Mountain Ash

by Margareta Osborn

  Up one fence line, across another, up into the top corner she shone the torch. The embers were still falling. She had to get out of here or she was going to die, which meant her children would die too.

  Sobbing now, she swung to leave the paddock and caught sight of a dark rump in her peripheral vision. Parnie!

  She dashed down to him. He was snorting and whinnying, running a short section of fence in the far south-eastern corner. He was beside himself. Was she going to be able to guide him to freedom? Trying to calm her voice, she called out to him, ‘Parnie. It’s me. Parnie, mate. Settle. Settle.’ She was up to his shoulder. He was throwing his head, but her voice seemed to reach out to him. She was able to put her hand on his neck and stroke his face. She urged him forwards. ‘C’mon, mate, let’s get out of here.’ The horse needed no encouragement. He was right at her shoulder, and she had to run to keep up. Back to the gate they went. Parnie plunged through and took off down the hill towards the house with Jodie pelting along behind him. She skidded to a halt outside the old miner’s shack. Now she just had to get Milly and get out of there.

  Her daughter met her at the back garden gate. She was crying, howling. ‘Mummy, Mummy! I’m scared!’

  Jodie was terrified too, but she wasn’t going to admit that to Milly.

  ‘C’mon, sweetie, you’ve got to stop crying. We can get through this together.’ Milly wouldn’t be soothed. She was hiccupping. Jodie grabbed hold of her daughter. Towed her towards the ute. Opened the passenger door. Urged her in. Ran around to jump into the driver’s seat only to be stopped by a scream from Milly. Nearby, a glowing branch had fallen straight down onto a rearing Parnie’s back. The horse was plunging and kicking. The smell of singed hair and meat was discernible despite the dense smoke she was inhaling with every breath. Finally the horse dislodged the branch, and Parnie took off into the dark orange night. The smoke and ash was getting so thick Jodie couldn’t see the top of the hill any more, let alone what direction the horse took. In the paddock at the sides of the house, spot fires were starting to light up from the embers. They had to get down the hill to the east and onto the irrigated flats. But where to head?

  Jodie jumped up onto the tray to get some height. Scanned as far as she could see, which wasn’t far. What she did see made her blood run cold. A fire had started at the bottom of the hill on the roadside to the north. The flames were gulping everything in their path, screwing the tops out of the Yellow Stringybark trees in a swirling firestorm. She snatched her gaze to the south, desperately seeking an escape route. Despite her best efforts, she couldn’t see over the brow of the rise to the road below. But if it was anything like to the north, she and Milly would run into the inferno at the foot of the hill, for the fire looked as though it was coming at her from all directions. Holy fuck. They were screwed.

  Sobbing now, Jodie jumped down, hauled Milly out of the ute and back towards their home. She prayed the short grass and lawn she’d tried to keep as green as she could might save them. All they could do was rely on the water, mops and towels. Retreat to the house when the fire front came, and pray like hell the house didn’t explode before they got out into the burned-out high ground. Jodie grabbed a hose, thanking God the power and thus the pump hadn’t gone out yet. She started drowning the ground around her home with water. It was pointless. Too little water too late.

  She turned to spray water on a spot fire near the garden gate and saw out to the north-west the massive flickering glow of the fire front itself. It would have been beautiful if it hadn’t been so terrifying.

  Thick smoke, like orange potato soup, made her cough and splutter. She gathered up her crying daughter with one arm, spraying water with the other, knowing full well that they couldn’t beat this monster. It would take an army of people to try to put these spot fires out and protect the house. She wished she’d had time to plug and fill the spouting. She should have been prepared. She should have been out of here yesterday. She should have done a lot of things.

  Now her mistakes would kill them all.

  Nate was pushing the ute hard, literally willing the vehicle to drive faster. He didn’t care about the speed limit. He just had to get there. To save Jodie.

  He’d been trying and trying to ring her but there was no answer on either phone.

  As they travelled west, the pulsing glow in the sky from the bushfire could be seen for miles. With threatening malevolence it seemed to be sucking them into its sphere of influence.

  ‘Fuck, mate, you’d better slow down,’ said Wal, who had a stranglehold on the Jesus bar. ‘We’ll have a bloody accident and then what good will we be?’

  Nate eased off the accelerator ten millimetres for a few minutes to soothe the older man, then crept it up again. The people he loved best in the world were in the path of that monster ahead of him.

  ‘Wal, can you try her again?’

  His mate punched the number for the umpteenth time. Put the phone on speaker. This time someone answered, ‘Hello?’ It was Milly. Nate grabbed at the handset.

  ‘Milly? It’s Nate. Are you still up on the hill?’

  ‘Yes. Mum and me are here –’ She was gone.

  ‘Fuck it!’ roared Nate, banging his hand against the steering wheel. ‘Try again!’

  Wal tried, but the phone went straight to message bank.

  Nate sighed. ‘Well at least we know where they are.’

  Wal looked out at the heavy black sky ahead. There was not a star to be seen, nor the moon. ‘I’m not sure that’s a good thing,’ said the older man.

  Nate flattened the accelerator in response.

  They made it to Narree and were heading out towards McCauley’s Hill just as Clem rang. Wal put him on speaker phone.

  ‘I’m at Alex’s. I can’t find the bastard. I’ve searched everywhere. The tractor and trailer with the water tank are missing. The boys are down the back on the dozer and grader pushing in a bigger fire-break for the house. But Alex has disappeared.’

  ‘Jason and Russ don’t know where he is?’

  ‘They reckon they saw him heading to the river to fill the tank. They lost track of him after that.’

  ‘You can’t raise him on the UHF?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Mobile?’

  ‘No reception.’

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘Exactly. What do you want me to do?’

  Nate frantically tried to think of all the places Alex could be. Problem was Nate had been away from Glenevelyn so long he didn’t know where to start looking.

  ‘Be damned if I know.’

  ‘I’ll do another loop around the home paddocks and then I’m going to clear out to Jodie’s. The police are putting up roadblocks and I won’t get through if I don’t leave here now. I bloody hope Travis is down there with her. The main fire front’s heading in that direction.’

  Nate felt his blood run cold. ‘We’re twenty minutes away.’

  ‘Well, you’d better fucking hurry.’

  Chapter 44

  Jodie was exhausted. Her arms felt as if they were about to fall off. Her legs were like jelly and she was light-headed. But she kept going, running on adrenaline alone. She slammed another spot fire with the sodden towel. Milly was jogging beside her with a bucket of water. The little girl had been tireless in running here and there with a mop, helping her mother dowse the fires. Milly had also found them goggles, scrabbling over the stuff packed in the horse float to retrieve them from an old motorbike gear-sack.

  But time was running out. The fire front was coming. Jodie could hear a roar similar to a train’s, or the continuous boom of the ocean. Humongous explosions sporadically sent the orange glow in the sky reaching even taller. She didn’t want to admit to herself these were probably houses exploding. She didn’t want to look at what was coming, otherwise she knew she would lose it and for Milly’s sake she couldn’t do that.

  It took Milly to trip, fall down and not get up, for Jodie to decide they’d had enough. She herself was staggering, co
uld barely lift her towel above her head.

  Jodie had thought about her final stand in the last little while. She put that thought into action, turning the ball valve on the tank to ‘On’ and allowing one of the water tanks to soak the ground along the back of the house. Thanks to her vigilance in keeping the grass green close to their home, and the fall of the hill, the water gave her a buffer zone between the green grass and the fence. It would have to do. She stumbled over to Milly and picked her up. The little girl was crying again. ‘I’m sorry, Mummy, I’m just so tired.’ The beseeching look on her daughter’s face was heart wrenching. Milly shouldn’t have had to go through this. It was time to get inside and take their chances.

  Jodie lugged her daughter into the old shack and sat her on the floor in the kitchen. Called the dog. Slammed the door. Jammed a towel under the air gap. Checked the windows to make sure they were all snug shut.

  And sat down to cuddle both Milly and Floss.

  She’d done so much wrong in her life but this little girl in her arms was all that was right. She couldn’t bear the thought of losing her and prayed to God that if anyone was spared from this hell it would be Milly. She wondered where Nate was. She wanted the chance to tell him how she felt, explain why she had been so frightened to open her heart and their lives to him. If she’d only taken that call. She would have done anything now to hear his deep voice, to be held by those strong arms and told it was going to be all right. Because she knew what was bearing down on them outside wasn’t going to be fine. They were going to die up here on McCauley’s Hill and Alex McGregor would probably laugh himself silly at this turn of events. It was one foul yet easy way to get rid of the blot on the McGregor landscape that was Jodie Ashton.

  She buried her face in her daughter’s hair and inhaled the sweet scent of strawberries among the torpid, orange world of bushfire smoke. Both her babies were her world. They would have been the rock around which she would have built the rest of her life. She should have at least given Nate a chance to prove that he was worthy of their love too. Instead she’d been high-handed and decided his fate for him, never to be a father to his child even though he’d begged her for the chance. She’d been so bloody stupid trying to protect her own heart and in doing so she’d broken his. The baby inside her belly had the right to know and love its father, just like she’d loved hers. Plus the fact Milly loved Nathaniel McGregor too. What a dill Jodie was. What a complete and utter bloody idiot.

  And now it was too late.

  Jodie glanced around the kitchen. Judging by the increasing roar from outside and the intensity of the smoke inside, the fire was nearly on them.

  She’d tried her hardest and now it was all up to God.

  She prayed if it was going to end here, it would be quick, for all their sakes.

  Nate hit the start of Hope’s Road and skidded around the corner to see the glow behind the hill flaming now. The road to the north under McCauley’s Hill was ablaze, the road to the south not. Fire was so damned indiscriminate.

  There was a police roadblock in the middle of the tar.

  ‘No way, mate, you’re not going up there,’ said the officer manning it.

  ‘My … my … wife’s up there on that hill.’

  ‘I don’t care. My orders are to let no one through.’

  ‘Fuck it!’ Nate slammed the steering wheel.

  Wal tried next. ‘Did you hear what he said? She’s up there on her own with their daughter. And she’s pregnant.’

  The young constable blanched, but for all intents and purposes he held firm. ‘No.’ But Nate noticed he moved off to the side, allowing the ute access.

  Both the cop and Nate stared at each other for a few seconds before Nate took off, blasting around the Road Closed sign like it wasn’t even there. It was a credit to the policeman that he didn’t follow.

  When they got to the bottom of the hill, Travis Hunter screamed up beside them on his tractor, towing a trailer with a thousand-litre bulky on the back. Nate guessed it usually carried calf milk. ‘We’ve just raced back from the beach,’ called Travis from the cab. He looked it too. Hair all scruffy like he’d pulled his clothes on backwards in a rush. ‘Tammy’s filling the spray rig with water. She’ll be along in a sec. Where’s Jodie?’

  Nate pointed towards old Joe McCauley’s place. ‘Up there.’

  ‘Fuck,’ said Travis, with a haunted expression. ‘She’ll never survive. Not in that old shack.’

  ‘We’ve got to get up there and get her out. What’s the best way?’ yelled Nate.

  Travis quickly took stock of the situation and pointed towards the far southern corner of the hill, the only part of the rising country not threatened with imminent fire. There was a dam higher up and it’d been leaking, so a little green grass was scattered in the understorey. ‘There. We’ll cut the fence.’

  Nate floored the ute and raced towards the fence line Travis had pointed out. Wal bailed out of the ute, scrabbled in the toolbox and found a pair of wire cutters. He snipped the fence. Nate took off, yelling out the window, ‘You wait for Travis. He’ll need help manning that bulky.’ Wal nodded and waved Nate on. Up the hill, across the paddocks he went. He couldn’t see a damned thing in front of him, made his way guided only by the light in the tiny kitchen window of the house. He barely missed a fleeing horse by inches. Parnassus by the size of him.

  Up the hill Nate drove, bumping over rocks, mowing down Burgan brush. Spot fires were starting, licking his ute in places, but still he ploughed on, rebounding off low scrubby tree trunks like he and his vehicle were in a pin-ball machine. He finally screeched to a halt outside the southern side of the house. Fled the vehicle. Hurdled the fence. Ran up along the front verandah. Belted on the door, shouting, ‘Jodie, Milly, Jodie!’ He slammed his arms hard against the glass. ‘JODIE!’

  Jodie thought she was hearing things. Was someone yelling her name? She lifted her face from Milly’s head where it was resting.

  ‘JODIE!’

  She staggered to her feet, stumbled to the front door and pulled it open to let a blast of billowing smoke in, followed by Nathaniel McGregor.

  He’d come back. He was here. She started crying. ‘Oh God, Nate. How did –?’

  ‘Grab Milly, quick!’

  But Milly was already right behind her, yelling Nate’s name, scrambling into his open arms.

  ‘Let’s go!’

  ‘I’ve got to bring the dog –’

  ‘Grab her. Come on!’

  Jodie gathered up Floss and together they ran back along the verandah. Fireballs were whizzing over the top of the house now. They were globes of flame and sounded like fireworks fizzing through the air, or a kid’s laser gun. Whoosh! As they hit the ground they spat flames twenty or so metres, zigzagging out across the dry grass.

  Piling into the ute, Nate took off, dodging fire as he went. His square jaw was set in concentration, the muscles in his arms tense with keeping the ute on its four wheels. They hurtled down the hill back towards where they could see Travis’s tractor idling at the cut fence.

  ‘I thought the whole hill was on fire,’ yelled Jodie. ‘I couldn’t see over the top.’

  Nate grimaced. ‘You had to be at the bottom looking up to realise this part wasn’t burning yet.’

  And you had to be crazy – or desperate – to risk it even so. Jodie grimly glanced back out through the rear window of the ute.

  The fire front had reached the edge of the bush on top of the hill. It was coming out of the trees like a living, breathing tidal wave of flame, reaching for the open country with a voracious appetite. Leaping up into the sky at least twenty feet. And still Nate careered on, trying to get them to safety.

  Jodie stared across at the man who’d put his life on the line for her and her daughter. And the baby who was his.

  He’d come back.

  He was risking his life.

  For her.

  For them.

  At the base of the hill, and on the edge of the irrigation flats, T
ravis, Tammy and Wal were waiting. They were trying to keep the exit to safety free from the flames that were gulping up the roadside verges. Nate took the vehicle through the gap in the fence, waving to his mates. They were all squashed into the tractor cab and boring along behind them before you could say Thank God for that. Nate kept on driving, heading towards Montmorency Downs, Travis and Tammy’s place. They pulled in the drive to find an agitated Billy bouncing on one foot then the other. He ran up to the ute window and stuck his head inside. ‘Tammy thought you would have gone to Mue’s! What were you doing still up there?’

  Nate glanced at Jodie. Her eyes were big, round and wide. She was looking at Billy like she’d never seen him before in her life. Shock, he guessed. Milly was much the same except she was burrowed into Jodie’s side, arms gripping her mother as though she wasn’t ever going to let go.

  Nate didn’t blame her. He desperately wanted to hold Jodie like that. He’d wanted to do it since they’d left the top of the hill. But he couldn’t. It was just about killing him that she didn’t want him, but at least he’d got them all safely out of that place.

  The tractor came roaring up behind the ute. All three rescuers piled out of the cab. They ran across to Nate’s vehicle. ‘Are they okay?’ called Tammy. ‘Do we need an ambulance?’

  ‘No. They’re in shock, but I think they’re fine,’ said Nate, looking to Jodie for some guidance. She wasn’t saying anything. She was still staring at Billy as if she’d seen a ghost. He thought she was all right, but then he remembered the baby. His baby. Holy shit, he’d nearly lost his child too. He hadn’t thought of that in the scramble to get to Jodie and Milly.

  BANG!

  A massive explosion caught them all unawares. Milly screamed. Billy ducked down behind the ute. Nate threw himself left, attempting to shield Jodie and Milly from whatever had erupted. A huge squall of bright orange flame was billowing up on the top of the hill to the north-west. Jodie was sobbing; Milly was still screaming. Nate couldn’t see Travis, Tammy and Wal. Glancing frantically around from his crouched position, he couldn’t work out what had happened until Travis appeared at his open window. The man looked grey, but then that could have been the smoke. He was yelling, ‘Holy fucking hell, I think that was Joe’s house. It’s gone. Blown up!’ The man’s voice broke on his last words. ‘Thank God you got them out, Nate.’