M Sellars - The Law Of Three

I continued on my trajectory in the opposite direction of the burning house, not exactly sure where we should go. I only knew that we needed to get far enough away that we would be safe, and then we could use a cell phone to call for help.

I was just about to look up and try to gain my bearings when the dull pain of a full-force tackle tore into my back. I was twisted away from Deckert by the blow, and pitched forward. An unintelligible banshee wail soaked through the curtain of semi-deafness in my ears, and someone rode me to the ground, flailing madly all the way.

The utter shock of being tackled took a moment to set in. Initially, my face was filled with snow, and I was blinded to what was going on around me. That, combined with my still diminished hearing, left me in a surprised daze. All I knew was that someone was on top of me, and I thought that I was being hit repeatedly. Whoever was attacking me was also yelling something, which to me was, for all intents and purposes, unintelligible, coming across as nothing more than a jumble of excited noise.

I was pinned in place and stunned into immobilization. As the bewilderment wore off, however, I could definitely feel the thumping against my back. I started to wince as the next blow fell and then realized that it didn’t really hurt all that much. My mind raced as I tried to reconcile the absence of serious agony in connection with the blows. Unfortunately, the equation simply didn’t work out for me.

I finally decided that either I had already taken so much abuse while in the house that it just didn’t matter any more or that the adrenalin in my system was dulling the pain for the time being so that it could spring it on me later. Whichever it was, my attacker was having very little effect at the moment other than just generating some general discomfort.

I suddenly felt myself being rolled to the side, and it crossed my mind that maybe I could seize the opportunity. I clenched my fists, preparing to fight back against the mysterious combatant. As my right shoulder rotated upward, I pulled my left arm in and slid it beneath my rising chest. By the time I was on my side, I had twisted it free, and I tensed my muscles in preparation. Using the supplied momentum to roll myself the rest of the way over, I swung my left arm in a wide, roundhouse arc.

Fortunately for both of us, the firefighter kneeling next to me jerked back just in time to cause me to miss.

“Whoa, sir!” she shouted as her hand came up and deflected my arm.

Her voice was just audible enough for me to make out what she had said, and the sight of her brought my tension back down to a manageable level. I allowed myself to relax, and my head fell back into the snow. “Carl…” I wheezed. “Heart…”

Her lips moved, and I shook my head.

“He’s right here.” She raised her voice and repeated the comment as she fought the zipper on the front of my coat with a sense of urgency. “The paramedics are already with him. Are you having trouble hearing?”

“Yeah. Explosion. Ringing.” I sputtered once again as my breathing started to come under control for the first time in what seemed like forever. “He okay?”

“He’ll be fine, sir,” she told me.

“Ben?”

She pointed above and to my left, so I twisted my head to have a look. My friend was remaining staunchly by Deckert’s side as the paramedics were loading him onto a backboard.

Ben pulled a clear, plastic oxygen mask away from his face and sputtered, “I’m here, white man.”

I made out what he was saying more from reading his lips than actually hearing him.

“Can you walk, sir?” The firefighter was talking to me again.

I turned my face back to her and managed a weak grin. “I was before you tackled me.”

She smiled back. “You didn’t give me much choice. We were coming around the back to vent the structure, and the first thing we saw was the three of you running like maniacs. We couldn’t seem to get your attention though.”

“Well, there was this fire you see…” I let my voice trail off.

“Yeah, that’s what I hear,” she answered with a grin. “So, we need to get this coat off of you.”

I swallowed hard and looked back at her as if she had lost her mind. “You did notice that it’s snowing out here, didn’t you?”

My wry comment was peppered with small fits of coughing.

“Yes,” she nodded as she spoke. “But apparently you DIDN’T notice that you were on fire.”

The abrupt tackle suddenly made all kinds of sense. The light must have snapped on behind my eyes because she just looked back at me and grinned.

“I thought someone was attacking me,” I offered.

She nodded. “I pretty much got that from the roundhouse. Can you sit up?”

I pushed myself up and felt half the joints in my body pop and creak as I did so. I winced and continued until I was fully upright. The firefighter gingerly extracted my arms from the heavy winter coat, and without hesitation, the cold air wrapped itself around my sweaty body, bringing an instant chill. The snow beneath me was already melting from my body heat and soaking into my pants, leeching the warmth from me. Sitting there, I started to realize just how miserable I felt.

The firefighter worked her fingers through the elastic strap on another oxygen mask and pulled it over the back of my head then adjusted the business end over my nose and mouth.

“Just breath normally,” she instructed.

I nodded as I sucked in the fresh oxygen then spit out a quick cough.

“I know it’s hard, but don’t gulp it,” she told me again. “Just breath normally.”

I stared across the yard at the back of the house and saw that with the exception of the smoke billowing from the basement door, the outer structure seemed relatively intact. Of course, I had no idea what the damage was like from the front. In any case, the blurry scene before me sat farther in the distance than I had expected. Apparently, we had been covering ground at a pretty good clip when we escaped.

“You’re lucky,” my rescuer told me as she shuffled around and draped a blanket across my shoulders. “It looks like your coat took it all, except maybe…”

“Except maybe…” I started to ask then pulled the mask out from my face for a moment. “Except maybe what?”

“Did you happen to have a ponytail?”

“Yeah, I do.”

“Well… Not so much anymore.”

The front of the house was a somewhat different story as compared to the back. Although it could have looked far worse, it was obvious upon first glance that the structure had been involved in a fire. A portion of the roof had been burned through, and all of the windows were broken. Smoke still streamed out of any open orifice, mixing itself with the falling snow to form an eerie curtain of haze.

Firefighters were still entering and exiting the home, attacking what remained of the blaze with hoses that trailed in through the front door as well as around to the back side. Still, from outward appearances, it didn’t look anywhere near as bad as it had been on the inside.

Being mid-afternoon on a weekday, there was a noticeable absence of onlookers; something I’m sure made life easier on the professionals trying to do their jobs. One of the firefighters had told us, however, that a news crew was on the scene.

Ben and I were presently parked in the back of an ambulance, watching the goings-on through the open back door. Carl Deckert had already been rushed from the scene in a different life support vehicle, siren blaring and emergency lights strobing. The last thing we had been told was that he had gone into a full-blown cardiac arrest but that the paramedics had been able to defibrillate his heart. He certainly wasn’t out of danger, but he had a strong, regular pulse and was stable for the time being.