The Icarus Effect Page 11
“We’re right here. Better late than never, right?” Hannah materialized out of the ragged tendrils of smoke, walking with her left arm draped over another young woman’s shoulder. Hannah’s right arm was in a makeshift sling, strapped tightly to her chest.
“You all right?” Ben asked, immediately regretting it.
Hannah smiled, followed by a wince. “Oh, sure. I’m thinking about playing some tennis as soon as I get back to town. You?”
“Sorry. Stupid question.”
Lloyd interrupted them. “No time for a break, guys,” he said. “Let’s get the heck outta Dodge. Eamon, you and the rookie there take Eddie. Be careful with his leg. Ronnie, you grab Weston with the other rookie - what’s your name, bud?”
Ben turned around, noticing the ‘other rookie’ for the first time. He’d been in such a hurry to get down from the top of the saddle with Cliff before they’d picked the last man in their detail, and he hadn’t bothered to look back until now.
“My name’s Chad.”
“Great,” Lloyd continued, “Chad.” He looked around at the others. “Cliff and I will bring up the rear, and we’ll rotate through the carry detail with everybody else whose able, every hundred yards or so. Whoever’s left not carrying somebody can take turns helping Hannah. Clear?”
There were several weary muttered responses, so Lloyd took that as consensus. “All right. Let’s move, before it gets any hotter.”
They all took their assigned positions and started back up the hill, as the smoke climbed up the valley behind them, and the fire reached out, hungrily seeking more fuel.
Ten miles to the south, a growing line of thunderstorms started expelling huge downdrafts of air, causing the wind to shift again, this time directly in the direction of the retreating firefighters.
7
Ex Cinere
Observation Peak Fire
Sawtooth National Forest
8:37 P.M.
“I don’t wanna die out here.”
Ben glanced over at the man he was helping to carry. His face was covered in crusted blood, and his head lolled from side to side as Ben and Ronnie carried him up the hill between them, seated on their interlocked arms.
“Nobody’s dying here today, brother.” Ronnie said it with enough conviction to almost make Ben believe him. “We’re gonna be knocking back some beers at NIFC before you know it.”
Weston, the man they were carrying, snorted out a half-laugh, then abruptly vomited on his own chest. It was mostly water, which was the problem. He was already dehydrated. Add to that the severe concussion he’d suffered, and he was in desperate need of medical attention. Ben didn’t have many illusions about how close they were to finding help, either.
They’d been going for several hours since they picked up the injured members of Bravo crew, and Ben was completely disoriented. The thick smoke was making it hard to navigate, and now that the sun was dropping lower behind the thickening clouds of smoke, it was going from bad to worse. Ronnie seemed to know intuitively which way to go, though. Everything he did, he did with complete confidence.
Let’s hope he’s not confidently walking us in circles. “How much further you think, Ronnie?”
“Until our next break?” Ronnie asked. “That happens right now. Until we hit the highway?” He paused as they carefully set Weston down against a tree. “To be honest, I was hoping we’d have been there forty-five minutes ago.”
Ben’s heart sank. “Seriously?”
“Oh, man,” Weston wailed. “I really don’t wanna die out here!”
Ronnie stretched his lower back, then turned to the rest of the group. “Here’s the deal, guys. We aren’t moving fast enough.”
“No kidding,” Chad muttered.
Ronnie continued on as if Chad hadn’t spoken. “We should have cut the highway almost an hour ago, based on what we looked at on the maps before we set out. But here we are, and we still haven’t found it. So, either I took a wrong turning somewhere, or we’re just moving a lot slower than I’d bargained for. Either way, we’re not outrunning this fire.” He waved his arm to the south. There was a glow of flames half a mile away from their position, lighting up the forest in an otherworldly effulgence. Occasionally they would see a single tall tree go up like a torch, the flames crowning at the top in a brilliant flash of orange, accompanied by a momentary increase in the constant roar of noise.
The fire hadn’t been moving as fast as they’d feared, but it was moving faster than they could run. It was a matter of time and endurance before they either collapsed and the fire rolled over them, or they simply got overtaken, and the fire still rolled over them. Ronnie looked around at the gathered faces. Some looked panicked, some undaunted; all were exhausted, filthy and grim.
“You all need to bug out,” Eddie, the man with the broken leg, said with a gasp.
“We can only get so far at the speed we’re goin’, Eddie,” Ronnie answered.
“Yeah, ‘we’ can only get so far,” Eddie said. “I’m not talking ‘we’. I’m talking you.”
Ronnie took a couple of deep breaths, shaking his head. “That’s not happening.”
“What’s he talking about?” Chad demanded.
“Nothing,” Ronnie said. “‘Cuz what he’s saying isn’t on the table to begin with.”
“You know it’s the only option, Ronnie.” Eddie said this with his teeth clenched, biting back the agonizing pain from his shattered leg.
“Hey,” Chad broke in again. “What the hell is he saying?”
“He wants us to leave him, Weston and Hannah behind,” Eamon said.
“What?” Ben was shocked. “No! We can’t do that!”
“Speak for yourself, Chief,” Chad said. “Seems to me the healthy ones could outrun this thing. We, uh… we can go for help.”
“You’re only interested in helping yourself, Chad.” Ben said through clenched teeth. “We’re not leaving ‘em.”
“Who died and put you in charge?” Chad sneered. “I say we take a vote, and do it quick!” he waved his arm at the fire, still surrounding them on three sides, only much closer now than it had ever been.
“We can’t outrun it if we’re carrying three people,” Lloyd said.
Chad clapped his hands together, then spread his arms wide. “That’s what I’m saying!”
“The truth is,” Lloyd continued, “we probably couldn’t outrun it even if we were all healthy.”
“Debate’s over,” Ronnie said, looking to the south. The sound of the fire had suddenly changed, the wind noise going up a couple of octaves to a near-shriek. Trees were crowning in rapid succession, the fire suddenly leaping from treetop to treetop, closing the distance between it and the firefighters at an alarming rate.
“It’s blowin’ up!” Lloyd shouted. “Get ‘em up!” he hollered at the crew, indicating the three injured people. “We need to find a clearing. Make sure you have your shelters ready!” He waved at Ronnie, who grabbed Eddie and tossed him over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. Eddie screamed in pain as Ronnie took off through the woods at a stumbling trot. Two other members of Bravo hoisted Weston up under his armpits and followed, Weston’s toes dragging in the dirt.
Ben ran to Hannah, dropping down on one knee with his back to her. She looped her left arm around his neck while he reached back, grabbed her knees and hoisted her onto his back. Then he took off running as fast as he could manage. The rest of the group followed through the trees in ragged disorder. Ben could sense the panic starting to take hold on them as the fire rushed closer. The air was suddenly a maelstrom of swirling smoke, ash and flaming debris. Spot fires were starting to pop up all around them as the leading edge of the fire threatened to overtake them.
Ben could suddenly hear Ronnie and Lloyd barking instructions ahead. He could only see a few yards now, and the noise of the fire was deafening. He felt like he’d been swallowed by a dragon, and was trying to escape out of its mouth before the teeth snapped shut and its breath cooked him aliv
e.
He broke into a small clearing at the base of a rock slide. Lloyd and Ronnie were grabbing people, shoving them toward places where there was the least available fuel, helping them get their emergency shelters out and set up. Ben could smell Hannah’s and his own hair burning as flying sparks singed everything within reach. He rushed to the lower edge of the slide and set Hannah down next to some small boulders. Ripping her shelter off of her belt, he quickly unfolded it and helped her get inside. Her broken arm made it difficult to pin the right edge down, so Ben climbed over her and tucked the edge underneath for her. She whimpered in pain as he shoved the metallic fabric under her broken arm. “Stay there!” Ben shouted.
He straightened up and looked around, realizing he was the only one left except Ronnie who hadn’t deployed his shelter. He and Ronnie exchanged a quick look, then they both pulled their shelters off their belts and opened them.
As Ben was getting ready to step inside the fabric envelope, Ronnie suddenly shouted.
“Grab him!”
Ben looked up to see Chad running toward him. The fire had reached the lower end of the clearing where Chad had deployed his shelter. He’d obviously panicked as he felt the heat from the flames; he’d abandoned his shelter and was trying to run away.
Ben had no time to think. He dropped his shelter and tackled Chad.
“Get off!” Chad screamed, all pretense of bravery gone. “I gotta get away!!”
Ben was laying on Chad’s back, with Chad’s arms pinned beneath them. Ben raised his eyes, and saw the entire world aflame. The fire was roaring toward them, incinerating everything in its path.
They were going to die.
The world went suddenly black. Ben felt a crushing weight on his back, and his vision was blotted out. It took him a couple of seconds to realize that someone else had jumped on his back, but not before covering both him and Chad with Ben’s discarded shelter. Ben realized it had to be Ronnie.
He knew that Chad’s shelter had to have blown away as soon as Chad abandoned it, and Ronnie was covering the two of them with Ben’s; that meant that Ronnie must have abandoned his own shelter in order to cover them up before the fire rolled over them.
“Ronnie!” Ben shouted. “Get under it! Get off and get underneath!”
Chad was screaming and crying out in panic, begging Ben to let him up. Ben struggled, but Ronnie had clamped his beefy arms around both of them, holding the shelter as tightly around them as possible, not letting them move. “Stay down!” Ronnie bellowed, his voice hoarse. Then the fire was on them.
The noise was deafening. Trees burst into flames and were consumed with the deep-throated roar of a forge, while boulders split from the heat, sounding like a ragged volley of cannon fire. Ben felt the air being sucked up around them as the ravenous flames drew in oxygen. The heat alone took his breath away, and he felt the flesh on his arms searing, as though he were reaching across an open flame. Chad was weeping and pleading incoherently beneath him, but the worst sound of all was coming from Ronnie.
His face was close to Ben’s ear, separated only by the thin, fire-resistant fabric of the emergency shelter. As the flames roared over them, Ronnie screamed in agony. It was a tortured, animalistic wail that seemed to go on without end. Ben found himself screaming in response, anger and grief mixing with terror, pouring out of his scorched lungs until he couldn’t scream any more.
Ronnie’s grip on them tightened, even as his screams faded out. Ben sobbed in gasps and coughs, his throat and lungs made raw from the heat and smoke. Slowly, he realized the freight-train noise of the fire had stopped. He didn’t know how long he’d been there, wrapped up in a shelter on top of a person he hated, in the grip of another who’d sacrificed himself to save them both.
He heard voices, but couldn’t distinguish the words. Screaming, crying, commands shouted and ignored. Ben wanted to get up, but couldn’t seem to move. Slowly, he became aware that he was holding on to the back of Chad’s head with both hands, driving his face into the dirt. Chad’s breath was coming in puffs of dust and ash from the right side of his mouth as he sobbed, begging to be let up.
“Oh, no.” It was Lloyd who spoke, his voice seeming a thousand miles away. “Eamon, give me a hand, here.”
Slowly, the weight was lifted off of Ben’s back, the shelter pulled away with it. He slowly opened his eyes to a scene straight from hell. The main front of the fire had passed them and was continuing to move off to the west, leaving hot spots and pockets of flame in what little fuel remained in its wake. Smoke wafted in thick, choking bands across the ground, sweeping into whirling vertical columns that were drawn up into the air above; mixing with tongues of fire, tornados in miniature wreathed in flame. Trees still burned all around them, their smaller limbs and needles stripped off, the incinerated bark still snapping and popping. Lines of fire crept up the sides of many of the trees, looking like the world was bleeding upward.
As Ben watched, a single cow elk burst from the trees not ten yards away, heading east, her eyes full of terror. Her fur was burning, and black smoke trailed in her wake. She staggered as she ran, collapsing when she was almost out of view in the blackened trees. She lay there for a few moments, legs kicking helplessly as she let out a last, high pitched squeal. Then she was still.
Ben rolled off of Chad. Every muscle ached. Chad was still crying and stuttering out gibberish as Ben slowly got to his feet, helped up by Eamon. Lloyd was standing over Ronnie’s horribly burned body, partially covered now by Ben’s cast-off shelter.
“What happened?” Lloyd coughed, rubbing his eyes with the back of a grimy hand.
Ben just stared. He felt like his entire life was becoming defined by the people he’d lost all around him. Bleak, desperate grief tore him from the inside out with a visceral pain as he looked down at the twisted body of his crew chief, the man who had saved his life by sacrificing his own, without a second’s hesitation. Why would he do that for me?
Then Ben remembered Hannah. He looked up, to the edge of the rock slide where he’d left her in her shelter. In the space between them, the rest of the crew was up and moving around now, all of them out of their shelters, looking dazed and shocked. All of them but one.
Ben had to force his legs to move. He ignored the others and walked over to where Hannah’s shelter lay, her form still visible beneath it. The right side of the shelter had come loose and lifted up from beneath her body, torn free in the intense wind of the firestorm. Ben sagged to his knees at Hannah’s side, gently lifting the rest of the shelter off of her. Her face was turned to the left, away from the gap in the shelter, away from where the deadly gases had found their way in to suffocate her. Ben carefully placed a hand on her back, feeling for breathing, but she was frighteningly still.
“Hannah,” he choked out her name, then abruptly rolled her over. Her hair was singed into a tangle around her ashen face, and her lips were a sickening grayish blue.
“HELP!!” Ben screamed. “Somebody help!”
Eamon and Lloyd were at his side then, pushing him out of the way. They teamed up to check Hannah for a pulse and breathing. Getting nothing, they started CPR.
As he watched them work, Ben felt the world closing in on him.
Ben lost track of how much time passed before Lloyd finally stopped giving Hannah chest compressions. He watched, unbelieving, as Lloyd reached over and touched Eamon on the shoulder, stopping him as he moved to give her another breath. Eamon paused and looked up, and Lloyd shook his head. Eamon sagged back on his haunches and hung his head, then blew out an exhausted breath.
“Don’t,” Ben pleaded, his voice sounding small and far away. “Don’t give up.”
Lloyd turned to look at him. “She’s gone, rook.”
“No.” Ben shook his head. “That can’t be.”
“She’s not responding, man. We’ve been trying for almost twenty minutes. There’s just nothing more we can do.”
As Lloyd and Eamon moved away and started planning the crew’s evac
uation, Ben cradled his head in his hands and sobbed.
For the next six hours, Ben existed in a daze. He heard Lloyd talking on the radio, reporting their casualties and making plans of action, but none of it really registered. Everything was background noise to him, now.
Eamon found that Ben could follow directions, but only if Eamon laid a hand on his shoulder and looked straight in his eyes when he gave them. Then Ben would nod slowly, and go off without a word to do whatever he was asked, all the while moving like an automaton. At the moment, Ben was sitting several yards apart from the group, just staring at the palms of his hands.
“He’s in shock,” Eamon said, leaning in close so only Lloyd would hear.
“We all are,” Lloyd said. They had managed to lead the survivors, in the dark, through an eerie moonscape of burning trees and smoking ash to where they now sat exhausted in the middle of a clear cut. The fire had wiped all the grass and brush from the clearing, leaving them with a relatively safe place to rest.
Their last radio contact with NIFC had been two hours earlier, and Lloyd had given them his best guess as to their location and direction. His radio battery had failed in the middle of that conversation, and they’d kept moving until they stumbled across the clearing more than an hour later, so he couldn’t be certain that any rescuers would know where they were now. NIFC had told Lloyd that the other members of their crews that had bugged out ahead of them had also been forced to deploy their shelters, but they had made it to an open meadow where the fire passed over them quickly. No one in that group had been hurt.
Now, in the dead of night, with no reliable way to navigate, Lloyd wanted to rest them here for a while before continuing on. Of their original group of fourteen, they’d lost Hannah and Ronnie, and had been forced to leave their bodies behind. The survivors were all dangerously low on water. Several of them had suffered varying degrees of smoke inhalation and minor burns, and they still had Eddie and Weston to deal with. Staying was dangerous, but so was moving. Lloyd didn’t like their options much.