Crucible of Fire Read online

  Most of the town’s citizens thought the attacks were caused by economic stresses, or just relationships breaking down. That happened and triggered violence. Maybe some of it could be attributed to the uncertainty caused by the wildfires, which threatened property and lives.

  But Matt believed the attacks, and probably the wildfires, were the work of Mr. Dark. Ever since Matt had come out of the snow after being buried in an avalanche for three months, his destiny had been tied to that dark entity’s troubles. Matt still didn’t know the true nature of that relationship, but he’d been chasing answers since he’d first come in contact with the creature.

  Two weeks ago, Matt had arrived in Ashland and hired on with Lombard Lumber while he settled in to wait for the next wildfire. He’d just started to think maybe Mr. Dark had moved on when Ernie Lombard, the family patriarch, came running into to the bunkhouse looking for volunteers to go fight another one. Matt instantly suited up. The helicopter had shown up to collect them and their gear within moments.

  Heat blew into the helicopter’s cargo area through the open door as the pilot searched for the rendezvous point he’d been given by the fire marshals. Angie Lombard leaned back away from the scorching breeze and ended up pressed against Matt’s chest. Realizing that she’d encroached on his space, she pulled away.

  “Sorry.” With the headphones connecting them to the helicopter’s PA system, Matt could hear her. She was the middle child of the Lombard siblings. In her early thirties, she was only lately returned to the family after walking out of an abusive marriage. Her red hair was cropped short, barely brushing her shoulders. She was beautiful, a head turner, and the coverall couldn’t disguise her womanly figure.

  Matt shook his head and smiled. “No problem.”

  “Nervous?” She pulled at her work gloves, getting a better fit. Matt didn’t know what she’d done before returning to her family, but since she’d been back, she’d worked as hard as any of the men. Her brothers still seemed to resent her presence, though. She had changed the family pecking order, and the brothers didn’t have an easy relationship with each other or the old man. Lombard Lumber was struggling to keep its doors open, and most agreed that the blame rested on Harvey Lombard, the oldest son.

  “I’m always nervous right before the game.” Matt smiled.

  She nodded. “Me, too.” She gazed back down and the firelight gleamed in her eyes. “God help me, fighting these things always brings something out in me, you know? I shouldn’t be excited, but I can’t help feeling that way. It’s you against nature.”

  “Yeah.” Matt studied her, but he didn’t see any of the lesions and festering sores that normally precluded the insanity that gripped people whenever Mr. Dark was around playing his games. He hoped it stayed that way. He liked her.

  The PA system crackled into the headphones and the pilot’s tense voice rang in Matt’s ears. “Okay, we’re a no-go on a ground landing, so I’m going to get you as low as I can and you’ll jump.”

  Next to Matt, Big Mort Carruthers cursed, and even though his voice wasn’t broadcast over the headphones, he was loud enough that Matt could hear him. Big Mort was a huge man, large because of genes, powerful because he’d always worked hard. Before he’d hired on at Lombard Lumber, he’d soldiered in Iraq and Afghanistan. He liked mentioning that.

  Something flickered at Big Mort’s temples, a dark, darting shadow that threaded through his crew cut, but Matt couldn’t be certain if it had been a manifestation or not.

  Beside Big Mort, Stanley Timmons rocked easily on his feet. He was thin and sallow, lantern-jawed, and quiet. Nothing at all like Big Mort, but the two had come as a pair and they spent all their time together. Big Mort was the mouth, but it was Timmons who often took action first. One night at a bar, Big Mort had gotten into a shouting match with a biker. Matt hadn’t seen who had started the confrontation, but Timmons had ended it with a beer bottle to the biker’s head that laid the man low as he’d reached for a knife.

  As if sensing attention on him, Timmons rolled his head over and looked at Matt. For a moment, everything looked all right. Then the flesh under Timmons’ right eye split open and peeled down to his jaw, exposing an underlying carpet of crawling maggots. They wriggled between Timmons’ teeth and oozed into his tongue.

  Timmons spoke in a thick voice over the headset. “Welcome to the bonfire, Matt. There’ll be a hot time in the ol’ town tonight.”

  The voice and the mocking laughter belonged to Mr. Dark and scraped into Matt’s ears like razor-finned eels.

  Before Matt could do or say anything, the helicopter jerked sideways. Timmons’ face returned to normal and he looked away.

  At least now Matt knew for certain that his instincts were right. But he also knew that they all faced a danger far deadlier than a raging wildfire. Mr. Dark didn’t taunt Matt unless there was something big in play.

  The helicopter veered and swooped around the outside of the fire, coming in downwind of the destruction and hovering forty feet above a twisted mass of trees.

  “This is the best I can do, folks.” The pilot sounded apologetic. “But this is where the incident commander wants you people. There are rappelling ropes on both sides of the cargo bay. Grab your gear and good luck.”

  Matt unbuckled his seat harness and went to join Angie at the doorway. The helicopter swayed and bucked slightly as the pilot tried to keep the aircraft steady.

  Holding on to one side of the cargo bay, the helicopter copilot kicked out a coil of rope, which dropped to the ground through the trees. He was a short, compact man in his forties. He turned to the group of lumberjacks.

  “First man down secures the rope so the others can slide faster. Any questions?”

  Studying the man, Matt didn’t see any lesions or festering. He took a deep breath and looked down into the blazing forest. It didn’t look like anything human could make a dent in the spreading fire. He staggered a moment as the helicopter lifted and dropped a few feet.

  “All right, let’s go.” The copilot held up the rope. “All that hot air is making it hard for Tommy to hold the helo on target.”

  Matt pulled on his leather gloves, slid past Angie, and grabbed the rope. “Me first. I’ll anchor the rope on the ground.”

  The copilot nodded. “Good to go. Just hang on to the rope and lean back. Kick free at the skids and slide down. Just like back in gym class.”

  Yeah, except that gym class didn’t offer a forty-foot drop into a wildfire. Or whatever Mr. Dark has planned.

  Matt handed over the headset, turned and leaned out backward from the cargo bay, then kicked loose and started down. He forgot about the landing skids, though, and ended up cracking his forearms into the steel framework hard enough to guarantee some bruises over the next few days. Then he was beyond the helicopter and sliding down the rope too fast.

  He clamped his hands on the rope and felt the friction heat up his palms and fingers. Smoke trailed from the gloves. He twirled his leg and caught it up in the rope, helping brake his descent. The last ten feet he was in good control of his fall.

  Landing on the ground and hearing the dull, whooshing roar of the fire and the sharp cracks of the burning branches and trunks splitting from the heat all around him, Matt stumbled away instinctively. The fire sounded like an animal, spiteful and predatory. For a moment, he was lost in it, but then he recovered and pulled the rope taut, adjusting his position as the helicopter hovered and jerked. He shouted up to be heard, and waved in case they didn’t. “Ready!”

  Overhead, the helicopter rotors swept through the rising smoke and embers. The whop-whop-whop of the blades warred with the muted thunder of the wildfire.

  Angie made a cleaner descent from the helicopter than Matt did. She released the rope and walked backward.

  On the other side, only fifteen feet away, Big Mort dropped through tree branches and howled curses, spitting and snarling almost inarticulately. He stuck the landing, though, and wrapped the rope around his hips to guide the ne
xt person down, taking a couple of steps to move away from the trees.

  Stanley Timmons came down next, dropping the last few feet to the ground and immediately taking up a position like he’d landed in enemy territory. He held a chainsaw over his shoulder and peered at the flames as if he was taking their measure.

  Jimmy came next, the youngest member of the group—a twenty-year-old hipster who sported a thick goatee, and he was still inebriated enough from hitting the bar earlier to let the rope slip through his hands too quickly. He came down fast, and Matt released the rope to grab the younger man’s falling body. Jimmy hit him, knocked the wind out of him, and drove them both to the ground.

  “Oh, man. Sorry about that, bro. Freakin’ rope was burning my hands.” Jimmy fumbled but got himself upright, weaving a little. He’d barely fallen into bed when Ernie Lombard had come calling. Jimmy should have stayed back, but Ernie was getting paid for every man he brought to fight the wildfire. “Glad I didn’t turn loose any higher up there.”

  Matt rolled to his feet easily and caught the rope again. “It’s okay, Jimmy. Just get out of the way.”

  “Sure, sure.” Dusting himself off, Jimmy walked to the side.

  Matt looped himself in the rope again and called up that he was set, waving once more.

  Standing in the helicopter cargo bay, Harvey Lombard stared over at his younger brother as Scott set himself on the rope. For a moment, Scott locked eyes with him, singeing him with his holier-than-thou disapproval, and Harvey felt anger burning like live coals in his gut.

  Scott knows. He knows I screwed up. Harvey made himself breathe and banked his anger the way he always had. He and his brother were different. Always had been. Scott listened to their father and did things the way the old man said to do them. Harvey wanted more of a life than that. Staying shackled to a chainsaw, breaking his back the rest of his life—that wasn’t how he wanted to live.

  All he needed was a run of good luck. His brother and his old man just didn’t understand that.

  Scott kicked free of the cargo bay and sailed down. He was wiry and ropy like the old man, same sandy-colored hair the old man had had at his age. Harvey was bigger, and he was dark haired. He got the dark hair and eyes from his mother. His old man said he got the wildness in him from his mother, too. She’d run off and left the old man when Scott was a baby.

  The helo jerked suddenly and Scott slipped on the rope. For one sick instant, Harvey thought his brother was going to lose his grip on the rope and fall. He imagined Scott flailing through the air, plummeting the thirty feet or so to the ground. If the fall didn’t kill him, then maybe he’d get impaled on broken tree branches. Harvey had seen that happen when a falling tree caught a green lumberjack unawares. The tree had fallen wrong, twisting and breaking, then skewering the guy through the throat. He’d bled out in minutes, choking on his own blood.

  Harvey couldn’t help thinking that maybe Scott getting killed wouldn’t be so bad. His old man kept insurance on all of them. The payoff would help keep Lombard Lumber in the black for a while longer.

  A heartbeat later, though, Harvey was prepared to bail out the door after his brother. The copilot stopped him with a hand to his chest.

  “He’s okay.”

  Sure enough, Scott held onto the rope and started down in a controlled slide.

  The knot of panicked anticipation in Harvey’s belly eased.

  “Okay, now you.” The copilot motioned Harvey forward. “Keep a tight grip on the rope, buddy.”

  Harvey pulled his gloves on more tightly, felt the weight of the chainsaw across his shoulders, and took hold of the rope. He wrapped a leg, then pushed out and slid down into the maelstrom.

  Things were going to change tonight. He felt that in his blood the way he had on those nights when the dice had rolled right and the cards had come home.

  A voice seemed to whisper in his ear. You gotta play the odds. Even bets are for suckers.

  “Okay, Tommy, they’re all out. Let’s get out of here.” Curtis Joiner squeezed back into the helicopter’s cockpit and took his seat beside Tommy McCracken. He buckled himself in.

  The helo remained hovering over the staging area, where the emergency vehicles sat with flashing lights amid all the drifting smoke.

  “Tommy?”

  In the pilot’s seat, Tommy sat and stared out at the flames crawling across the treetops. He was a couple of years younger than Curtis, but both men had known each other most of their lives. They’d played ball together back in high school, worked in the park service, and gotten trained for the helicopter certification.

  The only difference was that Tommy had gotten his certification in the army. He was still part of the National Guard and had rotated back in from deployment a couple of weeks ago. Since getting back, he hadn’t been himself.

  Curtis figured the difference in behavior had to do with what Tommy had seen overseas. Lots of guys had come back messed up after going over to the sandbox.

  But tonight there was more going on. Tommy just didn’t act like—

  Grinning, Tommy turned and faced Curtis. “How long have you been sleeping with Francine, buddy?”

  Francine was Tommy’s high school sweetheart and wife of twenty years. Back in the day, Curtis had told Tommy that Francine wasn’t any good for him. That had caused the first and only fight they’d ever had. Tommy had busted him in the mouth and they’d fought till neither of them could stand up. Two months later, Curtis had stood as Tommy’s best man.

  Curtis held his hands up. “Hey. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I’m talking about you sleeping with my wife.” That grin looked tight and painful on Tommy’s face. “Stabbing me in the back while I was overseas risking my neck for this country.”

  Curtis intended to keep denying everything, but it was like he wasn’t in control of his mouth anymore. “Sleeping with your wife was easy, Tommy. I told you she wasn’t no good for you. For the last six years, every time you’ve been deployed, she’s taken up with somebody. This time she just came on to me.”

  “You could have said no. That’s what a friend would have done.”

  That hadn’t really been possible. Francine was still a looker. “I was weak. Hit a long dry spell. She was there and it just happened. If it hadn’t been me, it would have been somebody else.”

  Tommy just stared at Curtis for a long moment. “Yeah, I guess that can happen.” He looked back out at the burning forest. “Still, you shouldn’t have done it, Curtis. Not to me.”

  “We’ll talk about this later, okay? Want me to fly?”

  “No, I got this.” Tommy kicked the rotors up to full power and pulled the yoke to the side.

  The sudden acceleration of the helicopter rotors drew Matt’s attention immediately. The downdraft kicked up dust and leaves, stirred the smoke coiling around them.

  Sheltering beside a fire truck, Matt looked up and saw the two helicopter pilots inside the Plexiglas bubble. Under the helmets, their faces crawled with festering sores that pulsated with centipedes climbing through the diseased flesh. The pilot’s jaw abruptly unhinged and popped loose, dropping to his chest. His tongue, suddenly a tentacle, slid out and flicked against the Plexiglas.

  In the next instant, the helicopter shifted sideways and leaned over. Fifty feet away, the rotors started clipping the treetops, chopping branches like a giant weed whacker.

  The fire fighters and police gathered below the helicopter dove for cover just as the blades struck thicker branches and shattered. Metal shards screamed over the staging area and struck fire trucks, police cars, and ambulances. A long chunk of rotor struck the ground a few feet from Matt and embedded, standing up at an angle.

  The helicopter exploded, scattering fire in all directions, adding to the conflagration already slithering through the forest.

  “Get over there!” a fire fighter yelled. “Get some hoses on that fire! Let’s get this shut down!”

  Watching the fire fighters deploy the hos
es as the pumping engines cycled to readiness, Matt knew the wildfire was just getting started. The rescue workers weren’t going to get control of the blaze until Mr. Dark was sent packing. Matt had to find the dark clown and hope he was strong enough to stop whatever was happening.

  Lean and leathery, Ernie Lombard trotted over to the fire chief. “I got guys here. We can help.”

  The fire chief shook his head. “You guys need to get that fire line in. There’s houses out there that need to be saved. Stick to the plan, Mr. Lombard—that’s how we’re going to beat this thing. Just stick to the plan.”

  Matt stared out into the fire. Somewhere out there was the connection between Mr. Dark and the fires. He was going to find it and end it. That was his plan.

  3

  “Okay, we’re here.” Ernie Lombard held the geographical map on the ground with one hand as he knelt. Angie held the other side of it, keeping it smooth as her father played his flashlight over the forest. Ernie tapped a section with his forefinger. “The incident commander says we should concentrate on creating a fire line through here. They don’t think we can stop it at this point, but maybe we can slow it down.”

  Standing between Harvey and Big Mort, Matt looked at the conflagration and felt the heat of the fire riding the breeze. The stink of it filled his nostrils and made breathing hard. He searched for some indicator of where Mr. Dark was, some grouping of the fires.

  Back at the staging area, the fire department had controlled the helicopter fire, but neither of the pilots had survived. Matt turned his attention back to Ernie.

  The map looked like a checkerboard, marked in white and yellow squares. White represented the residential areas. Yellow marked state forest land. There were a number of houses within the fire’s path. Emergency teams were evacuating them now.

  “They want us to put in a fire line. Got some other teams out here workin’ in different spots. They’re hopin’ we can get out ahead of the blaze, maybe turn it back in on itself. If everythin’ works out right, we’ll be meetin’ up with another team layin’ down a fire line, too. We get lucky, we can connect them before the fire reaches us. We don’t, we fall back an’ try again.” Ernie looked up, his face hard and lean. “Any of you guys don’t know what a fire line is? Ain’t no sense in bein’ proud out here. You don’t know somethin’, it’s gonna get you killed. Worse’n that, it might get me killed, an’ I ain’t gonna stand for that.”