Wildfire

Chapter Eight

Ben thought he was doing pretty well. He was flying big loops and figures of eight and learning to ride the air currents over the hills and valleys of the vineyards. He was even wondering if Kelly might let him try a landing.

Suddenly the plane started going sideways. It felt as though a giant hand was pushing the fuselage.

Kelly was aware of it immediately. She looked up from the map on her lap. ‘Jeez, where did that wind come from? Give me control.’

‘You’ve got it.’ Ben was relieved to hand over to her. He tucked his feet under the seat, let her take the stick and sat back. He felt the pedals move up and down as she tried to compensate for the wind. The engine roared above his head as Kelly opened the throttle.

He relaxed. Flying was actually quite tiring. There was so much to think about. It felt good to let Kelly worry about it for a while.

His relief didn’t last for long. Despite everything Kelly was doing, the microlight was still drifting off course. He could see her tugging the stick from side to side, her knees going up and down as she worked the pedals furiously. He could see the cables that ran through the cockpit to the rudder sawing backwards and forwards. But they were having no effect. The engine was straining but it couldn’t push them forwards. The craft was being pitched sideways like a paper boat.

Sitting in a fragile bubble 1500 feet above the ground was a bad place to be when things started to go wrong. Ben expected any moment to feel a great bang and see a wing snap off and tumble past the cockpit.

Kelly managed to get the nose down, and they started losing altitude.

Ben noticed the altimeter. ‘Kelly, we’re at nine hundred feet.’

Kelly stuck her head out of the window but her voice still carried on in his headset. ‘I know. I’m going to land.’

Ben looked out of the window. They lost height very quickly. The rows of vines, which were visible only as stripes in the landscape at cruising altitude, enlarged into distinct hedges. Ben was convinced he could see the individual leaves. They were being ruffled in a strong wind. In between the hedgerows were wide avenues of bare red earth.

Kelly lined up on one of the avenues and pointed the nose towards the ground. She closed down the throttle. The engine noise lowered, like a singer humming down through a scale. Ben felt the plane lose airspeed. He could make out more details on the ground now. Wooden poles and netting holding up the vines. The herringbone marks where tractors had driven down the avenue.

The microlight seemed to hop sideways in the air. Kelly pumped her feet up and down on the pedals. Her voice came through on the headset, muttering through gritted teeth. ‘Don’t you dare …’ The nose lifted. Ben felt a bump. For a moment he thought what he had been dreading had happened; that something had snapped off. Then there was a bump at the front as well. That was the wheels touching down.

Above their heads, the engine stopped. Kelly squeezed the brake hard. Ben could feel the friction as the brakes bit into the wheels, and every jolt and rut in the track jarred him. It was like taking a sports car over a hundred speed bumps at full tilt. But he was very grateful to be back on the ground.

The plane slewed to a halt on the dusty track, its tail poking into a row of vines.

‘We’ll wait it out here,’ said Kelly. ‘We’re too small and light to make any headway in a wind like that.’ She secured the brake with the strip of Velcro, turned off all the systems and undid her seat belt.

Ben stepped out the other side, easing the stiffness in his limbs. The dusty ground felt rock hard under his feet, completely dried out after months of drought. Without the breeze they felt when flying, the heat was stifling. The flying suits stuck to their skin. The first thing he and Kelly did was unzip them and slip off the big doughnut headsets so they hung around their necks.

Ben unzipped a pocket in his trousers, took out a bottle of sun cream and smeared some on his face and arms. It felt gritty where the red dust had stuck to his skin.

Kelly couldn’t resist a mocking remark. ‘Gotta protect that lily-white English complexion, eh, Ben? Your mom’s got you well trained.’

Ben snapped the lid shut and held the bottle out. ‘Don’t you want some? George isn’t going to fancy you if you come back looking like a lobster.’

Kelly hooked a bottle of water out from behind her seat and drained it. She looked at the empty container with disappointment. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve got any spare water?’ she said hopefully.

Ben pointed to a sign at the end of the avenue of trees. It said: FORREST VALE VISITOR CENTRE, ONE KILOMETRE, with an arrow pointing to a path to the right. ‘I haven’t, but they’re bound to have some at the visitor centre. Will the plane be all right if we leave it?’

Kelly leaned into the cockpit, checked the brake, then closed the door. ‘Yeah, it should be fine.’

As they set off, the leaves of the vines started to rustle around them like a whispering crowd. The branches, tied in orderly rows, waved and rippled.

Kelly stopped and slipped her orange baseball cap off. Her blonde hair billowed out behind her and she tilted her head back. ‘Mmm, that is nice.’

Then the wind changed direction. Suddenly it was a lot stronger. The vines flapped the other way, straining against their tethers. Big leaves plunged down on Kelly’s face like fingers trying to gather her up. She jumped backwards. The wind pushed her back even further and she staggered into Ben. Ben would have fallen over, but the wind changed again and for a moment they were stuck together, unable to move forwards. The wind had to be over sixty miles an hour — it was impossible to take even a step. Then, as quickly as it had sprung up, the wind dropped to a dead calm.

Kelly bundled her hair up and put her hat back on. ‘Man, this weather is freaky today. It’s a good thing we’re down here and not trying to fly in it.’

Matt and Jenny Forrest, and their army of helpers, stood around the picnic tables. All the guests had arrived and Matt was pouring glasses of last year’s vintage while Jenny handed them out.

Suddenly the checked rug on the table billowed up like a sail. Matt tried to grab the wine glasses but they crashed over, sending Chardonnay and broken glass all over his bare legs. The chairs set out in a row next to the decking folded up by themselves and keeled over. Sun hats were snatched off the visitors’ heads and whirled into the air.

There was a sound of screeching, like fingernails down a blackboard. Moments later a tangle of metal landed on the parched earth. The wind had torn the TV aerial off the roof.

‘Inside!’ Jenny yelled. Her voice was a tiny thing against the wind roaring in her ears. She waved her arms towards the house.

Her guests, half blinded by dust blowing in off the vineyards, struggled after her.

Once they were all inside, Matt pulled the door shut with difficulty. They looked out at the hillside. The vines were shaking violently. Dark clouds were drifting across the sapphire-blue sky.

Jenny’s father shook dust out of his grey hair. ‘Of all days to get rain …’

‘Maybe it isn’t rain,’ said Matt. ‘It wasn’t earlier.’

‘Dust or rain …’ Jenny sighed. ‘Someone up there must have it in for us …’

The clouds massed up from behind the hill, hugging the ground. There was another vineyard there, belonging to the Forrests’ neighbour.

‘I’ve never seen rain looking like that,’ said Jenny’s father.

In the distance, the cloud began to creep over the hill. The landscape looked like someone had smudged its edges with charcoal.

Jenny grabbed the binoculars they kept on the windowsill. As she turned the focus wheel she saw flickering tongues of orange flame.

It wasn’t rain approaching …

The binoculars fell from her hand as she gasped: ‘Fire!’

Alex Porter and his wife Jacquetta were on holiday, over from New Zealand. They’d hired a Toyota Corolla in Adelaide and had headed out into the hills to tour the wine-growing region.

The air conditioning was on full blast in the car, but it was barely coping with the heat. Jacquetta fanned herself with the map on her knee. Outside, the rows of vines looked like they were wilting. The grapes hung in tight clusters, a blue bloom on the skins, ready for picking.

‘Those grapes must be tough,’ she said. ‘I can’t understand why they’re not shrivelled to raisins by now.’

Suddenly Alex found he couldn’t see the dials on the dashboard. The sky outside had gone dark. He flicked the lights on. ‘Hey, looks like we’re in for a storm.’

‘We certainly could use it.’ Jacquetta turned the dial on the air conditioning but it was already at maximum. ‘Look at the temperature,’ she said, pointing to the dashboard display. ‘It’s fifty degrees outside. I thought it was supposed to get colder before a storm, not hotter.’

‘Fifty degrees?’ Alex tapped the display. ‘That can’t be right. There must be something wrong with it.’ He swung the car round the corner.

Then they saw why it was getting so hot and so dark. In front of them, the vineyard was a wall of flame the height of a two-storey building. It rolled towards them, roaring and crackling.

Jacquetta screamed.

Alex slammed on the brakes, jammed the car into reverse, screeched through a turn, then when they were facing back the way they came, he gunned the accelerator.

Jacquetta twisted in her seat, staring back through the rear windscreen. The fire was an orange ball, boiling towards them.

‘Faster, Alex! It’s going to catch us!’

Alex kept his foot flat on the floor. They reached 80 kph, then 90. A bend came up. He was going too fast. The back end of the car swung like an opening gate and crunched into some vines. The impact knocked Jacquetta’s head hard against the window. She slumped down, unconscious.

They had come to a standstill. Alex revved the engine. The wheels spun on the dusty track. In his rear-view mirror he caught a glimpse of the flames drawing nearer. Smoke started to seep into the car.

Then the tyres bit and the Toyota moved off again.

But the fire was gaining. Flames began to light up the darkened interior of the car, flickering over Jacquetta’s face. She was moving her head groggily and muttering. There was blood coming out of one of her ears. That shocked him for a moment and he stopped concentrating on driving.

His hesitation cost them vital seconds. The flames in the rear-view mirror were now much closer. Alex pushed the pedal to the floor. Another corner was coming up. He threw the steering wheel to the side — and saw the headlights of the pick-up truck coming towards him. He didn’t have time to stop or swerve. There was nowhere to go anyway. Alex glimpsed the horrified face of the driver in the cab, then the two vehicles crunched together. Jacquetta and Alex were thrown against the windscreen.

Their seat belts stopped them going all the way through, but the impact knocked them out cold. The truck driver looked up and saw the wall of flames boiling over the car towards him.

As the heat ignited their petrol tank, Alex and Jacquetta were mercifully no longer aware.