Page 26 of Burn (Two Wheeled Psychos #2)

Flames lick at me, hissing and popping as I step into the front entrance. The water from the hose behind me keeps most of it back, but it still reaches for me like an ethereal entity from hell. Its fingers grab at my jacket, and tickle my skin through the fire proof material, making my chest burn more than before.

The floor is warped, the intense heat lifting up the wooden boards, and the walls are scorched black with thick layers of smoke already coating them. The ceiling is crumbling, and as I make my way through a front foyer area a large chunk of plaster falls in front of me, dusting me with the white powder and most likely asbestos from this being such an old structure.

Houses in the inner city are mostly from the previous century, and the chemicals used in their production can be as deadly as the fires that rage through them, adding another level of danger to my work. I wouldn’t have it any other way. I like it, I revel in it, I love it.

Love huh?

“Yeah. Hmmm.”

So you do know the word. So why won’t you say it to her?

“Not now.”

Why not? Seems as good a time as any. You’ve got this. Meth house, fire, easy-peasy.

“One that hasn’t blown yet asshole. Now focus.”

Fine. Go to the left, through the living room, kitchen is in back.

“Thank you. Dick.”

You do love her though; I can feel it. I know you can too. You’re just too chicken shit to say it.

“I said not now.”

I yell to him as I make my way through the burning living room of the house, climbing over a large sectional sofa, and pushing a TV stand out of my way. It topples over, and the television screen pops as it hits the floor, flashing a bright light through the room for a millisecond.

“Fuck dude, you startled me.”

Marcus bitches behind me, blasting the shattered television with the hose, skittering it across the wooden floor.

“Suck it up buttercup.”

I laugh to him.

“Serves you right for looking at my woman.”

“She’s fucking fine. I’ll give you that. How’d a freak like you end up with someone like her?”

“Maybe she’s a freak too.”

I joke with him, not letting him know that in reality she actually is. More than he could ever know.

“Ooohhh, me likey a lot.”

He laughs.

“Now, let’s kill this bitch, I was in the middle of a really good lunch.”

“Yeah and I was in the middle of an orgasm.”

“Fuck man, TMI.”

He says, pretending to gag, making all sorts of gross and wet sounds from his filthy mouth.

Now who needs to focus. You’re avoiding the topic here boy.

“Whoo-hoo! Let’s go!”

I yell to the guys behind me, ignoring him as I step into the heart of the nasty bitch.

The fire is angry, her flames shooting from the counter tops and reaching out for me as I advance through them. They swirl at my feet, hissing as Marcus and the other guys blast them with the water, soaking my boots and pants to keep me from going up. Fireproof clothing is only fireproof to a limit, and these fires burn so hot that even if they don’t burst into flames, they’ll melt to me.

“My legs, get my legs more.”

I shout to the guys, making them spray me down as I walk through the mess.

Glass beakers and bottles explode as I make my way through, pushing carts of drugs out of the way. Things are falling and screaming, the heat of the blaze making glass and metal around me warp and snap.

Amongst the screeching of inanimate objects burning, another sound echoes through the gutted room. Sounds that aren’t from things, but from a person.

“Fuck!”

I shout, darting to my left towards a doorway that leads to what should be a laundry room in a house of this type.

“We’ve got a live one.”

The screams get louder as I trudge through the now flooding floor, kicking things away from my feet as they float by. The men behind me stay in the kitchen, doing what they need to do, battling the center of the beast, taming her, stabbing her with their hose that’s like a proverbial spear to her heart.

“You good?”

Marcus calls to me as I kick down an old wooden door, making it blow apart at the hinges with one solid hit from my booted foot.

Splinters of wood scatter and cover my jacket as it falls to the floor with a splash in the water and a heavy thud.

Beyond it is someone huddled in the corner, between a washer and dryer, hiding their face, yet screaming for help. It never ceases to baffle me how people can just hunker down and wait for help. I mean don’t these assholes have any kind of survival instincts? It’s them that causes this shit, then I have to put my life in danger to rescue them, when they should be left to burn up for their stupidity in the labs they cook in.

Let him burn.

“I should.”

I grunt, storming through the room, grabbing the guy by the arm, my hand accidentally grabbing a long dreadlock and yanking on it, making him yell out in pain.

“Come on. You’ll be screaming a lot louder than that if you don’t get the fuck out of here.”

I say to him, lifting him to his feet.

He fights me, his hands swinging out at me, his eyes looking at me like I’m some kind of creature from the abyss, and I can tell that the reason he didn’t try to escape is that he’s so high on his own product that he’s incapable of functioning, beside lashing out.

“For fuck’s sake.”

Filthy animal. Burn him. Throw him out in that fire and let it eat up his useless ass.

“I would love to do that.”

There’s that word again.

“Shut up!”

You’re in here rescuing this piece of shit, amongst all this shit without any fear, yet you’re afraid to say three little words to her. Do I have to do it for you?”

“You wouldn’t, you can’t!”

I can, and I will.

“No.”

Yes!

“No. Now stop. I have work to do.”

Admit it. Allow yourself to admit it. Maybe it’s what you need. Maybe it’s why you’re so fucked up, and your only friend is me. Ever think of that?

“Goddamn it shut the fuck up!”

I scream, making the guy in my grasp freak out even more. He starts punching and kicking at me, throwing himself against my body in his drug-induced panic being fueled by my own psychosis in front of him.

“You’re crazy man.”

The druggie says, hitting me square in the face mask, making it pull away from my skin, letting in the toxic fumes around us.

My eyes weep and my skin instantly feels like it’s peeling away from my skull. The heat is insane, and the chemicals burn more than the fire. I take a deep breath in through my mouthpiece trying to center myself and adjust my mask back on my face, grabbing the motherfucker by his twisted hair, and dragging him to the door, screaming at him and the one in my head at the same time to knock it the fuck off.

“I just need to do this. Then I can worry about her and all the fucked-up feelings I have that I don’t know what to do with!”

I scream louder and louder as the fucker fights me.

He’s thrashing and pulling back on me, his body being used as a weapon to drag me back away from the area that the fire has left and into the blazing room he was in. I’m trying to bring him out and he’s yanking me back. My feet are slipping on the floor that’s all wet and slick now, and it’s a game of tug of war inside an inferno.

If he wins you’re not getting out of here. You know what you have to do.

“I know. I know!”

The lab in the kitchen is howling, with the flames reappearing from under the surface of the water that shimmers like an oil slick. The chemicals are mixing with it, and it’s becoming volatile. It’s going to…

The explosion rocks the whole house blowing me off my feet, and throwing me across the room. Flames engulf me and knock back my brothers as the containers of mixed drugs blow apart one by one.

I’m being covered in shrapnel as I land in a heap in the corner, my fingers still entwined in locks of hair that flew with me, but there’s no body attached to it. I’m on the floor in the corner panting and wheezing, trying to find my bearing with a scalp hanging off my gloved hand.

“Fucking hell.”

I call out, looking through the new disaster for my brothers.

The house shakes around me and a loud screeching sound fills my ear. The smell of gas invades my mask, choking me, making it hard to breathe even with the respirator in my mouth. My nose fills with the scented smell of the natural gas additive and I know that this is it. I’m going to finally be taken out by one of these fucking fires that I underestimated, that I let him underestimate.

It's the feeling of my life leaving that makes me yank off my mask and scream into the blazing inferno around me.

“Phoenix. I love you!”

It’s like nothing I’ve ever done before, admitting to myself that I have real and true feelings for someone. I don’t love, I only hate, but even the hate is muted in me. My little psychopathic heart and head don’t know how to feel emotions. But here and now, as I try to climb off the floor, knowing I’m not going to make it, I can feel the love, and I know that it’s too late for me.

Now that I’ve felt it, it’s going to kill me, just like everything else in my life that I used to love before I forgot how to. Like my father when I was a baby before he left, and mother before she raped me over and over again then killed herself with her own drugs and sexual debauchery.

This is it. I’m going to die the moment I allow myself to say the words that I’ve been afraid to since she spoke them to me. It’s like karma coming around and yanking from me the only happiness that I’ve felt in so long. But I deserve that don’t I? For all the lives I’ve taken, for all the bad things I’ve done. I’m a killer and I don’t deserve to love even though now I really want to.

It's a life I could never have imagined, now flashing before my eyes. A home, a woman, children, and a fucking white picket fence. They should all be mine now that I have the most important part, the woman who loves me for me, for who I am, but fuck it, that bitch karma has me now.

“I love you Phoenix. I’m sorry.”

I weep as I get to my knees, shaking off the burn of the chemicals and the heat of the flames.

“Fuck man, come on!”

Marcus screams at me through the dense smoke, his hand smacking me in the face mask.

“Let’s go!”

Blindly I reach out for him. My head is swimming from the impact on the wall and floor and the chemicals are fucking with my mentation. Falling forward he catches me, propping me up on my feet, and I can feel him smacking my face mask.

“What?”

“You’re off, that’s why you can’t breathe buddy. Come on, suck in through your mouth.”

He yells to me in the darkness of all the smoke.

“Can you walk? You flew pretty far.”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Good.”

He says, not waiting for me to get my bearings.

He takes my hand in his and yanks me hard, almost pulling me back off my feet, but I somehow stay up and follow him out. He’s using the length of hose that travels through the building as a safety rope, following it with his hand to keep us in the right direction to the front door.

There’s not much else that can be done. The gas shouldn’t be on, it should have been turned off before we even came in, but unfortunately the first responding station must have missed that. Now it’s too far gone, and we need to get out before it blows again which can be any second.

The darkness lightens a little as we make our way through what I am assuming is the living room and the front door comes into view. Daylight streams in, battling the smoke for the darkness.

People are in a hustle outside, running around, trying to pull the trucks back, but it’s too late.

The explosion blows like the Yellowstone volcano at our backs, throwing Marcus and I out the door with a huge fireball that takes everything in its path, including the line of trucks, and the one that Phoenix is in.

“Nooo!”

I scream at the top of my lungs as I crash to the sidewalk outside in a crumpled heap.

Consciousness fails me, and the last thing I see before my eyes flutter closed is the ladder truck blow apart into pieces.