Chapter One
“Two more chains,” Gromit said. His surname was Wallace, but we called him Gromit, and if you can't figure out why, you're not my kind of person.
“Shut the fuck up,” I growled and kept clearing brush. I hated being a swamper, but it was even more annoying when I teamed up with Gromit as a faller. That line about chains—a measurement of 66 feet—was his way of saying we weren't stopping anytime soon. And no fucking shit. We'd been working the job for over a week and barely holding back the head. “Look out for that widow-maker.” I pointed at a branch about to come down.
“On it.” A chainsaw whirred, competing with the roar of flames, and then went silent. Directly following that silence came the crash of the branch landing.
I immediately looked for the black. Always keep one foot in the black—the charred land a fire has already burned. It's an escape route in case things go belly-up. My route was about twenty feet away. No biggie. Once I got a mental lock on it, I looked over at Gromit. He was facing the wildfire.
Wildfire season in Oregon lasts from May through October. It's when I really earn my pay. Not that I don't work at other times of the year. Shit catches fire all the time. But forest fires are the worst—grueling endurance tests that made you wonder why you chose this profession. A house on fire—now that we could take care of in a few hours. A building, maybe a bit longer. But a forest fire didn't run out of fuel. It just kept burning and burning with the whim of Mother Nature. A breeze could kill you. It could send what you think was a contained blaze in another direction and decimate a town. One team could handle a house. It took every fucking station in the area to fight a forest fire. And that wasn't counting the medical and helicopter teams. There's a reason they put so much funding into those anti-forest fire campaigns. Listen to Smokey Bear, kids. Only you can prevent wildfires—by telling your dumb ass parents to make sure their campfire is completely out.
This particular blaze had a spread rate that could make your head spin, but we had kept it from wiping out the nearest towns. They had an orange, apocalyptic sky, but they didn't have to evacuate. Yet. That hadn't been the case a few years ago. Back then, there had been a lot of evacuations. And too many people didn't make it. Not because they were stupid and waited too long, but because the fires were that vicious and fast. The deaths I remember the most vividly, the ones that haunted me still, were those of an old man and his dog.
They had died in his car because of smoke inhalation. The fire had cut off the road they were on. You'd think with all the shit I'd seen, it would be burnt bodies that caspered me at night. But there was something about that man and his dog that gutted me. The dog had been in his lap, and the man was curled around it, their faces pressed together. Not the worst way to go, granted, but it hit me hard. The love on their faces. Fuck, I didn't even have a dog. I refused to get a pet and risk leaving it one day to never come back. But I wanted one. Or maybe a cat. Something to love like that—a love strong enough to wrap myself around them and press our faces together when the end came. And we'd go in peace because we were together.
Why was I thinking about that damn dog again? Because in the fire, there was movement, and I could have sworn it was a dog. No, it was too large to be a dog. Was it growing? Couldn't be. The flames were playing tricks on me. It had to be an animal, but there was nothing that large in Oregon. The shape was massive. As big as the trees. It unfolded, stretching out impossibly wide, then suddenly retracted.
“What the fuck was that?!” Gromit's voice came through my lid's com-unit, startling me. “Tell me you saw that shit! You saw it, right?”
“Yeah, I saw it. It's an animal, I think. Hold on. No, fucking way! That's a man!” I ran into the fire, leaving Gromit to curse.
I shouldn't have just left him like that, but something inside me shouted to get to that man as fast as possible. And it wasn't just because a man in the middle of a forest fire, with no gear, was seconds away from adding “dead” to his description. No, there was more to this instinct that drove me forward. Everything depended on me reaching him in time. Wait—everything? Yes, that's how it felt. That man was important. I had to save him.
But when I got to him, the guy looked completely unconcerned. This motherfucker was standing in the middle of a burning forest and looked as if he were on a casual stroll through a park. He wasn't even coughing.
I would have to process the impossibility of it all later. My savior streak was screaming to get him to safety. I would have thrown him over my shoulder and run if he hadn't been so big. And naked. The guy was naked as the day he was born. Very impressive. In so many ways. Again, things to think about later.
I slung an arm around his broad shoulders and shouted, “This way!”
The guy swung his head to look at me and that's when it finally hit him that he was in trouble. His eyes widened and his jaw fell. He looked around in shock, then back at me. For a second, the fire didn't matter. We were in an inferno hot enough to make Dante sweat, but it didn't come close to the heat that suddenly filled me. A fucking rollover blasted through me even though I was in a forest. It was his stare—his eyes. They were greener than this forest had once been, and they pinned me like a bug.
He said something I didn't understand. Some strange language. Arabic? Possibly. I knew some Greek from my grandmother. So, I couldn't use that line about it all being Greek to me. I could only say that it most definitely wasn't Greek.
“Come with me!” I shouted through my mask. “Now!”
The man blinked, scowled, then asked, in English, “Where am I?”
“Come with me now!” I pulled him toward the line and as I turned, I saw Gromit. He was standing a foot away, just watching us. “Help me with him!” I said.
Gromit flinched, his stare lowering to take in the full monty, then rushed forward to grab the man's other arm. We ushered him away from the blaze and kept going, getting him to the black. I didn't let go until we were at the base and then it was only to yank off my lid and mask.
“Medic!” I shouted. “We need a medic!”
Several stations were working the line, so I didn't know the paramedic who came running. Still, I treated him like family when he came to a jerking stop before us and gaped at the man. Anyone who helps us is family.
And, as I would have said to a brother or cousin, I snapped, “Hey, fucko? Are you going to help him or what?”
The medic flinched and looked the guy over. “Uh, here.” He pulled a silver emergency blanket out of his pack and wrapped it around the man. Since it was too small to cover everything, he did a towel-tie around the guy's waist.
The man frowned at the blanket, spread it open to peer at the fabric, then looked at the medic. “What sort of material is this?”
“Uh.” The medic looked at me.
I shrugged. “Did he inhale too much smoke?”
Absently, I reached over and pushed one of his hands toward the other so the blanket covered his goodies. He didn't seem concerned about his nudity, but I certainly was—for my sanity, if nothing else. I held the medic's gaze as I did it, but saw the unknown, possibly insane man staring at me out of the corner of my eye.
“That much smoke and he would have been unconscious,” the medic said. “Sir, come with me. I want you to sit down so I can examine you.” He reached for the man's hand, and the guy jerked back.
