“And Josiah Woodman!” yelled Cain.
Cain laced his fingers behind his neck, shutting his eyes and trying to tune out the cacophony that surrounded him. Radio chatter, sirens, the fire itself, the structure collapsing.
“Speak to me, Woodman. Jesus, please speak to me!”
“Caaaaaain!”
He wasn’t sure if he’d imagined the sound of his name or not, but his eyes opened wide, and he ran from Fred Atkins toward the burning building. His boots crunched and skidded over the gravel just outside the mouth of the barn.
“Woodman?” he screamed, taking a look inside. It was a death trap, a full-on blaze of orange and blue, with beams strewn across the floor, at odd angles, slowly charring as the flames licked them into submission.
“Caaaaaain!”
This time there was no question. It was coming from inside, and it was Woodman.
Turning to the fireman closest to him, he grabbed the man’s lapels and said, “My name is Cain Wolfram. I’m goin’ in there for my cousin, Josiah Woodman.”
Then he placed his oxygen mask over his nose and mouth and ran inside.
***
Being inside a fire was something he wouldn’t wish on anyone, but there was a sort of beauty to it too—the orange-colored smoke, the pattern of the flames, the crisscrosses of black beams collapsed in triangles, backlit by orange and blue. The whirls of smoke. The ravenous flames eating, consuming, destroying.
With his mask over his mouth, he couldn’t yell very loud, but he didn’t need to. He found Logan McKinney almost immediately. He was facedown on the floor between what used to be stall bays. He looked unconscious, not wearing a mask. Cain didn’t stop to think. He reached down and hefted Logan onto his back, the dead weight forcing Cain’s muscles to work overtime, and ran back out of the barn as fast as he dared, stopping at the mouth of the barn and screaming, “Help him!” to the crowd of firefighters that had amassed there, waiting as Engine Three’s pipes were socked and opened. They rushed forward to take Logan’s body, and as soon as he was free of the other man’s weight, Cain turned and ran back inside.
Taking off his mask for a moment, he screamed, “JOSIAH!” at the top of his lungs, then replaced the mask.
More debris fell from the center of the barn—parts of the roof that hadn’t collapsed yet, but were fixing to at any moment. He was at the exact spot where he’d found Logan, and he could go left, right, or forward. He opted for left, then heard Woodman scream his name again from the opposite direction.
“Caaaain!” he heard, weaker than before.
He whipped off his oxygen mask and screamed, “Josiah! I’m comin’!”
Reminding himself to step carefully, lest he upset any more of the unstable structure, he made his way toward the sound of his cousin’s voice, his body on autopilot, only one goal in mind: to find and save Woodman.
Finding him proved to be simple. He was also facedown on the floor without a mask, but across his back was a support beam that must have fallen when the roof caved in.
Cain tore his mask from his mouth and knelt down, placing it over Josiah’s mouth and nose.
“I’m here, but you’re pinned. I’ma push it off.”
Standing back up, he leaned down and took hold of the beam with his gloved hands, grunting with the effort it took to move it an inch or two off of Woodman’s spine.
“Crawl, Woodman!” he screamed, but Woodman remained immobile, and Cain watched in horror as another beam fell, not ten feet from them.
He was breathing in soot and smoke now, and his eyes were burning so bad, he could feel the tears trailing down his face. As gently as he could, he replaced the beam on his cousin’s back and leaned down close to Woodman’s ear.
“Can you hear me?” he yelled, coughing over the last two words. “If you can hear me, listen, Josiah. I will lift, but you have to crawl out. You are one tough sumbitch. When I tell you to, you fuckin’ move your ass!”
Josiah’s eyes opened and closed, and he made a sick gurgling sound that Cain took for a yes.
Leaning down again, Cain gripped the beam on either side of Woodman and used every drop of strength in his body to lift up, his arms shaking, his muscles burning. Josiah’s fingers curled into the concrete floor, and he pulled himself, inch by fucking inch, out from under the beam.
As soon as his cousin was clear, Cain dropped the beam and reached down for his cousin, turning him onto his back first, then putting his hands under Woodman’s shoulders to drag him out.
Another beam cracked overhead and fell, flames and sparks spitting above them. Cain stumbled as he walked backward, trying to look back at where he was going, but the smoke was thicker than before and the heat felt hotter. And fuck but his lungs burned like the devil had set up shop, and fuck, maybe he had.
“Cain!” He turned with relief to see Scott Hayes coming toward him. “I’ll take him!”
Scott put his hands under Woodman’s arms, and Cain staggered back, his energy reserves almost depleted.