The Wildfire Season by Andrew Pyper Read Free Book Online Page B

long-legged. It’s that he can’t help from looking back every five or six strides. No matter how brief his glances, simplyturning his shoulders and blinking once against the rolling wall of flame is enough to break whatever speed he had worked up. When the kid’s eyes return to the man ahead of him he has lost another five feet, and he must dig his toes in and start climbing all over again.
    Because Miles won’t allow himself to overtake any of the others, the kid slows him down as well.
    Don’t look at it! Miles is shouting at him, but the kid doesn’t hear. He says it another three times before he realizes that the words are pronounced only as an idea within him. He works sideways across the hill to the kid’s line of ascent and slams his palms against his shoulder blades. Every time the kid turns, he pushes again. Don’t look at it , Miles says with his eyes, and this time, the kid gets it.
    And then Miles looks too. He’s astonished at the fire’s speed. The conditions are perfect for it making a sprint like this—dried stalks of high grass, the accelerant of oak scrub at the bottom of the gulch, a slope for the flames to climb—but he still can’t believe how it defies what he’s ever observed of fire before, the way it turns gravity upside down. Now Miles can see that it’s true what he’s been told a thousand times. Only fires and bears run faster uphill than downhill .
    Ahead, Miles can see the first figures making the crest. The fire is so close he can hear it—not its vacuum but its resulting explosion of flames. The whirl opened up and new air rushing in tofill the space in a metallic screech, a subway train grinding the rails as it goes too fast around a bend. The kid covers his ears.
    The two of them are the only ones who remain below now, a little over a hundred yards short of where the slope levels and falls away into forest. It is close enough that Miles can see the individual fingers of grass at the top bending against the rush of heat. The fire will have burned the same blades to black wicks before they get halfway to touching them.
    It is close, but Miles has noticed how his pace has slowed almost to a standstill, and the final ascent is far steeper than any other section of the hill. The other men have a chance of making it, so long as the fire is delayed on the crest. But even if they had wings it’s too late for Miles and the kid.
    Miles lunges forward and grabs the kid’s arm, stopping them both. Without explanation, he slips his hand into his pack and pulls a fusee out. He lip-reads the kid’s voiceless words— Don’t stop! Don’t stop! —but only raises his hand in reply. Miles ignites the fusee with the lighter he takes from his pocket. When it flares to life, he bends to touch its spitting mouth to the straw around them.
    An escape fire. A small burning of grass lit before the main fire hits, so that the burned area—the ‘good black’—can be stepped into and, with their heads buried in the ashes, the worst of the fire may pass around them. It is a technique Miles has only read about. He remembers stories ofturn-of-the-century natives saving themselves and any pilgrims who would join them, far out on the Great Plains lit up like a prairie inferno. But there is no mention of escape fires in any of the current training materials, and for good reason. Miles knows that more men have burned in the good black than have been saved by it. But they will die if they run on, and die if they stand where they are. Miles decides for himself and for the kid. They will be an experiment.
    Miles steps into the circle, the stalks still snapping and sending live sparks up his pant legs, and waves at the kid to join him. Just ten feet away, the kid stays where he is. Staring at Miles in an uncomprehending palsy of disbelief. Why is his foreman starting a fire when there already is one, a huge one, coming right at them?
    For a moment, the two men meet each other’s eyes through the smoke