Earl W. Emerson - Into the Inferno

INTO
THE
INFERNO

EARL EMERSON

Ballantine Books
New York

Table of Contents

The good die first...

William Wordsworth

Life, in my estimation, is a biological misadventure that we terminate on the shoulders of six strange men whose only objective is to make a hole in one with you.

Fred Allen

1. JUNENEAR THE END

Im a mad dog. Utterly mad.

If you knew my circumstances, youd trust me when I tell you Im as crazy as they come. And growing madder by the minute.

Nobody out there in the dark doubts me. I can see a few of the uniforms in the shadows, fingers tightening on their triggers, scopes zeroed in on my heart. I can hear the whispering. Most can barely wait to begin pumping rounds into the night. Into me. Any excuse. Any little twitch on my part will provoke a bloodbath.

You think Im kidding?

Consider this....

Im standing on the roof of a police cruiser screaming at twenty police officers to keep their distance. My mouth looks like the bloody maw of hell. Several of my teeth have been loosened and quite a few others are missing entirely. I have a cell phone in one hand, a pistol in the other. The cell phone is pressed to my left ear. The gun to my right ear. During most of the last twenty minutes Ive been threatening to put a bullet through my brain. If thats not enough, Im naked as a jaybird.

Im crazy as a shithouse rat and they know it. Destined for a jail cell, a straitjacket, or, more likely, to end up dancing the funky chicken in a fusillade of bullets.

Dont waste your time feeling sorry for me. Youre headed there, too. Thats what Ive learned in the last week. Maybe not the nuthouse or a fusillade of bullets, but youre headed for the dirt. Same as me. Same as every last one of us. Eventually everybody lands in the dirt.

I dont care anymore.

You cant fake my kind of insanity. They know I mean business. They know Im a mad dog.

Thats the whole point.

All I have to do is make a move and theyll kill me. Dont think Im not tempted.

Suppose I move.

Theyd shoot.

And theyd keep on shooting.

Maybe I should do it and end all this. In seven days Ive turned into a lunatic, my life expectancy dropping from years to hours to minutes.

Running into Holly Riggs was the end for a bunch of us.

2. FEBRUARYTHE BEGINNING; OR,
A YOUNG GREEN-EYED WOMAN IN TIGHT JEANS
SCREAMS SHRILLY AT RELIGIOUS CHICKENS

The first time I saw Holly Riggs, she was standing in the left lane of Interstate 90 up to her knees in Bibles. Three hundred Bibles. Eight hundred chickens. It was ten oclock at night, and already a good many of the birds had absconded for parts unknown, others sauntering away more slowly than any animal with a brain would. Some of the chickens were frozen to the roadway like art projects in a school for the mentally challenged.

As more emergency vehicles arrived, dozens of birds scampered off into the snow. Up the hill, teenage boys on their way home from night skiing got out of their cars and chased fryers, a shabby sport at best, for the birds were easily overtaken, even more easily bagged, and the boys had no use for their prey once captured.

Holly Riggs. Anyone whod come over Snoqualmie Pass in an eighteen-wheeler in the middle of February on the iciest roads the state had experienced in almost a decadeyou had to give her points for spunk.

For a week the Pacific Northwest had been dancing with a freeze-thaw cycle. The iced-over road surface on I-90 was polished and melted each day by the sun and by cars with chains and studded tires. When night fell and the roadway refroze, it became so slippery, a person could barely stand on it. Washington State wasnt like Minnesota or North Dakota, where the roads were frozen all winter and the state knew how to deal with them; our regions fleet of DOT sanding trucks had been swamped from the onset.

It was a few minutes after ten when my pager went off, when Mrs. Neumann stagger-stepped through the frozen field between our houses like a stork wrapped in an afghan. She would look after my girls while I responded to the accident, was still knocking the snow out of the treads in her galoshes when I pulled out of the drive.

The accident happened on the last downslope from the pass, prior to North Bend, just before the Truck Town exit, where a huge field lay between the eastbound and westbound lanes of I-90. It was in this field that several of the smaller vehicles and one of the big trucks had come to rest.

Parking on the eastbound shoulder, I followed two sets of footprints across the crusted snow. I knew this meant I was only the third fire department employee on the scene.

I could see Chief Newcastle up on the roadway speaking into his portable radio, Jackie Feldbaum beside him. We were all EMTsemergency medical technicians.

Even though North Bend was growing like a tumor on a nuclear facilities inspector, it was still a small town, and cleaning up road accidents was just one of the taxes shouldered by any small-town fire department situated next to a major highway.

I-90 was unidirectional, so the impact speeds werent as high as they might have been, the injuries not as severe. Including the two big trucks that started it, fourteen vehicles were involved. A heap of work for a mostly volunteer department, but Chief Newcastle ran the operation like the seasoned veteran he was.

Having retired as a captain after thirty years of working for Portland Fire, Newcastles trademark at emergencies was remaining so cool and unencumbered you would think he was about to take a nap. Jackie, one of our volunteers, was already beginning to triage patients. A ten-year volunteer, she was one of those people who needed both hands while watching brain surgery on the cable medical channel, one for draining Budweiser after Budweiser and the other for taking notes just in case she might have to reenact the procedure in the field someday. We called her the Fire Plug behind her back, which wasnt a reference to her firefighting history so much as a testament to her figure.

Marching across the slippery road surface in her sure-grip Klondike boots, Jackie yelled like a crazed football mom. Before the night was over, she would videotape the wrecked vehicles for her home library. Her job tonight was to count up the casualties and begin assigning the injured to incoming personnel in order of priority. It was called triage, from the French word trier, to sort. Jackie might have been better at it if she hadnt been in the tavern when her pager fired, though we didnt find out she was half-crocked until later.

I guess I should have been suspicious when Newcastle asked me to check out the two big rigs and their drivers. Thats when Jackie Feldbaum winked at me and said, You might want to get the phone number of that second driver. Shes just your type.

Whats my type? I asked without stopping.

Still breathing. Jackies cigarette voice erupted into a guttural laugh like a dog coughing up a fish bone. Everybody in the department, volunteers and paid both, had their fun kidding me about women. I didnt mind.

The guy from the chicken truck was chasing chickens up and down the highway; he told me he didnt need medical attention. His truck was facing backward on the freeway, the trailer on its flank, he had blood running down his face, but he said he didnt need medical attention. Fine. I left him alone.

Somewhere on the long curve down the last of the foothills into North Bend, just after the point where the State Patrol liked to sit with their radar guns, the chicken truck had jackknifed into the middle lane, sideswiping the second truck and sweeping it down the icy highway like a push broom sweeping chestnuts. The driver of the chicken truck later said he thought everything was okay until he glanced out his window and noticed his own trailer passing him on the left. After that, all he remembered was screeching metal, squawking chickens, and feathers in his teeth.