The smoke room: a novel of suspense - By Earl W. Emerson Page 0,1

stooped beside the victim. “What happened?”

“I’m not sure. It might have been a bomb.”

“A bomb,” Stanislow said. “Did you hear that, Gum? What if there’s another one?”

“You got any explosives in the house?” I asked.

“Just a few bullets. But I didn’t do this. It came from up there.” He pointed toward the sky.

Powdery material that might or might not have been smoke drifted out of the hole in the roof. Later we determined it was creosote dust being distributed by the kitchen fan. The broken window frames were draped in a wet substance that appeared remarkably similar to entrails. As I neared the doorway and the cotton-jacketed hose started to harden at my feet, I clipped my air hose to my face piece and began inhaling compressed air. Stanislow caught up with me but stopped near a gorefestooned window frame. “Jesus. Look at that.”

I pushed the front door open with my boot.

“You think that’s his daughter?” Stanislow asked. “You think that’s her guts?”

“Only one way to find out.”

“There’s no telling how bad he’s bleeding. I better stay out here and take care of him.”

“Okay. I’ll go in. You take care of him.”

I picked up the nozzle and went through the front door, keeping low the way we’d been taught, not crawling but not standing, either. When I switched my helmet light on, hundreds of thousands of black motes wafted in the yellow beam. I could see maybe ten feet through the nebula. It had been close to 90º Fahrenheit when we left the station, and experts estimated that under normal working conditions the microclimate inside our turnouts was nearly 150º. It was probably higher tonight, which kept me sweating profusely in the heavy, all-encapsulating turnout clothing.

It didn’t occur to me until I entered the structure that I’d been listening to howling for some time now, the noise obscured by the roaring of 6

E A R L E M E R S O N

Engine 29’s motor and pump. The noises might have been coming from an animal. More likely it was a second victim. Most of the ceiling in the main room was on the floor, plaster and broken boards underfoot. I moved through the blackness, at times forced to feel my way, dragging the hose even though there was no sign of heat or fire.

“It’s okay,” I said. “I’m here to help.”

She was hunkered on the floor. The black ink in the air had settled on her like broken spiderwebs. The floor was gooey, and as I reached her I slipped to one knee. When I tipped her head up and peeked through the blood and the black residue covering her face, I was greeted by the most startling blue eyes I’d ever encountered.

“You all right?”

She blinked but did not move.

“What happened? Are you all right?”

“There’s a head over there.”

“What?”

“A head.”

“How many people were here?”

“Just me and Daddy.”

“So whose head is it?”

“I don’t know. Maybe somebody came in the back. All I know is, he was huge.”

The furniture had congealed into vague, elusive lumps swathed in plaster and rubble. On the floor in front of the kitchen sink I found a large animal’s head. It took a moment to ascertain the head had belonged to a hog and the material surrounding it was an animal cadaver, halfempty, the entrails spewing this way and that like grotesque Halloween ornaments strung up by a lunatic.

“Am I going to die? Please don’t tell me I’m going to die.”

“You’ll be okay.” My Emergency Medical Technician training taught me to start with what we called the ABCs: airway, breathing, and circulation. She’d been making noise, so she had an airway and was breathing. As far as the circulation and bleeding went, she was covered in gore, so I had no way of knowing whether she was bleeding or not.

T H E S M O K E R O O M

7

Speaking into my portable radio, I said, “Command from Engine Twenty-nine, team B. No sign of fire. There’s light smoke in the structure. We’ve got a second victim inside. I’m bringing her out.”

“What happened?” she asked, as I took her arm and stood her up.

“Who did this?”

“I don’t know. Let’s get you out of here. Can you walk?”

Apparently not, I thought, as she sagged against me. One arm under her shoulders, the other under her knees, I lugged her through the ravaged interior of the house. As it turned out, she was a fullgrown adult, almost as tall as I was—five-eight—and while I wasn’t the strongest