Eden Burning (30 page)

“Can you get high enough in a tree to see where the smoke is coming from?” Nicole asked.

Benny didn’t bother to answer. He simply sized up the trees around him, accepted a boost from Mark, and scrambled up until the branches were too thin to support his weight. He looked around once, twice, three times, as though memorizing the land.

“Mountain burning!” he said, his voice high.

Nicole’s eyelids flinched. It was what she had expected, but she had hoped fiercely that the radio announcer was wrong.

“Can you see any lava?” she called.

“Smoke.”

“Is it from burning trees or is it in great big plumes going all the way to the clouds?” Nicole asked, keeping her voice calm with an effort.

“Trees.”

“Can you see a way down to the road?”

Benny hesitated a long time. “Sorry-sorry, Pele. Big line smoke between.”

A chill went over Nicole.

They were cut off from rescue, and all around them the land was on fire.

Nicole forced herself to breathe past the freezing instant of panic. Ten young lives depended on her. She had to think and think fast. Chase and Dane knew where their children had gone hiking. The men would know the kids were cut off from the road.

The radio poured static and excitement in her ear. She made out just enough words to know that they weren’t the only ones to be caught by the mountain’s sudden shift. Search-and-rescue operations were being mounted by air, land, and even sea.

In her mind she retraced the trail between where they were now and the road that they couldn’t reach. Somehow she had to get everyone to a place where they could be seen from above.

And, if necessary, airlifted out.

“Can we get to the slick pahoehoe flow that’s halfway back to the road?” she asked.

“Yes-yes,” Benny said instantly.

“Is there smoke in that direction?”

He moved his hand in a circular motion that took in the land all around them. “Smoke everywhere.”

“Do you see any helicopters or small planes?”

He gave the sky the same careful survey he had given the land. “No. Just smoke. All-all, Pele. All-all.”

“Come down, Benny. And thanks. You’ve helped us.”

She turned and faced the children who were waiting anxiously in front of her. Sandi moved to stand next to her older brother. Mark bent over and said something as he put a reassuring arm around her. The gesture was so like Dane that Nicole wanted to smile and cry at the same time. She took several measured breaths. She had to stay calm. And she damn well had to
appear
calm.

“The radio announcer said that Kilauea is splitting some new seams,” she told the children. “We’re supposed to go to a road or a clear area where we can be spotted from the air. Then a helicopter will come and get us. Benny, you take the lead again. Mark, help Lisa up onto my back.”

“I’ll carry her,” he offered quickly.

Nicole shook her head. “Thanks, but it’s not that far.”
And I’m a lot stronger than you. I won’t be a year from today, but it’s not a year from today. It’s now, and we’re trapped on a burning mountain.

“But—”

“If I need help over the rough spots, I’ll yell for you,” she said, cutting off his objections.

Unhappily Mark lifted Lisa onto Nicole’s back.

She smiled over her shoulder at the girl. “Hang on tight, honey, but around my shoulders or my chest, not my neck. Ready?”

Lisa nodded.

“Benny, I want you to keep going until you’re in the center of that slick pahoehoe,” Nicole said in a tone that told everyone this wasn’t a suggestion. “When you’re there, sit down and wait for the helicopter.”

“Sure-sure.”

She smiled at him and turned to the rest of the children. “It’s very important that you stay together. If it gets too smoky, take off your shirts and breathe through them.”

The kids all nodded.

Mark whipped off his shirt and handed it to Nicole. “If I need something to breathe through, I’ll take some of Steve’s shirt.”

She hesitated, then took the shirt. “Thanks. This will be easier to tear than my silk halter. And Mark, if I fall a bit behind,” she added casually, “don’t double back for me. Lisa and I will be fine. You bring up the rear of the kids.” She saw the quick concern for her and the protest forming on his lips. “You’re the strongest of the boys,” she said in a low voice. “If someone needs help, I’m counting on you to be there.”

He wanted to object, to stay with her no matter what, but a single look at her eyes told him all he needed to know. There was no give in her.

As Benny took the lead, Mark fell into place at the end of the line of hikers. Nicole walked behind him, carrying Lisa. They hiked at a good pace and without the usual jokes or sibling byplay.

For the first time in her life Nicole was grateful for her unusual size, as well as for the years of dancing and hiking that had conditioned her body. Lisa might have been small, but she wasn’t a handful of feathers, and the miles they had to cover were on a path that was little more than crushed ferns pointing the way between trees, shrubs, and bigger ferns.

The wind shifted again. Now it blew from behind Nicole. The air was rough with smoke, a reminder that somewhere above them, burning lava was spreading down the mountain.

Nicole coughed and kept walking, hoping for another shift of wind. With every step she was falling a little more behind. She couldn’t see the children ahead of her anymore. She couldn’t even hear their occasional complaints about the pace Benny set. All she could do was follow the faint trail left by nine pairs of feet tramping in front of her.

Gradually the forest changed, thinning out and then getting lush again according to the rhythms of old lava flows. The air stayed the same, thick enough to taste. Every shift of wind brought more smoke swirling down the mountain in billows. Despite the makeshift scarves Nicole had ripped from Mark’s shirt, she and Lisa coughed constantly

And always, always, Nicole listened for the crackling sound of fire overtaking her. So far all she had heard was the roaring of her blood in her own ears. The forest was too wet and lush to catch fire from a few random blobs of hot stone raining down. But a river of lava was different. The intense heat of the molten stone dried out everything close to it. Plants heated to flash point and went up in small explosions along the edges of the lava flows. Both the lava and the burning forest pumped out a lot of smoke. It made a misery of breathing.

Just when Nicole had begun to think she was lost, the plants around her thinned to almost nothing. The glassy pahoehoe ahead of her once had flowed like burning syrup down the mountainside, filling crevices and hollows. Though the lava had been fully cooled for more than a hundred years, it was still too harsh an environment for plants to take hold.

Mark stood at the edge of the shiny flow, looking anxiously toward the thick forest beyond. When he spotted Nicole, he ran over and lifted Lisa from her back.

“Hang on, squirt,” he said to Lisa.

The girl wrapped her arms around his thin shoulders and hung on.

Nicole smiled wearily and stretched the kinks out of her back. “Everyone here?”

“Yes. They’re waiting in the center of the flow just like you said to do. A small plane flew overhead about twenty minutes ago.”

“Did it see you?” she asked sharply.

“It wagged its wings.”

She closed her eyes, feeling dizzy with relief. Until that moment she hadn’t admitted to herself how frightened she was. “Thank God.”

On the pahoehoe there weren’t any trees or tall ferns to block everyone’s view of the mountain. Even through the haze of smoke they could see long lines of more dense smoke writhing skyward, marking outbreaks of lava. The molten stone itself was still hidden, revealed only by the fires it set among the wet green forest.

Nicole watched the smoke creep lower and lower down the mountainside. The wind was unpredictable. It pushed smoke here and there and back again, revealing and concealing the land at whim. The only certainty was that the air was getting thick enough again to make them cough.

“Listen!” Mark said.

The faint, distinctive
whap-whap
of a helicopter rotor came down through the murky sky. Soon a small chopper landed gingerly on the uneven ground. Nicole herded the kids toward the open passenger door.

The pilot glanced from the ten children to the tall woman standing braced against the backwash of the rotors. She looked at the helicopter’s small interior and then at the pilot.

Neither of them said a word.

She stood at the door and boosted children inside until they were packed in the helicopter like fish in a tin. Mark was the last one in. He turned to help Nicole, only to find that she was hurrying away.

“Where’s Nicole going?”

The pilot didn’t answer.

The helicopter shuddered up to full power, and Mark understood. “Nicole!” he yelled through the open door. “Come back! There’s room! You can have my place!
Nicole!”

With one hand the pilot held Mark in the seat. With the other he slammed and locked the door. Then he poured on more power and put the bird into the sky.

Mark beat his fists against the transparent door and watched Nicole until he couldn’t see her any longer. But he could see a lot more of the mountain.

And all of it was on fire.

By night the lava would look like a wild network of liquid red and gold. By day it looked like a black, many-fingered hand wreathed in smoke. That hand was reaching down toward the island of pahoehoe where Nicole waited alone.

“I’ll come back for her,” the pilot shouted over the noise of the engine.

Mark turned away from the frightening view and looked into the pilot’s sympathetic eyes. With a jerky nod the boy went back to watching out the window.

The pilot spent most of the short flight to Hilo Airport talking on the radio. He told the search-and-rescue coordinator that he had found the kids the airplane had reported. There were ten kids, not nine. He was bringing them in to Hilo, and would someone be damned sure there was a fuel truck standing by.

As soon as the helicopter touched down, Mark spotted the tall figures of his father, his uncle, and Bobby running across the apron toward the chopper. The kids poured out of the helicopter and ran toward their parents. Mark carried Lisa to her father’s eager arms.

Chase took his daughter’s small weight with a feeling of gratitude that made his throat ache. He surrounded her with a hug. She returned it with all the strength in her small arms.

“She’s okay,” Mark assured his uncle. “Just a sore ankle.”

Chase nodded and looked over Lisa’s black head for the fiery hair that had haunted his dreams.

The helicopter was empty.

There was no one else nearby but the pilot, who was hauling a fuel line toward the machine at a run. With growing unease Chase looked all around the apron. When he turned back to Mark, tears were streaming down his nephew’s face.

“There wasn’t—enough room,” Mark said, his voice breaking. “She wouldn’t let me—trade places. It was burning—behind her. Everywhere. Burning.”

Chase made a sound like he had been kicked. With a terrible effort, he kept his voice gentle while he unwrapped Lisa’s arms from around his neck.

“Go to Uncle Dane, punkin,” he said, kissing his daughter, handing her into Dane’s arms. “He’ll take you home.”

“I want Nicole,” Lisa said suddenly, and burst into tears.

“So do I.”

The pilot saw Chase running toward the helicopter. “That your wife back up on the mountain?”

“I’m working on it,” Chase said roughly.

“Hell of a woman,” the pilot said, pumping fuel with grim haste. “She saw right off there wasn’t enough room. Didn’t say a word. Just stuffed the kids in the cockpit and jumped back out of the way. The boy damn near bailed out after her. Barely got the door locked in time.”

“Was she hurt?”

“No.”

“Did you get GPS coordinates?”

“Yeah, for all the good it will do me. Global positioning satellites in the sky don’t mean shit if you can’t see the ground.”

“Smoke?”

“Thick enough to chew.” The pilot jerked back on the fuel nozzle. “That should do it. It’s not far for a bird. Pure hell on foot, though. I’ll radio in as soon as I find her.”

“I’m coming with you.”

“Too damned dangerous,” the pilot said bluntly. “That old mountain is coming apart all over.”

“We’re wasting time,” Chase said as he jumped into the passenger seat.

The pilot climbed into his own seat. “Good enough. I can use another pair of eyes. Even with the GPS . . .” He shrugged. “You ever used one of these helmets?”

“Yes,” Chase said curtly.

“Put it on. Can’t hear much otherwise.”

With that the pilot concentrated on bringing his chopper back to life. The instant the machine was ready, the tower gave them clearance. The helicopter leaped into the sky.

The panorama of the burning mountain unfolded below Chase. His trained eye quickly picked out the pattern beneath the chaos of billowing smoke. From a point just over halfway up the mountain, long fingers of molten lava were spilling out, setting fire to the forest wherever they touched. Several major fissures shot fountains of boiling lava into the air. Other fissures simply pumped rivers of lava quietly down the slope. Slivers of green forest lay untouched between the new flows.