Flash Fire

by Caroline B. Cooney

  His feet had memorized their pattern and his mind returned to thinking and suddenly, he could not believe how much there was to think about. Elony and Geoffrey — were they making it to Pinch Canyon Road okay? What other families were home? Who had a car? Who would pick them up? Where were the rescue vehicles? Could a helicopter land in this? How bad was it at the mouth of Pinch? If they got out on Grass, would they be okay? How long would his back stand this? If his back gave in, what would he do? Drag his sister? Could they do a three-legged march?

  Pinch Canyon

  4:16 P.M.

  AT THE BOTTOM OF the driveway, Beau paused like a normal driver in a normal situation and looked left and right.

  To the left was a scurrying little Hispanic woman carrying a purple rug.

  To the right —

  There are other people here! thought Beau, sick that he had forgotten — completely forgotten — that his was not the only family on Pinch Canyon Road. Some housemaid was trying to outrun the fire.

  He turned right, away from the woman.

  Elisabeth screamed, “Beau! You monster! We have to get her!”

  “We are getting her! Calm down. I’m going to back up. I don’t want to be facing the fire. I want to be facing the exit. I’m just being sensible.” A purple rug, thought Beau. Now I ask you. With all the things you could save…

  He accelerated very quickly, far faster than he had ever backed a car or even seen a car backed, and the woman moved into the half-burning scrub at the edge of the road to wait for him.

  Elisabeth slid over the back of the seat and opened the door for the woman.

  The purple rug was sopping wet.

  When the maid unrolled it, it contained a beautiful little boy.

  It was that creepy little Aszling kid. The adoption that failed.

  And I thought she was saving a piece of carpet, thought Beau, ashamed. I couldn’t even find car keys, and she’s out there saving a life.

  The woman was too tired to lift the little boy, so Beau put the car in Park and raced around the vehicle to help them both in.

  “We wait,” said the woman.

  Words throbbed in his skull like stunted basketball cheers. Drive-drive-drive! Go-go-go! Fire-fire-fire! Run-run-run!

  She was just a girl, his own age. Extremely pretty. Thick straight black hair half up in some sort of knot and the rest like a ribbon down her back. Enormous eyes, like a painting on velvet of a waif by the side of a road.

  “We’re not waiting,” said Beau. He put the Aszling kid in the center seat and strapped his seat belt on. The fire was not so scary when you were actually driving and it felt as if you were escaping. But fumbling with seat belts and wasting valuable oxygen on pointless discussions, it felt as if the fire were a murderer with a submachine gun already aimed.

  “Wait for Hall and Danna,” explained Geoffrey.

  “Why, Geoffrey, I never heard you talk before,” said Elisabeth, delighted.

  Beau was sick with urgency. Gale force winds were filling the canyon now. The fire’s heat was lifting sleeves and hair as if there were going to be a hurricane. “Hall and Danna Press are still in their house!”

  Geoffrey nodded. “Horses.”

  “Whose horses?” screamed Beau. He could not lower his voice. He knew that panic was going to come inside him through the door of his shrieking.

  “Egypt and Spice,” said Geoffrey.

  Beau all but threw the Hispanic girl into the car, too, and then he raced around the Suburban once more, got in the driver’s seat, and still in reverse, aimed for the Press-Luu-Aszling driveway.

  Well, Hall and Danna might have gone to get Egypt and Spice, but the horses had made their own choice. They came galloping out of the smoke, one after the other, passing so close to the Suburban that Beau couldn’t even be sure the horses had seen the vehicle.

  Blind with fear, thought Beau, trying to fend off the same feeling.

  The uninhabited side of Pinch Canyon was not so bad. A few trees that clung to the rock-faces and some scrub a foot or two high were burning away, but not killer burning, just burning burning. But on the inhabited side, the fire was moving so fast! It was taking great, bus-long strides, and here he was, with sister, toddler, and maid, going back into it.

  Good practice, he reminded himself.

  Elisabeth was chatting away. “What’s your name?” she said cheerily. How partylike, how hostessy, she sounded: just the way Mom was always coaching her to address guests.

  “Elony.”

  “Oh, that’s pretty,” said Elisabeth.

  We’re going to get killed here, thought Beau, and she’s deciding if names measure up to her standard.

  The Luu house — and presumably Danna and Hall — was in the middle of a very steep driveway. Beau wasn’t sufficiently skilled to back up those tight curves, but neither did he dare go frontward. If the fire trapped them, he could never turn around.

  He’d have to park down here and wait for them. Wait when fire was flashing like lightning only a football field away?

  His thoughts were getting out of control again, racing off little side avenues, now when he needed every thought focused.

  Panic, said Beau sternly, as if Panic were a gang member and he was going to talk Panic out of attacking him. Panic, beat it.

  Pinch Canyon Road

  4:17 P.M.

  TRANSPORTATION!

  Hall recognized the Severyns’ Suburban. Elony was waving from the window. Hall did not have enough oxygen to shout, but he didn’t need to. Beau backed the Suburban right up to him, leaped out of the driver’s seat, and took the box first.

  “Kittens,” said Hall. “Give ’em to Elisabeth.”

  Beau obeyed, and Elisabeth was delighted, crooning to the kittens through the frayed and stretched cardboard holes.

  Danna sagged on Hall’s back. Her complexion was a sort of olive white, a color from the vomit end of the spectrum. He eased Danna off Hall, and Hall remained bent, unable to fix his spine, while Danna moaned horribly. From inside the car, Elony grabbed Danna’s shoulders, turned her, and sat her on the floor of the car. Beau lifted her legs, trying to distribute her pain carefully, and together, he and Elony slid Danna backward into the vehicle. The Suburban was, after all, as long as an ambulance.

  It seemed to Hall that they spent hours doing this, precious precious time, while the fire advanced.

  “What happened?” cried Elisabeth.

  “She broke her leg,” said Hall. He had managed to straighten. Beau ripped open the front passenger door and bundled Hall in. Hall began doing back calisthenics to ease the muscles.

  The fire was bounding forward, skipping houses, as if it saw tastier morsels. How does it skip? thought Beau. It isn’t playing fair.

  Elony splinted the broken leg with the sopping wet velour. Danna was not crying. Maybe it was so hot that her tears had dried up; she was dry-crying. Elony popped open one of the Cokes and dribbled soda into Danna’s eager mouth.

  Beau slammed the gas pedal to the floor and the heavy Suburban with its tremendous engine roared down Pinch. Then immediately Beau backed off and drove slowly. “Hall, can you drive?” he said.

  “I don’t have a license.”

  “Who cares about a license? Can you drive?”

  “Yes.”

  They had reached the Severyn driveway. A little distance, not much, was between them and the major fire. Way up its scenic driveway, the Severyn house was smoking. Low easygoing flames were consuming its decks. The fire status of the house had not changed. He could still get in. “Good. You drive. I have to get something.” Beau put the car in Park and vaulted out.

  Hall stared at Beau. “What are you doing?” Hall felt entirely blank, the way you felt when the VCR failed and instead of being inside the movie, you were suddenly inside some TV channel; all new characters in all new dialogue starting up without a split second’s notice.

  “Go on without me,” said Beau. “I have to get something.”

  Go on w
ithout him?

  Far ahead of them, going around the final curve of Pinch Canyon, one of the two horses was momentarily visible, dark and beautiful like a statue seen through the fog. The horses were the only sensible ones around: They knew enough to leave.

  “What are you talking about, Beau? Get back here!” Hall screamed at Beau, unable to believe his ears. Beau was going back into the burning house?

  “Drive on!” yelled Beau over his shoulder. He was actually running uphill with a sort of eagerness on his face, as if he had a mission. “I’ll be okay.”

  How could he be okay? There was nothing okay about what he was doing. Where did this word okay come from?

  Swear words poured out of Hall: He was like a dictionary of obscenities. “Beau! Get back here! You’ll get killed! Your house is on fire! Stop!”

  But Beau disappeared, taking the switchback, the thickets of undergrowth that sheltered deer and rabbits hiding him from sight.

  The gas line that fed the houses on Pinch was barely beneath the dirt, and back at the Press-Luu-Aszling driveway it was not beneath the dirt at all, but just lying there, between the roots of trees and weeds. The fire was so hot it melted a weld and the pipe exploded. A long, steady stream of gas burned blue and white.

  Hall assumed that the fire would work its way down the pipe, or that the heat would explode the entire length of the pipe, or that the pipe would continue to supply gas to the fire, which would fill the entire canyon. Either way, they were going to burn.

  “Beau!” he bellowed, one more time. “Stop! Get back here!”

  Pinch Canyon

  4:18 P.M.

  HALL FOUND HIMSELF BEHIND the wheel with no memory of having shifted from the passenger side.

  How could Beau do this to me? How could he put me in the position of abandoning him? Because that’s what I have to do. I have to drive away.

  Hall hated Beau right then, hated him with passion he had not experienced in all his fifteen years.

  Hall put the car in Drive.

  “No!” screamed Elisabeth. “Wait for my brother!”

  “Hall, there has to be some way we can wait for him!” shrieked Danna.

  “How can we wait?” shouted Hall. “The fire isn’t waiting! The fire didn’t say, ‘Oh, okay, I get it, you need a twenty-minute intermission, hey, sure.’ ”

  They were all screaming, the Suburban was practically rocking from the volume of their screaming, and the fire screamed, too. The wind increased and through the open window it lifted Hall’s hair in a gust that roasted his skin.

  “No, no, no, no, no!” cried Elisabeth.

  With all the racket around them, he could still separate out her lungs, heaving like a scared animal’s, like the flanks of the deer coursing out of the hills.

  “You can’t drive away and leave him here!” yelled Danna from the floor. “There isn’t any way for him to get out but us.”

  Beau Severyn had selfishly, for utterly unfathomable reasons, forced Hall into a hideous corner. Could Hall really and truly put his foot down on the accelerator and drive away, and leave Beau to certain death? He had stopped for kittens. Could he refuse to stop for Beau? But the flames — the gas line — the heat of just the wind, never mind the fire itself — everything was gaining on them, at a horrific pace.

  Hall had just become the oldest. The driver. The one in charge. He had more lives to think about than just Beau’s. If he had to sacrifice the stupid one in order to save the group, then he had to.

  In that moment, Halstead Press knew that he had grown up, and that Beau had not, and that being the grown-up was not cool.

  It was a terrible burden.

  Pinch Canyon

  4:18 P.M.

  THE PAIN WAS UNBELIEVABLE. Danna honestly could not believe that anything could hurt so much. She could not believe that she, Danna Press, she was a burden. She was the kind of person who did everything, and did it well, and did it right the first time. Now she was nothing but a nuisance, a jerk who had to be carried?

  And Beau — what was he doing? She couldn’t see from here. She screamed, “What is he doing, Hall? Don’t let him, Hall! Make him come with us.”

  It was hard to think through the pain.

  But she would rather have pain than be held responsible for Beau dying. How could Beau be so selfish, so crazy? How dare he put them in this position?

  Running back into the fire?

  A wash of horror came over Danna. Ice, when she was dying of heat exhaustion. It was nauseating, to freeze when she was baking. I am of no use, she thought. And Beau — he’s worse.

  Her brother drove on. How horrible to be flat on the car floor, unable to see, unable to imagine what Beau could be doing, or heading into, or why. And the horses. Danna would just have to trust them to the kindness of strangers.

  Elisabeth was shrieking incoherently, trying to battle her way out of the Suburban. There was a little latching sound, as Hall hit the mechanism to lock all doors.

  Beau will die, thought Danna. We’re abandoning him.

  But not really.

  He abandoned escape. He chose this. It’s his own stupid fault.

  Oh, Beau, Beau! How could you be so dumb?

  Pinch Canyon

  4:18 P.M.

  ELISABETH STOPPED SCREAMING BECAUSE everybody screamed right back at her for screaming.

  Her very own adored brother would be a fire ghost. Another mysterious death, for reasons nobody would ever know. Beau, like the ghost of the stables, was willingly walking into fire.

  Beau! she thought, drawing the syllable out in a desperate loss and fear. Beauuuuuuuuu.

  In her terror, Elisabeth cuddled Geoffrey. They were actually not so far apart: ages four and eight. She was closer in age to Geoffrey than to Danna, who was fourteen. And Danna right now was closer to pain than anything else.

  Elisabeth was only eight, but eight is pretty old. Old enough to know that if her parents had to lose one of their two children, they would not want it to be Beau.

  She wanted Beau to live because she loved her brother.

  But she wanted Beau to live because otherwise her parents would wish that she had been the one to die.

  It was too big and ugly a thought for anybody, least of all anybody eight years old.

  There was plenty of purple velour to go around even after it was splinted on Danna’s leg, and since Elisabeth had to have a hiding place for her tears, she wept inside the soft, hot, soaking wet fluff of the blankie.

  It seemed to Elisabeth that Geoffrey cuddled back. Maybe she was pretending, because she was so desperate, but she felt that somehow he knew Elisabeth was worse off than he was. They clutched each other, while the Suburban lurched because Hall, who could drive, but certainly hadn’t, found out that the accelerator was very responsive.

  “It’s okay,” said Elony to Elisabeth, because Americans liked this phrase, whether or not it proved to be the case.

  Why, Elisabeth needed to know, why had Beau gone back?

  Her brother had many possessions, and few mattered to him. He was not in love with his things. There was no baseball card collection, no favorite trophy, no beloved anything Beau wouldn’t just shrug about and buy another.

  He’ll die, thought Elisabeth, and become nothing, but always there, like the stable ghost. Fingers stretching out and never finding. He’ll live in the ashes of our house, and —

  And she knew what he had gone back for.

  For something that was nothing, and was everything.

  Grass Canyon Fire

  4:18 P.M.

  “YOU HAVE TO HELP me!” shrieked Chiffon.

  “Listen, lady,” said the EMT, “we got people that are burned. We don’t have time for you.”

  “Look at me!” screamed Chiffon.

  “You fell down!” shouted the EMT. “Stop bothering us. We got people that are really hurt.”

  “I’ll sue you!” she sobbed.

  “Fine. Feel free. Just get out of the way.”

  Chiff
on could not believe it. They were not going to treat her? This was America! How dare they tell her to beat it! What did they think their job was?

  She sobbed and patted her burned hands and cheeks, felt the scorched edges of her hair and stared at the charred clothing that had protected the skin beneath it.

  Nobody paid the slightest attention to her. The fire passed on.

  The filth of disaster covered Grass Canyon Road.

  Some houses were untouched: lawns still emerald green, tennis racket still balanced by the door.

  Next door would be a black hole, smoke hanging waist-high above what had once been a house. A piece of sofa, a shoe, a briefcase: These sat in the ashes as if somebody had added them after the fire.

  The ambulances treated some fireman for smoke inhalation, which really annoyed Chiffon. Weren’t burns that were going to scar a beautiful girl’s entire future more important than some fireman’s lungs, for heaven’s sake? They treated some old couple whose clothes and hair had burned off. Chiffon didn’t like having to look at this; it was indecent. They should do it inside the ambulance where you didn’t have to see. But everybody insisted the inside of the ambulance was full.

  I bet, thought Chiffon, resentfully. Now she recognized the fireman on the stretcher. The really cute one who had brushed her off like a bug. Well, he wasn’t really cute now.

  The fireman coughed and whispered, “Is it true that Pinch Canyon is completely gone?”

  “We don’t have full information on that yet,” said somebody to the fireman.

  It was the kind of answer for when you don’t want to upset somebody with the truth. Pinch Canyon — gone?

  Gone?

  But Geoffrey…