Wildfire

Chapter Seventeen

Ben picked up the jerry can, ducked under the wing of the microlight and unscrewed the big cap on the tank behind the cockpit. Kelly twisted round in her seat to watch him as he refilled the fuel tank. Her hands were encased in white mittens, and as Ben poured the fuel mixture in, she made little twitches, mimicking his movements. Ben got the distinct impression she would rather be doing the job herself.

‘When you mixed it,’ she said, ‘did you use a filter?’ The microlight ran on a mixture of two-stroke oil and lead-free petrol.

‘Yes,’ said Ben. ‘Just like you said.’

‘Good. You don’t want dirt in the fuel tank or we might stall.’

Once the tank was full Ben stowed the jerry can on its hooks beside the petrol tank.

Kelly had some more orders for him. ‘Check the engine is securely bolted to the wing.’

Ben looked at her as though she was crazy. ‘Why? I haven’t touched it.’

‘You always have to check the engine mounts before you take off.’

Ben reached up to the wing, put his hands on either side of the engine and gave it a good shake. ‘Is that secure enough?’

‘Yes, now check the propeller. If it’s got any chips or nicks, it might snap off.’

Ben ran his hands along first one blade, then turned the propeller and did the same with the other. ‘Smooth as a baby’s bottom.’

Kelly looked affronted. ‘A what?’

‘As a toddler’s ass, I guess you’d say in America,’ said Ben, hiding a smile.

Next she made him check the wires that held the wings and the connections to the ailerons, the rudder and the brakes. All of this was standard procedure before take-off.

Finally Kelly was satisfied. ‘Let’s eat and then we can get going.’

Ben scrubbed his hands with wet wipes, then picked up the bag of sandwiches from the floor and offered it to Kelly.

She stayed where she was, sitting back in the seat, the map on her lap. ‘You’ll have to feed me.’

Ben laughed, thinking she was joking. ‘You’re not serious, right?’

Two bandaged hands waved in front of his face. ‘If

I do it myself I’m gonna make a big mess.’

Ben fished out one of the sandwiches and looked at her dubiously.

Kelly sighed. ‘Ben, I’m starving. Just hold the darn thing up and let me take a bite.’

She really wasn’t joking. Ben tore the wrapper off and looked around warily. If anyone saw him doing this, he’d die of embarrassment. A big tow-truck was parked at the garage but the driver was occupied filling up with petrol. There was a building site a short distance away but no one there would be able to see them. He held the sandwich out. ‘Go on then.’

Kelly took a bite, sat back and chewed thoughtfully. ‘This town is weird.’

‘Apart from being underground, you mean?’

‘Did you see all those ill people in the hospital? This is one unhealthy place.’

‘Yeah,’ said Ben, his mouth full. He realized Kelly was waiting for another bite and thrust her sandwich towards her mouth.

Kelly bit, chewed and swallowed. ‘It must do odd things to people, living underground like that. I mean, look at that building site. When they want a house they don’t put up blocks and mortar, they go burrowing.’

Now that she pointed it out, Ben noticed how weird the building site was. A machine like a stubby rocket was boring a tunnel into the ground, disgorging rocks and red sand up a conveyor belt. But he would rather leave the sightseeing until they’d got the embarrassing business of feeding Kelly out of the way. He held up the sandwich. ‘Eat.’

She opened her mouth.

Instead of taking a bite, she jumped, nearly knocking the sandwich out of Ben’s hand. ‘What the hell—?’

A dark figure was standing just outside, staring in at them: an Aboriginal child of about seven. He had dark brown skin and thick wavy hair.

Two more children appeared beside him — another Aboriginal, with a red plaited cord around his neck, and a younger blonde girl.

Ben wanted the ground to open up and swallow him. If one of his mates in Macclesfield had found him feeding sandwiches to a girl, his life wouldn’t have been worth living.

But Kelly had no thought for his blushes. She recovered from her fright and took another big bite of the sandwich. ‘Run along and play,’ she said to the children, her mouth full.

Three pairs of eyes watched them in astonishment.

Kelly took the last piece of sandwich and Ben decided to try to explain. ‘She’s hurt herself,’ he said, hoping that would make him look a bit less soppy.

That wasn’t what the children were interested in. The Aboriginal with the red cord reached out a hand and stroked the microlight’s wing. The other one also put his hand on the plane. ‘Did you come here in this?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ said Kelly. ‘Now beat it.’

She still had her mouth full but Ben couldn’t mistake the irritation stirring in her voice. He guessed she didn’t relish chatting to seven-year-olds.

The blonde girl reached a grubby finger towards Kelly’s bandages. ‘Have your hands been cut off?’

‘Go away,’ said Kelly. ‘We’re going to start the engine in a minute. The propeller will cut your hands off if you stand too close.’

The girl looked as though she might do as she was told, but the two older children didn’t want to leave the microlight. The first child turned to the other one and asked him, ‘Is this like the real big bird that disappears?’

‘No, that was bigger. This one looks like a kind of bike.’

Kelly glared at them. Ben scrunched up the sandwich wrappers and smirked.

‘What’s the bird that disappears?’ asked the little girl.

‘You’re too young to know about that,’ her companion with the red cord told her.

‘They might have seen it,’ said red necklace. He turned to Kelly. ‘Have you?’

‘No, I haven’t,’ snapped Kelly.

‘Describe it to her,’ said the other Aborigine.

Red necklace leaned into the cockpit. ‘I’ll have to whisper.’

Kelly glanced at Ben, hoping for rescue, but she was cornered in her seat. Like it or not, she was going to be told. The child leaned close and whispered in her ear. When he had finished, he straightened up and looked at her solemnly, waiting for her response.

Kelly shook her head. ‘No, I haven’t seen any UFOs. Now buzz off. I mean it. We’re going to start the engine and it’s extremely dangerous for you to be this close to the plane.’

A woman appeared at the door of the petrol station and beckoned to them. The children turned round and ran across with a flat-footed gait that kicked up clouds of red dust. They weren’t wearing any shoes.

Kelly didn’t waste any time. ‘Start the darn engine, before they come back.’

Ben turned the key. The engine spluttered, then settled to a low purr, with the propeller turning slowly. An enormous grin spread over his face. He was going to take off.

‘Don’t get too excited,’ said Kelly. ‘We’re not going anywhere yet. We have to run the engine for five minutes to get it up to operating temperature.’ She sat back and shook her head. ‘This place is the Midwest Down Under.’

‘What did that kid tell you?’ said Ben.

‘Some nonsense. His uncle went walkabout in the bush at night and saw lights in the sky.’

‘Is that the big bird that disappears?’ asked Ben.

‘Don’t be stupid.’ Kelly brushed crumbs off the map with her forearms. She put on a high, squeaky voice.

‘A big bird came down, and when it landed, it disappeared.’ She reverted to her normal voice. ‘That’s how six-year-olds talk about UFOs.’

‘No they don’t,’ said Ben. ‘They talk about spacemen. Big birds that vanish sounds like a dreamtime story.’

Kelly checked the temperature gauge. ‘You can skip the culture lesson. We’re ready to go.’

They did a few final checks. Under Kelly’s direction, Ben set the trim — rebalancing the craft to adjust for the weight of the fuel they had added. He secured the doors and fastened the seat belts, reaching around Kelly’s waist to do up hers.

‘Thirteen and never been kissed?’ said Kelly.

He felt himself blush as he fumbled with the seat belt catch. Finally it locked. ‘There!’ he said in relief.

‘OK.’ Kelly’s tone was brisk now. ‘Start by pointing the nose down.’

Ben looked at the controls in front of him. His mind had gone blank again. He couldn’t remember how to point the nose down.

‘With the stick!’ exclaimed Kelly. ‘For heaven’s sake. I should have got one of those kids as my co-pilot.’

If Ben had felt more relaxed, he might have reminded her that one of them thought the microlight looked like a bike. As it was, he was too preoccupied struggling to remember what instrument did what. He moved the stick forward as far as it would go.

‘While you’re sitting there like a dork, I’m thinking about our take-off. We’ve got a clear run along this road here. Windspeed and direction are fine — let’s have the throttle fully open and off we go.’

Ben pulled the throttle up. The propeller became a blur, the engine let out a roar and the rev counter climbed sharply. But they didn’t move.

Kelly batted her hand towards the stick. ‘Take the handbrake off!’

Ben winced and slipped the piece of Velcro off the handle.

Released from its fetters, the microlight shot forwards.

Ben had forgotten how rickety it felt. The cables through the cockpit twanged like guitar strings, the wheels rattled, and the steering seemed to have a mind of its own.

‘We’re veering left,’ snapped Kelly. ‘Keep straight with your pedals and the stick. Use the horizon.’

Ben nudged the pedals and stick until they were heading dead straight down the road. He had a sudden vision of meeting a juggernaut or a coachload of tourists head on.

The stick kept twitching in his hand, as though the nose was trying to come up. ‘It feels like it wants to fly,’ he said. He felt quite proud that he’d noticed that.

‘You’re not going fast enough yet — if you haven’t got enough speed you’ll stall. Just keep going like this.’

Ben glanced at the airspeed. It said 40 knots. With all this twanging and rattling it seemed like 140. He felt particularly reckless to be doing this on a public road. If this was England, by now he would have met the juggernaut and the tourist coach, plus several dozen parents doing the school run. The speed crept up to 50 knots … 51, 52 …

‘Ease the nose up,’ said Kelly, ‘and keep her level.

’ At last. Butterflies were dancing a fandango in Ben’s stomach. He eased the stick back, keeping his eyes firmly on the horizon. The slightest deviation in straightness and he would be ready to make a correction.

As the wheels left the ground, the rattling disappeared and the ride became smooth as silk. The horizon slipped away. The plane soared into the air.

‘Keep this speed,’ said Kelly, ‘and climb to a thousand feet.’ Already she was looking down at the map on her knee. ‘But well done. That was pretty good.’

Ben felt a warm glow spread through him. He’d actually got a plane into the air all on his own. A little voice in his mind was saying ‘Wow’, over and over again.

But Kelly wasn’t about to let him rest on his laurels. ‘Keep straight.’

Ben started to correct when suddenly he looked down at the pedals.

Something was moving in the foot well. Something like a grey hand.

‘Don’t look down there,’ scolded Kelly. ‘You’re meant to be climbing. You can’t relax yet — this is a critical stage.’

Ben looked ahead and tweaked the nose up, just to make sure. Then, once again, he felt something tickle his leg. He looked down—

His leg jerked violently before he’d even got the scream out. The microlight wobbled and the wings tilted. Ben’s shoulder hit his door with a thump.

Kelly tried to hold onto the seat. She pumped the pedals to bring them straight and yelled, ‘Have you gone nuts?’

‘There’s a spider as big as my hand!’ Ben couldn’t look anywhere but the foot well. The spider was big and furry, with long, long legs.

‘Oh, grow up. This isn’t some Indiana Jones movie.’ Kelly tried to straighten the plane up but her bandaged hand pulled the stick too far. The microlight rolled violently the other way. She pushed the stick and stamped hard with the pedal to stop them going right over, then lifted her foot to release it.

At that moment the spider crawled onto Ben’s boot. He tried to shake it off and his foot shot forward. On the other side, Kelly pressed down on her pedal, making Ben’s snap down on his foot, pinning it.

She screamed in fury. ‘Get your foot out of the way!’

With his foot imprisoned, the spider got a good purchase and started to climb up his leg. Ben jerked his feet away from the pedals but that didn’t dislodge it.

The microlight rolled from one side to another. ‘We’re losing airspeed!’ Kelly tried to pull the throttle up with her elbow, then turned and took the stick crudely between her wrists. To do so, she had to twist round in her seat, and found herself staring straight at Ben’s thigh.

The spider had a big brown furry body like a mouse, black glinting eyes and long spindly legs. A dainty pair of incisors curved downwards like a Victorian moustache. It was barely half a metre away from Kelly’s face.

Despite herself, Kelly recoiled in horror, jerking the stick and making the microlight dive once again. She shrank back against her door and shifted the stick back again with her elbow. ‘More throttle, quick!’

Ben increased the throttle, never taking his eyes from the spider. It felt heavy as it walked further up his leg, and he felt every movement of its eight legs through the thin fabric of his flying suit.

Kelly screamed hysterically, shadow-boxing the air with her bandaged paws. ‘Get it out! Just get it out!’

‘How?’ Ben shouted, equally hysterical. He jerked his leg, hoping to shake the spider loose, but it wouldn’t shift. Did it have suckers on its legs?

‘Just do something!’

Careful to keep his body absolutely still, Ben put his hand out of the window. The catch on the door was fiddly but he managed to open it. The door swung back and smacked against the nose of the plane. The red ground yawned outside.

Kelly’s voice shrieked in his headset. ‘Are you nuts?’

Ben jerked his leg towards the open door but the spider remained stuck fast. If he touched it there was the risk that it might bite him. ‘Get off me, you ugly devil,’ he told it through clenched teeth.

Kelly’s hand waved in his face as she adjusted the stick with her left elbow.

Ben grabbed her arm and used her bandaged hand to bat the spider away. If it attacked, he figured its fangs weren’t long enough to bite through all the bandages. Kelly screamed and the spider flew out of the door, became a black blob in the bright sunshine and vanished to a pinpoint.

‘Happy landings,’ said Ben with feeling.

He let go of Kelly’s hand and reached to pull the door shut. It had swung right open and was flapping to and fro. He had to brace his hand on the door frame and lean out. His fingers caught the door, got a purchase and pulled it shut.

He sat back, catching his breath.

Kelly’s voice came through on the headset, hoarse and strained. ‘Do you mind sorting out this plane before we crash?’

As Ben took the controls, he saw that the ground looked alarmingly close: sure enough, when he checked the instruments, he found they were at 360 feet. He nudged the stick forward and swooped down a little way to get a good burst of speed, then opened the throttle and soared upwards. He watched the altimeter, kept the craft straight, and made sure they were cruising to textbook standards before relaxing and turning to Kelly.

She was sitting back in her seat and cradling her hand.

Ben winced. ‘Did I hurt you?’

‘No, I don’t think so. Those painkillers must be pretty good.’

But while Kelly didn’t mind Ben grabbing her arm too much, she did have a few other things to get off her chest. She sat up straight and fixed him with a furious glare. ‘The next time something like that happens, don’t panic like that. You do not ever start jerking your feet around in a light aeroplane. I thought you were having an epileptic fit!’

Ben was stunned. Now she was blaming him? ‘Whereas you were a picture of self-control, I suppose?’ he muttered resentfully.

Kelly didn’t seem to hear him. She had more to say; plenty more. ‘We nearly rolled over — if you do that in a microlight, you’ll snap the wing off. We were flying dangerously low and the speed we were going we could easily have crashed. That was a very immature way to react — and by the way, you never, ever, ever — under any circumstances — open the door.’

She gestured towards the door and nearly biffed him on the nose with her pristine white bandage — now marked with a big yellowy smudge.

‘You’ve — er — got a bit of something on your bandage. I think it’s spider entrails,’ Ben told her.

Bel walked along a shopping street. The windows were grimy and dark. In a clothes shop, a dummy lay across the doorway. Its hair and face had melted. At first Bel thought its body had been painted green, then realized that the clothes it was wearing had melted too.

Had she seen this dummy before? she wondered. Was this the shop near the green where she’d fallen over among all those insects? Was she going around in circles? She felt so disorientated. Wisps of smoke and steam rose from the ruined shops, as though the fires inside were not truly vanquished but sleeping, like dormant volcanoes.

The asphalt under her feet had softened in the heat. The heavy fire engine wheels had pushed it up to the edges of the kerb so that it looked like a fallen soufflé.

She was no longer wet. The heat radiating from the scorched streets had dried her clothes in no time. They felt stiff with sweat and dirt, as though they had been starched. There hardly seemed to be anyone else about. Had they all been picked up in rescue vehicles?

Approaching a junction, she noticed a burned-out car that had rammed into a lamppost. There was nothing left of its interior: the seats and controls were vaporized, leaving only bare metal — though its back window remained intact; it was covered in stickers. Although they were blackened, the lettering showed in a different texture so they were still readable. Bel recognized them because they were from environmental campaigns she had played a part in: NUCLEAR POWER, NO THANKS. AGAINST GLOBAL WARMING. The car had belonged to people like her. Maybe she even knew them. There was another sticker, less familiar to her. She looked closer and tried to trace the lettering: OZ PROTECTORS FOR A HEALTHY PLANET.

If the car had had any tyres left she would have kicked them. These were the people who had kidnapped Major Kurtis, locked her up and left her to burn. Now their car was wrecked. Well, that was poetic justice.

But then a cold feeling stole over her. The car had crashed into that lamppost. She imagined the scene: had the petrol tank gone up and consumed the occupants in flames? Had Major Kurtis been in the car too?

What a horrible way to die, to burn to death in a car. She felt sick to her stomach. She’d wanted revenge, but in some civilized way; she’d wanted them to face justice.

No, they must have got out, she decided. If they hadn’t, there would still be some human remains, surely. And the car might not belong to the same people who grabbed her. Any environmentally aware person might display stickers like that. Still, if she ever crossed paths with Oz Protectors again …

She did not know that she already had; that they had suffered only a slightly less dreadful fate, choking to death on the chemical fumes in the swimming baths.

Down a street to the left she saw a group of fire-fighters and an engine. Thank God! At last — people. She ran towards them.

They were working on the cinema. The three-storey frontage had collapsed, along with the ground floor, and blackened concrete beams spanned a big hole into the basement. Three firefighters were directing their hoses down into it. But the water wasn’t blasting out at high pressure; it was trickling out gently, as if they were cleaning something fragile. There was something very eerie about the whole scene.

Bel found her eye drawn into the hole. She saw shapes below the section of wall, a jumble of light and dark, slick with water. It reminded her of a shoreline after an oil disaster. Everything looked different after a fire had done its work. Was that a metal chair? A café table? The more she looked, the more she recognized. Water was trickling down from the hoses above, washing away some of the soot so that the bright metal of the tables and chairs showed through.

The trickling water revealed something else as well. Pale rods protruded out of the black slick. They were bones from toes. A human foot.

Before she could look away her brain made sense of more shadows — part of a leg.

‘Ma’am.’ Bel suddenly noticed a firefighter standing in front of her. A girl. Her face seemed familiar — the oriental features smeared with black stripes, the fire-fighting clothes bulking out her rangy frame, making her look like an American footballer. Had she spoken to her earlier that day? Or maybe it was shock that made her imagine that.

She pointed into the basement. ‘There’s somebody down there.’ Her voice came out in a whisper — she felt terribly shaken. She had often seen dead bodies when she visited disaster zones but it was something you never got used to; particularly when they had been burned.

Even as she said it, she realized the firefighters must already know the body was there. That’s why their hoses weren’t on full blast.

‘Ma’am,’ said the firefighter, ‘you can’t stay here. You must move on.’

Bel looked into the firefighter’s face and saw weariness. She was just a kid. She could only be a few years older than Ben. What terrible things must she have seen today? And yet she was being so calm. Disasters made people grow up so quickly. Bel felt ashamed of her own moment of weakness. She made an effort to pull herself together. She let the firefighter escort her away from the yawning pit and towards the truck. Hose lines snaked out of the back, throbbing with the water that was travelling down them. The sound of it pulsing towards the wreckage drew Bel’s gaze back there again.

She saw a tongue of flame flickering up the side of the building. The firefighters responded immediately: suddenly the water came out in a strong white jet and they lashed the walls. In less than a minute the flames were beaten back to smoke.

Then they reduced the flow to a gentle trickle once more and turned back to their patient work down in the basement.

‘Is there somewhere safe where I can go?’ said Bel.

Wanasri took her to the fire truck and opened a hatch in its metal side. She brought out the spare fire jacket and put it around Bel’s shoulders, then went back and fetched a bottle of water.

‘Wait here and you can ride back to the station with us,’ she said. ‘But it looks as though we’ll be here for hours yet.’

Bel felt the weight of the jacket and slipped her arms into the sleeves. She wanted to say thanks, but tears of relief welled up in her throat instead. She nodded and sat down against the chrome bumper of the engine. Wanasri hurried back to rejoin her colleagues.

Engine 33’s crew were working on the cinema as a break from active firefighting. The teams could only work in flames and smoke for so long, so they had been sent to work at a low-risk site — a job that was actually no less harrowing than fighting fires. They were recovering badly burned bodies.

Petra, Andy and Darren were gently hosing the bodies down to cool them off — stopping them from burning and deteriorating further, which would make identification impossible. Wanasri’s job was to prevent the public seeing the bodies.

They decided they needed to move a section of debris and Wanasri went back to the engine to fetch some lifting equipment.

The woman she had left sitting against the fender was on her feet.

‘Are you feeling better?’ asked Wanasri.

Bel fastened the jacket briskly. ‘I feel fine now, so I’ll be off,’ she said. ‘There are some trucks down at the end of that road — I’ll go down there and hitch a ride. It’s better than sitting here for hours — I’ll get in your way, and anyhow, I’ll go mad if I just sit here. Thanks again for your help.’

‘Are you sure?’ said Wanasri.

But Bel was already marching away, her arms swinging determinedly.