Firestorm-pigeon 4 (5 page)

"Black Elk, LeFleur." The crew boss was shouting into the radio. His adrenaline level was rising too, Anna guessed.
"Black Elk," came back with a hiss of static.
"Status?"
"Everybody's bumped up. They're halfway up the hill by now. Me and Hayhurst are coming back for you."
"There's enough of us for the job. Head on up. Keep those guys moving. The wind's getting squirrely. No sense anybody getting hurt on this one. Clear 'em out.
"Hang onto your hat, Newt," LeFleur addressed the boy in the litter. "We're going to head up the hill."
"Sorry I don't have a bullet for you to bite on," Anna said as they started up the incline and Hamlin's weight shifted, forcing pressure on the ruined knee.
"I got a lipstick," Jennifer offered. "But I don't s'pose it's the same."
Newt was beyond banter. His face was the dirty gray of ash and sky, all his will needed to form a wall around the pain in his leg.
The slope was close to thirty degrees but the forest was comprised of slightly older growth than farther up. Trees were six to eight feet apart and there wasn't too much undergrowth. Anna's boots dug deep in the duff as she hauled up, one step at a time, the side of the stretcher in one hand, the jump kit in the other. The position was awkward and she knew she wasn't helping much with Hamlin's weight.
Across Newt's chest she could see Short struggling to maintain her end of the bargain. Jennifer's strength was all from the waist down, good wide hips and strong thighs like a figure skater. Anna knew her shoulders and arms would be aching with the strain as she fought to take some of the weight up for Stephen and John.
Cool air gusted from behind. Though it caressed her sweaty skin, it made the little hairs on the back of Anna's neck crawl.
"Dump the jump kit," LeFleur ordered as he picked up the pace. "Len, give a pulaski to Anna. Keep moving."
Anna dropped the medical bag and used Nims's pulaski like an ice axe, clawing up the hill. LeFleur's breathing rasped deep in his chest, the cords of his neck distended and the flesh between the rim of his hard hat and his collar was a deep red.
"Switch out soon," she said to Stephen. He nodded. The foot of the stretcher weighed less and he was both bigger and younger than the crew boss. "Next flat spot. I take the head, Nims, you get the foot. Got that?"
LeFleur grunted.
The vegetation closed in, branches scratching at their faces and arms. The pounding of her heart was the only sound Anna was aware of. Oblivious to anything but the pain in her left shoulder from pulling Hamlin and the small square of real estate directly in front of her boot toes, she trudged on. Quite independently of conscious thought, her mind clicked through numbers trying to find a rhythm to pass the time, keep cadence. Waltz time: ONE, two, three, ONE, two, three.
A place not deserving of the name "clearing" opened up slightly at the base of a ledge of volcanic rock about eighteen inches high and fifty feet long that formed a brow half a mile below spike. Long ago soil had laid down a blanket covering all but the lip and the rock was hidden by a dense cover of waist-high shrubs.
Momentarily free of the trees, they stopped. Short fell to her knees, sucking in lungfuls of air. Hands on thighs, LeFleur tried to catch his breath. Even Hamlin was gasping, fighting pain and shock.
"Sounds like a TB ward around here," Stephen said. "Switch out." The EMT grasped the front of the Utter. "Nims?"
Leonard Nims was sweating and his breath was coming fast but he was the freshest of the five. He handed LeFleur the tools and lifted the foot of the litter. Anna and Jennifer switched sides.
"Got to stretch out the other arm," Short said to Newt. "I'll still look like a gorilla but leastways both sets of knuckles'll be draggin'."
"Let's do it," Stephen said.
The words were followed by a low rumble. Faint, visceral, it was like the sound of a freight train coming down the tracks. The noise welled up from the bottom of the canyon. They looked back as one.
The far side of the ravine blossomed in fire. A mushroom cloud poured up in a deadly column and fire spun a tornado of destruction through the forest's crown, pulling oxygen from the air and creating weather of its own. Flame boiled down into the canyon bottom.
"Jesus fucking Christ," Lindstrom whispered. "Firestorm."
Chapter Four
NEVER HAD ANNA seen anything so beautiful. Raw, naked power blooming in red and orange and black. Tornadoes of pure fire shrieking through the treetops, an enraged elemental beast slaking a hunger so old only stones and gods remembered.
Exhilaration rose in her throat, a sense of revelation, of sharing the divine. "Whoa," she said, and heard the bubbling laughter of her voice mixing with the roar of Armageddon.
A scream brought her back and the fire of the holy spirit turned to fear that coursed through her with such violence she felt her bowels loosen. The scream had been ripped from Hamlin when Len Nims dropped his end of the litter. Anna could see him barging up the hill through the manzanita. She grabbed up the foot of the fallen stretcher. Hamlin's weight pulled a cry from her, the movement an answering groan from Newt.
"Deploy?" Lindstrom was shouting.
"Not a good place." LeFleur. "Too much brush. Run. Go for the ridge. Run."
Lindstrom held the head of the stretcher, Anna the foot. Both stared stupidly at Newt Hamlin, his only safety between their hands.
"We can do it," Lindstrom screamed.
The hell we can, Anna thought, but she held on to the litter. Newt said nothing. His brown eyes stared into her face, then Lindstrom's, and Anna knew she was witnessing an act of courage. Not bravado—he couldn't loose his jaws to tell them to go—but the courage to keep them closed against the words that would beg them not to leave him.
"We can do it," Anna said.
"Get the fuck out of here," LeFleur shouted. The roaring pushed his words like foam on the tide. "Go." The crew boss brought the handle of the pulaski he carried down hard across the bones of Stephen's wrists. The litter fell. Anna couldn't hold on and her end dropped as well.
"Go. Go." LeFleur was striking at them with the handle, herding them like goats. Jennifer started up the hill, slowly at first, then beginning to run. "Go, God damn it!"
Anna started to climb, Stephen with her, pounding up the slope. Fear took over. John, Newt, everything behind was blotted out but for the fire. She wanted to turn back, to look at it, but an odd memory from Sunday school of Lot's wife turning to a pillar of salt stopped her.
Loping on all fours like a creature half animal, half human, she scrambled over downed logs crumbling with rot, plowed through brush. Ahead of her, in that narrow scrap of world between eyes and hands that still existed, the ground turned red. She thought of "Mars," a short story her sister had written about the red planet. Close on that thought came another: how strange it was that while she was running for her life, she was thinking of Mars.
And she was running for her life. The idea snapped sharply through the sinews of her body and she became aware of the stretch of the muscles in her legs, the hardness of the ground, the slipping as her boots tore at the duff, the strain in the big muscles of her thighs and that slight softening that heralded fatigue. She wondered how long she could keep going.
A scrap of trivia surfaced. Fire, unlike anything else known to man, defied gravity. It traveled faster uphill than down. The length of a football field in a minute, that stuck in her mind. How long was a football field? A hundred yards? Fifty? Third grade. Johnstonville Elementary. She'd won a blue ribbon for running the fifty-yard dash in ten seconds flat. She was older now. Stronger. Older. Maybe only the young would make it.
A thicket of manzanita filled her vision and Anna plunged in. No time to find another way. Breath was cutting deep, each pull of air tearing a hole in her side. Branches scraped her face, plucked hanks of hair from under her hard hat. Nothing registered, not pain, not impediment. Anna felt as if she could claw her way through a mountain of stone.
Then her feet went from under her and she was down, her jaw cracking against a stone or a root. Her head swam with it, her mouth was full. She spit and blood, colorless against the flame-drenched earth, spilled out. She wondered if she'd bitten her tongue off.
"Up, goddam you, up."
LeFleur. He pulled at the back of her pack and Anna came to her knees. "Go. Go." Anna ran again. The thickets were close to the ridge. Close. If she could make the ridge, maybe...
Roaring drowned even thought. Heat scorched her back, she could feel the burning through her left sleeve below the elbow. Air, sucked deep into her lungs, scalded and she screamed without sound. Her legs were growing heavy, sodden. Instead of carrying her she now had the sense of dragging them.
The ridge top rolled beneath her as if she'd flown in. Suddenly she was aware the way had grown easier: the beaten earth of the old camp. Paula's truck, the hood up, was parked where they'd left it. Two gasoline cans sat by the front wheel. Both were puffed up like roasted marshmallows, ready to blow. It crossed Anna's mind to move them before any of the others reached the ridge but she knew if she touched them she would die and she kept running.
Across the camp, clear of the pines, and over the crest of the ridge, Anna could see Jennifer ahead of her crashing down the slope toward the creek bed. Anna stumbled after, falling and pulling herself up time after time. Like a woman in a nightmare, she thought, like the Japanese maidens in monster movies.
Howard Black Elk ran out of the trees just above. He'd lost helmet and gloves. His hands were over his ears trying to protect them from the burning. Both arms were seared, the flesh hanging in ribbons.
Anna caught him by the shoulders.
"The creek," she gasped. "Fire'll slow when it reaches the ridge." While she talked she ripped her bandanna in half and bound Black Elk's hands. The last of the water from the bottle on her belt she poured over the bandages.
"The creek," she repeated.
"Safety zone," Black Elk said. He hadn't panicked. He knew where he was going. Together they ran again, flying downhill on legs that felt made of rubber and sand. Anna slid on rocks, fell over bushes and swung around trees. She heard the gas cans explode and looked back to the ridge top.
Flame was cresting in a wave. Burning debris shot over, tumbling down and starting new fires. A hundred yards and Anna would reach the creek. She turned to run and felt a sharp pain shoot through her ankle.
Fuck, she thought, I've broken it. Fear narrowed to that one place in her body and she put her weight on it. It held. The pain melded into the others as she ran.
The creek was sunken, the banks several feet high and she tumbled over the lip into the sand. Already it was hot to the touch.
"Deploy!"
Maybe it was LeFleur. Smoke blinded her. Hacking coughs tore the air from her lungs. Fumbling behind her back, Anna pulled her plastic-encased shelter from its pouch. She hadn't checked it in years. They were supposed to be checked every two weeks but no one did it. No one thought they would have to use them.
Ripping it out of the plastic, she clawed it open; a small silver pup tent. Firefighters called them shake 'n' bakes. It no longer struck Anna as funny. Scorching wind snatched at the flimsy shelter, threatening to wrench it from her grasp. Fire poured down the mountain, burning embers exploding in its path.
Anna dragged the silver tent over her and anchored it with her boots to hold it down. Pulling it along her back and up over her head, she gripped the front edges in her gloved hands and fell face forward into the sand.
The roar engulfed her. Scouring sand and debris rasped on her shelter and she felt the skin on her back begin to burn. Pressing her face into a hollow in the sand, hoping for air cool enough to breathe, she thought of her sister. If she didn't get out of this alive, Molly would kill her.
Chapter Five
FOOTAGE OF THE firestorm was on the six o'clock news. The shots were from a distance of several miles and cut short when the helicopter carrying the cameraman hit rough weather. Still the explosive sense of power carried through, the might of nature unleashed.
Frederick Stanton relaxed in the living room of his one-bedroom apartment in Evanston, Illinois. An overstuffed couch, bought for comfort, not looks, dominated the room. In the grate of a defunct fireplace, a television took the place of logs. The hearth of the nineties. Hardwood floors, recently refinished, picked up the reflection from the screen. No other lights were on.
Long legs draped modestly in a battered terrycloth robe, Stan-ton lounged with his feet up and a glass of scotch—neat, no rocks. His bifocals were pushed down to where he could see over them. An aqua budgerigar with black tail feathers hopped down the length of one of Stanton's long arms, murmuring and pecking as if the man were made of delicious crumbs.
In the fireplace flames burned silently behind the anchorman's head as he read the news: "The storm front blamed for the blowup brought snow and sleet in its wake, damping the fires and grounding air support. Due to the weather and hazards caused by burned snags falling across the twenty miles of steep and twisting logging road that leads in to the remote spike camp thought to be in the path of the blaze, no machinery will be sent up until morning. A ground crew carrying food and medical supplies has been dispatched up the beleaguered fire road on foot. At present ten firefighters are listed as missing."
The anchor turned and looked expectantly at a blank wall behind him. After a second's delay film of a base camp in northern California was shown.
Frederick sat up. The budgie twittered in annoyance and flew several feet before landing on a bare knee to continue its foraging. One of Stanton's hands strayed to the black receiver of an old-fashioned rotary phone, a movement as unconscious as it was natural to a man who lived by the exchange of information.
The station cut to a commercial for fabric softener and Frederick pawed through a disintegrating hill of newspapers and magazines obscuring the coffee table. Outraged, the budgie flew back to his cage with a noisy flapping that metaphorically slammed the wire door behind him.
"Sorry, Daniel," Frederick said absently. The magazines began to slide and an avalanche of paper cascaded down around his ankles and over long white feet half concealed in slippers trod flat at the heels. The disturbance uncovered the remote control. Stanton caught it up and began clicking through channels. National coverage was over for the evening. All he could find was Chicago news.