3000 Degrees by Sean Flynn Page B

high above a thin and frigid void, was aware of gravity. The challenge was neither reckless nor foolhardy—indeed, because the danger was so obvious and omnipresent firefighters were exceedingly conscious of any signals that preceded a life-threatening shift in conditions—but it was enthralling. Every nerve tingled, a tremble that started in the primitive stem of the brain and skittered, like electricity through bare copper wire, into the arms, the legs, the chest, the gut.
    So the men tensed at the first honk from the wall. Then they relaxed at the bored voice, all that excitable juice soaking back into their tissues. “Engine 3,” the dispatcher began.
    Not one of their trucks. Engine 3 ran out of the Grove Street station. No one in Central had to move at all. That's when they stopped listening completely.

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    J AY L YONS JOGGED ACROSS THE CEMENT FLOOR OF THE G ROVE Street station as the dispatcher repeated the order for Engine 3 to roll, moving quickly but not with any enthusiasm. He hauled himself behind the wheel, switched on the motor, goosed the gas pedal, forced a growl out of the big diesel. Three more men, bulky in their bunker pants and turnout coats, piled into the compartment behind the cab. Jay's boss, Lt. John Sullivan, climbed into the passenger seat. The overhead door facing Grove Street rolled up and back, opening a portal into the December dusk. “Let's go,” Sullivan said. Jay dropped the transmission into gear and stepped harder on the gas. Sully yanked the cord for the air horn, toggled the siren, sent the engine onto the street with a yowl and a wail.
    The first run of the night, a medical assist. Jay had long ago gotten tired of one-bell runs. Most engine men eventually did. There were just so damned many of them, sixteen thousand a year, give or take, more than half of any engine company's workload. It was a good theory, sending a truck out to every medical emergency dialed into 911. Every Worcester fireman was trained in advanced first aid, and with fifteen engines operating out of a dozen stations in every corner of the city, they usually beat the ambulances to the scene. There were some good calls, too, ones that made the guys feel like they were doing something important, actually helping someone. Every couple of months, an engine crew would help a woman through her last moments of labor, bring a new life into the world, or restart a heart with the defibrillator, keep an old life hanging on a little longer.
    But most first-responder runs didn't amount to much more than baby-sitting until the ambulance showed up. Like this one, chugging to a gym on Millbrook Street where a diabetic had passed out while lifting weights. The men from Engine 3 would keep him warm, monitor his vital signs, wait for the paramedics to take over. A useful task. There were worse calls to get. People dialed 911 for ridiculous reasons: an upscale private club used the firemen and the ambulance drivers to bounce its drunks, insisting their stumbling belligerence was merely a gentleman's seizure. Sunburns and menstrual cramps became emergencies after midnight. One of the engine companies was on a first-name basis with a petite homosexual hustler who called every few months complaining about his bleeding rectum.
    It wasn't the kind of action Jay had signed up for. Jay lusted for fire, monstrous, voracious flames, untamable incinerators, the infernos that hardly ever reared up in Worcester anymore. He'd been through a couple, even taped a picture inside his locker to remind himself it could happen again. It was black-and-white, reprinted from a newspaper, a three-family tenement disintegrating in flames two years earlier. Jay wrote in the margin, “My first big blaze!” He tolerated the first-responders the way an athlete tolerates wind sprints: required drudgery for a chance to play in the big game.
    At least it was his night to drive. Jay mashed the pedal to the floor, flattening it with his boot, accelerating north on