I Smell Burning

[Deamon]

"Ha, sucks to be you." Josie laughed as she laid her cards down on the table. "And this time I didn't even cheat."

She leaned forward and made a show of scooping up the cigarettes that lay on the table. She didn't even smoke, but she enjoyed messing with everyone who did by trying to win as many as she could. They were sitting in a kitchen in one of the upper floors of the staff housing block. It had been danger zoned at the beginning of the day and the island team had decided to use it as their base. It wasn't quite as interesting as the other locations because of how exposed it was and one of the things they needed to make sure of was that they stayed hidden from the students. So, they had resolved to pass the time doing what they always did, play cards and shoot the shit.

The job had been sold to her as outdoors work but she could deal with a few days spent cooped up inside. Her main issue was the chain of command; she was sure Parker only kept her around because she was very good at her job. She always had a comment or joke ready for whatever they were asked to do. Which typically wasn't much, just making sure all the equipment on the island was working correctly. As she went to sit back down she saw something faintly glowing and moved over to the window.

"What is it?" Haskins asked, turning slightly in his seat and spotting it himself. It didn't take long after that for a whole group of the island team to be standing watching the library burn from the window. Eventually Haskins broke the silence. "I suppose we should radio it in huh?" The suggestion elicited a loud dramatic groan from Josie and some general curses from the others.

"I'll do it." She said and moved away to collect her radio. After making sure it was tuned she went back over to the window and continued to observe the burning. Parker answered almost immediately. "Yo, Parker you probably know already but I think someone's conducting a book burning? You want us to save the knowledge or leave it."

There was a moment of silence from the other end before Parker responded.

"We already know about the fire Knight." She hated being called Knight. "They're going to declare it a danger zone shortly. Orders are to wait until that happens then you'll be going in to put what's left out. Am I clear?"

"Yeah you're clear, stay where we are and let it burn down." She grinned at the others who either smirked themselves or just shook their heads and went about getting ready.

"Go put out the fire Knight." Then he hung up before she could respond.

____

"This is bullshit."

The announcement that the library had been made a danger zone was soon after she had finished talking to Parker and following it the island team had marched down to sort the situation out. They were armed to the teeth with fire extinguishers.

So yeah, some of the guys were a little pissed.

"What you never had dreams of being a firefighter when you were younger?" Josie asked with a grin as she lazily sprayed a pile of smouldering embers with her fire extinguisher. The general stares answered her question. "No, me neither."

In her opinion they should have been allowed to hunt the girl down and shoot her themselves, or, at the very least the fucking kid should have had their head blown off. The fire was annoying as fuck sure but it wasn't the worst thing ever, not really. It meant she had something to do. She didn't want to be doing, but it was something to do.

No, she wanted to hunt the girl down because it would have been something to do and it would have been fucking fun.

Instead here she was spraying powder over the burning remains of a library.

Josie was still smirking though, because she knew that at the end of the day, she was still going to get paid and the girl was going to end up dead.