Rope wasn’t standard gear for us or for wildland crews. It was a me-thing to carry rope—and a fucking good thing for Robby. But it was taking too long to get him to the top. I didn’t have time to wait down here.
This was a seriously shitty place to be. If I went left or right, along the wall, I’d get cooked before I found an escape route. That meant there was nowhere to go but up.
A nice metaphor. It wasn’t going to get any worse.
I could live with that.
Time to climb.
Finding grips in the rock, I started to scale. I just had to make it to the edge, where it went from sheer cliff to steep hill. Once I got that far, I’d be able to scramble up, more or less on my feet. Or maybe by then Robby would be at the top and they could toss me the rope.
In the meantime, all those rock-climbing hours were sure coming in handy.
“Gavin, check in,” Chief said. “They’re moving everyone off the fireline.”
Wedging my boots into the rock, I made sure I could let go with one hand, then answered. “I’m climbing up. Did they get Robby out yet?”
A gust of wind, hot enough to sear my arm hair, buffeted me.
That wasn’t good.
“He’s fine. But Gav, we’ve got all the makings of a firestorm right where you are.”
I reached up, feeling around for another handhold. Dug my fingers in, pressing them as if I could indent the rock itself to give me just a little more purchase, and pushed upward with my feet.
Inches. I was moving inches.
And I was out of time.
I was going to get cooked against this rock like a virgin sacrifice to an ancient fire-breathing dragon.
Yeah, there was no way I was going out like that.
Reaching for my radio one last time, I called Chief. “Jumping back down. Deploying fire shelter. Come get me when it’s over, Chief.”
I didn’t have time to wait for his reply. For the second time today, I jumped off the side of a cliff.
I rolled into the fall. The last thing I needed to do was break a leg trying to stick the landing. I launched to my feet and ran to where I’d left my pack.
Another blast of hot air hit me and for a second, I thought it might be too late. Voices talked to me over the radio, but I didn’t have time to stop and answer. In about thirty seconds, fire was going to engulf the valley, eating up everything in its path. If we’d done enough at the top, it would stop there. The crew and the houses beyond would be safe.
As for me, that was a little less certain.
I ripped the fire shelter out of my pack and grabbed the handles. Turned my back on the fire and shook it out. The fabric shelter was a bit like a six-foot long silver Twinkie. I guess that made me the cream filling. Probably a bad metaphor, and I didn’t know why I was thinking about junk food right now.
The hot wind made deploying the shelter a huge pain in the ass. But I’d practiced this dozens of times with leaf blowers aimed at me to simulate these conditions.
Time seemed to slow. The twenty seconds it took me to deploy the shelter and take cover felt like minutes. I stepped into the footwell, put my body through the rectangular hole in the shelter’s floor, and covered myself. Then I hit the dirt, face down, with the shelter around me. I pinned it to the relatively cool ground with my elbows, knees, and the toes of my boots. Its main job, besides keeping the fire from burning me alive, was to trap breathable air. There was about to be a severe lack of oxygen down here. I needed a good supply of air if I was going to live through this.
For a second, everything went silent. Nothing but the sound of my breath echoing inside the shelter.
Then the roar.
Holy shit, it was so fucking loud. Gritting my teeth, I held the shelter down with my hands, elbows, knees, and feet. Hot wind buffeted me, like a tornado was ripping through the valley. I wondered if I’d be able to stay on the ground. The heat was intense, even through the protective layers of the shelter.
Bits of debris hit me and a nearby tree—or something—burst into flame with an ear-splitting boom. It sounded like the fucking apocalypse out there.
I didn’t know how long the burnover would last. Could be fifteen minutes. Could be longer. I decided to be ready for the worst and hope for the best. That a rescue team would be down here before I’d even peeked outside to see if it was safe yet.
The flames roared over me, hellish and loud. I could just hear Chief’s voice over my radio. Telling me to stay calm. Stay put. Don’t move. Breathe.
I listened to him, my only link to the world of the living, while the inferno raged mere inches from my skin. Glad I wasn’t completely alone.
This sucked, but at least I was going to live.
I was pretty sure, anyway.
Contrary to what my brothers liked to say, I didn’t have a death wish. I just liked to have fun. Hell, I had the opposite of a death wish. I wanted to live big. I knew all too well how easily life could be taken away. I wasn’t going to waste mine.
Fuck that.
Sweat dripped off my nose, landing in the dirt. The air was starting to feel stale and close. It was hot as fuck in here. I felt like a baked potato. Probably looked like one, too.
Would the oxygen last long enough?
It fucking better.
The wind kicked up again, blasting over me in hot waves. The noise drowned out whatever the voices in the radio were trying to tell me. I thought I caught the word bucket. Hopefully that meant the helitack crew was overhead with a bucket drop. They’d douse the area with fire suppressant, which would mean getting to me sooner.
More debris rained down on me. I shifted my legs to keep the shelter pinned down tight. My throat was dry and scratchy, but there wasn’t anything I could do about that. I just coughed into the dirt and hoped nothing big landed on me.
Gradually, the hellish noise receded. The air outside seemed to still, or at least stop whipping over me like a fucking tornado. I knew it was too soon to check conditions, but damn, I wanted to. It was hard to keep from jumping up to look around. But if I moved too soon, I’d get a lungful of hot ash and die in seconds.
I’d come this far, I wasn’t going to die now. Not when all I needed was a little patience.
Next time one of my brothers called me impulsive, I was totally pulling out this story.
Thinking of my brothers made me think of Gram. I hoped she didn’t know what was happening. I’d tell her later, and watch while she shook her head and breathed out a sigh of relief that, once again, her youngest cub had defied the odds.
Not that she’d be surprised. I always did.
The roar of the inferno didn’t return. Either it was burning itself out or the bucket drop had worked to dampen the intensity here. It was probably safe to break the seal on the shelter and peek out at ground level, but I decided to wait a little longer, just in case.
“Gav, check in when you can.” Chief’s voice was monotone, all business. Professional. But I knew him. I could hear the worry he was trying to hide.
Time was hard to judge with my heart pounding and my limbs tingling from all the adrenaline coursing through my system. So I counted backward from three hundred. Five minutes, give or take, and I’d check my surroundings.
I got to four hundred, no new sounds.
Three hundred. No debris.
Two hundred. The air seemed still.
One hundred. Nothing new.
Down to sixty and I was pretty sure a second wall of flame wasn’t coming. But I made myself count all the way to one anyway.