Author's Note: Be patient with me as I venture once again into Fan Fiction. I used to write a lot when I was younger but it was all terrible. I got this idea while commuting home one day from work, and decided to start writing. Several chapters later I wrote a nearly complete outline for the story, and now I just need your help and encouragement to make it real. Here goes!
One-time Disclaimer: I own nothing but my socks.
I had somehow never imagined myself sitting in a therapists' office. The room smelled like antiseptic, and there was only very generic and "peaceful" art on the walls; geese flying over misty lakes and all that. I had a variety of chairs to choose from in the small room, while my therapist sat in the lounger in the corner. I tried to tuck myself into the far corner of the leather sofa, with my feet tucked under my legs. He could probably deduce something from my choice of chair: far away from you, I don't want to be here.
My therapist was a strange man; sharp brown eyes behind thick glasses and hair that refused to stay flattened on the sides. He wore only grey clothing today, and seemed to fade into the background if I wasn't looking directly at him. Maybe if I didn't look at him I could pretend that I was just talking to myself in this room – nope not in therapy, just crazy.
I was so busy talking to myself in my head I missed what he said.
"I'm sorry, can you repeat that?" Dear sir, I wasn't listening to your boring and monotonous voice. Please kill me now.
"I said, what do you remember?"
A terribly innocuous questions, but one that struck to the heart of the issue, because what I remembered made no sense, no matter how many times I reviewed it in my head. I swam around in my memories for a moment, and picked a place to start.
"On September 1st, I left for California for the summer…"
Mornings were never really my forte. At the completely unreasonable hour of four a.m., my alarm clock started chirping merrily on the nightstand. I fumbled around in the dark quickly, trying to silence it before it woke anyone up. A few moments too late, a large arm snaked its way around my waist, and I could feel warm breath on my neck.
"Don't go…" a sleepy voice whined. I chuckled a little, and pried my fiancé's arm up just enough to slip out from underneath.
"You'll barely notice I'm gone," I replied with a quick kiss. "You'll be at work every day." A little more whining later he was fast asleep, and I was working my way to full wakefulness with a cup of coffee. Packing for my "business trips" was always an interesting expedition that I procrastinated starting until the morning of departure.
I was headed to California to fight wildfires, and anything I wanted with me had to fit into a single duffle bag and my wildfire pack. Phone charger, camera, t-shirts, socks… extra socks… extra extra socks. A Wildland firefighter can never have enough socks. Inevitably a new kid would bring only one or two pairs and manage to trip into a creek on his first day, and then spend the rest of the shift complaining.
I twisted my hair into a tight bun at the base of my neck and secured it firmly. Extra hair ties, I reminded myself, shoving a few into both my duffle and fire pack. Hair is extremely flammable, and the smell of burning hair is very difficult to wash out.
I dressed in comfortable flight clothes – jeans, college sweatshirt – and checked my luggage one last time. On a whim, I tossed an old photo of me and my fiancé into my pack, and I was good to go. I looked in on my fiancé one last time, and thought about waking him for a proper goodbye. My decision was cut short by a light knock on the apartment door – my ride was waiting. Bag, jacket, boots, and out the door.
"Morning, Danny." I greeted my crew leader as I shut the door quietly behind me. He was a full head and shoulders taller than me, with a full red beard and slight beer belly. Every summer he managed to lose it in California, and every winter it managed to find him again.
"Got enough stuff, Aria?" Being the only woman in my crew I was teased for the habits of my sex, but it was all in good fun.
"Got enough gut, Danny? I'm going to start calling it 'Lassie' soon – it always runs home!" I patted his gut with a free hand, and promptly shoved my duffle into his arms. A loud guffaw came from the truck, and I groaned. "Please don't tell me…"
My least favorite person leaned out of the window.
"Songbird! I'm suuuuuuper excited for the season! Are you?" Danny's nephew Samuel (and he insisted on being called Samuel, not Sam, which I completely ignored) was probably the least competent Wildland firefighter I had ever known. I had seen him training for his Red Card – the one that allows us to travel from state to state – and had prayed he would drop out.
Unfortunately, the knock-kneed, skinny-legged, chicken-winged teenager (nineteen is still a teenager) had just scraped his knuckles on the finish line and would be joining us in the dry West. He also had the incredibly awful habit of giving people nicknames they hated. For the music-related nature of my name, I was Songbird. What kind of shitty nickname is longer than your actual name? If he was lucky I would only strangle him until he passed out, and let him live.
"You don't like Samuel." The interruption was a little jarring, but I recovered.
"He's young. And he makes mistakes. I'm not fond of the combination." The therapist scribbled something on his legal pad. It made me nervous, and I twirled my hair around my finger.
"How about you tell me about the fire?"
Fire runs faster than you could ever imagine. When it first starts it crackles along at a creeping pace, reaching from grass to leaf to twig. But then they reach ladders. Not ladders like 'oh I can't reach a light bulb', but dead trees that have fallen against other trees, big dead bushes or waxy plants at the base of a tree, or a dead pine tree whose brown needles haven't all fallen off yet. When fire reaches these fuels it leaps to the sky. Suddenly the walls and skies are only fire, and you find yourself running for your life.
A firefighter's boots are made to be fire-proof, with thick treaded soles and no steel toe (which could cook your toes), but that also makes them heavy. Any good firefighter will spend a good deal of time breaking in their shoes – mink oil and an oven, a hammer, whatever it takes to keep those shoes from killing you when it's time to run. And you run. The sound of a fire bearing down on you can only be compared to that of an oncoming train – it roars. And it scares the shit out of you.
Predictably, Samuel made the horrible mistake of buying new boots before his first summer of fires. He had probably spent an entire day trying to break them in, but it honestly takes a month or two of constant abuse to form the leather into a comfortable shape. His feet were starting to drag behind him, and his little chicken legs couldn't keep lifting the heavy boots. He was taking huge, gasping breaths, and he was falling further and further behind the group. I groaned loudly, and called ahead to Danny.
"I've got Sam – keep going!" It goes against almost every instinct of a firefighter to leave someone behind. I could see the muscles in Danny's jaw clench as he paused for a moment. There were four other men in the group besides him and Samuel, and their eyes were wide – on the verge of panic – at the thought of the fire bearing down on them. It takes a lot to scare us, but the safety of the black was far, and the fire was picking up speed. In high winds a wildfire can go as fast as 50 mph. We can't run that fast.
"Come on!" I screamed as I pulled on Samuel's arm. He couldn't reply – his breaths had gone from gulps to gasps. He was out of gas.
"It's a terrifying moment when you realize you might die." The therapist nodded, and scribbled on his legal pad.
In the event that a firefighter is trapped, there is a measure of last resort. We carry a small cube at the base of the pack that can be easily removed by parachute clips. It's a little larger than a two Chipotle burritos, and very carefully inspected every year, and it is called a Fire Shelter. It essentially wraps the firefighter in fireproof tinfoil, and turns us into little burritos. When it's time for a shelter, you're out of options.
I ripped my pack from my back, and quickly snapped off my shelter. Sam did the same, but his hands were shaking too badly to manage the clips. I did it for him, trying to keep my voice soothing as I reminded him of his training.
"Take the shelter and your rake, nothing else." I gave him a half-second to breathe, and we took off again. When relieved of packs, firefighters lose about 40-50lbs. The point of taking the only shelter isn't to lighten us so we can run to the black; it's to give us one or two more minutes to prep the shelter. We have to run to open ground, scrape away leaves or grasses from the shelter area, open the silver burrito, and climb in.
We stopped running at the wide bed of a river – perfect. It had no overhanging trees, and a gentle slope that would be easy to scrape away. Having had lots of practice – and knowing that I should practice often – I was ready in no time. Samuel was working himself into a good panic. He hadn't started digging; he was instead fumbling with the shelter, raking his nails over the protective plastic, fumbling for the easy-rip cord. Before I could scream at him to stop, he had ripped open the case, grabbed a large section of shelter, and yanked. The rending tear that followed filled me with far more horror than the oncoming fire.
He had ruined his shelter.
He held the scrap in one hand, and the rest in the other. He stared from one piece to the other, and then slowly, very slowly, he looked up at me. I hesitated only a second.
"God dammit…" I mumbled. "Come here!" He didn't move. I stomped over, grabbed his arm and hoped it left one hell of a bruise. I shoved him down onto the bare patch of soil I had dug. "Get on your belly, idiot." He squirmed in place to comply. I gave him instructions as I pulled out my own shelter. "Put your hands around your mouth, and keep your face in the dirt. That will keep some cooler air in your mouth. It's going to get hot – really hot – whatever you do, stay in the shelter. Do you hear me?" I screamed those last words, and got a quick, twitchy nod. I inspected my shelter for a moment just in case, and threw it over him. "Tuck the ends under you – that's right." The opening of the burrito opens to the ground, and is just big enough for you to climb in. It has no structure, no supports. It relies on your body to seal it against the ground, and gives you a bubble of safety. Samuel vanished under the fireproof shelter – a cocoon of silver against the soil. He would be safe if he stayed in place; a little singed around the edges, but safe.
Now I had to figure out what the hell to do for me.
"You had very few options." I wanted to snap at the damn therapist and tell him to stop interrupting me.
I had my helmet, a fire rake, and a broken shelter. My eyes snapped to the river just a few long strides away. I had no chance of surviving the fire. I had only a slightly better chance of not drowning.
"Drowning it is…" I dropped my rake, and the useless shelter. I went to the water, and waded into the rushing torrent of the river. Faster than I expected it ripped my feet out from under me, and I was headed feet first – thankfully – down the river. I caught a last glimpse of Sam in his burrito before I was whisked down the water.
My heart was beating in my eyeballs. I was traveling fast, so fast, too fast down the water. It had been an open river to start, but it was narrowing – and large rocks were coming up out of the water in dangerous proximity to my body. I didn't want to die – not like this. A firefighter killed by water, what irony.
I was utterly terrified. Images flashed through my head – why hadn't I woken my fiancé for a proper goodbye?
And then I saw it.
A huge looming rock in the middle of the river – it was tipped upstream, looming over the water like a granite Grim Reaper. There was no way for me to avoid it; I was at the whim of the current, and it was bearing me towards my doom. I clutched at my breast pocket for comfort – inside was the photo I had brought along at the last minute – and I didn't need to see it to feel the warm blanket of love. I would give it a shot. I took off my helmet to slim down my line, and braced my legs for the impact. I was ready.
I slammed against the rock, but my feet held. The water pushed down on my shoulders, trying to push them downriver and into the rock, but I was holding my position. I could do this! I tried slowly, very slowly, moving a foot half an inch to one side. It held. Inch by careful inch I moved my way to the side of the rock – if I could get to where the water started to move around the rock, the current would carry me further down the river. I was going to be okay!
I could not have seen the dead tree coming down the river behind me.
It crashed into me with merciless force, hitting my head and ringing me silly. I lost my footing, and it pushed me swiftly against the giant river rock. The current moving down under the rock started to pull me under, and the trauma of the tree to my head left me unable to move my arms with purpose. I moved them weakly, and clawed at the rock with a weakening grasp. The ripped down, and the water closed over my head.
I knew only darkness.
"Is that it?"
"That's all I remember." I almost choked on the lie.
I was seated on a park bench. My fire gear was gone, and I was dry. I was wearing black slacks, a breezy white blouse, and delicate white sandals. My loose hair tickled my shoulders. I blinked.
What the hell?