The responding firefighters had set up their command post a block away from the Skybridge Towers, on a plot of open grass in between a church and a department store. The responding chiefs and captains had managed to gather as many blueprints and maps and diagrams as they could and were spreading them out across the ground and a collection of folding plastic tables that they’d borrowed from the store. The voices of the responders mixed with the static and grumbling from the radio sets that they’d set up on the tables; a trio of command support trucks were parked in front of the group, their red and blue lights spinning.
“We’ve lost the eighty-seventh floor,” Captain Spotlight Sweep reported, turning away from the hoofset that he had been speaking into. “Pull everypony out of there.”
“Already done,” Captain Wind Barrier of Precinct Nine reported, shaking her long blonde mane out of her eyes. “The fire’s spreading upwards. We need to get more pegasi crews up to the floors above to get any survivors.”
“They can only carry a few ponies at a time, though, and that’s a long way up and down,” Chief Dust Path grunted, chewing on a toothpick as he studied maps of the upper floors that he was holding before his face in his magic. “Not to mention the time wasted searching. We’d probably spend our time better dealing with the survivors that we can all reach.”
“Time wasted?” Wind Barrier snapped. “Time spent trying to save ponies who are going to burn to death is time wasted?”
“That’s not what I meant,” Dust Path replied, not looking up from the maps. “What I meant was, we need to triage this situation and focus on saving the ones that we can instead of risking our ponies.”
“They know the risks!” Wind replied. “If we—”
“Enough,” Spotlight cut in. “Arguing wastes everyone’s time and costs us lives. Pull them out of the upper floors.”
Dust Path nodded grimly. Wind Barrier glared at Spotlight for a few moments but made no further arguments.
There was the sound of rapidly approaching hoofsteps and Spotlight looked up to see Smokey Bear hurrying up to one of the trucks. Her face was drenched in sweat and her facemask, which was clipped to her belt, bounced against her side as she ran.
“Ran out of batteries, sir!” Smokey reported, panting as she unhooked her hoofset from her belt and placed it on the rear bumper of the truck. She began to rummage around in the back of the truck for a spare battery.
“Lady?” a small voice asked from behind her. Smokey turned around to see a small foal tugging on her tail. He had a white-yellow coat and a light brown mane, which was cut short. His bright green eyes were wide with concern.
“My mommy won’t wake up,” the foal said, pointing at a nearby ambulance.
Smokey looked up to see a mare with a golden coat laying on a stretcher, an oxygen mask over her face and her eyes closed. It took a few moments, but Smokey eventually detected the slow rise and fall of her chest. She also saw Healing Touch behind her, bustling from pony to pony, her jaw clenched and sweat dripping down her tangled mane as she tried to relieve the suffering of as many ponies as she could. But for everyone that she helped, a dozen more came, pleading for help.
“Your mommy will be fine,” Smokey tried to reassure the foal, giving him a brief pat on the head as she snatched up a spare battery and plugged it into her radio. “I’m sorry, I have to go—”
There was suddenly a great crashing sound, and the screaming began again. Smokey looked up to see that the Skybridge Tower seemed to be folding in on itself, collapsing as though it had been turned into a tower of cards that somepony had pushed. With a drawn-out rumbling noise, the tower tumbled to the ground. A plume of smoke and dust, taller than many of the buildings around them, spread from the foundations, rushing down the streets. Ponies turned to run or fly away or dived for whatever cover was available.
Smokey seized the foal and leaped behind the truck, holding the frail little body to her chest. A moment later, the cloud of debris enveloped them. A deafening roar filled their ears; the thick clouds blotted out all light, leaving them in darkness. She felt, rather than heard, the foal screaming as she held him, his chest convulsing; she herself seemed to forget how to breathe, her body taut and still as though she’d been turned to stone.
It took several minutes for the debris to pass by: it felt like a hundred years. Finally, the roar died down and they were allowed to see again. Smokey remained frozen for several seconds, her ears ringing and her lungs still barely functioning, then gasped and pulled the foal away. “Are you okay?” she shouted, barely able to hear her own voice.
The foal nodded, terrified. Smokey stood up and let go of the foal, looking around. The chiefs and captains were picking themselves up and dusting themselves off, their maps and blueprints and tables scattered everywhere. Healing Touch was lowering the magic shield that she’d placed around herself and her patients, shaking down to the tip of her tail.
Smokey looked and her jaw dropped in horror. Where the Skybridge Tower had stood only moments before was now a pile of rubble, with flames still dotting the surface. Twisted metal jutted out like broken bones protruding from the mountain of concrete and brick that lay on the ground. Smoke still rose from the burning mass, spiraling upwards into the sky.
Her hearing slowly returned, and she was once again painfully aware of the noise that surrounded her. The constant frightened babble of voices, the mixture of static-punctured commands and questions over the radios, the wailing of sirens coming and going—this and a hundred other noises assaulted her ears, exacerbating the headache that had been building for hours.
And then, through all the noise, a sound came to Smokey’s ears that chilled her blood. A distinctive, high-pitched whine.
No, not one whine. Hundreds of them.
“No, no, no, no…” Smokey Bear cried, rushing towards the wreckage, pushing past stunned civilians and responders. In the back of her mind, she briefly acknowledged Spotlight Sweep’s voice calling her back, but she ignored it. The screaming of the PASS devices called her forward.
She pushed past a couple of police officers that briefly tried to hold her back and stopped at the edge of the rubble. A massive mountain of rubble stood before her, a skyscraper turned into a funeral pyre crowned in flames and smoke, which were fighting a vicious battle against the streams of water that poured down it from surrounding ladder trucks. The screaming of the PASS devices was almost deafening, and she imagined that it was her comrade’s voices, crying out for help.
With a desperate cry, Smokey lunged into the pile and began to fling rubble aside, trying to reach the ponies buried beneath. The air around the debris was thick and burning hot, scorching her lungs as she struggled to breathe it. Her hooves grasped a steel beam and she screamed aloud as the hot metal burned her hooves, but she forced herself to ignore the pain, flinging the beam aside.
“Lieutenant!” Sous Chef shouted, running up and wrapping his forelegs around Smokey to try to pull her away.
“No!” Smokey screeched, fighting against him in a bid to fling herself back into the funeral pyre. “Let me go!”
“It’s not safe!” Sous Chef protested, dragging his fighting, protesting lieutenant away from the rubble.
“They need us!” Smokey wailed, still trying to pull herself loose and dive back into the rubble, hoping to pull out the firefighters that were screaming out to her for help.
“Smokey!” Sous shouted, collapsing to the ground and hugging her as tightly as he could. “You can’t get them while it’s like this! You can’t help them!”
“I can!” Smokey cried, the tears in her eyes no longer having anything to do with the smoke stinging her face. “I can! I can…”
She broke down into sobs and buried herself into Sous Chef’s embrace, trying to hide from the world, hide from the death. Sous held her close but could offer no words of comfort. The crackling of the flames continued to fill their ears, mixing with the continuing screams of the PASS devices. A thick column of smoke and debris spiraled up into the mockingly clear blue sky, like a funnel of souls ascending to heaven.
It took over an hour for the fires to finally die beneath the onslaught of water, then they had to wait even longer for the rubble to cool off enough for them to get close; by the time that the responding firefighters, police officers and EMTs could begin searching for bodies and survivors, the shadows of the buildings were growing long beneath the light of the lowering sun. The wailing of the PASS devices continued throughout the search, never ceasing or wavering.
Smokey morosely dug through a pile of twisted cement with a shovel, searching for any sign of anypony. She paused in her work, leaning against the shaft of her tool and wiping sweat, grime, and tears off her face.
“Smokey, catch,” Spotlight Sweep called from the edge of the pit. Smokey looked up in time to see her chief toss her a canteen of water. She grabbed it, unscrewed the top, and emptied a third of the contents over her head, drenching her mane with the wonderfully cold water. Then she tilted her head back and guzzled down the rest of the water in one go.
“Did you find anypony?” Spotlight asked, doffing his helmet and wiping off his mane. The gray in his mane was especially pronounced in the lowering light of the evening.
“No,” Smokey replied hoarsely, tossing the canteen back up to him. She turned around and went back to digging. The coarse wood of the shovel’s shaft dug into the forming blisters on her hooves.
“Smokey, take a break,” Spotlight called down.
“Negative, sir,” Smokey panted, tossing aside another shovelful of scrap and dust. “I’m—”
“Help…”
“What was that?” Smokey said, stopping her work and looking up.
“Everypony quiet!” Spotlight barked. All of the ponies around them stopped what they were doing, freezing where they were, ears perked and listening for any sound over the crackling of dust and electronic wailing.
“Down here…” a voice whimpered.
“Survivor! Over here!” Smokey hollered, diving into the pile and flinging aside debris with her bare hooves.
Spotlight Sweep rushed up next to her and joined in the effort to clear away the rubble, then Sous Chef was there, then Dust Path and Wind Barrier and Healing Touch, all of them pushing aside scrap with machine-like energy and stamina.
With a grunt, Sous pushed a large piece of drywall out of the way and uncovered two forelegs, covered in dust and blood. One, adorned in the torn sleeve of a turnout jacket, lay limp and still. The other, a lime green limb, waved feebly up at them.
Invigorated by the sight of their target, the rescuers redoubled their efforts. Within minutes, they’d uncovered three ponies.
A lime green stallion with pale blue hair lay atop the pile, covered in an inch-thick layer of dust and blood. He blinked up at them and coughed weakly, blood bubbling at his lips.
“Don’t move, don’t speak,” Healing Touch instructed him, rushing to his side in a moment, and casting a spell over him to scan his injuries. She gripped his hoof and smiled. “You’re going to be alright.” She turned and shouted, “Get a stretcher!”
Even as the command was given, Dust Path and Wind Barrier were rushing up to them, a stretcher carried between them. With their help, Healing Touch lifted the patient onto the stretcher and hurried him to an ambulance, where another EMT waited.
But Smokey had already forgotten about him. Her eyes were on the other two ponies, who had cushioned the stallion’s fall with their own bodies.
Hydrant and Bull Run lay side by side, their coats torn, their SCBA masks fractured and hanging from their faces. Their PASS devices hooked to their coats were silent: their batteries had died long ago. Bull’s faithful Denver tool lay mere feet away from his outstretched hoof. Both stallions’ eyes were closed and their bodies still.
Smokey slowly dropped to her knees, staring at her comrade’s bodies. The world seemed to rush away from her, all sound and sensation disappearing save for the corpses. She felt numb, as though her innards had been scooped away, leaving behind nothing.
Then she felt a hoof on her shoulder. She turned to see Sous Chef and Spotlight Sweep standing behind her. Sous had his hoof on her shoulder, squeezing gently in comfort.
“It’s nopony’s fault, Smokey,” Spotlight said in a throaty voice. “They...we all did everything we could.”
“We can always do more,” Smokey replied quietly.
“Survivor! Survivor, over here!” a voice called. The trio looked up to see ponies rushing towards the caller, diving into another pile of rubble.
“We are doing more,” Spotlight said, then rushed off after the other rescuers.
Sous Chef held out a hoof. Smokey Bear stared at it for a moment, then took it allowed Sous to help her to her hooves. She paused briefly to look back at Hydrant and Bull where they lay, then raised her hoof in salute.
“Rest easy, boys,” she whispered, then turned and rushed over to the other rescuers, with Sous Chef racing behind her.
The crews worked through nightfall, with volunteers and other workers swelling their ranks as they cleared debris, tended to the wounded and extracted the dead by the dozens. Cooks from nearby restaurants gathered to create meals to sustain the rescuers, working under Sous Chef’s watchful eye.
As the sun dipped towards the waters of the Celestial Sea, several of the chiefs gathered to plant a flagpole in the midst of the Skybridge Tower’s foundations and ran an Equestrian flag up it. The blue banner with the two alicorns flapped over the mass grave, the fabric stars joining the other stars in the sky to mark the spot where a tower had fallen, and where a hundred heroes lay.