Wildfire (9 page)

She didn’t see where it went; she would get it in a minute. Right now, she was in the zone, a state of perfect concentration. Just a gentle tap and the ball should roll into the hole. Victoria breathed in, ready to play the stroke.

A voice suddenly ruined her concentration. ‘Strewth!’ It was her opponent, a Thai restaurateur who she knew only by the name Troy. Victoria whirled round, ready to give him some choice words for spoiling her shot.

Troy was pointing at the rough – the woodland
around the seventeenth hole. Flames were crackling through the trees, sending smoke rolling towards them.

Victoria was so startled she dropped her club. ‘Oh my God.’

They stood, stunned, as they watched the orange flames licking through the wood, catching anything they touched and sending it luminous with flame. In no more than thirty seconds the entire wood was on fire, all the way back down the edge of the fairway. The wind was whipping it up into an inferno.

Troy slid his iron back into his trolley. ‘We’d better get the groundsman.’ He turned and set off down the green.

Victoria grabbed her trolley and hurried after him.

Then something very strange happened. The wind snatched up some burning branches, carried them over Victoria’s head and dashed them against the trees on the other side of the fairway, several metres away.

Like a spark jumping a gap, the fire was leaping through the crowns of the trees.

On both sides of them, the woods were on fire.

Victoria and Troy forgot about their trolleys. They ran for their lives.

* * *

The golf course backed onto the racecourse. So far, two races had been run since the wind started to pick up, but things were getting worse.

The wind was upsetting the horses, filling their sensitive ears with strange noises. They could hear everything that was going on in the adjoining streets – dustbins falling over, gates banging and trees creaking. To these highly strung creatures it sounded like a riot was coming their way.

Another race was due to start but the jockeys couldn’t get their mounts into the starting gates. The wind was making them rattle. To the horses it sounded like the metal bars would collapse on top of them. It was too much for their taut nerves.

When the jockeys tried to whip the horses in, they wheeled round and reared. The jockeys pulled them up, turned them back and urged them towards the gates again. The horses rebelled and tried to gallop away. Now they were all spinning in circles, dust kicking up from their hooves, looking at the gates with terrified eyes.

The stand was next to the starting gates, filled, even
on a weekday, with a couple of hundred people. Most of them were racing professionals – trainers, owners, potential buyers, newspaper reporters and bookies. All of them watched anxiously as the young thoroughbreds spun round and round. Those graceful legs were so easily injured – and that might write off an expensive horse. But these seasoned racegoers had seen plenty of equine tantrums before. If the horses got into the starting gates they could run the adrenaline out of their systems safely.

All eyes in the spectators’ stand were on the horses. No one noticed the deadly cinders that were blowing in from the golf course next door.

At first a few flaming leaves flew over. They landed on the roof of the stand and on the piles of rubbish that had fallen out of the bins. The greasy papers from the nearby burger stall caught in seconds.

The smoke reached the sensitive nostrils of the horses below, but they were already so upset that it made little difference.

Some burning twigs blew as far as the car park. Many of the grooms had tied haynets to the horse-boxes for the horses to eat while they were being
rubbed down. The hay was dry and glowing embers set it alight in no time. The burning debris blew in easily through the open ramps. The horseboxes, already hot as ovens from the sun, were soon ablaze.

In the spectator stand, the organizers were discussing whether the wind meant they should cancel the rest of the day’s racing. At first no one spotted the fires taking hold all around them.

Out on the track, a big black yearling had had enough. It leaped into the air with a twisting buck. The jockey didn’t have a chance of staying in the saddle. He pitched straight over the horse’s shoulder. The loose horse now took off in a flat-out gallop away from the rattling gates. It crashed through the white rails as though they were matchwood.

On the other side was a row of cars parked tightly together. The horse saw there was no gap, so it tried to jump a green Ford.

It misjudged and landed on the car. The impact made a sickening noise. The horse crashed to the ground, twisted up onto its feet like a cat and carried on fleeing, sparks flying off its shoes.

The car was a write-off. Its bonnet was crushed, its
roof staved in. Being hit by half a ton of horse travelling at 65 kph had the same result as a head-on collision with another car.

While everyone’s eyes were on the galloping horse, the roof of the stand had reached flashpoint. Inside, a reporter from the
Adelaide Herald
heard part of the roof collapse behind him. He turned round and saw that the back of the stand had disappeared behind a pall of thick black smoke. Little tongues of orange flame were flickering all around him.

‘Fire!’ he screamed. ‘Get out! Get out!’

The spectators could only run in one direction – under the white rails and onto the racecourse.

Meanwhile the loose horse was heading towards the car park. Just then, one of the horseboxes exploded as the fire reached its fuel tank.

The loose horse immediately whirled round and fled back towards the other horses, which were still milling around by the starting gates. When they saw the terror in its eyes, they panicked, and the jockeys lost all control of their mounts.

There was only one way for the petrified horses to go: through the rattling gates.

But because the race hadn’t yet started, the exit doors were bolted. The galloping horses crashed into the gates, pulling them right off their foundations.

The spectators who had fled from the burning stands reached the grass and paused for breath. Behind them, the stand was a mass of flame.

Too late they felt the ground shaking, as it does at the start of a race. Ten horses, imprisoned in the closed gates, were charging towards them.

It was bad being on the ground, but it was just as bad being off it. The air was seething with thermals.

So far, Ben’s first experience of flying had been the kind that would put most people off for life. Since they’d taken off from the vineyard it had been like riding a rollercoaster – an extreme rollercoaster that didn’t even stop to let you get your breath.

Kelly didn’t stop for breath either. She yelled instructions relentlessly:

‘More throttle!’

‘Stick right!’

‘Stick up!’

‘Stick up now, Ben,
now
!’

He didn’t think, he just did what he was told. It was like they were one creature. She was the brains and he was the body.

A body that was feeling exceedingly sick.

The microlight dropped 20 feet. Ben was lifted out of his seat: the seat belt cut into his legs and his head bashed against the window frame.

Kelly screamed and the sound drilled into his ear drums. She must have banged her hands – she kept doing that. Judging by the level of discomfort, she probably had some second-degree burns. Those would need medical attention soon.

As suddenly as the plane had dropped, Ben found that they were flying smoothly along again.

He glanced at Kelly. The map was on her knee. She was leaning over it, holding it down with her elbows. Her hands were clasped out of the way so they wouldn’t touch anything inadvertently. She was also very quiet.

Ben kept expecting the plane to start plummeting again but for now they seemed to have escaped the turbulence. He peered out of the window. Below was
an unbroken mass of smoke. He couldn’t tell if they were over vineyards or suburbs – or even the outback. There were isolated patches where the wind had cleared the smoke and he could see bright fires burning below. He got his mobile out of his flying suit. ‘Is it safe to use this here? My mum’s down there some-where and I want to see if she’s all right.’

Kelly nodded towards a slot on the dashboard, like a hands-free set in a car. ‘Put it in there.’

Ben set up the phone, then pressed a speed dial.

A recorded voice came through on their headsets: ‘
Lines are busy. Please try again later
.’

‘Could you try my dad?’ Kelly was pointing at the zip pocket on her trousers. ‘My cell phone’s in here. Increase height by about fifty feet before you do.’

Ben opened the throttle a little, then fished her phone out and slotted it into the dashboard cradle.

‘He’s on speed dial, under “Dad”.’

Ben pressed the navigation key. The picture of Kelly dangling from the power chute glowed briefly, then was replaced by her speed dial menu. He cursored down and dialled.

The response was the same: ‘
Lines are busy …
’ Ben cut the call.

Kelly checked over the instruments. ‘Bit more left rudder,’ she said.

Ben obliged – though he could see that her mind was elsewhere.

She voiced what they were both thinking. ‘Your mom and my dad were in the same place, so I suppose it makes sense that neither of them was contactable. We’ll try again in a while, huh?’ She winced as she talked.

‘We’d better get you to a doctor,’ said Ben.

Kelly looked down at the map. She had been leaning on it while the plane was throwing them around and now it was creased like a well-used cushion. She tried to smooth it down, having to use her elbows.

‘For sure. I just need to find somewhere we can land.’

Rikki stood at the window. She always liked to watch the racehorses from her tenth-storey apartment. That was why the block had appealed to her and her husband so much. Now the afternoon’s racing was
part of her daily routine with her three-month-old son Josh. As usual, she fed him, changed him and walked around the living room with him on her hip, jogging him to sleep while she watched the 1.45 yearlings race.

But today she looked out of the window and got the shock of her life.

The stand was engulfed in a ball of flame. Black smoke boiled into the sky. The horses had started running before the gates had opened. They had dragged the entire structure out of the ground and were galloping caged inside it.

Right in their path were the people who had fled from the flames. They had no chance of getting away. The charging horses knocked them down like a monstrous war machine.

She couldn’t look any more and turned away. The baby picked up on her shock and started to cry.

Rikki had friends on the other side of the racecourse: Molly and Dan. Molly had a daughter the same age as Josh and usually tried to get her off to sleep by the 1.45 race. Could she see this too? Rikki sat down on the sofa, being careful to support Josh’s
head properly, picked up the phone and pressed a speed dial.

While it was ringing, she glanced out of the window and got another shock. She couldn’t see the carnage on the racetrack any longer. Smoke obscured it all. The entire horizon seemed to be carpeted in black smoke and flickering orange flames. Blue lights flashed beneath the smoke as though travelling under black gauze.

As she waited for Molly to pick up the phone, another thought crossed her mind. Would the fire reach the flat? Surely not; it was ten storeys up.

But why hadn’t Molly answered yet?

Suddenly the line went dead.

The phone rang for a short time in Molly’s house, but she wasn’t able to reach it. She was trying desperately to open the window onto the balcony. Her baby, Emanuelle, was in a neoprene sling on her chest.

The security locks wouldn’t budge. Behind her, the sofa was on fire. The tapestry cushions and upholstery were nearly all consumed, and the bare frame was showing through the orange flames like a
Terminator’s skeleton. Thick smoke poured from the foam interior. Outside the room the hall was a wreckage of burning rafters.

Molly had the key in the window lock, but it was stiff and she couldn’t turn it. Emanuelle was crying and coughing, her face scrunched and red. Hot smoke burned the inside of her lungs. It felt like she had sucked in boiling water. It must be even worse for her baby.

The key slipped out of Molly’s fingers. She gave a strangled sob of despair and fell to her knees. Once she was down on the floor, the smoke got even thicker. She coughed, but there was no oxygen, only the choking black smoke and the fumes from the sofa. She could hardly even see Emanuelle’s face barely inches away. She collapsed while the phone rang and rang.

The flames reached the phone cables, shrivelling them like burning hair. The ringing stopped and the LCD display in the phone station blistered in the heat.

By then the fire had spread to the building next door to Molly’s …

* * *

The pall of smoke drifted across the city. The botanical gardens, which Engine 33 had fought so hard to save, went up like a bonfire. Wanasri and her crew couldn’t save it now; they were tied up with other fires. Every fire engine in the city was out on a call, fighting flash blazes. They worked fast, but the fires travelled faster.