Story code: ST-001815
Part 2: The Dead Screen
The ringing echo of the heavy plastic slamming against the metal tailgate cut through the low murmur of the municipal staging area. Silence rippled outward. The laughter died. Two firefighters at the nearest folding table stopped mid-bite, their plastic forks suspended over paper plates of brisket.
Marcus kept his hand resting on the thermal camera. His soot-stained fingers stood in stark contrast to the clean, polished red paint of the command truck. He didn’t look at the other firefighters. He kept his eyes locked on the Chief.
The rookie jumped back, dropping his fork into the dirt. “Hey! What the hell, man?” His eyes darted to the camera, a flash of recognition breaking through his indignant shock. “That’s my rig. Where did you get that?”
Marcus slowly pulled his hand back, leaving the camera sitting squarely on the tailgate. “Sector four,” he said, his voice raspy from twelve hours of breathing smoke. “Bottom of the ravine. In the manzanita.”
“I was down there an hour ago,” the rookie said quickly, stepping forward to grab the equipment. “I must have left it when I stopped to fix my hydration tube.”
“You left it on a live ember bed,” Marcus said. He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to. In the sudden quiet of the camp, the words carried perfectly.
The rookie stopped reaching for the camera. A slow, dark flush crept up his neck, visible even under the smeared layer of expensive sunscreen on his face. “Excuse me? I set it down on the cold black. The grid was dead out.”
“The wind shifted,” Marcus said, keeping his focus on the Chief, though he spoke to the rookie. “The embers flared. It caught the brush. It was a minute away from crowning into the pines directly below my crew.”
“That’s a lie,” the rookie snapped, his voice pitching higher. “I cold-trailed that whole section myself. There was no heat.”
Heavy boots crunched rapidly across the gravel behind Marcus.
“Inmate 4490!” The sharp, barking voice belonged to Officer Vance, the corrections guard assigned to Con Crew 4. Vance shoved his way past a stunned municipal firefighter, his face purpling with rage. He stopped a few feet from Marcus, unhooking the heavy radio from his duty belt. “Hands behind your back, 4490. You do not approach command staff. You do not cross the boundary line.”
Marcus felt a cold weight drop in his stomach, a sensation that had nothing to do with the physical exhaustion dragging at his limbs. His parole hearing was sixty days away. A single disciplinary write-up from Vance meant an automatic denial. The board wouldn’t even look at his file for another two years. He had just thrown away his ticket home.
Vance reached out, his thick fingers closing painfully around Marcus’s bicep. “Move. Now.”
“Hold on, Officer,” the Chief said quietly.
Vance paused, though his grip on Marcus’s arm didn’t loosen. “Chief, I apologize. This inmate knows the protocol-”
“I said hold on,” the Chief repeated. He pushed himself off the side of the truck. He didn’t look at Vance, and he didn’t look at Marcus. He was staring down at the thermal camera on the tailgate.
The Chief reached out and turned the heavy yellow block over. The underside of the reinforced plastic casing, the side that had been resting against the earth, was completely warped. The thick rubberized grip was melted into a slick, blackened smear, bubbled outward from intense, direct heat.
Marcus watched the Chief run a calloused thumb over the melted plastic. It was undeniable proof.
“It was sitting on a bed of white-hot coals,” Marcus said.
The rookie stepped closer to the tailgate, his eyes widening at the damage. The defensive posture instantly mutated into aggressive panic. “He’s making it up, Chief! You know how these cons are. He probably dragged it through an ash pit to make a point. Or he tried to steal it, panicked, and dropped it in the hot stuff when he realized he couldn’t hide it!”
Marcus clamped his jaw shut. The accusation was so absurd it took his breath away, but the danger of it was razor-sharp. In the eyes of the state, Marcus was a convicted felon. The rookie was a sworn municipal employee.
“He slammed it on your truck,” the rookie continued, sensing his advantage. “He’s aggressive. He destroyed city property.”
The Chief looked up from the melted casing. His expression was still utterly unreadable, a mask carved from weathered granite. He looked at the rookie, then slowly shifted his gaze to Marcus.
“If this was left on a live spot fire,” the Chief said, his voice dangerously even, “the internal thermal log will show the temperature spike right before it was abandoned. The data is time-stamped with GPS.”
The Chief pressed his thumb heavily onto the rubberized power button on the top of the unit.
Marcus held his breath. Vance squeezed his arm tighter. The rookie crossed his arms over his chest, trying to look bored, but the sweat beading on his upper lip gave him away.
The Chief held the button for five seconds. Ten.
The small screen remained pitch black.
The Chief frowned and pressed the secondary reset switch. Nothing happened. The heat from the coals hadn’t just melted the casing; it had cooked the lithium battery pack or fried the internal motherboard.
The rookie let out a sharp, breathless laugh. “Well, look at that. Guess he broke the motherboard when he slammed it down like a psycho.” He looked at Vance. “You saw him damage it, right, Officer?”
“I saw him,” Vance said grimly. He yanked Marcus backward a step. “Destruction of municipal property, 4490. You’re done.”
Marcus stared at the dead black screen. The only piece of objective evidence was gone, leaving him stranded with a broken thirty-thousand-dollar camera and a guard eager to write his parole away.