A living creature determined to devour any chance of keeping those below Evan free of the flames’ hunger.
On the fifth trip, Evan lost sight of the team.
“Fuck!” he screamed, searching for the firefighters in the fleeting glimpses he got of the ground through the fire and smoke.
Risking the dangerous gusts, he dropped lower, the smoke swirling away from the chopper’s blades like a whirlpool.
Nothing but fire and smoke and burning trees and scrub.
A kangaroo bounded across the ground, its fur ablaze.
“Fuck!” he screamed again, gripping the collective pitch lever tighter.
Another squall slammed into the chopper, knocking it sideways.
Evan fought back control, desperate to find the ground team. Alarms buzzed in the cockpit, warning signals he was too close to the ground. Too close.
A flash of neon yellow caught his eye amongst the black and red. He reefed on the lever, tilting the chopper into the wind.
The smoke swirled away, revealing the Ridge’s fire brigade captain, Jess Montgomery, screaming at someone or something still hidden by the smoke.
Yanking back the collective lever, Evan sent the chopper high. Scanned the area. Studied the smoke and the flames. Calculated what little time those on the ground had left before the fire ringed them completely.
And did the only thing he could.
Hoping to hell the captain realised what he was doing, he activated the retraction winch for the water collection hose and directed the chopper back down into the inferno.
He cut through the thick smoke and flames devouring the scrub behind Jess and her team and headed for the only patch of ground to their rear untouched by the fire.
Christ, he hoped to fuck it was large enough to land on without being engulfed by flames.
The chopper’s cabin turned to an oven again. Sweat beaded on his forehead, his top lip. Stung his eyes.
He navigated purely on instinct. Fought the buffeting gale as it tried to drive him into the blaze. Fought the pummeling memories of a similar fight between nature and aircraft five years ago…
Through the chopper’s windshield, he caught sight of Jess screaming at that same unseen something or someone in the smoke. This time, however, he spied four of her team running towards him.
Ash had turned their faces black. Their eyes were wide with fear. Two of the men dragged a third between them, his body limp, his head lolling.
Heart fast, Evan gripped the collective lever tighter, made sure the collection hose was completely retracted and prepared himself for what came next.
A juddering jolt rocked the chopper as it thudded against the ground. He bit back a curse, fixing his stare instead on the men hurrying towards him. Men fleeing a cruel, hideous death.
They reached the side of the chopper just as he slid open the door.
A wall of heat hotter than a furnace slammed into him. Searing-hot air poured into his lungs. The screams of a ghost assaulted him again, dying screams of agony. He shut them out, focusing on the men looking up at him with raw terror and relief.
“We’ve lost Harry,” one of them shouted, helping his fellow fighters shove their unconscious crew mate into the chopper. “The Captain is trying to find—”
A deafening roar erupted behind them, followed a split second later by a wave of scalding heat.
Snapping his stare over the men’s shoulders, Evan witnessed a massive eucalyptus tree detonate on the rim of the fire front. Beneath it was Jess Montgomery, the petite captain of the Wallaby Ridge Fire Brigade hunching over what was obviously a prone body on the ground.
“There!” Evan yelled, pointing in her direction.
Every fibre in his body urged him to jump from the chopper and run to them. To drag them from beneath the burning tree.
But if he did, they’d all be dead within the minute. The fire was devouring the small area he’d touched down in. They all needed to be in the air ASAP, and given he was the only one capable of piloting the chopper…
“Hurry,” he shouted at the backs of the two men now running for Jess and Harry.
The urge to join them flooded him again. Overwhelming and powerful. Gritting his teeth, he dropped his attention to the unconscious man on the floor of his chopper. Checked his pulse.
Alive. But only just.
Pulling him farther in, he shot a quick glance outside. Just in time to see another gum tree detonate beside the first.
Just in time to see half the blazing foliage fall to the ground.
Just in time to see Jess and the other men haul Harry out of the way.
“Time’s up,” he yelled again. The roar of the fire devoured his words as easily as it devoured the bush. “We’ve gotta get out of here now!”
A heartbeat later—time that dragged for an eternity—Jess and her team pushed Harry’s inert form into the chopper’s interior.
Evan didn’t waste time checking to see if the father of three was alive. If he did that, none of them would be.
He threw himself into the pilot seat and took off. Propelled the Bell 205 upwards, through flames and smoke that were not just circling them but reaching for them. Hungry for them.
Enveloping them.
The world disappeared. Became a sweltering shroud of black and red and orange.
Behind him came the unmistakable sounds of a person performing CPR. Below him came the furious blast of another eucalyptus tree detonating.
Evan pulled back on the controls, hurling the chopper higher through the smoke. Higher. Higher.
Until they burst out of the inferno, out of the blackness and into a cloudless dusk sky.
* * * *
Four hours later, with the north containment lines once again secure, and over 50,000 hectares of burning scrubland and vegetation extinguished, Evan finally allowed himself to climb out of his chopper.
The AS350 B3s from Sydney had arrived and were taking turns dumping the fire still burning with water sucked up from the water hole in the middle of the national park. On the ground, the teams sent from Sydney, Tamworth and Dubbo worked with Jess’s small crew of volunteers.
Setting foot on the Wallaby Ridge’s helipad, Evan turned his gaze to the western horizon and studied the angry red glow marring the midnight sky. He’d give himself fifteen minutes. Enough time to grab something to eat, a coffee maybe, and then get back up there. Exhausted as he was, the night—the fight—wasn’t over. They may have contained the north front once again, but the risk of the blaze breaking lines again, especially with the way the wind was gusting and building, was high. Too high.
“Harry’s going to make it.”
Adjusting his baseball cap on his head, Evan shot the man currently walking towards him a quick look.
Charlie Baynard gave him a smile he could only describe as drained. It was a first. Until now, Evan had never seen Wallaby Ridge’s Senior Constable anything less than one hundred percent alert. “He’s got a lung full of shit and ash and smoke, but he’s going to make it. The doc’s dealing with him and Grub now at the hospital.”
Evan scrubbed at his face, his fingers charting the twisted scarred mess of flesh that was his temple, cheek and jaw. His brain wanted to remind him, as it always did when his fingers or gaze encountered the damaged skin, how it came to be that way, how much he’d lost. He wouldn’t let it. Not now. That kind of haunted torture was reserved for moments alone, in his home, staring at himself in the bathroom mirror.
Staring at his naked body and reliving the—
“Grub going to be okay?” he asked Charlie, killing the bleak reverie.
The senior constable snorted. “The bastard sucks more shit into his lungs daily with those roll-your-owns he smokes. The doc says heat exhaustion got to him.” He paused, fixing Evan with a steady look. “You know, they’d all be dead if you hadn’t got them out.”
Evan shook his head. “I didn’t do anything anyone else wouldn’t do.”
Charlie snorted again. “That
is the most convoluted way of saying stop paying me a compliment. And it’s also shit. Not many people would risk their life like that. They’re calling you the hero of Wallaby Ridge.”
Evan’s gut knotted. He frowned at his friend. “Who’s they?”
“Everyone. The nurses at the hospital, Harry, Grub. Hell, even Jess used the word hero, and you know what she’s like, the only person she ever says anything good about is Desmond.”
Evan tugged at the brim of his baseball cap, pulling it lower over his face as he turned back to the bruised-red horizon sky. “I’m no hero.”
“Well,” Charlie muttered, “you better be ready to tell the pretty thing heading our way now that. ’Cause I’m pretty certain the hero of Wallaby Ridge is exactly who she’s come to talk to.”
Dragging his stare from the western sky, Evan gave Charlie a puzzled look. “Tell who that? What the hell are you…?”
The question died on his lips as a woman entered his line of sight.
A tall, willowy woman with hair the colour of midnight, skin the colour of creamy coffee and eyes the colour of a cloudless summer sky.
A woman who loved Cohen Brothers films, hot chili slathered all over her Vegemite toast for breakfast, and dancing barefoot on the beach.
A woman who went skydiving in her spare time and fostered abandoned dogs until they found new homes.
A woman who, as far as he knew, was still his ex-wife’s best friend.
A woman, he noticed, carrying a Chanel Eight News microphone like it was a weapon, with a camera man from the same news network trotting behind her like a faithful puppy.
Jenna McGrath. A woman who’d stirred the primitive centre of what made him a man from the very second he’d met her.
Fuck.
Burn For You
(Outback Skies, Book Three)
Available Here
About Lexxie Couper
Lexxie Couper started writing when she was six and hasn’t stopped since. She’s not a deviant, but she does have a deviant’s imagination and a desire to entertain readers with her words. Add the two together and you get erotic romances that can make you laugh, cry, shake with fear or tremble with desire. Sometimes all at once.
When she’s not submerged in the worlds she creates, Lexxie’s life revolves around her family, a husband who thinks she’s insane, an indoor cat who likes to stalk shadows, and her daughters, who both utterly captured her heart and changed her life forever.
Lexxie lives by two simple rules – measure your success not by how much money you have, but by how often you laugh, and always try everything at least once. As a consequence, she’s laughed her way through many an eyebrow raising adventure.
You can find details of her writing at
www.LexxieCouper.com
Breathless For You: Outback Skies, Book Two Page 10
