It was pure pandemonium when they arrived in Lundbar Hills. The two homes that housed the men were gone. There was nothing but rubble. Windows of nearby homes had been smashed by a blast. This wasn’t a regular fire. It looked as if someone had dropped a bomb on the two houses. Outside, nearby, blackened bodies lay on the ground, some unmoving, others reeling in agony and being tended to with fire blankets and multiple medical teams. As soon as Johnson stopped the truck, Colby pushed out and rifled through the back of the cab for a fire blanket. Every vehicle that was in operation had two. Colby rushed over to a woman that was on fire, screaming. She fell to the ground and he smothered out the flames with the blanket while all around him people ran by tossing buckets of water on the fire. It did little to help. Others used small portable extinguishers and were spraying white powder. The blustery wind wasn’t making it easy, blowing a lot of it across the street like a snowdrift. It swirled in the air, making many cough.
The woman’s screams under the blanket were deafening.
The chances of her surviving were low. Even if she lived, the trauma she’d have to deal with would be immense. They had doctors in the city and a hospital that was in operation but it wasn’t prepared to deal with this level of trauma. As he scanned the neighborhood, he noticed that it wasn’t just two homes, but several more in the distance that had been targeted.
If they were under attack, where were the attackers?
Once the flames were out, Colby moved on to the next victim. Some were quick fixes. An arm on fire, a leg. The worst was a man whose entire body was covered. It took two of them to put out the flames and by then he was already dead.
It was a chaotic scene and yet amid it all the residents were doing the best they could.
Screams filled the air in every direction. If they weren’t coming from burn victims, it was family. Parents finding their children unconscious, teens with blackened faces crying as they looked for missing parents. Tears streaked the cheeks of almost everyone he saw.
He and Alicia moved from one person to the next. For some it was to put out fires, for others it was to offer bottled water. Ten minutes turned into twenty in the blink of an eye. His gaze drifted over the terrifying sight of dead bodies, and victims being lifted as carefully as possible into trucks to be taken to the hospital. For some it was too much to witness and people turned away. He thought he could handle it but even after all his years as a cop he could feel himself breaking. Maybe it was the alcohol coursing through his system but he stopped and dropped into a crouch and brought both hands up to his face just to pause, and take a moment to pull himself together. When he removed his hands, he could see Alicia standing there, staring at the body of a small child whose skin had been turned to a red and black charred mess.
“Alicia.” She didn’t respond.
She wasn’t the only one frozen by shock. Young and old reflected back the agony they felt. The screaming of burn victims was too much to bear and something broke in Alicia that night. She turned and ran. “Alicia!” he cried out but she didn’t look back. Like a salmon moving upstream against a tide of fish, he hurried after her but lost her in the swell of people flocking to help or simply to gawk.
Hours later, Colby found Alicia not far from their house down by the waterfront trail. She was sitting out on the extended dock, feet dangling over the edge. It was quiet, just the sound of the water lapping against the shore and dock. Colby had been there many times over the years to fish with his brothers. Her back was turned to him as he stood on the waterfront trail observing her. He considered letting her have some alone time but there was something about her reaction to the fire that made him curious.
She’d seen all manner of horrors since L.A.
Why was it different this time?
She was picking at the wooden dock as he approached, an easterly wind blowing her long dark hair across her face. She was looking toward Woodley Island where the jetty still had boats moored.
Colby took a seat beside her.
He didn’t say anything at first. He just waited for her to speak.
“Sorry. I wasn’t much use. I… I couldn’t handle it,” she said.
“No need to be sorry. It’s a lot to take in.”
She cast a glance at him.
“When I was a cop I saw all manner of shit on the job. Parents who had killed their kids, animals abused, women raped or beaten, and gang members chopped up into multiple pieces. You’d think it would harden you to it all, and in some ways it does, but seeing burn victims, hearing them scream. There’s something different about that. Even more so when it’s children. No one gets used to that.”
“Those people will die, won’t they?”
He nodded. “Some will. Pain is pain. And not everyone can be saved, Alicia.”
“But I froze. I couldn’t move.”
“It happens to the best. I saw cops throw up, some toss in the towel after one month on the job. No amount of college prepares you for what you see in the streets. That’s why there is such a high rate of suicide among cops. It sticks. The gruesome images stay with you. You take it home. A lot of guys drown it out with drink but that only leads to other problems.”
There was a pause.
“I wanted to help, I just didn’t
