The guys around them whooped and cheered as James’s car withstood the onslaught of feverish blast that she could feel all the way from where she was standing. She fanned her face as her upper lip and the dips below her eyes grew damp with a sheen of perspiration.
Which was when she heard it.
A piercing alarm was followed by an amber light flashing on the rear of Dave’s cement mixer, just beyond James’s car. Though it was safely out of the line of fire, the heat must have pissed it off somehow.
Immediately, the firefighters cut the fuel and whipped their attention to Karis for direction. Karolena could tell they were a unit as well-trained and cohesive as the Shields. They operated as one as they assessed the issue.
Karis looked to Dave. “What’s it doing?”
“Uh oh.” Dave’s eyes grew wide.
James, also having spent decades in the construction business with his friends, cursed. “No. No! We have to move the car.”
“You can’t touch the door handle,” Roman cautioned. “Or any part of the vehicle. It’ll melt your hand off.”
Joe, the other Powertools foreman, grabbed James’s elbow and prevented him from sprinting toward his baby as Devon and Neil tried to calm him down. At the same time, the drum of the cement mixer began to tip.
“It’s a safety feature.” Dave groaned. “If it senses too high of a temperature in the mix, it assumes the cement is kicking off and dumps it to prevent it from hardening inside the truck and ruining it.”
“Oh, it’s going to ruin something all right.” Ace seemed to blurt what they were all thinking but knew better than to say most times. This was no exception. He added, “Wow. It goes a lot faster than I would have thought.”
The drum had inclined enough that the first thick plops of the cement poured from the truck onto the roof of James’s car. Rocks and slurry quickly obscured the colorful paintjob with gray sludge that sizzled as it ran down the sides like grotesque icing.
“We have heat-proof gloves.” One of the firefighters was already tugging them on past his elbows.
“No. Don’t.” Holden shook his head.
“What do you meanno?” James rounded on Holden as he dangled the keys out toward the firefighter.
“If you open the door, it’ll ruin the entire interior and my leatherwork. You ordered it jizz proof, not cement proof!” Holden threw his hands in the air as half the people around them laughed and half stared in horror.
“How the hell do you fuck in something that small?” Ace clearly still had his mind on the important questions.
“Let the cement inside and we’ll never get it all out,” Holden insisted.
An entire waterfall of viscous mud began dumping on top of the car. It was too late to stop it. So they watched as the pile of cement with the car at its center grew larger and larger.
“Don’t worry, the car is waterproof.” Dave tried to downplay the situation. “The Heat can use their hoses and wash this right off. No problem.”
Karolena had seen that nickname on the calendar too. The Heat. Must have been easier than saying Middletown City Fire Department all the time. Catchier, too.
“Wow. That thing really holds a lot of cement, huh?” Tavish winced.
As the weight on top of the car increased, an ominous metallic creak cut through the sound of the plopping cement and the bang of rocks pummeling the roof. Suddenly the entire mound shuddered and dropped a bit lower.
“Uh oh.” Dave said again.
Carver stopped recording his video. She figured this wouldn’t make good advertisement after all. Instead, he started texting furiously. “I’m letting Eli know we’re going to need a new suspension. A much more robust one.”
More sounds, this time with more of a crumpling component.
More texting. “And maybe some impact reinforcement for crush resistance.”
James pasted a smile on his face that had nothing in common with his usual ones. “This is fine. Everything’s fine.”
The pile quickly turned into something that resembled a gray version of the poop emoji but without eyes or a smile and with the addition of a random black snorkel poking out the top of it.
After a few more slow revolutions, the cement truck unleashed the last of its load onto James’s car, then emitted a cheery triple-beep before tucking the drum neatly back into place and going silent.