The Predator(William Cline) The Predator

“You ever heard of Prometheus?" Captain Garritano stood in front of the engine, staring out at the nightscape of the city. It was late and he could not sleep, though the fire captain rarely slept well when on duty. He glanced over at his newest volunteer, Jon Taylor, who had come in to ride out with the duty crew. Jon was staring out at the same night-darkened city.

“No. Who was he?”

Garritano smiled. “He was a Greek god. He I credited with, among other things, giving fire to man. You ever study Greek mythology in school?”

Taylor looked over at the old fire captain, shook his head.

“You never heard of Zeus, and all those guys?”

“He was the one with the thunderbolts?”

“Yeah, that’s him. Zeus got mad when Prometheus gave fire to man. Had him chained to a mountain. Had a big eagle come by and eat his liver every day. Of course, since Prometheus was a god, his liver grew back. So the bird just kept coming back for more. Finally, Hercules saved him.”

“Saved Prometheus?”

“Yeah, Prometheus.”

“Interesting. Why did…what’s his name? Zeus? Why did Zeus get so mad that we got fire?”

Garritano smiled, breathed deep the smells of the truck bay: oils and cleaners, tires, and the omnipresent odor of burning. The last came from the rows of yellow turnouts against the truck bay walls. “It is because of what fire really is, what Zeus knew it to be. Prometheus wanted man to have a valuable tool, but Zeus knew fire was a living, breathing animal, one of the fiercest predators in existence.”

“I’ve heard you say that.”

“I think it is the best way for firefighters to think of it. Fire is a predator without conscience, without remorse, interested only in eating and growing.”

“Kind of like an alien?”

Garritano closed his eyes. “Yeah, kind of like that.”

Behind them the lights of the truck bay came on, and the bell high up on the rear wall jolted to life.

“Go get your stuff,” Garritano said, not waiting for the dispatch. “Been feeling it all day. The predator is out tonight.”

The fire began in a pile of packing boxes stacked in the basement. Tendrils of smoke crept silently up the corrugated sides of the cardboard, only to dissipate in the air. Inside the box that sat in the very corner, at the bottom of the pile, a kernel of soft red began to glow; an embryo that needed only oxygen to begin its process of growth.

Minutes passed slowly, and the dark of the basement began to tinge with the smell of burning. Ever so slowly the cobwebs that hung in the corners and between the floor joists turned to a darker brownish-gray.

The fire grew slowly, consuming the packing materials. This infant predator struggled to become. Even in its nascent mind this predator desired power, visualizing the metamorphosis that must come, yearning for its flowering of rage; one explosive instant.

The predator could feel its time approaching, and its interior swirled and throbbed between deep red and orange. Anticipation caused it to swell and swallow more and more of the packing material until the box began to collapse.

Though this birth was one of exothermic power, the predator still feared being discovered before its time. But it had the advantage: the people in the house were sleeping soundly and the batteries in the smoke detector were dying.

The carpet covering the first floor living room began to sprout longer, more ethereal strings of napping as the smoke found its insidious way through the cracks and crevices of the basement ceiling. The brown smoke rose like a fog. At the change in floors, the still thin smoke lost its heat swiftly and gathered nearer to the floor, puffing and billowing with the air currents that rambled through the house.

Suddenly the softball-sized clot of smoldering material grew in earnest. Boxes surrounding the womb weakened and fell inward giving the fire fresh oxygen and fuel at the same time. With a loud whoosh of indrawn breath, the beast entered this world and came to life, and quickly began enveloping its world in rippling orange sheets of flame.

Suddenly the cooling smoke on the first floor found new impetus as the temperatures below rose rapidly. The carpet began to shrink and melt. Insatiable in its desire to spread and conquer, the predator curled up the wall and crawled across the basement ceiling. Temperatures shot up to near one thousand degrees beneath the first floor. The carpet buckled and melted sending poisonous smoke up the stairway to the second floor.

The smoke detector chose this moment to find within itself energy enough to scream out its warning, but it was too late. The man heard the detector’s scream, but when he stood up out of bed he rose into a cloud of toxic gas. Consciousness left him, and the toxins in the smoke ended him. Still sleeping, the woman met her end in the blissful darkness of unconsciousness.

The predator felt certain of its victory as the smoke of its new body spread to the rest of the house. It was insatiable. With its swiftly increasing power, the predator realized that there were no bounds. Once it took this house, sucking in the lost souls of the people it would soon burn beyond recognition, it felt that nothing could stop it.

Windows in the basement shattered and blew outward, giving the predator an unlimited amount of oxygen. Quickly it burned its way through the panels of the basement door. Fire came up and curled around the corner just as the carpet ignited. In seconds the room flashed. Tapestries of living flame hung across all of the walls, devouring everything. Translucent flame danced over everything in the room. Curtains vaporized, and the wallpaper quickly curled and fell away into ashes. The windows, crazed with black, and shuddering in their softening metal frames, finally blew outward.

The predator knew in its evil mind that the battle for this house was won. Out the windows, as its fiery extensions blew from the shattered windows and clawed up the outside of the house, the predator looked about and knew what it wanted next.

But its first fatal error was committed and could not be recalled. Even though two lives were gone, and their bodies were suffering from the nine hundred degree heat on the second floor, living eyes saw the fire and raised the alarm.

Arrogance replaced desire, and the predator thought of itself as invincible. After all, had it not grown from a smoldering knot of bitter hatred into the usurper of two lives and one house?

With nothing to stop it, and an abundance of food and oxygen, the predator climbed the stairs and engulfed the entire second floor, boiling the tissues of the man and woman free of any fluids.

How easy the predator found it to kill, to destroy. It yearned for more. Casting its gaze beyond the house it now owned, the predator watched the impotent gesturing of the frantic humans that stood, impotent and helpless, in the surrounding yards. It cared nothing for them, but contemplated devouring their houses.

And even after the puny men in their red machine with flashing lights arrived, the predator felt no fear.

Suddenly there was pain, and in an instant the predator's fiery dreams became choked in steam, and the pain of chilling water sent spasms of agony through its multifaceted body.

Casting about, it could see the little men with hoses, dousing its sides, and the sides of the other houses near it with water. The sting and pain of that small amount was minute compared to own its power, but suddenly it was struck by a force from the front that sent the fires imperious thoughts tumbling into a blackening hole of defeat. There came torrent of water that struck the predator with fury enough to make it falter. It penetrated the weakening wood structure to attack its very heart. And in that steam-choked moment, the predator knew fear, understood that its time on earth was over.

But, even as it resigned itself to death, there came an echo from the depths of the earth from which it had come that reminded it that it was a predator, a successful predator; the first predator.

Captain Garritano stood apart from the rest of the crew, alone on the other side of the street, staring at the skeletal remains of the house. The cool night air was tinged with the odor of burning: that scent left behind by the predator, even in its defeat.

Sitting in one of the rear jump-seats of the engine, volunteer firefighter Jon Taylor sat, the SCBA still leaning against his legs, his head down. He had found the two occupants during the search of the second floor.

Garritano was considering in his mind how he was going to approach Taylor, impart some wisdom to the young man. His plan was just taking shape when his pager began to beep, and the station tone came over the radio.

For a young firefighter who had just been viciously introduced to the predator, wisdom would have to wait.

---