Rise to Be
"I hate Halloween," Cruz announced with a huff as they turned off the hoses and looked at the smoldering mess outside the duplex they'd responded to.
"You say that every year," Otis pointed out.
"And every year it gets worse, people are nuts already and it's like every year they got to top whatever happened last night," Cruz replied. "Case in point!"
"Hey guys," Casey walked up to them, "A little less talk and start putting everything away, let's get out of here."
Otis waited until Casey was out of earshot to point out to Cruz, "In all fairness, setting a car on fire on somebody's front lawn, is hardly the strangest thing we've ever seen."
"Now that's true," Herrmann said, "remember 3 years ago the house next door to the grass fire we're responding to has the whole lawn stolen? Who the hell steals somebody's lawn? How do they do it is a better question."
"That's not the point, you want this to start becoming the norm?" Cruz replied.
"Joe, it's Halloween, before this day's over we're probably gonna get two dozen calls about something somebody set on fire as a prank," Brian told him.
"Pranks are supposed to be funny, there's nothing funny about this!"
"Oh I don't know," Herrmann spoke up, "I'm sure somewhere around here the douche bag firebug that started this mess is watching and laughing his ass off."
Brian took the high road and pointed out, "The main thing is nobody was hurt."
"Yeah, but then why was Squad called in too?" Cruz wanted to know.
"Chalk that up to part of the prank," Brian said.
"Ha-ha."
"Hey!" Casey came back up to them, "What'd I say?"
Static crackled through his radio, followed by a woman's voice, "Dispatch to Truck 81, Engine 51, Squad 3, structure fire-" the rest of the message was drowned out by more static.
Casey responded, "Dispatch this is 81, repeat."
There was more static as dispatch repeated the message, everybody got about half the details, it sounded like something was interfering with the frequency of the radios. A third try got them the full address, everybody loaded up the trucks and took off.
During the drive over, Herrmann took notice of the scenery they were passing and told the others, "I thought this part of the city all burnt down years ago, there can't still be anyone living out here...can there?"
"I guess we'll find out soon," Casey said as he watched out the window for any sign of the fire.
After a few minutes they saw the first signs of smoke, and came upon an old ten story apartment building that had probably seen its prime before any of them were even born. An old half rotted sign stood on the property with the name 'Armstrong Apartments' barely readable anymore. It was the only building in an otherwise vacant block. Smoke was pouring out of some of the windows on the sixth floor, but there was no sign of anybody around.
"Who called it in?" Herrmann asked as they got out of the trucks.
"Raise the aerial, let's see if anyone's inside," Casey told Cruz.
"Right, lieutenant."
Casey got his mask on and started up the ladder. Just as he cleared the third floor he could hear somebody yelling, he looked up and saw a young woman in the window on the sixth floor calling down to them. Just as the ladder reached its limit outside the sixth story window, Casey saw the woman stand up on the ledge and get ready to jump.
"Hey! Whoa!"
Over the roar of the flames he could hear her bellow down, "Look out below!" and she jumped, and somehow, actually managed to slide down the ladder, and bumped into him with enough force that it threw him off balance and he went over the side of the ladder, but managed to grab hold of one of the rungs before he fell off, and he clung to the underside of the ladder as the woman continued to descend towards the turntable, where she promptly landed with a pronounced thud.
"Casey!" Severide screamed as he saw the Truck lieutenant fall over the side of the aerial.
But Casey still had a death grip on the rungs and his feet swung wildly in the air as he waited for Cruz to bring the aerial back down.
Herrmann had gotten ready to follow Casey up to the sixth floor and had his mask on as well. He went over to the turntable of the truck and saw the woman who jumped was moving to get up. She only looked old enough to be in high school and was already dressed for Halloween in a homemade hippie costume of bell bottom jeans, a red halter top, an orange peace sign earring attached to one lobe, and a floral bandana tied over her long brown hair. Before Herrmann could ask if she was alright, she looked up at him in his mask and exclaimed, "Hey, Halloween!"
"Don't remind me," he replied. "Are you okay?"
"Yeah," she said as she pulled herself to her feet. She looked at Cruz and commented sarcastically, "Hey chauffeur, great job", then moved away from the truck.
Joe took his eyes off their lieutenant being slowly drawn in like a fish on a lure for a second, and asked Otis, "What did she call me?"
"Is there anybody else in that building?" Herrmann asked.
The girl shook her head, "No, nobody's lived there for years."
Herrmann, like the others, saw Casey let go and drop to the ground when the ladder was low enough, and he hit his radio to let everyone know, especially so Matt would know he didn't have to go back up again, "Lieutenant, there's nobody else in the building." Then he went to see how Engine was doing getting a line run up to the fire floor.
"Casey, you okay?" Severide asked as he approached the Truck lieutenant, who was shedding his helmet and mask and the cylinder on his back, as he got back to his feet.
"Yeah, fine," Casey exhaled painfully, "what happened?"
Kelly wasn't too sure about that one himself.
Within half an hour the fire was out, the damage was minimal, not that it really mattered since the place was deserted anyway. As everybody loaded up the trucks again, Severide looked and saw that the girl was still there, and stood leaning against the side of Engine 51.
"Hey!" he called to her, "Did you call this in?"
"Now how would I do that?" she asked as she came up to them. "There's no phone in the building and even if there was, nobody's lived there for years."
"So what were you doing in there?" Casey asked.
The teen girl looked at him like he'd asked a stupid question, and answered, "Making your job easier for you."
"What?"
"What's your name?" Severide asked.
She did a double take, the expression on her face suggested she was offended by the question.
"Marlene Tucker," she answered, "Chief Tucker's daughter."
Everybody looked around at one another, the name didn't mean anything to them but that didn't prove anything.
"And you are?" she returned.
"Firehouse 51," Otis answered.
She looked at him with an annoyed expression, and asked, "You any good?"
That question took everybody by surprise. Everybody was dumbstruck, but Otis finally recovered and responded, "We do alright for ourselves."
"Oh yeah? Then I guess you ought to know something about this, come on," Marlene said as she headed towards the building's fire escape.
Everybody looked towards one another and nobody had any idea what to make of this one. Finally Cruz asked, "What House do you think her father works at?"
"I don't know, but wherever it is, I'm guessing they don't play well with others," Otis commented.
"Come on, let's see what it is," Casey told them.
They followed her over to the bottom of the fire escape. Marlene had already climbed up to the third floor and called down to them, "It's alright, I checked it out, you're safe."
"Boy somebody's full of themselves," Otis murmured.
"Shh."
The girl got up to the fifth floor escape and called down to them, "It's a good thing you showed up when you did, a few more minutes and the whole thing probably would've gone up."
The smoke had made its way down from the sixth floor and made the apartment they entered into very dark and hard to see. Casey ordered the rest of the windows on the floor be opened to let it out, while Marlene led them to an apartment across the hall.
"I'd just found them before the fire started," she said as she pointed to a corner of the room, "Thank God it didn't have time to get down here."
Casey turned on his helmet light and saw a balloon suspended from the ceiling with some kind of fluid in it.
"What's that?" he asked.
"It's what all the arsonists are doing now," Marlene said. "They fill balloons with diesel fuel, then hang them up in these old buildings, and start a fire, when the fire reaches this...the whole building goes up in flames."
"I never heard of that," Brian said.
Marlene turned towards him and said condescendingly, "And who're you, the probie?"
Otis did a double take and asked, "What did you just call me?"
"You heard me," she replied, "and last I checked, probies only spoke when spoken to by the real firemen."
Otis blinked, then exploded, "WHAT?"
"Otis!" Casey tried to get Brian to back off, but it was too late. The distance had been closed between him and the girl, a few heated words were exchanged, and she kicked him.
"That's enough from both of you," Casey told them as he got between them.
"Lieutenant, all due respect, I don't care who her father is, I'm not scared of him," Otis said.
"Walk it off, Otis," Casey warned him. He turned towards the girl and started to tell her, "And you-"
"Just on par to bust the new guy's balls, isn't it?" she said tauntingly.
"In-house," Casey replied, "I don't care who your father is, you assault one of my men again, I'll bust you."
She just smiled at him in response and said, "No wonder you're the lieutenant, you get it. I like you."
Casey had no idea how to respond to that, nobody did, but before anybody could, she told him, "There are five more balloons spread across this floor, you want to call in the arson squad to investigate, I'm telling you, they'll have a whole file on this stuff. I have to get going."
Severide went over to Matt, who turned and asked him, "You ever see anything like this?"
Kelly shook his head, "Not personally...I think Benny mentioned this a few times...guess it's true what they say, in time everything comes back."
Otis grumbled to himself as he finishing loading up the truck. Marlene came into sight and called over to him, "Hey Probie."
Otis turned around and glared at her and said cynically, "Boy subtlety isn't your strong suit, is it?"
"Don't take it personally," she said as she walked over towards him, "everybody gets this treatment. Hey, next year I'm going to be joining the academy, then I'm going to wind up right where you are."
Somehow he doubted that, but he looked at her and asked, "You're going to be a firefighter?"
"That's right," she said.
"What is it, a family legacy?"
"My dad's a fireman, his dad was a fireman, his dad was a fireman, I'm the only kid, so I'm going to be one too," she told him. "My dad's been drilling me on all this stuff for years."
"Huh," Otis slowly nodded, "so is this more his thing or yours?"
"I don't do anything I don't want to do," she said, "why are you a fireman?"
"Fair point," he said. He looked back to the apartment complex and asked her, "So what were you doing here if the place is empty?"
"Like I said, making your job easier," Marlene answered. "A lot of arsonists target these old buildings, they're perfect fire traps, lot of good firemen have died in these things because they were sabotaged."
"But how could you guess somebody would actually torch it? It's the only building in this whole area."
"The others already burnt down years ago," she said, "this place was strictly for training, but apparently a real firebug got to it."
Otis looked back at the wreckage, then at her and told her, "Well, I'm glad you got out okay. Good catch with the balloons."
"I learn from the best," she replied with a smug smirk. "Well, I gotta go. Hey, Happy Halloween."
"You too," Otis gave a small wave goodbye.
"Otis, who're you talking to?" Casey asked as they came out of the building and went over to the trucks.
"That girl was still here," Otis said, he turned to point her out, but she was already gone. "She said her dad's the fire chief, right? She says she's joining the academy next year."
"God help us everyone," Severide commented jokingly, "If she makes it as a firefighter, we're all gonna die."
"Well, we've done everything here we can, let's get back to 51," Casey told the others.
When they got back to the House and everybody settled in the common room for their first break of the day, Boden entered and inquired, "Any problems with that car fire?"
"No," Casey answered, "why, Chief?"
"Because they don't usually take two and a half hours to put out," Boden answered.
"No, we got done there and then we went to the next call," Severide said, "the apartment fire."
"Yeah, I still wonder who called it in?" Cruz asked.
"What apartment?" Boden asked.
"There was a sign in the yard, uh...Armstrong Apartments," Casey said.
Boden turned and looked at him and said firmly, "That's not funny."
That got everybody's attention.
"What's not?" Severide asked.
Boden looked around at his men one by one, and seeing all of them with a straight face, he asked them, "You're serious?"
"Yeah, it was an old wreck, somebody lit up the sixth floor and had fire bombs ready to go on the fifth, why?" Severide asked.
Wallace looked around at all of them again and saw they were all very serious.
"Okay that does it," he said, "everybody get up, we're going for a ride. Show me this apartment."
"This is impossible!" Severide said as they got out of the trucks and looked around the empty lot.
"This was the place, wasn't it?" Otis asked.
"Yeah, I remember it," Cruz said as he looked around, "but what happened to the building?"
Where the ten story building had been just an hour ago, there was now nothing, no indication any building had ever been there, just a big patch of dirt that showed no signs of any recent activity.
"You're telling me that you responded to a fire here today?" Boden asked.
"Positive," Casey said as he looked at the empty lot in awe, "Chief, it was right there, it was a ten story building."
"We were in it," Severide said, "we went up to the fifth floor from the fire escape. The whole place was abandoned."
Boden nodded, his face not giving anything away, and he asked his men, "And this girl, this teenager that you said was in the building...what did she say her name was?"
"Marlene Tucker," Otis recalled.
"She said her dad was somebody called Chief Tucker," Casey said, "nobody we know."
Boden merely nodded again, then told the others, "Get back in the truck."
"Is this the right place?" Casey asked, feeling chills starting to run down his spine.
The two trucks and Boden's van pulled up near the entrance of the old cemetery. Wallace hopped out and motioned for his men to follow him in.
"Chief, what're we doing here?" Severide asked as they followed him past several rows of variously sized and shaped tombstones.
Boden didn't say anything, and just led them further into the graveyard, then he turned at one row and led them halfway down, and stopped at a large marble marker, and pointed at it. Everybody gathered round and felt their jaws collectively drop open as they saw a picture of the girl from the apartment complex, on the marker behind a glass shield. And under that it read:
Marlene Tucker
1957-1974
Beloved Daughter
Future Fireman
At the bottom of the tombstone, something else was written on it that looked like it had been hastily scrawled on after the fact:
We Rise to Be
"Chief Robert Tucker moved to Chicago in 1949, he was a third generation fireman, first generation out of New York," Boden let out a small laugh as he told them, "he never quite got the hang of the language difference, always calling candidates 'probie', aerial operators 'chauffeur', so on. He and his wife had one child, a daughter, Marlene, and he was determined she would be a firefighter just like him, he taught her everything he knew.
"In the 60s and 70s, arson was at an all time high, so were firemen dying because of it. The arsonists would seek out old complex buildings to torch, perfect fire traps, then they made sure when the firemen responded, some of them wouldn't walk away. They took steps off the fire escapes, they cut holes in the roofs and covered them with tar paper so when they went up to vent, they'd fall through to the floor, a favorite of theirs to guarantee a raging fire was to fill up balloons with diesel fuel and stick them near the rafters. Chief Tucker decided to enforce what he called a preemptive strike on the arsonists. He taught his daughter all the ins and outs of arson, and he had her go out around the city, look for the types of buildings that were being targeted, and check them out. Make sure the stairs were intact, make sure the roofs were in one piece, check for any fire bombs inside, if the building was clear, they didn't have to worry about it, if she found any traps, she'd call it in so if they ever responded to those buildings, they'd know what they were getting into. Everybody thought he was a damn fool and that she was going to get killed doing it. She'd reported five building complexes set to burn, including the Armstrong Apartment complex, by the time the fire department got out there, the sixth floor was in flames, but she jumped out the window and onto the aerial, and they got it put out before it reached the balloons. One day, there was a ten alarm fire, Tucker's House was among the responders, she came onto the scene in time to see one of the spectators in the crowd starting to retreat, she had him pegged as the arsonist. There was so much confusion that nobody was paying much attention, so...she stole the Battalion van and chased after him. He got away in his car, she followed him for two miles and finally ran him down, forced his car off the road and he crashed into a fence, kept him there until the cops showed up and arrested him. They hauled him to the police station, and she returned the van to the scene...a block from the fire, a drunk driver came out of nowhere, she lost control of the van and it flipped over. She was thrown through the windshield, and killed instantly."
Everybody looked down at the tombstone, and nobody knew what to think. They took in what the Chief was telling them, but somehow it just didn't connect. Finally Casey asked him, "How do you know all this?"
Boden looked at the grave and answered, "Marlene Tucker was 17 when I was in junior high, back then her reputation preceded her, everybody at my school knew about her because she was always getting into trouble and her father was always having to bail her out. I was 12 years old when she died. I told my parents that I was going to the movies, I caught a bus and crossed town to go to her funeral. I couldn't believe it, there were firemen from every House, a hundred of them past and present had come from New York to pay their respects. Chief Tucker had fought tooth and nail for an open casket service, so that everybody could see his daughter. The undertaker hadn't been able to cover up the head injuries, could only lessen how bad they looked. At the end of the service, when they got ready for the burial, he went ballistic, he tried throwing himself into the grave, half a dozen firemen had to restrain him, he had to be forcibly removed from his own daughter's funeral because he wasn't going to let them fill in the grave. It was the first time I'd ever seen a grown man cry. It was also the first time I decided I wanted to be a firefighter."
"But...Chief, that's impossible, we all saw her today," Casey said, feeling the blood disappear from his face as he realized this.
"We talked to her," Severide added, completely aghast.
"She kicked me," Otis added. "She was alive and well."
Boden shook his head. "That's not possible. She's been dead for 40 years."
The sudden sound of leafs crunching as somebody stepped on them drew everybody's attention back towards the entrance, and everybody saw an old man, had to be in his 80s, still with a touch of black in his hair, with a slight gut on him that showed through his sweater and open coat, walked with a pronounced waddle to distribute his weight so he didn't have to walk with a cane, carrying a plastic wrapped bouquet of flowers in one hand as he made his way down the rows. He saw the men and stopped, and looked at the chief with a wide eyed expression.
"Wallace," the old man said, clearly surprised. "What brings you here?"
"Chief Tucker," Boden addressed the man in equal surprise.
The old man laughed and said, "I haven't been chief anything for almost thirty years, Wallace, you know that."
"Sorry," Boden gave a small smile, "old habits." He turned to the others and told him, "These are my men from 51."
"Oh yes, I've heard a lot about your House," Tucker said as he sat down on a bench at another tomb close by, "All good things. But what're you doing here?"
The smile dropped from Boden's face and he exhaled as he said, "Chief Tucker, I don't have any idea how to say this, but," he looked around at the others and explained, "it seems that my men...saw your daughter today."
To his surprise, the older man gave a sad smile and nodded, "Oh yes, I might've expected that."
The firefighters all looked around at one another questioningly.
"What do you mean?" Cruz asked.
"Marlene always had a way of making her presence known...apparently even death itself couldn't stop that," Tucker explained. "Over the years several people have claimed they saw her...if this is true, for some reason she always hides when I come to visit."
Nobody was sure what to make of this sudden revelation, and nobody knew what to say.
Boden finally broke the silence and told the retired chief, "I never knew your daughter personally, but I know she would've been a great firefighter. I would've been honored to work with her."
"Thank you, Wallace," Tucker responded, "And I know she would've learned a lot from you."
Boden smiled sheepishly and said, "Thank you, Chief, given she would've made the academy several years before I did, I like to think I would've learned a lot from her, and subsequently from you."
Casey risked a question and asked Tucker, "No disrespect, sir, but what're you doing here?"
"Halloween was always Marlene's favorite holiday. My wife, God bless her, could never bring herself to come here...but since she passed 15 years ago, I come out every Halloween to visit with my daughter."
"Well we're very sorry for intruding," Boden said.
Tucker waved him off. "Not at all, I'm sure she'd love your company." He gave a small laugh and told them, "It's always interesting to see how firemen work now...makes you realize how stupid we were back then. Of all the firemen I knew growing up in New York, the only time any of them ever wore their oxygen masks was at Halloween, bit of a running joke over there."
Herrmann and Mouch turned and looked at each other.
"They were more stubborn back then, but they're sure living a lot longer now than they used to," Tucker said. "Funny how some things change, ain't it?"
"Dammit," Casey slammed his locker shut. Somebody had taken his toolbox, nobody ever touched it, and he'd kept it in the exact same place for five years, but now he couldn't find it. He knew it wasn't likely that Severide took it, but maybe he at least had an idea who did.
Last he saw Severide, he and the rest of Squad were at their table on the apparatus floor. Now when Casey returned to the floor, the others were gone and it was just Severide, who stood along the Squad truck, and seemed to be looking at something or someone out towards the street. Then suddenly, Severide ran out to the driveway, looking like he was in a panic over something.
"Kelly?" Casey ran after him to see what was the matter.
He ran outside and looked around and saw Severide had gotten halfway up the block before he stopped and stayed where he was. His face was flushed and he was huffing and puffing trying to catch his breath.
"You okay?" Casey asked as he caught up with him.
"I thought I saw her," Severide told him. "I would've sworn I saw her."
It had been a rough three days since Halloween. They'd left the cemetery and left the retired fire chief to visit at his daughter's grave, and they'd all gone back to 51 and resumed a normal shift, but the whole experience sat wrong with all of them. Nobody knew what to make of what they'd found out, none of it made any sense.
"I know," Casey nodded sympathetically.
None of them had really been able to wrap their heads around the idea that they had seen, and talked to, and argued with a ghost. Even having her own father confirm that fact hadn't helped any of them to accept it.
The two lieutenants turned and headed back to the House, just as they reached the apparatus floor, Casey suddenly stopped, causing Severide to walk into him.
"What happened?" Kelly asked.
Casey just looked ahead with wide eyes that couldn't believe what they were seeing. Kelly looked to see what it was, and he saw it too.
The bumper of Truck 81 had been scratched almost clear across the front. Upon further inspection they realized it wasn't merely scratched, but something had been written on it.
Probies Never Say Die
"Kelly," Casey choked out in a shocked gasp.
"I know," Severide nodded. The scratched words matched the same scrawled pattern of the bottom of the tombstone they saw in the cemetery:
We Rise to Be
The End
A/N: The title and message at the bottom of the tombstone are taken from Thomas Lovell Beddoes' poem "The Warning".