Zach took a few deep breaths to try to calm himself. He had to think about something else, so he started mentally going over in his mind the list of things that he wanted to pack and take with him when he left the crew. He tried to mentally winnow it down, so that he could keep his packing as light as possible. By the time he got back to base, he was sure he could fit his whole mental list into one large duffel bag. He hopped out of his truck, and started toward the bunkhouse, almost excited for the prospect of a new life that stretched out in front of him. But he’d only walked about ten feet when Trevor came running around the corner of the hangar at full speed.
“Zach, where have you been? Get your gear together!” Trevor said. “We just got a call from headquarters. They’re sending us out to a fire in Southern California.”
“What?” Zach asked, startled. “We’re barely into March. How is it hot enough already for a fire?”
“Well, you know the drought is just as bad down there as it is up here, so everything is abnormally dry,” Trevor said. “Combine that with the fact that they’re having a heat wave down there, and that an idiot camper still thought it would be okay to leave a campfire unattended, and you have, quite literally, the perfect storm. I guess the guy thought that he was far enough out that nobody would catch him lighting an illegal fire. Well, now his fire is not only out of control, but it’s way too deep in the wilderness for any vehicles to get there or for a ground crew to reach.”
Zach stood staring at Trevor. “Are you sure? I’ve never heard of a smokejumping crew being called in this early in the year.”
Trevor looked at Zach like he was a crazy person. “Yes, I’m sure. Why would I be making this up? Get your butt in gear and start getting ready. The plane’s going to be here to pick us up in three hours.”
Trevor jogged off, shaking his head. Zach watched him leave, and tried to figure out what to do. He had been all ready to walk out the door, but he felt it was unfair to force his crew to take on a job short a crewmember without any notice. After considering the situation for a few moments, he decided that the only way to really do right by his crew was to go on this last mission with them. When he got back, he would tell them he was leaving. Odds were that there wouldn’t be another fire for a while after this one, so they should have plenty of time to prepare for taking on the next wildfire without him.
Zach strode into the hangar to make sure his gear was ready, even though he already knew that it was. He had checked and double checked it several times, and now his overabundance of caution was paying off. The rest of the crew was already in the hangar, running around and making last minute preparations. Zach smiled sadly at the sight of the crew going into action. They might all have their differences here and there, but when it was time to get down to business, they all knew how to work together as a team. He was going to miss these guys when he was gone.
Zach shook off the feelings of sadness, and jumped in to help with last minute preparations. There would be time to wallow in grief later. Right now, he had one last job to do with his crew.
A few hours later, Zach joined the rest of the smokejumpers as they climbed into a twin otter aircraft, and the pilot took off due south. Feelings of nostalgia overwhelmed Zach as he watched the hangar he had called home for the last year become smaller and smaller as the plane flew higher and farther away. He closed his eyes, and tried to focus on something else, like what he would do for work as soon as he left the crew and gave up his job. Maybe he would head up to the Pacific Northwest, and take a bartending job at some small bar in a sleepy town on the coast. He could start over where no one knew him. The idea of never being judged for who he was or what his past held sounded overwhelmingly appealing to him. And yet, even as he tried to fill his mind with images of himself hiding out in a small coastal town, he couldn’t completely push away with the snapshots of Mindy that kept popping up in his mind’s eye. By the time the plane reached the drop site, Zach’s mood had plummeted. He did his best, though, to at least act like everything was okay. Maybe Mindy was unwilling to accept that he could change, but he truly believed that he could. He would make a real effort during this last mission not to fly off the handle at his crew. He took a deep breath as he looked over at his alpha, and saw Ian nod at him.
“Door!” Zach called out, and then started opening the jump door of the plane. A rush of cold wind came in to the aircraft as Zach pulled on his jump helmet and fastened the strap. Even though the temperature on the ground was hot, the air at an altitude of nine thousand feet still felt fresh.
“Gear up!” Ian said, and the rest of the crew started buckling their helmets and checking the straps on their parachute rigs. Zach grabbed the colorful paper streamers that the crew used to determine wind direction. He stuck his head out the door of the plane and watched as the trees went rushing by below him in miniature. He loved how tiny everything looked from up here, and how sticking his head out of the airplane to watch it all zoom by made him feel like he was flying. Another small detail of this job that he was going to miss.
Zach threw several streamers down in quick succession, watching them carefully as they floated down to the earth.
“Looks like there’s no wind to speak of,” Zach said. “You know what that means—there’s not going to be much wind to slow you down on your landings, so be extra careful when you’re coming in. Try extra hard to avoid the trees.”
Ian stuck his head out the door with Zach, to assess the situation, then looked over at Zach to nod his confirmation.
“We’ve got our spot,” Zach said. “Let’s go!”
The crew lined up, and one by one began hurling themselves from the door of the airplane. First Trevor, then Hunter, and then Charlotte jumped. The plane had gone too far at that point, so the pilot circled around to do a second pass. When they got back over the jump spot, Luke jumped first. Zach got in position in the door after him. He would jump, and Ian would follow him, leaving the plane last.
Zach watched as Luke fell away from the plane, counted out five seconds, and then hurled himself into the open air. The jumping part of this job had become so routine for him that he didn’t feel much adrenaline anymore. He arched his back to stabilize himself against the wind, and then paused for a moment to look at the burning horizon as he fell. He was trained to pull open his parachute as soon as he had stabilized, but today he couldn’t resist the temptation to wait for several extra seconds. Since he was traveling toward the earth at about a hundred and sixty miles an hour, it didn’t take long for those extra seconds to bring him dangerously close to the earth. He had heard people describing ground rush, which, just like it sounded, meant the feeling of watching the ground rush up toward you as you fell without a parachute. The feeling could be alternatively exhilarating or terrifying, depending on your personality, and, of course on why exactly there wasn’t a parachute over your head. If you were freefalling by choice, because you wanted the exhilarating, dangerous feeling of getting too close to the earth, you’d obviously be a little less freaked out than if your plummeting was unintentionally caused by difficulties in opening your parachute.
Zach had intentionally chosen not to open his parachute, but it wasn’t because he was looking for some exhilarating feeling. He had just found himself wondering, at five thousand feet above the ground, what it would be like to collide with the earth and then feel nothing. He fantasized about how freeing it would be for all of the heartache he dealt with to disappear into oblivion in an instant. Then he saw, out of the left corner of his eye, Luke, with a fully open parachute. When Zach flew past Luke in a rapid descent, that’s when he snapped out of it. No matter how hopeless he felt things were, he couldn’t leave his crew with this kind of mess. Having to deal with a clan member dying so horrifically was too much to ask of them. Zach reached back, and pulled the handle of his parachute. The last few seconds before it inflated he watched with widened eyes as the treetops came impossibly close. He heard the loud sound of a woman’s voice screaming, and he realized that Charlotte must
be on the ground, freaking out as she watched him plummeting down far too quickly.
He felt his parachute jerking him upwards as it inflated, slowing him to a floating speed moments before he crashed into a tangle of branches and leaves. He felt a searing pain on his left hand, and looked down to see a line of dark red blood oozing from his palm. He winced, and forced himself to slowly move each one of his limbs. Everything felt a little stiff, but, as far as he could tell, nothing was broken.
He started loosening the straps of the container that held his parachute to his back, covering everything in blood as he did. He glanced at his hand again. The cut was bleeding quite a lot, but it didn’t seem to be that deep. Hopefully, he’d be able to easily patch it up with a first-aid kit.
After he loosened all the straps, he wriggled out of his rig and threw it down to the ground. There were probably going to be some holes in his parachute that needed mending, but it’s not like it mattered. This was going to be his last mission, anyway. He unfastened the large bags of gear strapped to him until they were no longer attached to his jumpsuit, and threw those down to the ground as well. Then he unzipped the large cargo pockets on his jumpsuit, and pulled out a coil of rope that was stowed there to assist with inevitable tree landings.
But before Zach could get the rope fully out and attached to a secure tree branch, Charlotte had arrived at the bottom of the tree.
“Oh my god,” she yelled up. “What happened? Are you okay? I really thought for a minute there that I was about to see you die.”
Even from his faraway vantage point at the top of the tall tree, Zach could see the tears streaking down Charlotte’s face, and he felt guilty. Charlotte had a good heart, and, although she was human, it was obvious that she would never dream of being anything but loyal to anyone on the crew.
“I’m fine,” Zach yelled back down. “Hang on, I’m coming down.”
He tugged on the rope to make sure it was fastened securely, and then used it to shimmy his way down through the tree branches and to the ground. As soon as he set his feet on the ground, Charlotte wrapped him in a big hug.
“That was one of the scariest moments of my life,” she said.
“Sorry. I’m okay,” Zach said. “I just lost altitude awareness or something.”
One of the dangers of parachuting that the crew had been trained to avoid was losing altitude awareness. They had been instructed to always keep an eye on the altimeters they wore on their wrists, which told them how high they were. If, for any reason, they got below a certain altitude, they were trained to pull the parachute even if they hadn’t yet stabilized against the wind. Usually, this wasn’t an issue for the smokejumping crew. It typically only took a few seconds to stabilize, and that still left them plenty of altitude to open a parachute.
But Charlotte bought Zach’s excuse and nodded sympathetically. “Don’t feel badly,” she said. “Even the most experienced jumpers have been guilty of losing altitude awareness.”
Ian walked up at that moment, a huge frown and look of concern on his face. “I call bullshit,” he said. “What the hell is going on with you? Because whatever you thought you were trying to do there, it wasn’t funny.”
Charlotte looked back and forth between Ian and Zach with an expression of confusion on her face. “What do you mean?” She asked.
“He’s lying,” Ian said. “I can smell it from a mile away.”
“I don’t know what you’re smelling, because that’s the truth, I lost altitude awareness,” Zach said, even though he knew Ian couldn’t be fooled so easily.
By this point, the other crew members had rushed over as well, all clamoring to see if Zach was okay. Ian let out a low growl, but dropped the matter. Zach knew, however, from the look in his alpha’s eyes that the discussion wasn’t over—just postponed. Ian let the rest of the crew clamor around Zach for a minute or two, and then put a stop to the commotion.
“Alright, everyone,” Ian said. “Shows over. Let’s get to work.”
The crew’s chatter died down and they scurried off to finish unpacking their gear. Ian shook his head at Zach in disgust, and then followed the rest of the crew.
Charlotte stayed behind for a moment, and gave Zach a curious look. Her eyes were full of questions, but the only thing she asked was whether he was okay.
“I’m fine,” he said. “I’m really sorry that I worried you.”
Charlotte nodded, and then gave Zach’s arm a quick squeeze before heading off in the direction the rest of the crew had gone. Zach slowly gathered up his gear. This whole incident had only confirmed for him that it was time to leave the clan behind. The longer he stayed here, the more people he was hurting.
Zach determined to throw himself into the work at hand, and try not to think about anything else until the job was done. There would be time later to figure out the gnarly details of the next chapter of his life.
For a while, Zach’s plan worked. The crew set to work with chainsaws and pickaxes, clearing a fire break in the trees. They had gone through this process dozens of times now. Once they had made a fuel-free zone by removing anything that would burn, they would set a back fire on the other side of the fire break. The back fire would burn toward the wildfire, and when the two fires met they would burn each other out. The work required a great deal of physical exertion and strength, and that was exactly the kind of thing that Zach needed right now. For three and a half days, the crew spent every second of daylight clearing away the trees and brush. When they finally finished, Ian took a flame torch and lit the backfire. Long after the rest of the crew had wandered off to grab some food and take a break, Zach stood watching the back fire burn. The bittersweetness of the moment overwhelmed him. How many times had he stood with the clan, watching a scene similar to this? And this would be the last time.
He turned when he heard crunching footsteps behind him. Ian was walking toward him and munching on a protein bar.
“Hey,” Zach said, keeping his gaze fixed on the fire. He couldn’t bear to look his alpha in the eye right now.
“Want to tell me what’s going on?” Ian asked. His anger had seeped away over the last few days, and now his voice was filled with concern.
Zach finally looked over at Ian, and his heart tightened at the look of worry on his alpha’s face. Zach decided that now was as good a time as any to drop the news of his leaving on Ian. The longer he waited, the harder this was going to be.
“This is my last mission, Ian,” Zach said. “I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s best for the clan if I leave. You know as well as I do that I haven’t really gotten along with everyone for a long time, and I think I need to just go. Find my own way, and let you guys be free from the demons that follow me around.”
Zach expected Ian to immediately protest and forbid him to leave. But Ian was silent for a long time, staring off at the flames of the back fire. When he finally spoke, his voice was filled with a heavy sadness.
“I can’t stop you from leaving, Zach. But I think you’re making a big mistake. You’ve spent the last several years going on and on about how humans can’t be trusted. But it’s not just humans you don’t trust. You don’t trust your own clan members, either. There’s obviously something very big bothering you, but you won’t tell anyone what it is. I guess you think it will hurt us, or that we won’t be able to handle it. But you’ve never even given us a chance to try. You just sink deeper and deeper into your own despair. We’re all here waiting with outstretched arms, wanting to save you from whatever ghosts are chasing you down. But we can’t help save you unless you let us.”
“No one can save me,” Zach said, his eyes turning dark.
Ian sighed wearily. “You’re right. No one can save you, because you refuse to trust anyone. If you want to leave, then leave. But after everything this clan has made it through together, I think you’re acting like a selfish, spoiled child for thinking you can handle your problems better on your own. We’re a family, Zach. We stick together, no matter what.
If you really want the clan to be free from your demons, then let us help you fight them.”
Ian turned and walked away, leaving Zach to consider his words.
“Nice thought, Ian. But you don’t know what you’re asking for,” Zach said aloud. Then he turned away from the fire himself and headed back to the clan’s fire camp one last time.
Chapter Eleven
Friday morning, Mindy woke up well before her alarm clock. She had been visiting Sophia every day at the orphanage, and could hardly believe that today she was finally going to be able to bring the little girl home.
Mindy quickly showered and had breakfast, then went to Sophia’s room to check on the little welcome basket that she’d put together. She had filled a pretty white wicker basket with an assortment of children’s books and a large, soft stuffed Dalmatian. Sophia had told her a few days ago that she loved dogs, especially the ones with “the spots all over,” so Mindy hoped she would like the toy.
When Mindy picked Sophia up from the orphanage, the little girl seemed more resigned to her fate than excited. Sophia waited patiently outside Mr. Stewart’s office, holding a small duffel bag that contained her few belongings. When the time came to leave, Sophia took Mindy’s offered hand and let herself be led out of the building. The girl was quiet the whole ride home, and Mindy didn’t try to force her to speak. She thought letting the girl have some space was probably the best course of action right now.
Sophia still didn’t speak as they arrived at Mindy’s townhome and Mindy showed her the welcome basket.
“Do you like the puppy?” Mindy prompted, as Sophia stood staring at the bedroom and the basket.
Sophia nodded.
“Do you want to go give him a hug?” Mindy asked.
Sophia shook her head. “No. I don’t want to love anything. It all just gets taken away when I have to move again.”
For the thousandth time since she’d met Sophia, Mindy felt her heart breaking. This little girl had been through so much for someone so tiny. Mindy bent down next to Sophia.
Fire Bear Shifters: The Complete Series Page 44