47 Degrees

by Justin D'Ath

  There’s a loud rumble behind her. Zeelie spins around. Wowsers! Now that she’s no longer downwind of the Bialettis’ house, the worst of the smoke blows past her. And what she sees is barely recognisable as her neighbours’ former home. The front wall has collapsed. Was that the noise she just heard? Two concrete steps, the doorframe and part of the porch are all that remain. Zeelie can look right through to the other side. Everything in there is burning. Hungry flames chase each other up, down and along the fiery skeletons of walls. Over there is the bath, floating like an empty lifeboat in a sea of flames. There’s the toilet, its melted lid sliding down the white porcelain sides in long, flaming candle drips. And that must be the kitchen, with the fridge caved in like a squeezed milk carton, its door partway open. Behind it looms the rectangular bulk of the stove, black now but easily recognisable. One end of the roof, the part with the television aerial still attached, has collapsed into what used to be the Bialettis’ lounge room. The potbelly fireplace is still in place, but its metal flue glows bright red. From every part of the burning house, tall yellow flames boil up into the low, smoke-filled sky.

  The heat here feels different from the blow-dryer wind back in the cherry orchard. Now it’s more direct, more brutal; it dries her eyeballs and feels like sunburn on her face and lips. Despite this discomfort, which borders on pain, Zeelie finds she can’t look away. She has never seen a burning house before. It’s both terrible and fascinating. And it makes her feel guilty.

  I caused this, a small, ashamed voice says inside Zeelie’s head. I should have poured just one more bucket of water onto the steaming mulch. But then the fish would have had none left to swim in.

  Poor fish! Zeelie glances in the direction of their pond. It’s closer to the house than she is. And the Japanese garden surrounding it looks different. All the leaves on the little droopy trees have either shrivelled up in the searing heat, or have dropped off altogether. Below the scorched trees, the fishpond no longer looks like a pond; it just looks like an old, rusty bathtub half-buried in the ground.

  And something is in it.

  A pale, domed shape pokes up at one end. It’s difficult to see clearly through all the smoke, but those two dark spots look uncannily like eyes.

  ‘Atti!’ Zeelie cries, already running.

  The poor old dog has crawled all the way into the Bialettis’ fishpond. He is protected from the heat of the fire by the bath’s deep sides, but Zeelie isn’t. She’s only 15 metres from the blazing house when she reaches the pond. The heat is so intense that she has to turn her back on the flames, and scrunch her head down like a tortoise seeking refuge in its shell.

  Zeelie has never felt so hot in all her life. A part of her brain is screaming at her, run, run! but she isn’t paying attention. It’s almost too hot to think.

  In a kind of daze, Zeelie grabs Atticus by the collar and hauls him out of the bathtub. Several dead, or half-dead, goldfish roll around in what remains of the filthy water, but there’s no time to worry about them. Leading him by his collar, Zeelie staggers off down the Bialettis’ driveway, going in the same direction that the lyrebird went. Every crunching step takes her and the big, dripping dog further from the burning house and further from the brutal heat of the flames. But it’s still unbelievably hot, and there’s so much smoke and cinders and windborne ash swirling around her that it almost feels like she’s walking through something more solid than air.

  Even though she has left the Bialettis’ burning house behind her, and she and Atticus are safe, Zeelie knows that a much bigger, much hotter – and much more dangerous – fire is on the way.

  7

  THE LEAST OKAY THING

  ‘I see you found the old rascal,’ says Zeelie’s father. He’s standing out on the lawn, frowning up at the roof. The sprinkler he fixed to the chimney flings out silvery chains of water that spiral off horizontally in the wind. ‘Where was he?’

  To her dismay, Zeelie feels the tears coming; she can’t stop them.

  ‘The Bialettis’ house is on fire!’ she blubs.

  Now her father is holding her, her face is pressed into the front of his hot, sweat-damp shirt, and she’s sobbing uncontrollably.

  ‘It’s okay, sweetie, it’s okay,’ he says, stroking her filthy, knotted hair. ‘Everything’s going to be okay.’

  But he’s lying and they both know it. Nothing is going to be okay. And the least okay thing – the biggest lie that Zeelie’s father has told her today (about Rimu) – is almost too horrible to consider.

  If only they had never moved here! If only she and her family had stayed in Benalla. Benalla is an actual town. It has shopping centres, soccer and netball clubs, a public swimming pool, places to hang out and other kids to hang out with. It isn’t just a six-kilometre stretch of houses and mini-farms in the middle of a forest. There’s only one shop here – a little general store that doubles as a post office – a single primary school and the hotel. Back in Year 6, Zeelie’s teacher told them that Flowerdale isn’t strictly a town, it’s a community. Give me a town any day, Zeelie thinks now. They don’t have bushfires in towns.

  ‘Hey!’ shouts her father, stepping suddenly away from her. ‘Where do you think you’re going?’

  He’s not yelling at Zeelie, he’s yelling at Atticus. Zeelie must have let go of the old dog’s collar when she started blubbing. She sees him disappearing around the end of the house, trying to sneak back home again. Doesn’t he know his house has burned down? Doesn’t he know he no longer has a home? While her father goes after Atticus, Zeelie takes the opportunity to wipe her nose and eyes, and get herself under control a bit. She wishes her mother was here.

  She wishes the Rodeo – with its tow bar – was here.

  Stop it stop it stop it stop it stop it! Zeelie tells herself, as more stupid tears come.

  Her father reappears, dragging Atticus by the collar. ‘Come on, Zuls,’ he says as they go past her. ‘We’ve got to get moving.’

  She follows him across the pine needle-strewn lawn towards the garage. She keeps her head down and tries to blank out her thoughts. As if that’s possible! The horse trailer is too big and too empty to ignore.

  And so is the mess that greets Zeelie when she enters the garage. Specks of white stuffing and coils of brown wool lie scattered all over the concrete floor. In the middle of it all, a single button eye stares sightlessly up at her.

  ‘Oh Kiwi!’ Zeelie whimpers.

  Fly is straining towards her on the end of his lead, his tail whipping back and forth. A fleck of white fluff sticks to his nose. He’s so pleased to see her that Zeelie finds it impossible to be cross. Anyway, it was her fault for leaving Kiwi where the puppy could reach him.

  And Kiwi was just a toy.

  But more stupid tears fill her eyes. Can anything else go wrong today? It’s a dumb question; of course it can. A picture of the Bialettis’ burning house is still fresh in Zeelie’s mind. Four buckets (well, four half-buckets) of water from their fishpond weren’t enough to save it. So one little sprinkler on their own roof is hardly going to protect theirs.

  ‘Alley oop!’ grunts her father. He hoists big, damp Atticus up into the back of the van. With all their stuff jammed in there already, very little space remains for the dogs. They have to go on top. Zeelie’s father has spread an old blanket over everything to make it more comfortable. He lifts Holly up next.

  ‘Can Fly go in the front with us, Dad?’

  He is about to say no, Zeelie can tell from the set of his jaw. But when she meets his frowning eyes with her wet ones, her father backs down. ‘Okay,’ he says. ‘But you’ll have to keep him on your lap.’

  That’s fine with Zeelie. She’s forgiven naughty Fly for what he did to Kiwi. And he isn’t naughty really, he was just being a puppy. She hugs him tightly as the van reverses out onto the gravel driveway. They barely make it. The moment they are clear of the big metal shed, a huge gust of wind catches the door and slams it shut after them, narrowly missing the front of the van.
r />   ‘Shoot!’ says her father. He’s not looking at the shed door, he’s looking at something behind them.

  Zeelie changes position to get a view in her side mirror. All she can see are flames. They are so close, so fierce, that even their reflection makes her face hot.

  ‘Hold on,’ warns her father.

  Banging the gearshift into drive, he stamps his foot down on the accelerator. The engine howls and gravel clatters against the underside of the van beneath Zeelie’s feet as it jerks forward. She hears something go bump in the back, and hopes Holly and Atticus are all right. Crouched protectively over Fly, holding him tight, her eyes are still fixed on the mirror. What they see does not seem real. A massive wall of fire has engulfed the Bialettis’ pine trees. Her house is a tiny black silhouette, dwarfed by the towering flames.

  Her father swerves the van out through their gate onto the service road. He glances sideways, past Zeelie and out her window. Their house is on her side of the van now; she no longer has to use the mirror. The view is terrifying. It’s not just the Bialettis’ pine trees that are on fire, there are fires all along the creek behind their house. Or is it one, huge fire? It’s hard to tell. Some of the flames look taller than the Eureka Tower in Melbourne. There’s too much smoke to see what’s going on further back, but judging by the orange glow in the sky Zeelie can guess what must be happening up on the ridge and in the catchment beyond.

  It seems like the whole world is on fire.

  Those poor people, her mother said to her on the phone a couple of hours ago. Now Zeelie is one of the people her mother was referring to.

  But she’s more worried about Rimu.

  They are driving past his paddock now. Zeelie can’t help but notice how many trees are scattered across it. At least none of them is on fire. Not yet, anyway. She can’t see Rimu in all the smoke, but there’s his stable. Has he had the good sense to take refuge in there?

  Zeelie wets her lips. ‘Do you think he’ll be all right, Dad?’

  Her father has just switched on the van’s radio and someone is talking about Humevale, wherever that is.

  ‘What was that?’ he says, paying more attention to the radio than to Zeelie.

  ‘Rimu. I wish I’d shut him in his stable.’

  ‘Yes,’ says her father, still listening to the radio.

  They reach Silver Creek Road and he stops to wait for a big brown Range Rover that comes looming out of the smoke with its headlights on. The Range Rover is towing a trailer that is so loaded up with household stuff that it brushes through the overhanging branches of a roadside gum tree. Zeelie’s father switches on the van’s lights too, then he pulls out to follow the Range Rover.

  ‘I’m sure Rimu will be fine, sweetie,’ he says finally, much too late and obviously lying.

  They are out on the main road now, following the overloaded trailer. There’s so much smoke that sometimes all they can see are its faintly glowing tail-lights. Zeelie’s mind races. Whoever is in the Range Rover could have towed Rimu’s trailer, she thinks. She would have paid them for all the stuff in their trailer using the money in the New Zealand bank account Grandpa and Grandma Royle started for her the day she was born. The money is supposed to be for when she goes to university, but Rimu is more important. Zeelie doesn’t have to go to university, although she knows you have to in order to become a vet. It’s useless thinking about it – nobody is going to save Rimu.

  Maybe he will be okay, Zeelie tries to convince herself.

  Fly’s racing heartbeat taps against her fingertips as she hugs him. He’s excited to be in the van, sitting in her lap, but he has no idea what’s happening.

  Our house is going to burn down, Fly-baby, Zeelie says to him in her mind. He wouldn’t understand anyway – Zeelie can barely comprehend it herself – and it’s not something she is capable of saying aloud.

  Her father twists a knob on the dashboard and a blast of warm air washes over Zeelie’s neck and face.

  ‘Dad!’ she shrieks. ‘We don’t need the heater on!’

  ‘It’s the air conditioner.’

  ‘But it’s hot!’

  He checks the temperature setting. ‘Give it time to cool down, sweetie. It might take a little while on a day like this.’

  There has never been a day like this, Zeelie thinks crossly. She buzzes her window all the way open, just to show her father how she’s feeling. Mr Stay-and-Defend, who has let everyone down! He doesn’t say anything and the cabin quickly fills with smoke and tiny specks of flying ash. Fly struggles in her arms; he wants to put his head out into the hot wind but Zeelie won’t let him. She’s cross with him, too, without really knowing why.

  After about a minute, Zeelie begins to feel silly about her open window and closes it again. The air conditioner is beginning to work now, just as her father said it would. At least he got that right. Fly settles down and warmly licks the back of Zeelie’s wrist, where one of Mr Bialetti’s rosebushes scratched her. She should take off her jacket.

  Her father looks straight ahead and says nothing about the open-and-then-closed-again window.

  They pass the general store. There’s a garage on one side of it and a little op shop on the other. Downtown Flowerdale. Everything looks closed. There are no cars outside. Someone has placed a sandwich board sign where you cross the rickety wooden bridge over King Parrot Creek, but the writing is too faint to read through the drifting smoke.

  A big tear slowly rolls all the way down to Zeelie’s chin. Fly stretches up and licks it off.

  The hotel is about two kilometres further on. There are more open paddocks at this end of the settlement, fewer trees. The hills on both sides seem further away. It’s a relief to be out of the forest. There’s still smoke everywhere. Zeelie opens her window a crack to check the temperature, but it’s no cooler. The Range Rover ahead of them slows as they pass a long line of four-wheel drives with full trailers, parked nose-to-tail along the edge of the road like a stopped train.

  There are no horse trailers, Zeelie notices.

  More vehicles, many with stuff piled high on their roof racks, fill the hotel’s gravel parking area. There are people everywhere: men, women and children; some have dogs with them. Nearly everyone is staring back up the valley, in the direction the smoke is coming from. A few people turn and watch as the Range Rover and her father’s van drive past. One man waves and her father waves back.

  ‘Who was that?’ she asks.

  ‘No idea,’ he says.

  It was probably someone whose pump he’s fixed – everyone knows his van. Zeelie has always felt slightly embarrassed to be driven around in it, but today she doesn’t care who sees her.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  Her father is slowing down. They have just passed Zeelie’s old primary school and it’s mainly farmland from here on. The Range Rover continues straight ahead towards Yea, its bulky trailer disappearing into the smoke as the van turns left onto the road to Broadford.

  ‘We can get down to Melbourne this way,’ her father says. ‘It’s quite a bit further, but it should take us around the fire.’

  Zeelie thinks about the other road, the one they normally take when they go to Melbourne. She’s holding Fly a bit too tight and he wiggles to let her know. She says, ‘I hope Mum didn’t try to drive home.’

  ‘She wouldn’t have,’ says her father. ‘I’m betting they’re still at the hospital.’

  That’s not what he was saying a couple of hours ago. Zeelie wonders what he’s really thinking.

  She asks, ‘What if they aren’t there?’

  ‘I’ll phone the hospital as soon as we come into range,’ he says. ‘Could you check if there’s a signal, sweetie? My phone’s in the glove box.’

  Zeelie gets it out and checks. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Not to worry. Try again in a few minutes. I usually get a signal once I’m closer to Strath Creek.’

  ‘I wish Mum’d taken her phone with her,’ says Zeelie.

  ‘Me too.’

&
nbsp; Neither of them speaks again for a couple of minutes. Zeelie keeps checking the phone; she can’t help it. There’s still no signal. Fly licks the screen and she wipes it on her sleeve.

  ‘This doesn’t look good,’ her father says.

  She glances up to see what he’s talking about. A pale brown car is coming through the smoke, flashing its headlights at them.

  ‘What are they doing, Dad?’

  ‘We’ll soon find out.’

  The two vehicles pull up next to each other in the middle of the narrow road. The car no longer looks brown – it must have been the smoke – it’s white. A man, a woman, two small blond-haired boys and a tiny baby are all squashed into the two front seats. The smaller of the boys sits on his father’s lap, between him and the steering wheel. His brother and the baby are squashed in with the mother. Are any of them wearing seatbelts? Zeelie wonders. There’s no room for anyone in the back of the car because it’s piled to the roof with clothes, blankets, packs of disposable nappies and a range of suitcases, backpacks and overflowing carrier bags. There’s even a birdcage, complete with two dull yellow canaries, huddled together on a perch. Both drivers open their windows.

  ‘You won’t get through that way, mate,’ the man in the white car says. ‘Everything’s on fire.’

  ‘Is that so?’ Zeelie’s father sounds amazingly calm. ‘Thanks for letting us know.’

  ‘Where have you come from?’

  ‘Flowerdale.’

  ‘How are things there?’ asks the other man.

  ‘Not good.’ Zeelie’s father shakes his head. ‘But the hotel looks safe enough, if you’re looking for somewhere to go.’

  ‘We’re trying for Yea. Is that road still open?’

  ‘Looked okay five minutes ago,’ says Zeelie’s father.

  The man’s wife says something to him that they can’t hear. He nods and turns back to Zeelie’s father. ‘Gotta close this window, mate – this smoke’s no good for the baby.’

  ‘Thanks for stopping,’ her father calls as both their windows slide up.