by Chris Ryan
As Ben made the adjustments, Kelly sat back, resting her elbow along the window and drumming her fingers. ‘You know, I once had to land a microlight on the West Seattle Bridge as part of a display. Although the bridge was straight and wide enough, there were air currents because of the river. It was a real test of skill. You had to feel what the plane was doing, and if you took your eye off the ball for just a moment—’
‘Save it for when you need to impress George,’ said Ben.
The house was on a hill. A two-storey building over-looking the woods on one side and the Adelaide botanical gardens on the other, it was now shrouded in smoke and steam as thick as a sea fog. The woods were on fire and three crews were trying to stop the flames reaching the house. Engine 33 was one of them.
The fire was getting closer. Wanasri couldn’t see it, but she could feel the temperature rising with every minute she stood there, directing her hose into the dense cloud. Even though she was wearing goggles, her nose was running and her eyes were watering. Andy, Petra and Darren were standing in a row next to her.
Saving the house was top priority, and if they failed, the consequences could be very serious. The fire would spread to the botanical gardens next door. Its fifty acres of unusual plants and trees were all tinderdry in the heat. And beyond the botanical gardens lay a closely packed residential estate.
Saving this house would save all of them.
Suddenly the fire hose went limp in Wanasri’s hands.
She whirled round. What had happened? They had lost water pressure. Andy was running back to the engine to deal with it.
When she looked back, flames were rolling towards her fast like a big orange wave. Without the hoses they couldn’t keep it back. It was too late to run — the flames were already on top of her. Fire licked against her mask, blinding her. The heat seared her, even through the heavy suit. She dived to the ground.
She heard rather than felt the water falling on her. When she looked up, Darren was hosing her down. Andy must have got the water back on. Just in time.
Wanasri got to her feet and gave Darren a thumbs-up. The fire retardant in her turnout gear had saved her from serious burns. But that didn’t mean it didn’t sting.
She retrieved her hose and opened the nozzle again. The water came through, straight and true, and she aimed it into the woods. She couldn’t see anything because of the smoke, but she remembered this from her training. So long as she wasn’t seeing flames, it was under control.
After a few minutes the heat was easing. The smoke thinned out to reveal a blackened mass of twisted branches. Wanasri turned her hose off to give the steam time to settle. Then they would be able to see if the fire really was out. She turned round.
And saw a flicker inside the house.
She yelled at the top of her voice, ‘Fire inside!’ She ran across the lawn, up onto the sun deck and in through the French windows. The hose snaked along behind her. Her eyes searched from left to right, up and down — where was that flame?
Petra’s boots thudded onto the decking behind her. ‘Where is it?’
Wanasri peered through the smears on her goggles. She couldn’t see.
Petra suddenly called out. ‘There!’ She pushed past the sofa then stopped. ‘I’ve lost it again.’ Sometimes chasing a stray flame around a house was like trying to catch a wild bird. ‘Darn you,’ muttered Petra, looking around the skirting board. ‘Come on out.’
Then Wanasri spotted it. She went towards the corner of the room — and realized it was only the amber LED on a computer monitor, flashing every few seconds to show it was on standby. ‘False alarm,’ she called. She reached out her gloved hand and switched it off, just to be sure.
Petra walked back to the French windows. Darren and Andy were coming in, portable extinguishers in each hand. Petra chucked her hose out onto the lawn and took an extinguisher from Darren. Wanasri did likewise.
Now they had to check over the rest of the house. The fire had sent a lot of burning debris into the air and some of it might have blown in. The Engine 33 crew searched upstairs. Other crews came in and took the ground floor. Cupboards were opened, cushions were turned over, rugs were shaken, furniture was moved — all in case a stray spark was smouldering away unseen in a corner.
Upstairs, the house was clear. Wanasri led the way down to the ground floor. The other fire crews were congregating in the hall. The limewashed floorboards were criss-crossed with wet black footprints.
‘All clear down here,’ said a member of another crew as he pulled off his helmet.
Wanasri felt a broad smile breaking across her face. Cheers and whistles rose around her. They had saved this house — and the botanical gardens, and the housing estate. She saw a gloved hand stretched out to her. She slapped it enthusiastically. High fives took the place of words. Her first day. She felt bone-weary but prouder than she had ever been.
Outside, the air smelled of damp smoke. But it was a good smoky smell — the smell of plain old burned wood, not the acrid, chemical fumes of a house fire.
The hoses were wound away, the ladders stowed, and the crews departed for their stations.
Sitting high up in the cab of Engine 33 between Andy and Darren, with Petra at the wheel, Wanasri could see over the wall of the botanical gardens. It was a calming space with rolling lawns and beautiful manicured trees.
‘You’re having a hell of an initiation,’ said Petra to Wanasri. ‘It’s not usually like this. There must be some mischief-makers about.’
Darren leaned across Wanasri. ‘Talking of initiation — Andy, get her helmet off.’
Andy grinned and unclipped Wanasri’s chin harness. Darren lifted her helmet away. Petra, at the wheel, chuckled.
Wanasri regarded them with big, suspicious eyes. ‘What are you guys doing?’
Darren slid his fingers over the grime on her helmet. It left two rows of clean yellow streaks.
‘Hold her still, Andy,’ said Darren.
Andy pinned her arms by her sides.
Darren extended his sooty fingers towards her face.
Wanasri realized what he was going to do. ‘No!’ she squealed and tried to squirm away. But with Andy’s bulk squashed against her there was nowhere to go. Darren, grinning, drew on her face with the sooty fingers.
As soon as Andy released her, she pulled down the flap of the sun visor and inspected the damage in the mirror. Darren had drawn tiger stripes across her forehead and cheeks.
‘I’ll get you back,’ growled Wanasri, secretly pleased she had been so clearly accepted by the crew.
Petra braked at a junction and looked both ways before easing the big engine through a ninety-degree turn. ‘Hey,’ she noted, ‘it’s getting kinda windy out there. Look at those trees.’
The other crew members had been so busy giving Wanasri her initiation stripes that they hadn’t been paying much attention to what was going on outside. The tall eucalyptus trees along the road were waving hard, as though someone was shaking them. So were the aerials and satellite dishes on the roofs of the houses. Dustbins fell over and their contents were snatched away in a whirling storm.
Darren pointed along the road. ‘Hey, see that smoke over there?’
At the end of the road, a black plume of smoke rose into the sky. It was slanting at forty-five degrees, blown by the wind.
Instantly the mood in the truck turned serious. It was as though someone had flipped a switch. The crew were back on duty.
Petra put the siren on and pressed the accelerator to the floor.
Darren spoke into the radio. ‘Control, this is Engine Thirty-three. We’re going to investigate smoke on Oak Street. We might need back-up.’
The wheel jiggled from side to side in Petra’s hands. She fought to keep it straight. ‘That is some cross-wind. The truck’s steering like a supermarket trolley.’
Wanasri buckled her helmet back on.
When they reached Oak Street, Petra braked, skidding, and the truck pulled up beside a big corrugated-ir
on fence. They had barely come to a halt before Andy jumped out. He ran over to the gate and started to pull it open. Then he snatched his hand back with a yell.
‘It’s hot!’
Darren brought over the bolt cutters. He hooked them around the handle on the door and yanked the gate open.
Intense heat slammed into them like a wall. With the heat came a choking smell of burning rubber. They were in a scrap merchant’s yard. A mountain of tyres lay in one corner, heaped up against the iron fence, and they were on fire. The wind was fanning the flames, throwing black smoke and burning scraps of rubber into the air. That was why the blaze had looked small from a distance. The high wind was whipping the smoke away, diluting it. But that same wind was also carrying the burning scraps in a wide arc over the houses.
Petra screamed into her radio. ‘Need major back-up on Oak Street now! Code Red! Code Red!’
Chapter Eight
Ben thought he was doing pretty well. He was flying big loops and figures of eight and learning to ride the air currents over the hills and valleys of the vineyards. He was even wondering if Kelly might let him try a landing.
Suddenly the plane started going sideways. It felt as though a giant hand was pushing the fuselage.
Kelly was aware of it immediately. She looked up from the map on her lap. ‘Jeez, where did that wind come from? Give me control.’
‘You’ve got it.’ Ben was relieved to hand over to her. He tucked his feet under the seat, let her take the stick and sat back. He felt the pedals move up and down as she tried to compensate for the wind. The engine roared above his head as Kelly opened the throttle.
He relaxed. Flying was actually quite tiring. There was so much to think about. It felt good to let Kelly worry about it for a while.
His relief didn’t last for long. Despite everything Kelly was doing, the microlight was still drifting off course. He could see her tugging the stick from side to side, her knees going up and down as she worked the pedals furiously. He could see the cables that ran through the cockpit to the rudder sawing backwards and forwards. But they were having no effect. The engine was straining but it couldn’t push them forwards. The craft was being pitched sideways like a paper boat.
Sitting in a fragile bubble 1500 feet above the ground was a bad place to be when things started to go wrong. Ben expected any moment to feel a great bang and see a wing snap off and tumble past the cockpit.
Kelly managed to get the nose down, and they started losing altitude.
Ben noticed the altimeter. ‘Kelly, we’re at nine hundred feet.’
Kelly stuck her head out of the window but her voice still carried on in his headset. ‘I know. I’m going to land.’
Ben looked out of the window. They lost height very quickly. The rows of vines, which were visible only as stripes in the landscape at cruising altitude, enlarged into distinct hedges. Ben was convinced he could see the individual leaves. They were being ruffled in a strong wind. In between the hedgerows were wide avenues of bare red earth.
Kelly lined up on one of the avenues and pointed the nose towards the ground. She closed down the throttle. The engine noise lowered, like a singer humming down through a scale. Ben felt the plane lose airspeed. He could make out more details on the ground now. Wooden poles and netting holding up the vines. The herringbone marks where tractors had driven down the avenue.
The microlight seemed to hop sideways in the air. Kelly pumped her feet up and down on the pedals. Her voice came through on the headset, muttering through gritted teeth. ‘Don’t you dare …’ The nose lifted. Ben felt a bump. For a moment he thought what he had been dreading had happened; that something had snapped off. Then there was a bump at the front as well. That was the wheels touching down.
Above their heads, the engine stopped. Kelly squeezed the brake hard. Ben could feel the friction as the brakes bit into the wheels, and every jolt and rut in the track jarred him. It was like taking a sports car over a hundred speed bumps at full tilt. But he was very grateful to be back on the ground.
The plane slewed to a halt on the dusty track, its tail poking into a row of vines.
‘We’ll wait it out here,’ said Kelly. ‘We’re too small and light to make any headway in a wind like that.’ She secured the brake with the strip of Velcro, turned off all the systems and undid her seat belt.
Ben stepped out the other side, easing the stiffness in his limbs. The dusty ground felt rock hard under his feet, completely dried out after months of drought. Without the breeze they felt when flying, the heat was stifling. The flying suits stuck to their skin. The first thing he and Kelly did was unzip them and slip off the big doughnut headsets so they hung around their necks.
Ben unzipped a pocket in his trousers, took out a bottle of sun cream and smeared some on his face and arms. It felt gritty where the red dust had stuck to his skin.
Kelly couldn’t resist a mocking remark. ‘Gotta protect that lily-white English complexion, eh, Ben? Your mom’s got you well trained.’
Ben snapped the lid shut and held the bottle out. ‘Don’t you want some? George isn’t going to fancy you if you come back looking like a lobster.’
Kelly hooked a bottle of water out from behind her seat and drained it. She looked at the empty container with disappointment. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve got any spare water?’ she said hopefully.
Ben pointed to a sign at the end of the avenue of trees. It said: FORREST VALE VISITOR CENTRE, ONE KILOMETRE, with an arrow pointing to a path to the right. ‘I haven’t, but they’re bound to have some at the visitor centre. Will the plane be all right if we leave it?’
Kelly leaned into the cockpit, checked the brake, then closed the door. ‘Yeah, it should be fine.’
As they set off, the leaves of the vines started to rustle around them like a whispering crowd. The branches, tied in orderly rows, waved and rippled.
Kelly stopped and slipped her orange baseball cap off. Her blonde hair billowed out behind her and she tilted her head back. ‘Mmm, that is nice.’
Then the wind changed direction. Suddenly it was a lot stronger. The vines flapped the other way, straining against their tethers. Big leaves plunged down on Kelly’s face like fingers trying to gather her up. She jumped backwards. The wind pushed her back even further and she staggered into Ben. Ben would have fallen over, but the wind changed again and for a moment they were stuck together, unable to move forwards. The wind had to be over sixty miles an hour — it was impossible to take even a step. Then, as quickly as it had sprung up, the wind dropped to a dead calm.
Kelly bundled her hair up and put her hat back on. ‘Man, this weather is freaky today. It’s a good thing we’re down here and not trying to fly in it.’
* * *
Matt and Jenny Forrest, and their army of helpers, stood around the picnic tables. All the guests had arrived and Matt was pouring glasses of last year’s vintage while Jenny handed them out.
Suddenly the checked rug on the table billowed up like a sail. Matt tried to grab the wine glasses but they crashed over, sending Chardonnay and broken glass all over his bare legs. The chairs set out in a row next to the decking folded up by themselves and keeled over. Sun hats were snatched off the visitors’ heads and whirled into the air.
There was a sound of screeching, like fingernails down a blackboard. Moments later a tangle of metal landed on the parched earth. The wind had torn the TV aerial off the roof.
‘Inside!’ Jenny yelled. Her voice was a tiny thing against the wind roaring in her ears. She waved her arms towards the house.
Her guests, half blinded by dust blowing in off the vineyards, struggled after her.
Once they were all inside, Matt pulled the door shut with difficulty. They looked out at the hillside. The vines were shaking violently. Dark clouds were drifting across the sapphire-blue sky.
Jenny’s father shook dust out of his grey hair. ‘Of all days to get rain …’
‘Maybe it isn’t rain,’ said Matt. ‘It wasn’t earlie
r.’
‘Dust or rain …’ Jenny sighed. ‘Someone up there must have it in for us …’
The clouds massed up from behind the hill, hugging the ground. There was another vineyard there, belonging to the Forrests’ neighbour.
‘I’ve never seen rain looking like that,’ said Jenny’s father.
In the distance, the cloud began to creep over the hill. The landscape looked like someone had smudged its edges with charcoal.
Jenny grabbed the binoculars they kept on the windowsill. As she turned the focus wheel she saw flickering tongues of orange flame.
It wasn’t rain approaching …
The binoculars fell from her hand as she gasped: ‘Fire!’
Alex Porter and his wife Jacquetta were on holiday, over from New Zealand. They’d hired a Toyota Corolla in Adelaide and had headed out into the hills to tour the wine-growing region.
The air conditioning was on full blast in the car, but it was barely coping with the heat. Jacquetta fanned herself with the map on her knee. Outside, the rows of vines looked like they were wilting. The grapes hung in tight clusters, a blue bloom on the skins, ready for picking.
‘Those grapes must be tough,’ she said. ‘I can’t understand why they’re not shrivelled to raisins by now.’
Suddenly Alex found he couldn’t see the dials on the dashboard. The sky outside had gone dark. He flicked the lights on. ‘Hey, looks like we’re in for a storm.’
‘We certainly could use it.’ Jacquetta turned the dial on the air conditioning but it was already at maximum. ‘Look at the temperature,’ she said, pointing to the dashboard display. ‘It’s fifty degrees outside. I thought it was supposed to get colder before a storm, not hotter.’
‘Fifty degrees?’ Alex tapped the display. ‘That can’t be right. There must be something wrong with it.’ He swung the car round the corner.
Then they saw why it was getting so hot and so dark. In front of them, the vineyard was a wall of flame the height of a two-storey building. It rolled towards them, roaring and crackling.
