My Butterfly by Laura Miller Page B

phone.
    The brakes on the truck squealed to a halt seconds later, thrusting my chest forward. And as if it were second nature, we all flung open our doors and jumped out. Bryan immediately went to the top of the truck, and I grabbed a line of the thick hose and threw it over my shoulder.
    “Will,” I heard my name shouted.
    I glanced up and spotted the captain near the two women. At the same time, another volunteer grabbed the hose from my shoulder and took off with it toward the house.
    “We’ve got a man inside looking for a dog,” the captain said. “We need to get him out of there.”
    I nodded my head, and my oversized, hard hat moved with it. Then, the captain sprinted toward the house with an ax in his hand, and I followed after him, sliding my mask over my face.
    The door to the house was wide open when we reached it. And inside, it was dark, and the air was thick.
    The captain immediately bent down and started crawling along the floor. I did the same, trying to stay as close as possible to him as he tapped his ax against the floor to make sure it was stable. But with each foot, the air got warmer and thicker, and the popping and the cracking of the fire got louder in my ears.
    I turned my head from side to side, looking in corners and down hallways, searching for the man through the smoky haze. I couldn’t see the fire, but I knew it was slowly eating its way over to our side of the house and that with each inch forward, we were that much closer to its flames.
    Suddenly, the captain stopped in front of an open door. I stopped too and peered inside. Beyond the doorway, there were stairs leading down to a basement, and there was clearly a light on in one of the corners.
    We stood there motionless for a moment. Then, I thought I heard something.
    “I think he’s down there,” I said, through my mask.
    I watched as the captain first glanced down the hallway in front of us. The flames were popping out of the rooms on the far end of the house now. We could have minutes, or we could have seconds. Either way, it wasn’t much time.
    I eventually followed the captain’s gaze back to the flight of stairs before he angled his face toward mine and nodded. That was my cue, I guessed, because our next steps were down the series of wooden planks.
    As our boots hit each board, I gripped with my gloved hand the banister. And seconds later, we were both at the bottom of the stairs and standing on a concrete floor. To the far right of us, the ceiling had already started to give way. A wooden beam was sticking halfway out of the first floor. It was charred black at its end. And through the hole it had left, I could see the big, orange flames raging their chaos above us.
    “I’m over here,” called out a strained voice from the other side of the basement.
    The voice was faint, and I wasn’t quite sure how I had heard it over the fire’s havoc in the background.
    I turned to see a man slumped over a box in a corner. He was conscious, but from the way it looked, he was barely conscious.
    I patted the captain on the shoulder and then hurried over to the man. When I reached him, I took off my mask and put it to his face. I knew I wasn’t supposed to, but it looked as if he could barely keep his eyes open. He was probably one breath away from passing out.
    “Put your mask back on, Will,” the captain yelled when he reached me.
    He hastily removed my mask from the man’s face and shoved it into my chest. Then, he took his mask and forced it over the man’s nose and mouth.
    “Here, help me get him up,” he shouted.
    I watched him bend low and throw the man’s arm around his shoulder. I slid my mask back on and did the same on the other side, and together, we hoisted the man to his feet and started toward the stairs again.
    But before we had even made it a couple of steps, there was a dog bark, and the man seemed to come to again and lift the mask from his face.
    “My son’s dog,” he said, stopping and trying to turn