Smoke Season

CHAPTER 5

July 11

5:15 a.m.

After a restless night, Mel awoke on the side of Flatiron to a whole new world. On either side of her, crew members stirred in their sleeping bags, coughing and shifting as an eerily intense warmth in the air awoke them. They arose one by one as Mel had, sitting up with exclamations of alarm at the ash that covered their bags, hair, and skin. She scrambled out of her bag, kicking at it as it clung to her boots, which she was now glad she’d worn to bed. Shaking a dusting of ash from her long hair, she weaved her way between sprawled sleeping bags and hastened up the slope from their impromptu camp, José on her heels.

As they crested the edge of the plateau at the tree line, the sight of the blaze met them through the smoke.

“Shit!” Mel staggered back, one hand rising to shield her face. She knew now that they should have taken things more seriously last night; the docile spot fire of the evening before was now an angry, pulsating wall distinguishable even at this distance. The heat of it hit her like she’d just opened an oven door to check on the progress of a batch of cookies, and she skidded out in the shale, holding up a fist toward José, ordering him to stop where he stood a few yards back. “It’s rolling!” she shouted.

José froze, hands on his head in dismay, tears from the heat and the smoke already forming in his eyes. “How the fuck did this happen so fucking fast?”

Mel shook her head. So much for the campfire they’d hoped to stomp out. The wall of flame before them contradicted everything Mel had learned in her years of fire science. Sam had seen something like this, she remembered suddenly, during his first tour in Afghanistan, when the chemical fires would barrel down the narrow streets of Ghazni City. But here in the wilderness, the flames should have decreased, not increased, in the cooler night temperatures. Not act like lava as it consumed the dead, highly flammable undergrowth on the forest floor, gulping oxygen as it progressed. Suddenly tackling this blaze felt like more than babysitting, and she swallowed a swell of actual worry. The heat of this fire was sufficient to tinge Mel’s skin, standing this close. Which meant the smoke of it just might reach Annie’s lungs.

Just before dawn, True dreamed of snow. It was one of those early-morning dreams in which she lay just on the cusp of wakefulness, reality almost but not quite in reach. Usually, her dreams these days involved wads of cash and raging river currents; snow in July was a fresh take on preconscious anxiety. And while possible, it wasn’t remotely likely. Not while she lay sprawled out with her down sleeping bag only half-zipped, the air hitting her skin lacking even the tiniest bite. Then she opened her eyes and did a double take: wispy flakes indeed floated lazily from the sky, a layer already accumulating on her bag.

But not a layer of snow. Of ash.

True blinked, trying to make out the shape and scope of the soot that had been falling on her face as she’d slept, but the sky was virtually the same color as the falling soot ... a pale, almost translucent gray. The morning light looked flat and dull, as two-dimensional as the monotoned joke postcard she’d once received from a rafting buddy on vacation in Central America: Costa Rica in the fog.

She scrambled to stand up, steadying herself in the now rocking oar raft as she shook out her sleeping bag, eyes squinting as she surveyed first the mountain, then their camp from the shoreline. Camp looked quiet enough, though a thin sheen of ash covered everything, from the cooler to the foldable kitchen table and chairs to the Wus’ tent, where they continued to sleep. Good. True could use a few minutes to get her bearings.

Because Mel had been right. Flatiron wasn’t even visible in the smoke that now swallowed it whole. In fact, True couldn’t see farther than a hundred yards in that direction—to the east—and her way forward, eyes straining downriver, wasn’t much better. Shit. Maybe Vivian would freak when she saw the apocalyptic world they’d inherited overnight. So far, she had defied stereotypes—a trait True tended to like in a woman—but surely any mother would balk at conditions like this.

She glanced toward the dry bag she knew contained the sat phone, nerves dancing in her gut. Now that she couldn’t even lay eyes on the blaze to assess its strength, should she call Mel back? Or should she forget about Fallows and make an evac plan for the Wus?

Get a grip, Truitt. She’d push for Wonderland, just like Mel had urged, un-ideal as it was. For air-quality comfort, she’d tell the Wu family. To take care of business, she told herself. As long as she still arrived at Temple Bar on Friday, she’d be fine.

A hazy, oddly muted stream of sunlight filtered through Sam’s bedroom window just past 6:00 a.m., accompanied by three sounds, all of which seemed out of place as he stirred under the cotton sheets. The first was Annie coughing in her bed in the apartment living room. The second was the low rumble of trucks—big ones—outside the Eddy, probably on the highway adjacent to the river, and the third was a muted but incessant pounding on the door leading to the stairwell and the Eddy bar.

He sat up quickly, his thoughts immediately on Fallows. Was he back to cause more trouble? But now that he was awake, his priorities reshuffled as he identified the reason for his daughter’s intensified cough. The smell of smoke, not like a house fire—like a campfire—permeated his nostrils, despite the fact that Sam had gone through the building before going to bed last night, sealing all the windows they usually left open on summer nights in the mountains.

The pounding on the door continued, and he felt torn between going to Annie and answering it. He hurried down the hallway, tugging a Carbon Rural softball-team sweatshirt over his head as he walked. Whoever knocked so urgently on the other side of the door would just have to deal with his candy-cane-striped flannel pajama bottoms, gifted by Astor last Christmas.

He opened the door to Kim, a full five hours early for her shift, who rushed inside with a terse “You have your phone on you? I can’t find jack shit on mine.”

Sam trailed after her in his pajamas, scrambling to catch up in his groggy state. Astor, a light sleeper to a fault, emerged from her room, her expression as baffled as Sam’s. Kim popping in wasn’t unusual; her place was just down the street. He did, however, take issue with the early hour. “Find what on your phone, exactly?”

“Carbon Rural updates, county alerts, anything. The Outlaw County emergency app is a joke.” Her eyes were glued to her own screen, one manicured finger flicking upward in search of information.

The smoke. The fire. The reason for Annie’s coughing. “How bad is it?”

Sam moved automatically past her to the window on the landing and got his answer, which had adrenaline chasing any lingering desire for sleep from his head. The smoke was worse outside, far worse ... He nearly choked on it as he craned his neck to the west in an attempt to get an unobstructed view of Flatiron. He covered his mouth with the neck of his sweatshirt to filter the air entering his lungs, but he shouldn’t have bothered: when Sam finally made out the shape and scope of the mountain, he gasped out loud, the involuntary response leaving him sputtering.

The Flatiron Fire raged. No other word could describe what Sam saw to the west. What he had managed to convince himself was a tame show of nature last night now burned huge and hot, covering far more than the finger’s breadth of forest he’d noted before bed.

He closed the window in a hurry; he couldn’t have Annie subjected to this level of smoke. Not that it was much better inside the apartment. As he ushered Kim back in and shut the door behind them, her raspy cough still cut the air. He made a beeline toward the kitchen, where his own phone sat charging. Between Twitter, Facebook, and the county emergency-alert system, surely someone knew something. Or even better, maybe Mel had left him a text. Hearing her voice and confirming her own safety would be a balm to his already tattered nerves, and besides, Kim was right: they needed information, and fast.

“We need to pull back!” Mel yelled to José, spinning on her heel to retrace the path to camp. She didn’t have to tell him twice, and they burst back into the circle of sleeping bags and trucks out of breath, where she gasped out an order to call for backup.

Doug White, with a talent for skeptical derision, looked up from brushing his teeth at the water station with a deliberate lack of haste. “Right now?”

“Affirmative.” Mel ground her jaw, wishing the Red Book call had come in just a few minutes later last night, after White had finished clocking out. But until Hernandez himself showed his face, Mel was the second highest-ranking firefighter here, and she intended to hold her own. White’s misogynism would simply have to wait. “And we need to get on the horn with any neighboring agencies we can. Eagle Valley Fire Protection District, Outlaw County, even BLM, if they can send someone.” They stood on Forest Service land but would take whatever help they could.

He complied, though perhaps not until taking his cue from Lewis, who jumped right on the horn. “I got Parker Pass Station 3 and 7, too,” Lewis announced a minute later, head still bent toward his handheld. “And ODOT is on standby. How bad is it, Mel?”

Though she could no longer see the fire now that she was back in camp, that rolling lava still played behind Mel’s eyes. “Bad. We’re relocating,” she announced to the crew at large, trying hard to keep the edge to her voice firmly planted in urgency, not panic. “Pack up and gear up.”

Most of the young volunteers made short work of it, apart from Deklan, who wanted to know which agency would arrive first— the county —and which would be most effective— probably Eagle Valley .

“It takes a village, isn’t that what you old-timers say?” he noted, while still trying to apply moleskin to his filthy feet, his dirty socks balled up on the ground next to his sleeping bag.

“Just pick your shit up,” Mel ordered in response. She finished stuffing her down sleeping bag into its compression sack with more force than necessary, then called on Deklan to do the same. “Nobody has time to babysit you.”

Deklan’s ears turned the same shade as his fiery red hair at the reprimand, and Mel felt a swell of regret. As battalion chief, it was her duty to make sure the kids took this seriously, but that didn’t mean she had to bark out orders like a drill sergeant. It hardly made her better than White. Besides, stressful situation notwithstanding, Mel was reasonably sure she was actually just projecting her own baggage onto the boy, trying to mother him while her own kids were out of sight and out of reach.

“I’m sorry,” she told them. “Just ... do your best to get loaded up. We need to pull back, stage further down-mountain while we wait for reinforcements.”

Deklan finally complied in earnest, the first hint of fear in his eyes. Good, Mel thought, even while still feeling a bit mean. Fear was his friend. “And get yourselves fed,” she added. She waved a packet of instant oatmeal at the kids, compliments of the Carbon Save Mart. They donated this stuff to the station firefighters by the caseload. “Looks like you’ll get the action you’ve been waiting for sooner rather than later.”

As José rushed to load the Gatorade water dispensers onto the supply rig and Lewis corralled the crew vehicles, Mel stepped away from the fray to check her phone for any messages. One had managed to get through sometime in the night from Sam. Seeing his name on her screen sent a jolt of gladness through her tired body.

“Will it ever stop?” she’d asked True once, in a low moment, when her love for Sam had, at least temporarily, overridden the stubborn resentment that clung like springtime algae to the boulders along the Outlaw’s riverbanks.

True had only looked at her sadly, and Mel had read the answer in her face. Did it matter? Because love simply hadn’t been enough. Finances aside, the stress inflicted by Annie’s diagnosis had proven impossible to parse from the essence of them as a couple. Collateral damage, their therapist had said. Friendly fire, Mel had retorted.

But the text this morning gave her a welcome sense of relief: Girls fine with me at the Eddy.

Thank God. But what about True? The smoke could be funneling into the river valley by now, since the fire raged so hard here. Given the unprecedented speed of this fire, would she have to pivot from her usual course? Mel couldn’t decide which was worse: True failing to carry out this week’s handoff, crucial to keeping Annie’s meds flowing, or getting stuck en route, putting herself, and her river clients, in danger. A quick swell of anger, not unlike the resentment that simmered persistently below it, arose in Mel. Just for once she’d love to have actual viable choices placed in front of her instead of the shit hand she and everyone she loved had been dealt.

Get your head on straight. Firefighters who had half their brains elsewhere made mistakes. Sometimes big ones. Occasionally fatal ones. She’d promised herself, from the start of this mess she’d gotten them into, that nothing like that would happen on her watch.

She only allowed herself to iMessage Sam back, cursing under her breath when she got a predictable Text not sent message. She tried again, sending the words as an iPhone text message instead. Fire gaining. Annie ok? When this attempt, too, resulted only in a scrolling wheel of death, she bit back another wave of worry—for Annie, for all of them—and simplified further, even though she knew this new message, in its succinctness, stripped down to only what mattered most, could alarm Sam. Love to all. Kiss girls for me. She hit Send three times before she heard her message sling through the ether with a whoosh .