Summer of Fire - Linda Jacobs [81]
Glowing embers fell faster. Burning branches blew into the road. Without stopping to think, Clare tore the shelter from Billy’s hands and let it blow away like a billowing sail. She reached for her own and pressed it into his hands.
The fire swept through the treetops a hundred feet away, pillars of orange, red and purple. Searing heat blasted Clare’s face and the grass at her feet burst into flame.
In the same moment, a tongue of flame roiled out of the woods and licked at the foil mounds where the soldiers had already pulled their shelters over them on the ground. Hands that had been reaching to tuck in flaps retracted inside the balls that looked like baking potatoes wrapped and ready for the oven.
Clare met Steve’s eyes. He pulled his tent over his shoulders like a cape and shoved her ahead of him onto the semi-cleared ground, falling half beside and half on top her.
“I wish I had a respirator,” she said grimly.
They lay awkwardly, arms and legs bumping and hardhats at odds. The dragon’s breath pressed hot foil onto her shoulder and she realized that the Hellroaring was upon them.
Nearly inaudible above the fire’s vacuuming scream, someone in a nearby shelter sobbed. Steve had gone down with his sleeves rolled up and his hands bare. She imagined his knuckles heating as the line of firelight brightened the edges of the tent.
He swore viciously.
Clare placed her hands in leather gloves over his, taking the tapes from him. “I’ve got this end.” His boots held the other.
He jerked his hands inside with what she imagined would be second-degree burns. Clusters of crimson fireflies revealed pinprick holes in the shelter. Smoke poured under the edge, bringing tears to her eyes. Crazy currents lifted the material and let fire seep into the uncleared grass.
While Clare held on, Steve repeatedly slapped out small flames, swearing as he burned his hands. Despite gloves, her hands grew hot, especially her left little finger that felt as though she pressed it to an iron.
How could she have become so cocky, thinking things were going well? What if Devon were one of the young people here today?
A roll call was in progress. One by one, the troops called their names into the din. Halfway though the alphabet, Sergeant Travis shouted, “Jakes? Sound off, soldier!”
The only reply was a barely audible sob.
Hellish orange light seeped through the pinholes. “Stay with it!” Clare shouted. “Whatever you do, don’t get up and run!”
The roll call broke down as other voices joined in.
“Hold on!”
“Everybody stay put!”
A sudden, shrill cry made Clare think the pain of her fingers was nothing. It went on and on, a scream of such purely distilled agony that she wanted to put her hands over her ears. Her imagination took flight. A shelter had blown free, the wall of flames devouring its occupant.
Or worse, Clare screwed her eyes shut against the image of someone who’d panicked and thrown off their hope of salvation, a lurching, staggering, falling torch.
When the screaming finally stopped, she shook with sobs. Her tears dried instantly in the scorching air.
Despite an incoherent comforting murmur from Steve, it all surged back. Surrounded by the blast furnace bellow of the Hellroaring, through her closed eyelids, she could still see the glare of fire, both real and remembered. In the Yellowstone wilderness, someone suffered an agonizing fate. In a Houston apartment house, a roof slanted sideways, twisted, and crushed the man on the hose.
In the past weeks, Clare had gone from denying Frank’s death, underscored by her refusal to return to a station without him, to anger at being left unscathed at his side. Now that rage rose with the fire’s fury. Travis had said this was her fault.
“No!” She’d kicked at the flaming timbers over Frank, drunk on adrenaline and determined not to lose.
But she had. Frank was dead and a soldier’s silence spoke more