Read The Last Nightingale for Free Online

attitudes in line. Such things were especially important for a young family man, as nearly all new cops happened to be. But these two dolts were behaving like men who had gotten their jobs easy, perhaps from relatives or through bribes.
    They clearly failed to see any reason to adopt Blackburn's dedication. And there was no practical way to punish them under the circumstances, something that these two had already figured out. It left a bitter taste in Blackburn's mouth that all he could do was to give firm orders, then make sure that they saw him going about each of the jobs himself in the way that it was supposed to be done.
    He employed the most careful efforts in handling the remains of victims, but still held to his central order and refused to permit anyone on his squad to quit before all of the bodies that had been pulled from the rubble were safely interred—and protected from the rats—or until all of the park's available ground was filled. There was still open grave space left when the delivery system broke down. It happened somewhere back along the way, no one knew where. With a fraction of the city's officials still living, and with the city's physical resources hardly functional, the remaining workers’ growing fatigue was now causing the work process to decompose faster than the corpses they hoped to save. He lost count after burying fifty.
    All of them were planted deep.
    Fatigue settled in like fog. It was natural for anyone who had ridden out the Great Earthquake, as it was already being called, to function on fear and adrenaline for the first few hours. Many were too traumatized to sleep at all. But halfway through the second day,even the healthiest and strongest felt their physical resources depleted. Even simple tasks became confusing.
    Blackburn could see that anarchy was snapping at their heels, and he could only hope that the rest of the city's dead were being reduced to ash in the unchecked fires. Protected, at least, from the final indignity of feeding the rats that roamed everywhere, free as cats and dogs. The fires, in the end, were proving to be good for that much. No one could know how many San Franciscans and hapless travelers died in the Great Earthquake and fires, with all trace of their existence wiped away. Human remains joined thousands of abandoned pets and even large draft animals in mass cremation. Thankfully, uncountable swarms of rat populations were converted to ash and bone as well.
    But rats were always the first to run and the last to get caught. If he and his men failed to go deep enough, the rats would be at the fresh graves the next day. And yet he was nearly delirious with exhaustion. If only his bosses would let him get some sleep. He had managed to snag a few catnaps here and there, but with waves of uncontrolled flames rampaging through the city and raining hot embers, there was never time for anything more.
    Only when the last of the bodies were taken care of did he manage to spend a couple of hours sound asleep, facedown under the nearest tree, before some lieutenant shook him awake and ordered him to form up a detail. He was to lead a top-speed, house-to-house search for survivors in those neighborhoods that stood in the path of the advancing flames. He and his crew would have to keep themselves moving just ahead of the firewall, in a final pass through the standing homes before the firestorms consumed them.
    His stomach was already twisted with hunger; his bones ached. He wondered how the two soft recruits were going to take to another difficult assignment. But he was pleasantly surprised to see Gibbons and Mummery actually perk up a bit under the challenge. The necessity of it was plain, even to them.
    Unfortunately, there weren't many victories there. Most of whathe saw within the masses of tilting wreckage was an endless repetition of mangled bodies, long dead. A small few were still alive, but trapped beyond saving in the few moments before the flames found them.