Read Online Flash Fire by Caroline B. Cooney - Free Book Online Page B

could really watch houses burn. A dozen houses into a cul-de-sac was a mansion with an eight-car garage.
    The firefighters were making a save, or trying to, on the opposite side of the street. Mr. Eight Cars was going crazy, trying to save them. “Garage has an asphalt roof, looks like vinyl siding, definitely cement floors,” said Swann’s father. “What’s the guy worried about? That’s not gonna burn.”
    “If the fire gets hot enough, it’ll melt them,” pointed out Swann’s mother.
    They were pleased at the thought that these people would lose everything they owned.
The Press House
4:04 P.M.
    H ALL DID NOT TOUCH the garden hose. He stared at the distant path where the bicycles had been. There was no sign of them. Actually there was no sign of the path either, because smoke had taken over the mountain. Sometimes you could see flame and sometimes you couldn’t. Hall couldn’t figure out where the fire went when there was no flame.
    It was even hotter. He had not thought the world could get this hot. He remembered hearing on television that the interior of a fire whirl could reach two thousand degrees. He tried to imagine what happened to riders of bikes in two-thousand-degree heat and then tried not to imagine it.
    Were those cyclists just out for exercise, having forgotten that half the county was ablaze? Did they think it would be cool to get up close and personal to a fire wall? Or like Hall, had they counted on the fire to stay where it had been earlier in the day?
    He was shivering. His feet felt pretty comfortable where they were. His stomach didn’t feel so great where it was. His eyes burned, from ash and smoke and tears.
    He was weeping for the cyclists.
    They could not be alive.
    Of course, they’re alive, he said to himself.
    He remembered nine-one-one. He had to phone. Let emergency people know that several people were hurt on Pinch Mountain. But you couldn’t drive up Pinch in an ambulance. You couldn’t land a helicopter on the vertical sides of it. You couldn’t walk in, carrying stretchers and first aid kits, because there was fire between you and the bike path.
    Hall’s mind slowed down, like a bike coasting to a stop.
    In the distance, a huge spinning ember of fire got caught in the whirlwind. The ember was as large as a bonfire, as large as a couch, and it spun as if it were only a feather. It landed in the driveway of the farthest-in house on the canyon: Matt Marsh’s house.
    The road sign read PINCH CYN. CYN never quite looked like the right abbreviation for Canyon. But you couldn’t write CAN, either, as if you lived in a jar.
    But we do live in a jar, thought Hall, and the lid is about to close.
    “I’ve got all the kittens,” said Danna. He was startled to have her next to him again. How long had he stood there accomplishing nothing?
    “Now,” said his sister, sounding exactly like Mom. It was that list voice: chores, groceries, errands, orders. “We’ve got to get Egypt and Spice,” said Danna. “Then we’ll start defending the house.”
    The fire had two personalities. There was the sheet fire personality: a wall advancing down Pinch, still a considerable distance away. But closer were little fires, as if many careless campers were getting ready to make S’Mores.
    Hall’s hands were extremely cold. There was absolutely no sign on the mountain that there was, or ever had been, a row of bicycles. “I’m not sure we can defend the house,” said Hall. They were on the grass — thick, lush, damp grass where sprinklers were going. Their legs and shoes were soaked while their hair and faces baked from the approaching fire. Usually the sprinklers ran at night. Hall wondered whether he had been the sensible person to turn the sprinklers on, and if so, what other actions he had taken.
    “Of course we can,” said Danna impatiently. “We’ve been watching people on TV all week stay with their houses.”
    The wall of fire was throwing baby fires out in front of itself,