Fishing In Fire, page 13
“Here,” Mason said. “Let’s wrap the rope around our waists too. We’ll have to stand close together. Closer. I’m probably heaviest, so I’ll be the anchor in the back.”
It took a while for the others to get set up. In the end, there wasn’t enough room for everyone to tie in, so Morgan and McKenzie agreed to stay off the rope and stand by the edge to help catch Annette as she came over.
Mason locked his hands on the rope. “OK. This here is like fishing. Get it? We already have the catch on the line. Once we start, there’s no second-guessing, no hesitation, and definitely no stopping until we reel her in. Soon’s Morgan says go, we pull, pull, pull, and don’t stop pulling no matter what happens.”
They all murmured agreement and Annette backed up as far as the rope would let her. She’d never make this jump, never vault over and land on her feet on the other side. This would end in a painful hard scramble up the rocks.
Tears rolled down Morgan’s face. Annette wished the girl would pull herself together—her emotional display was cracking Annette’s control. If she had any chance at this jump, she had to give it her all. She had to be hard-core.
“Whenever you’re ready, Ann,” Yumi called to her.
But this wasn’t a whenever-you’re-ready type of situation. The fire was coming. She could feel the waves of hot breeze already. She couldn’t afford to lose time, and the more she thought about what she had to do, the more afraid she became. In her head, this would work. She didn’t weigh that much, not close to as much as the combined weight of the seven others. She was securely tied to the rope. With a good run and jump, and with their pull, she’d make it. She would. She would. Right now. She lowered into something like a runner’s starter stance. Now. Her muscles twitched. Now. One of the quotes she’d copied into her notebook echoed in her mind. The Lord of the Rings author, J. R. R. Tolkien, once said, “Courage is found in unlikely places.” She finally knew what that meant. She breathed deeply, in and out through her nose. In and out. And—her legs exploded, launching her forward, arms pumping.
Annette screamed, slapping her foot down on the rocky edge and pushing off hard.
“Pull!” Morgan called.
Darkness laced with fire below, hot sparks rising up to greet her. Hard yank to her back, like being punched in the spine.
Stone and scrub brush slammed her chest and legs, head smacking her forearm. No breath. She slipped down for a second. Her feet kicked in the endless empty air below.
“Pull!Pull!Pull!” someone shouted.
Annette hurt all over. She wanted to help them, wanted to climb, but pain pulsed through her chest, legs, arms. She couldn’t breathe!
Hands gripped her arms, pulling her up.
“Got you,” Morgan cried. “You’re OK.”
“Don’t worry. Come on up,” McKenzie echoed. To the others she shouted, “We got her! Stop pulling! We’re dragging her right over the rock!”
There was no answer to McKenzie’s complaint, and a moment later Annette was on flat ground again. She could almost get a breath in.
Everyone surrounded her, patting her, asking if she was OK.
“Hey!” Yumi said sharply. “Let’s give her some room. Let her get some air. Maybe move her farther from the edge. Annette, can you walk?”
She couldn’t do anything. She opened her mouth and tried to suck in a breath.
“She hit so hard,” Morgan said. “Maybe she broke a rib?”
“Wind . . .” Annette gasped. “Winded.”
“Higgins, Kelton, help me,” Yumi said. The boys ducked, draping her arms over their shoulders, and then the three of them hauled Annette a solid twenty feet from the chasm. “Annette, that had to have hurt bad. But is anything broken? Can you walk? If you can move, we should all go.”
Annette nodded, sucking in half a breath. She took a step. Then another. The pain was diminishing. “How would I know if something’s broken?”
“Oh, trust me,” said Hunter, risking sliding out from under her arm. She wished he hadn’t. “If something’s broken, you’ll know.”
Annette took a few more steps. McKenzie approached and put a hand on Annette’s shoulder. “That looked like it hurt bad. And it had to have been terrifying. But, Annette, it looks like you’re kind of walking. Yumi’s right. We should go. I’m sorry.”
Annette smiled. It was obvious McKenzie was sincere. She seemed to feel bad pushing Annette after what had just happened. But she was also right. Annette placed her hand on McKenzie’s shoulder and smiled. “Yeah. I can kind of breathe now. I can walk.” She winced as she looked at the horrible red skin scrapes on her arms and legs. “Everything else, I’ll figure out on the way. All that matters is fleeing the fire.”
fire chief nick panetti twisted the cap off a cold bottle of water and started chugging. He hated wildfires. He really did. He loved the thrill of battling against them and the feeling that he was doing something useful and important, saving people and their homes from the blaze. But he hated these fires. Worse than that, though, he hated the press when they showed up to report on the fires.
“Chief Panetti!” A woman called, holding out her phone to record. “Chief Panetti, any idea what caused this blaze?”
Another reporter, a man with a ridiculous large mustache straight out of 1977, raised his hand. “Chief Panetti, is the city of McCall itself in danger?”
What percentage of the fire is contained at this time? Is it true that you are now battling multiple fires? Any idea if or when the governor might declare a state of emergency or a disaster area? What is meant when people talk about a fire being contained? Is there any hope of extinguishing this blaze without the help of significant rainfall?
Panetti closed his eyes and pressed his fist against the throbbing pain in his forehead, though whether the pain came from his drinking ice-cold water too fast or from the irritation from the reporters, he could not say.
“Hey, one at a time, please,” Panetti said. “One—” The reporters all talked at once. Why did they always do this? “One. . . . please. Ladies and gentlemen, if you could please—”
“Everybody quiet!” Sheriff Hamlin shouted. “Panetti has a lot of work to do. He’s been kind enough to agree to answer your questions. But he’s going to call on you to ask one at a time, or this conference is over.”
Panetti offered his old friend Hank Hamlin a half smile. Even now that he was getting older, he was so tough. He’d been an animal back in high school when the two of them had played football together. But that was a long time ago, with no dangerous fire and no annoying reporters to deal with. Panetti pointed to the woman with the phone. “What’s your question?”
The woman offered a tight smile. “Chief Panetti, more and more resources are rushing to fight this blaze, and yet all reports seem to indicate that it only continues to spread. Can you explain that, and can you estimate when this fire might finally be contained?”
The chief stared at the reporter for a moment, and decided to give her the benefit of the doubt. She was probably smarter than the question she had just asked, and was merely trying to get him to explain the answer for the benefit of the many people who were worried about this fire. “Listen, as I’ve said before, as you’ve heard from any of the men involved in fighting this fire, we haven’t seen anything like this in our careers. I’ve been fighting wildfires for twenty-two years, and this is, by far, the worst combination of circumstances I’ve ever seen. We were both lucky and unlucky the last two years, with enough snow and rainfall to keep the wilderness from becoming too dry and presenting too much of a fire risk. Unfortunately, that’s a good news/bad news situation. Yes, for the last two years the moisture reduced fire risk, but it also helped grow a lot of fuel. Then this spring and summer have brought far below normal rainfall, so all that fuel dried out. Our other problem is that we’re facing very high winds today. We’re seeing the convergence of two air pressure systems, which is playing havoc with wind direction. This places our firefighters at greater risk. They may be set up to defend a structure or key transportation route, only to have the wind shift, altering the direction and pattern of the fire’s spread. This has the potential to cut off escape routes for our firefighters. So right now a lot of our efforts are on evacuation and the safety of our own people, trying to do the best we can to contain the spread of this fire.”
Chris Terine, one of his men, not the best firefighter in the field but an ace when it came to organization, communication, and administration, stepped up to the lectern and pulled him back a few steps. He was a solid guy and wouldn’t interrupt something like this if it wasn’t really important. Panetti held up a finger. “Excuse me, just one second, folks.”
Terine handed him a note card with the worst possible news. He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. The card read, Missing kids. Possibly fishing in fire zone, with the names of the potentially missing kids written in a neat column. Beneath the names was written, Possibly in vicinity of Painted Pond. “Right.” He nodded his thanks and dismissal to his man and stepped back to the microphone. He took a deep breath. He hated dealing with the press, and he hated having to relay this news even more.
One of the press men raised a pen. “Chief Panetti, are there any plans to issue an evacuation order for—”
Panetti held up his hand. “In a minute. Listen up. I’ve just received information I want to pass along to you, and I’ll preface everything I’m about to say by reminding everybody to remain calm.” There was a concerned murmur among the press. A couple of locals who had been volunteering to get food and water to firefighters on break at this command post stepped into the tent.
“First of all, I must demand that every parent in the McCall area immediately verify the location of their children. In fact, it would be best if the kids just went home and stayed there. Even if you think you know where your kids are, I’m telling you to contact them and make sure you know. I say that because our situation is complicated by . . .” He counted the names on the list. “Eight missing children. At this time, the sheriff’s office and the fire department are interested in any information about the location of the following young people. Annette Willard. Swann Siddiq. Hunter Higgins. Yumi Higgins. Kelton Fielding. McKenzie Crenner. Morgan Vaughn. Mason Bridger.” The reporters rushed to ask questions but Panetti held up a hand and spoke loudly. “We have some reason to believe that they may have been in the area or . . .” Panetti surveyed the map of his memory. Where was Painted Pond? Up north of where the first fire started, for sure. “North of the area where this fire started.”
“Do you mean there are children trapped in the fire?” some reporter called from the back.
What a stupid question. Caught in the fire just meant dead. “Stop! We don’t need a bunch of speculation! It’s possible these kids are just hanging out with friends somewhere in town. That’s why we need full parent accountability of all children, and if anyone has seen or thinks they have seen any of these kids anywhere, or heard about where they are, please contact the sheriff’s office at once.”
“What about air assets?” another reporter asked. “Could aerial reconnaissance be deployed to search for the missing kids?”
“That’s one of the biggest problems with this effort. I’m told winds are too great to safely operate aircraft.”
A reporter in the middle of the group stood up. “I understand the county has some infrared scanning technology. Might that be used to scan through the smoke in the search for the children?”
This was the first time Chief Panetti wanted to punch a reporter in the middle of a briefing. But the guy was way back in the middle of the group. At least a few people groaned at the man’s stupidity. “Yes, we have some helicopter-mounted infrared equipment. But the first problem is, as I’ve said, the winds are too strong for us to safely operate aircraft. The second problem, and this is kind of a big one, is that the IR equipment is scanning for heat, and yeah, any people under all that smoke will be emitting natural body heat. The other thing that’s going to be putting out heat would be fire. It’s gonna be real hard to isolate people at just shy of one hundred degrees when the entire area is burning at well over a thousand degrees.”
The reporter’s face flashed as red as a fire, and he sat back down.
“I think that’s a good place to wrap this up. Thank you for your questions and especially for helping to get the word out about the missing young people. More information will be forthcoming on our website and Facebook page. URLs are written on the marker board over in the corner. Thank you. And to everybody out there, working on this crisis, good luck.”
Maria Sanchez had been enjoying three weeks of nearly complete solitude in her friend’s cabin. The internet was practically nonexistent there, but that was good. She’d needed to be free of distractions to finish her novel before the deadline. But then she’d seen smoke. The smoke got worse. Her friend had warned there might be a lot of smoke in late-summer Idaho. But then she’d glanced up from her writing to peek out the window and it had looked like a light snowfall. In August? It took a moment for her brain to put it together. Back in New York, she’d never had to worry about wildfires. These were ashes. There was a fire, a big one, and close.
She’d called her friend to ask what to do. I’m sorry. All circuits are busy at this time. Please try your call again later. This is a recording. A recording? Oh really? As if she couldn’t tell. She tried again at once. Same message. She switched on the TV. Her friend had explained there was no cable or satellite. This thing was connected by a long wire to a digital antenna mounted a hundred feet up a tree clear on top of the mountain behind the cabin. She found the news, and it was all bad. “Oh no,” she whispered. Almost without conscious thought, she grabbed her laptop with her manuscript and her flash-drive manuscript backup. She stuffed that, along with all her clothes, into her suitcase. All packed, she paced the small living room. Then she saw, on the screen, the words evacuation order. She was pretty sure the highlighted area of the on-screen map included her location. If not, it was close enough.
“Highway 95 has been added to the list of roads closed to all but emergency vehicles and evacuation traffic,” said a woman on the news. “And now we have a report of a possible missing-children situation. Eight preteens, residents of McCall, have been reported miss—”
She shut off the TV. Turned off the lights. Was there anything else she should do? Leave a note? Should she lock up? She decided against that. If some other terrified soul, fleeing the fire, needed a place to—what?—get some food or water or something, she wouldn’t make them break in. If police or fire rescue came through and wanted to check for people, she’d make it easy for them. That gave her an idea, and she quickly taped a note to the door. Maria Sanchez was staying in Ted Carrington’s cabin. Evacuating to McCall. Nobody in this cabin.
Then she lugged the heavy suitcase out to her little Prius, climbed in, and sped down the driveway. Even though it was still several hours before sunset, the sky was growing dark. Could the smoke really block out the light like that? How dark would it get? Turning south onto Highway 95, she pushed down on the gas. The speed limit was sixty miles per hour. Who cared about petty laws at a time like this? She would have happily gunned it up over a hundred, but the road was curvy, and she especially had to slow down for the rough road construction zone. Up ahead, smoke seemed to be rising from both sides of the highway.
It grew dark enough for her to need her headlights. She screamed a little as she rounded a curve and saw bright fire on the steep hillside to her left, hot sparks tracing through the dark toward the fire spreading out through a small clearing to the right.
Flash of taillights. She screamed again and hit the brakes. Ahead, a line of cars at a standstill. “Come on! Go!” she screamed. But nothing was moving. She turned on the air conditioner, as much to try to filter the smoke as to cool the air inside the car, but the fire was close to the road. She could feel the heat coming off the window beside her.
The world had descended into a nightmare darkness. Blackness all around, save for bright waves of fire up above on the slopes on both sides of the road. Sparks blew in the fierce wind above her, so that she was trapped in a tunnel of fire. About five yards ahead, a massive tree, coated in flames, slowly leaned toward the highway. People scrambled from the cars below and, with towels or other clothes wrapped around their heads, ran desperately away as the tree came crashing down over the road, smashing two cars, both of which burst into flames in seconds. A tree and two wrecked cars. The road to McCall was blocked.
Fleeing people slapped on the doors of the cars behind their destroyed vehicles. One car door opened to let one person in, but most of the cars must have been full. Finally some desperate stranded people reached her car, pounding on the windows and the roof. “Get in!” Maria shouted. They kept knocking. She remembered the locks, and hit the unlock button. In the next instant, three strangers squeezed into the backseat, and someone else flopped down in the passenger seat next to her.
“We gotta turn around!” said one of the newcomers. The people in back were mumbling about their totaled car, how much of their stuff was destroyed in the trunk.
Maria shifted into reverse and backed up, but hit the front bumper of the pickup behind her, whose driver honked. Everybody around her had the same idea. They were all trying to work the three-point—or ten-point—turn they’d need to head in the opposite direction.
“It’s so hot out there,” said someone from the back.
“Smokier here in the car,” said another.
Someone screamed. Checking the rearview mirror, Maria quickly figured out what was wrong. Behind the column of desperately fleeing cars, another enormous burning tree fell over the road. They were trapped.
These strangers, these desperate people, as terrified as Maria, had climbed into her car for shelter, as a last-chance transport to safety. But more and more it looked as though they were all stuck out on the dark highway with the fire closing in.
