15 Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus. 2 But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, "This man welcomes sinners and eats with them."
3 Then Jesus told them this parable: 4 "Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Doesn't he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? 5 And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders 6 and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, 'Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.' 7 I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.
"This can't be happening!" Captain Stanley resisted the urge to throw the handy talky on the pavement and stomp on it until it was unrecognizable "This...can't…be….happening!"
In front of him, an apartment building was fully engulfed in hunger-crazed flames, the glowing orange fingers wrapping themselves around the old boards and beams and dissolving them into a charred mess. In its anger, the fire roared with loud intensity, drowning out the shouts of men and the humming of engines.
Roy DeSoto, his face smudged with soot and his air mask hanging below his chin, ran up to his superior and laid a hand on Cap's shoulder. "What is it?"
Cap looked from Roy to the burning building, his eyes glistening with unshed tears of frustration and grief. "There's somebody in there, Roy. We can hear them screaming but we can't find a way in."
Roy turned to face the structure. Sure enough, just barely audible over the snapping and popping of the timbers, was a horrible, prolonged scream of tortured loneliness and abandonment. Roy felt the grip of unrestrained panic start to enclose his heart. He glanced back at the gaggle of victims he had extracted from the fire. Off to the side, a woman was being held by the arms as Johnny struggled to keep an oxygen mask over her mouth and nose. Her voice cracked and shaky from smoke inhalation, she shook her head violently back and forth, joggling the mask from it's place and yelled in a hoarse, pleading voice, "My son! My son! He's burning to death! My son!" Her pleas reminded Roy of a ewe calling for her lost lamb.
The wildness in her frantic, smoke blurred eyes caused a wave of pity to wash over him. Johnny, under directions of the hospital on the biophone, administered a quick sedative to calm the woman before being called away by another Captain to assist on the hoses to dampen the out of control fire.
"My son! He's burning!" The woman moaned as Roy knelt by her side and stared into her eyes. She looked up at him and clutched his turnout sleeve until her knuckles turned white. As the sedative took effect, her words jumbled together into a gurgle that fell silent and her hand flopped uselessly to the wet pavement.
Then again came the cry from within the building; long and mournful, a sad lament that seemed to have given up on all hope of rescue and cried out for the end to come quickly and with level justice. It burst forth from the collapsing building, invisible notes mingling with the billowing smoke that swirled towards the inky heavens, blocking out the happily twinkling stars like a harsh wind blows out a candle.
Roy stood up and faced the flames. The silhouettes of the firefighters doing their noble task cast shimmering shadows upon the damp asphalt. Roy fingered the tube that fed his oxygen mask, letting his sore digits linger there before they grabbed the black webbing and flipped it around the back of his head, fastening the air mask tightly to his face.
"Lord, see me through!" He shot a quick prayer up to the Lord watching high above. "Let your angels guide me to find this boy!"
As he neared the building, he glanced back over his shoulder and saw the group of injured victims, staring at him with mouths wide open, either gasping for breath or in amazement. They were all alone; Johnny was gone and they would have no understanding of anything the doctors at the other end of the line would tell them. Some of them were badly injured...but no, he had to rescue this boy. Even if it kills me. Roy tightened his helmet strap and charged at the building, now in his mind a giant monster from which he had to safely extricate a helpess soul from the depths of it's belly.
As he approached, he laid a hand on a lineman's back and hollered "Cover me!"
The lineman shouted, "Are you crazy? You can't go in there!", but Roy advanced slowly towards what he perceived was a door engulfed in fire. The lineman swung the hose around and doused the doorway thoroughly as Roy ducked through it to find himself in another world.
Is this what hell looks like? He wondered to himself. Everything was unrecognizable as it was in the grip of a fiery death. Above him, the ceiling groaned and the beams squealed as they flexed and twisted. Glowing embers covered the floor, shimmering and popping.
Roy paused to listen for the screams, but instead heard the loud grinding noise of a timber above his dove out of the way at the last moment, feeling a rush of heat at his back and hearing the fibers of the wood give way and crash to the floor.
Now coming louder, the scream filled Roy's ears. The boy was close by.
"Keep yelling!" He popped the bottom of his face mask off and bellowed as loudly as he could as he moved towards where he thought the noise was emanating from.
A few steps to his right, listening oh so carefully, then two strides front, turn to the right, and there was a closet. The door knob was hot even through Roy's gloves, but he ripped the door open, wrenching it off its hinges and launching it through the air as flames licked the bottom edge.
Inside, curled up on the floor like a wounded puppy, was a boy of about twelve years, his arms thrown up protectively over his head and knees tucked up to his chin. Roy knelt beside the boy and pried the arms away from the face and stuffing his oxygen mask over the boy's face and pulled him to his shaky feet.
The boy's face was red and burned severely, as well as a lot of the torso and legs. Black snot ran from his nose and his lips were cracked and dry from in intense heat. As the boy sucked in air from the mask, Roy squinted his eyes against the foul smoke and rushed back to where he thought the doorway was. It was still intact, but the beam blocked Roy from walked out. Twenty feet away, the roof finally gave way, sending sparks and debris all over the boy and Roy.
With the roof collapsing at his back, the doorway obstructed in front of him, the boy hanging onto his turnout coat for dear life, Roy felt trapped.
Coughing because of the fumes, Roy looked desperately for an opening along the wall but saw none. The structure was past saving, and Roy knew that if he didn't get out, both he and the boy would be doomed to a fiery end.
He glanced again at the burning beam. Perhaps alone he could jump over it, but with the kid….
Roy pulled the mask from the boy's face and gripped his shoulders as he whispered in the boy's ear. "Now listen carefully, and you'll be alright. I'm going to throw you across that beam, through the door. Your clothes may catch on fire, and you gotta beat it out if that happens. It's the only way we can get out of here alive!" Then, not waiting for an answer, Roy got a good grip on the boy, and hurled him as best he could through the doorway. The momentum caused him to fall to his hands and knees on the debris littered ground, but he jumped up and prepared himself for climbing out. Roy backed up a few paces to get a flying leap, then took off running and leapt before his shins could crashing into the beam. As his body sailed through the air, he heard a great 'whoosh'; the sound of the roof caving in behind him. His tired body met the ground with a jarring violence. He rolled a few times and then lay still, staring at the sky and the satiny smoke billowing upwards.
"Hey, are you alright?" The lineman who had covered him now stood anxiously at Roy's side, spraying water at the crumbling doorway. "That was insane, man! Right as your feet came out the whole building collapsed! You're lucky to be alive!"
Roy stared up at the lineman's astonished face, trying to regain his breath and sat up. The victim lay in a crumpled pile a few feet away, where Johnny had already rushed over and was preparing to carry him to the arms of his waiting mother.
"J-Johnny, is…" Roy was caught up in a coughing fit, but Johnny looked up and shook his head slowly.
"He's dead. The fall killed him." Johnny left the body and moved to Roy's side, helping his partner to his feet. "Why on earth did you do that, Roy? There was no way anybody could've been alive in there!"
"He-he was...alive when...found..him." Roy gasped and Johnny repositioned the oxygen mask over his friend's face as he lead Roy to the curb beside the other victims. Roy clutched an O2 mask to his face after shedding his firefighter's mask.
Nothing else seemed to exist, he just stared at the big ugly, smoldering monster that had claimed the life of one of his vicitms. Those people had been his responsibility, and he had failed in his duty. They had been his flock, he the shepherd, and he had lost one of his most precious lambs. Roy just sat on the curb, alone, and cried.