Dies the Fire

by S. M. Stirling

  "Mother-of-All," Juniper blurted. "The whole town could burn down! And those poor people on the 747—"

  She imagined what it must have been like at thirty thousand feet, and then her mind recoiled from it back to the here and now.

  And Rudy was flying out of Eugene tonight, she thought, appalled. If the same thing happened there—

  "We have to do something," she said, pushing aside the thought, and led them clattering down the stairs again.

  And we can only do it here. Think about the rest later.

  "People!" she said over the crowd's murmur, and waved her hands. "People, there's a plane crashed right downtown, and a fire burning out of control. And it looks like all the emergency services are out. They're going to need all the help they can get. Let's get what we can scrape up and go!"

  Most of them followed her, Dennis swearing quietly, a bucket in one hand and a fire ax over the other shoulder; Juniper snatched up a kerosene lantern. Eilir carried the restaurant's first-aid kit in both arms, and others had snatched up towels and stacks of cloth napkins and bottles of booze for disinfectants.

  She needed the lantern less and less as they got closer to the crash site. Buildings were burning across a swath of the town's riverside quarter, ending—she hadn't gotten her wish, and the fire covered the Squirrel's site. Heat beat at them, and towers of sparks were pouring upward from the old Victorians and warehouses.

  If the plane was out of Portland, it would have been carrying a lot of fuel …

  The streets were clogged with people moving westward away from the fire, many of them hurt, and they were blocked with stopped autos and trucks and buses too. Ruddy firelight beat at her face, with heat and the sour-harsh smell of things not meant to burn.

  "OK," she said, looking at the … refugees, she thought. Refugees, right here in America!

  First aid could make the difference between life and death, stopping bleeding and stabilizing people until real doctors or at least paramedics got there.

  "We're not going to do any good trying to stop that fire by hitting it with wet blankets. Let's help the injured."

  She looked around. There was a clear stretch of sidewalk in front of a hardware store where a delivery truck had rammed into the next building down; its body slanted people out into the road like a wedge.

  "We'll set up here. Dennis, see if there's any bedding anywhere around here, and a pharmacy—and anyplace selling bottled water."

  He lumbered off, followed by some of his customers. The others started shouting and waving to attract attention, and then guiding the injured towards her. Juniper's stomach clenched as she saw them: this was serious, there were bleeding slashes from shattered glass, and people whose clothes were still smoldering. Her head turned desperately, as if help could be found …

  Nobody's going to benefit if you start crying, she thought sternly, and traced the pentacle in the air again—the Summoning form this time, all she had time for. Brigid, Goddess of Healing, help me now!

  "You," she said aloud; a young man had pushed a bicycle along as they came. "You ride over to the hospital, and tell them what we're doing. Get help if they can spare it. Hurry!"

  He did, dashing off. The first-aid kit was empty within minutes; Dennis came back, with a file of helpers carrying mattresses, sheets, blankets, and cardboard boxes full of Ozonenal, painkillers and whatever else looked useful from the plunder of a fair-sized dispensary; a pharmacist in an old-fashioned white coat came with him.

  "Let's get to work," Juniper said, giving Dennis a quick hug.

  The best part of an hour later, she paused and looked up in the midst of ripping up volunteered shirts for bandages. The fireman approaching was incredibly reassuring in his rubbers and boots and helmet, an ax in his hand; half a dozen others were following him, two carrying someone else on a stretcher.

  "What are you doing here?" he asked, pausing; the others filed on past him.

  Juniper bristled a little and waved at the injured people lying in rows on the sidewalk. "Trying to help!" she snapped. "What are you doing, mister?"

  "Fuck-all," he said, but nodded approval; his face was running with sweat and soot; he was a middle-aged man with a jowly face and a thick body.

  "What's wrong?"

  "Our trucks won't work, our portable pumps won't work, and the pressure is off in the mains! Died down to a trickle while we manhandled a hose down here and got it hitched. The pumping stations that lift from the Taylor treatment plant on the river are down and the reservoirs've all drained. We can't even blow fire lanes—our dynamite won't explode! So now what we're doing is making sure everyone's out of the way of a fire we can't stop. Lady, this area's going to fry, and soon."

  Juniper looked up at the flames; they were nearer now, frighteningly so—she'd lost track in the endless work.

  "We've got to get these people out of here!" she said. "A lot of them can't walk any farther."

  "Yeah," the fireman said. "We'll have to carry them out—the hospital's got an emergency aid station set up on the campus. We're using runners and people on bicycles to coordinate. Hey,Tony!"

  A policeman stood not far away, writing on a pad; he handed it to a boy standing astride a bike, and the teenager sped off, weaving between cars and clots of people.

  "Ed?" the policeman said; he looked as tired and desperate as the firefighter.

  "We've got to move these injured over to the aid station."

  The policeman nodded twice, once to the fireman and once to her, touching a hand to his cap. Then he turned and started shouting for volunteers; dozens came forward. The walking wounded started off westward into the darkened streets, most of them with a helper on either side.

  "These mattresses will do for stretchers," Dennis said; he'd gotten them out of nearby houses and inns. "Or better still, cut off the top covers and the handles and use them that way. Hey—you, you, you—four men to a mattress. Walk careful, walk in step!"

  The firefighters helped organize, then carried off the last of the worst-wounded themselves. Juniper took a long shuddering breath through a mouth dry as mummy dust. Dennis handed her a plastic bottle with a little water left in it, and she forced herself not to gulp it all down. Instead she took a single mouthful and handed it on to Eilir; the girl looked haunted, but she was steady save for a quiver in the hands now and then.

  Goddess, she's a good kid, Juniper thought, and hugged her.

  It was about time to get out themselves; the fires were burning westward despite a wind off the Coast Range— and thank the Goddess for that, because if it had been blowing from the east half the city would be gone by now, instead of just a quarter.

  Shouts came from across the street, and a sound of shattering glass. The musician looked up sharply. Half a dozen young men—teens or early twenties—had thrown a trash container through a storefront window; they were scooping jewelry out of the trays within, reaching through the coarse mesh of the metal screen inside the glass.

  The policeman cursed with savage weariness and drew his pistol; Juniper's stomach clenched, but they had to have order or things would be even worse than they were.

  I hope he doesn't have to shoot anyone, she thought.

  Most of the looters scattered, laughing as they ran, but one of them threw something at the approaching policeman. Juniper could see the looter clearly, down to the acne scars and bristle-cut black hair and the glint of narrow blue eyes. He wore baggy black sweats and ankle-high trainers, and a broad belt that glittered—made from chain mesh. Gold hoops dangled from both ears.

  "Clear out, goddamnit!" the cop shouted hoarsely, and raised the pistol to fire in the air. "I'm not kidding!"

  Click.

  Juniper blinked in surprise. A woman living alone with her daughter on the road was well advised to keep a pistol, and she'd taken a course to learn how to use it safely. Misfires were rare.

  The policeman evidently thought it was odd too. He jacked the slide of the automatic back, ejecting the useless round, and fired
into the air once more.

  Click.

  He worked the slide to eject the spent cartridge and tried a third time—and now he was aiming at the thin-faced youth, who was beginning to smile. Two of his fellow looters hadn't fled either. They all looked at each other, and their smiles grew into grins.

  Click.

  One of them pulled a pistol of his own from behind his back, and pointed it at the lawman; it was a snub-nosed revolver, light and cheap. He pulled the trigger.

  Click.

  He shrugged, tossed the gun aside, and pulled a tire iron from his belt instead. The youth with the chain belt unhooked it and swung it from his left hand. Something else came into his right, and he made a quick figure-eight motion of the wrist.

  Metal clattered on metal and a blade shone in the firelight. She recognized the type, a Balisong folding gravity knife—if you hung around Society types like Chuck Barstow, you overheard endless talk about everything from broadswords to fighting knives, like it or not.

  The banger wasn't a sporting historical reenactor like the Society knights. He walked forward, stepping light on the balls of his feet, rolling the knife over his knuckles and back into his palm with casual ease. The other man flanking him was a hulking giant with a bandana around his head; he picked up a baseball bat from the sidewalk and smacked the head into his left palm. The full-sized Louisville Slugger looked like a kid's toy in his hand.

  The policeman was backing up and looking around as he drew his nightstick. He was twenty years older than any of the three men walking towards him, and nobody else was left this close to the fires; the roaring of their approach was loud, and it was chokingly hot.

  "Oh, hell," Dennis said. "Now I gotta do something really stupid."

  He picked up the fire ax he'd brought from the Hopping Toad and walked out towards the policeman.

  Juniper swallowed and looked around her, then at the storefront behind them. They'd broken it open for the tools they needed; she made a quick decision and dashed inside, taking the lantern with her. She hesitated at the axes and machetes and shovels … but she wasn't sure she could hit a human being with one, even if she had to. Instead she picked a bare ax helve out of a rack of them, giving thanks that redevelopment hadn't gotten this far yet and turned the place into a wine bar or an aromatherapy salon.

  Stay here, she signed to Eilir. Get out the back way if you have to.

  Then she turned and dashed out into the street; the firelight had gotten appreciably brighter in the few seconds it had taken. Dennis and the policeman were backed up against the pickup, and there was a turmoil of motion around them as the three street toughs feinted and lunged.

  No time to waste on subtlety or warnings, she thought.

  Especially not when all her potential opponents were stronger than she was, and would probably enjoy adding rape to theft and murder.

  She ran forward, her steps soundless under the bellow of the fire that was only a block away now and both hands firmly clamped on the varnished wood. Dennis gave her away simply by the way his eyes went wide as he stared over his opponent's shoulder.

  The man with the tire iron was turning when she hit him; instead of the back of his head, the hardwood cracked into the side of it, over the temple. Juniper Mackenzie wasn't a large woman—five-three, and slim—but she'd split a lot of firewood in her thirty years, and playing guitar professionally needed strong hands. The unpleasant crunching feel of breaking bone shivered back up the ax handle into her hands, and she froze for a moment, knowing that she'd probably killed a man.

  Oh, Goddess, I didn't mean it! she thought, staring as he dropped with a boneless limpness.

  Dennis had different reflexes, or perhaps he'd merely had enough adrenaline pumped into his system by the brief lethal fight. He punched the head of the ax into the gut of the giant with the baseball bat, and followed up with a roundhouse swing that would have taken an arm off at the shoulder if the big man hadn't thrown himself backward with a speed surprising in someone that size.

  The blade scored his left arm instead of chopping it, and he fled clutching it and screaming curses; he sounded more angry than hurt. His smaller friend with the Balisong ran backward away from the suddenly long odds, the flickering menace of his knife discouraging thoughts of pursuit.

  He halted a dozen paces away, his eyes coldly unafraid; they were an unexpected blue, slanted in a thin amber-colored face. Juniper met them for an instant, feeling a prickle down her neck and shoulders.

  "Yo, bitch!" he called, shooting out his left hand with the middle finger pointing at her. "Chico there was a friend of mine. Maybe we'll meet again, get to know each other better. My name is Eddie Liu—remember that!"

  Then he looked over Juniper's shoulder, shrugged, turned and followed his bigger friend in a light, bounding run.

  She turned to see Eilir coming up with an ax handle of her own, and her gaze went back to her friend and the policeman.

  "Either of you hurt?" she said.

  Dennis leaned back against the wrecked truck, shaking his head and blowing like a walrus, his heavy face turned purple-red and running sweat beyond what the gathering heat would have accounted for. The policeman had a bleeding slash across the palm of his left hand where he'd fended off the Balisong.

  Juniper tossed down her ax handle, suddenly disgusted with the feel of it, and helped him bandage his wound. Out of the corner of her eye she was conscious of Dennis recovering a little, and dragging off the body of the man she'd—

  Hit. I just hit him. I had to, she thought. I really had to.

  She was still thankful he moved it, and avoided looking at the damp track the bobbing head left on the pavement.

  "You folks ought to get out of here," the policeman said. "I've got to get to the station and find out what's going on. Go home if you're far enough from the fire, or head up to campus if you're not."

  He walked away, limping slightly and holding his injured left hand against his chest; the nightstick was ready in his right. Juniper pulled her daughter to her and held her, shivering. She looked into Dennis's eyes; her friend wasn't quite as purple now, but he looked worse somehow.

  They started up Monroe, heading back towards the Hopping Toad in silence. Dennis stopped for an instant, picked up the revolver of the looter she'd … hit … and weighed it in one big beefy hand. Then he pointed the weapon towards a building and pulled the trigger five times.

  Click. Click. Click. Click. Click.

  "Remember what the fireman said?" Juniper asked quietly. "About the dynamite not working? And what are the odds of that many cartridges not working?"

  "You know," he said in his mild voice, "I never really liked guns. Not dead set against 'em like John, but I never liked 'em. But … y'know, Juney, I've got this feeling we're going to miss them. Pretty bad."

  Chapter

  Three

  She's sinking fast, Havel thought as he scrabbled at the restraining belts that held him into the pilot's seat.

  Got to get out! Out!

  "Mom's hurt, Mom's hurt!" a voice shouted, almost screamed; Signe Larsson, he thought. "She can't move!"

  The interior of the plane was dark as a coffin, groaning and tilting, popping as bits of metal gave way. The gurgling inrush of water was cold enough to feel like burning when it touched skin.

  Oh, hell, Havel thought as he reached across to the copilot's seat; Kenneth Larsson was hanging in his harness, unconscious.

  A quick hand on the throat felt a pulse. Just what we fucking needed. Getting this limp slab of beef out in time wasn't going to be easy.

  "Calm down and get the belts off her," he said as he unhitched the elder Larsson; the flexing weight slid into his arms, catching on things in the dark, and the water was up to his waist. A little more light—more of a lighter blackness—came through the rear hatch, which Eric Larsson had apparently gotten open. The cat was screeching in its box—

  A thin sound cut through it, like a rabbit squealing in a trap. Havel's teeth skinned bac
k unseen; he'd heard that sound before, from a man badly wounded.

  Signe Larsson shouted: "Oh, God, Mom's hurt inside, something's broken, I can't move her—"

  "Get her out now or you'll both fucking drown!" he snapped.

  The floor of the plane was tilting ever steeper; probably only the buoyancy of the wing tanks was keeping it from going straight to the bottom.

  "Out, out, out!" he shouted. "Now!"

  She must have obeyed; at least he didn't run into anyone when he scrambled into the passenger compartment himself and pulled the inert form of her father through behind him. Mary Larsson probably weighed a good bit less than her strapping tennis-and-field-hockey daughter. Kenneth Larsson's frame carried nearly a hundred pounds more than the pilot's one-seventy-five.

  Contortions in the dark got Larsson's solid weight across his back, with an arm over his shoulder and clamped in his left hand to keep him from slipping back, and Havel began crawling forward with the rising water at his heels; it was more like climbing, with the plane going down by the nose.

  Breath wheezed between his teeth; he'd pay for it later, but right now legs and right arm worked like pistons, pushing him up past the four seats—thank God it was a small plane.

  When he got to the doorway a hand came back and felt around; he put it on Larsson's collar, and the man's son hauled away, dragging the infuriating weight off Havel's back and out into the night as Havel boosted from below. That was fortunate, because just then the inrushing water won its fight, and the Chieftain sank with its nose straight down.

  "Christ Jesus!" Havel shouted, forcing down panic as a solid door-sized jet of icy water smashed into him, nearly tearing his hand free of its grip on the hatchway; the torrent continued for an instant, and then he was submerged and weightless—floating, as the plane sank towards the bottom.

  He felt the jarring thud as the nose struck the tumbled rocks at the bottom of the mountain river.

  Don't get disoriented now or you will die, he told himself grimly, hanging on to the hatch; he arched his head upward, and there was a small air bubble trapped in the tail space in back of the hatch—above the hatch, now. He coughed water out of his lungs and took three deep fast breaths in blackness so absolute it was like cold wet rubber pressed against his eyes.