Heartland (7 page)

A blood red sun glared down from an acrid sky. Angry streamers poured up from the west, black and gritty and laced with heat. Loudspeakers hanging from the chuck wagon's corners blared “I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow.” Three soot-blackened firefighters sprawled on the earth beside the paramedic station, coughing into oxygen masks. They watched JayJay and his team stride by, wearing their pristine fire-retardant jackets and their axes and shovels sparkling in the wretched light. The bedraggled firefighters didn't say anything. They didn't need to.

JayJay said, “Don't worry about it, friends. Come sunset, we'll be just as dirty.”

Minh was the only one who managed a smile. “Have you ever fought fires?”

“Been through a lot, sister. But this here is a first.”

As they entered the forest, a woman so hoarse she had lost all but the last shred of her voice stood in a fork of the trail. “The line is three hundred meters straight ahead. Listen for the claxon. If the wind rises we've got to clear out of here fast.”

The trail was rimmed by fire hoses that writhed and slid like canvas snakes. They passed through a clearing that held a half dozen houses. Families frantically packed SUVs. People hosed down roofs. Two women standing in the nearest home's front drive hugged in tear-streaked terror.

“I'm frightened,” Minh confessed.

“I'm sure glad to hear it,” JayJay replied. “Hate to think I was the only fellow scared out of his tiny mind.”

Robbie asked, “What's that sound?”

Ahn replied, “Take a guess.”

But it didn't sound like a fire. It sounded
alive
. A growling roar rose ahead and to their left, an angry rumbling JayJay felt in his chest.

They followed the sound of chain saws and bulldozers. The fire line was such an astounding sight they froze at the point where the trail opened. Another woman was clearly used to the response, for she started grabbing sleeves and pointing them ahead. Another man waved to them. He pointed to the shrub. Then to the people scurrying to either side.

“Come on,” JayJay yelled. “We got work to do.”

“Hold it right there, you two.”

Derek pointed to the yellow letters on his vest. “Press.”

“Hey, I'm so impressed I can't hardly stand it.” The bearish guy's soot-stained helmet read
Boss
. He turned his head and coughed. His throat sounded semiruined. “Out here you either follow my orders or you leave, got me?”

“Sure, Boss.”

“You ever been on a burn?”

“I have, Boss. More times than I can count.”

“Then you should know better than to head out on your own.”

“We're trying to catch up with JayJay Parsons.”

“What, the actor from
Heartland
?”

“He was on the church bus with those kids.”

The guy grinned. His teeth looked impossibly white. “This is a joke, right?”

“No, Boss. No joke.”

“Okay, but you still got to team up.” He scouted around. A trio of weary firefighters were gathering their gear from a pile by the oxygen tanks. “You guys headed back out?”

“Got to get that line done,” one replied, then had to cough from the effort of speaking.

“Take this pair with you.” To Derek and Peter he said, “Grab coats and helmets from the pile by the ambulance.”

The firefighters glared at where
Press
was written on their vests. “Why us?”

“They need a team, you're it. And keep an eye out for JayJay Parsons.”

“The actor? For real?”

“All I know is what these two are saying. But if you find him, do us a favor and keep the six o'clock news from telling the world we toasted my favorite TV star.”

Chapter 8

T
here was no room for anything but
speed
.

The din was earsplitting. Bulldozers driven by insane men with lightning reflexes shoved down tree after tree. Chain saws chopped off the branches. JayJay and his team joined sweaty, soot-blackened workers pulling the debris into mountains on the opposite side of the line from the approaching burn. The line was a hundred and fifty feet wide and ran off in both directions to where ridgelines became swallowed by smoke. Their task was to widen the line. The four of them wrestled mammoth branches and fragments across the stumpy earth. No one needed to tell them to hurry. Every hint of wind carried the threat of the enemy.

JayJay welcomed the work. He relished everything about it. The people, the hoarse commands he couldn't understand, the sweat, the aching muscles, the heaving chest. This was
real
. The sparks that floated in the air and burned the exposed skin of his neck were not just painful. They
anchored
him. The tormenting thoughts were banished. He was among new friends. He was doing something useful. Something important.

He had never felt so alive.

Derek's mouth almost touched his ear. Even so, Peter scarcely made out the question, “Do you see him?”

“Are you kidding?” Peter had never experienced such sensory overload. His mind threatened to shut down. He wanted to curl up in a safe corner, close his eyes, and just make the whole thing go away. He could scarcely hear himself, much less Derek. The noise held such intensity it assaulted his brain.

A trio of planes lumbered by overhead, so close Peter thought he might be able to reach up and touch them. They were followed by two helicopters, the big ones with two rotors each. The choppers carried huge buckets on long metal lines. The buckets almost scraped the treetops. Then they were gone, but the noise level remained the same. As though the din had reached a point where it could not grow any louder. Just change in nature. The dozers and the chain saws and the fire formed fists of noise. He had never heard a burn before. But he knew the sound. It could not be anything else.

He jerked as one of the firefighters grabbed his sleeve. The man's words were lost to the din. But Peter read the man's lips.
Stay close
.

They jogged across the clearing. The fire line was frightening in its unnatural straightness. And the people. Hundreds and hundreds of people. All of them moving at breakneck speed. Gestures took the place of words. Everybody worked in frantic coordination.

One of Peter's team grabbed an idle chain saw. Peter flinched as the man gave the handle an easy toss and the machine whined to life. He had always hated the sound of those things. Now he was surrounded by a hundred of them. All screaming and biting and cutting.

Derek punched his shoulder. He pointed to a group of four people who came and went in the drifting smoke. He said something Peter missed entirely. Then he started walking.

“Wait!” Peter glanced nervously at the guys they had arrived with. But the firefighters were intent on a felled tree. Peter stumbled after Derek. The earth was rutted and jumbled, the going made treacherous by deep bulldozer furrows and exposed roots. The mud was glutinous. Yet even carrying the camera, Derek sprinted toward the foursome. Peter followed only because he was terrified of getting lost and never finding his way out again.

Derek stopped without warning and dropped to the earth. He was still thirty paces from the four. He braced his elbows on the highest stump in the clearing. He focused. Took a slow breath. Then hit the trigger.

Derek did a slow sweep of the entire scene. Taking in the dozers and the saws and the workers and the angry sky. He lingered on the smoke overhead. Then he drew in close and tight. Taking aim at one group in particular. Four people hauling a branch. Four out of hundreds. Struggling with just another huge branch.

Then Peter saw him.

JayJay's face was streaked like an Indian's. His teeth were drawn back in a snarl of sweaty effort. The reddish-gold hair emerging from his helmet was matted to his forehead. The four of them were dwarfed by the pine branch they carried. Even so, they
ran
. JayJay Parsons and three others. Two of whom were Oriental. The fourth guy had freckles and looked about seventeen. They were all clearly very scared. They dumped the branch. Kicked it well back out of the clearing. Stood breathing hard for a minute. Then they turned and headed back across the line for the next branch.

Peter found his breath returning to normal. He took a more comfortable position on the ground beside Derek. He took mild notice of the wet seeping through his trousers. He no longer cared. His mind had moved into creative mode.

He did a slow three-sixty, trying to embed everything into his brain. He did not need to watch JayJay. Derek would do that for them both. What he needed was to get all of this down so tightly he could go back and make it live on the page.

He came back around. And found Derek grinning at him. The camera was propped on the stump. Peter moved in so close their helmets clicked. “This is the first episode for next season!”

“Now you're thinking!” Derek pointed ahead. “Let's change position so I can shoot them against the sun!”

“What sun?”

“Exactly!” Derek clambered to his feet. His legs were caked with the viscous mud. Ash speckled his coat. His face and hands were gray-black. His eyes were on fire. “Let's go!”

The wind caught them totally by surprise.

One moment the four of them were wrestling just another branch across the line, with the mud clinging to their boots like red claws. The next, the world vanished.

JayJay started coughing before his mind fully registered the change. The world was
gone
. At first he thought it must have been another of those giant choppers passing too close overhead, clamping the smoke to the earth. Only he could not hear the rotors' deep thrumming. Yet the air was pushing
down
on them. Not from the north where the fire burned. Straight down. Compressing the air and the smoke to the earth. Blinding them. Making his lungs burn like he had taken a double helping of ash.

The claxon added a ghostly panic to the invisible scene. The alarm whooped up and down the scale. But from which direction? The wind was as great an enemy as the fire. It made the noise come from all directions at once. It rammed the smoke and the flames down JayJay's throat.

JayJay dropped his hold on the branch. He tried to shout, but the words barely croaked from his throat. “Where's my team?”

If anything, the smoke grew even thicker. The sky overhead ate the sun completely. He heard coughing. He groped in the direction he thought the cough came from. His glove gripped another shoulder. JayJay flung his arms around the unseen figure. The man was almost his height, which meant it had to be Robbie. The way Robbie clung to him, JayJay knew he was not the only one who had panicked. Feeling the young man's muscled strength beneath the jacket drew JayJay back from the brink.

He stripped off his belt, reached around, and found Robbie's arm. He planted one end of the belt into Robbie's hand. He drew his helmet in tight to Robbie's. “Don't let go!”

“Where are the others?”

“Stoop down and hunt! One hand only!”

JayJay found the body by stumbling over it. He had no idea whether it was Ahn or Minh. Only that the body was small and still except for tremors that did not quite form into full coughs.

The chain saws and the bulldozers grew silent. The fire still roared at them from all sides. Other hoarse voices called out names and confusing directions. The claxon whooped and shrilled and offered no clearer a course than the fire.

JayJay clearly heard Robbie croak, “I've found Ahn!”

Which meant it was Minh that JayJay was slinging onto his shoulder. “One of you strip off your jacket!” He did not recognize his own voice. “Grab hold of the arms. Everybody stay together!”

“Where is Minh?”

“I've got her.”

“Where do we go?”

“I'm working on it.” JayJay shifted Minh so that she rode easier on his shoulder. At least it was the lightest of the team that had gone down. He squinted and looked straight up. Ash and burning cinders pelted his face. He blinked away the blinding tears and forced himself to keep staring at the unseen sky.

A panic-stricken voice shrilled, “The flames! They're coming!
I can see them!

”

“Hold hard there, brother. You ain't burning yet.” Then it came. The one solid opening he had been waiting for. There and gone in a single frantic heartbeat. But enough for JayJay to get a sighting on the sun. But he also lost hold of his belt. “Where are you at!”

A panicked voice tremored, “Here.”

“Here don't mean nothing in this soup. Follow my voice. Okay, I got you, no, don't grab, I'm carrying somebody.”

Ahn cried,
“Minh!”

“You stay calm too. I got your sister.” JayJay heard other voices calling with the authority of having made the same sighting as him. Which added to his confidence. “Everybody listen up! Grab hold of anybody you get within reach of, but only use your free hand! I spotted the sun. Okay, let's move!”

They had only gone about thirty paces when JayJay tripped over a coughing form and almost went down. Half turning, he called back, “Robbie!”

“Yo.”

“Grab my jacket. I need my other hand.” He scooped up the unseen figure. “You got to help me, mister. I'm too burdened down to bear your weight.”

The guy tried his best. But he was coughing and hacking so hard he kept wanting to fold again. “Mister, you got to stay up, we don't have that far to go.” Each word raked another furrow in his throat. JayJay hacked and came up dry. “Come on, keep walking, that's it. We're almost there.”

But he wasn't sure where “there” was until he recognized the hoarse female voice that had directed them off the trail and into the fire line. “Okay, y'all get ready. On my count, we're all gonna shout together, ‘The trail is over here.' Ready? One, two,
three
.”

They didn't make much of a dent, even calling together. But the news was caught by those closest and passed back. At JayJay's command they did it again. Then other shadow figures were closing in. And JayJay was still holding a supine form. “Let's go!”