Ray ducked his head, his eyes squeezed tightly shut as splintered glass dusted even the far side of the street where he was standing. The inrush of air fed the flames horrifically, intensifying the heat to a level where it actually stung Ray’s cheek.

Another window shattered, this time from the second story of the two-story house, but not from heat. Someone had smashed a chair through the glass panes and the chair bounced and rolled down the tilted roof to land unceremoniously on the lawn, right side up, as though waiting for someone to come and sit down. There was a shriek and Ray saw a young girl of perhaps twelve, standing at the window in a nightdress. Her face was contorted in fear and smoke billowed behind her. She started to climb out the window backwards, her bare toes gripping the hot shingles like fingers, but they slipped on a piece of glass and she slid down the window frame, her hands slicing on remnants of glass that poked out in dangerous little triangles from the frame. She screamed but abruptly stopped as her chin struck the windowsill, making her bite deeply into her tongue. The blood tasted awful as it mixed with the grit and smoke staining the corners of her nose and mouth. But she held on.

 Ray was across the street before he knew what he was doing, throwing open the little white gate that connected to the little white fence that surrounded the front yard of the burning house. He screamed for help, hoping that his terror spiced voice might wake some of the neighbors from their dreams. He started for the front door, but seeing the smoke pouring from its seams, thought better and ran around to the side, of the house hoping he could find a way to the roof by standing on the fence. But the fence was too low and the pitch of the roof too high. Ray ran back around to the front until he was just below the little girl, who was crying and begging for help despite the pain in her hands and tongue. He tried a jump for the gutter and managed to touch it with the tip of the fingers of one hand, but realized almost instantly that he would never be able to pull himself up that way. He looked around desperately for something to stand on and saw a milk box sitting next to a small table and two chairs on the front porch.

“Help me, please, someone help me!” cried the little girl.

 Ray ran for the porch, grabbed up the milk box, and then ran back beneath the terrified child. He was setting the box on the chair that had been thrown from the window and had just turned his back on the house when the bathroom window erupted out at him. Splinters of glass sprayed his cheek and dusted his hair and clothing.

The little girl shrieked again and lost her grip on one side of the windowpane. She dangled loosely, her feet flopping over one another as though they were paralyzed. Ray knew she was freezing up. He’d seen it before, in Iraq. He’d been one of the front line grunts and witnessed more than his share of battle, and he’d watched men freeze. When the explosions started hammering around them and the bullets went whizzing past their ears, some men would just stop dead cold where they were, their eyes big and round and dilated, their mouths either set in a an amazed “O” shape or slammed tight in a death locked grimace. His best friend, Brian, had frozen like that one night.

There had been a muffled “Whoomph!” And then a rain of sparks that fell like liquid fire. Ray remembered watching those big drops of red and orange and yellow spill towards them and thought how incredibly beautiful the sight was. He didn’t think he had ever seen anything so wonderful in all his life, so he turned to ask Brian if he felt the same, when he saw that look, like the proverbial deer caught in headlights. And then the shockwave hit, slapping Ray down like an angry god, and blowing past Brian as though he were a statue. He didn’t budge, only his clothes rippled in the hot wind that blasted past him, and then a fist sized piece of shrapnel punched a hole through his face and out the back of his head, and Ray’s friend was gone. Just like that. If Brian hadn’t frozen he would have flattened when the concussion of the ammo dump going up hit them just as Ray did. But he did freeze. And now the little girl was doing the same thing.

“Hang on, honey!” he screamed up at her as he restacked the milk box on the chair that had fallen over when the bathroom window went. He fumbled once, fear making his hands tremble, but stacked them on the second attempt. He hopped up on the box, his hands able to grip the gutter now. It was hot! So hot! How much time did he have?

Behind him he heard doors opening and a siren far off but growing closer.

 Ray jumped with his legs while pulling with his arms at the same time and was able to hop up over the groaning gutter and get his chest onto the pitched roof. He was in good shape, even though he had been out of the military for over a year, he could still do twenty chin-ups in two minutes. It felt good to be using his muscles for real. Not the phony use of a weight machine or the boring hours of running along a grass decorated greenbelt, small streams trickling musically in the background. But for real! In a life or death situation. One forgets the thrill of combat. The high of surviving by the strength of your body and the quickness of your mind. Adrenaline surging through your veins like bloody fire and the threat of death a heartbeat away. This was living! This! The here and now, a child’s life at stake as well as his own! Just like in the war, when it was his buddies he was fighting for as much as himself. His friends that he was willing to fight for, to die for! And the frantic thrill of the fight itself.

The little girl looked down and saw the man a few yards away from her. His face was red and smudged with soot. She almost let go then, but even her fingers refused to obey her now. Her thoughts were little more than blaring white noise, drowning in a sea of terror. She hung limply waiting to die.

Ray was at a bad angle, his stomach and legs below the ledge of the gutter, his chest above while his arms were bent in a curl, his hands still gripping the quivering, hot gutter. It felt like it might give at any time. His lower body was beneath the fulcrum making it hard to gain further purchase on the roof. If he let go, he might drop straight back down, but without letting go there was nothing to push or pull against.

Ray saw something then; a section of tile to the right of him suddenly liquefied and then fell into a hole that opened up beneath it. A spear of flame whipped up through the hole instantly, and the hole began to grow.

Without hesitation Ray let go of the gutter and threw his hands forward, his fingers digging for a hold on the gritty shingles. He inched closer to the gutter, the skin on his palms and fingers shredding on the sandpaper like surface. With all his might he dug in until the partially melted tiles finally held. He pulled himself up, his face even with his hands. There was a terrible lurch and he felt the gutter give way beneath him. One hand pulled free, then scrambled for a new grip, missing, trying again and finding an edge he could hold on to by his fingers alone.

A blast of fire roared out the now shattered bathroom window and licked at his legs. The sweat pants offered little protection and the pain quickly turned to agony. He kicked his feet against empty air trying to push himself up just a few inches and felt one of his tennis shoes start to melt around his foot. He screamed and dragged himself up.

Neighbors were pouring into the street now and the sirens, still far off, were coming closer. A few of the gathered men tried to approach the house but the heat kept them back, holding their robes tight to hide their fear as much as their nakedness. But Ray had no time for them, combat was at hand and he was fighting.

His left pant leg caught fire and Ray dragged himself up with a primordial surge, his shoes making it just past the mangled gutter, where he laid spread eagle, knocking the leg frantically against the roof until the fire was out. His lungs chugged hot air that seared his chest and the hole beside him gobbled the tar shingles as it reached for him with flickering claws.

Ray looked up and saw the girl, her eyes glazed, one hand still clutched to the pane. He reached up and grasped her ankle. Her skin felt amazingly cool. He jerked her toward him and her legs moved but she kept her grip.

“Let go!” he screamed at her. “I’ll catch you. Let go!” But she was as frozen now as Brian had been on that fateful night not so long ago.

He would not let her die.

He jerked as hard as he dared without losing his tentative hold on the roof and her thin body actually lifted from the tiles. Ray continued to pull, demanding that she pull free, but she wouldn’t and finally he had to let her fall back to the roof with a quiet thump.

His breath was a raging fire in his lungs now, rivaling the furnace beneath him. Sweat poured and exhaustion dragged at his heart forcing him to rest. Something stung his right wrist and he saw the edge of the hole had almost made it to him. There was no time. He looked up at the dazed face, gritted his teeth, and let go with his other hand taking hold of her ankle with both hands and jerked back brutally, her grip broke, the nails of her fingers snapping like brittle metal and she fell into his arms. The impact erased his shallow purchase on the shingles and he fell backward, clutching the little girl to his chest and cradling her in his arms. He hit the lawn square on his back, his body absorbing most of the impact. The air shot from his lungs and one of his feet had somehow gotten tangled beneath him as he fell and the bones of his shin snapped in two. His head hit the lawn, jarring his brain against the wall of his skull, and beautiful lights exploded in a cavalcade of showers that played in his mind’s eye. Then blackness.

Ray awoke several minutes later in the back of an ambulance. They’d started an IV and were getting ready to leave the scene for the hospital. He grabbed the paramedic’s sleeve loosely.

“The girl?”

The paramedic smiled. “She’s okay, man. You saved her. Just a little smoke inhalation. But she’ll be fine. You did good, man. You did real good.”

Ray let his hand fall back to his stomach. He looked out the window, seeing the vibrant colors that broke up the dark of the night. Flickering shifts that mixed with the red lights of the emergency vehicles and the flames that gulped away the little girl’s home.

“The rest of her family?” he croaked out, his throat was raw and jagged.

The paramedic hesitated, then shook his head slowly back and forth.

“No,” he said. “Only the little girl, sorry, man. It was just too late for them.”

Ray closed his eyes and took a shuddering breath. He was spent. It was always like this after, when the fight was done and the enemy dead, both the body and mind collapsed, taking their needed rest before the next battle.

One of the back doors to the ambulance slammed shut and Ray had just enough time to see the bushes he had been standing by when this all started. The red can was not visible from this angle. He hoped he had pushed it back far enough. It wouldn’t do for them to find it now. No, it wouldn’t do at all.

The second door shut and the ambulance began to drive away, the dancing flames from the still burning house glittering through the windows at him.

   
Ray lay back and smiled.

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