AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“No, unfortunately. I wonder if she’s even alive.”
“Listen!” Billy shouted.
The sounds of several sirens echoed across the canyon.
“That’s good,” Emily said. “It means they’re getting reinforcements.”
“I don’t know how you live up here,” Kathy said. “I’m getting scared.”
The red sky flared up in the distance just as she spoke.
“I don’t know, guys,” Emily said. “That looks like it’s coming from the direction of the fire station.”
“It looks a lot closer than it is,” Billy said, following it on his phone. “We’re safe. I’m just worried for Paul’s sake.”
“Yeah, the morning can’t come fast enough,” Emily muttered.
***
Smoke and dust choked and blinded Paul, but he didn’t let it interfere with the work. The soothing rhythm of swinging the pickax, trenching along a line his crew chief had designated, took all the discomfort from his body. This fire was a little too close to home.
Emily might have picked up his vibes because the fire had started in the forested mountainside above Red Mountain Ranch when a homeless camper left his fire unattended, not in the canyon like Billy had thought.
The crackle of the crew chief’s radio interrupted his thoughts.
“We’re going to move west,” he called out after getting new directions. “Dispatch just put out a call to evacuate the area, including Dr. Bogart’s place.”
“That’s not going to be easy because he has about fifty cages of small animals,” Danny said. “Not to mention all the horses he’s rescued.”
“They should ask for help on social media,” someone else said.
Twenty minutes later, Billy got the alert from Facebook on his phone. Sitting on the terrace, Kathy had gone inside to get another bottle of wine, and Emily was still there.
“Uh-oh, they’re asking for volunteers with trucks and horse trailers to go to help evacuate the vet clinic,” he read from his phone. “Mandatory evacuations have begun in the Red Mountain Ranch area of north San Diego County.”
“Wait, that’s us,” Emily said, frightened.
“Not yet. We’re technically Canyon Ranch. The district changes at Jones Road.”
“I’m ready to help out,” Emily said. “That’s right over by Paul’s cabin. Do you want to go?”
Billy had a pickup truck and he didn’t hesitate. “Yes. I don’t see how we can ignore this.”
“I have boots you can borrow,” Emily said, looking at Kathy’s bare feet.
In five minutes they were in his truck, headed toward Paul’s cabin and the vet clinic. A sheriff’s car blocked the street, but when they saw the truck and Billy said they were coming to evacuate animals, the way was cleared and directions were given to the clinic. They were in a line of trucks, some with horse trailers. Emily wondered if the horses and mule that lived at Paul’s would also be evacuated.
Because he didn’t have a trailer, Billy was asked to take cages of animals that would be relocated to another fire station two miles away.
Dr. Bogart met them at the clinic entrance. “Thank you so much,” he cried. “Come this way. I have fifty or more cages that have to be moved.”
“We can stack them up to four high, and I’ll strap them down. We’re only going a few miles south to the other fire station.”
The smoke was starting to drift toward the area, and Emily’s eyes smarted. She followed Dr. Bogart into the building and saw right away the problem. The cages weren’t portable, attached to the wall behind and to each other.
“We’ll need carriers or cardboard boxes,” Emily said. “Do you have anything like that?”
“I’ve got them in the barn,” Dr. Bogart replied.
