by John Varley
The entire ridge at the top of Doheny Drive was on fire. The flames were twisting in the wind, spiraling like hellish white-orange tornadoes. A million sparks and a thousand larger chunks of burning debris were being lifted into the air, where some of them burned out, but many were coming south, falling into the houses and streets and very dry trees below. He could actually hear the roar of the flames now.
Karen was pushing the gate back on its tracks. Jenna was throwing things into the back of the Escalade. Dave glanced again at his daughter and her horse, and the animal seemed calmer. He couldn’t say the same for himself.
“Never mind packing anything else!” Dave shouted at Jenna. “Help Karen get the gate open.” Jenna hurried to do as she was told.
“Dad, the trailer isn’t hooked up.”
Cursing his failure to have everything ready the night before, Dave took one more look at the approaching flames and then got into his vehicle. He started it up and began backing toward the hitch on the front of the trailer, shouting for Karen or Jenna or somebody to guide him. Karen hurried over.
“We don’t have time for this, Dave,” she said.
“I’ll give it one try,” he said. “That trailer’s half-full of things we’ll need. If we can get the horse in, that’s good. If we can’t…” He didn’t need to go on.
Karen said nothing, either. She went to the back of the Escalade.
His taillights illuminated Karen first in white, and then red when he pressed on the brakes. She motioned with her hands. Back. Back, back, back.
“Cut it to the left,” she called out. He saw her looking at the trailer, then glancing at Addison and Ranger, still involved in a battle for dominance.
“Too much. Back to the right. Back…back…a little more…”
He eased his foot off the brake pedal, just a tad, letting the idling engine move the car toward the trailer. He fought the urge to get out and take a look himself. Karen knew what she was doing. He would just have to trust her.
She held her hand out suddenly, palm toward him.
“I don’t know if that’s good enough,” she called out. “Maybe you should pull forward a little bit and cut back.”
It’ll have to be good enough, he thought, throwing it into PARK and getting out of the open door and hurrying around back.
The tongue of the trailer hitch was a good three inches away from the ball on his back bumper.
“Help me out here,” he told Karen. They both shoved on the trailer tongue. It moved an inch. They shoved again and it didn’t move at all.
“One more time,” he said.
“On three,” Karen said. Her face was red in the taillights, and covered with beads of sweat.
“One…two…”
On three Jenna appeared on the other side and pulled. The tongue touched the ball and slipped over it, but only partly.
“Hold on, ladies!” Dave shouted, and cranked the wheel quickly until the support post was off the ground.
“I’m losing it,” Karen grunted.
“Hang on one more second…”
He kicked the trailer tongue and it slipped down over the ball.
“Got it! See how Addie’s doing.” He didn’t look up as he locked the tongue over the ball. He got the tailgate of the trailer unlatched, and it crashed to the ground, which startled both Ranger and Addison.
Maybe the trailer was too crowded with all their other supplies and bales of hay. Maybe Ranger just didn’t want to be in an enclosed space with the world smelling of smoke, with the orange of the flames reflecting in his wild eyes. When Addison led him toward the rear he shied away from it like a racehorse refusing to enter the starting gate. Addison got him back under control, walked him in a circle with the horse shaking his head so violently she could barely hold on.
Once more she led him to the rear of the trailer, and this time he reared up, lifting his front legs two or three feet off the ground.
“One more try, Addison,” Dave said, solemnly.
“Daddy, I can get him in.”
“One more try,” he repeated. “Sorry, sweetie, that’s all you get.”
As his daughter brought the big horse around once more, patting his neck and speaking to him in a soothing tone, Dave looked to the east, toward the two stories of what used to be his house. There was orange light coming from behind it. From behind it, from the east, the direction of the only road out of here. In the brief time they had used hitching up the trailer, the fire had come down the hill.
He turned back in time to see Ranger once more refuse to enter the trailer. At the same time, a small burning branch fell from the sky and landed near the garage door in a shower of sparks and glowing coals.
“A firebrand!” Jenna shouted. That was a term Southern Californians knew better than most Americans, and when they used it they weren’t referring to a political agitator. When a firestorm got going, like the one currently charging over the hill above them, high winds blew burning debris up into the air. Some of it could be of considerable size.
Ranger shied away from it, momentarily jerking Addison off her feet as he spun wildly. She was dragged a few yards, but managed to get one foot under her, then the other, and continued to plead with the horse.
“That’s all the time we have,” Dave called to her. “You’re going to have to let the horse go.”
“Daddy, I know I can—”
“Addison, let go of the horse and get in the car,” Karen said.
“Mom…”
“Get in the goddam car, now!”
The girl held on for a moment longer, then let go of the rope. Ranger seemed confused for a moment, then bolted toward the open gate.
“Ranger!” Addison screamed. Karen grabbed her daughter and held her firmly, because she was trying to follow her horse into the orange-tinted night.
“Mom, he’s going the wrong way!”
“He’ll figure it out,” Dave said. “He knows the way down, away from the fire. You rode him down and back just about every day, remember?”
Dave hoped it was true, but it was a fact that the stupid animal had raced to the west, where the street quickly curved and went up the hill.
“Now get in the car with no more argument.”
She didn’t say anything, but she didn’t move, and Karen had to pull her toward the open back door. Dave slammed the trailer ramp closed.
Karen happened to be on the driver’s side. She didn’t bother to go around and take her customary place in front. She shoved Addison in onto a pile of supplies they had heaped haphazardly in back, and Jenna slipped into the front seat.
“Go, go, go!” Karen called out as she slammed the door.
Dave moved the transmission into DRIVE and cautiously pressed on the accelerator. The trailer resisted him with a rusty squeak, and then the unwieldy combination began to roll toward the street. There was a loud scrape as the trailer tongue hit the asphalt and dug out a deep gouge. The scooters banged alarmingly against the side of the car, but the knots held. Then they were moving down the steep hill.
The first thing Dave noticed was that the orange light he had seen in the east was coming from two houses on the far side of Doheny, right in his path.
It was barely two hundred yards to the intersection. The houses themselves were not completely involved yet, but the foliage around them was going up like Roman candles, spouting sparks into the air.
“Hurry, Dave,” Karen called from the backseat. “Can we get by that?”
“It may blister the paint, but I think we’ll be okay. Roll up your windows.”
As he said that, a series of larger firebrands landed in the street in front of him. He drove around the nearest one and was approaching the dirt ramp they had made over the deep gap in the pavement when he heard the clatter of hooves behind him. He glanced in the rearview mirror and saw Addison, who had never stopped looking out the back window, rise so quickly her head bumped the ceiling.
“Ranger! He’s coming! He’s coming down!”
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Dave put on the brakes for a second and the horse dashed past him and was up and over the ramp in seconds. His tail was flying as he galloped straight toward the burning houses. Something uphill must have scared him even more than the fire.
Dave soon found out what that was. A low, brightly colored vehicle appeared behind him with a screech of tires as it came around the corner, and then he heard the high-pitched whine of an engine more suited to the racetrack than to urban-neighborhood streets. It went past him in a flash, a yellow Ferrari that was barely higher than the Escalade’s big tires.
The Italian plaything hit the ramp badly, and far too fast. For a moment it was airborne, then it hit the ground at an angle and roared up onto the curb on the north side of the street. There was a shower of sparks as the car, which had a ground clearance of only a few inches, scraped up onto the sidewalk. The driver somehow got it straightened out and back on the road. The engine was even louder, and Dave could see that most of the exhaust system had been left on the sidewalk.
“Who was that?” Karen asked.
“I have no idea. Hold on, everybody.”
Dave got the front wheels of the Escalade onto the ramp and started up. Behind him, the trailer moaned in protest. If the hitch were to come loose, this would probably be the place for it, he knew. And if it did, so be it. They would abandon it, and he wouldn’t spare it a backward glance.
It protested even louder as he got the back wheels on the ramp, then was silent for a moment as the big vehicle climbed, then cried out in pain again as the front wheels went over the top and the hitch was strained to its limit, at a very bad angle to the car. Dave juiced the accelerator and for a moment all four wheels smoked, and then the trailer lurched over the hump and was once more pushing him down the hill. They were gathering speed.
“Dave, should you—”
“Karen, don’t distract me now. The last thing I need is…” a backseat driver, he thought, but bit the words off before he could say them. The last thing she probably needed was an angry word from him.
“Sorry,” she said. “My bad.”
He was almost at the T-junction with two burning houses ahead of him. He glanced to his left and saw one of the most terrifying things he had ever seen. It looked like a solid wall of fire rolling down the hillside. No wonder Karen had been nervous; she had probably seen it before he did, with his attention focused forward.
When he quelled his moment of panic he saw that his imagination had contributed a lot to his first impression. The fire was moving, and it was coming down the hill, and it was coming toward them and it would be there very soon, but he had a few minutes. He managed to make himself apply the brakes as he approached the intersection, though his every instinct urged him to take the turn at the highest speed he could manage, even if it meant going up on the two left wheels.
The tires squealed as he made the turn, and he felt terrific heat on the left side of his face. He let the Escalade find its own line through the curve, a line that took it perilously close to the curb on his left but with what looked like enough room to get by.
One wheel of the trailer hit the curb and it bounced high and came down hard. Dave winced, then saw the trunk of a palm tree almost dead ahead. The Escalade missed the tree by inches.
None of the women said a word. Probably too terrified.
“Is everybody all right back there?”
“I got bumped around a little, but we’re okay. Right, Addison?”
“I’m okay, Mom.”
“Jenna?”
“No problems, boss. That was some great driving.”
He realized, incredulously, that she was serious. Well, maybe it was great driving, and maybe he’d just been taking the curve too damn fast.
He calmed himself down with a deep breath, straightened the car out, and steered down the middle of the road. He hardly needed his headlights, the bright light of the following blaze cast a long, black shadow ahead of him but illuminated the sides of the road with a hellish light. He only had to stay in the middle.
At the intersection with the street just below his, only a short distance on a map but a long way down the hill, the guardrail on his right had been smashed. A twisted piece of metal poked into the night sky. Twin streaks of burned rubber led directly into the hole. How could an idiot manage to go off the road there, Dave wondered, when the street went perfectly straight for another hundred yards? Dave was sure this was the launching pad for the yellow Ferrari that had passed them seconds ago. Maybe something had broken in the steering when he jolted up over the curb.
He had to slow to a crawl as he reached the 180-degree turn on Heartbreak Hill—there was simply no way to take it at any speed. Behind him the trailer weaved back and forth as he braked. He was alert for any wreckage below, but he didn’t see anything at first. Now he was a good ways below the fire, and the darkness enfolded them again. He moved as quickly as he dared, going due north now, toward the second 180-degree switchback. He looked up the terraced slope above him, but all he could see were the flames that were cresting on the drive above.
Suddenly, Ranger appeared in front of him, standing sideways on the road, breathing heavily.
“Daddy, let me get out and get him!”
“No, Addie, I can’t do that.”
It was academic, anyway, as the horse neighed loudly and bolted again, downhill. Dave heard a frustrated cry from the back. Now that the horse had moved he could see what had stopped it. The yellow car must have flown for a while, but it wasn’t an airplane, no matter how streamlined the designers had made it. He could see the groove it had plowed in the terraces above them.
Flames were growing higher up there. Now the remains of a six-hundred-thousand-dollar car lay half on the street and half-off, upside down, its shattered nose on the asphalt, its rear end on the dirt, its back broken.
“Nobody could have survived that,” Karen said.
“I don’t think so, either, but we have to look.”
“I guess you’re right. Yes, you’re right.” He felt something tapping on his shoulder, and realized she was handing him one of their Maglites. He took it, stepped out of the car, and hurried over to the wreck. As he approached it, he thought about the gun in his waistband, and had the awful realization that if anyone was alive in there, the only help he might be able to offer would be a bullet to escape death by fire.
He crouched and shined the flashlight into the small gap left between the crushed roof and the edge of the sprung door, which hung open a few feet. If someone was alive, he realized, he just might be able to pull him out.
He needn’t have worried. There was only one man inside, and his skull was clearly crushed. He took in the ruined side of the man’s face, saw the way his jaw had been almost ripped off, and looked quickly away. He stood up, and smelled gas. He hurried back to the car.
“Dead,” he snapped, and put the Escalade in gear again.
He eased around the Ferrari and continued down the hill. Soon they were passing Kingfisher Drive, then Meadowlark Terrace, both streets that angled off to the right. He could see that Addison had moved across the back to stare hopelessly up each street.
“Daddy, he could have gone up any of those streets. They’re all dead ends.”
“I know, honey, but that will leave him no place to go, right? He’d turn around.”
“Maybe not until the fire blocked off this end. Can’t we—”
“Hush, Addison,” her mother said. “Your father has to concentrate. And he’s right. Ranger knows the way down, he wouldn’t go up any of those streets.”
There were taillights ahead of him. More of them appeared as he continued down the hill. As he approached Oriole two cars came speeding onto Doheny, forcing him to put on the brakes again.
“You had the right of way!” Jenna shouted, indignantly.
“I don’t think that counts for a lot tonight.”
On down the hill more cars were appearing. Three people on bicycles zipped past him as he onc
e more slowed to a crawl behind a Mercedes SUV. It was developing into a traffic jam. He had had no idea there were still so many people living on these streets.
“The fire’s gaining on us,” Karen said.
Dave could see it in his rearview mirror. He was down to ten miles per hour, and he knew the fire could travel a lot faster than that. Sparks had begun to rain down all around them. He could see fires starting in the brush beside the road.
“Karen, keep an eye on it. If we get totally jammed up here, we might have to get out and run for it.”
“I’ll dig out some blankets,” Addison said. “We could put them over us, maybe it would keep the sparks off.”
“Good idea,” Dave said. He didn’t know if it would help much, but it would give her something to do.
“We could pour some water on the blankets,” Jenna suggested.
“I like it,” Karen said. “We have a lot of bottles back here.”
Dave heard Karen and Addison scrambling around, but concentrated on the cars ahead of him. One car had just stopped, right in the middle of the road, three cars ahead of the Escalade. The driver of the car behind the blocking car stepped out, one foot still in the car, and started yelling. Dave rolled his window down and he could hear them.
“Get that piece of shit out of the way!”
“I’m out of gas! We need a ride!”
“If you don’t move it, I’m going to push you out of the way! Move it, damn it, we don’t have much time!”
The driver of the stalled car got out, waving a pistol around. The second driver hastily got back into his car.
“Everybody get down,” Dave said. He slid down as far as he could, still looking out the windshield. He heard one of the doors opening and saw Jenna step out on her side, crouching behind her door like the cops did on the television, her shotgun resting on the edge of her open window.
Ahead, the stalled driver had gone back to the second car and was pointing his gun at the man who had yelled at him. Two women got out of the stalled car, looking terrified, going to each side of the second car.
“I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry,” one of the women was saying, over and over, sobbing as she got into the backseat of the car. The other woman couldn’t tear her eyes away from the sight of the fire bearing down on all of them.