Jessica fought to get control of her swaying body, and someone overhead at the loft was halted in any attempt to cut her down, choking now on the rising fumes. “Forget about me! Help the judge out, now!” she shouted. “Get that fucking decaying thing off her!”
Jessica, still holding firmly to her weapon, hoisted herself up, then holstered her weapon in her shoulder holster. She then located the scalpel her father had given her-which she kept on her at all times-and she pulled herself up to a position where she could cut the rope around her ankle. At the angle she was at, this proved difficult at best. In addition, on pulling herself up, she'd had to breathe in the smoke that had risen above, hugging the ceiling and loft. SWAT team members there had been suddenly forced back, one helping the other out of the strangling smoke. Had she been tied by two legs, the process would have been far easier. Two other SWAT team members were below her, and they caught her fall when the scalpel made its final cut. She fell from her rope prison into smoke and choking gases that had had time to accumulate throughout the bam. Helped to her feet, she coughed and shouted, “Help Keyes! I'm all right! Get Judge DeCampe free of here!”
But everyone was succumbing to the smoke and finding it impossible to breathe, much less see how to help another. Using the scalpel, Jessica ripped her blouse and covered her mouth and nose with the makeshift cotton mask. She next helped Keyes to slice through the remaining bonds, which Purdy had placed on the terrorized woman, but this was taking too much time.
Together, they worked furiously to extricate Maureen DeCampe from the horrid prison, while flames rose higher and closer, like angry demons all around them.
DeCampe, too, was now choking on the smoke. Jessica shouted, “Get her out of here! Now!” even as she worked with the scalpel. Keyes had hold of a clean, white woolen blanket brought for just this moment, and she readied it to cover the victim.
For a moment, Jessica feared they would have to drag out the entire four-legged, two-backed creature in order to save DeCampe from dying of smoke inhalation.
Areas of gangrene and decay showed all about her body, all needing immediate attention, all needing to be covered with a clean cloth. Finally, Jessica's last cut freed DeCampe's nude form from the monstrous creature that Jimmy Lee had become, an electrocuted, decayed corpse. Jessica and Shannon grabbed DeCampe by each arm, disallowing the injured woman any opportunity to place any weight against her own frame. They gently, carefully began to guide her out of the fire, but by now it was too hot, too blistering, the flames searing Jessica's eyebrows and snatching at the trailing blanket. Twice flames tried to claim the blanket, and a fleeting flash of thought bolted through Jessica's mind: Wouldn't she be better off burned to death at this point? How much reconstructive surgery and additional pain will she face, should she survive this night?
Jessica had seen that Maureen DeCampe's hands, feet, and right cheek were discolored from the first stages of decay. If she lived through this, Jessica knew she'd need a great deal of psychiatric support, family support, and plastic surgery. In the meantime, Purdy's swan song of fire, which basically and graphically said that they could all go to hell, screamed and roared around them. It was as if the fire fed on Jimmy Lee's and Isaiah's bodies, transforming them into a kind of pure evil within the confines of the fiery bam. At least, she hoped the two sons of bitches would go up in flame in the here and now, and throughout eternity. In the confusion, she also wondered about Nancy Willis's body, but for the moment, she must focus on the living.
Then Jessica saw a pair of SWAT team members attempt to drag the old man out. “He's dead! Fuck 'im!” shouted Jessica. “Leave him to go to hell with his son! Get the dead woman's body out of here if you can, but otherwise, save yourselves!”
An overhead beam came crashing down only feet from them. “Get out of here, all of you!”
Together, the two women hustled Judge DeCampe through the fire and out into the open air. Others poured in to take DeCampe to the waiting ambulance, while Shannon and Jessica dropped to the ground, coughing and trying to catch their breaths. At the same time, a thick black cloud billowed from the burning bam like a huge black bird of prey that had taken sudden flight. This black soot swallowed up and blotted out the night sky. Meanwhile, lights continued to shower down from the helicopters above.
“ Get those other medic teams in here, now!” shouted Eriq Santiva as he came close to the two women now on their knees, still gasping for air. “Now!” he repeated. He came to his knees and held Jessica, but when she smelled Richard Sharpe and not Eriq, she looked up into Richard's eyes. He held her so tightly that she again had to battle for breath. Beside them, Santiva was helping Keyes to the waiting ambulance.
“ John Thorpe's been injured,” Richard informed her.
Jessica instantly met his gaze. “How bad is it?”
“ Knife… could've been knives if he hadn't reacted as well and as fast as he did.”
“ How damned bad is it?”
“ Not sure.”
She got to her feet and battled her way to Santiva, coughing and bending over as she did so, still having trouble inhaling and exhaling. “Eriq? What's J. T.'s prognosis?”
“ One of the knives grazed his head, a glancing blow, but a second one caught him here, clipped his jugular. He bled a lot before the medics got to him. Turned white as a sheet.”
Richard again had his arms around her. He said in her ear, “Thorpe's lost consciousness. He's lost a lot of blood. In shock, they said. But his pulse is good, and he's been stabilized, dear. He's going to make it out of this trouble.”
She choked and coughed uncontrollably, and a medic placed an oxygen mask over her face. Again, Richard held her. She snatched away the oxygen mask and said, “I've got to be with J. T.” This brought on another coughing spasm, but she forced out the question, “What hospital?”
Richard firmly said, 'Take it easy. He's in shock, Jess.”
Coma due to blood loss, she feared.
“ He isn't going to miss you for a while, Jess. Slow down.”
She stumbled but pulled away from Richard. “I gotta be there for J. T.”
Keyes, also in bad shape from smoke inhalation, on her back in the nearby ambulance, pulled up to her elbows and shouted, “They're taking us to the same hospital, Jess. Don't worry.”
Richard gritted his teeth and said, “Don't be so stubborn, Jessica. You are into a case of the seriously ill leading the seriously ill.” He guided her to the second bed in the waiting ambulance, but Jessica failed to climb in, instead taking several steps toward Santiva as he approached. Meanwhile, another ambulance pulled up toward the open area fronting the bam, this one kicking up yet another cloud of sand and gravel. “Exactly what you need,” Richard said to her. “More bloody smoke filling your lungs.
Jessica noticed for the first time that Eriq Santiva was bleeding from the forehead and shoulder. Still, he somehow managed to be overseeing everything. Jessica saw him bend over the somewhat charred body of Nancy Willis, her RE/ MAX badge discolored with grimy soot, the puncture holes in her chest caked with dried blood. Her body would also leave here by ambulance.
Jessica met Eriq halfway, asking about his wounds.
“ Swinging ax almost took off my head,” he grumbled. “I was just ahead of J. T., and if he hadn't shoved me ahead… well, I would not be here talking to you… or anyone else, at least not in this life.”
Jessica's head bandaged now, she and Keyes having had plenty of oxygen by this time, both women concerned themselves with Eriq Santiva's obvious wounds. Both refused any further attention, instead wanting to not be treated as invalids. Both also wanted to know how DeCampe was doing.