CHAPTER EIGHT
‘HE’S got time,’ Sam said uneasily. He was watching Rachel, watching the stricken look in her eyes. He didn’t understand all of what was going on here but he understood enough. ‘The fire’s coming through fast but there’s no hint of firestorm yet. If he’s sensible…if the wind stays at its current force…’
Only, of course, it didn’t.
Ten minutes after Hugo had left, the wind strengthened from strong to gale force, ripping across the crowded beach with a force that was terrifying. The blast of hot air before the fire was almost overpowering. Rachel was stooped over a stretcher. Bridget McLeod had turned a hundred the week before. The heat was making her badly dehydrated and Rachel was setting up a saline drip. As the searing wind blasted across the beach, the woman pushed her away.
‘There’s others need you more. Leave me be.’
‘There’s no need to be noble,’ Rachel told her, trying not to sound panicky behind her mask. ‘We’re organised for this.’
She finished what she was doing and straightened, trying to see through the swirling smoke. But the townsfolk were prepared. A heat like this couldn’t last. The gale-force wind would blast through with frightening force but, because of the beach, they could survive. After the initial fire front, firefighting operations could begin again.
But for now… The little populace were hauling blankets over their heads, following orders that had been drilled into this fire-prone town since their childhood. Those who couldn’t walk were being carried into the shallows.
‘Toby.’ Rachel turned to find Myra at her side. Myra had Toby in her arms with blankets wedged between them.
‘There’s nothing more you can do, lass. Stay with us during the worst,’ Myra said, and there was no choice. Two firefighters had hold of Bridget’s stretcher and were carrying her into the shallows, the old lady already covered with a soaking blanket. The rest of the stretchers were lined up where the waves broke lightly over patients’ feet. Every patient had an allocated carer, each with sodden blankets.
Toby was whimpering with fear.
The noise from the fire was almost deafening.
‘Take care of Toby,’ Hugo had said.
Hugo.
Oh, God, Hugo…
She couldn’t think of him, now. She mustn’t.
The people of this tiny town were huddled in the shallows. She could scarcely breathe. There was nothing to do except survive.
Somewhere out there was Hugo.
‘If I survive, so must you,’ she whispered to herself as she dropped to her knees in the shallows. Toby crawled from Myra’s arms to hers and clung. They had their blankets right over their heads, a sodden canopy to stop the shower of burning ash falling directly onto them. The fire was a roaring inferno. Despite the pall of smoke she could sense the flames-a wall of fire bursting down from the mountains. The air was being sucked up. The oxygen. It was so hard to breathe…
‘I want my daddy,’ Toby whimpered, and Rachel held him close and whispered into his hair.
‘So do I,’ she murmured. ‘So do I. But Daddy’s gone to see a patient. He’ll be back soon. Please…’
‘Sue-Ellen?’ Hugo was out of the car, holding woollen wadding over his face to augment his mask as he raced toward the burning house. Vision was down to almost nothing-the fire was all around him. The trees overhead were roaring with flames.
It had caught. The back of the house had caught.
On this side of the house at least there was a little shelter. The house itself was stopping the worst of the blast. So far.
Hugo was coughing, retching. Yelling. Thinking fast. Maybe she’d gone to the dam. Maybe. It was the obvious place.
Surely she wouldn’t still be in the house?
‘Sue-Ellen…’
Something hit his legs-something alive. He looked down to see a half-grown collie pup whining in terror. Scratching at the door. Whining again…
Dear God.
The dog’s body language was unmistakable. She was inside.
For something that had threatened for so long, it was over with a speed that was frightening all by itself. One minute the population of Cowral was crouched in the shallows while the fire blasted its way right over their heads. The next the front had moved on. The air was still choked with smoke and debris but the roaring receded. The feeling that the very air required to breathe was being sucked away was replaced by the same choking, thick sensation that had been with them most of the day.
With the passing of the front the wind dropped. The fire had made its own wind. A vortex. That’s what the firefighters had said could happen and now Rachel believed them.
Toby was still cradled in her arms. Myra was beside them, their bodies a threesome of contact with the waves splashing over them in a rhythm that had been crazily undisturbed by the fire.
Rachel pushed back her blanket and peered cautiously out.
Around her everyone was doing the same-a field of grey, sodden ghosts arising from the ashes. Katy and her baby. The ancient Bridget, hauling back her blanket herself and peering out with an interest that belied her hundred years.
Casualties?
Sam was beside her, pushing himself out from underneath something that looked like a vast eiderdown. His wife was beside him. Sylvia Nieve still had a head full of hair-rollers and as she pushed back the eiderdown she gave them a cautious pat. Making sure of what was important.
‘Did everyone get to the beach?’ Rachel asked, and the cold feeling of dread in the pit of her heart felt like a lump of lead.
‘Elaine Baxter and Les Harding arrived just as it hit,’ Ian told her. ‘One of the men got bitten by one of Les’s cats. The cats are here in a cage-if someone hasn’t drowned them.’
‘But Hugo…?’ she asked.
‘He didn’t come back. He’ll have been well into the hills when it hit.’
‘Seeing his patient,’ Rachel said swiftly, as Toby turned a fearful face toward Sam. She had to stay calm. Hysterics would help no one. ‘There was a lady who’s ill up in the hills and your daddy has gone to look after her. And I need to go, too. Toby, can you stay with Myra while your daddy and I keep on working? I’ll see anyone here who needs help and then… Sam, how long do you think before we can get through to Sue-Ellen’s place?’
‘I’ll check with the fire chief,’ Sam told her.
‘As soon as it’s safe to move, let me know,’ Rachel told him. She gave Toby a hard hug, as much to reassure herself as to reassure Toby. ‘Hugo might… Hugo might need help.’
‘The chief’ll send a tanker.’
‘I’ll come, too.’
She worked solidly on the beach, coping with breathing difficulties and myriad minor injuries while she waited for the fire chief to declare it safe to travel through the town to Sue-Ellen’s farmlet beyond.
‘I can’t believe how lightly we’ve got off.’ The chief, a grizzled man in his fifties, pushed back his hard hat and wiped his forehead as he surveyed the clearing beach. ‘The storm sucked everything up in its path but we’ve done such a good clearing job around the town that we’ve only lost four houses. And they were holiday accommodation where no one followed orders to clear.’
Once the firestorm had passed, the townsfolk streamed back to their homes in time to put out spot fires and stop the fire from taking hold. Now the main front had reached the point where land became sea. Cowral was still surrounded by a ring of fire but increasingly the town looked safe.
But Hugo…
‘Can we go?’ Rachel finished wrapping a burned arm with a sterile dressing. A burning branch had been flung into the shallows at the height of the fire-it must have been blown for a quarter of a mile-but the child who’d been hit was already aching to get back to the excitement. Rachel clipped the dressing, gave the boy’s parents a rueful grin and turned back to the fire chief.
‘You don’t want to go with us, Doc,’ he told her. ‘I’ve got Gary Lewis on the truck already-he’s been out on the front and when he found out Sue-Ellen didn’t make it to the beach he nearly went berserk. There’s one of you emotionally involved.’