J.M.J.
Author's note: Thank you for continuing to read! Thank you especially to everyone who left reviews on the previous chapter: Var Devonshire, Rosemoor, and Callensnext1!
Chapter 4
The first surge of adrenaline was wearing off. It had been a couple hours since the first part of the building had collapsed, and there hadn't been any sign or sound of Johnny or the child. Roy knew that there wasn't much hope. There never had been. All odds were against them surviving, and as more and more time passed, it was getting easier and easier to believe that.
The men from 51 had gravitated close together so that they were all within easy speaking distance. A few other men from other stations were close enough, too, although it didn't really matter much. No one was saying much of anything.
At least, no one had been until Len Garrett from 99 started talking. He must have noticed the grim expressions on the faces of the 51 men, because he started in by saying, "You know, I remember one time, a mudslide took out this house. Carried the foundation right off and the house collapsed into matchsticks. There were a woman inside, and we didn't find her for days, but when we did, she was still alive. She wasn't even hurt that bad. She was just trapped. It happens sometimes, you know."
"I know," Roy replied, but he also knew that for every story like that, there were half a dozens others that didn't end so happily.
Garrett was about to say something more when debris under his feet started to shift. He and the others nearby made a dash for safety as another large section of the building settled down. If it kept up like this much longer, there wouldn't be anything left standing, Roy thought. There was hardly anything left now.
Attempting to thrust those thoughts aside, Roy tightened his grip on his Pulaski and prepared to get back to work. Captain Stanley held out a hand to stop him.
"I think you need to take a longer rest, Roy. You've been hard at this the whole time and I've hardly seen you take a break."
That was true. Roy had been avoiding breaks as much as possible. "Cap, I'm not going to just sit around without knowing for sure."
"Just for a few minutes," Stanley insisted. "Otherwise, I'm going to pull you out of this altogether. I don't need anyone making poor judgments out there."
Roy sighed quietly. "All right, Cap."
He was just turning toward the squad when Marco started shouting, "Hey, I've got him! Over here!"
All question of resting was forgotten as Roy and the captain started across the treacherous debris to Marco's. Just before they reached him, there was another shift. Roy lost his balance as the ground threatened to give way beneath him altogether, and Stanley had to catch hold of him to keep him from falling. As they righted themselves, they saw that Marco had also been knocked off his feet, but otherwise, no one else had been caught in this latest collapse.
Roy made his way forward again, using even more caution this time. "You said you had him?"
Marco nodded as he got back to his feet. "I heard him calling, right before…" He paused with an ominous glance toward where the latest cave-in had just taken place.
Even Captain Stanley couldn't help but groan. This really was too much, to be that close and then lose the chance after all. But the sinking feeling only lasted a few seconds. There was still a chance, and it wasn't their job to weigh chances, after all. Their job was to do everything in their power to rescue the victims of this disaster.
Captain Stanley shouted for help over here, and firemen swarmed down on the area. They worked carefully, but much more quickly now that they knew exactly where to look. To Roy's relief, there was no more talk about breaks. He was right in there at the front, digging, testing how stable the remaining debris was, and then digging some more.
Finally, they had opened it up enough to look down into what had been the basement. Roy shone a flashlight down in there. His heart sank as he saw no sign of Johnny.
"Do you think we've got the wrong spot after all?" Chet asked.
Roy thought he heard a sound as Chet spoke and he shushed him to be able to hear better. It was very feeble, but it was unmistakable: a baby crying.
"Johnny, are you down there?" Roy shouted.
There was no response, other than the baby's continued cries.
"Are you sure you heard Gage, Lopez?" Captain Stanley asked.
"Positive, Cap," Marco replied without a trace of doubt in his voice.
Stanley adjusted his helmet as he looked down into the hole. It didn't look stable at all. Continued digging might cause another collapse. If they had to do it, they would as carefully as possible, but it sounded like they were close. It might be best to send someone down there to look. He asked Captain Stein from 99 what he thought, and he agreed.
"All right," Stanley said, his mind made up. "DeSoto, I'm going to send you down there to see if you can find the kid and Gage and see what it's going to take to get them out if you do find them. Everyone else who doesn't need to be near the opening, get back."
It was about eight feet down into the hole, just deep enough that it was necessary to use a rope to lower Roy down. This was tricky, since there was no readily apparent way to get the rope straight over the hole, and nobody trusted the debris enough to climb down it. In the end, someone thought of it to extend the ladder of one of the trucks over the hole and attach the rope to it. It was still a bit tricky to lower Roy through the opening without him touching the sides any more than could be helped, but in the end, he found himself standing on what had once been the basement floor of the apartment building.
It was almost completely full of debris. Ceiling beams formed some very unstable supports that could be crawled under if absolutely necessary, but Roy was hoping it wouldn't be necessary.
Fortunately, the baby was still crying, and that gave Roy a direction to look in. The cries seemed to be coming from over nearer the wall, but that was nearly all choked off by debris. Roy shone his flashlight into whatever cracks and crevices he saw, but he only saw more dust and debris.
He was sure he was close to the baby. Its cries were still feeble and muffled, but some quality about them told him that they weren't coming from very far away. He peered into the same crevices here several times, frustrated that he couldn't see anything. Then, after looking into the same hole three times, he noticed a movement. He looked a little closer and realized that it was a baby's foot, but so covered in dust that he hadn't realized it at first.
Roy hurried back to the opening. "Cap! I found the child! It's buried in a pile of debris. I'm going to need help to dig it out."
He could imagine Stanley's face at that. Sending more men down into that hole, for the purpose of digging into the lowest level of that unstable mess, was not a pleasant prospect, but there was no other way.
While he was waiting, Roy went back to the pile to assess it for the best way to dig it out. There was a long beam in the middle of it with one end jammed against the wall so that it was at an angle. It appeared to be the only thing keeping the full weight of the pile off the child. There was something lying directly on the child so that its foot was the only part of it that Roy could see, but since it was still crying, it obviously could breathe. Roy tried to determine what the object was and how easily it could be moved. It was covered in white plaster dust, like everything else down here, but as he stared at it in the beam of his flashlight, he recognized its actually color with a shock: it was the dusty yellow of a fireman's turnout coat.
"Johnny?" Roy called tentatively.
He was sick with worry that there would once again be no answer, but this time, there was a sort of groan. It wasn't articulate, but it was there."
"Johnny, can you hear me?" Roy called, his voice a bit steadier now.
There was another wordless groan.
Then Roy realized that Chet and Marco were behind him. They were also straining their ears to hear the response.
"Is Johnny under there?" Chet asked as Roy turned around.
Roy nodded. "The kid, too. It sounds like they're both still alive."
He pointed out the beam, and the others agreed that if they stabilized that, they could probably clear away enough of the smaller debris to pull Johnny and the child out. They used a porta-power to take some of the pressure off the beam, and then they slowly cleared away an opening, one piece at a time.
Finally, they had cleared enough away that they could see Johnny's head and right shoulder and arm. His arm was protectively thrown around the baby, who had stopped crying again.
Gently, Roy tried prodding at Johnny's shoulder. This time, he got a sharp groan in response, and Johnny recoiled slightly.
"John, can you hear me?" Roy repeated.
"Mmm…hurt shoulder," Johnny mumbled in reply.
"Okay," Roy replied, relieved that Johnny was conscious. That was a good sign, at least. "Don't worry about anything. We'll get you out."
"Yeah…get…kid out," Johnny mumbled.
Roy had a good guess what Johnny was getting at. He wanted them to get the kid out first.
"What do you think?" Roy asked Chet and Marco. "It's not going to be easy to lift Johnny up enough to pull the kid out and we could cause the whole thing to go."
"But while we're trying to dig Johnny out, we might lose the whole thing anyway," Chet added, "and this way, we'd at least have the kid out."
"Right," Roy agreed. "I guess that's the way we're going to have to do this. John, this is going to hurt."
"Mmm," was Johnny's only response to that.
Feeling a little squeamish about the pain they were about to inflict on their friend, the three firemen got into position. They knew his shoulder was already injured and had hurt just being touched, but they didn't have any other way to move him.
"All right. On three," Roy said and began to count.
When he reached three, Chet and Marco grabbed Johnny's shoulder and lifted him up several inches, eliciting several loud cries of pain, while Roy grabbed onto the child and pulled it out. The plan had been for Chet and Marco to ease Johnny back down carefully, but before they could, the beam started to slip, with its heavy burden of debris. If they didn't get Johnny out now, he would be crushed.
In a snap decision in that literally do-or-die moment, Chet and Marco started to pull Johnny out. By some miracle, he wasn't pinioned so tightly that they couldn't pull him out, although they had to do so with absolutely no regard for whether they were injuring him or causing the debris to fall again. They had just pulled him clear when the beam gave way and dropped its load right where Johnny had been a few moments sooner.
For several tense seconds, they waited to be buried in yet another cave-in, but none happened. A cloud of dust rose up and set them all coughing, but that was it.
"Johnny, are you okay?" Roy asked, still holding the baby.
When there was no response, Chet said, "I think he passed out."
"I hope that's all it is," Roy muttered. "Let's get them both out of here."
"And us," Chet added.
Pulling them out wasn't easy. The baby was a little easier to manage, since Marco could just hold it as he was being pulled out himself. Johnny, however, had to be strapped into a stokes, and even then, he had a more jolting ride out than Roy thought he should.
Nevertheless, while the paramedics from 99 were still connecting the biophone to Rampart, Johnny blinked and tried to look around.
"Roy?" he said.
"Hey, there," Roy replied. "I see you're still with us."
Johnny flashed his crooked smile for a moment before the expression turned into a wince of pain. "Not so sure…about that. How's the kid?"
Roy glanced over at where 99's paramedics were working on the child. It looked weak and pale, but it was breathing on its own. That was a hopeful sign.
"We'll know more soon. You know, that kid might not have survived at all if you hadn't shielded it from all that debris."
"What else was I supposed to do?" Johnny deflected. "You know, Roy, it's funny."
Roy wasn't sure he saw any humor in the situation, but he knew well enough that pain and shock made people say things they wouldn't normally say, so he didn't try to argue. "What is?"
"This morning…that delivery truck idea…seemed like the most important thing in the world, but now…doesn't seem important at all. Think I'll stick with relaxing on my days off."
This time, Roy did smile slightly. "Good idea."
