Read Online Nest in the Ashes by Christine Goff - Free Book Online Page B

scorching, like the kind that rose in waves from the rocks of a sauna. Eric’s mouth went dry.
    Harry stood above Lark on the slope, his expression indicating he had seen the blowup. He stared, mesmerized, at the spectacle, and Eric fought a desire to look behind him. From the corner of his eye, he could see flames curling and whipping as they hooked up the slope. There wasn’t time enough to turn around. Maybe not even time enough to run.
    “Get into the black now,” Eric ordered. “Now!”
    The words snapped Harry free of the spell, and he moved, darting for the safety zone.
    Eric reached Lark and pushed her ahead of him onto charred ground. If Wag Dodge, the foreman on the Mann Gulch Fire, could save himself by lying down on the freshly burned ground, maybe they could too. Pushing Lark farther and farther into the black, Eric prayed for a miracle.
    Scrambling over logs still glowing with embers, he listened to the roar of the fire grow. Like a high-speed passenger train, it roared toward them, drawn like a magnet to the spot fire burning somewhere uphill, the gulch acting as a chimney. The ravine boiled in fire, jets of flame shooting into the crowns of the trees. A wall of flame roiled toward them, burning everything in its path.
    Harry stumbled and fell.
    “Deploy!” Eric shouted. “Deploy!”
    He dug in his pack for the foil shelter and ripped it free of its plastic cover. On his order, Lark and Harry had done the same. At this moment, bunched together on the charred hillside, each of them was on their own.
    Eric anchored the shelter with his toes, yanking it over his back and pinning it to the ground in front of him with gloved hands. Embers pelted the flimsy tent. Wind ripped at the edges, spitting bits of charcoal into his face. Rifle shots rang through the air, the sound of trees exploding. The ground felt hot, his lungs burned, and he pushed his face closer to the charred dirt, rooting for cooler air.
    He thought of Lark and Harry and Wayne. He thought of his mother in Lillehammer and how angry she would be if he died. He thought of Jackie and Tamara and, inexplicably, of a Norwegian potty-training song that his grandmother used to sing.
    The wind took on the whine of a jet engine. Trees popped like firecrackers. The inside of the fire shelter glowed. Eric felt a sudden crushing weight as the fire rolled over them. He arched, cringing away from the heat, away from the death he feared. Then the roar diminished, the pressure ebbed, and the train passed on.
    He lay quietly.
    Nora’s voice crackled from the radio, then Lark called out. “Eric?”
    “Don’t get out.”
    “Trust me,” she said.
    He smiled at the sarcasm in her voice. Humor served as first-aid cream for the soul.
    “Harry,” he shouted. “Are you there?”
    “Present and accounted for.”
    “Everyone stay covered,” Eric ordered. “The worst is over, but there’s still fire out there.” He could feel its heat through the foil and see the glow under the edges of his tent. “It’ll be hot. We’re safer inside.”
    “Now I know why they call them ‘brown and serve bags,’ ” Harry said.
    Lark giggled, hysteria bubbling close to the surface. “I thought they were called ‘shake ‘n’bakes.’”
    “Same difference.”
    Eric thought of Wayne. He didn’t remember seeing any sign that Wayne had tried to deploy his shelter. No bag on the ground. Had he been caught that unaware?
    The others didn’t know about Wayne, and Eric decided he should wait to tell them. Right now wasn’t the time to speculate on what had happened. He needed to maintain morale.
    Eric maneuvered the radio out from under him and notified Nora they were okay, turning down the volume in case she said something about Wayne.
    “You guys hang tight.”
    “We’ll do that.”
    The three of them hollered back and forth for what seemed like close to an hour before Eric’s shelter cooled enough so that he felt like sticking his head out from under the foil.