Wildfire Griffin (Fire & Rescue Shifters: Wildfire Crew #1)(2)
The phone crackled against her ear. “It’s your lucky day. I’ve got a hotshot out of Thunder Mountain who’s willing to swing by and take a look. He says he can get his squad to you within the hour.”
Edith blinked. “That fast?”
That couldn’t be right. Hotshots were ground crew—they didn’t parachute in like smokejumpers did. Either the hotshot had just happened to decide to picnic right on her doorstep, or he was being wildly optimistic about how fast he could reach her.
“That’s what he says. Apparently they just happened to be camping in your area. Sit tight until he arrives to assess the situation.” A sigh gusted out of the phone. “And don’t call again unless you’re actually on fire, understand? We’re busy setting up the new drone system, and I don’t have time for your interruptions.”
The phone went dead before she could answer. Biting her lip, she glanced out the window at the smoke. Was it thicker than it had been two minutes ago?
“It’ll be okay,” she whispered under her breath. “It’s not dry enough to burn fast. There’s plenty of time.”
As if in answer, a second bolt of lightning struck out of nowhere, followed immediately by a deafening crack of thunder. Edith stifled a shriek, reflexively covering her head as a tree blew apart barely a hundred yards away. A swirl of burning leaves pinged like gunshots off the tower’s wide windows, even though her lookout platform was twenty feet off the ground.
Edith cautiously raised her head, peeking over the edge of the window. From her vantage point in the tower, she had an excellent view of the nearest lightning-struck tree. The dead snag was burning fiercely, but fortunately it wasn’t close enough to any other trees for the fire to spread through the canopy. Instead, it was crawling through the undergrowth, chewing up fallen branches and shrubs.
She started to reach for the phone, but stopped. Warren had been very clear. And even if she did disobey his order and call anyway…he probably wouldn’t believe her.
She was on her own.
“You’re always on your own. This is no different.” She pressed the heels of her hands to her forehead, trying to squeeze her thoughts into focus. “You can do this. Remember. Air, fuel, heat.”
She’d learned about the fire triangle years ago, when she’d still been chasing impossible dreams. Just recalling those words it now brought back a torrent of acute sensory memories—the chafe of her uniform collar, the taste of campfire smoke, gnawing shame and black loneliness.
She flinched, but there was no time to dwell on old hurts now. Pushing back the unwanted emotions, she focused on her training. The classroom, muggy and filled with sweating bodies; the teeth-clenching screech of chalk over blackboard as the instructor sketched trees, flames, lines…
Air, fuel, heat. Those were the three things a fire needed to burn. To put one out, you had to remove one of them. The fire was already too big to smother by any means at her disposal, so she couldn’t remove the air. She didn’t have a convenient fire engine to hose down the fire to remove the heat.
The only thing she could take away was the fuel.
Her forestry tools were neatly arrayed on hooks by the door. She grabbed her axe and shovel, the well-worn handles familiar and comforting in her sweaty hands.
The instant she stepped outside, bitter smoke slapped her in the face. Coughing, she raced down the rickety stairs as fast as she dared.
Her tower was built on the top of the ridgeline, the thick wooden pillars sunk deep into solid rock. She fervently blessed whoever had picked the site; the stony outcrop made a natural break in the forest, so there weren’t any mature trees within thirty feet. But there were still tough grasses and wiry bushes growing in the thin soil. A few scattered patches were already smoldering where burning leaves had landed.
Remove the air.
Dropping her axe, she beat out the small fires with the flat of her shovel before they had a chance to spread any further. She dumped dirt onto the smoking patches to make sure they wouldn’t relight as soon as her back was turned. These tiny blazing patches were just scouts, thrown out by the main body of the fire. She could hear the hungry crackle getting closer. It would eat her alive before she could smother even a tiny fraction of it.
Remove the fuel.
She sank her shovel into the rocky soil. Tough matted roots resisted the blade, but she drove through them with the strength of sheer desperation. Turning the soil over, she dug again, and again, and again. With every thrust of her shovel, she extended the shallow trench. Creating a line.
Not just a line—a fireline.
Fire couldn’t jump across bare earth. Even the fiercest flames could be stopped by a wide enough break. And for a small blaze, you only needed a few feet…
Sweat stuck her shirt to her back. She dug frantically, switching to the axe to hack at the tougher roots. She wished she had a proper Pulaski, a kind of hybrid half-hoe, half-axe tool that would have made short work of the hard ground. But that was specialist equipment, only carried by real firefighters.
She did the best she could with what she had, scraping with the side of her shovel to make sure she hadn’t left any bits of plant that the fire could use as fuel. Her shoulders and arms burned from the repetitive movements.
Cut, dig, scrape. White light flashed with a deafening crack, but Edith didn’t glance up. No time to worry about further lightning strikes now, no attention to spare for the growing orange glow flickering through the trees.