Read Online Heartland by Davis Bunn - Free Book Online Page A

something Peter missed entirely. Then he started walking.
    â€œWait!” Peter glanced nervously at the guys they had arrived with. But the firefighters were intent on a felled tree. Peter stumbled after Derek. The earth was rutted and jumbled, the going made treacherous by deep bulldozer furrows and exposed roots. The mud was glutinous. Yet even carrying the camera, Derek sprinted toward the foursome. Peter followed only because he was terrified of getting lost and never finding his way out again.
    Derek stopped without warning and dropped to the earth. He was still thirty paces from the four. He braced his elbows on the highest stump in the clearing. He focused. Took a slow breath. Then hit the trigger.
    Derek did a slow sweep of the entire scene. Taking in the dozers and the saws and the workers and the angry sky. He lingered on the smoke overhead. Then he drew in close and tight. Taking aim at one group in particular. Four people hauling a branch. Four out of hundreds. Struggling with just another huge branch.
    Then Peter saw him.
    JayJay’s face was streaked like an Indian’s. His teeth were drawn back in a snarl of sweaty effort. The reddish-gold hair emerging from his helmet was matted to his forehead. The four of them were dwarfed by the pine branch they carried. Even so, they ran . JayJay Parsons and three others. Two of whom were Oriental. The fourth guy had freckles and looked about seventeen. They were all clearly very scared. They dumped the branch. Kicked it well back out of the clearing. Stood breathing hard for a minute. Then they turned and headed back across the line for the next branch.
    Peter found his breath returning to normal. He took a more comfortable position on the ground beside Derek. He took mild notice of the wet seeping through his trousers. He no longer cared. His mind had moved into creative mode.
    He did a slow three-sixty, trying to embed everything into his brain. He did not need to watch JayJay. Derek would do that for them both. What he needed was to get all of this down so tightly he could go back and make it live on the page.
    He came back around. And found Derek grinning at him. The camera was propped on the stump. Peter moved in so close their helmets clicked. “This is the first episode for next season!”
    â€œNow you’re thinking!” Derek pointed ahead. “Let’s change position so I can shoot them against the sun!”
    â€œWhat sun?”
    â€œExactly!” Derek clambered to his feet. His legs were caked with the viscous mud. Ash speckled his coat. His face and hands were gray-black. His eyes were on fire. “Let’s go!”
    The wind caught them totally by surprise.
    One moment the four of them were wrestling just another branch across the line, with the mud clinging to their boots like red claws. The next, the world vanished.
    JayJay started coughing before his mind fully registered the change. The world was gone . At first he thought it must have been another of those giant choppers passing too close overhead, clamping the smoke to the earth. Only he could not hear the rotors’ deep thrumming. Yet the air was pushing down on them. Not from the north where the fire burned. Straight down. Compressing the air and the smoke to the earth. Blinding them. Making his lungs burn like he had taken a double helping of ash.
    The claxon added a ghostly panic to the invisible scene. The alarm whooped up and down the scale. But from which direction? The wind was as great an enemy as the fire. It made the noise come from all directions at once. It rammed the smoke and the flames down JayJay’s throat.
    JayJay dropped his hold on the branch. He tried to shout, but the words barely croaked from his throat. “Where’s my team?”
    If anything, the smoke grew even thicker. The sky overhead ate the sun completely. He heard coughing. He groped in the direction he thought the cough came from. His glove gripped another shoulder.