conversations with dead people

[probie62truck]

The smoke curling around his boots reminds him of something; reminds him of water lapping against his bare feet while he stood in the ankle-deep expanse of the Atlantic, one summer the whole family took a day trip to the beach. He thinks about the sand between his toes (and in his bathing suit, which itched all the way home and gave him a rash) and the heat from the July sun beating down on his face.

He got a sunburn that day, too. His mother had to put cream on it for a week.

And they got attacked by a seagull that had been intent on stealing a sandwich that she'd packed for the cooler, and he'd run nearly a half-mile before it had stopped screeching and squawking at him--

"Probie! Jesus, kid, come on, do you copy?!"

Startled back into awareness, he awkwardly juggles the axe in his hand to thumb at the radio, fumbling with the thick gloves as the flames lick overhead on the ceiling. The axe hits the floor with a thud, and skitters down the stairwell into the darkness below.

"Shit. Shit."

"You okay, Mikey?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. Ground floor is clear but I dropped my axe. M'gonna get it real quick--"

He shifts his helmet on his head and heads down the stairwell, treading carefully on the slick stairs; the water cascading down them has turned them into a stream full of ash and God only knows what else.

"Watch the northwest corner, we've got a spot flarin' up--"

"Copy, you get that, Probie?"

"Yeah, got it, I just..." He reaches up to flick on his headlamp and stumbles, banging his cheek into the rickety handrail as he slips and falls. His helmet comes loose (did he forget to tighten the chin strap when he got out of the truck?) and the light flickers and goes out.

"Shit," he mutters, groping in the dark for either the helmet or the axe; either would be great right now, but he'd rather find the helmet and get the light back on sooner rather than later. The water from upstairs is flowing faster now, and the smoke is drifting over the top of it like an eerie, unnatural fog.

He thumbs at the radio but gets nothing but silence on the channel, not even a static crackle. His gloved hand closes around something slender and solid and he grits his teeth into a smile found the axe, okay, now where --

"Mind letting me go, friend?" says the rasping, choking voice directly to his right.

Flailing, Mike lets go of the axe-handle (a thin, boney arm?) and shouts, sliding backwards into his helmet. He fumbles with the light, smacking it with a gloved hand before it flickers back to life. He swings it wildly in the direction of the voice, and finds himself staring at a charred...

Corpse.

It has to be a corpse, because there's no way anybody with skin that cracked and charred and burnt is still alive. It has to be--

"That bad, huh?" it asks, turning its mostly-hairless head slowly in Mike's direction, grinning through peeling lips that expose yellowed teeth. "I kinda like it, myself."

Mike desperately feels around for the axe, and is grateful when his fingers close around the handle - the real handle, not the bones of whatever, whoever this is - and it's all he can do not to scream in fright.

Help him, if he's alive you can make a grab, how the fuck is he still breathing--

The building above him creaks and moans with the weight of the floors above the basement as they struggle to maintain their structural integrity, but he can't hear it over the sound of his heart pounding in his ears. He pushes himself to his knees, then his feet, still gripping the axe in both hands.

(Flames begin to lick the ceiling above him, but he doesn't notice that either.)




"You gonna use that thing, or you just gonna stare at me all day, bucko?" It says, laughing, and Mike feels his stomach churn as he watches the exposed muscles beneath the ribcage expand and contact. "C'mon, stop bein' such a pussy, kid, do something--"

"I..."

"Or is this too much for you?"

"I..."

"Come on", it says. "Any day would be nice."

"You..." he pushes on the radio with no response. "We...I need...basement..."

"Let's go, pussy!"


And then whatever it is, corpse, man, woman, monster lurches up from the floor, leaving handprints of peeled skin on the wall. Before Mike can make another sound, it runs past him into a hallway, smoke swirling in its wake.

"Hey...hey!"

Stop being a pussy. The guys will make fun of you for being so scared. The guy is probably high or somethin' and can't feel how bad he's hurt. You can get him. Go get him. Go--



The ceiling of the hallway is shaking overhead as the fire rumbles through the building, and the smoke thickens with each step he takes. Coughing, he puts his arm over his mouth and tries to see through the haze, but it's too thick, and the lights are out, and his own headlamp can't cut through the darkness in here.

"Hey! Dude!," he yells into the darkness, groping along the wall. "We've gotta go! Corpse-guy, come on--"

He glances up when the ceiling overhead rattles with an all-too-familiar crackle, and then books it into the darkness, further. He can't see what's ahead of him, but clutching the axe, he runs for what feels like forever as the roof caves in behind him, water and flame raining down.

With another wave of heat and smoke, he hits the ground and slithers through the wet ash and soggy plaster and ruined drywall, desperately looking for a way out. The man (or whatever it was) is up ahead, he has to be, there were no rooms off the hallway and no other doors.

His elbows scrape against brick and even through the thick bunker jacket he feels his skin rub raw. It reminds him of that stupid rash he got at the beach.

"Mikey!"

He glances up and has to strain to make out the figures in front of him, and he barely has time to recognize them as the guys from the truck before his elbows wobble and he collapses to the floor. He feels someone grab him by the back of the jacket, and someone else tries to peel the axe from his hands with little success.

"There's a guy in there--" he gasps. "He ran. Ran this way. You get him?" His lungs won't work and his brain is spinning, and he can taste the smell of burnt flesh on his tongue. "He...he...he..."

"Easy, Mikey, easy," someone pushes a mask on his face. "Nobody's in there--"

"No! He was...he was there..."

"They only found one. They got him out of the basement when we first got here, before you went down there. He was so far gone he was practically a corpse--"

His head swims as his eyes water, and he feels hands pressing against his shoulders, holding him down against the sidewalk. He needs to get up. They have to get back in there. They have to get him out. They have to do something. He has to do something--

"Probie, c'mon, chill the fuck out--"

"Mike, you're gonna hurt yourself--"

"There's nobody in there--"

Their voices blur in his ears into a river of static and the pop-crackle-hiss of flame, and he struggles to push himself up onto his elbows (but he's too tired and his lungs are screaming and the guys are too strong, even as he digs his gloves into the asphalt and claws for a grip).

"Someone get that fuckin' reporter out of here," he hears one of them (he thinks it was Tommy, but he can't hear right around his still-racing heartbeat) bark.

"M'not...I saw him...he was..."

"Easy, kid," says the same-voice-as-before. (It's Tommy, he's almost sure of it.) "I know. He was there. Just chill out, okay?"

"We gotta...gotta get him..."

"We got him."

"We got him?"

"Yeah, we did."


Mike swallows down a mouthful of ash, and allows a smile to curl on his chapped lips beneath the mask pressed to his face. He'd laugh if his lungs weren't burning, but as it is, he wavers on the edge of awareness before he blacks out.




(He wakes up in the hospital a few hours later and there's a note on the bedside table, along with a grease-stained paper bag.)


Got another call. Eat this cheeseburger and don't call me in the morning.
Take tomorrow off. Thanks for the fries!

He peers into the bag and frowns, muttering hoarsely into the oxygen mask they have him strapped up with.



"Sonofabitch stole my fries."