Rivals

Special Agent Weathers drove them straight over to Mandy Hunt's house - or what was left of it. Brent could see right away he'd picked the right friend. Maggie had been there, and she hadn't left through the front door.

Not that he could see a front door. The entire front side of the house had collapsed inward, broken boards and sheared-off rebar sticking up at crazy angles, the roof slumped over a gaping hole where the front wall had been. Water sprayed diagonally across the street from ruptured pipes and fires were starting to smolder in the heaps of shingles and broken plaster that spilled across the driveway and into the road.

If Maggie had dropped a bomb on the place, it might have done less damage. But Brent knew instantly what had really happened. She had been in such a rush to leave she had punched her way out right through the house. It didn't surprise him that she was capable of wreaking such havoc. He knew her strength, since he shared it.

"Stay in the car, I'm calling the fire department," Weathers announced, but Brent had already pushed his door open and jumped out onto the sidewalk.

"Come back here, Gill," the FBI man shouted, lowering his window. "I can't let you go in there! It's an insurance nightmare."

"There might be people in there, and they could be dead by the time the firefighters get here. Stay with him, Luce," Brent said, and in the backseat Lucy nodded. Her face was wide open, her eyes locked on the destroyed house.

Finally, he thought. A chance to do some real good. Nobody could debate that saving people from a collapsing house was heroic, or noble, or worth doing. Standing by and waiting with Weathers would be unthinkable.

Brent jumped into the mess and grabbed a steel beam that had fallen across the front of the house. Straining a little, he pushed it up over his head and then jumped inside. It fell back behind him and the whole house swayed, but he was inside, in what might have been a living room once though it was hard to tell. Ahead of him was the kitchen, still largely intact but wreathed in flames.

"Hello!" he shouted. "Is there anyone in here?" He would feel pretty stupid if there wasn't. There was no answer, but anyone in the wreckage might be unconscious. He pushed through the kitchen, flames licking at his clothes. Part of his sleeve caught on fire so he slapped it out. To his left was a stairway leading up, to the right an empty bathroom. He headed for the stairs - and then jumped back as half a ton of bricks and girders came crashing down from the upper floor, smashing the risers and filling the air with red dust that made him cough.

He didn't have much time. The ceiling above him was sagging, water dripping across the plaster and then down the kitchen wall. He bent his knees and sprang upward, smashing through the ceiling and the hardwood floor above, grabbing at anything he could hold onto and pulling himself upward through the hole he'd made.

He found himself in a master bedroom, pale blue paint on the walls and satin curtains covering the windows. The floor sloped to one side and the bed had rolled down to smash against the far wall. It was partially blocking the doorway so he grabbed it and hauled it out of the way, then jumped out into an upstairs hallway. There were doors on three sides of him, then, and they all looked like they'd jammed inside their crooked frames. He kicked one open and found a bathroom with no ceiling - the floor was littered with broken wood and burning shingles. The next door was a linen closet with all the towels and sheets in a pile on its floor.

One more door to go. He got a good run up and hit it hard with his shoulder. It collapsed instantly under his momentum and he rolled through into a girl's bedroom with horses on the walls.

In one corner of the room Mandy Hunt was curled up in a ball, wheezing and shaking. She didn't react when he shouted her name.

Brent took a step toward her - and the house shifted over to its right. The wall above Mandy tilted inward and started to collapse, while all the furniture in the room started sliding across the floor, squeaking as it ground its way down toward the lowest part of the uneven floor.

Plaster and sheared-off sections of lath showered down on Brent's head. He could hear nails popping as they were pulled free of the floorboards, and downstairs he heard a whoomping roar that he thought might be a gas line catching fire.

At any second the house was going to collapse under its own weight. He could hear the sirens of a fire truck in the distance but he knew it would never arrive in time. "Hold on, I'm coming," he called, in case Mandy could hear him.

The wall above her kept collapsing piece by piece. A huge chunk of plaster pinwheeled down from the ceiling and struck her on the shoulder, striping her pale skin with blood. Brent dove across her just as the entire wall gave way and came crashing down.

He was instantly buried in broken plaster and roof shingles. A length of metal guttering whipped across his back and cut his shirt open but it only hurt for a second before his body got its strength back.

Beneath him Mandy wasn't breathing.

Oh, no, he thought. No. I was so close.

But maybe - if 911 had sent an ambulance as well - maybe she could be revived. Brent scooped her up in his arms and staggered upright to his feet, shedding hundreds of pounds of dusty plaster and broken boards. He had to struggle to breathe himself. The air was so thick he couldn't seem to get any oxygen. He couldn't see anything and his ears were ringing.

He could jump straight up in the air, through the collapsed roof, but if he did he would have to drag Mandy up through the rafters with him and she might get hurt. He pushed through waist-deep debris instead, holding her up so her feet didn't drag in the jagged and broken mess, and shouldered his way back out into the hallway.

The fire had spread while he was in Mandy's room. It was racing up the walls, following the wires hidden behind the plaster, and was dripping from the ceiling. There was plenty of fuel to feed it and he knew if he wasted another second he would be engulfed in flames. The bathroom, he thought - he had seen blue sky through the broken walls of the bathroom. He rushed forward, holding Mandy well clear of the burning walls, and didn't even stop to look when he got through the bathroom door. He just ran and leapt and hoped he could find a soft place to land once he was outside. Behind him the house shifted again, walls falling in on themselves, the entire stairway collapsing and taking most of the upstairs hall with it. By then, though, his feet were pedaling at empty air and he was soaring, gliding across the street to land in a row of bushes that felt a lot harder than they looked.

Just before impact he lifted Mandy up in his arms to keep her from being crushed. When he had his feet back underneath him he laid her down gently on a freshly mown lawn and dropped to his knees beside her.

Her clothes were torn. Her hair was a mess. She had streaks of white dust across her face and her bare arms. Blood welled from dozens of cuts and abrasions all over her exposed skin. And she still wasn't breathing.

"Get back," Weathers said. He pushed Brent away and bent over the unconscious girl. Putting his hands together on her chest he pushed down rhythmically as he blew air into her mouth. Looking up for a second he said, "Pinch her nose shut. Yeah, just like that." He bent to blow air into her lungs again and then repeated his chest compressions. "Come on," he said, and scowled at her.

Mandy reached up one hand and slapped weakly at Brent's fingers. He let go of her nose and she made a horrible wet gagging sound. She rolled over on her side and was violently sick, but then she pulled her knees up tight to her chest and started gasping for air. "Maggie," she croaked. "Maggie Gill - she's gone crazy."

"Don't try to talk. You," Weathers shouted, gesturing at a firefighter standing in the street. "Over here!" He looked back down at the girl as the firefighter brought over a silver survival blanket and wrapped her up in it. "Was there anyone else in the house? Any brothers or sisters? Were your parents home?"

Mandy managed to shake her head no before the firefighter put a mask over her face and started pumping her full of oxygen. Two more firefighters came up with a stretcher and lifted her up gently, then wheeled her at top speed toward a waiting ambulance.

"Holy hell," Weathers said. His tie was shoved over to one side, and he fixed it with one hand while he stared at Brent's face.

"What?" Brent asked. "Did I do something wrong?"

Lucy was hobbling toward him. "Not at all, Brent. He's just never seen anything like you before."

Brent shook his head. He felt like he'd eaten an entire box of chalk and his eyes were burning. His clothes were in tatters, barely hanging off of him. Otherwise he thought he felt fine. "Huh."

"It's official," Lucy said, grabbing Brent around the chest and leaning her head on his shoulder. "You're a hero!"