To Protect & Serve by Staci Stallings Page B

the roof ladder and chainsaw in hand. As soon as the saw was whirring, Jeff turned back for the truck, feeding one of the cotton hoses from the top of the truck down to Jackson who had just returned.
    The training kicked in. His hands just worked, pulling the hose as it fed off the truck. At that moment a frantic lady dressed only in a thin flowery robe ran smack into the chaos and right up to Jeff’s side.
    “Kaleb. Did they get Kaleb out?” she asked, pulling on the edge of Jeff’s coat as he fought to extract the last of the hose from the truck. When he turned, those eyes seemed terribly familiar. Fear. Utter, inconsolable terror.
    “Who’s Kaleb?” he asked even as he worked. The hose hit the end. “That’s it!”
    “He’s the little boy. He’s eight. He’s about so high with red hair and freckles.”
    “Where was he supposed to be?” Jeff asked, trying to pay attention to everything at once.
    “He was staying home tonight—by himself while his mom and dad went out. They asked me to watch him. I didn’t know anything until I heard the…”
    “Captain, we’ve got a problem,” Jeff said, striding right up to where Gabe and the captain were strategizing where to go from here.
    Rainier looked up. “What’s that?”
    “There might be a kid inside.”
    “Might be?”
    “I didn’t know… he said he was going to bed,” the lady said as hysteria invaded her body and soul.
    “Where’s his room?” Rainier asked.
    “It’s on the first floor in the back,” the lady said. “He just called me thirty minutes ago, and everything was fine.”
    Jeff looked at the captain who yelled to two other firefighters running by. When they ran up, the captain briefed them, and broke them into two groups. Gabe and Jeff would go around back. The other two would go in the front. Six words of final instructions before Jeff ran to the truck where he grabbed the pry bar as Gabe pulled off an ax. The two of them raced down the darkened side of the house.
    At the gate Gabe stopped, rattling the whole fence in his frantic attempt to get in. “It’s locked.”
    “Great.” Jeff’s brain sped ahead of him like a racecar. “Here.” He dumped the metal at Gabe’s feet, jumped onto the house’s cooling system which stood by the gate. Two short motions and he was over. “Pitch me the stuff.” The equipment landed on the other side of the fence in a non-discernible pattern, and his hands moved in rapid succession retrieving all of it just as Gabe joined him on that side of the fence.
    They ran for the house, and at the first window, Jeff pounded on the glass. “Hey! Anybody in there? Kaleb? Anybody?”
    The only answer was the popping of the flames high above them. At that moment he heard the crash and ran to where Gabe had just hacked through the plate glass back door. He reached in as the smoke poured out of the gaping hole. One click and they were in. The glass crunched under his boot as Jeff stepped through the opening, and the middle of his heart slammed into his chest.
    Kaleb. A scared little eight-year-old kid in a two-story maze that he had no map for. Where was that little boy? Jeff pulled on his air mask as the smoke enveloped him. It was blinding, and he bumped into a dining room chair which sent him crashing into the wall. There were so many places a little kid could be. Feeling his way through the darkness list only by the pathetic flashlight he swung this way and that, Jeff slid down the wall until it suddenly broke into a hallway, and he turned into the opening. “Kaleb? Kaleb, buddy? Where are you?”
    Nothing was quiet. Voices, water, fire, sirens, windows shattering from the heat trying to find its way out. Then he saw what looked like a white cloth heaped next to the wall. “I found him!” he called to anyone who could hear anything in the mêlée. Gently he picked up the little body, which felt like it weighed nothing at all.
    He met Gabe coming from the other direction, and they hit the opening