All I hear next is a loud noise, followed by screaming.
“Janine! Janine! What’s happening?” I call into the phone, a sudden feeling of helplessness overcoming me.
“... he … fire!” I hear on the other end of the phone but the voice isn’t Janine’s.
“Janine!” I yell into the phone.
By then I’ve turned around and am running down the stairs.
“Emanuel!” Janine shrills in the phone. “Call the police. He’s trying to set the bar on fire!” Those are the last words I hear before the line goes dead.
“Eric!” I shout through the station, causing everyone to stare at me. “Something’s wrong at the bar. Janine said to call the police. Someone’s trying to set it on fire.”
As soon as the words are out of my mouth, our entire team is throwing on their turnout gear, grabbing tanks, and jumping into the truck.
“Let’s fucking go!” I shout from the back of the truck as Sean jumps into the driver’s seat. Impatience is pouring out of every cell in my body. The only reason I haven’t taken off and begun running to the damn bar myself is because I know it would take me longer to get there than the truck. But I hate waiting. All I can hear in my ears are the screams of Janine’s and Angela’s before the line went dead.
Captain Waverly finally jumps into the passenger seat next to Sean and we take off.
To the left of us, the second truck is also pulling out. I can make out Eric behind the wheel. He’s just as anxious as I am to make it to the bar.
“Run them the hell over!” I growl from the back as Sean honks the horn to get slow moving vehicles to get out of our way. It feels like it’s taking forever to make it to the damn bar. It’s only about a ten minute drive from the station. But it’s a weekend and there are more cars than usual on the road, due to events going on downtown.
“Make a right here!” I yell to Sean.
“The bar’s in the opposite direction,” he fires back.
“You can hook a left on the side street that’s wide enough to take straight behind the bar.”
“Fine.”
I hang on to the window of the door as Sean makes a sharp right turn. I feel a small sense of relief when, just as I predicted, there aren’t many cars on this side road and he is able to easily maneuver down the street. A few of the pedestrians and cyclists quickly make room, hopping up onto the sidewalk to allow us to pass without slowing down.
“Allende! Can you get in contact with them?” Captain Waverly calls from the front seat.
I try again on my cell phone, attempting to reach Janine. This time her phone is going straight to voicemail.
“Fuck!” I curse. “There’s no answer.”
Captain Waverly radios to Eric in the truck that is now behind us to see if he is able to get through to Angela.
“Nothing,” comes Carter’s reply who is in the passenger seat of the truck with Eric.
Six minutes later we are pulling up to the street where Charlie’sis. My fucking heart drops to my knees when I see black smoke billowing out of one of the broken windows on the ground floor.
Hopping out of the truck, I look up to see if top windows are open or if there is any smoke coming out from the top. There’s none.
“Angela!” Eric is yelling as he pounds on the front door. “It’s jammed!” he says after trying his own key to open the door.
“The back entrance.” I remember him telling me about the back entrance that is the quickest way to get up to the apartment without having to go through the bar itself.
I briefly glance over my shoulder to see Carter and Don setting up the hose while Sean is already running to the back. Eric and I follow behind him. We run through the alley that is folded in by the bar’s building on one side and a chain link fence on the other.
“What the fuck?” Sean yells when we come to a mid-point at which we find the entrance of the backdoor to be barricaded by garbage cans and bags of trash. The three of us work in tandem to move the bags and trash cans out of the way, tossing what we can over the fence.
“What’s the status back there?” Captain Waverly’s voice questions into the radio.
“Working on it,” I respond before quickly getting back to lifting the heavy trash cans. As Sean and I work together to push one of the bins over the fence, the lid comes open and a pile of bricks spills out. That is what’s making the bins so damn heavy. Sean and I briefly make eye contact with one another before pushing the bins out of the way.
