Flash Fire (12 page)

They had the windows down and he pushed the button that raised them. He felt oddly less safe with the windows closed, as if he had constructed a coffin instead of an escape route.

Time to test the Suburban.

He drove half onto the high, cut-in-the-hill side of the driveway, his right wheels tilted up the wall instead of flat on the road, and then he accelerated, rocketing past the danger at such an angle they might just tip over and land in the very fire he wanted to avoid, but they didn’t, and he hit the next switchback far too fast. They missed going over the edge by very little, instead knocking a whole row of sandbags down into the canyon below.

His little sister clapped. “Oooh, Beau, you’re such a good driver! This is such fun.”

And it was.

Beau had never had so much fun. Not scuba diving off Australia, not backpacking in the Rockies, not exploring volcano rims in Hawaii.

This was pretty neat. Of course, they were going to lose the house. But as his dad and every neighbor always said, these are the risks you take to live in paradise.

Beau and Elisabeth began laughing with a sort of weird delight. They were having a real adventure. Not a fake, travel-agency type adventure, not a pay-lots-of-money-and-get-a-little-nervous-while-your-guides-protect-you type adventure. The real thing.

E
LONY DESPERATELY WANTED ANOTHER
cigarette. How funny, when she was going to die from smoke, that she still ached to fill her lungs with it on purpose.

Fires hitting the wiring of the houses on Pinch Canyon touched off alarm systems. The screeching of burglar alarms echoed and reechoed through the canyon.

Elony assumed that this ugly racket would bring rescuers rushing into Pinch Canyon.

Pinch Canyon people were rich. They would have left nothing to chance. Although everything had gone wrong up there on the hillside, down here on the road, everything would be right.

So even though she was terrified, walking toward Grass Canyon with a dripping purple burden on her shoulder and fire on both sides, she was not actually worried.

W
ENDY FINISHED BLOW-DRYING HER
hair and paid careful attention to her makeup. In order to stay young and lithe and perfect, she worked her muscles hard. After exercise, however, it was key to look as if she never dreamed of exercise, as if this beautiful body was a gift.

“Mrs. Severyn? Mr. Severyn is on the phone for you,” said one of the attendants, smiling, and handing her a portable phone.

“Hello, darling,” said Wendy Severyn, fastening an earring.

“Wendy, they evacuated Pinch Canyon. I don’t know if the children are all right.”

The bottom fell out of everything. She felt as if she had lost her heart and lungs and the soles of her feet, as if even her brains were sliding down into the vortex. “They didn’t answer the beeper?” she said. They always answered the beeper; that was the point; that was why you had beepers.

“Wendy, try to get through from your direction. I’ve hitched a ride from the south, but you’re north of them, maybe the roads aren’t as jammed up there. Get in the car. Now.”

“But where shall I go?” she cried. “If they’ve evacuated Pinch — ”

“I think the high school is the evacuation point. I’ll head for Pinch, you head for the high school. We’ll keep calling each other and one of us will find the children.”

He disconnected. Just like that, with no details, no comfort, no nothing, Aden was gone. She handed the phone back to the attendant without seeing her.

Beau,
she thought.
Oh, Beau!

Wendy Severyn had no use for guilt. Guilt and worry were bad for your complexion, your sleep, and your peace of mind.

So she told herself it was not guilt she was feeling, this sick mud slide of emotion at the bottom of her soul.

She did not want their beautiful wonderful house burned. She did not want one molecule of her life changed, except maybe for Elisabeth to be more acceptable. She resented the fire for touching
her
part of the world; and when she walked outdoors and saw the evil black sky, and the orange sunset where the sun was not setting, and choked in the particle-laden air, and had to use the windshield wipers to remove ash before she could drive — well, really!

She drove fast, lips in a pout.

I know they’re all right. They have to be all right. If they’re not all right, it won’t be my fault. Nobody can blame me, nobody can say I didn’t do my best.

But nobody had said.

The only person saying that was Wendy herself.

The windshield wipers of her mind cleared her thinking painfully and hideously.

I didn’t do my best, she thought.

D
ANNA HAD PLENTY OF
time to study the fire.

The fire seemed to study her right back, like a thief planning how to break in and what to take.

Spice had jerked back and this time Danna had let go of the lead, afraid of where Spice would land. The horse moved sideways, jittering around, and then he bolted. There was not one thing Danna could do except hope that Spice went away from the fire and not toward it.

Should she let go of Egypt, too, and let him run? She felt better hanging onto him; he was company. She could not bear to die alone.

It was strange to be fourteen and know you were going to die. Like Joan of Arc, you were going to be burned at the stake. There was no stake here, though. No ropes tying her up. Not even a pile of sticks around her feet to which her enemies were setting fire.

Danna had been her own enemy.

She was so afraid that fear gave up and melted and she was not afraid. She was simply waiting.

She tried to move the broken leg, but it didn’t obey her.

She tried to fall over and start crawling, but the pain when she changed position was so great she couldn’t make herself do it. This isn’t logical, she said to herself. Any pain is better than death by burning. Think how painful that will be!

Let go of Egypt, she ordered herself. He’s doomed, standing with me. He’ll run. He’s huge. Fast. He can run over fire or through it.

She forced herself to unwrap her clenched fingers from the leather rope. Egypt did not appear to notice this and stayed right where he was. I could give him a good whack, make him run, she thought. But her body didn’t do it. The arm she needed to extend wouldn’t allow her to lose her balance like that.

She thought she saw Hall coming. In the swirling smoke, like a curtain with holes in it —
now you see me, now you don’t,
it snickered — he seemed to take a long time. Or else, more likely, he was a mirage of pointless hope.

“Where,” said Danna Press out loud, “is an
ARMED RESPONSE
when you really need one?”

H
ALL HEARD HER THROUGH
the smoke. “Yo!” he shouted. “Armed Response! Where are you?”

“Right here!” his sister shrieked.

She was, too, right there. The smoke was so thick he had not been able to see her only a few yards away. What happened to the paddock fence? he thought, confused because he had expected to find it as a landmark. Then realized the fire had already eaten it. His feet weren’t burning off because the constant use of the paddock by Egypt and Spice had killed any grass, so it was bare ground, and had offered no fuel. Fire was all around them, but only knee-high, and not actually on top of them, and the driveway, at this moment, still offered a path.

Not a safe path, but a path.

He waved his arms windmill fashion, as if he thought he could sweep the smoke away from them, and it was a major error, because Egypt, already terrified, went berserk at the churning arms suddenly appearing in his face. The horse reared, not whinnying so much as screaming, high and long like an engine whistle, not a horse, and then he ran. His sweaty filthy flank brushed hard against Hall, but Hall was more shocked by how hot the horse’s hide was than how close he’d come to getting run over by the neighbor’s horse.

His sister was just standing there, as if the fire had turned her to stone. That terrified him more than the fire or the bolting horse, and that was saying something.

“I broke my leg,” said Danna conversationally. She was hoarse from smoke, as if she’d been screaming for hours. “Egypt kicked it.”

He couldn’t worry about Egypt and Spice now. “Which leg?”

She pointed.

Hall was nine inches taller than Danna but he was still adolescent thin. He hoped, prayed, that he was adult male strong. Adrenaline turned out to be pretty neat. He squatted slightly, his back to Danna, grabbed her thighs and lifted. Then he adjusted his hips until she was sitting okay on his butt. When she stopped screaming, he started walking. The damaged leg didn’t look that bad, sort of like two knees on the same leg, but no bleeding. It was the scream that was awful, torn out of Danna’s lungs and lasting until he thought he would throw up.

When the screams ended, she leaned on top of him, hunched and panting. More animal than person: heaving lungs and hanging tongue. She was hideously heavy. He could not believe a small person could be so heavy. He thought of the distance down the driveways, and the fire closing in, and the lack of cars.

He resolved to think of nothing but lifting his feet. He would not pay attention to the weight on his back, any more than the horses would have paid attention to it. Lifting feet was the thing, putting them ahead of each other, as far ahead as his knees would allow.

Somehow they passed the carcass of his own house, without Hall’s back or mind breaking. Somehow they turned the final switchback and somehow he knew he would make it to the canyon bottom. Don’t think about what’s down there, he said to himself. Don’t think. Thinking’s bad. Feet. Lift feet.

“The kittens,” gasped his sister. “Hall, get the kittens.”

Like he could almost bend over and pick up a carton of kittens.

He tried to tell her that was ridiculous, he hardly had enough oxygen to manage his feet with, these things happened, and there you were, but he found he could not carry his feet past the kittens either. Somehow he curled even tighter in the spine and somehow found the strength to close his fingertips on the box and tuck it against his stomach. Danna’s hands roped his throat, her one knee bit into his side, her broken leg hung stupidly, and the kittens found the oxygen Hall wanted for himself, and screamed huge kitten screams for freedom.

His feet had memorized their pattern and his mind returned to thinking and suddenly, he could not believe how much there was to think about. Elony and Geoffrey — were they making it to Pinch Canyon Road okay? What other families were home? Who had a car? Who would pick them up? Where were the rescue vehicles? Could a helicopter land in this? How bad was it at the mouth of Pinch? If they got out on Grass, would they be okay? How long would his back stand this? If his back gave in, what would he do? Drag his sister? Could they do a three-legged march?

A
T THE BOTTOM OF
the driveway, Beau paused like a normal driver in a normal situation and looked left and right.

To the left was a scurrying little Hispanic woman carrying a purple rug.

To the right —

There are other people here! thought Beau, sick that he had forgotten —
completely
forgotten — that his was not the only family on Pinch Canyon Road. Some housemaid was trying to outrun the fire.

He turned right,
away
from the woman.

Elisabeth screamed, “Beau! You monster! We have to get her!”

“We are getting her! Calm down. I’m going to back up. I don’t want to be facing the fire. I want to be facing the exit. I’m just being sensible.” A purple rug, thought Beau. Now I ask you. With all the things you could save…

He accelerated very quickly, far faster than he had ever backed a car or even seen a car backed, and the woman moved into the half-burning scrub at the edge of the road to wait for him.

Elisabeth slid over the back of the seat and opened the door for the woman.

The purple rug was sopping wet.

When the maid unrolled it, it contained a beautiful little boy.

It was that creepy little Aszling kid. The adoption that failed.

And I thought she was saving a piece of carpet, thought Beau, ashamed. I couldn’t even find car keys, and she’s out there saving a life.

The woman was too tired to lift the little boy, so Beau put the car in Park and raced around the vehicle to help them both in.

“We wait,” said the woman.

Words throbbed in his skull like stunted basketball cheers.
Drive-drive-drive! Go-go-go! Fire-fire-fire! Run-run-run!

She was just a girl, his own age. Extremely pretty. Thick straight black hair half up in some sort of knot and the rest like a ribbon down her back. Enormous eyes, like a painting on velvet of a waif by the side of a road.

“We’re not waiting,” said Beau. He put the Aszling kid in the center seat and strapped his seat belt on. The fire was not so scary when you were actually driving and it felt as if you were escaping. But fumbling with seat belts and wasting valuable oxygen on pointless discussions, it felt as if the fire were a murderer with a submachine gun already aimed.

“Wait for Hall and Danna,” explained Geoffrey.

“Why, Geoffrey, I never heard you talk before,” said Elisabeth, delighted.

Beau was sick with urgency. Gale force winds were filling the canyon now. The fire’s heat was lifting sleeves and hair as if there were going to be a hurricane.
“Hall and Danna Press are still in their house!”

Geoffrey nodded. “Horses.”

“Whose horses?”
screamed Beau. He could not lower his voice. He knew that panic was going to come inside him through the door of his shrieking.

“Egypt and Spice,” said Geoffrey.