by Eric Vall
While Paige and Kimmy finished up in the back room, the girls and I made sure everything was loaded into the jeep and ready to go. After we finished, I found Paige’s backpack and pulled out one of her maps so I could get a better overview of the area.
“It looks like the fire is kind of northeast,” Bailey said as she looked at the map over my shoulder.
“I think you’re right,” I agreed. “It’s not straight north.”
“Where are we?” Anna asked.
“We’re here,” I said with a point.
“So if we want to go northeast we have to go back through a couple of the towns,” Tara said. “Then we can get to the main road and head north.”
“Right,” I agreed.
Being in a small town area was great in a lot of ways, but when you needed to get from one place to another very quickly, it wasn’t the best. The drive could take twenty to thirty minutes at least, and that was with me speeding. The roads around the mountains were often windy, and there were some sections where I would simply have to slow down. The thought frustrated me, but I knew there was nothing I could do about it.
I didn’t like being in the dark, and at that moment I felt like I knew nothing. The only thing I knew was that there was a fire nearby, but I had no idea how large it was or how much of a problem it could become. I needed to get closer and get a look at it to determine that.
Still, fire was unpredictable, and even if it was small today, that didn’t mean it would be small tomorrow, not with how dry everything was. I had a feeling that no matter what the thing looked like, it was going to be a major issue for us this summer.
Fires always were rampant during summertime, and with how particularly hot this year had already become, it looked like we were just at the beginning of the fire season. We couldn’t afford for the flames to get close enough to take out our crops or our home that we’d worked so hard to build, so we’d have to do something.
But I had no idea what.
“Ready,” Paige breathed as she and Kimmy came out of the building, each with an armful of equipment.
“Did you even get a chance to test that stuff?” Anna asked.
“We’ll test it when we get home,” Kimmy assured us, then she and Paige set the equipment into the back of the jeep and she slammed the door shut. “Let’s go.”
“Come on,” I said, and everyone piled into the jeep.
I passed the map back to Paige, and the brunette immediately gave it a quick look as Bailey pointed and told her where it looked like the fire was and where we were headed.
I peeled out of the driveway of the radio station a bit too fast, and gravel flung up from my back tires as I sped out and turned down the main road.
I mashed the gas pedal to the floor as we raced through the small towns toward the road that would take us further north. Nobody said a thing, everyone was quiet in the back as they looked around with panicked eyes.
I had just told the girls a day ago about not panicking the whole group with the talk of the stream drying up, but now it looked like everyone was in for a far worse wake up call.
All I could think about was getting a view of this fire and seeing how far away it was, and just how large it was. I turned onto the main road that led up north and wiped some sweat that had beaded on my brow. The day was hot as hell already, and I knew that if that fire was large enough, it’d only add to the heat.
“Turn onto the next road to your left!” Paige called out.
“Are you sure?” I asked, and I glanced back at her in the rearview mirror.
“I’m sure,” she said. “It will lead up the mountain, we can get a good look from up there.”
“Alright,” I agreed, and a second later the road came into view, so I hit the breaks and slid around the corner as I gassed it once more.
The road did lead far up into the mountains, and the further up we climbed the more nervous I became about the entire situation.
“How far up are we going?” Anna asked as she looked out the window.
We could already see some of the towns below us, and just north I could see the smoke from the fire. It was larger than it had looked back at the station, and I knew that we were in for a shock once we got a view of the actuality of the flames.
“Everyone roll up your windows,” I instructed, and the girls did as I commanded.
Even with the fire still being several miles off, the smoke was bound to catch up with us sooner rather than later, and when it did the air quality could become really bad. I remembered when I was younger and there had been a terrible fire in the summer. I had been trapped in the house for weeks because the wind had blown so much of the smoke to our town, which was at least twenty miles from where the actual fire was. I had been astounded at how far the smoke could travel and how extra hot it was during those couple of weeks that I was quarantined inside.
“It looks like we’re getting closer,” Bailey said as she stared out the back passenger window.
“We should be almost to the top,” Paige said. “There’s an event venue up here at the top of the mountain.”
“They must have had great views,” Tara mused.
“Probably not too great today,” Anna muttered.
I continued up the drive, and soon enough I saw a sign for the event venue. I pulled into the parking lot and quickly drew my pistol as I hopped out of the vehicle.
The girls followed me, and we headed around to the back of the dingy, overgrown venue until we found the back garden. There was a fence at the end of it that blocked kids and drunk people from falling over the edge of the cliff, but as I walked up to it all I could see was black.
The smoke was already around us, and I raised the bottom of my shirt up and held it over my nose and mouth to block out some of the particles.
The cliff we looked over was able to see miles and miles into the distance, and as I took in the view in front of me, my heart dropped.
Most of the area in front of us was engulfed in flames. The fire was absolutely massive, and I could see birds continuing to head south toward our home, the same direction the fire was headed. It moved indiscriminately and burned anything in its wake. I could see behind it that it had already eaten an amazing amount of forest, and I knew then that there was nothing we could do to stop it. We’d have to try our best to prevent it from overtaking our home, but that was all that we could do.
This was too large of a beast to try to take down. There was absolutely nothing we could do that would even put a dent in the astonishing amount of flames that were headed for us.
“Holy shit,” Anna breathed as she took in the sight of the fire, then she turned to me with scared green eyes. “Tav, what are we going to do?”
I wanted to reach out to her, to console her, but I couldn’t move, all I could do was stare back at her with the same scared eyes. Our home, the thing we’d worked so hard to build, could be taken from us. Our community could have to relocate, and we could have to start everything over again. We would have to rebuild from the ground up.
I took a deep breath and shook that thought out of my head. I’d do whatever I could to prevent that from happening. I may not be able to put out the fire, but there were preventive measures we could take, and we’d take them all, even if it meant halting all other activities until they were done. With how massive the fire was, and how quickly I could see it moving, there was no way to tell just how soon it would reach us, but my bet was that it was sooner rather than later.
We probably had a few days at most, and until then the wind would probably carry the smoke right to us, so we’d have to deal with the effects of that as well.
We needed a plan, and we needed one fast.
“It’s massive,” Tara said.
“And it looks like it's headed right toward campus,” Paige whispered.
“I can’t believe we didn’t know about it sooner,” Anna muttered.
“How could we have?” Paige asked. “It’s not exactly right in our backyard.”<
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“We’ve had a lot going on lately,” I said. “And Paige is right, we had no way of knowing until we saw it. We know about it now, though, and that’s what matters.”
“What do we do?” Tara asked, and she looked at me with light blue eyes filled with fear. “We know how to fight people, but this… how the hell do we fight fires without firemen and helicopters and shit? This is insane.”
“It is,” Paige agreed, and she looked at each of us with eyebrows drawn together with concern. “Between a fire this early in the season and the lowering of the rivers we could be in for a major fire season.”
“Especially since, as Tara pointed out, there’s nobody around to fight them,” Anna added.
“How long is fire season exactly?” the platinum blonde asked, and she side eyed Paige.
“All summer,” the brunette said softly. “And probably part of fall, too, depending on how hot it is.”
“Fuck,” Tara cursed. “This is bad.”
“It’s not great,” I agreed. “But there are still some precautions that we can take to prevent the fire from hitting us.”
“How?” Bailey asked. “We can’t control which way it goes.”
“You’re right,” I agreed. “But we can make it so that we’re not easy to get to.”
“How do we do that?” Anna asked.
“Fire lines,” Paige said, and she snapped her fingers and looked at me with wide eyes of recognition.
“Exactly,” I agreed.
“We don’t know how much longer we have until this thing reaches us, though,” Bailey pointed out. “Do we have time to prepare anything?”
“When did it even start?” Anna asked. “I wonder how long it’s taken it to get this big.”
“We have no way of telling that,” I said with a shake of my head. “But as far as preparing, we’ll do what we can with the time we’re given.”
“We should contact Renee, too,” Kimmy said. “I know you don’t want to use the radio, but--”
“Yes,” I cut her off. “That’s exactly what we need to do. She needs to know about this, too, especially since we can’t be sure which way the fire will travel.”
“But she’s right by the water,” Tara said. “Do you think it will get there?”
“I doubt that this one will,” I said. “But there are bound to be other fires this summer with how hot it is, I wouldn’t be surprised if they get some on their side of the lake as well. Either way, we need to warn her.”
“It will be easier for Renee’s group to prepare, though,” Paige said. “We don’t need to worry about them as much. They can use water from the lake to help dampen the area and make a barrier.”
“Why can’t we do that?” Anna asked.
“We can maybe do a bit of that,” Paige said. “But our water is already getting low in the stream and Otter Creek.”
“Yeah, but if we don’t save the campus and the farm then there won’t even be a use for the water,” Bailey pointed out.
“We’ll figure out the specifications of our plan once we’re back home,” I said. “Right now we need to go let everyone else know what’s going on. We’ll make a plan from there.”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Anna asked. “Don’t you think this will cause more panic than the river drying up did?”
“It definitely will,” I answered with a nod. “But we don’t have a choice.”
I walked over to the jeep and hopped in, and all the girls followed. Then I sped back down the road we had come from and back toward campus. Everyone there had a right to know what was happening and how much of a threat this fire was. With the water, there was time to figure things out, so informing everyone right away about the situation hadn’t seemed as important, but now I knew that they had to know. I also knew that I had to give everyone every possible option, including to leave.
I couldn’t force them to stay and put themselves in danger, even if the fire was miles away still. There was no telling how fast it would approach us, and if somebody felt that they had a better chance out on their own, then I had to afford them that. I wouldn’t ever require anybody to stay and assist. It was their choice if they wanted to leave, and part of me thought that some of them just might. This was an incredibly scary situation, and I wouldn’t blame anybody if they felt that they needed to get away rather than stay and try to face the flames.
Paige had been right, our water supply was already dwindling, but on the other hand, if we could use some of the water to dampen the ground and make it a less desirable treat for the fire, then that might just be what we had to do. First off, though, we needed to focus on the fire lines, those would take us the longest. We needed to cut down trees and use the tractors as a means to lay down some barriers.
I’d seen fire lines done before, and I had the general knowledge of how they worked, but I’d never had to put them up before, so I was slightly nervous. But I knew that it was the only way we could possibly save our home and farm.
I wiped the sweat away from my brow as we drove, and when I did I noticed that my shirt smelled slightly of smoke already. We’d only stood out in the smog for a few minutes, but it had been enough to make me reek of a bonfire. I kept an eye on the skies as we drove as well, and I spotted even more birds on their way down south. It was crazy to think that I hadn’t noticed it before, but I had no reason to think that they were running from anything, then. Now I knew exactly what they were running from, and I was running from it, too.
It was a strange feeling to know that the fire was at our back right then, and that even as we drove sixty five miles per hour down the highway toward home, the fire raged behind us, ready to overtake us as soon as it had us in its claws.
I wouldn’t let that happen, though. I refused to give in. I would fight for my girls and my home and the community that we’d built, and that was that.
The tension in the jeep was strong, and I could tell that everyone was on edge. Paige bit her nails as she stared out the window, Anna’s foot bounced against her knee, Bailey chewed on her bottom lip, Tara kept fussing with her hair, and Kimmy adjusted her shirt. We were all scared and upset, but I needed them to know that we would make it through this.
“I know this is scary,” I said as I let off of the gas a bit.
“What gave you that idea?” Tara asked sarcastically, then she looked at me with sad eyes in the rearview mirror. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I told her. I knew she was just upset and that was her go to defense mechanism, so I let it slide.
“It’s pretty terrifying,” Bailey said.
“I know,” I agreed with a small smile. “But we’re going to get through this. We’ve gotten through plenty before, this is no different.”
“It feels really different,” Anna sighed. “Before, we fought against people, and we could manipulate them and make them do what we wanted. We had the advantage almost always. Now, though, we’re the ones in the bad position.”
“It isn’t ideal,” I said. “And the fire is unpredictable, but we’re strong. We’re stronger than it is, and we’re smarter, too. We can plan ahead for it.”
“That’s true,” Kimmy said, and she bit her lip slightly. “We know ahead of time. If we only found out once the fire was near us then it could have been too late.”
“Either way, it was there,” I said with a nod. “But now we can prepare.”
“You’re right,” Paige said, and she took her finger out of her mouth and sat up straight. “We can figure out a way to get through this.”
“We can and we will,” I told her with a smile, and I looked around at each of the girls. “This is definitely going to cause some panic. And it should, it’s a scary situation, but I need you girls by my side, and I need you to be calm. The people who live here with us, they look to us to solve problems, and that’s what we’re going to do. Can you do that?”
“We can handle it,” Anna said, and she lifted her chin slightly so I knew she was in Major mode.
<
br /> “Good,” I said with a grin, and I turned down our driveway and made my way up to campus.
It was about mid afternoon when we arrived at the dorms, but I knew that everyone was already back on campus because I’d checked at Betty’s place on the way there and hadn’t seen any of our vehicles.
Once we pulled up, Winchester came right over to the jeep and barked to greet us, but I stepped out solemnly. I watched as Rolly’s face fell as he walked over to me.
“What’s wrong?” the old man asked. This was obviously not the greeting that he had anticipated when he saw us pull up.
“We have a problem,” I explained.
“Worse than the one we already had?” Rolly asked with a frown.
“I’m afraid so,” I said. “We need to call a meeting right now.”
“Of course,” he agreed, and he turned around and headed back over to Betty and a few other civilians who were sitting at the table staring at us with concerned looks.
“Good luck,” Anna whispered, and she patted me on the shoulder.
“Thanks,” I told her, and I reached to put my hand over hers.
I was going to need it. The news I was about to give was not going to go over well, especially not with everything that was already happening.
Rolly got the news spread, and soon enough everyone was gathered around the picnic tables and chairs. Some sat crossed legged in the grass, and they all looked at me expectantly.
Once everyone was settled in, I took a deep breath and approached the group.
“There’s a large fire up north,” I announced. “It looks like it's heading our way.”
There was a shocked silence for a few seconds, then everyone began to speak all at once. It was clear that they were all upset, but after they quieted down I answered their questions and told them how we’d come across the fire and how we’d determined that it might head our way.
“So, what are we going to do?” Jenny, Betty’s granddaughter asked, her voice shaky and scared.
“We’re going to use the tractors to make some fire lines,” I asserted. “We’ll also need to cut down some of the trees that surround the campus and the farm.”
