Wildfire

Chapter Twenty-two

Ben tried to slow down, but Bel was powering forwards, pulling him along by the harness. He yelled in her ear, ‘Stop!’

Bel stumbled to a halt and he nearly fell over her.

‘What did you do that for?’ she snapped.

‘You’re too heavy,’ Ben gasped. He unclipped the waist harness and Bel half fell forward.

She twisted round and looked at him, furious. Her red hair was nearly black with sweat and soot. In fact most of her was. ‘Don’t be so rude.’

‘It’s that jacket. You’ll have to take it off.’ With one hand he yanked the jacket off her shoulders, then saw her boots.

‘Take those off too,’ he said, pointing. ‘They must weigh five pounds each! Jesus, Mum, you picked a hell of a time to give up wearing sandals.’

‘Take off my boots?’ said Bel. ‘Have you gone mad?’

‘Yes, and take mine off too. Otherwise we won’t be able to get airborne.’

She knelt down, obviously not convinced he was entirely sane.

‘Try and do it sometime today,’ shouted Ben.

‘There’s a petrol station over there and it’s about to blow.’

‘There’s no need for sarcasm,’ she said. But the thought of an exploding petrol station obviously persuaded her. She undid his bootlaces, grumbling, ‘I haven’t done this to you since you were three years old. Foot up.’

Ben lifted his foot. ‘Yeah, yeah,’ he muttered.

She got one boot off, then the other. The sky was growing darker and darker.

Ben saw Kelly, a lime-green figure high in the grey clouds. She was already making good progress towards the sea.

Bel knelt down and unfastened her own boots. She had done them up securely with double knots because they were a size too big.

While she fumbled with them, Ben watched the roof of the petrol station. The flames were getting higher and burning debris was dropping down onto the fore-court. Then a chunk of blazing roof fabric landed near one of the pumps.

‘Hurry up!’ yelled Ben.

‘I’m going as fast as I can,’ grumbled Bel.

‘Well, go faster,’ retorted Ben, ‘or we’ve had it.’

The piece of roof was throwing out flames and sparks barely half a metre away from the looped hose of the pump. Ben watched the progress of the flames with the same fascination that a mouse watches a cat stalk towards it.

Bel stood up, both boots off. She turned her back to Ben and hooked her arms into the shoulder straps. Ben again fastened the waistband and the leg straps.

‘You know the routine,’ he shouted. ‘On your marks … go!’

The roof was covered in fine gravel and it was painful to run on it in bare feet. Ben felt Bel falter with the discomfort and yelled in her ear, ‘Faster!’

The chute rose up behind. He opened the throttle. The propeller roared up to top speed.

Had they shed enough weight? Would the chute’s remaining fuel be enough to lift them?

The power pack dragged their feet clear of the roof, but it was like a badly judged take-off with too little lift. Ben kept the throttle on maximum. It wasn’t enough. They were starting to drift back down again.

Ben saw a flash out of the corner of his eye. Suddenly they shot vertically up into the air as if they’d been fired out of a cannon. The deafening roar came a split second later. A wave of heat followed, so intense that Ben felt as if his skin was peeling off. The shock wave catapulted them further up still. The sky around them was completely dark and filled with burning debris that wheeled and tumbled like a flock of birds on fire.

The flames had reached the petrol tanks in the filling station. The explosion and the immense burst of heat had rocketed them vertically upwards. Far below, under the seething black smoke, the petroleum fire blazed as bright as the sun.

Way off in the distance, Ben could see a lime-green speck. It must be Kelly. She seemed to already be well away from the danger. That told him which way to steer to reach the coast.

He pulled on the left side of the canopy, but the chute didn’t respond. He looked up. Was the steering rope caught?

Then he saw a tongue of orange flame licking at the purple fabric. One section of his canopy was a tattered scrap of smouldering material. Already he could see sky through a hole that was getting wider by the second.

Quickly, he pulled the other side. The chute responded and took him inland again, over the burning city. Now they were starting to lose height again.

Bel twisted her head and looked round at him in alarm. She spotted the hole in the canopy and her face froze in horror.

They caught another thermal and the chute soared up once more. The burning city shrank to toy size. The intense heat dissipated and Ben felt able to breathe again. Ahead, the horizon opened out and the smoke started to disperse. He could see the sea.

But did they have enough lift to get all the way there?

Now he could make out the jetty and, beyond it, the harbour. Boats covered almost every square metre of the water’s surface. People were crowded onto the decks, huddling together as they watched their city burn.

A crash landing in the harbour wouldn’t be so bad. Except that Ben wasn’t at all sure they were going to make it that far.

They were losing altitude again and he tried to open the throttle, but it was already at maximum. The hole in the chute above them was widening as the fabric continued to smoulder.

They passed over burning roofs, then a burning park, drifting lower all the time. Leaves from the trees lining the park threw sparks into the air.

They continued to descend, their feet brushing over flaming branches. Whirling cinders burned their bare soles.

Ben smelled scorching fabric and looked up. Another section of the chute had gone. He gave it another thirty seconds at most — then the power pack would be blasting air up with no chute to catch it.

They didn’t need thirty seconds. When Ben looked down again, they were sailing over the boats. They’d made it. He cut the engine. The silence was immediate and almost soothing.

But now they were falling with only a small chute like a tattered umbrella to slow their descent.

The mast of a yacht loomed up and Bel pulled her feet out of the way. Ben, reacting slower, took a painful bang to his shins. They came down even lower and passed over a large white cabin cruiser. Their feet scrabbled along the top, leaving grubby marks. They passed over another boat and Ben tried to slow them down, extending his legs to brace his feet on the cabin roof, but his bare soles slipped on it.

Still they carried on, over another cruiser, getting lower all the time.

A dinghy crossed their path. The people in it were waving and shouting at them, but there was nothing Ben could do to get out of their way. The passengers threw themselves to opposite ends of the dinghy as the four-footed purple flying creature ran through the middle of their boat.

The next thing in their path was a striped awning on a yacht. The roofs of the cabins had been solid. This was canvas, like a tent. It bent under their weight; then, with a loud crack, one of the poles supporting the awning gave way. The canvas roof turned into a slide, and Ben and Bel found themselves tumbling towards a large square of sapphire blue.

The yacht’s swimming pool.

They hit the water with a splash. Fortunately the water wasn’t deep. Ben managed to stand up and unfasten the waist band. Wet purple fabric clung to their heads like a clammy skin as he and Bel battled to get out of the harness.

When Ben had fought his way out of the chute, he saw a row of people in swimsuits and sun hats. They were all holding drinks and looking at the new arrivals in astonishment.

He swam to the side of the pool. A bronzed Australian girl with pink-streaked blonde hair smiled down at him. ‘Are you OK?’ she asked.

Bel emerged from the other end of the chute. Her face was streaked with soot and her red hair was a tangled mess. She waded to the steps at the end of the pool and climbed out, her hand outstretched to introduce herself.

‘Er — sorry about dropping in unannounced. Hi. I’m

Dr Bel Kelland and this is my son Ben.’

A man in a peaked cap put his drink down and went to help her. ‘Did you come from the city?’

Bel nodded. Water made sooty pools around her bare feet.

One of the women picked up a blue towel, put it around Bel’s shoulders and invited her to sit on a sun lounger.

Suddenly there was a titanic boom and for a moment everyone looked at each other. It was so loud, it shook the sky overhead. Was it another explosion from the city? It seemed incredible — the sound was louder than a hundred petrol stations blowing up. Then the penny dropped.

‘It’s thunder!’ said the girl with the pink-streaked hair.

The heavens opened and rain came down. It was real summer storm rain, lashing down onto the deck in great, fat, splashy drops. The woman hurried Bel inside, while the girl helped Ben drag the chute and the soaked engine out of the pool.

He didn’t go in immediately. He stood on the sun deck, marvelling at the feel of rain on his hot skin …