I Died When the Sky Fell, Now I Wake Up Holding Lightning novel · Chapter 22 of 24
Chapter 22: Ruined Streets
The city had changed in three days.
Hollis drove the co-op pickup with one hand and kept the hand radio open on his knee.
The traffic lights hung dead over the intersections.
Cars sat nose to tail on the avenue with their doors open, abandoned where their engines had quit.
A bus lay on its side across two lanes with its windows blown out.
Smoke went up in straight gray columns from somewhere near the stockyards, and the sky over it was dark purple.
I had seen all of it already, once, from a dispatch floor.
I had never seen it from the street.
"Greta," said the radio. "Greta, it's Emmett."
I picked it up.
"Go ahead, Emmett."
"Okay. I'm on the Ninth Street bridge, and I have a problem. It's a semi. It's across both lanes, it's on fire, and there is a family of six on the other side holding a mattress."
"Is the cab burning?"
"The trailer."
"Then the cab will hold. Ward, are you with him?"
"I'm on the deck with a fire extinguisher," Ward's voice said. "It is not a large extinguisher."
"Back him up to the guard rail. Chain the cab and pull it back ten feet. Then the fire's on the wrong side of the road."
"That is a very specific piece of advice."
"I dispatched a fire like it once."
A pause.
"Pulling," said Emmett. "Pulling. Okay. Oh, that's very hot. Oh, that is very hot."
I held my breath until his voice came back.
"Clear," he said. "We have a lane. The family is waving."
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