Now, every story came back to him as he waited, moments measured in heartbeats, seconds grinding by with unbearable slowness.
Brandon dugat the ground with the Pulaski, scraping away dried pine needles, twigs, and grass to expose the cool, mineral soil beneath. Hawke had given Ramirez a spare brush shirt and brush pants from his pack and was telling the pilot and Ramirez what they could expect.
“You’re going to think you’re burning alive, and you might get burned, but it’s going to be a thousand times hotter outside the shelter than inside. Do not come out, no matter how afraid you are, no matter how hot or painful it gets. Do you understand?”
How could Hawke be so damned calm?
Brandon had trained for this, too. He’d done deployment drills over and over again. He’d watched videos, listened to survivor stories. But he didn’t feel calm. He’d sworn to himself that he would never be careless enough to become entrapped. He hadn’t imaged a helicopter would crash-land him in the path of a fire.
Libby.
Would he see her again? Would he die here in his shelter?
Don’t think. Dig.
They’d run from the helicopter, searching for a good place to deploy, somewhere with minimal fuels where burning trees wouldn’t fall on them. The fire was moving much faster than they were, so they’d had just minutes to find a spot.
Hawke had chosen this place—a clearing that looked like it might have once been home to a miner’s cabin. The cabin was long gone, but there was a sunken area in the shape of a rectangle toward the center of the clearing. It was as treeless as anything they could hope to find in the middle of a damned forest.
Hawke was doing his best to help the others. “You can do this. I’ll be right here with you. We’re going to check your shelters and make sure they weren’t damaged in the crash.”
The fire was close now, the heat already uncomfortable, the roar deafening, embers burning through Brandon’s brush shirt and igniting spot fires all around them.
“That’s good enough!” Hawke shouted to Brandon. “Toss your gear! Deploy shelters!”
Shit. Fuck!
This was it.
No drill this time. This was the real thing.
Brandon tossed the Pulaski, pulled his fire shelter from his pack, then doffed his pack and hurled it as far away from their deployment site as he could. It held flammable fusees and other things that might ignite.
“I’m taking my camera with me!” Ramirez shouted.
“Fine, but don’t hold onto it! Hold onto the shelter!” Hawke shouted back. “The wind could tear it right off you! If you lose your shelter, you die!”
It was a good thing that Brandon had practiced this so many times, because adrenaline was kicking the shit out of his manual dexterity. He fumbled with the red tear ring on the outer bag, pulled on it, and removed the fragile shelter. Tab labeledLeft Handin his left hand. Tab labeledRight Handin his right hand.
Clearly, they had tried to make the process both idiot- and adrenaline-proof.
He shook the shelter out, the wind catching it, hoisting it into the air like a sail. He wrestled with it, held onto it with clenched fists.
If he lost it, he would burn alive.
He managed to get one foot inside, then the other, catching sight of Hawke as he helped Ramirez and the pilot get inside their shelters. “Hawke, for fuck’s sake, deploy!”
The fire was almost on top of them.
But Hawke didn’t seem to hear him. He showed Ramirez and the pilot how to hold on, how to breathe cool air close to the ground. “Don’t panic!”
“Damn it, Hawke! Deploy!”
Hawke heard Brandon that time.
He checked the others, pulled out his shelter, shook it out.
The heat was intense now, the fire rushing toward them like some vision of hell. Brandon dropped to the ground, feet toward the blaze, then slid gloved hands through the straps and pulled the shelter down around him.