Chasing Fire

bloomed like flowers, burst like grenades, simmered like shallow pools. The wind colluded, thickened the smoke, giving loft to sailing firebrands.
    Gull smothered, dug, doused, beat, then laughed his way through the nasty work as Dobie started naming the spots.
    “Fucking Assistant Principal Brewster!” Dobie stomped out the licking flames. “Suspended me for smoking in the bathroom.”
    “High school sucks.”
    “Middle school. I got an early start.”
    “Priming your lungs for your life’s work,” Gull decided as he moved on to another.
    “That’s fucking Gigi Japper. Let me at her. She dumped me for a ball player.”
    “Middle school?”
    “Last year. Bastard plays slow-pitch softball. Can you beat that? Slow-pitch softball. How does that count for anything?”
    “You’re better off without her.”
    “Damn straight. Well, Captain, I believe we’ve secured this line, and recommend we cut across from here and start scouting north. I’m still looking for crazy old Mr. Cotter, used to shoot at my dog just because the pup liked to shit in his petunias.”
    “We’ll beat the hell out of old Mr. Cotter together.”
    “That’s a true friend.”
    They ate lunch, dinner, breakfast—who the hell knew?—on the quickstep hike, chowing down on Hooah! bars, peanut-butter crackers, and the single apple from Gull’s pack they passed back and forth.
    “I love this job,” Dobie told him. “I didn’t know as I would. I knew I could do it, knew I would. Figured I’d like it okay. But I didn’t know it’s what I was after. Didn’t know I was after anything.”
    “If it gets its hooks in you, you know it’s what you were after.” That, Gull thought, covered smoke jumping and women.
    Murdered trees stood, black skeletons in the thinning smoke. Wind trickled through, sending them to moan, scooping up ash that swirled like dirty fairy dust.
    “It’s like one of those end-of-the-world movies,” Dobie decided. “Where some meteor destroys most every goddamn thing, and what’s left are mutant scavengers and a handful of brave warriors trying to protect the innocent. We can be the warriors.”
    “I was counting on being a mutant, but all right. Look at that.” Gull pointed east where the sky glowed red above towers of flame. “Half the time I can’t understand how I can hate it and still think it’s beautiful.”
    “I felt that way about fucking Gigi Japper.”
    Laughing, somehow completely happy to be hot and filthy alongside his strangely endearing friend, Gull studied the fire as they hiked—the breadth of it, the colors and tones, the shapes.
    On impulse, he pulled his camera out of his PG bag. A photo couldn’t translate its terrifying magnificence, but it would remind him, over the winter. It would remind him.
    Dobie stepped into the frame, set his Pulaski on his shoulder, spread his legs, fixed a fierce expression on his face. “Now, take a picture. ‘Dragon-slayer.’ ”
    Actually, Gull thought when he framed it in, the title seemed both apt and accurate. He took two. “Eat your heart out, Gigi.”
    “Fucking A! Come on, son, time’s a’wasting.”
    He took off with a swagger as Gull secured his camera.
    “Gull.”
    “Yeah.” He glanced up from zipping his PG bag to see Dobie in nearly the same pose, reversed with his back to him. “Camera’s secured, handsome.”
    “You better come on over here. Take a look at this.”
    Alerted by the tone, Gull moved fast, stared when Dobie pointed. “Is that what I think it is?”
    “Aw, shit.”
    The remains lay, a grim signpost on the charred trail.
    “Jesus, Gull, looks like the mutants have been through here.” Dobie staggered a few feet away, braced his hands on his knees, and puked up his energy bars.
    “Like Dolly,” Gull murmured. “Except . . .”
    “Christ, I feel like a pussy. Losing my lunch.” Bone-white beneath the layer of soot, Dobie took a pull of water, spat it out. “He started the fire, the cocksucker, right here. Like with Dolly.” He rinsed again, spat again, then drank. “He did all this.”
    “Yeah, except I don’t think he did this to try to hide the body, or destroy it. Maybe it’s so we’d find it, or for attention, or because the son of a bitch likes fire. And it’s not like Dolly because this one’s got what’s got to be a bullet hole dead in the forehead.”
    Bracing himself, Dobie stepped over again, looked. “Christ, I think you’re right about that.”
    “I guess I should’ve taken