So, when he turned eighteen, many years earlier, he volunteered to be a fireman in the suburb of Salt Lake City.
Gary was one of three firefighters that answered the call that morning.
He knew why.
He knew the other firefighters, like many across the country were engrossed with the catastrophes unfolding across the globe. No one would say what they were or why they were happening.
He lived by a corner market and saw how many people rushed there to panic shop. Car horns beeped, people yelled and panicked over some sort of event that didn’t have a name or even pictures.
The Salt Lake local news anchor only seemed to announce major cities that were off the grid, no response at all.
They were advising everyone to stay inside, stay indoors until the threat had passed.
What was the threat? No one was saying anything specific. Some speculated they were volcanic eruptions, shift of tectonic plates causing quakes in cities that didn’t normally experience earthquakes.
He was certain as the day progressed, he’d learn more.
Gary’s phone went off and he pulled himself away from the television and computer, jumped in his truck and hurried to the station.
When he arrived, no one was there. He suited up, grabbed the gear and started prepping the truck. Charlie showed up, along with Stan.
“Where is everyone?” Gary asked.
“Watching the news,” Stan replied. “Maybe they know it’s a vacant house.”
“Yeah, well it can still spread,” Gary said, shaking his head.
The fire wasn’t far from them. Three blocks. Gary could even see the smoke from it in the distance.
They opened the doors, pulled out the truck and not a block down the street they came to a dead stop.
Traffic blocked the road, it was jammed.
Charlie beeped the horn on the truck as if it would suddenly make people move, but there was nowhere for them to move.
Gary stepped off the back of the truck into the street to gauge how far things were backed up. He watched people break in and loot the Pizza Hut, racing out with cans of sauce and sodas.
Were they insane?
He knew they weren’t going anywhere. They’d have to radio another station to handle the call. Just as he walked toward the front of the fire truck to talk to Charlie, he felt the slight rumble beneath his feet.
In that split second, his mind flashed to the news and the reporting of it possibly being a plague of earthquakes. But before he could fully register it in his mind, it was the loudest ‘boom’ Gary had ever heard. Not only was it loud, it shook the ground so much, that Gary teetered in his stance.
One shake, no more, it wasn’t an earthquake.
People screamed and ran, then Gary saw it.
In the distance, but directly ahead, right where the smoke from the fire once was, he watched what looked like rock and dirt shoot to the sky, like a geyser of earth instead of steam.
Did the fire cause an explosion?
But he knew exactly what it was when suddenly that fountain of soil ignited. Not only did the flames shoot straight to the clouds, a huge fireball formed, rolling across the sky.
Gas. It had to be some sort of gas. When it emitted violently from the ground, the flames from the nearby fire caused it to explode.
Gary dove for the ground behind the truck.
He felt the heat from the fire as it blasted above him. It didn’t last, it was fast and violent like when oxygen ignited.
As Gary reached to put on his Self Contained Breathing Apparatus, he felt it in his chest. The inability to inhale or exhale. Every ounce of air was sucked out. He watched a woman stagger, reaching out. Gary put on his mask. First rule, he couldn’t help others if he couldn’t help himself.
He wheezed in relief as he took in the air, then stood. He secured his mask tightly, grabbed another tank from the side of the truck, and ran to the front.
People fell to the ground, one by one, left and right, quickly.
He opened up the driver’s door and Charlie dropped right out.
Gary instantly put the mask on Charlie.
“Breathe, Charlie, breathe.” He shook him, but Charlie was gone, he was wasting the oxygen on him.
Gently he rested him back on the ground and looked for Stan. Surely Stan had on his SCBA. But on the other side of the truck, Stan lay on the road.
Gary stood there, feeling helpless, holding in his hand an apparatus that could save someone’s life. He looked. He looked for anyone that maybe still had life in them. He was overwhelmed, anxious and confused. He tried his hardest to think clearly, but it was all too much.
Gary watched the world around him just die and there was nothing he could do.
After running up and down the block, looking in buildings, he gave up. Exhausted, heartbroken and scared, Gary plopped down on the sidewalk.
They called it a ‘sniffer’ and every fire department had one on the truck. It took the warning alarm on his tank to snap Gary from his near catatonic state of despair to remember it. He sought out another tank but wouldn’t change it until he was on his last drop of oxygen. The way that people just died told him not only was there no oxygen in the air, there had to be some sort of release of a deadly gas.
The sniffer, a handheld gas detector confirmed that.
He wasn’t just getting high level
