Sunshine…Part One.

I was asleep when the radio call went off.

Fire call all fire responders needed. An apartment fire at 233, 37th street. I rolled out of bed and started to jump into my clothes and Rachel my wife sort of sat up and looked at me. “Joel? What…Oh no…I thought we talked…you said that you gave your resignation.”

“Rachel I’ve gotta go it’s a super unit fire.”

Super units were like the old housing projects a long time ago but here in the 26th century the new thing was these super units. It’s a massive building an apartment and housing unit the size of an entire city block…stores and stuff near the bottoms but the rest of the two hundred story things were apartments…or were seventy years ago.

These things were now old and the were also literally bad neighborhoods.

Still thousands of people…they needed every man, every body that they had or could get for something like this.

“You don’t have to go you’re done! Joel! No! You’re retired!”

“Yes I have to go! We have friends and family going there dammit Rachel! I only left last week, I have to go, what if something happened!?”

“Yeah Joel what if something fucking happened to you!?”

“I’m going!”

“Then expect you shit outside when you get home! You know what!!! Don’t fucking come home!”

I leave…Rae’s following me calling me everything but a white person…..old saying, back in the 20th and until the 23rd racism was alive and well here on Earth. She’s also throwing anything remotely breakable at me.

She really hates me doing my job.

But I’m a firefighter, I’ve been one for forty years. And I’ve lost track at how many times I’ve nearly died. Hell I’m about eighteen to twenty percent replacement parts. Cybernetic organs and stuff, bones, both eyes are tech made, lost them at different times.

She hates in and she’s scared…she though I was done, I though I was done but this kind of fire kills a lot of people…Roscoes included.

Roscoes are firefighters.

The name actually comes from a slang term for carry a gun, some people called guns Roscoes like ages back and then some time in the 22nd century someone called one of our fire axes that. “C’mon and bring that roscoe with you, there’s a kid trapped in here…”

No one knows the story it’s just how I picture it but the nickname stuck.

I’m not letting this happen, not while there’s still breath in my body. Hell I practically raised some of these firefighters…I’m not leaving them or the people in the lurch.

Cop…soldier…firefighters…

Once you’re a firefighter you never stop being a fire fighter.

I could really use my siren and flashers right now though. I’m driving a little crazy and cutting through the traffic. It might have taken me twenty minutes to get there but twenty minutes could be the same as twenty years in a fire like this.

I could see the flames from eight minutes away.

I have to ditch the car because there’s no way to get it closer and I jog the rest of the way in looking for.

“Tom!…what’s our sitch?”

“Not good Joel, suit up we had a shootout in there and there’s people trapped inside because they were hiding from the gunfire.”

He doesn’t ask what I’m doing there. An extra man is an extra man and I head to the loggy-bus (Logistics) to grab extra gear and suit up. I’m done in another twelve and I’m moving in with six other guys…two are oldsters like me.

We walk into the scene through floors of steam, a slimy muck like later of water made ash and soot. Up into hell…part of me can’t help but wonder at things like that. Walking up into hell.

The thirty seventh floor is where the heat, smoke and flames start up and we make our way through bit by bit looking and searching. There’s just so many places to hide. I swallow the pain in my heart when I’m seeing people that we just never got to in time…old people, kids…there’s always too many kids here…they end up having lots in here because it boosts the level of their assistance cheques.

I hate seeing kids die.

I hate the fact they’re dead because of some selfish mother fucking drug dealer or gang decided whatever they were doing was more important than their lives or the lives of the people around here.

Pets…

I’m hurt by seeing animals dead or dying too. The term furkids means something to me. I’m just one of those guys.

But every life we save, every one we pass off to the police officers and others brave enough to help the rescue teams is precious to me.

We’re up to the fortieth floor when there’s the popping of ammo going off ignited by the heat and we duck and take cover…there’s yells and just…

Jerry Mcknight one of the kids that went in with me and the other four guys doesn’t drop in time and there’s a “huk…” sound…not even a real sound and the kid drops…he took some rounds. I see one through his visor.

Dammit!

Dammit, dammit, dammit he was just twenty…just a kid he never even had a chance to really get to have a life yet!

I’m keeping down and I’m cursing and crying some as we’re waiting for the popping to stop.

That’s when I hear the crying.

I’m a father…

I know the sound of a little girl crying.

I’m a father…

There’s really no choice.

Ammo or no ammo, I can’t wait and just be safe.

I get up, sprint to the door of the room and break through it. I have no idea how I don’t get perforated as the bullets are zipping around. I see it’s an apartment and a drug lab one of those kitchen cook spots and they were doing this with family around!?

I see the little girl, five or six blonde in bad shaped from everything crying and coughing her mother lying at her feet in a puddle of blood. I run to her and scoop her up into my arms and she screams and I can’t take her mother with me.

I hear more shells going off and I turn my back to the sound hoping that the plates and mesh in my firecoat will be good enough.

I see a bullet whiz past the corner of my eye and my tech eyes can track it better than my real ones but I almost wish they couldn’t. I watch as that round punctures a tank in the kitchen then there’s the pffft of gas venting I turn again and fall/jump behind the sofa and curl around the girl.

BOOM!!!

We both scream…It feel like the surface of the sun for a few seconds…the sofa and us are pushed several feet and the pressure popped one on my ears.

I look at her she seems relatively okay.

Then the creaking…I try getting up and running out of there with her but no chance…The floor gives way we fall. I turn to take the impact of the floor and try to shield her. I go though that floor and the next as the place is coming down…the entire building is coming down.

I curl around her and pray.

……………………………….....I come too in the dark just barely lit by one of my mini headlamps and she’s crying…curled into a little ball under me and crying…I can’t move my legs…can’t feel them and the heat is just oppressive…the fires still going.

I feel around and feel blood…not good…they’ll dig us out but it won’t be soon enough.

I’m a father…

She’s just…

I took an oath.

I take my mask off.

“Hey pumpkin what’s you’re name?”

She rattles off something in Slavic. Great she has no idea what I just said. Okay…I take the mask and put it over her face. “Breathe…” I try to deep breathe to show her and she nods…it hurt…it hurt to breathe that deep. I turn down the gauge so she’ll have air hopefully because she won’t need as much as I would.

Yeah…

You’d do the same right…she’s still just a baby…she might have a chance. I pull her close to keep her warm. She’s breathing between crying and sniffling…it gets worse as my helmet light is dying.

She’s freaking out or she will be. I give her my hand to hold onto…it’s feeling numb….I start to sing to her to try and keep her calm. She needs to be calm to breathe right to conserve her air.

“You are my Sunshine…”
“My only Sunshine…”
“You make me happy…”
“When blue skies are grey…”
“You’ll never………..know…dear…”
“How…”
“How…much….I love you….”

“Don’t take…”

It’s getting darker…is it the light dying or me?

“Don’t take…”

I hear her tiny little voice in bad English…

“Don’t take ma sun shines aways….”

Darkness…