Flash Fire by Caroline B. Cooney
Matt could not get there.
He had to use the house itself for safety.
Houses usually burn slower than brush or trees. If they could make it inside, maybe they could flatten to the floor, find a little oxygen, and maybe the fireball would burn on by. Then they’d try to get out of the house and make a run to where the fire was finished, before the house did burn down around them.
Of course, that game plan didn’t always work. This fire was so hot that houses were almost combusting spontaneously. If that happened now, Matt would learn what it is to burn alive.
He gambled on the house because there wasn’t another gamble around. He bent, shoved up, and slung the woman onto his shoulder. The husband stuck close without needing to be told and they ran inside the burning building.
Pacific Coast Highway
4:13 P.M.
MR. SEVERYN WAS AS mired in traffic as if there had been a mud slide after all. A line of bright yellow bulldozers was being pulled up the Pacific Coast Highway on flatbed trailers. They would unload to carve up the earth, turn dirt on top of anything flammable, and build instant firebreaks. Nobody was going to go anywhere until that line of trailers got through. And all that time, his children would be alone and in danger.
I don’t know any of my neighbors, he thought, and they don’t know me. I never wanted to. I don’t care about a neighborhood, I care only about my own family, my own house, and my own land.
Who will know that my children are alone? Who will know that somebody has to look out for them? Who will think to go up that drive and be sure that Beau and Elisabeth are out?
He remembered the ugly town of his childhood. How gladly he’d left the empty steel mills and the damp icy climate. But he had left behind the only true neighbors he’d ever had: On that street, somebody would have thought to check on the elderly and remember the young.
He remembered the son for whom he had not been a father or a neighbor. Was this payback? Was this destiny — his loved children in trouble because he had not bothered to love the first one?
Oh, Michael, he thought. Then he jumped out of the car and jogged alongside a trailer, asking the driver where they were headed.
“Command Post on Grass Canyon.”
“Can you give me a ride?”
“No, sir. Sorry. Against the rules.”
The Severyn family had an unusual habit of using cash instead of credit. Mr. Severyn thought this might be a useful time to mention this habit, or at least open his wallet and display it.
The flatbed driver agreed that Mr. Severyn could ride with him after all.
Grass Canyon Road
4:14 P.M.
MATT WAS RIGHT. THE exterior of the house was on fire, but the interior was just smoky. Of course, smoke equaled poison and death, but if they lay low there might be enough oxygen. He and the two old people flattened beneath the silver protective blanket.
He kept in communication with June by radio, which was weird. He was going to be able to keep up a running dialogue of his death, unless of course he suffocated as he talked.
“We’re calling in paramedics,” said June. “Hang in there, Matt, you did the right thing.”
Fire was up in the ceiling. The room began raining fire.
“We’re kind of in trouble here,” said Matt.
This was an understatement, and it made the elderly man laugh. Matt liked the laugh; it was a survivor sound, a good sound.
“I think you’re going to be able to leave pretty quick,” said June, which was fine for her to say; it wasn’t raining fire on her back. “This fire is moving at an incredible rate. I’ve never seen anything like this. The wind is taking the whole fire with it. Keep low, keep calm, you can walk out in a few minutes.”
Calm sort of isn’t in the picture if your skin is burning. It was not a three-person blanket.
Behind them, the draperies caught fire. Yellow heat flashed around the room and then, surprisingly, died.
He wondered how quick death was, and if he would know about it, or if it would just flash through him like that, and he would no longer be there — only the charred flesh that had once been Matt Marsh.
“Let’s run to the garage,” said the old man. “It can’t burn, all it can do is get hot enough to melt us.”
“Hey, I’d rather melt any day,” said Matt, and he swung the woman up again and they ran, crouched and terrified, through blistering smoke, and Matt, at least, knew that to breathe this nonair was to die.
The Severyn House
4:14 P.M.
IT WAS SOBERING TO see how easily panic had taken over. A matter of seconds, and Beau’s thinking had deserted him. He was more shocked to learn that he, Beau Severyn, could panic than he was shocked at the fire.
All he had to do to open the garage door by hand was raise the overhead arm from its connection, and lift upward. Sure enough, the garage door proved rather light and slid easily into its storage slot on the ceiling.
Because of the large, paved, turnaround for the cars, there was no fire in front of him.
“There’s a spare car key in a little metal box under the driver’s seat, Beau,” said Lizzie.
He knew that. He had put it there. “Thanks, Lizzie.” He was very glad she hadn’t seen him lose every molecule of common sense.
He slid behind the wheel, as relaxed and leisurely as if they were headed for school, and she fished out the little box and handed him the key, and he said Do you have your seatbelt on? and she said Yes she did, and he drove out of the garage.
Beau gave his beloved house a last look. It seemed okay except for the places where it was burning. Minor places, places you could get with a hose, and things you could…
…things you could save.
His hands continued to steer.
His feet braked, his eyes focused, and his concentration didn’t give way.
But his heart gave way. The terrible loneliness that assailed him whenever he thought of Michael came again. Dying without your father’s love was worse than dying of smoke.
Oh, Michael! he thought. I can’t leave you there, as if you don’t matter.
He tried to talk to the brother he had never known, arguing, as if there had ever been talk, let alone arguments; or maybe he was arguing with Dad. Or with disease. Or with death.
Elisabeth, he said to himself, Lizzie is first, she can’t die either. I have to save my sister and then I can go back for my brother.
Go back for my brother.
This seemed brilliant to Beau, a good solid knight-in-shining-armor thought.
He maneuvered down the tight switchbacks. The fire was haphazard, strewn like confetti after a wedding. He had to drive over some fire.
It definitely gave him pause. What if fire somehow got into the gas tank?
Don’t be ridiculous, he said to himself, the underside of the Suburban is not cardboard.
The driveway was very narrow, some space taken up by rows of sandbags, because everybody on Pinch Canyon had thought that mud slides were going to be the problem this year, and he had little room in which to maneuver. Twice he had to drive the very tires through flame — burning treetops thrown into the drive by the wind. What if the tires melted, or the sharp, splintered branches gave him a flat? The idea of changing a tire in the middle of Pinch Canyon right now actually made him laugh.
Around the next switchback, an unidentifiable burning object filled half the driveway. Its flames were higher than the Suburban, so brilliant he had to squint, and he had no idea what it was that was actually burning. In any event, he didn’t want to drive into it.
They had the windows down and he pushed the button that raised them. He felt oddly less safe with the windows closed, as if he had constructed a coffin instead of an escape route.
Time to test the Suburban.
He drove half onto the high, cut-in-the-hill side of the driveway, his right wheels tilted up the wall instead of flat on the road, and then he accelerated, rocketing past the danger at such an an
His little sister clapped. “Oooh, Beau, you’re such a good driver! This is such fun.”
And it was.
Beau had never had so much fun. Not scuba diving off Australia, not backpacking in the Rockies, not exploring volcano rims in Hawaii.
This was pretty neat. Of course, they were going to lose the house. But as his dad and every neighbor always said, these are the risks you take to live in paradise.
Beau and Elisabeth began laughing with a sort of weird delight. They were having a real adventure. Not a fake, travel-agency type adventure, not a pay-lots-of-money-and-get-a-little-nervous-while-your-guides-protect-you type adventure. The real thing.
Pinch Canyon
4:14 P.M.
ELONY DESPERATELY WANTED ANOTHER cigarette. How funny, when she was going to die from smoke, that she still ached to fill her lungs with it on purpose.
Fires hitting the wiring of the houses on Pinch Canyon touched off alarm systems. The screeching of burglar alarms echoed and reechoed through the canyon.
Elony assumed that this ugly racket would bring rescuers rushing into Pinch Canyon.
Pinch Canyon people were rich. They would have left nothing to chance. Although everything had gone wrong up there on the hillside, down here on the road, everything would be right.
So even though she was terrified, walking toward Grass Canyon with a dripping purple burden on her shoulder and fire on both sides, she was not actually worried.
The Health Club
4:14 P.M.
WENDY FINISHED BLOW-DRYING HER hair and paid careful attention to her makeup. In order to stay young and lithe and perfect, she worked her muscles hard. After exercise, however, it was key to look as if she never dreamed of exercise, as if this beautiful body was a gift.
“Mrs. Severyn? Mr. Severyn is on the phone for you,” said one of the attendants, smiling, and handing her a portable phone.
“Hello, darling,” said Wendy Severyn, fastening an earring.
“Wendy, they evacuated Pinch Canyon. I don’t know if the children are all right.”
The bottom fell out of everything. She felt as if she had lost her heart and lungs and the soles of her feet, as if even her brains were sliding down into the vortex. “They didn’t answer the beeper?” she said. They always answered the beeper; that was the point; that was why you had beepers.
“Wendy, try to get through from your direction. I’ve hitched a ride from the south, but you’re north of them, maybe the roads aren’t as jammed up there. Get in the car. Now.”
“But where shall I go?” she cried. “If they’ve evacuated Pinch — ”
“I think the high school is the evacuation point. I’ll head for Pinch, you head for the high school. We’ll keep calling each other and one of us will find the children.”
He disconnected. Just like that, with no details, no comfort, no nothing, Aden was gone. She handed the phone back to the attendant without seeing her.
Beau, she thought. Oh, Beau!
Wendy Severyn had no use for guilt. Guilt and worry were bad for your complexion, your sleep, and your peace of mind.
So she told herself it was not guilt she was feeling, this sick mud slide of emotion at the bottom of her soul.
She did not want their beautiful wonderful house burned. She did not want one molecule of her life changed, except maybe for Elisabeth to be more acceptable. She resented the fire for touching her part of the world; and when she walked outdoors and saw the evil black sky, and the orange sunset where the sun was not setting, and choked in the particle-laden air, and had to use the windshield wipers to remove ash before she could drive — well, really!
She drove fast, lips in a pout.
I know they’re all right. They have to be all right. If they’re not all right, it won’t be my fault. Nobody can blame me, nobody can say I didn’t do my best.
But nobody had said.
The only person saying that was Wendy herself.
The windshield wipers of her mind cleared her thinking painfully and hideously.
I didn’t do my best, she thought.
The Luu House
4:14 P.M.
DANNA HAD PLENTY OF time to study the fire.
The fire seemed to study her right back, like a thief planning how to break in and what to take.
Spice had jerked back and this time Danna had let go of the lead, afraid of where Spice would land. The horse moved sideways, jittering around, and then he bolted. There was not one thing Danna could do except hope that Spice went away from the fire and not toward it.
Should she let go of Egypt, too, and let him run? She felt better hanging onto him; he was company. She could not bear to die alone.
It was strange to be fourteen and know you were going to die. Like Joan of Arc, you were going to be burned at the stake. There was no stake here, though. No ropes tying her up. Not even a pile of sticks around her feet to which her enemies were setting fire.
Danna had been her own enemy.
She was so afraid that fear gave up and melted and she was not afraid. She was simply waiting.
She tried to move the broken leg, but it didn’t obey her.
She tried to fall over and start crawling, but the pain when she changed position was so great she couldn’t make herself do it. This isn’t logical, she said to herself. Any pain is better than death by burning. Think how painful that will be!
Let go of Egypt, she ordered herself. He’s doomed, standing with me. He’ll run. He’s huge. Fast. He can run over fire or through it.
She forced herself to unwrap her clenched fingers from the leather rope. Egypt did not appear to notice this and stayed right where he was. I could give him a good whack, make him run, she thought. But her body didn’t do it. The arm she needed to extend wouldn’t allow her to lose her balance like that.
She thought she saw Hall coming. In the swirling smoke, like a curtain with holes in it — now you see me, now you don’t, it snickered — he seemed to take a long time. Or else, more likely, he was a mirage of pointless hope.
“Where,” said Danna Press out loud, “is an ARMED RESPONSE when you really need one?”
ROCK SLIDE AREA
The Luu House
4:15 P.M.
HALL HEARD HER THROUGH the smoke. “Yo!” he shouted. “Armed Response! Where are you?”
“Right here!” his sister shrieked.
She was, too, right there. The smoke was so thick he had not been able to see her only a few yards away. What happened to the paddock fence? he thought, confused because he had expected to find it as a landmark. Then realized the fire had already eaten it. His feet weren’t burning off because the constant use of the paddock by Egypt and Spice had killed any grass, so it was bare ground, and had offered no fuel. Fire was all around them, but only knee-high, and not actually on top of them, and the driveway, at this moment, still offered a path.
Not a safe path, but a path.
He waved his arms windmill fashion, as if he thought he could sweep the smoke away from them, and it was a major error, because Egypt, already terrified, went berserk at the churning arms suddenly appearing in his face. The horse reared, not whinnying so much as screaming, high and long like an engine whistle, not a horse, and then he ran. His sweaty filthy flank brushed hard against Hall, but Hall was more shocked by how hot the horse’s hide was than how close he’d come to getting run over by the neighbor’s horse.
His sister was just standing there, as if the fire had turned her to stone. That terrified him more than the fire or the bolting horse, and that was saying something.
“I broke my leg,” said Danna conversationally. She was hoarse from smoke, as if she’d been screaming for hours. “Egypt kicked it.”
He couldn’t worry about
She pointed.
Hall was nine inches taller than Danna but he was still adolescent thin. He hoped, prayed, that he was adult male strong. Adrenaline turned out to be pretty neat. He squatted slightly, his back to Danna, grabbed her thighs and lifted. Then he adjusted his hips until she was sitting okay on his butt. When she stopped screaming, he started walking. The damaged leg didn’t look that bad, sort of like two knees on the same leg, but no bleeding. It was the scream that was awful, torn out of Danna’s lungs and lasting until he thought he would throw up.
When the screams ended, she leaned on top of him, hunched and panting. More animal than person: heaving lungs and hanging tongue. She was hideously heavy. He could not believe a small person could be so heavy. He thought of the distance down the driveways, and the fire closing in, and the lack of cars.
He resolved to think of nothing but lifting his feet. He would not pay attention to the weight on his back, any more than the horses would have paid attention to it. Lifting feet was the thing, putting them ahead of each other, as far ahead as his knees would allow.
Somehow they passed the carcass of his own house, without Hall’s back or mind breaking. Somehow they turned the final switchback and somehow he knew he would make it to the canyon bottom. Don’t think about what’s down there, he said to himself. Don’t think. Thinking’s bad. Feet. Lift feet.
“The kittens,” gasped his sister. “Hall, get the kittens.”
Like he could almost bend over and pick up a carton of kittens.
He tried to tell her that was ridiculous, he hardly had enough oxygen to manage his feet with, these things happened, and there you were, but he found he could not carry his feet past the kittens either. Somehow he curled even tighter in the spine and somehow found the strength to close his fingertips on the box and tuck it against his stomach. Danna’s hands roped his throat, her one knee bit into his side, her broken leg hung stupidly, and the kittens found the oxygen Hall wanted for himself, and screamed huge kitten screams for freedom.