Page 45 of Smoke Season

“Ah, shiiit,” Deklan said.

Now that they were well below town, they could follow the Flatiron Fire’s progress; it burned bright over their right shoulder as they drove, on the slope on the far side of the river. Just like at Highline, ash spun in the wind, obscuring their view out the windshield if the wipers weren’t on full blast. Mel experimented with the headlights: Full brightness? Or dimmed as in a snowstorm, so as not to reflect the flakes of ash, turning them from sooty gray to bright white?

“At least it can’t jump the Outlaw,” Deklan noted as they approached the first of the many mountain streams that fed into the river. They’d arrived at one of True’s favorite first-night camping spots, Antelope Creek. The fire burned on both sides of the creek on the north bank with effortless abandon, but Deklan was right: the wide Outlaw indeed stopped the path from reaching the south shore.

“But there’s plenty of reason to stop it on the north bank, too,” Mel let him know. Wonderland Lodge sat on that bank. More than a few fishing cabins. And after the river road crossed from the south side of the Outlaw to the north at Wonderland Bridge, it led directly to the take-out area at Temple Bar.

“When are we gonna cross over and fight it?” Ryan wanted to know. Mel noted he sounded less eager than he and his rookie friends had two days ago.

“Not until evacs are completed over here onthisside,” Mel said. “The hotshot teams are already on it, as well as several hand crews. We’re going to follow the orders we were given.”At least, you boys are.

“Wait, so we’re gonna drive right past the fire, over here on the south bank?” Deklan wanted to know.

Mel nodded. “We’ll eventually get out ahead of it so we can cut a containment near Wonderland, but we’ll be knocking on doors first.”

“Perfectly safe,” Sly grunted. He turned to Mel. “That’s what I told Doris, and that’s what it’ll be, right?”

“Right,” she promised, even while inwardly flinching.

“Like we were perfectly safe cutting that containment on the slope of Flatiron?” Deklan noted dryly.

His observation was spot-on, of course. Every firefighter knew not to promise anything to anyone. Caution kept you alive. Assuming the worst worked in your favor. No one answered for a beat. “You’re right to keep your guard up,” Mel conceded to Deklan. She hoped Ryan was listening, too. “Never know what the wind will bring, right?”

She chanced another glance in the rearview mirror to see Deklan swallow and Ryan’s cocky grin fully disappear. “Right,” they echoed.

For the majority of the morning, they kept abreast of the fire, driving parallel to the blaze along the river road all the way to Devil’s Drop, the last of the smaller rapids before Quartz Canyon. It took them far longer than Mel had anticipated to veer onto every private dirt road, ignoring thePrivate Property,No Trespassing, andNo Huntingsigns posted on trees and stakes at each long dirt driveway to knock on doors. Had there always been so many folks living out here?

“Halllooo?” Mel called out at each property, running her siren in one quick bleep of warning before allowing Deklan and Ryan to exit the truck to approach the houses. These were precisely the type of homesteaders most likely to shoot first and ask questions later if a couple of teens crossed to their door without invitation. Their homesteads were mainly comprised of double-wides littered with junk cars, very few of them resembling anything close to True’s carefully curated yurt studio.

Of course, Mel doubtedanyoneput such deliberate care into their home, except maybe Sam. The first time Mel had seen True’s place, the vulnerability laid bare on her face, watching Mel take it all in, had almost been too damned hard to look at, like squinting into direct sunlight.The Outsider. Mel hated that name. It made her ache for that tender part of True, the part that, no matter what True said to the contrary, no matter what brave front she put up, wanted it all. Mel wished she could tell her the same thing she told Sam: it wasn’t a “build it andthey will come” situation. Life threw curveballs, and no amount of river rock or solar panels could change that.

“Clear, Chief!” Deklan called out now, and Mel let the sight of the front porch of yet another dilapidated homestead wash the image of True’s yurt from her consciousness. Deklan affixed a green rapid tag and descended the sagging porch steps, leaping much like a monkey himself as he returned to the truck.

All of these properties sat empty, thank goodness, save for a few animals. While Deklan and Ryan continued to affix tags to each door, Sly and Mel called in a few to Animal Control—livestock still contained in barns and stalls, mostly—knowing the department would be making rounds as soon as they were cleared to drive the river road. Deklan attempted to chase down a few panicked dogs, all of whom escaped capture.

“They’ll be fine,” Mel assured the boys, even while swallowing her own misgivings. What could she do? She had to keep her priorities straight. Animals tended to flee; the dogs would undoubtedly find a drainage pipe or irrigation ditch to cower in, where they had as good a chance as most.

“These all pot farms?” Deklan asked, climbing back into the battalion chief truck after clearing a ramshackle cabin deep in a tangle of overgrown forest.

Mel eyed the dense vegetation, excellent camouflage back in the day when the Feds combed these woods looking for hidden grow sites. “Must be.” It explained the increase in farms out here, off the grid. “At least, this place probably is.” She wondered how often search and rescue and the sheriff’s department had been here in the past few years, checking on compliance with state regulation.

“Wouldn’t kill ’em to clear the ground of undergrowth,” Deklan observed, kicking at the layer of brittle pine needles blanketing the dirt drive.

“Bad for business,” Mel told him tightly, “once upon a time. Now, these farmers are just lazy.”Or growing far more than is legal, in order tosell commercially to the cartels on the I-5 corridor.The Fallowses being the worst offenders, of course.

“Oh yeah,” Deklan said. “I forgot weed didn’t used to be legal and stuff.”

“Whelp,” Sly grunted from the front seat, as mention of illegal grow caused Mel’s mind to flit to Fallows, and then to Astor and the fear she must have felt this morning. She shut that thought right back down. If she fixated on that now, Mel would be unable to do her job. And if she couldn’t do her job, she wouldn’t collect the ammo box. She wouldn’t get her payout. Annie wouldn’t get her prescription. Every terrible thread of Mel’s reality was knotted to the next, in a seemingly endless tangle.

They continued to pick their way along the river road, listening, over the sound of their own engines, to the intermittent buzz of chain saws across the water—one of the hand crews at work on firebreaks closer to the blaze—and watching the regular rain of Phos-Chek falling from the sky from the planes that circled the air, releasing the rust-colored fire retardant onto the flames like that saffron-tinted powder thrown at the Holi festival True had taken her to in Portland once. They were making good use of the daylight, but the task seemed never-ending. So much for Mel’s optimistic promise to retrieve the ammo box from Temple Bar today. At this rate, she’d be lucky to make it that far southwest by this time tomorrow.

They made it another five miles downriver over the afternoon, and when the persistent flicker of flame over their right shoulders finally dipped out of sight in a cloud of smoke, leaving them with a view of only ash-gray forest instead, Deklan sighed in relief.

“And ... we’re officially ahead of the Flatiron Fire. About time, too.”

“This means Wonderland Lodge is still standing over on the north bank?” Ryan asked, peering through the windshield in an attempt to spot it.

He wouldn’t. Not in this smoke. “Yes, it’s there,” Mel told him, “and should remain standing, after we cut a containment line.” They’dset up camp here on the south side of the narrow, one-lane Wonderland Bridge, built to last from the CCC days, where it was safest.

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