by Jenna Kernan
* * *
MEADOW GAPED AS the top of the ridge exploded like an erupting volcano. With her camera still running, she stood in the road, paralyzed by what she witnessed. The house that had broken the ridgeline collapsed, falling in fiery wreckage into the gap below. The steel skeleton vanished amid tails of smoke that flew into the sky like launching rockets.
Dylan.
He was up there. Her impulse was to flee, but the urge to reach him tugged against her survival instinct.
The rockets of fire flew over her head, and she turned to watch them land, each a meteor impacting the earth. The vibrations from the explosion reached her, tipping her camera and making her sidestep to keep from falling beside it. She lifted the running GoPro and held it, collapsing the tripod as she panned, capturing the flaming rock touching down and igniting infernos to her right and left, knowing the HDMI video interface and antenna in her car compressed the video data before sending it to the live feed.
The desert bloomed orange as it burned. She turned back to the ridge, seeing the smoke billowing up to the sun. Beneath the yellow smoke came a wall of fire and the cracking, popping sound of burning. A hot wind rushed at her, burning her skin. She felt as if she stood in an oven. She had to get out of here. Meadow turned in a circle and saw flames on all sides. The smoke was so thick she began to choke. Should she try to drive through the flames?
How had the falling rock and fire missed her? She stood in the road as she realized everyone had been right. She wasn’t going to see thirty.
Chapter Two
Had she gotten out? Dylan wondered as he barely managed to navigate his truck along the thin ribbon of gravel to the bottom of the ridge and onto the straight stretch that led to Meadow.
He prayed that she had, but the fear in his heart and the flames already crowning in the pines warned him she was in danger. He listened to his instincts, slowed his speed, fighting against the urge to accelerate. Moving faster than he could see could cause him to crash the truck or to hit Meadow. He was close to her position now. He knew it. Where was she?
He saw her Audi parked exactly where it had been—only now the wall of fire to his left glimmered off the mirror surface of the black paint reflecting the approaching flames. Soon the paint would melt, along with every bit of plastic. The inferno was close to jumping the road. Dylan hit the brakes, sending gravel spraying from his rear tires.
“Meadow!” he shouted as he threw open the door. “Meadow!”
The blaze was loud now, sounding like a locomotive. His eyes burned as he swept the ground for any sight of her. Then he saw a flash of white. She was running. Strong legs pumping as she darted from behind her car and then in front of his truck. In one hand she held her camera by the folded, compressed tripod. She reached the passenger side, and his arms went around her instinctively as he pulled her into the truck and set them in motion again.
Not here, he thought. There was too much fuel. Too much energy for the flames to consume in the surrounding pines.
“There’s no way out,” she shouted.
He knew that. He knew they were trapped. It was not a question of if but when the fire would catch them.
Not here. Not yet.
He glanced behind them. The fire glowed red in the rearview. So close now. Ahead there was only smoke and the orange flames that raced along on either side of the road. Finally he saw it. The black earth he had been searching for. The fire had already burned the easy fuel there. He glanced back. How long did he have? A few minutes. He needed more earth, more black earth between him and what chased them. He needed a place to survive the burn-over.
He went as far as he could, hoping, praying it was far enough. Knowing if he went any farther he would not have the moments he needed to prepare.
Dylan hit the brakes.
“What are you doing?” yelled Meadow. “Go! Go!”
He reached across the gap between them and dragged her out of the truck by her wrist. She didn’t fight him, just locked her jaw and allowed him to pull her behind him. He grabbed his rake and thrust it at her. She clutched it in her free hand, the other still gripping her camera. Then he seized his pack and Pulaski ax from the utility storage box in his truck bed. No time to talk. No room for the bottles of water he always carried. He glanced about as he judged the wind and the flames, wishing the crowns of the trees had already burned. Then he rushed them off the embankment to the black earth. The road would help break the flames, but the truck... Were they far enough to be clear of the gas tanks? He tugged her along, running into the smoking black soil that crunched beneath his construction boots. Choosing his spot because he was out of time, he went to work with the ax breaking the soil, tearing away the burned vegetation by the roots, digging a trench. The ground was so hot. He’d never thought he’d have to deploy his fire shelter. After all the training films and practice and all the fires he had fought, Dylan really had believed that he could control the situation, stay ahead of the fire line and always have a viable escape plan. Yet, here he was.
“What are you doing?” she yelled.
The roar was louder and the hot wind rushed past them.
“Rake that away!” he yelled.
He broke more soil, digging deeper and glancing at the approaching wall of flame.
She pushed the tripod down the front of her shirt before using the fire rake to pull away the roots and brush he cleared with the ax.
“A grave?” she asked.
He paused to stare at her. She looked back with a calm that terrified him because he saw that she was ready to die.
“Fire shelter,” he called.
Her brows lifted and he could not tell if she was relieved or disappointed.
No time now.
“That comes off.” He tugged at her shirt.
“What?”
“Polyester. It melts.” He dragged the shirt over her head. She dropped the rake. The camera tumbled free, and she stooped to her knees to snatch it up again and yelped at the contact of her bare knee with the smoking ground. He went for his pack, grabbing the flame-retardant shirt he wore to fight fires and tugged it on. It would be his back between the shelter and the flames.
“This, too?” She lifted the edge of the flimsy scrap of fabric that was her skirt.
He nodded and dropped the camel pack in the ditch, then took his gloves and radio, but nothing else. He’d never heard of two people deploying in a shelter that was designed for one.
He estimated the wind was reaching fifty miles an hour now. If he lost the shelter to the wind they were both dead. He dropped to his knees, already tugging the fire shelter from the nylon sheath.
“That looks like a Jiffy Pop bag,” she said.
“Come!” he roared.
She dropped before him and he enveloped her, forcing her down to the earth and into the shallow ditch he had made. The roar grew louder, like a jet engine that went on and on.
He got the shelter over them and used the hand straps to tug the edges about them. His feet slid inside the elastic and he braced, holding himself up on his elbows.
“It’s hot,” she called, wriggling. “The ground—it’s too hot. I’m burning.”
“Stay still.” It was hotter outside, he knew. Five hundred degrees and rising, he thought, his training providing him the information.
“This isn’t going to stop it. It’s thin as one of those emergency blankets.”
Except this was two-ply. A silicon layer and the reflective outer foil.
“We’ll cook alive!” she yelled.
It was possible. Not all deployed wildfire fighters survived. But mostly they died from the heated gases that scorched their lungs until they could not breathe.
“Stick your face in the dirt and take shallow breaths,” he shouted in her ear to be heard above the roar. The explo
sion that shook them told him that his truck tires had blown. The gas tank would be next. Flying debris could rip the shelter. If that happened, they would die here.
The fire shield now seemed a living thing that he had to wrestle to hold down about them. The heat intensified until he felt as if the skin on his back burned. Every time the shelter touched him, it seared. He kept his elbows pinned and punched at the shelter, creating an air space. Each breath scalded his lungs. He took shallow sips of air and held them as long as possible, hoping the next breath would not be his last.
* * *
MEADOW FELT THE weight of him pressing down upon her. He was so big and the ground so hot. She couldn’t breathe.
“We have to get out,” she yelled, not knowing if he heard her. The air in her next breath was so hot she choked. He pushed her head down to the ground.
“Dig!” he ordered.
She held the neck of the tripod and used the collapsed legs to dig, making a hole, and then she released her GoPro to cup her hands over her face to inhale. How could he even breathe? The air above her head was even hotter. He needed to get his face down by hers.
She dug faster, using her hands now, her acrylic nails raking soft sand as she burrowed like a ground squirrel. “You, too!”
She gasped at the intake of hot air into her throat.
He wriggled forward, his cheek now beside hers, his nose and lips pressing into her cupped hands. She could feel his shallow breath. Their skin was hot and damp where their cheeks met.
From somewhere outside the balloon shelter came an explosion. She flinched.
Chapter Three
“Gas tank,” he shouted, clarifying what had just blown up.
The roaring went on and the shield fluttered and bucked, reminding her of the slack sail on a sailboat.
Ready about, her father would call, and the boom would swing over her head. As the smallest and quickest, she was allowed to scramble up to the foredeck to tie off the lines and drop the buoy between the ship and the dock.
Something stung her chest. She clawed at her bra.
“Burning,” she cried.
Dylan lifted, released the back fastening as she tugged it clear.
“Metal heats up,” he shouted in her ear. “Buttons, rivets.”
Underwire, she thought. The thing was so hot, like a brand against her flesh. She wondered if she had burned her skin. If she could just lift the edge of the cover and get some air. But he held it down with his forearms and legs. She reached for the shelter and he grabbed her wrist, forcing it to the hot, black earth.
“I need to breathe!” she shouted.
He said nothing. Just held her down along with the tinfoil roaster bag that was cooking them alive. It was an oven. Hotter than an oven. She pressed her face back in the dirt and tried to breathe through the fingers of her free hand. The rings were heating. She tugged at her captured hand. He resisted.
“My rings. Burning!”
He released her and she jerked off her silver, gold and platinum rings and pushed them away.
Beams of red light shone down in narrow shafts through the cover. She glanced up. There were holes in the shelter. She pointed and felt him nod.
“It will be all right,” he said. “It will still work.”
Had the roaring decreased? She wasn’t sure.
“How you doing?” he asked.
She could hear him now. He wasn’t shouting.
“I don’t want to die,” she whispered. The words came as a surprise to her. Yesterday there was nothing she’d wanted to do. Nowhere she’d wanted to go. And now she just wanted to see the sky again. Dive into cold water. Inhale the scent of peonies.
“We’re both going to live.” He brushed his cheek against hers. “I’ll keep you safe, Meadow. It won’t get you.”
She closed her eyes and struggled to control the ball of pain that tried to escape her throat as a sob. She failed. Here she had thought there was only a thin veil of foil between her and the fire. But it wasn’t so. Dylan stood between her and the flames. He protected her with his body and his promise, and she loved him for it.
“How long do we have to stay in here?”
He shifted, letting his hip slide to the ground, taking some of his weight from her. “A while. Have to be sure it’s past us.”
“How will you know?”
“The sound. The roar is fading. The heat and the color. It’s orange now. See?”
She lifted her head to the pinholes and saw the light that had been pink and then red like the flashing light of a fire engine were now the orange of glowing coals. The sky shouldn’t be that color. Never, ever. She let her head fall back to the breathing hole.
He stuck something against her face.
“Drink,” he ordered.
It was a tube. She put it in her mouth and swallowed. Water—hot, stale and welcome. She drank until he took the hose from her. How much water had she lost in this tinfoil tent?
She marveled at him. In only minutes he had gathered from the truck exactly what they needed to survive.
“How do you know all this? How do you have one of these things?” Hotshot, she remembered. Walking twenty miles to deploy, he’d said. She needed to get one of these Jiffy Pop thingies. “You fight wildfires,” she said, more to herself than to him.
“Yes.”
“Dylan?”
“Hmm?”
She wished she could look at him, see his handsome face, those dark eyes and the clean line of his jaw, but he was so close that his nose was pressed to her ear and he lay half across her.
“Can you...talk to me? You know? Take my mind off...”
“What about?”
“Tell me about yourself.”
“Well, I told you my name. I’m from the Turquoise Canyon Apache tribe. We are Tonto Apache. I live up there on the reservation between Antelope Lake and Darabee in the mountains.”
His voice was like a song with a lyrical quality that calmed her. She felt the panic easing away as he continued.
“If I met you there I would say to you, ‘Hello, I am Bear, born of Butterfly, and my father’s name is Jonathan Tehauno. My mother’s name is Dorothy Florez. They named me Dylan.’ It’s more important there to know your parents and clans. Your name comes after all that or sometimes not at all. So when I say, ‘Bear, born of Butterfly,’ you know my father’s clan is Bear and my mother’s clan is Butterfly.”
“I live in Phoenix. I am Wrangler, born of Theron and Lupe. My mother’s name was Cortez.”
He chuckled and she felt herself smile.
“Tell me more.” She felt herself relaxing, her weary muscles twitching from the tension that now eased away into the hot earth.
“I live in the community of Koun’nde in tribal housing. My friends make fun of me because my home has so many books.”
She chuckled because she had stopped reading the minute she realized no one could make her do anything.
“I own a truck, nearly, and have five horses in the community herd. Well, I did own a truck.” He sighed and then coughed. After a moment he kept talking, his breath cool against her face. “I like to ride. I’ve won some endurance races on horses and on foot. After high school, I joined the US Marines. I was honorably discharged after two tours. Decided not to reenlist. I missed home. It’s cool up on the mountain. Not like down here in Flagstaff or over in the Sandbox. That’s what we called Iraq.”
His voice hummed in her ear, a deep, resonant song. She closed her watering eyes.
“Let’s see. I’m a member of a medicine society, the Turquoise Guardians. We dance at festivals and perform ceremonies. I sing in a drum circle.”
She didn’t know what any of that meant, but she wanted him to keep talking.
“The people say I have
a good voice.”
Meadow agreed with that, though she had not heard him sing. She wanted to ask him, but it was so hard for her just to breathe, she didn’t have the heart.
“I’ve been trying to get some of my friends to join me in August to go up to Rapid City for the Indian Relay Races. We’d need four good horses and a four-man team. One rider and each horse runs one mile with the same rider.”
She tried to picture that, one man leaping from one horse to another.
“I keep telling Jack that he was born to be a catcher and Ray and Carter could hold the mounts. I’d like to ride, but if they’re faster I’d let them go, instead. Only now Carter’s in witness protection. So we need a fourth. I suggested Carter’s brother Kurt. He’s smaller but strong. Jack said he’d think about it. Jack Bear Den is a detective on our tribal police. His brother Carter and my friend Ray Strong are hotshots. Turquoise Canyon Hotshots. That’s us. Kurt Bear Den is a paramedic with the air ambulance. I’ve been a hotshot since I came home but it’s only six months, the fire season. So I need more work. I was supposed to meet Cheney Williams.”
Her eyes popped open. “I know him.”
“You do?”
“He works with my dad. He’s a financial guy for the documentaries. Contracts, I think. Something. I’m not really sure. He’s around a lot.” Meadow felt a rumble in Dylan’s chest, like a growl.
“I was told that he’s an attorney in environmental law. Working to stop that house.”
“You haven’t met him?”
“No. My shaman recommended me.”