Read Online Firestorm-pigeon 4 by Nevada Barr - Free Book Online Page A

The skin on her little fingers burned. In her mind's eye she saw it curling away, blackened and seared, leaving only the clean white of finger bones.

Noise crested, became solid, clogged the machinery of her ears and mind. Her head filled with the roar till it seemed it must explode. Her lungs were crushed with it, the bones of her body shaking, softening as if the molecules vibrated against each other. Anna hunkered into the sand, thought, like breath and sight and hearing, blasted away.

When Anna had grown accustomed to the idea of death the roaring seemed to lessen. She sensed it not so much with her ears as with her body. An infinitesimal lifting of the weight, a tiny shift in the crush. That something in the eastern sky that, while not yet light, somehow flaws the perfect hue of the night.

The black of the noise was flawed. The firestorm was past the creek. And Anna was still alive.

This is good, she thought. This is good. Elation brought hope up from the depths of her soul and hope brought fear. Anna was sick with it.

Prying open grit-encrusted eyes, she rolled her head to one side. Within the shelter the sparks had moved like stars across the night sky. Orange glared through pinpricks, the small imperfections in the shelter, on her left side now. The fire had jumped the creek bed; it was moving on.

Anna held what fragments of painful breath there were left in her lungs, irrationally terrified that should she move, make even the smallest of sounds, this ravening beast that was fire would turn back, dig her out of her lair and devour her as wild dogs would devour a rabbit.

"Get a grip," she said through cracked lips.

Most assuredly she was alive. Her lungs hurt, she had to go to the bathroom—if she hadn't already—her hands and her shoulders burned, her stomach threatened to empty, but worst was the thirst. Dust stuck in her throat till she couldn't swallow. Lips and tongue were as unyielding as old leather. Her very skin and hair and fingernails felt parched. If she could have immersed herself in water she had little doubt that she would soak it up like a sponge, swell up half again, in size.

"Anybody alive out there?"

Anna thought the words were in her mind, in someone else's voice, and she wondered if this was where the angels came or one's life flashed before one's eyes.

The message was repeated: "Anyone alive?"

It was her radio, impossibly far away on her belt. More than anything in the world, Anna wanted that voice to continue. Inching one gloved hand away from the shelter's edge, she tried to get to the Motorola. Winds jerked the aluminum up and a sandblast of heat and ash choked her. She felt the shelter being peeled back, the fire coming back for her. Abandoning the radio she clawed the tent down again.

"Anyone?"

The voice sounded plaintive now and, to Anna's fevered mind, farther away. Salvation was slipping from her. The rescue plane flying over her raft without seeing it. Rolling to one shoulder she used her weight to pin down the embattled tent. Where she pressed against the shelter wall she burned. Still she held out till she'd wrested the radio from her belt. Facedown in the sand again, she pushed the Motorola up close to her mouth and forced down the mike button with a clumsy gloved finger.

"I'm alive. Is that you, John?"

"Some roller-coaster ride."

Anna wanted to kiss him, cry all over him, marry him, have his children. "Who else has radios?" she asked.

"Howard's got one. Black Elk, are you alive out there?"

Radio silence followed.

"He's alive," Anna said, not because she believed it but because if he was he'd need reminding. "His hands and arms got burned. He probably can't get to his radio."

"Keep the faith," LeFleur said. "I'm on the far side of the wash from spike. It sounds like it's past me. I think that was the worst of it."

"Gee, ya think?" Anna said sarcastically, and the crew boss laughed. A wonderful sound: heaven, honey, nectar. "How long have we been in these things?"