Нора Робертс - Chasing Fire

In that moment, she loved them, loved them all with a near religious fervor. Every ass and elbow, she thought, every blister and burn.

Her eyes lit when she looked at Gull. “Best job ever.”

“If you don’t mind starving, sweating and eating smoke.”

Grinning, she shouldered her Pulaski. “Who would? Head on up. We’re still making line here so—” She broke off, grabbed his arm.

It spun out of the orange wall, whipped by the wind. The funnel of flame whirled and danced, spinning a hundred feet into the air. In seconds, screaming like a banshee, it uprooted two trees.

“Fire devil . Run! ” She pointed toward the front of the line as its wind blasted the furnace heat in her face. She grabbed her radio, watching the flaming column’s spin as she shouted to the crew, “Go up, go up! Move your asses. Gibbons, fire devil, south flank. Stay clear. ”

It roared toward the line, a tornadic gold light as gorgeous as it was terrifying, spewing flame, hurling fiery debris. The air exploded with the call of it, with its lung-searing heat. She watched Matt go down, saw Gull haul him up, take his weight. Keeping her eye on the fire devil, she shifted, got her shoulder under Matt’s other arm.

“Just my ankle. I’m okay.”

“Keep moving! Keep moving!”

It snaked toward them, undulating. They’d never outrun it, she thought, not with Matt stumbling and limping between them. Behind Matt’s back, Gull’s hand gripped her elbow, and in acknowledgment, she did the same.

This is it. Even thinking it she pushed up the ridge. No time for emergency gear, for the shelters.

“There!” Gull jerked her, with Matt between them, to the right, and another five precious feet. He shoved her under the enormous boulder first, then Matt, before crawling under behind them.

“Here we go,” Gull breathed, and stared into Rowan’s eyes while the world erupted.

Rock exploded and rained down like bullets. Through smoke black as pitch, Rowan saw a blazing tree crash and vomit out a flood of flame and sparks.

“Short, shallow breaths, Matt.” She gripped his hand, squeezed hard. “Just like in a shake and bake.”

“Is this what Jim felt?” Tears and sweat rolled down his face. “Is this what he felt?”

“Short and shallow,” she repeated. “Through your bandanna, just like in a shelter.”

For an instant, another, the heat built to such mad intensity she wondered if they’d all just torch like a tree. She worked her other hand free, found Gull’s. And held on.

Then the screaming wind silenced.

“It’s cooling. We’re okay. We’re okay?” she repeated, in a question this time.

“What can you see?” Gull asked her.

“The smoke’s starting to thin, a little. We’ve got a lot of spots. Spots, no wall, no devil.” She shifted as much as she could. “Get behind me, Matt, so I can look out.” She angled beside Gull, cautiously eased her head out to look out, up. “It didn’t crown, didn’t roll the wall. Just spots. Jesus, Gull, your jacket’s smoking.” She beat at it with her hands as he worked to shrug out of it. “Are you burned?” she demanded. “Did it get you?”

“I don’t think so.” He crab-walked back. “The ground’s still hot. Watch yourselves.”

Rowan crawled out, reaching for her radio. On it Gibbons shouted her name.

“It’s Ro, Gull, Matt. We’re good. We’re clear. Is everybody all right? Is everybody accounted for?”

“We are now.” Relief flooded his voice. “Where the hell are you?”

She stood, scanned the area to give him the best coordinates. “Matt’s bunged up his ankle. Gull and I can handle these spots, but we dumped most of the gear on the run so... Never mind,” she said as she heard the shouts, saw the yellow shirts through the smoke. “Cavalry’s coming this way.”

Dobie came on the run with Trigger right behind him. “Jesus Christ, why don’t you just give us all heart attacks and get it over with?”

He grabbed Gull, slapped his back. “What the hell happened to you?”

“A little dance with the devil. Better put out those spots before we end up having to run again.”

Trigger crouched beside Matt, held out a scorched and mangled helmet. “Found your brainbucket, snookie. You’re a lucky bastard.” He put Matt in a headlock, a sign of relief and affection. “A lucky son of a bitch. Have a souvenir.”

He set the helmet beside Matt before hurrying over to help Dobie with the spot fires.

“Let’s check that ankle out.” Rowan knelt to undo his boot.

“I thought we were finished. I would’ve been finished if you and Gull hadn’t gotten me in there. You saved my life. You could’ve lost yours trying.”

She probed gently at his swollen ankle. “We’re Zulies. When one of us goes down, we pick them up. I don’t think it’s broken. Just sprained bad enough to earn you a short vacation.”

She looked up, smiled at him as she started to wrap it. “Lucky bastard.”

Though he protested, they medevaced Matt out, while the rest of the crew beat the fire back, finally killing it in the early hours of the morning. Mop-up took another full day of digging, beating, dousing.

“You volunteered to stay back, confirm the put-out,” Rowan told Gull.

“I’ve got to quit all this volunteering.”

“With me. The rest are packing out.”

“That’s not such a bad deal.”

“We’ve got MREs, a cool mountain spring, in which the beer fairy has snugged a six-pack.”

“And people say she doesn’t exist.”

“What do people know? I wanted to see this one through, all the way, and take a breath, I guess. So you’re good with it?”

“What do you think?”

“Then let’s take a hike, start doing a check before the sun goes down.”

They moved through the burnout at an easy pace, looking for smoke and smolder.

“I wanted to wait until it was over—all the way—before I said anything about it,” Rowan began. “I didn’t think we were going to make it back there against the fire devil. If you hadn’t spotted those boulders, reacted fast, we’d have all ended up like Matt’s now-famous helmet.”

“I don’t plan on losing you. Anyway, if you’d been on my side, you’d’ve seen the boulders.”

“I like to think so. It was beautiful,” she said after a moment, and with reverence. “It might be crazy to say that, think that, about something that really wants to kill you, but it was beautiful. That spinning column of fire, like something from another world. In a way, I guess it is.”

“Once you see one, it changes things because you know you can’t beat it. You run and hide and you pray, and if you live through it, for a while, all the bullshit in real life doesn’t mean dick.”

“For a while. I guess that’s why I wanted to stay out, stick with it a little longer. There’s a lot of bullshit waiting out there. Leo Brakeman’s still out there. He’s no fire devil, but he’s still out there.”

She blew out a breath. “Every time we get a call, I wonder if we’re going to stumble over another body. His, someone else’s. Because he’s out there. And if he didn’t start those fires, whoever did is out there, too.”

“It’s been three weeks. That’s a long time between.”

“But it doesn’t feel over and done.”

“No. It doesn’t feel over and done.”

“That’s the bullshit waiting.” She gestured. “Why don’t you take that direction, I’ll take this one. We’ll cover more ground, then meet back at camp.” She checked her watch. “Say six-thirty.”

“In time for cocktails and hors d’oeuvres.”

She beat him back to the clearing by the bubbling stream. The campsite, a hive the night before of very tired, very grungy bees, held quiet as a church now, and shimmered in the rays of evening sun. She stowed her gear, checked on the six-pack of beer and the six-pack of Coke she’d asked L.B. to drop.