Charlotte Maclay - With Valor And Devotion

Out front, a second police car arrived, siren screaming, lights flashing red-and-orange stripes along the shadowed path to the rear of the house.

“Suzie, where are you?” a child’s voice cried.

“Damn, there’re two of ’em,” Mike muttered. Kids. He hated it when the red devil went after kids, trying to suck the life out of them. Bad enough when it was grown-ups who were trapped. It wasn’t a fair fight when kids were involved. Mike’s job was to even the odds.

“I can’t see anything inside,” Jay shouted, trying to peer in the old-fashioned guillotine window. He gave it a shove but it didn’t open.

Mike pulled his heavy flashlight from its loop at his waist. “I got it. Stand back.”

He smashed the back of the flashlight through one of the panes, reached inside past the jagged glass, unlatched the window and opened it.

“Come here, Suzie,” the child coughed and sobbed. “Please, Suzie.”

“Give me a boost,” Mike ordered.

Jay cupped his hands, and Mike used them to lever himself inside, diving headfirst. He hit the floor with a thud, and coughed as smoke filled his lungs.

Stay low, you go; stay high, you die. Mike reminded himself of the old firefighters’ adage as he tried to get his bearings in the dark. Beyond two feet, smoke swallowed the light he shone around the room. He began circling to the right on his hands and knees so he’d know how to get back out again if there was a flashover.

But he wasn’t going anywhere until he found the children.

“Where are you, kid? Talk to me, okay?”

“I can’t find Suzie.”

Mike followed the sound of the young, frightened voice. “I’ll get her. You just stay put and keep talking.”

The child coughed again.

If the kid hadn’t made a sound right then, Mike might have missed him and passed right by what appeared to be a walk-in closet. He flashed his light inside and caught a glimpse of a boy with big brown terrified eyes. He looked to be five or six years old.

“Come on, fella, let’s get you out of here.” He reached for the boy.

The kid backed farther into the closet. “No! I won’t go without Suzie!”

Mike didn’t like the idea of manhandling the kid, but the smoke wasn’t getting any better. He had to get the youngster out of there in a hurry.

“I promise I’ll come back for Suzie, but for now you’ve got to do as I say.”

“No!” the child wailed, making himself as small as he could in the very back of the closet. “I want Suzie!”

Losing patience wouldn’t help. “What’s your name, son?”

The boy snuffled and coughed again. “Randy.”

“Great, Randy. Now this is what we’re gonna do. I’m gonna carry you out the window, then I’m gonna—”

“No!”

Clearing his own lungs with a cough, Mike flashed the light around. If he could spot Suzie—

“Is Suzie your sister, Randy?”

He shook his head. “Nuh-uh. She’s my dog ’n’ she’s all I’ve got.”

Mike heard a plea in the boy’s voice that was more than a spoiled kid wanting his pet back. Something that went far deeper.

From outside, Jay shouted, “You okay in there?”

Mike gritted his teeth. “Yeah, we’re just hunky-dory.”

He couldn’t mess around any longer. Kids couldn’t tolerate a whole lot of smoke. Neither could he.

Lunging for the boy, Mike wrapped his arm around the kid’s middle and started to back out of the closet, still keeping on his hands and knees. Toting the youngster around in that position was like carrying an angry, oversize centipede, a hundred arms and legs flailing while the boy screamed that he wouldn’t go anywhere without Suzie. Randy’s heel caught Mike in his solar plexus. He grunted as the air whooshed out of his lungs.

And they said dogs were loyal to their masters. Apparently, in Randy’s case, it worked both ways.

“Are there any other people in the house?” he asked the child.

“Just Suzie. And she’s mine!”

At the window, Mike passed the squirming, thrashing boy to Jay.

“You gotta save Suzie,” Randy cried. Great big tears filled the boy’s eyes, and his chin trembled. “You promised!”

“Who’s Suzie?” Jay asked, barely able to contain the youngster in his arms.

Mike rolled his eyes. “Don’t ask.”

Turning back into the smoke-filled room, Mike knew it was against departmental rules to risk a firefighter’s life for an animal. But dammit, it was the kid’s dog. Sometimes rules needed to be broken.

Getting as low as he could, he squirmed across the floor. Kids panicked in a fire. So did animals. Mike’s best guess was that the dog would go into hiding. But where?

The smoke was actually a little lighter now, making it easier for him to breathe as the rest of the fire crew got the flames under control. Mike flashed his light around. If the sense of loyalty between Randy and his dog was mutual, Suzie wouldn’t have gone far.

And she hadn’t. The dog was tucked under a makeshift bed that was little more than a cot. Who were these people who were living in an otherwise vacant house, Mike wondered. And where were Randy’s parents?

The dog didn’t react when Mike pulled her out from under the bed. A medium-sized dog of indiscriminate breeding, she lay limply in his arms as he lifted her. Mike couldn’t tell if she was still breathing or not.

“Come on, Suzie. If you die on ol’ Randy, it’s gonna kill the kid.”

He made it back to the window, climbing out awkwardly with the dog in his arms, then walked to the front of the house. Randy spotted him immediately.

With a cry that was so filled with desolation it nearly broke Mike’s heart, the boy pulled away from the paramedic who’d been working on him and ran through the weed-filled yard to Mike.

“Is she dead?” he sobbed.

“I don’t know, son. I really don’t know.” Mike continued walking toward the paramedic truck with the dog in his arms, Randy clutching his leg as if he and the boy were surgically attached. “You got any oxygen, Brett?” he asked the paramedic.

“For the dog?”

“Suzie’s real important to Randy. Let’s give it a shot.”

Brett shrugged. “Whatever.”

They all knelt together in what was a prayerful circle—Randy and Mike holding the dog, the paramedic cupping an oxygen mask over the dog’s muzzle. Tears of grief streamed down the boy’s face. If truth be known, Mike had a few tears in his eyes, too. As a kid he’d never been allowed to have a dog—not even a mutt like this shaggy-haired combination collie-terrier-and-who-knew-what-else. At Randy’s age, Mike would have cheerfully done chores for a year in any of the foster homes where he’d lived if they had let him have a dog of his own. It had never happened.

Suzie’s tail twitched.

“She’s alive!” Randy hugged the dog so tight, Suzie whined.

“Easy, son,” Mike said, and coughed. Gently, he rested his hand on the back of the boy’s head. “Let her catch her breath before you squeeze her to death.”

The paramedic backed off with the oxygen and smiled. “Looks like a good rescue to me.”

“Yep.” But Mike still wondered where the boy’s parents were, and why he’d been in the house all alone. The fire had been suppressed, nothing but the lingering smell of smoke as the crews mopped up. And still there was no sign of a family member or even a baby-sitter.

Brett said, “We’re going to transport the boy. He needs to be checked out for smoke inhalation.”

“You hear that, Randy? They’re going to take you to the hospital. You get to ride in an ambulance. Pretty cool, huh?”

Even as the dog was licking his face, the boy’s eyes were wide and distrustful. “What about Suzie?”

“Somebody will take care of her. She’ll be okay.”