Summer of Fire - Linda Jacobs [121]
Kelly swiveled her head. “It’s jumped the highway!” she shouted. She took off, Thomas at her heels.
Moru was running now, too, leaping over logs behind Kelly and Thomas. Steve chased them, running awkwardly on his crippled knees. Behind them, the North Fork howled like a predatory animal.
Steve and Moru had fire shelters on their belts, but he hadn’t seen any on Thomas and Kelly. Maybe they had them in their packs, for at this rate they were going to need them. He hated the thought of going into a shelter for the second time in a week, but there it was. And from the wind velocity and the sound of it, the North Fork’s firestorm would burn far fiercer and hotter than the Hellroaring. If they were overtaken, they’d probably die.
Trying to think of a way out, he considered the layout of the complex. If they worked their way to the left, they might get ahead of the fire’s path and break into the open near the employee cabins.
The smoke grew thicker. Ahead, the visibility was down to just under a hundred feet when Thomas slewed to a stop, holding his out his hand. When Steve pulled up beside him, he felt the fire’s heat. As Kelly and Moru joined them, a flash of orange appeared through the trees.
“They’ll be heading for the easement,” Garrett predicted. From his neutral tone, she gathered he saw long odds against their making it.
This wasn’t goddamn fair. Last night she’d dared to believe that Steve was making a new start after losing Susan and Christa. A fresh beginning that she might have a stake in.
Her little voice whispered that life . . . and death . . . weren’t fair.
Garrett looked at the hellish red twilight and broke into a flat out run. Clare’s bandanna covered the part of her face not protected by goggles, but she felt the stinging impact of wind-borne cinders.
Not far from the south edge of the parking lot, the wide, treeless swath of easement headed into the forest. Clare strained and picked out four yellow Nomex shirts. They weren’t even wearing hard hats and she assumed they hadn’t believed the North Fork would move this fast.
She picked out Steve and uselessly added her scream to that of the fire. He waved an arm to signal that they were heading her way.
Clare started toward them, but Garrett grabbed her sleeve. “I wouldn’t.”
Although she’d come to appreciate his wisdom, this time she tried to pull away. “Steve!” she cried.
Garrett’s fingers held like a vice. “Rule number one,” he ground out. The commandment she’d preached to Jerry Dunn of Toro Canyon, about not jumping into the water to save a drowning victim unless you had the right equipment and were certain of conditions.
The one she’d ignored while struggling to uncover Frank, the one Javier had disregarded to drag her from danger. She struggled to get free, to go to Steve, but a wall of flame roiled up over the trees on the easement’s west side. Heat waves distorted the air.
Garrett pointed to the pipes running down the center of the corridor with sprinkler heads at intervals. “The irrigation system!”
Pete Cullen and his West Yellowstone volunteers had brought their equipment to protect the power lines, but no water flowed. “Why isn’t it on?” Clare shouted.
“Don’t know.”
She located the fireplug where the pipes were tied in to the four-inch connection. “I hope there’s pressure.” She ran for the nearest fire truck, parked thirty yards away. Instinct told her that she was running for Steve’s life.
No one was near the vehicle, a grim sign that this perimeter, too, had been abandoned, so quickly that nobody had moved the truck. She checked the back where the hose clamp was, but the plug wrench wasn’t in plain view. Moving to the side, she unlatched the shining silver cover of the nearest locker.
Nothing inside but air packs, with spare bottles clipped in place above. Clare started for the other side of the truck and realized that the wrench was on the rear step. She’d just failed to see