Chasing Fire

spectacular on you.”
    “I can’t disagree with that. Still, everybody should stop worrying about Rowan and do their jobs.”
    By four P.M., she was jumping fire, doing hers.

23
     
    J uly burned. Hot and dry, the wild ignited, inflamed by lightning strikes, negligence, an errant spark bellowed by a gust of wind.
    For eighteen straight days and nights Zulies jumped and fought fire. In Montana, in Idaho, Colorado, California, the Dakotas, New Mexico. Bodies shed weight, lived with pain, exhaustion, injury, battling in canyons, on ridges, in forests.
    The constant war left little time to think about what lived outside the fire. The manhunt for Leo Brakeman heading into its third week hardly mattered when the enemy shot firebrands the size of cannonballs or swept on turbulent winds over barriers so effortfully created.
    Along with her crew, Rowan rushed up the side of Mount Blackmore, like a battalion charging into hell. Beside her another tree torched off, spewing embers like flaming confetti. They felled burning trees on the charge, sawed and cut the low-hanging branches the fire could climb like snakes.
    Can’t let her climb, Rowan thought as they hacked and dug. Can’t let her crown.
    Can’t let her win.
    So they fought their way up the burning mountain, sweat running in salty rivers in the scorched air.
    When Gull climbed up the line to her position, she pulled down her bandanna to pour water down her aching throat.
    “The line’s holding.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “A couple of spots jumped it, but we pissed them out. Gibbons is going to leave a couple down there to scout for more, and send the rest up to you.”
    “Good deal.” She took another drink, scanning and counting yellow shirts and helmets through the smoke. On the left the world glowed, eerie orange with an occasional spurt of flame that picked out a hardened, weary face, tossed it into sharp relief.
    In that moment, she loved them, loved them all with a near religious fervor. Every ass and elbow, she thought, every blister and burn.
    Her eyes lit when she looked at Gull. “Best job ever.”
    “If you don’t mind starving, sweating and eating smoke.”
    Grinning, she shouldered her Pulaski. “Who would? Head on up. We’re still making line here so—” She broke off, grabbed his arm.
    It spun out of the orange wall, whipped by the wind. The funnel of flame whirled and danced, spinning a hundred feet into the air. In seconds, screaming like a banshee, it uprooted two trees.
    “Fire devil . Run! ” She pointed toward the front of the line as its wind blasted the furnace heat in her face. She grabbed her radio, watching the flaming column’s spin as she shouted to the crew, “Go up, go up! Move your asses. Gibbons, fire devil, south flank. Stay clear. ”
    It roared toward the line, a tornadic gold light as gorgeous as it was terrifying, spewing flame, hurling fiery debris. The air exploded with the call of it, with its lung-searing heat. She watched Matt go down, saw Gull haul him up, take his weight. Keeping her eye on the fire devil, she shifted, got her shoulder under Matt’s other arm.
    “Just my ankle. I’m okay.”
    “Keep moving! Keep moving!”
    It snaked toward them, undulating. They’d never outrun it, she thought, not with Matt stumbling and limping between them. Behind Matt’s back, Gull’s hand gripped her elbow, and in acknowledgment, she did the same.
    This is it. Even thinking it she pushed up the ridge. No time for emergency gear, for the shelters.
    “There!” Gull jerked her, with Matt between them, to the right, and another five precious feet. He shoved her under the enormous boulder first, then Matt, before crawling under behind them.
    “Here we go,” Gull breathed, and stared into Rowan’s eyes while the world erupted.
    Rock exploded and rained down like bullets. Through smoke black as pitch, Rowan saw a blazing tree crash and vomit out a flood of flame and sparks.
    “Short, shallow breaths, Matt.” She gripped his hand, squeezed hard. “Just like in a shake and bake.”
    “Is this what Jim felt?” Tears and sweat rolled down his face. “Is this what he felt?”
    “Short and shallow,” she repeated. “Through your bandanna, just like in a shelter.”
    For an instant, another, the heat built to such mad intensity she wondered if they’d all just torch like a tree. She worked her other hand free, found Gull’s. And held on.
    Then the screaming wind silenced.
    “It’s cooling.