by John Shannon
There was a deep concussion far behind, so visceral it rang in his sinuses. It was either a rifle (no pistol sounded like that) or the brushfire had come upon something explosive. They all craned their necks back. The tall eucalyptus that loomed across the street from the house was catching fire down low among its shaggy bark, but it hadn’t been the source of that boom. They had to watch in horror for a moment as the wind tore strips of flaming bark off the tree and sent them toward the house, air-borne rafts of flame. One firebrand caught on the roof but died out slowly on the gravel.
“The house is history,” Jack Liffey said. “Let’s go.” And his car, he thought. Another trusty vehicle lost.
The canyon narrowed and became entangled with dead brush. Somebody had to take charge.
“Trev, go ahead for a minute and kick a path through that dry stuff.”
“Fe real, mon.”
He ran forward and kicked away at the impassible barrier of dry chamise plants, releasing medicinal smells into the smoke, until finally he had kicked a path through, then he ran forward again and furiously attacked another blockage of the chest high shrubs. Faint yelps of fright carried down with the ash and smoke, and he figured the cameramen had finally discovered their predicament. The smoky wind grew thicker and darker, full of grit, the eye-smarting teargas of a campfire shifting abruptly into your face. Once in a while, a driven spark stung the back of his neck like an angry insect.
“Oh, de debbil!” Trevor Pennycooke came to a halt and turned with spread arms to catch them both against their hurrying momentum. For the first time Jack Liffey noticed the Jamaican’s ripe smell, stronger than the fire itself when you got this close. Pennycooke had backstopped them at the lip of a sheer drop down a crumbly cliff. It was nearly fifty feet down and would have made a lovely waterfall if this wadi ever ran with the winter rainfall.
Jack Liffey looked back and saw they would have to retreat forty or fifty yards to find a slope they could manage out of the ravine, returning into the teeth of the fire.
“Ay! Ay! Ay!” somebody back there behind the shimmering heat wall was yapping like a dog.
“That fucking guy!” somebody else yelled, the voices tiny, panicky, like very small men trapped in a bottle. The fire itself had begun a kind of growl and crunch like some unseen predator eating.
“Let’s go folks,” Jack Liffey said. “I see a deer trail up there.”
“My ankle is killing me.”
It was about to kill all three of them, he thought, and it would for sure if this turned into a real firestorm.
“Sorry,” he said. “It doesn’t get any better for a while.”
* * *
Maeve went to the window, where she could hear several sirens all around the compass. “They coming for you?” she asked in jest.
“That’s fire,” Thumb said.
“Bomberos. You can tell just from the siren?”
A nearby firetruck gave a series of deep trucklike hoots, and then she could tell, too. They seemed to be all heading westward, and she had a terrible premonition. They should have been going eastward to the Claremont fire, or north to Altadena. “Got a TV?”
He was already turning it on, patting it gently on one side, then shaking it and giving a bigger whack.
“Just don’t say it responds like a woman, okay?”
It took him a moment to get her joke, and then he frowned. “Only cobardes hit women.”
A lopsided picture finally emerged from the streaks and static on the old TV, far too green, and he fiddled with the knobs until the image straightened up. Channels eleven and five had the Claremont fire. He twisted the old rotary dial to thirteen and what appeared to be a helicopter shot of a hillside fire, with a house already burning. A small logo said 13 Live.
“… Not one of your ordinary Malibu fires. Several phone tips have reported that shots were fired, but we’ve been unable to get confirmation from the sheriff’s department. It may have begun up here with a drug deal gone sour or even a domestic dispute. This one is certainly arson. Only fifteen minutes ago Air Thirteen captured this scene above Mulholland near Cold Canyon Road.”
TAPED EARLIER came up over the logo, and the small foreshortened figure of a man could be seen scurrying along the edge of a paved road with a roadway flare, setting fire to the weeds. The camera panned over to a downhill line of fire that was already threatening a flat-roofed house on a dirt road. A couple of men seemed to be filming this fire. The cameras were smaller than the usual news cameras, so the men appeared to be ghoulish homeowners recording the death of their own homes with amateur equipment. The announcer babbled away, but Maeve was only half listening. “… hot flare … amazing calm … maybe twenty years old … we may be watching pure evil at work …”
“Madre,” Thumb said.
The screen flickered and the words in the corner returned to 13 LIVE. The flat-roofed house was ablaze. A sunk driveway led to a big garage, and a car seemed to be parked down there, half charred and smoldering.
“Oh, NO!” Maeve shrieked.
“What?”
She could feel her face burn in sympathy with the flames, and her hands stretched out involuntarily toward the TV, all her muscles stiffening. A VW Bug with two primered fenders, left front, right rear. Her father had said he thought the girl he was looking for was in the Malibu hills.
“That’s my dad’s car!”
The camera pulled away from the car, and she tried a desperate act of will to make it go back. As the helicopter circled, the camera panned around and tried to stay on a prone figure on charred ground that had obviously been overtaken by fire. The person was too thin and too tall to be her father, and he seemed to be clutching a little video camera. One arm was still moving a little. She felt an immense relief and then a momentary guilt at being thankful for someone else’s misfortune. While she watched, begging the helicopter camera to come around again to the car, to show her some detail that would belie what she knew, the TV set broadcast the sound of two gunshots. Instantly, the man in the helicopter began to jabber, and the helicopter scooted outward and higher, losing sight of the house.
“Are you sure?” Thumb said.
She nodded dully, and they both watched as they could hear the pilot shouting “We’re taking fire!” and all they could see was a chaotic streak of landscape as the helicopter retreated in a tilted circling evasive maneuver, the cameraman bravely struggling to find a target.
“I owe you two a life,” Thumb said. “Let’s go get your father.”
“You didn’t kill anyone.”
“I have.”
She wasn’t sure whether it was rueful or proud, and just then she didn’t care. “We don’t even know where that fire is.”
“Mulholland and Cold Canyon,” he said. Obviously, he had listened more carefully than she had. She tried to picture a route. To get there, she’d have to drive east along the 10 and, when it hit the ocean, up the coast highway, but by the time she made the turn onto PCH the traffic would be a nightmare—or blocked by the police. By then most of the traffic would be fleeing the other way, but, anyway—Thumb was right—she had to try.
“Let’s go.”
“I got to get something.”
He turned his back to her and, trying to hide it, he tore open a small box and yanked out a black pistol that he stuck in his waistband.
“Is that the one … ?” she asked.
“Claro que yes. I’m sorry.”
“That’s over. I forgive you. But it’s dangerous for you to be keeping it.”
Trevor Pennycooke had halted momentarily when they finally boosted the girl up to the deer trail. Without warning, he drew his big ungainly revolver and fired a couple of shots back into the flames. Jack Liffey could only think of the man-of-war at the beginning of Heart of Darkness, standing off the coast of the Congo and firing its cannon into the endless jungles to punish some nameless indiscretion of the continent. This pistol fire would have about as much use, but maybe he discerned a target b
ack there in the dancing heat.
“Bal’heads tink dey beat on me like a drum. I-an-I a snake fe squeeze dem dead.”
“Yeah, okay, Trevor, but not now.” Jack Liffey could feel the heat pouring down the hillside like an avalanche from an open furnace door. The fire had become a steady roar now, an animal poked into authentic rage. “Let’s get her out of here.” The dear trail was only wide enough for one, but he struggled slightly off trail on the downside to offer the best footing he could to her one good leg. Just as he got the pace he tripped on some outcrop and lunged forward, dragging her along, before he caught himself. She whimpered with pain, but he could tell she was trying her best not to. Pennycooke followed close behind, as if to protect them from the fire. Before long, the trail tilted down at quite an angle, and he had to find a new cadence, his heels hitting the steep dirt hard. His own ankles were starting to hurt.
“I-an-I take over naow,” Pennycooke insisted, and Jack Liffey felt a strong hand on his shoulder. The live sparks and firebrands streamed past, and he hated to slow down even for the changeover. It was a miracle that the fire hadn’t leapfrogged ahead of them on the flaming debris.
Pennycooke picked her up and put her over his shoulder like a long sack of grain. Jack Liffey was amazed at his strength and balance as he started to jog heavily down the trail, the girl’s dark pigtails jouncing behind. Even unburdened, he had to hurry to keep up. A minute earlier, there had been a news helicopter but no evidence of fire department aircraft—all those angelic water-droppers you saw on the news. He supposed they were busy on the other fires or charging up with fire retardants somewhere. If the fire hadn’t been so loud itself, howling behind them, he figured he would have heard sirens from the fire trucks. But there hadn’t been a one. He wondered if they’d all been sent to cover the fires in the east.
He saw a flame lick upward out of the brush to his right, an offspring of the main fire. He’d read that wildfire raced uphill faster than a man could run, climbing on its own heat and the grasp of its taller flames, so he supposed they were lucky to be chased downhill.
Trevor Pennycooke stumbled ahead, and Jack Liffey lunged forward to help catch him before he went down heavily. The Jamaican gasped once. “Thankee, mon.”
Somehow, they had lost the deer trail, or it had petered out on them, and they were kicking and high-stepping their way through chaparral now, waist-high dry weeds, wild grasses, and concealed stone outcrops. It was pure brute strength that kept the Jamaican tearing through the weeds at almost a trot, carrying his limp burden. Jack Liffey was having trouble himself getting a breath, with the smoke and the exertion, plus one lung still weakened by its recent collapse. An echo of Dickens entered his weary mind: somewhere nearby there is pain. And exhaustion.
A hundred yards ahead, and well below, they could see the dark scar of a paved road, two lanes without shoulders, a guard rail along the lower side. There wasn’t a single vehicle escaping along it. Why?
Maeve drove fast, too fast for the little Toyota, which was starting to feel floaty at about 100, losing traction on the freeway as she wove grimly in and out between other cars in the faster lanes of the 10, and she had Thumb dial star 3 again on her cell, the speed-dial for Gloria’s house, but it was still busy.
“Please don’t get us busted with a cuete in the car,” he said, one hand clinging hard to the shoulder belt next to his neck and his palm flat against the dash.
It was Calo slang, but she could guess. “Put it in the glove compartment. I’ll take the blame.”
He did just that, and then redialed and by his expression she could tell he’d got a ring. He held out the cell.
“Gloria—don’t talk—this is Maeve. Dad’s caught in that fire in Malibu. I saw his car on TV—that big house off Cold Canyon was the first one to burn up.” She grimaced as she swerved around an SUV full of kids. “I’m going there now. Do what you can.” She rang off before Gloria could argue, then switched the phone off completely and dropped it into her shirt pocket.
Thumb pressed both palms hard against the dash now, wincing silently from time to time—but he didn’t want to admit a girl’s driving was frightening him.
“You drive pretty good.”
“Hope I don’t hit a slowpoke. If I do, there’s going to be a fine spray of my own shit all over the inside of this car.”
“I’m not sayin’ nothin’, chica.”
They slithered down the weedy bank to the road, and it felt good to stand on pavement. Trevor Pennycooke lifted the girl off his shoulder and set her down to rest stork-fashion on her good leg. The six-foot cliffbank protected them a little from the blast of heat that was visible as a speckled wavery wind passing overhead. Jack Liffey guessed that they had actually gained on the fire.
“The road’s no good,” Jack Liffey said. “I think this is Piuma. I came up it once, and it switchbacks like crazy for miles.” He pointed straight across the road back into waist-high yellow grass and sighed. “Straight down is the way.”
In the end, it was a different issue that settled it. Jack Liffey happened to be hanging his head, staring down at just the right spot in the roadway to see the startling and baffling spark of a tiny collision, instantly inhabited by that weird sound of a high-velocity ricochet. A few seconds later, they heard the crack of the rifle far above. He pointed to the white gouge where the bullet had come in at a shallow angle and then ricocheted away.
“Who bust dat cap?” Pennycooke stood out fearlessly in the road and squinted back toward the fire, visible as a solid wall of billowing flame.
“That was a rifle, probably with a scope on it. I think it’s your friend Keith—the guy you circumcised.”
It was just possible in one spot to make out the break in the weedline far up the hill where Mulholland ran. A fire captain’s sedan and a pumper truck were parked up there, but no one was visible. Trever Pennycooke aimed his big Webley uphill and fired several shots blindly into the fire before cursing and discarding the empty revolver. Jack Liffey realized he had lost his own pistol long ago. Farewell, old friend.
Pennycooke hefted the girl onto his shoulder again, and they stepped over the low guard rail and back into the chaparral. Jack Liffey felt guilty letting the Jamaican do all the heavy lifting, but he knew he was too near his own limits.
A noisy helicopter came high along the hillside behind them, dangling a swaying firebucket on a cable. Jack Liffey caught a glance of orange mist falling away from the bucket. It didn’t seem to him it would do much good against a fire this size. The helicopter warped away toward the ocean, its bucket swinging in a big arc with the turn. He remembered a half dozen of his friends once trying to piss out a roaring campfire. Even with beer-engorged bladders, they’d done no more than give the fire a short hissy fit and engulf themselves in an unpleasant smell.
There was a much bigger Canadian flying boat that could scoop up tons of water, and the city had borrowed a couple of them one year but had never sprung the money to buy one. There were no freshwater lakes convenient, and there was intense objection to using sea water on a chaparral fire. Better to let the land burn than despoil it with salt water. Some environmentalists also objected to building homes for the rich up in the fire zone in the first place, as argued by his friend Mike Lewis. Inevitably, the fire departments would have to commit to defending these homes, and inevitably they would burn, the city spending millions to make vain and dangerous stands on back roads for a handful of high-rollers.
He pounded along behind Pennycooke and Luisa. He could tell that his mind was doing its best not to think directly about the inferno at their back. It was like the sound of a thousand cigarette packs being crumpled, plus a deeper roar, under that, like the steady howl of a bear the size of Nevada.
TWENTY-ONE
Zor the O
He was wrong about gaining on the wildfire. It was starting to flank them now, perhaps just a twitch of wind direction or maybe a bedding of some faster-burning plant that gave a yank to the flames so they s
ped forward to the right of their deer trail. Now, the three of them were running for their lives. Or two of them were running; the girl was still draped over Trevor Pennycooke’s shoulder. Jack Liffey couldn’t keep his eyes off the errant thrust of the flame, kinking his neck that way again and again. It was like a living thing, hanging back unexpectedly, then lunging forward in attack, taunting them—vile orange slaps of fire, sudden mouths that engulfed a dry bush at one bite, the flames creeping low for a moment and then taking a ballet leap. His hands and neck were covered with grass cuts, stinging himself with his own sweat.
For a while, he had heard sirens and airplanes, but now he could hear only the crackle and thunder of the living fire that was determined to outflank them. Luckily, the dear trail trended away from the flames, but then it dropped steeply into an arroyo that was too dangerous to enter, and they had to set out across the open brush, weeds slashing at their ankles. Trevor Pennycooke was visibly tiring ahead of him, but if he set the girl down, so they could triple up, it would only slow them up.
“Can I help?” Jack Liffey called.
“Trod on.” The man was gasping for air. “We all ruff necks, mon.”
They must have been spotted by the fire department helicopter because it made a low pass from in front and hit the chaparral just ahead with a faint orange spray. The edge of the mist cloud drifted onto the threatening flame to their right and gave the beast a momentary surprise. It reared and smoked a pure white emanation, as if in a rage, then lay back down and carried straight on, more determined than ever. Get a bigger plane, he thought. There might have been another gunshot from behind, he wasn’t sure, as a kind of sizzle seemed to pass near his ear and then the crack of a shot.
