Page 102 of Until We Come Home

Barnes marked the tank on the map as our end point, and we passed close enough on the way up that I caught a glimpse of it through the haze—a heavy steel cylinder on a wide gravel pad. They clear a big perimeter around those tanks for service vehicles and to keep fuel away from the structure.

Nothing up there but rock and dirt. It’s uphill, away from the rigs and the people and every instinct telling Ollie to run downhill, but it’s the only patch of ground on this ridge with nothing left to burn.

“No,” I say, spinning him around by his shoulder harness so he’s looking up the slope. “We’re making for the tank.”

“That’s straight into the fire,” he stammers.

“It’s toward clear dirt.” I unclip the hand tool from my harness and let it drop, then strip the pump off his back and hurl it aside. “Ditch everything except your shelter, your canteen, and your radio. Hold that shelter like your life depends on it. Now move.”

We run.

Embers rain down so thick the air is a storm of red light, hot flakes bouncing off our helmets and igniting the brush on both sides of the line. Every few seconds another patch of fuel goes up with a heavy thud I feel in my chest. The smoke is so thick my headlamp beam dies ten feet out, so I keep one hand locked in Ollie’s collar so he doesn’t slip away in the dark.

I key my mic as we move, breathing hard but keeping my voice flat. “Strike Team 7, Navarro. We’re heading up the line toward the water tank. There’s a gravel pad up there with nothing on it that can burn. If we get cut off, we deploy there.”

“Copy, Navarro,” Barnes comes back, his voice stripped down to pure command. “Water tank. There’s an access track coming up from the highway side. I’m rerouting Rebecca now. Keep moving.”

We’re about a hundred yards from the tank when Ollie falls.

He’s running right beside me, and then his right leg drops straight through the ground and he crashes face-first into the dirt. He screams loud enough that I hear it over the fire. I turn back, swinging my headlamp onto him. His leg has sunk into a hole up to the knee.

A stump hole. An old tree burned out underground years ago and its rotted roots left a hollow, and a thin crust of ash made it look like solid ground until Ollie stepped on it.

I grab him under the arms and pull his leg free. His boot is bent at an angle that’s all wrong, and I know before he says a word.

“It’s broken,” he gasps, his face gone pale under the soot. “Mateo, I think it’s broken.”

“Yeah, it is,” I say, hooking his arm over my neck and dragging him up onto his good leg.

He tries to hop, makes it three painful strides, and his good leg gives out. He sags against my side, teeth gritted, while behind us the brush along the cut ignites in a long, roaring sheet of orange. I bend low, drive my shoulder into his middle, and heave him up over my shoulder.

He’s solid, a hundred and seventy pounds of probie plus gear and boots, and the slope is steep and slick with ash. The heat presses against my back now, so intense my Nomex feels like it’s baking into my skin. I lock my jaw, keep my eyes on the dirt, and climb.

“Listen to me, Ollie,” I grunt, one heavy step after another, his weight digging into my shoulders. “You’re not dying in this fucking fire, alright?”

He lets out a sound against my back that’s half laugh, half sob, and I keep pushing up the ridge.

The dirt under my boots turns to crunching gravel before I can see the tank. Then the smoke thins, and my headlamp hits its steel wall, tall and gray and streaked with soot. The cleared pad is about sixty feet across, nothing but crushed rock. I stagger to the far side, so the tank sits between us and the worst of the brush, and lower Ollie down as easily as my burning muscles will let me.

Up the slope, the main fire pours over the last line of firs. Below us, the spot fire is eating up the path we just ran. In a minute, they’re going to meet right on top of us.

“Shelter,” I tell him, dropping to my knees beside him and ripping the tab on his case. “Right now. Just like training.”

His hands are shaking too hard to manage it, so I do it for him. I snap the shelter open, the silver foil cracking in the wind, and help him slide his hands into the straps. Then I pull it down over him, careful of the broken ankle, roll him onto his stomach with his feet toward the fire and his head toward the tank, and press his gloved hands flat into the corners.

“Face down in the dirt,” I yell over the roar, leaning over him. “Keep your mouth right against the gravel. That’s the coolest air you’re going to get, so breathe that. Hold the edges down with your hands, your elbows, and your good foot. No matter what you hear, you don’t let go and you don’t get up. Got it?”

“Got it,” he chokes out, his voice muffled under the foil.

I rip my own case open and pull my shelter out, fighting the wind for it. I drop flat onto the gravel beside him, my shoulder pressed against his, and pull the shelter over me. I hook my boots into the foot straps, dig my elbows into the rock, and hold on.

The fire hits the pad.

It sounds like a jet engine next to my head. The noise is so loud it stops being sound and becomes pressure, pounding against my chest and ringing in my ears. The shelter whips and snaps in my hands as the fire’s wind tries to rip it away.

The foil above my face starts to glow a dull red. The heat comes straight through it, searing my back, my shoulders, my neck. I can smell the gravel baking under me. I can smell my fire shirt starting to scorch.

“Mateo,” Ollie calls through the foil, barely loud enough to hear over the roar. “Mateo, are you there?”