Inside Straight

His outline fuzzed. Then, his shirt and pants collapsed, and in his place a swarm of tiny green wasplike insects hovered. The swarm maintained the outline of the man—a disturbing, wavering form, rather than anything with human features—and raised a nebulous, buzzing arm in salute. Then, he scattered. The swarm broke apart, zoomed to the building, and entered through three different windows.

“Is that bastard going to be okay?” Hardhat asked, staring. He’d built a second scaffold by another window and rescued a third victim.

In only a second, almost as quickly as they’d entered the building, the swarm returned, tendrils of insects shooting out of the windows and dropping to the ground. There, they coalesced, crawling together to form the shape of a man, kneeling and naked. “Bugs and smoke… don’t mix,” he managed, coughing.

Wild Fox pointed. “Dude, you know you’re naked?”

Regaining his feet, Hive glared. “Thanks very much. I might have missed that little fact.” With a bout of angry buzzing, his hip region snapped out of existence, to be replaced by a Speedo band of writhing insects. He went to retrieve his clothing.

“I bet the girls love that,” Curveball said, smirking.

He leered. “You could find out.”

“We don’t have time for this.” She drew a pair of marbles out of the pocket of her shorts. Then she wound up for the pitch. She threw with that odd softballer’s pitch, the underhanded swing and snap. The marble flew, faster than a softball, faster than any thrown object had any right to fly. It burned through the air, glowing yellow, before impacting on the front door. The wood shattered with the force of an explosion. She threw the second one at a ground-floor window. The impact left a jagged hole in the side of the house.

“Great,” Hive said, deadpan. “Now we can see the fire even better.” She glared at him.

Exposure to more air only made the flames larger and more ferocious. The baby was still crying.

Curveball turned to Ana. “Earth Witch, you try something. We’ve got to do something.”

Ana shook her head. She wasn’t going to open a hole in the ground just for the sake of doing something and run the risk of undermining the whole building. They hadn’t been too successful so far, but that would take the cake of failures.

She said, “Maybe we could try the fire hose.” Stupid idea, yeah. That didn’t mean they had to stare at her like she was an idiot—like they were doing now.

Curveball and Drummer Boy glanced at each other, then ran to the hose and fire hydrant. They wrestled with it for a minute, without making progress. Buttoning up his shirt, Hive helpfully observed, “I don’t think you’re doing that right.”

“Then you do it, Bugsy!” Drummer Boy said. He dropped the hose, which he’d been hoisting with all six hands.

The heavy nozzle yanked out of Curveball’s grip. “Hey!”

“Shit,” Drummer Boy muttered. “Here, let me try.” Using brute force, he manhandled the nozzle into place and managed to wrench open the valve on the hydrant. The hose filled, writhed, and twisted out of their grip, spraying a sheet of water across the pavement.

“Watch it!” Hive shouted as a tail of the spray caught him.

“Stop standing there and help!” Curveball shot back.

Grabbing hold of the nozzle and pinning it down while Curveball attempted to wrestle with the hose, Drummer Boy muttered, “This is great. This is just great.”

The baby’s crying seemed to get louder.

They managed to maneuver the fire hose in place to spray water at the blazing windows, but by this time the flames were monstrous, engulfing the building. Shouting continued to emanate from within—more people needing rescue. They didn’t have much time, and the minutes dragged painfully.

Then Curveball said, “Oh my God.” She cupped her hands to her face and shouted, “Hardhat! He’s gonna jump! The guy’s jumping!”

From one of the third-story windows, a man was climbing over the sill. Hardhat came running. “Where?”

“To the right!”

Drummer Boy dropped the hose and made a dash for the window, as if he could actually catch a falling body, but it was too late. Hardhat only laid one of his I beams down before the victim landed.

“Motherfucker!” Hardhat shouted. Drummer Boy gave an angry shake of an arm.

They had no way of getting inside. They couldn’t pull anyone out.

“Would somebody do something?” Curveball yelled. She kept saying that.

Hardhat, sweat and soot smearing his face, turned on her. “What the fuck you want me to do? Blow pixie dust out my ass? I’ve been doing something!”

Gardener tried to step in. “Arguing isn’t going to help anything.”

“At least we’re good at that,” Hive said, and he actually smiled.

Then they all started shouting at each other.

Some team, Ana thought.