Expectant Father (21 page)

Logan slowly nodded and extended his hand. “Hurry down
there, man. I don’t want to have to pull my suit out of the closet for you.” For Spider’s funeral.

“Don’t bury me yet.” He still had things to accomplish—a father to get to know, a child to raise, a woman to love.

“I’ll go with you.” Chainsaw took a step forward, but Spider held up a hand.

“The crew needs leaders right now. Without me or Golden, that’s two less steady heads. You stay.”

“D
O YOU SEE THAT CLOUD
forming here?” Carl said, pointing to the screen. “The fire’s creating another thunderstorm. That’s totally amazing.”

“But will it bring rain, or lightning or both?” Julia asked, wiping at her eyes with a tissue while Carl looked at the screen, saying nothing.

“It doesn’t matter,” Becca said. “The fire will blow up before the first drop of rain hits the ground.” Was Aiden paying attention to the conditions? He’d felt the pressure build during the first blowup.

Her stomach was wound up in such tight knots that she didn’t think she’d be able to breath soon. It had become hard just to draw air.

“Those three teams still haven’t called in,” Jackson whispered to Sirus, but Becca heard him anyway.

“Which teams?” Sirus asked.

“Silver Bend…”

Becca didn’t hear any more. Aiden was up on that mountain, at the heart of the approaching storm carrying a metal Pulaski—a miniature lightning rod as far as she was concerned, just a huge magnet waiting for a lightning strike. But there was a more imminent danger from the front of the fire.
Leaping quickly across the narrow ridges, it could take the men and women up there by surprise.

“The satellite won’t be in position for another fifteen minutes to read the fire’s progress,” Carl said.

“Can we send the chopper?” Becca asked in a strangled voice.

“Angus isn’t going to fly into a blowup in this weather, and I can’t say as I blame him. It’s a suicide mission.” Jackson exchanged a look with Becca that was not at all encouraging. “But they’re not a bunch of rookies, Becca. They’ll realize there’s trouble in time to head to the safe zone.”

“What if they go to a pickup zone instead?” Julia asked.

Sensing her unease, Sirus put a hand on Becca’s shoulder. “With the winds whipping around like this, they won’t expect any air support.”

In other words, they wouldn’t expect a rescue.

“H
EY
,” S
PIDER YELLED
as soon as he spotted men through the trees, hoping his voice would rise above the wind and reach the Montana crew. He’d already warned the second DoF crew to retreat.

Either they heard him or he’d come into their line of vision, because many of the crew looked up. The embers weren’t as bad on this side of the ridge, but there were still embers in the air and crackling on the ground.

“We’re falling back to the safe zone,” Spider shouted as he ran up to the superintendent.

“At whose command?” the super asked, looking suspicious.

A couple of the veterans in the group kept hacking at the ground, including Spider’s dad.

Spider forced himself to look casual. “Well, you can radio
in if you’d like, but the other two DoF crews have already fallen back.”

The leader asked his radio man to make contact with base camp. Aiden knew it was futile. The smoke and clouds overhead were swirling, the air charged heavily with something bad on the way, and they were on the opposite side of the mountain range from base camp with no radio relay in between them.

“I guess we can fall back with you, but just remember, we were the last to go.” The leader smiled triumphantly at Spider.

“What an ass,” Spider mumbled to his dad when the old man came over to him.

“I’ve been trying to tell him for the past ten minutes that we should pull back, but I don’t think he’s ever seen anything like this,” Roadhouse admitted half under his breath. “He doesn’t know what we’re in for.”

Something changed. The wind became hotter. There was a roar in the distance, a fierce challenge to all who lay in the dragon’s path.

“Run!” Spider shouted, hoping the team wouldn’t put pride in the way of safety. He grabbed his father by the arm and together they stumbled down the path.

“L
OOK AT THOSE WIND SPEEDS
,” Becca said, pointing to Carl’s computer screen where several pieces of equipment Carl and Becca had installed in the fire’s path were shuttling information like crazy.

“It’s coming down the southwestern slope, isn’t it?” Julia asked.

“Yes,” Becca and Jackson said at the same time. The right slope, the right fuel, and the right wind were converging with potentially deadly consequences.

“Can we cut it off somewhere?” Sirus asked, the lines on his face deeper than Becca had ever seen them.

Becca and Julia pointed to the same place on the map at the same time. “Here.”

Julia explained, wiping at her nose with a tissue. “At the bottom of the valley there’s a river. The wind will channel it to the south, toward the highway, but it may not have enough force to scale the next ridge.”

“It had better stall because that was the last ridge between the fire and the nearest town,” Becca said.

“What about base camp?” Sirus asked.

“My simulation indicates it won’t be threatened until tomorrow.” Julia thrust a paper in Becca’s direction.

After a quick perusal, Becca nodded at Sirus.

“If we can get some air support and dump a couple of loads of slurry…” Catching on, Jackson looked up at Sirus. “It’s time to call in some favors.”

Becca handed the printout back to Julia. “I always knew you had it in you.”

Julia looked both pleased and saddened by Becca’s compliment. “Sometimes it takes stubborn minds a bit more effort to come around. I should have told you about my allergies. I’m sorry—”

“Don’t apologize,” Becca cut her off. “You’ve learned something and I’ve learned something.” Not to be quick to judge. To communicate better.

It was unfortunate that Becca had learned how to manage too late.

I
T ONLY TOOK THEM TEN MINUTES
to make it to the safety zone. Days before the meadow had been burned over, the ground mere charred grass, but all the empty space seemed to be filled with the forty-odd DoF crew members already there. Fitting
another twenty men and their shelters in was going to be a challenge.

“Move closer.” Logan was shouting over the wind, trying to direct everyone to make room.

Faces—young and old—were pinched with fear. Men were sweating openly in the path of the ever-increasing hot wind. Explosions sounded on the mountain above them, trees being consumed in one fiery flame like a match. The roar of the fire grew louder, like a freight train, bearing down on them all.

Some were still tossing their packs aside, taking only water, wetting a bandana and covering their mouths in an attempt to cool the air they’d be taking into their lungs if the fire passed over them. Others had already deployed their shelters, fitting their feet in the bottom corners and hooking their gloved hands in the top corners, then flopping down with no grace onto the ash covered ground. The way some of the shelters were shaking and lifting in the wind, Aiden knew some firefighters were trying to dig a shallow hole in the ground for their faces to try and escape the poisonous gas the fire would bring.

The wind seemed to swirl around them, taunting with the promise of certain doom.

Spider began running around making sure his team members were deploying their shelters correctly. They all carried one in case of emergencies like this.

The roar of the fire intensified with another explosion—closer now.

O’Reilly, one of their rookies, was struggling with his folded shelter, as if the fireproof material were stuck together and unwilling to open. He shook it violently.

It opened.

And then blew away in the wind.

Before Spider could react, Victoria was standing next to O’Reilly, pressing her shelter into his hands.

“What are you doing?” Spider shouted, racing over.

“I’m giving him my shelter.” Victoria’s face was paler than usual as she knelt to help the nearly paralyzed rookie into his shelter. “He’s got a wife and kid at home.”

“W
E’VE GOT REPORTS OF TEAMS
in the safe zone deploying,” the radio communications officer announced.

Aiden.

Jackson paced.

“Which teams?” Becca demanded with a crack in her voice. He couldn’t leave her to raise their baby alone.

Julia was crying now, not just having an allergic reaction. She looked to Becca for support, and Becca held her hand tightly, repeating, “Which teams?”

“I don’t know. It’s all garbled. Listen for yourself.” And then the communications officer unplugged his earphones and filled the tent with the static sound of radio traffic.

“It’s coming…mountain…hear it.”

“Where’s my satellite feed, Carl?” Sirus was the calmest one in the tent.

Becca thought she might throw up. “Which teams?”

“V
ICTORIA, TAKE
the goddamn shelter,” Spider shouted.

She stood staunchly before him, her gloved hands limply at her sides, shaking her head. “There’s no point.”

“Take my shelter, Victoria, or so help me God, I will stuff you in it myself.” The roar of the fire was deafening now. Spider glanced around the safe zone, looking for anything that would provide him with some level of protection. Maybe there’d be a miracle, as there had been last fall when Logan had found a coyote den.

Victoria raised her head, her expression sadly determined. “I will not take your shelter.”

He grabbed her shoulder with one hand, being careful not to let go of the shelter in his other hand. “I will not stand by and let this happen.”

“Get in the shelter with me.”

Spider shook his head. “You know that doesn’t work, there won’t be enough oxygen. Take the shelter. That’s an order. Every second you refuse is one more second I won’t have to get away.”

She shook her head. “I’ll run downhill.”

“You may be faster than me going up over a long distance, but I kick ass running downhill.” And he’d have to if he wanted to live.

Becca…

He couldn’t think about her now. Or the baby.

“There’s no point,” she repeated. “I have cancer.” Victoria took a step back, her hands fisted. “I’m not taking your shelter.”

Oh, God, it all made sense now. Victoria throwing up, her stamina decreasing, her concentration worthless. She’d been fighting cancer and hadn’t let anyone know all these months. She’d tried to hang in there and he’d been an asshole, kicking her when she was down, just as Becca had said.

Spider lowered his head, clenching his jaw as he made his decision. He owed Victoria. “Look, nothing is hopeless. Not the way I see it.” Unwilling to wait any longer, Spider thrust the shelter at Victoria and took off downhill.

“Damn you, Spider,” Victoria called after him. “I’ll tell her you love her.”

“A
IY-OW
.” Becca hadn’t expected the sharp pain in her belly, couldn’t believe that such a pain would rocket her out of her chair.

“Becca!” Julia helped ease her back down. “Are you okay?”

“I think so.” She rubbed a hand over her stomach, which was tight as a band of steel. “Just a Braxton Hicks contraction.”

“Teams deployed…pray… God.” The static-filled voice descended over Becca like a cold shroud. How would she know if Aiden, Victoria and Roadhouse had deployed their shelters safely? How could she wait the additional ten minutes or longer wondering without going crazy?

Her belly tightened again, causing her to straighten in her seat. She’d never had the practice contractions hit her so intensely. This was painful. This was…

Labor.

“A
IDEN
… S
PIDER… WAIT
.”

Spider skidded to a halt at the edge of the meadow, wasting too many precious seconds he couldn’t spare for his dad to catch up to him.

“Deploy your shelter, Dad.”

Roadhouse ran in a lopsided gait, as if his legs were hurting. The ridge behind him was ablaze with flames rising eighty feet toward the darkly clouded heavens, reminding Spider of what little time he had left.

“Take mine,” Roadhouse shouted as he slapped his folded shelter into Spider’s chest, not even pausing as he loped past him down the mountain.

“What the—”

“Becca and the baby need you,” he called without looking back. And then his dad disappeared into the brush and down the mountain.

Foolish old man. What the hell was he thinking? He’d never outrun this beast.

Spider took a step after him, then paused.

A tree exploded quite near the edge of the meadow, sending a whole new wave of flame into the air and embers showering across the meadow. If Spider didn’t deploy now, he’d die for sure. They’d both die.

The air seemed to slow around him, waiting, waiting for him to decide. Stay and brave the dragon or run after a father he’d only just learned really loved him? The air became heavier, pressing down on him, holding him captive until the decision was taken from him.

And what of Becca and the baby if he died?

With one last look down the ridge, Spider swore and sprang into action, pausing only to retrieve the bag of his dad’s letters from his pack and stuffing them into his shirt.

With practiced, shaking hands, Spider shook out his dad’s
shelter, fit the loops around his feet and hands, and flopped face-first onto the ground, his ears filling with the roar of the dragon’s anger.

The hungry beast had arrived.

“I
CAN’T BREATHE
,” Becca struggled to fill her lungs with air.

“Calm down, we’ll save them,” Sirus reassured her, not looking up from the computer screen where he hoped to see the latest satellite picture of the fire any moment.

Jackson spared her a quick glance, then did a double take and swore. “She’s not having a panic attack, she’s in labor.”

Becca’s stomach muscles contracted, sending her arching in her chair. Her face felt hot.

She couldn’t be in labor. She still had about five weeks to go. She cast her gaze around, looking for someone to calm her down, someone to reassure her that everything was going to be all right, but Aiden wasn’t there.

She’d fallen in love with Aiden and rejected him.

What had she done? He might die never knowing how she felt about him. And it was her fault he was out there.

Someone— Julia—encouraged her to breathe.

How foolish she’d been not to realize that Aiden was perfect for her. Her heart had known in Las Vegas that he was the only one for her. She’d just been too stupid to see it until now, until Aiden was in danger of dying and her heart was in danger of breaking.

“Don’t let him die,” Becca whispered half to herself even as Maxine, the medic, burst into the tent.

S
PIDER HAD NEVER FELT
like such a coward. He never would have taken the shelter if his father hadn’t mentioned Becca and the baby.

He wanted to see the spark in Becca’s blue eyes when they
argued, and her smile when he said something that pleased her. He wanted to hold his baby in his arms, just once.

Pressing the corners of his fire shelter down with his hands and feet, he could feel the heat wash over the meadow and the sixty-some-odd bodies crouched as he was beneath a thin layer of aluminum foil and fiberglass laminate.

The wind and fire challenged the edges of his shelter, trying to lift it off the ground, trying to roast him alive. Reflexively, he jerked the shelter back down. The fire roared on and on endlessly above him.

Firefighters didn’t call shelters Shake ’n Bakes for nothing. The heat inside was severe and threatened to suck the oxygen away just as Spider needed it most.

To his left, screams erupted.

“Don’t run!” he shouted before dissolving into a fit of coughing as he fought for air. He prayed that whoever had been burned hadn’t been burned badly enough to lose their composure and jump up. Therein lay certain death.

And what of his father? Had he been able to outrun the dragon?

More screams. Spider couldn’t distinguish the voices. For all he knew, it could have been his father.

The sour taste of vomit filled the back of his throat.

He’d let his father sacrifice his life so that Spider could live. He almost wished he wouldn’t survive this vengeful firestorm. Because if he did survive, he’d have to live with the knowledge that he was a coward—every day, for the rest of his life.

U
P-DOWN
. U
P-DOWN
. U
P-DOWN
. Don’t think. Just move.

His knees were two knots of pain. It was excruciating just lifting his legs, much less running on them on an uneven sur
face. Not that it would matter. The roar of the fire filled his ears with a near-deafening challenge.

Roadhouse wouldn’t be able to outrun the dragon for long.

At least he’d go out on his own terms. Death would come swiftly, and with it the knowledge that he’d finally done right by his boy. Well, one of his boys, anyway.

Up-down. Up-down. Over a felled log. Losing his footing. Sliding on his butt. Somehow managing to pop back up to his feet without losing speed.

All the while, the fire bellowed hungrily behind him, daring him to stop and look back.

Roadhouse didn’t want his last memory to be of a wall of flame sweeping down upon him. He kept running even when his knees hurt so badly they’d become numb with pain.

Up-down. Keep your mind off the knees and the fire. Think of something else. Make it to the other side of this little meadow.

Familiar smells—smoke, pine, bear scat.

Bear?

He entered the stand of pine trees at the bottom of the meadow and nearly ran into a humongous grizzly crossing his path.

Bear and man let out yowls of surprise barely heard over the roar of the fire nearly upon them.

Roadhouse veered to the right, stumbled over a small boulder and flew into the air, his momentum carrying him over an outcropping of rock.

“L
OGAN
,” S
PIDER SHOUTED
upon emerging from his shelter. The charred remains of their backpacks littered the meadow. Smoke drifted up from the burned ground as if it were dust
kicked up by a light wind. The wind itself had died down to a strong, bracing breeze.

Firefighters began lifting off their shelters and standing, looking relatively unscathed, other than the emotional scars they’d carry from this day forward of barely cheating death.

Others rolled their shelters off and called for help, having been burned by flames licking under their shelter.

Spider jogged back up the slope to reach the rest of his crew, calling again for his friends. “Logan! Victoria! Chainsaw!”

He saw Doc first, and then the rest of the Silver Bend crew came into view.

“Are you all right?” Spider asked Logan.

“Yeah. Doc, do a head count.” Logan’s blond hair was streaked with ash, but he was otherwise fine.

“But how…” Victoria asked, looking frail and beaten, as wilted as a flower on a one-hundred-and-ten-degree day.

Spider understood exactly what she felt, what she’d been through.

“Roadhouse gave me his shelter,” Spider admitted. Now that he’d seen to his people, he turned, about to charge down the hill to find his father.

“Why did he do that?” Doc asked.

Because he loves me,
Spider realized. And he’d never given his father a chance to share that love until it was too late.

“For that matter,” Victoria asked, “why did you give me yours?”

“Because you’re a fighter, and you don’t deserve to go down without a fighting chance.”

“Thanks.” She hesitated, and then she hugged him awkwardly. “I guess Peter Pan saved my ass again.”

“The name is Spider,” he called as he took off, no longer able to put off the task before him.

It wasn’t until Spider was at the edge of the blackened meadow and facing a smoldering slope that he realized Victoria had followed him. Bushes were still on fire and the tops of trees still burned, their trunks blackened but otherwise still intact.

“How could anyone survive this?” Victoria looked around them.

“If anyone could, it would be Roadhouse…my father,” Spider added when the name seemed too awkward in light of what his dad had given up for him.

Spider stared at Victoria for a long moment. “Do you still have that picture of your dad? The one in front of the Silver Bend sign?”

“Yeah. I kept it in my pocket.”

“My dad knows who he is. They were friends. That’s why he kept looking at you. He saw me give up my shelter for you.” Spider swallowed and stared down the slope, not wanting to venture through it for fear of what he’d find. “I don’t know what kind of man your father is, but if he’s anything like mine, he’s worth finding.”

Spider didn’t wait for Victoria’s reaction. He plunged into the smoldering forest to find his dad.

“D
O WE HAVE AN UPDATE
on the fire? Is it on rails or at a station?” Jackson asked, meaning was it still racing over acres or had it slowed.

“It’s not stopping, if that’s what you mean,” Becca managed to answer, trying to bat Maxine and her blood-pressure cuff away. “Hopefully, it will move over quickly and dance through the canopy, leaving the bush on the ground dried or burnt but not torched.”

“But you don’t know,” Jackson said. “We don’t have the latest satellite feed.”

Sirus was on the phone with someone from NIFC, negotiating an air tanker. Given the number of people at risk, Becca doubted they’d turn him down this time.

“We’ve got to get you to the hospital,” Maxine reminded Becca.

Becca’s belly swelled and tightened with another contraction. When she could speak again, she announced staunchly, “Not until I know they’re okay up there.”

“Becca, there’s nothing we can do other than wait. If you go, you’ll be in radio contact the same as we are here,” Sirus said.

“But I won’t be here.” She wouldn’t leave without knowing Aiden and the rest were okay.

“I’m downloading the satellite data,” Carl announced.

“Is it live or on delay?” Becca demanded.

“It’s live. A continuous update. Here we go, folks,” Carl said, pushing his chair back a bit from the screen so that the others could see.

Becca struggled to sit up, but Maxine pushed her back down. “Easy, girl.”

“Holy cow,” Jackson said, looking a bit pale himself. “Look at the heat that beast is generating.”

“Let me see,” Becca insisted, brushing off Maxine’s hand and rising. “Then I’ll go.”

The satellite picture showed a huge red cloud over the mountain above them—the body of the fire was probably racing through the crowns of the trees at speeds that could easily trap a man. In its wake was a wide orange tail—a second wave of flame that would destroy whatever was on the ground that the crown fire had missed. The tail traveled slower, but was just as deadly.

“Thirty minutes until we get our first air tanker.” Sirus
joined them at the monitor. “See you at the hospital, Becca. That’s an order.”

Tears spilled over Becca’s cheeks as she whispered, “Aiden, where are you?”