START
I
The helicopter banks round, and the firemen in back see it then: the biggest fire in state history. It doesn’t creep along the mountain range or run like a sliver through the trees. Instead, it is the mountain, and the valleys are like sinkholes in the earth.
The pilot barks into their comms: Damn, that’s pretty ugly, fellas.
Back further, Henry takes off his headset, closes his eyes. He starts to pray, but stops himself.
There was no undoing this.
Someone slaps his shoulder. It’s Carter.
Carter points to his head, his face bunched up.
Henry puts the headset back on.
Carter: You good?
Henry shrugs. ‘Who cares?’
The spotter by the cabin door waves and points. Okay, the jump spot looks clear. Take us down.
Henry and Carter and all the other firemen gathered their equipment. They stand in line and grab the cable. Henry is third in waiting.
The first two jump and disappear into the night sky.
Ready? says the spotter.
Henry isn’t, but he drops into it.
II
Cold air.
Clothes thrashing around.
The plane tumbling away overhead.
-One thousand and…
Bad memories flood in.
Henry ran into Carter’s wife at a bar near his house. The bar owner booked some trivia night upstairs in the old pool room that no one ever used. Friday night and suddenly all sorts are coming through on their way upstairs. The regulars ignored them. But Henry is in his booth, with his newspaper as always, and in she came already halfway lit and looking for something. He’d known her for years.
-Two thousand and…
It went way past where it should have. The chaos they were making was part of it for her. Maybe part of it for both of them.
-Three thousand and…
The strands of her hair in his linen.
-Four…
Henry pulls the chute open, and it goes wrong immediately. Knows it by heart, as well versed as he is in the sensation.
III
He came down in the trees. Branches whipping until one catches and swings him hard into the trunk of a Redwood.
Nothing for a few seconds, then.
His eyes open. Henry checks his arms and legs. Everything’s still working.
Then he hears Carter’s voice: ‘So you coming down tonight, Henry?’
Below - forty feet, minimum - are the other firemen.
‘You can tie off on that branch to your right, I reckon,’ says Carter.
Henry pads his leg for the rope.
The let-down, that’s what they call it.
IV
The fire crew gets burned-over in a few hours in and retreat to the meet, a spot near a small river on the way out of the fire. They stand there in the shallows of the river and watch deer take shelter in the water. Around them, the wall of molten forest crackles and smokes.
‘You don’t see this every day,’ says Carter.
It was hell.
They rest and wait.
Filling his canteen, Henry sees something else. ‘What the…’
People were coming up the river. Running. Knee deep in the water. Moaning, on fire, smouldering. They shouldn’t be able to move like that, not with those injuries.
Carter runs towards them, to help.
The others follow.
The good men.
But not Henry.
The running silhouettes drag the firemen down into the water, screaming. Dark jets of blood spraying from necks and faces, the river water colouring around Henry’s ankles.
He doesn’t run. There’s no where left to go.
So they come for him.
I love you, he says to her, at the last moment, but what does it matter?
END
— IAIN
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