On Fire Read online

  Once it was secure, he changed out for his zoom lens. He framed his shot and checked his settings. The sun would appear like fire around the rounded peaks within minutes. Scottie stood up and stretched his arms above his head and then leaned forward and back to ease the tight muscles in his lower back. Usually he went on at least two hikes a month, but work had been so busy he’d been forced to work half days on most Saturdays, and that left him with just Saturday night to hang out with friends and Sunday to catch up on chores. He’d only been able to go on one weekend hiking trip that summer, though the waterfalls on the way up and the view of the Columbia River Gorge from Hamilton Mountain were always worth the effort.

  Scottie pulled off his headlamp and scrubbed his face and head with one hand, trying to wipe away the sleepiness still plaguing him. When he opened his eyes, the first tinges of yellow stained the paler blue, highlighting a thin layer of clouds lying over the peaks and glaciers of the mountain. He snapped shot after shot, panning the camera to create a panorama. At one point, the clouds looked like golden fluff, the sun’s rays shooting through the moisture and setting it afire.

  By the time the sun had risen fully, he’d taken nearly four hundred pictures. Hopefully he’d get enough to make a panorama plus a few nice shots of the sun’s light breaking into rays behind the mountain. He carefully folded up his tripod, cleaning the dirt out of the tips before he put it away. The camera bag fit against his hip and he slung his pack on his back. It was a lot to carry, but his dad’s second favorite saying was “Better safe than sorry.”

  He chuckled. As a teen he’d hated what he viewed as nagging, but now he got it, and, more often than not, said them himself. Switching out the lenses again, he made his way down the trail, stopping to take pictures of a bunch of orange and red Indian paintbrushes and the pretty purple stripes decorating the delicate white petals of the grass widow flower. The knees of his jeans were filthy by the time he made it back down to the gravel road. He whistled as he walked, scrambling through the wash that marked the end of the drivable section of the road.

  First order of business once he reached camp was to appease the angry growling of his stomach. Scottie pulled out the spray butter from the ice chest and slathered a few slices of bread. They sizzled in the pan over his propane camp stove until they were crispy on one side. He grabbed an iced coffee out of the cooler and sat down. He’d forgotten to fold up his chair the night before, so it was damp, but his pants were already dirty anyway.

  Biting off the crusts and then peeling off the softer back side of the bread, Scottie saved the buttery, crispy tops of the toast for last. He licked his greasy fingers and downed the last of the iced mocha. He splashed some water in the pan and washed it with his fingers, tossing out the dirty water at the far edge of the trees.

  After drying his hands, he got down to business, getting his tablet out of his SUV and pulling the memory card out of his camera. He was going to be there six more days, so he wanted to delete the pictures that weren’t worth keeping. The screen on the camera was deceptive because it was so small. Some of the shots were blurry or didn’t quite frame the mountain the way he wanted, so he deleted those right away. He had just enough signal to send a few shots to his cloud storage, so he picked the five he thought were the best.

  When he was done he put everything away, leaving most of his equipment on the backseat, looping his camera strap over his neck. The creek was calling to him, and now that the sun had risen a good distance over the horizon, it was filtering through the trees, creating shadows and patches of light that would work with the reflections on the water.

  Scottie had to make his way down a slope, using trees and bushes to slow himself, and then he scrambled over some rocks rounded and worn by the water during the winter. The creek was a fraction of its normal size, narrow enough he was actually able to jump across it. He wobbled a little on the far side and had to lean forward to balance out the extra weight of his backpack. Scottie set his camera down on a dry stump and then dipped his hands in the water.

  “Brrr.” It was freezing cold. He wiped his hands over his face and the back of his neck. “What’s this?” He fished deeper in the creek, reaching for a brown rock with yellow stripes wedged between two bigger rocks and pulling it out. Petrified wood. He hadn’t found a piece in years. He dried it off with a corner of his flannel, but it stayed a nice brownish red even when dry. If he could find a shallower spot where it wouldn’t get carried away by the stream’s current, he’d take some pictures of it underwater.

  For a few hours Scottie hiked along the creek as it flowed downhill. Sometimes he was able to follow close, stepping over smaller streams, and other times the brush and fallen trees forced him away from the creek. Moving farther into the woods, he surprised a doe and a large fawn grazing on a patch of green grass. Very, very slowly he lifted his camera, holding his breath as he focused on her large brown eyes staring right at him. He held down the shutter button, hearing it click repeatedly.

  She flicked her ears and then turned, slowly stalking away through the trees, her baby following behind. Scottie let out a long, slow breath, his hands shaking. They were only deer, but he’d been within ten feet of them. He’d never been so close before.

  Wiped out after that exciting encounter, he jumped the creek one last time and made his way up to the road. Beyond the trees, the sun beat down on his head until sweat dripped into his eyes. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. He was thirsty, so he sucked up the last of the water in his CamelBak. It was warm but wet his throat.

  After he got back to camp, he grabbed a protein bar and an apple. He took a large bite and chewed the crisp flesh while he went through the new pictures. The petrified wood pictures didn’t look great, but he had an excellent close-up of the doe head-on, a few long blades of grass sticking out of one side of her mouth. Scottie was happy but tired. He put the camera and tablet away and then moved his chair so his face would be in the shade. Stretched out, he sighed.

  One of the luxuries of vacation… an afternoon nap.

  TWO DAYS later, Scottie had done all the hikes close to his base camp, and he was ready to go farther afield. He went over his backpack once more, grabbing a few small bottles of water and two tubs of noodle soup. All his emergency supplies were still packed neatly, and he made sure to pack extra batteries for his camera and his GPS.

  He tossed his bag and stove in the SUV, but left the rest of his camping gear. He hadn’t seen a soul since he left Trout Lake, so he wasn’t too worried about anyone coming across his camp and stealing his stuff. Right before he left, he remembered to toss the empty water container in the backpack to fill up on his way to the trailhead.

  When he stopped to fill up the jug, nothing came out of the spigot in the turnoff. There was a white truck—not really white anymore—parked next to the bathroom. A guy in a pair of shorts and a polo came out. He held up one hand. “Hey.”

  “Hi! Camping at the lake?” It was a pretty safe bet with the flip-flops he was wearing.

  “Yeah. Not much lake to enjoy this year, though. Still busy enough I had to run the wife down here to this bathroom.”

  Scottie nodded. “I stopped on my way up, and it looked pretty low. Still saw a few people out on float tubes with trout poles.”

  “I caught a six-inch rainbow this morning.”

  “Nice.” Scottie kept his amusement to himself. He patted the water pipe. “Hey, do you know when they shut off the water?”

  “Yesterday, I think.”

  Damn. “Okay, thanks.” Good thing he always kept a filter in his gear. With the bottles he had and his full CamelBak, he should be fine for a few days. Scottie climbed in and started his car, waiting for the guy’s wife to come out and get in their truck before he drove off. No one liked choking on dust.

  It took forty minutes to drive around to the base of the trail. There was a van already parked at the turnout. That type of vehicle usually meant berry or mushroom pickers. He’d probably have plenty of solitude once
he got a good distance down the track. This hike had a big climb in elevation, so he also dug out his extendable walking stick.

  He was right. About ten minutes up the trail, he found a large group of people spread out over the slope. They were yammering to each other, hands busily stripping the bushes of ripe berries. Scottie waved back when they waved at him, but he didn’t stop to chat.

  The hike took the rest of the afternoon, but he stopped for several breaks as well as taking pictures. He drained his CamelBak, but luckily he’d found a flowing stream to refill it with his filter. He stopped for a snack on the top of one ridge, turning in a full circle. The path had become nearly nonexistent after it stopped at a meadow, victim to the lack of grooming. He spotted his stopping point and chose some landmarks to help him once he was back in the trees.

  When he finally made his way out of the trees and into the meadow he’d chosen, Scottie was eager to get his pack off his back. There were a few different kinds of scat and a good-sized wallow along with scrapings about shoulder height on the saplings. If he was lucky, the elk would come in sometime during the late evening or morning. The scrape was high and fresh, and only elk would be rubbing off their velvet that early.

  Scottie’s pack tent was low to the ground, just big enough for him and his backpack. He pulled out his pocketknife and cut several low-hanging pine branches. He rested them against the sides of his tent to help camouflage it.

  After pulling up a patch of grass to make a small dirt circle, Scottie got out his pack stove, balancing it carefully as he filled the cup with water. He used a lighter to start the fuel, turning it up full blast to bring it to a boil. The sun was fading and the wind had picked up, so the cup of soup was welcome for warmth as well as filling the hole in his stomach. He made sure to bag his trash and put it all away.

  The light left some interesting patterns of shadows, and he walked around the edges of the trees, trying to capture them. He found a stump and sat down, listening and waiting. Finally, he grew too cold sitting there, and it was getting late enough he needed to get back to the tent before it was too dark to see, since he’d forgotten to grab his headlight.

  Yipping coyotes didn’t sound too far off, but he wasn’t afraid of them. He rolled up his flannel for a makeshift pillow and stared out the mesh front of his tent, enjoying the shining stars between the gathering clouds. The moon hadn’t cleared the trees, but it had been full the night before, prompting him to spend the time to get shots of it over the span of several hours.

  The combination of the short night’s sleep and the long hike wore him out, even though it was barely past nine. He blinked sleepily, taking a deep breath and letting it out long and slow. Not even the lump of dirt under his hip was enough to keep him awake.

  LIGHTNING FLASHED, and thunder rolled over the landscape. Scottie blinked, squinting when the lightning lit up the thick clouds again. There were only a few seconds between that and the boom and rumble, but it wasn’t raining.

  A dry storm. Scottie debated getting up, but he wasn’t really set up to get lightning shots with his camera. Instead, he got out and covered the top of his tent with a tarp hung from the large trees surrounding him just in case it began raining. He hunkered down in his sleeping bag, squirming to get away from the lump, and enjoyed listening to nature’s display of violence.

  Chapter Three

  JAX LEANED back against his fists, groaning at the stretch in his lower back. The firebreak had to be wide enough to keep the backfire they’d set from jumping toward them, but it was hard work with shovels and hand equipment.

  He was hot, sweaty, and his gear felt like it weighed about a thousand pounds. They’d only been in the forest for a single day, and he could tell this fire was going to be a fucking nightmare. The wind wouldn’t let up, and the lightning had sparked half a dozen small fires that had already grown to a much bigger blaze. He lifted his hard hat and wiped his forehead with a rag. It was white—once. Now it was gray streaked with black. He grimaced and shoved it back into his pocket.

  “Hotshot Crew Twelve, acknowledge.”

  Jax pulled his radio up from the loop on his high-vis vest. “Crew Twelve here. Go ahead.”

  “We just received notice from Parks that they’ve got a photographer hiking in your area who hasn’t gone through any of the checkpoints. His trip plan shows him on the trail running through grid fifty-eight through sixty.”

  “Shit! Are you fucking kidding me? What kind of idiot hikes in the path of a forest fire?” Jax growled. His crew crowded closer. “Dispatch, are you sure he’s actually in the area? We’ve just set a backfire that’s going to converge on that trail within hours.”

  “Some berry pickers saw him the day before, and his vehicle was still there when they left at dusk. Parks matched the description of his vehicle and a daily itinerary that says he should be in that area. Check the trailhead and get your asses out of there if he’s not there. If he is, go in and get him out.”

  There were a few groans. They were supposed to go off shift soon since they’d already worked twelve hours and hadn’t had a meal break in five. Jax narrowed his eyes at his crew, and they all shifted, looking away.

  “Copy that, dispatch.” Jax hung his radio back on his vest. “All right, you all heard. Let’s pack it up and get back to the truck. You can eat and take a break while I drive, you pansies.”

  Scooping up his shovel, he turned to walk back to the truck. Simon, a fellow firefighter he’d worked with for a few years, stepped up beside him.

  “Just what you love to do: go rescue the helpless idiot. Maybe he’ll give you a kiss, Prince Charming.”

  “Shut up,” Jax growled. One thankful rescue got a little too friendly, and Simon wouldn’t let him live it down. It hadn’t even been a man planting the wet kiss on him, something else Simon liked to harp on.

  “Someone’s grouchy.” Simon cracked open a bottle of water and took a long drink. “What has your fire-retardant underwear in a bunch?”

  “Stupidity.” He shot a glare Simon’s way, but it didn’t do any good. Jax might be the senior firefighter in charge of the crew, for a damn good reason, but Simon wasn’t afraid to flip him shit when they weren’t in crisis mode. “Who hikes into the middle of nowhere when there’s a dry lightning storm warning?”

  “Maybe he didn’t know,” Simon said.

  “Yeah right.” Jax snorted. “He’s probably some fancy photographer from the city, thinking he knows how to survive up here since he can avoid getting lost in downtown Portland. I don’t like putting you guys at risk to save an idiot who had better be gone, if he knows what’s good for him. He won’t like what I have to say if we have to drag him off the mountain.”

  “We’ll be fine. You don’t have to baby us. Everyone’s had five years in the summer crews except Dave, and he’s had four. We’re not newbies.”

  Jax climbed into the truck. “I never said you were,” he protested.

  “Then stop thinking you need to hover over us. Let us do our jobs, and you do your job keeping track of what’s going on.” Simon pulled another water bottle out of the chest on the truck and handed it through the open door. “Drink some water and grab some of those energy gels, for god’s sake. You may talk big, but I know you’re just as tired as we are.”

  THE BACK end of the truck fishtailed as Jax took a corner too fast and they bounced on the washboards rutting the road. He needed both hands to keep control, but he was still thirsty.

  “Damn it, I just bit my tongue,” Dave complained. “This road sucks.”

  “I’m doing the best I can.” They reached a flatter stretch, so he took advantage and sucked down half of his second water bottle. Carlos tossed him an energy bar when he crumpled the empty bottle and stuck it in a bag. “Thanks, man.”

  “Can’t have you fainting away.”

  The fruit and nut bar was thick and didn’t taste the best, but it would give him the energy he needed. Jax chewed angrily, upset he wasn’t headed back to the command tents so
his crew could get some much-needed downtime. He attacked his food as he drove, but he wasn’t really paying attention and nearly ran into a log jutting into the road.

  “Damn.” Dave clung to the oh shit handle over the passenger door when Jax cussed and jerked the wheel to the left. “Who cleared this road?” Their truck was being scratched on both sides. “Apparently this photographer doesn’t care about his paint job if he came up here. How much farther?”

  “Hard to tell with all this brush. Whole damn area is going to go up in flames. We need to get in and get out quickly,” Jax said, his hands clenched on the wheel. He couldn’t avoid the ruts, since the road was so grown over, so they bounced in and out of potholes. The turnout where the guy was supposed to have parked was right before a single-lane wood bridge over a dry creek, the wood pitted and scarred. Jax didn’t want to try and drive over that.

  A dark SUV covered in dust sat off to the side.

  “Shit. He’s not here but his car is,” Dave said. “Looks like we’re hiking in.”

  Jax turned the truck around so they were pointed down the road, and they all got out. He dropped the keys on the floorboard. “You guys do a quick check on the packs. Grab extra water and make sure we have first aid supplies.”

  He got back on the radio to Dispatch. “Dispatch, this is Hotshot Crew Twelve.”

  “Go ahead, Twelve.”

  “We’re at the trailhead, and we have a matching vehicle. It looks like the hiker hasn’t made it out. Do we have a name or general description?”

  “Let me check, Twelve. Stand by.”

  Jax took the pack Simon handed him and slung it over his back. He grabbed his equipment and hooked everything in place. “Acknowledge, Crew Twelve.”

  “Go ahead, Dispatch.”

  “Be advised, you’re looking for a male in his early twenties, brown hair, approximately five ten. His name is Scottie Ness.”