“We’re arranging transportation,” Colin says.
“We haven’t arrived yet?” Andy asks.
“The army wants us farther in. They’ve already got Swiss and Turkish teams working here.”
“Fucking hell,” says Reg. “Turks?”
No one’s awake enough to take proper offense, but whoever’s here isn’t working fast enough. Andy’s palms itch. It’s right in front of him, so close that he can smell the plaster in the air, the sting of particulates.
“And the Swiss,” Reg continues. “What are they doing? Bringing everyone cocoa?”
“For fuck’s sake,” Colin says. “Shut up.”
Reg looks like he’s just stepped in shit, and Colin glances up the street, as if waiting for a bus. Reg makes a wanker gesture behind Colin’s back. Andy’s hands are still fists.
“Have you worked with the Swiss team before?” Andy asks Colin.
“Yeah, in Montserrat.” Colin swings his hands, like it’s his first day of work. “They were first on the scene there. And the Brits fucking own Montserrat.”
We used to own India too, Andy thinks, but feels bad for thinking it. Maybe that’s the difference between him and Reg: Reg doesn’t apologize for what comes out of his mouth. Andy isn’t scared of Reg. Reg reminds him of men he’s brought home, the ones who want to prove they’re stronger than he is. They grapple him in massive bear hugs, and he squirms in their embrace; they put him in shoulder locks and dare him to escape, which he knows is his cue to submit. Grizzled and burly men who gnaw on his nipples as if they’re taffy, and he wakes sore, sensitive to the touch, flushed with heat and blood, and can’t put on an undershirt because even cotton hurts.
Sometimes he doesn’t get the whole gay thing. Well, he gets it, but doesn’t get it.
Two buses pull up. Their panels read “Himalayan Tours,” and they have tinted windows set high above the ground. The door opens with a pneumatic sigh. “Welcome aboard,” Mike says. “Next stop, Bhuj.” The team of seventy splits between the buses, not just the UKFSSART, an acronym that reminds Andy of a deflating tire, but the International Rescue Corps and Rapid UK as well. Andy, at twenty-five, is the youngest. He’s also the shortest. The rest of his crew has nicknamed him Fireplug for his height and his thickness. Most of the men duck to avoid the top of the doorway as they board. Not Andy, of course, who has room to spare. During his initial firefighter recruitment session, one poor sap three or four centimeters shorter than Andy was dismissed, and Andy thought, Should have worn platforms, mate.
He and Colin sit up front. Colin glares at Reg. Mike and Les settle across the aisle. Outside, people are shadowy versions of themselves. Orange dots move about in the distance. The Swiss team, maybe the Turkish team. At last.
“Back in Montserrat,” Colin says, “the Swiss had done a pretty thorough sweep of the immediate area. Everything around the volcano had burned to a crisp. Ten-kilometer radius. You could smell it. I nearly swore off meat.”
The burning pine, Colin explains, couldn’t cover the bittersweet stench of burned skin. Ash, ankle-deep, had seared villagers fifteen kilometers away. The Swiss team had spray painted large Xs on the doors of the houses where there were no survivors. Village after village, x-ed out. Even outside the blast wave, ash smothered everything. What seemed like life had been choked in place: livestock suffocated while standing, human bodies solidified as if they’d been dipped in plaster. Colin entered a chapel where people had sought sanctuary. They had collapsed in the pews: an elderly man in a brown suit, head lolling back as if bored by the sermon; a mother holding the hands of her daughters in white dresses, sashed at the waist. Colin stopped checking pulses after the first few. His breathing apparatus was a cheat. He put an X across the double doors, the fingertip of his glove black with paint, and, on a hunch, went back inside. He crossed the nave and went up the chapel stairs to the sacristy. There he found the pastor, unconscious, but alive, his chest moving shallowly. He was in his vestments, crisply ironed. Colin administered oxygen, sharing his breathing mask, until the man woke. The pastor said he’d come up for additional prayer books and must have fallen asleep. Alléluia, he said. Un miracle! God had saved his children in their hour of need. The pastor’s words steamed inside the mask, a damp hope. Un miracle, he said again as they descended. Colin kept a tight hold on the pastor’s arm as they walked toward the door. He called out, Guillaume! Sophia! He knelt by the mother and her two daughters and took the younger’s hand. Anne Marie, he said softly, realizing at last. Claire. He stroked the girl’s hair with the back of his hand, kissed his fingertips, and brought them to her lips. His strength waned, his arm hanging limp across Colin’s shoulder as they entered the sunshine. The village was gray and silent. The pastor hid his face, praying into his fingers.
“But how did he survive the oxygen displacement?” asks Andy.
“I don’t know,” says Colin. “See, that’s the thing. Maybe it was a miracle after all.”
Forty-Five Hours after the Earthquake
A jolt shakes Andy awake. The other crew members look asleep — eyes shut, hands crossed in their laps, heads resting on rucksacks. The packs stowed in the cavernous luggage compartments below shift. Metal scraping metal. During firefighter training, trainees put one pound into a beer kitty for every piece of equipment damaged or missing, from a popped-off button to a burned-out bulb in a headlamp. At the end of the course, there was enough for drinks on the house three times over. How strange that damage could warrant a celebration.
Andy looks out the window, picking out shapes on the landscape. The flatbed lorries with the heavy-lifting equipment trail far behind them, their lights distant specks. The headlights seem like the only lights in a blacked-out world. He expects electricity — proof of life — and reminds himself that this isn’t London, or even the countryside. This is middle-of-nowhere India. He remembers Bombay and Calcutta from geography class, placing the cities on a blank map for exams, but he’s never even heard of this place they’re going to — never mind that he’d failed geography. Bhuj. It sounds like a bad word, something you’d get in a fight over. Your mother’s a Bhuj!
Once in a while there are factories, huge, tubular structures glowing from within like paper lanterns. The three-quarters-full moon reflects off puddles of the salt marsh, and the ground glows phosphorescent. Andy’s eyes tire of squinting into the darkness, omnipresent, thick and consuming, impenetrable, filled with pain.
“You think you’re ready for anything,” Les had told him once. It was during his induction ceremony into the UKFSSART. All thirteen brigades — even South Wales — had gathered at the Charter Accountant’s Hall. They choked the place in noise. Bronze sconces lit the room golden, and near the ceiling, above the balustrade, portraits of old men peered down, judging the revelry. The men sat bicep to bicep, filling the empty space with muscle. The chairs had been removed in favor of benches the length of telephone poles, and as they ate, they knocked elbows, each bite a wrestle for supremacy. A burp from one end of the hall could be heard at the other. They were red-cheeked from lager, good cheer, and the heat of the room.