Creepypasta Collection Book 1

A Firefighter Lost

I had been fighting wildfires my entire adult life. The adrenaline of fighting the most primitive of all living things on this planet kept me going back every day. The adrenaline from fighting a fire for three weeks will keep you going for the rest of the year. If you don't think that fire is living, breathing being; then you have never fought one or intently studied it. All fires need oxygen to breath, that's how we put them out, we smother their ability to breath oxygen and they slowly die, the same as any of us would. All fires eat whatever their fancy in their path. They need to eat, if they run out of food, they die. We do this too, by letting loose young fires i the path of the big fire and let them eat all the food before the big fire can get to them. You take out the food supply, the being dies. Fires give birth to young, and they set them free on a floating ash to land in an area away from their food supply, to find their own food and grow until they too give birth to new fires. Fires have long ago discovered the meaning of their life, and they have been doing it for billions of years on this planet, and they will continue to do it long after the human plague has subsided.

When you stand surrounded by a fierce opponent of a fire, you can hear it. Yes, there is the cracking of the fire, but that is not that fire, that is the sound of everything being consumed by the fire. The fire itself screams and bellows, it has a siren call that entrances you and calls for you to stop and let it live. When a firefighter loses control of a fire, there is always an investigation into what went wrong, what could have gone better and whether the fighter was at fault. All the investigations I have been part of every firefighter has said the same thing, that they heard a call beckoning to them. This is always played off as not real, and their imaginations as the fire itself is too hard to hear over, it was always the fighters imagination playing tricks on them.

Several times I have fallen for this call and have allowed a fire to blow past me. As a thank you for stopping the fight, the fire had let me live. It could have consumed me as it does so many people who try to flee and try to fight it's fury, but if you give in and surrender to it, it will allow you to pass. Like I said, fire is a living, breathing being that is conscious of its decisions and actions, but that is a story for another day.

It was because of the siren call, and my falling prey to it that I ended up out there on this day. I told you that we tried to starve the fire out, and well, that takes a group of people to go miles ahead of the fire and start small ones to eat up all the brush and kindling around, and then before they get too big, really barely larger than a campfire, we snuff them out. No hoses, no water, just us, our firestarters, and our thick boots and shovels. It is dirty work, but when you lose the Chief's confidence, this is where you end up. It is you, the Plebs, the Old Timers, and maybe some volunteers to run you out some water and keep a lookout for the large fire on the horizon. Seeing the fire means it is rapidly approaching and it is our sign to move another few miles away and start again. There was no excitement in this, no adrenaline, just boredom and monotony. It is what has to be done to get back on the front lines and confront the demon again, and prove that you are better.

Johnny shuffled over to me on this day, dragging his shovel at his feet and simply said, "Fire's coming."

I looked up, saw flames licking the skyline in the distance. A helicopter flew just ahead of the flames and dropped water from the lake into the path of the fire. I let out a sigh and stomped at the small fire that I had going in front of me. A quick whistle and a point to the field in front of us got the same action out of the dozen others with Johnny and I. Everyone else jumped into their beat up location trucks and drove off to the next pre-planned site. If there was a shift in the fire, or if it looked like the fire would get contained, they would radio ahead and either shift our location, or put us on standby.

"Jake, shouldn't we make sure all the fires are out?" Johnny was a Pleb. First year, straight out of the academy, and always looking to do things by the book. Chief knew this would drive me crazy, so Johnny was the obvious choice to make me partner with.