It’s night already, and the flames nothing more than a distant glow on the horizon. A supertanker flies over us and drops its water cargo, snuffing out most of the nearby spot fires.
“Sound off!” I rasp, my voice barely recognizable through a throat that feels scoured with sandpaper. “Squad 27, sound off!”
“Martinez here,” comes a hoarse response to my left.
“Diaz. I’m good,” follows from somewhere behind me.
“Brett. Still alive, somehow,” the last voice confirms.
Relief washes through me, stronger than the pain radiating from my smoke-filled lungs. We made it. All of us. I stagger to my feet, my legs wobbling beneath me like a newborn colt’s. My turnout gear is scorched and blackened, but it did its job—I’m battered but still standing.
The ravine we sheltered in is unrecognizable, a charred valley with ghostly skeletons of brush still smoldering at the edges. The fire has moved on, leaving destruction in its wake. Other firefighters emerge from their shelters like reluctant butterflies from apocalyptic cocoons, their faces streaked with soot and sweat.
“Lieutenant.” Martinez approaches, coughing. “You okay?”
“Yeah.” I nod, though “okay” is relative when you’ve just had a staring contest with death. “Everyone else?”
“Some severe burns, but everyone’s walking.” He gestures to the ridge. “Radio’s working again. Command says we’re to fall back to the secondary staging area.”
We gather what’s left of our equipment. Tools abandoned in our mad dash have been reduced to metal parts with the handles burned away. My squad looks like extras from a war movie, exhausted and shell-shocked, but alive. That’s what matters.
The hike back is a blur of pain and determination. It’s as if my boots are filled with concrete, each step a battle against my body’s desperate plea to lie down and stop. But we keep moving because that’s what firefighters do; we push through when everything in us wants to quit.
The secondary staging area is another war zone crammed with ambulances, command vehicles, and tired firefighters sitting on the ground guzzling water and getting medical attention. EMTs swarm us as soon as we arrive, checking vitals, slapping oxygen masks over our faces, applying burn cream to exposed skin.
“Lieutenant Collins.” The incident commander approaches as a paramedic shines a penlight in my eyes. “Your squad did good work today.”
I remove my oxygen mask. “Thank you, sir. Any word on containment?”
“Wind’s dying down. We’ve got air support now, and the eastern flank is holding. You’re off duty. Your crew needs medical evaluation and rest.”
I want to argue that there’s still work to be done, but one look at my squad’s faces tells me he’s right. We’re spent. Diaz is getting a nasty burn on his wrist treated, and Brett looks ready to collapse where he stands.
“Yes, sir.” I nod, wincing as the movement sends a stab of pain through my neck. “Any casualties?”
His face darkens. “Three confirmed. Civilians who refused evacuation.” He pauses. “We got to them too late. But it could have been a lot worse if those structures hadn’t been prepped. Good job on Descanso.”
The knowledge that homes were saved offers little comfort when weighed against the lives lost. But that’s the brutal math of this job; you tally what you saved against what you couldn’t, and hope the former outweighs the latter.
The next few hours pass in a daze of medical checks: we’re fine, but they keep monitoring us for smoke inhalation. By the time we pile back into our truck to drive home, it’s dawn already.
The rocking motion nearly lulls me to sleep, but every time my eyes close, flames dance behind my eyelids. My mind won’t shut off, replaying moments from the fire in vivid, terrible detail. The wall of flame rushing toward us, the panicked dash for shelter, the certainty that I might never see Lily or Penny again.
Lily. Her name alone sends a jolt through me. I didn’t call her. Didn’t text. She must’ve heard about the fires on the news by now.
I fumble for my phone, then remember it’s dead, the battery drained hours ago. Doesn’t matter. What would I even say? “Hey, just survived being nearly burned alive. How’s your day going?” No, better to tell her in person.
Since my housing complex is on the way to the station, Martinez drops me off straight from the truck. I’ll go get my pickup tomorrow. I drag myself out of the cabin with a mumbled thanks. Every muscle protests as I shoulder my duffel bag and shuffle across the parking lot. My uniform reeks of smoke and sweat, the fabric stiff with dried perspiration and ash. I look like I crawled out of hell. I certainly feel like it. But I’m home, I’m safe, if not in grave need of a shower.
I drag my beaten body through the complex entrance, lungs still feeling like someone scrubbed them with steel wool. The early morning air hits my face—cool, clean, lacking the superheated oxygen I’ve been breathing for the past twenty-four hours. It hurts to inhale, but I do it anyway, savoring the burn that reminds me I survived. I’m one walking bruise, singed at the edges, but I’m alive.
The courtyard is quiet in the light of dawn. I lift my gaze to Lily’s balcony, a habit I’ve developed over the past four months, a reflex as natural as breathing. I don’t expect to see her at this hour, but I look anyway—and freeze.
She’s standing at her railing like she’s been there for hours, waiting. Watching. Her knuckles white where they grip the metal.
Her hair is a mess. Her expression a mask of anguish I can make out even from a distance. Did she spend the night on the balcony? Or is she up early?
When our eyes meet, her face crumples with emotion, and, gosh, that look, it wipes away everything else. The sting in my lungs, the sweat crusted on my back, the heat of the fire I left behind. All that exists is Lily, wild-eyed on that balcony, and the hope that maybe she needs me as much as I need her.
