“I believe you,” Becca said, laughing.
“You’d better,” Krissy said. She finished by telling Becca what her most recent “admirer” had written back.
“She’s a bitter bitch
, Krissy,” Becca assured her. “But I think we should still find out who she is and go kick her ass.”
Krissy laughed, but then asked an important question.
“Becca, do you think people take us seriously? I mean, like, our friends? Do you think they’re expecting that I’ll just go back to my old ways? That I can’t be in a real relationship?”
“Baby,” Becca said soothingly, “no, I don’t think that. Our friends know us and have seen how we are with each other over the years. They’re happy for us.”
“It’s real, Becca,” Krissy said. “You know that, right?”
“Krissy, I know that, I promise. Nothing would have happened between us if I didn’t know that.”
Krissy sighed with relief. Becca had made her feel so much better. She was about to tell her girlfriend that there was no need to hunt down that other bitch and kick her ass, but suddenly, in the background from Becca’s end of the call, she heard a loud klaxon start wailing.
“Shit! I gotta go!” Becca said.
“Okay, be careful.”
Krissy could hear that Becca was now running, presumably back into the stationhouse.
“It’s probably just a stupid dumpster fire,” Becca said. “See you tomorrow!”
“Okay, see you—” But Becca had already ended the call.
Shrugging, Krissy went back to her ice cream and Grace Kelly.
Chapter 25
It wasn’t a stupid dumpster fire.
It was a raging inferno engulfing an enormous distribution warehouse in an industrial complex full of such buildings on the edge of town.
Worse, in this day and age of online ordering and get-it-there-overnight delivery, the warehouse had been full of workers when the fire broke out. By the time 911 had been called, the fire had spread so rapidly and had so overwhelmed the building’s fire suppression systems that there were not only workers trapped inside, but also reports of fatalities.
Inside, the warehouse was a hellscape of flames and smoke. To make matters more difficult, the firefighters had to contend with navigating themselves around all sorts of machinery and even robots. The most frightening things, in Becca’s mind, however, were the seemingly interminable aisles of floor-to-ceiling racks stocked with countless goods, waiting to be ordered, packaged and shipped. This warehouse was as large inside as a city block and those racks seemed to go on to infinity. Several of them were already on fire, and Becca was worried they would collapse and trap her firefighters under a mountain of debris from which it would be impossible to rescue them.
Then there were the countless cardboard boxes and other packing materials all over the warehouse and which the Burning Beast was happily consuming. Even worse, she learned that in a storage area towards the docking bays were drums and drums of oil used to lubricate all of this wonderful automated machinery. If those blew…
But she had a crew on that; she only hoped they could keep the fire away from all that oil and whatever else this company had stored there.
“Cappy,” she shouted at Herc, who was manning a line next to hers. When he looked her way, she pointed. “Get some men over to those shelves! Pull those fucking things down before they fall down!”
“Got it!” Cappy acknowledged. He handed off his line to the firefighter behind him and ran off towards the racks, recruiting men as he went.
She felt a hand on her back.
“Chief,” a voice said, “Men trapped in the north end! The fire flanked them!”
Shit!
The Burning Beast came to play tonight!
She handed off her line to a fireman and started following the man who had alerted her when suddenly she heard her name called.