FIRE BREAK
by ardavenport
John Gage finished brushing his teeth, rinsed and spit into the sink. He was the last in the bathroom that night. Everyone else in the station had gone to bed. Yawning, he strolled past the lockers into the dorm area to his own bed. It was dark, but all the other guys would complained if he turned a light on. Besides, he knew the way.
Sitting down on the bed, he checked the boots and turn-out gear that he had readied on the floor earlier, in case there was a run in the night. There usually was. He lay down and pulled the blanket up over him and closed his eyes.
Oooooooeeeeeeee-mmmmaaaaahhhh - BLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!
Lights came up. Six firefighters swung up out of bed, their feet landing in their boots.
"Squad Fifty-One, Woman Down. At the apartment building. Four-two-two-two Clinton Way. Time out: Ten Thirty-Seven."
Three firefighters rolled back into their beds. But Captain Hank Stanley followed the two paramedics out to answer the dispatcher.
"Squad Fifty-One Kay-Em-Gee Three-Six-Five." The captain handed Roy DeSoto a piece of paper with the address on it and the squad accelerated out of the station, siren blaring and lights flashing as it hit the street and sped off into the night.
Captain Stanley stands alone in the half empty garage. In his boots, pants, suspenders and white t-shirt. He looks directly into the camera. The lights fade down to darkness behind him.
"A quiet ordinary night at the fire station is interrupted by the blare of the alarm. All part of the job for two paramedics, modern day heroes, coming to the aid of their fellow citizens in need. All in a nights work for two LA County firefighters, except that this call for help was called in from . . . . the Twilight Zone."
~~~~~~~~
There were two police cars outside of the residence and a young, thin, dark-haired officer waiting for them. His name tag said 'Reed'. He explained the situation as they went up to a second story apartment.
"Apparently a fight broke out between two women in one of the apartments. The neighbors called us and just as we arrived one of them hit the other with a cast iron frying pan."
At the second floor landing they hurried down the hall where a couple of people stood looking inside one of the apartments. The policeman and two paramedics elbowed past them.
Johnny sniffed. "What's burning?"
"One of them started a trash can fire, but it's been put out. We didn't think we needed a fire engine for it." The policeman pointed to the victim.
She lay in the middle of the living room floor, a carpet of typewritten pages under her. More pages covered the easy chairs, the blue sofa, the coffee table. A light gray typewriter with reddish scribbling on it and stacks of more pages sat on a card table with an overturned chair next to it. A trash can stuffed with charred pages was underneath the card table. Both firemen eyed it suspiciously, but they didn't see any smoldering.
Roy bent over the woman while Johnny opened the biophone.
"Rampart, this is Squad Fifty-One. We have a woman unconscious. Approximately thirty-five - - -"
"Thirty-eight."
Johnny briefly looked up at the petite brunette with perky hair and wearing a short blue dress.
"Correction, thirty-eight years old. Approximately a hundred and eighty pounds. She's been hit in the head with a heavy frying pan."
Roy clicked off his pen light and sat back. "Pupils are even and reactive. There's a large bump on her head, but apparently no other injury." He pushed back the short sleeve of the woman's green flowered dress and wrapped the blood pressure cuff around her upper arm.
"Don't help her!"
The paramedics looked up at a stout, gray-haired woman in an orange polyester pantsuit. "If she wakes up she'll just think of more things! Then I don't know what will happen to all of us!"
Officer Vince Howard tightened his grip on her arm. "Hey, don't get in their way. You're in enough trouble already."
"Oh, you don't understand!" She struggled in the officer's grasp, but made no serious attempt to get away. "She - - she can do things - - I don't know how - - but she writes them!"
Roy continued with the vital signs. "BP is 110 over 70, respiration is 20, pulse is 85."
"Rampart, BP is 110 over 70, respiration is 20, pulse is 85."
"She thinks she's going to write for television, of all the crazy things. She's been at it for months, but this time - - I don't know - - she said she got some gypsy mumbo-jumbo. And then suddenly tonight these - - - things started to happen.
"Ooooooh, I admit it was fun at first. She could just type out a scene with anyone we wanted and they'd just appear. right here in front of us. But then it started to take over. Other people started disappearing. They were being replaced with people who weren't even real! And things just started changing all around us! And she wouldn't stop it! I HAD to stop it somehow!"
"Just stay right there, I'm not warning you again."
She glared at the sheriff's deputy. "And I'm warning you! She's dangerous. She can do things! To all of us!"
"What things? Make us disappear?"
Her somewhat crazed eyes looked down at Roy.
"This room for one thing. This isn't our living room. It's different. It's - it's from a TV show! And those people!" Her arm shot out, pointing. "They're not real! She invented them! No! She changed them. Our neighbor is Mrs. Cranston, not Mary Tyler Moore!"
The woman with the perky hair fretted nervously. "Uh, my name is Mary Richards."
"Hey you. Stop picking on her!" The fat, balding man in a shirt and tie stepped forward threateningly.
"He's not real either! He should be Mr. Carlton from downstairs!"
Roy looked at Johnny, who shrugged.
"Ooooooooooooohhhhhh." The victim rolled her head, her eyes blinking open.
"No, no, no! Don't let her wake up!"
"Rampart, patient seems to be regaining consciousness."
The other police officer, Malloy, grabbed the woman's other orange polyester-clad arm.
"Uh, excuse me, Officer." Another man with thinning hair in a gray suit stepped forward. "I'm a doctor. A psychologist, actually. I think maybe I can help."
"He is not a doctor! He's a comedian on a sitcom!"
Vince rolled his eyes. "Are you her doctor?"
"Ooooooooooooh." The woman laying the papers on floor moaned.
Roy looked up at the doctor. "What's her name, Doc?"
"Peggy Walton."
"He's not a real doctor!"
"One more word from you and I'm going to take you out to wait in the back of the squad car." Vince's patience had finally run out.
"Oooooooooooooooh."
"Peggy." Roy bent over the victim. "Peggy can you hear me?"
"Don't talk to her!" Both Malloy and Howard struggled with the woman who, even with one policeman on each arm, fought back furiously.
"You . . . .tried to kill me. . . ." Peggy's eyes focused.
"You're going to be all right now - - -"
"She's going to kill us all!"
"All right lady, you're going to have to leave." Vince and Malloy started to lead her out.
"Uh, Roy! Fire!"
DeSoto turned. The top of the drapes over one window was on fire. How?
Johnny leapt over the victim's legs, almost tripped on the papers and crashed into a side table as he ripped down the drapes and stomped them out. Roy looked all around.
The other people were gone.
"Aaaaaaiiiiiiiii!!!" Flames erupted from the typewritten pages under the woman's feet and the two policemen hastily pulled her back away from it. Johnny leaped forward to stomp on that fire.
"What's going on?" Roy stared down at the burned pages. Then turned, hearing a familiar crackling. A new fire started up behind the sofa.
Reed backed up by the door. "What's going on?"
"Call the fire department!" Roy grabbed the victim's shoulders and pulled her up. "Johnny!"
Gage looked up from where he was stomping behind the blue sofa.
"Leave that! Let's get out of here!"
He hesitated only a moment, but dove to grab their equipment boxes when two more spot fires showed up in opposite corners.
They fled. Reed had already disappeared down the stairs to call for more help. Vince pushed the woman first. She screamed about Peggy trying to kill her. Malloy and DeSoto half carried Peggy's oversized bulk between them. Johnny followed.
"What the . . . ?" Roy looked up and down the hallway. The typewritten pages had spread, covering the floor outside the apartment. A new fire started at the end of the hall. A hot breeze fluttered the pages around their ankles.
In a sudden flurry of papers, the struggling woman broke free from Vince's grasp and rushed at Peggy.
She didn't have any arms.
Horrified, frozen before them she stared down at where they just ended in two masses of paper. Behind her, Vince stared down at the crumpled pages in his hands. Roy's gaze locked on Peggy, who glared at the armless woman.
"I wrote you, too. And you tried to kill me."
"But - - - " The pages mounded up around her, covering her ankles, legs, knees, rising higher and higher to her waist. " - - - then . . . . . who am I?" The last syllable wavered into a wail. The typewritten pages covered her up. Then the woman-sized mess of pages collapsed down to the floor.
"Let's get out of here." Johnny pushed them from behind. Roaring orange flames swept upward from the pages behind them in the apartment. They all ran for it, the fire consuming the paper at their heels.
~~~~~~~~
When Engine 51 and Engine 127 arrived, the apartment building was fully involved. Flames spewed out from the second and third story windows. Smoke billowed from the first floor. The firemen quickly deployed their hoses, streams of water shooting up into the building, attacking the bright flames.
The paramedics had their patient loaded on the ambulance stretcher, ready for transport to Rampart General. An oxygen mask covered Peggy's face and she stared upward, her eyes tragic.
Johnny didn't see any of the other people from the apartment. Not the neighbors or Reed or Malloy, or the woman who had so strangely . . . . . vanished. And burned. With the masses of typewritten pages they had left behind in the fire. Except for Officer Vince Howard. He remained; he strolled up to them.
"Do you see any of those other people Vince? Did they get out?"
His answer surprised Johnny.
"What people?"
Roy looked back, astonished. "The other people. The neighbors. The doctor. The woman with the frying pan."
Vince shook his head.
"I only saw this woman, when you pulled her out, just before the fire took over the second floor. Or at least. . . . . that's what I'm putting into my report . . . . unless you two think you can prove something else."
Roy looked at Johnny, who swallowed down whatever he might have said. What could they say?
"Uh, I guess. . . . . that's what we'll put in our report, too. Just what happened. I guess." Roy lowered his eyes, uncomfortable with the sensible lie.
Vince moved on.
The ambulance attendants loaded the victim and Roy started to climb in with her, but stopped.
Johnny looked up at the burning building. The street was wet and tangled with hoses and firemen, still fighting their battle with the flames that now erupted from the roof, the black night sky behind them.
"There weren't any people to save, Johnny. It was just paper."
"Yeah, I guess." But his eyes kept scanning the building.
"I'm going to Rampart with the victim. You follow in the squad."
"Are you sure it's safe?" Johnny turned, his eyes warily on Peggy in the ambulance. Roy looked, too.
"Yeah." He turned back to his partner. "I think so." He shrugged with a slow, sad smile. "She lost her typewriter in the fire."
Gage tilted his head and lowered his eyes, considering this.
"Yeah. I guess so."
"I'll see you at the hospital." Roy climbed in and the attendant closed the door behind him. Johnny took one last look at the flaming building before sprinting for the squad.
The camera pulled far back away from the scene as the ambulance drove off, leaving behind the wet, black pavement, fire trucks and hoses.
Captain Stanley clicked off the TV set.
"Well, it must be a slow night. We got to watch the whole episode this time."
"I don't know about this one Cap, it was a little unusual. I don't think it really worked." Marco got up from his wooden chair in the group in front of the television.
"I didn't think it was so bad. Change can be good." Mike Stoker nodded thoughtfully.
"Yeah, well I don't care what the episode was about, just as long as we get the night off." Johnny Gage got up from the chair he sat in. "Where are those cookies Mr Unger dropped by?"
Roy pointed. "On the counter."
"Hey don't eat all the chocolate chip ones, Gage." Chet Kelly got up and followed. Stoker and Marco went for the cookie box, too.
Roy DeSoto, who had been good all night about staying away from the extra calories, sat back in his chair and looked up at Stanley. "I guess they all have writer's block tonight."
Stanley shrugged back. "If the lady fans want to give us a break I'm not going to complain about it."
"Hey, Gage, you got the last chocolate chip." Kelly followed with the half empty box. Stoker and Lopez had a couple cookies each.
"You've already had three." Gage talked around a right cheek-ful of chocolate chip cookie and sprawled down on the station's synthetic leather couch. "And I'm telling you, I don't mind a quiet night. I could do with a few less accidents in the fanfic." He took another bite, a few crumbs dropping down onto his blue uniform shirt.
"It's the price of being popular, Gage. But that still doesn't give you any right to take all the good ones." Gage made a face at him and stretched his long legs out on the couch. Kelly rooted around the remaining cookies. Roy, reasoning that he had been good that night after all, got up and went over to Chet for a look in the box.
Captain Stanley turns to face the camera. The lights fade behind him where his men still dividing up and arguing over the cookies, a gift from a grateful gourmet rescued from a car accident.
"So our heroes enjoy a break from the demands of the A-plots of burning buildings and rescues and injuries cooked up by over-dramatic TV producers and writers. And over-enthusiastic fans. And they enjoy the respite with a trivial B-plot about watching TV shows and divvying up cookies . . . . "
Sitting on the sofa, Chet Kelly issues a challenge to his fellow fightfighters that they couldn't bake the best batch of chocolate chip cookies in the whole fire department. Gage, Lopez and Stoker scoff that Kelly could successfully bake anything. DeSoto takes a bite of a big sugar cookie.
". . . . . on this relatively quiet, but far from ordinary, night at Station 51, an LA County fire station located somewhere in . . . . the Twilight Zone."
~~~~~~~~ END ~~~~~~~~
Disclaimer: All characters belong to whoever owns the 1970's TV show Emergency!; I am just playing in their sandbox.