Firestorm (28 page)

“Roger that,” the air-operations manager said.

He ran around to the other side of the helicopter and checked Reyne’s pulse again. “Reyne! Honey, wake up!”

She didn’t move.

“Reyne, sweetie,” he said, pushing back sudden tears that took him by surprise. “I’ve gotta leave you for a few minutes. Clear a spot for the chopper. I’ll be right back for you. I will. I promise. And we’re
going to get out of here.” He kissed her forehead lightly, then scrambled to his feet and back to his backpack and chain saw. Loading both up, he cast one last glance toward Reyne and then ran up the creek bed. Their lives depended on his speed, and he knew it.

Logan left the creek bed, crested the ridge, and ran another six hundred feet to the agreed-upon location for the evacuation chopper. Deciding he was far enough away from the small valley to avoid the same downdraft that had killed Gene, Logan fired up his chain saw and began cutting. Pine after pine went down, and the area was cleared when the chopper emerged from the wispy clouds of smoke above like an angel of deliverance.

He didn’t bother to watch it land. Instead, Logan glanced up at the fire, now maybe two miles away, and sprinted back toward Reyne. He nearly broke his ankle as he slid over the rounded rocks in the creek bed and fell, tumbling for a perilous moment before righting himself. But he didn’t stop running. Logan was determined to reach Reyne and get her back to the chopper in time. No dragon was going to cheat him of a life with her.

He nearly laughed in relief when he finally spotted her again and managed to clamber over to her. Pausing for a second, wondering about neck injuries, he decided that there was no time to do anything about it anyway.

He picked Reyne up and carefully slung her over one shoulder. With one last, sorrowful glance back toward Gene’s body, Logan muttered a prayer over his choices and set off in a half jog up the creek bed toward the ridge high above. He could hear the
whop
of the chopper blades in the distance, and he knew their time was short. Great Bear was nearly on top of them. Logan could feel his hot breath.

He stumbled twice as he climbed, nearly dropping Reyne to the stones at his feet. When they reached the ridge, he was so out of breath that he had to set her down, gasping. He turned to face the dragon, which was edging ever closer, the flames shooting higher than three hundred feet in the air. He could allow himself no more time.

He picked Reyne up—cradling her this time in his arms—and glanced around. The smoke was getting thicker, and the A-20 tanker was banking back toward them to dump the planned fire retardant as a precaution. They were still a good four hundred yards from the chopper.

The winds were picking up—the fire again creating its own weather pattern. Logan scowled. By the time they made it to the chopper now, it would be a miracle if the pilot could get them out. He set Reyne down and waved his arms madly at the pilot, motioning to him to get out while he still could. He and Reyne would have to ride out the firestorm in the retardant-drenched area nearby.

The chopper pilot remained where he was, hovering just above the ground for a second as if vacillating about what to do. Logan leaned toward the radio strapped to his shoulder. “Home base! This is McCabe! Get that chopper out of here! We’re taking cover in the retardant area! Over!” He screamed to be heard over the wind and prayed that the message would be audible on the other end.

He assumed they had heard him because a second later the helicopter took off, bobbing crazily in the wind. Logan prayed that the brave pilot who had tried to save them would make it. Then he concentrated on saving themselves.

The wind picked up Reyne’s hair and blew it like straw in a wind tunnel. Logan felt as if he were leaning forty-five degrees into the fierce gale. And against every instinct in him, he had to head toward
the fire—toward the clearing that lay between them and Great Bear. “Come on!” he roared at the flames towering above them, not a quarter mile away now. “Come on!”

His words sounded braver than he felt inside. But they managed to reach the clearing that the tanker had doused in retardant and waded through the thick, red muck to the very center. Logan set Reyne down, her back against his legs so she wouldn’t slump into the foam and suffocate. Then he undid the tiny square of foil to deploy one fire tent that would serve as their flooring.

The fire was almost upon them, the heat nearly unbearable as he gently laid Reyne stomach-down on the first tent and, with trembling fingers, worked to deploy a second. He looked up to see the firestorm coming toward them at breakneck speed, gobbling the brush near the edge of the clearing. He had to get them covered.

Logan set his mouth in a grim line, squinting to avoid the irritating dryness as the fire seemed to lick the moisture from his eyes. He leaned his head toward the closest flames, hoping his hair might buy him seconds. Miraculously, the second tent was deployed in record time. Logan waved it out before them and was reminded of Reyne’s description of it being like a beach towel in hurricane-force winds.

Then he was under it, tucking it around Reyne and himself, struggling to keep the flaps sealed. But before he sealed the final flap, before lying down beside Reyne, he was looking up into the face of the dragon. He had faced big fire before, but nothing like this. At last he could see what had taken her so long to get past.

There it was, towering above him in a swirling, crimson dance of flames. Its movements were hypnotic, transfixing.

It was the face of the devil himself.

W
hen Reyne regained consciousness, she blinked to make sure she wasn’t dreaming. The first thing she saw were the bright orange dots of a fire shelter—just as she had seen in her nightmares of Oxbow. Then she heard it—the familiar roar of a dragon cheated of its prey. And from the sounds of it, he was right on top of her. Instinct prodded her to flee, and in her fuzzy state of mind she moved to obey it. She tried to rise to her knees, to run, to escape the monster that threatened her.

But somebody stopped her. “No!” he yelled, leaning more heavily upon her.

She turned her head and found herself staring into Logan’s blue eyes. Shaking her head as if still dreaming, she looked around as best she could. It appeared that they were sharing a fire tent, and Logan was half shielding her with his own body.

“It’s good to see you’re awake!” he shouted, smiling at her as sweat dripped into his eyes. He seemed oblivious to the fact that a fire was raging outside.

“Where are we?” she yelled back to him.

“Riding out Great Bear!”

It all came back to her. She frowned and glanced back at Logan. “Gene?” she asked in a single shouted word.

Logan grimaced and shook his head slightly. “I’m sorry!”

Reyne laid her head back on the foil material beneath her cheek, suddenly very, very weary. She gave in to the sudden desire to slip back into the blackness without a fight.

Logan studied her thirty minutes later as the fire abated. Periodically, he would lift a corner of the tent to check, but it was still too hot for them to escape their flimsy shields. At last she roused, coming back to the land of the living, and Logan smiled, wanting his grin to be the first thing she saw.

She opened her eyes as if it pained her to do so and then wearily smiled back. “Is it over?” she asked, now able to speak in a normal voice.

“The worst of it.” He kept smiling.

“And what’s making you so happy? That we lived?”

“That we lived through it together. Reyne, we just survived a firestorm together. If we can get through that, we can get through anything. I have high hopes for our marriage, Mrs. McCabe-to-be.”

Reyne lifted her head and brought a hand to her cheek. The retardant had managed to seep through the minuscule holes of the tent below them and had coated their bodies in red. She wiped away some of the sludge. “I think I’ll need a bath before we go to the altar, Mr. Oldre-to-be.”

“Uh-oh,” Logan groaned. “We haven’t discussed the whole name issue, have we?”

“I don’t think it will be an issue,” she said with a small smile. She grew more serious. “Logan, I would’ve died back there … If you hadn’t come …”

Logan nodded silently. Then he said, “I couldn’t do anything
else, Reyne.” Their eyes held for a long, intense moment. Then he looked away, again checking a corner of the tent. “I think it’s safe to get out,” he said. “You feel up to standing?”

“If you’ll help me.”

Logan rose and tossed away the foil shelter. All around them was a charred wasteland that would have smelled overwhelmingly of smoke had it not been for the pervasive detergent odor of retardant all about them. Logan helped Reyne to a sitting position, then leaned toward his radio. “Home base, this is McCabe. Over.”

Ken’s excited voice popped over the line a second later. They could hear laughing and yelling behind him. “McCabe, is that you? You made it? How about Reyne? Over.”

“We’re both well and accounted for. How about a lift home? Over.”

“You’ve got it,” Ken said jubilantly. “We’ll have a chopper at the original clearing in twenty minutes. Over.”

“Sounds good. Over and out.” Logan switched off the intercom and then knelt beside Reyne to study the blackened landscape before them.

W
ithin days, the last tendrils of Great Bear’s smoldering fire had been stomped out by groundpounders, and not a moment too soon. Due to the supreme effort put forth from the valley’s people, even the evacuated ranches had been spared. There would be more fires to fight that fall, but none were as big and dangerous as Great Bear.

As fire season finally drew to a welcome close, Reyne and Logan found more and more time to plan their wedding and recuperate from the summer’s exertions and losses. It was a lovely autumn, crisp and cool, and they relished it after languishing in the excruciatingly hot summer climates that supported their livelihood.

They spent many days puttering around Logan’s ’51 Chevy, fussing about details, and Reyne even got him to help her in revitalizing her battered garden, planting lots of autumn flowers that sported various shades of gold, orange, and red. The beds of chrysanthemums and marigolds gave her cottage a warm, welcoming look.

One day they went for another drive into the back country, wanting to survey Great Bear’s damage from the inside out.

Another day they drove Logan’s truck far out on a country road and parked. They snuggled under several old quilts in the back as they watched the harvest moon rise, and then they made their way back to town when the moon sank over the opposite horizon.

On a lovely October evening, in the quiet forest clearing where
they had enjoyed their first dinner date, they had their wedding. Logan had painstakingly recreated the scene, stringing strand after strand of tiny white lights. Only a small group of fifty or so close friends and family members were invited, and even they filled the small clearing to capacity, edging into the forest in places.

As a hired violinist played, Reyne smoothed her simple raw-silk gown and waited for her mother to settle the short veil over her face. She smiled at her mom, then took her place between her parents to walk down the “aisle.” She looked down the pathway and spotted her handsome husband-to-be standing beside Arnie Lear. Beside them stood Thomas Wagner, Mike Moser, and other grinning firefighting friends dressed in their bright yellow Nomex shirts, which were clean for the occasion. As she drew near her groom, heart-stopping in his black tuxedo, Dirk and Rachel Tanner smiled at them from one side, Matt Morgan from the other. Little Hope stood beside him clutching a little basket, having done her duty as flower girl. And somewhere, Reyne was sure, Beth was looking on and smiling.

When she reached Logan, he stepped to her side, and the rest of the group circled them. It felt to Reyne as if they were enfolded in a circle of love. Arnie spoke eloquently of love and trust and the holy bond of matrimony, and Logan’s fingers were steady as he slipped a narrow band of diamonds onto her ring finger, next to the woven engagement band. The rings met and meshed, and Reyne resisted the urge to stare at them again. There would be plenty of time for that later.

She took Logan’s ring from Rachel—a matching band of three woven strands—and smiled up into Logan’s eyes. “With this ring, I thee wed,” she repeated after Arnie while gazing steadily, tenderly, at
Logan alone. And as the sun set in a fiery display of orange and red, Arnie Lear pronounced them husband and wife.

At the grange hall reception, after eating a huge, catered meal outside, the firefighters present pulled out hidden Pulaskis and saluted the couple military style, crossing them between two rows and creating a tunnel for Reyne and Logan to rush through. As soon as they were through, she and Logan started the dancing with their own private whirl around the floor, and afterward Reyne was swept from one man’s hands to the next as the men lined up to dance with her.

More than an hour later, when Mike Moser’s turn was finished, he handed her a crisp fifty-dollar bill. “What’s this for?” she asked, her spirits high. “You don’t have to pay me to dance with you. You’re really not that bad.”

“It’s a bet I had with your husband!” he yelled over the band’s music. He gave her a merry smile. “Last spring he told me he’d marry you by fall or pay me a hundred dollars!”

“Oh he did, did he?” she asked, planning to give her husband a bad time as soon as she caught up with him. She turned and glanced around the hall, looking for him. He obviously had had one eye on her, and when Reyne met his gaze, she got his full attention.

She cracked the bill like she meant to make Logan pay for every dollar of it. He laughed, seeing Mike’s shrug behind her, and then strode toward her to collect his own dance.

“Would you accept another dance with your new husband?” he asked with one eyebrow jauntily tilted upward.

“That depends,” she said, hands on hips. “The going rate is quite high.”