The Doctor's Fire Rescue by Lilian Darcy

Author:Lilian Darcy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2013-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

OUTSIDE, dusk had come, thick and hazy and too early for this time of the year. The smoke was so dense in the west that it blocked the light and made the hour seem much later than it really was. True darkness must still be an hour away.

Alison saw Frank, Steve and Nico grouped around a heap of tortured black metal a hundred metres from the house and went towards them across the hot grey-black dirt. In places, the clumps of dry grass that had been burned down to the roots crunched beneath her feet like uncooked spaghetti. Clean air and most colours—green, purple, blue—seemed like realities from another world, and only theoretical possibilities in this one.

Her senses weren’t working right. She’d gone deaf to the volume of noise right at the fire-storm’s height, and now her eyes had forgotten what colour was like. Even her pain awareness was off-line. What was that stinging feeling on her lower left leg, at the back?

When she focused on it, it got stronger, so she paused and twisted around and discovered a jagged, blackened slash in the fabric of Jackie’s trousers. Beyond it, on her skin, was a burn. She didn’t investigate it very closely because it didn’t seem relevant at the moment, other than as an explanation for the pain. She must have gotten it at some point while she’d been wielding that blanket, but she didn’t know when or how. She’d deal with it later.

‘This was the generator,’ she guessed aloud, when she reached the men.

Nico flicked a glance at her and their eyes met and locked together for a moment, communicating the shared memory of their kiss and those shouted, emotional words that neither of them had understood. Had they even meant anything?

They couldn’t possibly be repeated or explained, Alison felt. They were like the fire-storm itself, overwhelming everything else and passing so fast that even a short while later you couldn’t remember how you’d felt, couldn’t relive the detail, couldn’t believe it had been real.

‘Was,’ Steve agreed, in answer to her comment. ‘Pump engine went, too. If it hadn’t lasted as long as it did, I think we would have lost the house.’ A glowing ember fell in front of him, giving a telling punctuation to his comment. He didn’t say out loud that if the house had been lost, the people in it might have been, too. The house was still at risk, and the temperature must still be close to a hundred degrees. ‘We lost the feed shed. We’ve got nothing for the horses. Or the cattle, if they’ve survived.’

The comment fell heavily on all of them.

Alison saw Rich patrolling for spot fires and glowing heaps of coals with the hose from the rain-water tank in his hand, while Sam and Troy used wet blankets. On the far side of the house, she caught sight of another figure, also with a blanket, and realised it was Joan. Unstoppable, bless her.

She was calling to them. ‘Come and look at this!’

They tramped over.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.