“It’s working,” Rio said, a disbelief in his voice. “The fire is dying at the line.”
Cinders blew into the green, dying as they landed in the sodden runway. The blaze coughed up angry, blackened fury as it fought to live.
“Good job with that line, Riley,” Tucker said. “Textbook. Good thing you were here.”
Those words found fertile soil, dug in.
“We need to get off this porch and into a safety zone. I suggest the lake.” Tucker was on the radio, calling for another drop.
“The fire is cutting west—it’s headed around the lake.” This from Skye, and Riley turned, watching as the fire headed west.
“It’ll run into that ridge,” Tucker said, pointing to the west, where the bald ridge edged the property.
Except— “Larke’s house is beyond that ridge, right in the path of the fire.”
And that’s when he realized— “Where is Larke?”
He looked at Skye, at Seth, then Romeo, but they shook their heads. He dashed around to the front of the house, spied the rest of the team unloading gear from the chopper.
He ran up to one of the Zulies. “Have you seen Larke?”
Hanes. The man shook his head.
And that’s when Riley noticed her truck was gone. He turned, cupped his hand over his eyes, but couldn’t see through the fog of smoke.
But in his gut, he knew.
He ran back to the porch, found Tucker coming off it. “Please tell me there’s another load of water coming in.”
“Yeah.”
“Tell the pilot to drop over Larke’s house.”
Tucker looked at him. “Listen, we need the water to slow it down here. The ridge will stop—”
“Larke is at her house!”
Tucker stilled, his expression stricken. Yeah, well that’s how Riley felt. “Are you sure?”
Um…
Tucker handed him his phone and Riley swiped it up and dialed. Please, please—
“Hello?”
He didn’t even bother to school his voice. “Larke, what the— Are you at your house?”
A pause, then, “I have to save it, Riley. I’m just spraying water on it—”
“You’ve got to be kidding me! The fire is coming around that side—you have to get out of there!”
“I have to save my house!”
He imagined her, a handkerchief over her face, the smoke thick, blinding her. She probably had no idea how close the fire ran. He cupped his hand over his eyes, but the smoke had thickened over the lake. She probably couldn’t even see the road if she tried to drive.
“Larke, drop your hose right now and get to the lake.”
“Riley—”
“Now!” he thundered, not even bothering to hide his panic.
“No. It’s my house—”
“It’s your life!”
“No! I’m fine—I don’t need you, Riley. I can do this!”
“Larke—”
“Stop trying to protect me—”
She started coughing.
He wanted to reach through the phone and throttle her.
“Get to the lake! Right now. I’m coming to get you!”
She was still coughing.
“Larke!”
The line cut off. “Larke!”
He wanted to throw the phone. Tucker ripped it from his grip.
Riley grabbed Tucker’s shirt. “You gotta redirect the plane—!”
“We have another drop coming but if we don’t throw it down here, we lose this fire and it keeps heading south, right into the town of Copper Mountain. She’s smart, Riley. She’ll get to the lake.”
Riley ground his molars, gave Tucker a hard look, and let him go. Spotted Barry jogging out past the house to the hangar.
The chopper.
Riley took off toward the hangar and reached the man just as he was climbing into the cockpit of his Otter.
Riley grabbed the door. “I need a ride!”
Barry frowned. “I’m just moving the plane.”
“In the chopper—I need a ride to Larke’s place.”
Barry stared at him, his eyes widening.
“Yeah, she’s there.”
The man aged a decade before his eyes as he stared out across the field, toward the lake, now clogged with smoke. His voice turned whisper thin, almost a gasp of horror. “I can’t fly the chopper through that clutter.”
Riley took a breath, nodded. And the answer was easy. “Then drop me in.”
Barry looked at him. “You can’t see where you’re dropping. You know you could land right in the fire, right? Larke’s smart. She’ll get to the lake.”
“I have more control in a ram—besides, what do you want me to do? I called her—and got cut off. She’s determined to save her house.”
Barry looked back at the horizon. The flames flickered up through the smoke and turned the lake an eerie, deep crimson. “Get your gear. I’m firing up the engine.”
Riley nodded and ran to the big barn, where they’d hung the chutes. He grabbed a jumpsuit, a helmet, gloves, and shoved a fire shelter into the leg pocket, along with a length of rope and his knife.
“Where are you going?” Tucker yelled as Riley sprinted back to the plane. Barry was already taxiing out past the strip, the flames still lapping at the edge of the burn. He angled toward the road.
Good thing they made bush pilots fearless. Or perhaps just as crazy as he was.
Tucker caught up to him. “Have you lost your mind? You can’t jump that fire!”
“I can and I will.” Riley was breathing hard, but he stopped to pull on his suit. Tucker zipped him up while he threw on his helmet.
“This is stupid and crazy, and Jed is going to kill me, so don’t die.” Tucker slapped the top of Riley’s helmet, then grabbed the grids. “Watch the wind—it’s going to carry you west into the fire. You’re on a ram, so that just might keep you alive. You want to go down as close as you can to the shore as possible. Otherwise the chute and all your gear could drag you down.”
“Keep trying Larke. Make her get to that lake.”
Tucker nodded, then picked up the chute and shoved it on Riley’s back. Turned him to click him in and check his straps.
“So help me, if you die—”
Riley turned and ran for the plane.
And to think she’d accused Riley of being reckless.
Larke tried to cut his panicked plea from her brain as she held her hose, attached to the pump in her yard. The water came from the lake, and she had turned it full force as she sprayed her house, but the wind caught the deluge and tore it from its target. She was drenched, filthy from the ash blowing through the yard, and her eyes teared, blinding her.
Smoke billowed, turning blacker as the fire roared closer. She couldn’t make it out but felt it, the sparks lighting her world to red, the breath heating her neck.
She couldn’t sort out exactly what had propelled her to jump in her truck and race down the hill toward the house. Instinct, panic. Or maybe just the sense that she had to do something.
She couldn’t lose everything, not again.
Not when she was just starting to put herself back together.
It was just a house, yes. But it had been her safe place.
Her safe meadow when she ran from the valley of death.
Get to the lake!
The last words she heard Riley say, nearly a scream as his emotions streaked through her. Then she’d coughed, dropped the phone, and the call died.
She hadn’t been able to find it again in the smoky haze that collapsed over her property.
She didn’t know what else to do but to keep trying to spray the house. To save—
Fire flickered on the roof, a tongue of flame that rippled up the cedar shakes and caught on the ridgepole.
No!
She aimed her hose, but the spray wouldn’t reach that far. More cinders blew onto the dry slats, and she wept, as much from the grit in her eyes as the destruction of her h
ome.
Smoke clogged her throat, and she bent over, her body racked with coughing. Fell to her knees.
Get to the lake!
She dropped the hose, kept her head down.
Two hundred yards away.
Except, she wasn’t sure what direction in the blackened fog.
She followed the hose line, scrambling toward the pump, and found it jutting out of the ground on a cement slab.
Maybe if she just stayed here—she unscrewed the hose and pumped water on herself, wetting the ground around her. But she couldn’t even fit her entire body onto the platform and—
The fire would simply rush over her, evaporating the water and burning her body to a crisp.
Get to the lake!
Right. She scrambled to her feet, put one hand over her mouth, the other tented over her eyes—although, really, she couldn’t see anyway, with the blur of her watery eyes, the cocoon of smoke.
She tripped, landed hard, nearly missing a head blow to a rock, and sprained her wrist.
Get up!
She closed her eyes.
Riley, in her head, a moment before he dropped over her, protecting her.
But he wasn’t with her now, was he?
Okay, she wasn’t brave or tough at all. Or maybe she was, but she was also painfully, wretchedly weak.
And maybe that’s why God had dropped Riley into her life. Because a girl like her—a tough girl, one who ran outside the fence more often than not—probably needed a guy willing to go after her.
Drag her back to safety.
Let God walk you into new paths, new pastures. Not with this guy, but with someone good. Honorable.
Yes, with this guy.
Except— Stop trying to protect me—
Larke wanted to curl into a ball and weep. Because even if Riley wanted to come after her, the road, her house—the fire engulfed it all.
She couldn’t even find her way to the lake. She scrabbled on her knees across the lawn, blinded.
Then, behind her, an explosion shook the air. She screamed and fell to the dirt, her hands over her head, her legs drawn up as dirt and debris rained over her.
Her propane tank had ignited.
The house turned into the furnace of hell, flames engulfing it. It sucked the smoke and oxygen into its vortex, and for a moment, the smoke lifted.
Enough for her to spy the lake. Blood red and cresting with waves from the firestorm.
And, dragging to shore, like the Creature from the Black Lagoon, a man garbed in a sopping wet jumpsuit, dragging a helmet from his head. He reached the shore and took off in a run, tugging a square out of his leg pocket, unzipping it as he picked up speed.
“Larke!”
She wanted to call his name, but the fire ate her attempt, coughs tearing through her. She forced herself to her knees, her breaths gritty and stiff even as she spat out dirt and soot from her lungs.
Riley!
Please let him see me. Please let him find me, drag me—
“Larke!”
She looked up and he stood over her like some kind of superhero in all that bulk, his body backlit by the flames from the house. He’d already shaken out the tarp, now he shoved his feet into the pockets at the bottom, then he fell over her, in that bulky outfit, thick and soggy, and pressed her right into the ground.
“Roll over. Head down and stay under me. Your entire body, Larke, keep it under me.”
She obeyed and felt his body practically smother her. He hooked one hand in the upper pocket, but when he reached up to grab the other, he let out a groan that she felt right through to her bones.
He couldn’t hold the shelter down. Not with his wounded shoulder. The corner flapped, and she reached out and caught the edge. Pulled it down.
“No, Larke—your hands will burn!”
“Then give me your glove.” She twisted under him, handed him the edge of the shelter, and while the fire turned to a locomotive outside, she grabbed his glove, shoved it onto her hand.
“And my suit! Shove your arm into my jumpsuit.”
He had already unzipped the top of his suit on his race up the shore, and she took the corner while he pulled his arm free. Smoke billowed into the enclave, and out of the slit she spied flames.
They lay on soggy ground, thanks to the pump, but still on green.
She shoved her hand down the vacant sleeve, through the arm hole, grabbed the corner of the shelter, and yanked it down.
Riley clamped his arm around her waist, pulled her tight to himself, his body hot against hers. “Keep your legs under mine,” he said, and she lined hers up along the strength of his. His knees dug into the soil, his legs like iron as he clamped the shelter to the earth.
“Head down. Dig a little well for our faces, if you can.”
She scrabbled out a spot in the earth with one hand, set her face in it. His wedged in beside hers.
“We’re going to make it, Larke.”
Her body started to shake as the world furied around her. The fire whipped the shelter,and sweat poured down his face. The wide collar of the jumpsuit protected their heads, and she sank into the pocket of his protection, her grip straining to keep the shelter anchored.
“You came for me,” she said, turning her face to his.
“I told you. Where you go, I go.”
Then he kissed her. A strange, awkward kiss, but sweet, and enough for her to taste the salt on his lips. Sweat, perhaps. Or maybe he’d been crying.
Yes, a hero, exactly the kind she needed.
“Now, just keep breathing.”
She nodded and put her face back into the well, listening to the fire crest over her, through her, and pour into her heart.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me…
9
Somehow Riley had landed without burning to death or drowning, somehow he’d found Larke in the clutter of the smoke and flames, and somehow he had gotten the fire shelter out, thrown over them, and bedded down in the grass.
Now he simply had to keep them alive.
And that was the problem.
First rule of fire shelters—they need to be deployed in the black. Or at least a scraped-out section of inflammable earth.
Instead he’d parked them, out of desperation and immediacy, on a soggy patch of flammable, lethal grass.
Larke’s entire body trembled beneath his, protected, yes, by his jumpsuit along with the flimsy material of the fire shelter. But even if the flames didn’t dry the earth, scorch it and lick their way inside the tent, they could just as easily bake, or suffocate from the soaring heat as the blaze cooked around them. It wasn’t uncommon to have to shelter for an hour, maybe longer.
If they lifted the shelter too soon, the air around them would still be toxic, the oxygen depleted, and they’d sear their lungs.
Riley tucked his face beside hers in the tiny well she’d scraped out for them, felt her tears on his cheekbone, and wanted to kiss them away. “It’ll be okay,” he whispered, reaching deep for hope.
“It’s so hot, Riley. It’s so…”
“I know.”
He’d looked up once, and the entire shelter had turned an eerie, burned orange. The fire had stopped roaring, but the crackling and snapping evidenced a world in flame around them.
“Maybe we should run to the lake.”
He wished he knew how long they’d been huddled together. Ten minutes? Twenty?
“No, we can’t. The air is unbreathable—”
“I can’t breathe here!”
He turned his head and pressed his lips to her hair. “I know.”
She stilled, as if trying to clamp down on her panic. Outside, a wind howled, the weather from the firestorm, and it shook the shelter.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “It’s just… It’s so hot.”
His entire body sweated, his hair soggy, his forehead dripping.
Maybe he should have run for the lake. Grabbed
her up and fled. But his instincts told him to throw down, hunker down, and…pray.
Pray.
Oh God. Please help us.
He didn’t know where it came from, maybe desperation, maybe because he had nowhere else to turn—but the words formed like a wave, crashing over him. Please, please, don’t let me have screwed this up. Keep us alive.
His breathing was coming fast, and Larke reached under her body and found his hand. She threaded her fingers through his and squeezed.
Apparently, he wasn’t radiating as much calm as he hoped.
A gust of wind washed sauna heat over them.
Larke moaned.
Riley closed his eyes. His legs and arms burned, the lactic acid building up, his shoulder achy and raw from lying on it. He felt his own moan building and shoved it back down, clenching his teeth against it.
You are their good shepherd. Protect them. Guide them. And bring them home safely.
Barry’s words picked right then to thread through him, coil around him, but he leaned into them. The Lord is my shepherd…
Riley’s breath trembled out, the heat pressing into his bones, his flesh nearly on fire.
And it had to be worse for Larke, her nightmares replaying all over again, him pinning her to the ground, turning her helpless, even if it was to save her life.
“Say it with me, Larke. I don’t know it all— ‘The Lord is my shepherd…’”
“‘I…I shall not…want.’” Her breaths were choppy. “‘He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters…’”
He closed his eyes. “‘He restoreth my soul…’”
I think your dad would still be proud of you.
His eyes burned, his throat filling. Dad…I’m sorry.
“‘He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake,’” Larke whispered.
For his name’s sake.
For a moment the old man walked into his memory. Garbed in his uniform, the dress whites, the rows and rows of medals. Packed and ready for deployment. But first a stop at church. Never go to war without God, Riley. Only when you belong completely to him can he truly use you.
“‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil,’” Riley said. “‘For thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.’”
Summer of the Burning Sky Page 36