“The door’s locked. I think they’re inside,” he finally said to Peter.

The fire blazed through the house faster than anyone had anticipated. The roof appeared to sink in a bit.

Creaking.

At the fire chief’s behest, the police urged the small crowd that had gathered to the far side of the street.

“Kevin! Peter!” The Lance called out over the roar of the fire. “You better get your asses out! It’s gonna blow!” He hoped his crew could hear him. Hoped they knew the danger coming down on them.

Then with a deafening crash the roof caved in. The windows burst with a shattering crash, and flames danced tauntingly through the broken glass. No one should have been able to survive that blast. The fire was too hot and consuming. The smoke was a thick black pillar surrounding the house and rising into the air, choking even those standing on the street behind the tape that read DO NOT CROSS.

At this point the structure was beyond saving. The best the firemen could hope for was to not let the fire spread through the yard and reach another house. They scrambled with the hoses to saturate the ground around the house to form a barrier that would hopefully keep the flames contained. Then they returned to fighting against the fire itself, but there was less urgency in their tactics. Everything they knew about fires indicated that the structure was lost and no one within was alive.

Lance watched the burning structure carefully, looking – hoping – for any sign of movement. He’d been in worse situations, and had still managed to make it out alive and barely injured when he was wearing that old coat. He’d always sworn it had brought him good luck, ever since his wife had put the Eye of Horus charm inside it – just weeks before she’d passed away in car crash. The Eye of Horus was a symbol of spiritual protection, according to his wife. Lance guessed it had actually worked for him. He just hoped it would do the same for Kevin.

Kevin shifted the weight of the small boy in his arms. The child, no more than ten years old, had been huddled in the hall closet hiding from the heat of the fire; he was passed out from smoke inhalation. Kevin had been following Peter back down the hall when the flames had rushed in and they heard the roof start to cave in. Now they were crouched under a beam that had nearly crushed their heads. Kevin peered through the smoke, trying to find an escape route. Peter was choking on the smoke – his mask had come loose in the rush to miss being hit by the cave in.

It’s useless. We’re trapped.

Just when Kevin thought they were going to be swallowed by the rising flames, he spotted the woman again. The smoke and heat didn’t seem to be affecting her. Of course not, She’s a ghost! She beckoned to Kevin. Urging him to follow her. She went into the room just a few feet away. But there were flames between him and the doorway.

“We can’t! The fire’s too hot,” he yelled after the ghostly woman. Suddenly she was next to him. Her hand on his shoulder. The flames slowly died away from the path she wanted Kevin to take. Checking the mask he’d put on the boy, Kevin tightened his grip on the unconscious child and grabbed Peter by the arm of his coat. Against his own judgment and thinking he’d lost his mind, Kevin carefully followed the woman into the room.

The fire hadn’t reached the middle of the room yet, although the inner walls were covered by the biting flames. Kevin rushed for the window. Setting the boy down and releasing the sputtering Peter, Kevin knocked out the glass as best he could. He yelled out as loud as his sore throat and suffocating lungs would let him. A moment later he saw the chief come around the house to their aid.

The rest of the day was blur for Kevin. But he and Peter had survived with amazingly little actual smoke inhalation damage. And the boy, who they found out had run away from home, was expected to make a full recovery.

The next morning, Kevin came awake in his hospital bed with the feeling of being watched. He saw the ghostly figure of the middle aged woman in her flowery sundress standing in the doorway of his room.

“Thank you,” he whispered.

She nodded, smiling warmly at him, and disappeared just as silently as she had come.