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“We have to find her!” I shouted into his ear. “She might be in—”
“HERE!”
I whirled and there she was, dragging the mother of all fire extinguishers. The thing was at least as long as her leg. I didn’t even know where she got it.
“Help me…”
Bryce and I grabbed the thing, and together we ran for the fire. I pulled the pin. He directed the discharge nozzle, and I squeezed down hard on the trigger.
WHOOSH!
A thick white powder exploded from the end of the nozzle, filling the whole area with smoke. We advanced together, into the heat. We sprayed the base of the pallet first, then worked our way up the side.
But the flames were just too much. We were barely making a dent.
Damn.
“I’m here!”
Camden’s cry was labored, like he’d just run a marathon. He was drag
ging a contractor-grade hose, stretched out behind him. Relief crashed over me as I realized water was rushing forth from the end of it.
“Hit it from the other side!” I yelled. “Bryce, help him!”
Karissa was already on it, grabbing the center of the hose and pulling it in the right direction. The resulting slack helped Camden move quickly. He put his thumb over the nozzle to widen the spray, and began soaking the pallet from the opposite end. Gradually, over the course of a minute, the flames began dying down.
“Stay with it!”
The flames licking sideways were gone, and so was the danger of the fire catching on somewhere else. The heat dissipated as the fire began to die.
YES!
I didn’t breathe again until I knew we were in the clear. When it was finally more smoke than flame, I said a silent prayer to the patron saint of firefighters. If there actually was one.
“Fuck…”
I sprayed until the canister was dry, and no more powder came out. Camden eventually dropped the hose.
“That could’ve been bad,” Bryce muttered.
“No shit.”
“Really bad.”
I shook my head, exhaustedly. “I know!”
“I mean, we just got here in time,” he said. “That thing had to have been set just minutes ago.”
The realization was sobering. It forced me to look around.
“It’s okay,” Karissa declared, walking toward us from the smoldering pile of charred wood. “I just checked it. It’s totally out.”
Camden stood behind her, nodding vaguely. “Still. If we hadn’t been here…”
“But we were here,” I said thoughtfully. “And maybe that’s significant.”
“What do you mean?”
