More firemen rushed past me to aid their brother officers, one of them knocking me back a step. There was no point in slowing anyone down to ask questions.

I raised myself up again. It must have been sensory overload because I thought I could see a hand, but there weren’t really any fingers, and a terrible smell made me dizzier than the confusing sight.

“Who on fire?” one tall kid yelled out at no one in particular, then started to pull on the sleeve of my jacket as I passed in front of him.

“Don’t know,” I said, breaking loose from his grip and inching forward, but his choice of pronoun focused me.

No question that within the fiery pile was a human being. The putrid odor of burning flesh — coppery and metallic — permeated the air. Holocaust survivors and soldiers who had liberated camps in World War II claimed it was a stench they would never forget.

“Go!” It was one of the ESU cops who had pushed back the gate he’d hacked open, calling out to the firemen who’d been spraying hoses impatiently from the sidewalk.

The pair took the church steps two at a time, rushing toward the smoking mound. While uniformed cops turned their attention to crowd control, Mike dashed in through the gate.

“I’m his partner,” I lied to the startled cop at the foot of the steps, running up behind Mike. I could see feet — small, pale, and bare — protruding from the remains of what might have once been a blanket that had covered them. They didn’t move.

The taller fireman dropped to his knees and did what he must have done thousands of times after dousing the flames at a scene, whether or not he believed the victim would be able to respond.

He grabbed the ankles and pulled them toward him, then threw off the charred material that had concealed the corpse. He leaned over to begin an attempt at mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, but his back bucked and broke sideways as he braced himself against one of the massive columns and retched.