The Adventures of Soap Boy

Part 8: Rescue

There before me, a man hung from a pallet. His life quite literally hanging in the balance. And said balance was important. His weight on one end of the suspended pallet was causing it to tilt. In just a few seconds, what had to be a ton of stone would slide over his hands and force him to let go.

He would probably survive the drop since it was only about six meters, but then the stones would fall on him. I wasn't so sure he'd survive that. While I was thinking that, I was already in motion.

Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted the crane operator reaching for the controls in a panic. Now that I got a good look at him, he was only a teenager. Far too young to be behind the wheel of something so dangerous. I couldn't let him make another mistake.

"Don't touch anything!" I screamed at him at the top of my lungs.

He stopped, and his attention snapped over to me. By that time, I was in a full sprint. I knew I was supposed to take it easy, but lives were on the line, and my recovery would have to wait. I had to get the teen to do something productive, or he would go back to ruining everything with the controls. I thought back on the various training manuals, and the image of an improvised stretcher came to mind.

"Grab those shovels and that tarp!" I yelled, while pointing at each object.

After only a moment's hesitation, he jumped out of the crane and got to work. I ran ahead so that I would be in position when he brought the stuff. That's when I saw a problem.

The area where the man was going to land already had fairly sizable rocks falling all over its general vicinity. The teen was wearing a hard hat, but I had no such thing.

I thought for a moment, and an idea popped into my head. It seemed unlikely, but it would have to work. I produced bar soap from my scalp and the tops of my shoulders, forming a helmet and shoulder pads. After that, I ran into the fall zone.

The teenage boy brought the stuff, and started working under my instructions to form a stretcher. We simply wrapped the tarp around each shovel and pulled them apart between us. Once finished, we spread out the two meter square stretcher. We pulled it tight, and were ready to receive the adult worker.

"Fall on your back!" I yelled up to the man, who didn't waste a second obeying.

He fell into the stretcher with enough force that I was forced to drop it. It did its job, though, and broke his fall. Me and the boy helped him onto his feet, and we all started running away from the fall zone. As I ran, I felt several rocks hit me from above, but My armor worked and I was mostly protected. Once we were a good ten meters away, we breathed a collective sigh of relief.

The exertion caught up to me, and it was time to pay my dues for running while half-starved. Dizziness overtook me, and I was forced to sit down. I was aware enough to notice something interesting, though.

When my focus broke, the shoulder pads fell right off. Once I thought about it, I had made the pads, but nothing to hold them on. I decided to run an experiment, but was interrupted by a voice.

"Hey, can't you hear me?" I snapped back to reality, and looked up to see the older of the two workers looking at me in concern.

"Yeah, sorry." I responded, still a little woozy. He reached out, offering me a hand up, but I waved him off.

"Sorry, I don't think I can get up right now." I said, trying to find the words to explain the situation. He seemed to accept my condition without explanation, however, and rescinded the offer.

"Well, I'd like to thank you for helping me somehow." He said with obvious gratitude in his voice. "How about dinner? My place isn't far, and I'm sure the others would understand me calling off early after that debacle."