Wildfire (22 page)

Ben dipped one wing so that the microlight banked. He saw blue lights moving under the smoke layer, flashes of red and silver fire engines, and the shimmer of the firemen’s turnout gear reflecting in the evening sun. It was like the metallic glint of fish in murky water.

Kelly let out a loud sigh. ‘I can’t see – there’s too much smoke. We’ll have to go in closer. It’s not very safe but I’ve got to see what’s on the ground. Don’t even think of trying to land this time – this is our reconnaissance pass.’ She checked the instruments and
waved a bandaged hand. ‘The turn has slowed you – I told you it would. More throttle or we’ll stall.’

Ben took the plane down to 200 feet. They flew over the park. A few bare trees reached spindly limbs up into the smoke. The grass was not visible at all.

Kelly shook her head. ‘Those trees will get in the way.’

‘Can’t we steer between them?’ said Ben.

‘We’ll be coming in at sixty knots – that’s a hundred and ten kilometres per hour. You can’t steer at that speed. If you clip a wing we’ll turn over. We’ve got to find somewhere else.’

‘What about down there?’ said Ben. He pointed down to a wide street. The smoke cleared for a moment, revealing abandoned cars and an overturned market stall. ‘Er – don’t bother to answer that,’ he added, and turned the plane away.

As he started to climb again, he spotted the perfect landing site below. It was a long dual carriageway, with three lanes on each side, leading away from the centre of town over the river Torrens.

‘There!’ he exclaimed.

‘Ben, that’s a bridge. There’s a parapet in the
middle and wires on each side. That’s a crazy idea.’

‘You said you’d landed on a bridge before,’ countered Ben.

‘I’ve never done anything of the sort,’ she retorted.

‘You were telling me earlier that you landed a plane on a bridge in Seattle.’

‘I was just the passenger. I was sitting in the back, scared stiff.’

The windscreen was suddenly full of seagulls rushing towards them. Their wingspan made them look huge. Kelly ducked and shrieked and Ben pressed back in his seat.

There was a bang as something hit the wing, then a seagull thudded onto the windscreen like roadkill. As it tumbled away, it left a smear of blood.

‘We got one,’ grinned Ben, trying to act flippant to cover his shock.

The grin was soon wiped off his face. The whole cockpit began to shake, the engine vibrated and the plane was drifting. ‘Hey, Kelly …’

Kelly looked up, fury in her eyes. ‘That bird must have nicked our propeller. The engine’s pulling us to the side. Get your feet away.’

She tried the pedals but they didn’t respond, so she went for more brutal tactics. She pulled the stick hard to one side and rammed the right pedal down.

The plane swung dramatically sideways, slicing downwards through the air. They flew so close over a telegraph pole that Ben could see the grain of the wood. Then, as they tilted, he could see only sky out of the window.

‘Turn the engine off,’ shouted Kelly. ‘It’s pulling us about too much.’

Ben thought she must have gone mad. ‘
What?
’

Kelly shouted louder. ‘Turn the engine off!’

Ben turned the key. Red lights came on all across the instrument panel and the needle on the rev counter dropped to zero. The plane was eerily quiet. Kelly used the pedals to level the plane and he could hear the rudder move on the tail.

‘Shall I start it up?’ said Ben. After all, the time-honoured way of solving a mechanical problem was to switch a machine off and then switch it on again.

‘No, the propeller will tear off if we do that. We’ll have to come down like a glider.’

‘Come down where?’ said Ben.

Kelly’s voice was weak, as though she could scarcely believe what she was saying. ‘The bridge.’

Ben swallowed, his heart thumping.

‘Start your approach. Turn and line up with the middle lane on the left-hand side. And get it right. We don’t have an engine to get us out of trouble so there are no second chances.’

Ben took the controls gingerly. Without the engine noise he could hear every creak in the microlight’s frame. When he moved the pedals it was even worse: they made thumping noises in the floor and behind him. When he used the stick it made the whole wing move.

‘Ben,’ shouted Kelly, ‘stop being so feeble! Fly the darned thing!’

Carefully he lined up the plane on the road. The river was in the middle of his horizon – a murky ribbon growing bigger by the second. The town was beyond. A pall of wet smoke blew towards them. It was like trying to catch your breath inside a wet towel.

‘Get the nose down more,’ said Kelly. ‘Stop looking downwards – look at where you’re planning to stop.’

Their height was 70 feet and the road filled Ben’s
windscreen now. His palms were slick with sweat on the controls.

Like when they had landed in the desert before, everything on the ground started getting big; everything except the bridge, which looked like a very small target indeed, a hump of tarmac with some thin white lines marking out the traffic lanes. It would be easy to misjudge it and end up in the river. And the river didn’t look like a friendly place to land. It was full of debris, some still burning, some sooty and black – all of it charging along in the current like a mad boat race.

‘Nose up,’ said Kelly. ‘Or we’ll keep gathering speed and bulldoze into the ground.’

Ben tweaked the stick back and the microlight seesawed backwards. Without the engine noise he had completely lost his feel for the craft.

Kelly growled in irritation and elbowed the stick forward. The nose pointed down again. The road surface was so close they could see dark smears of tyre rubber on the white lines.

Kelly’s face was grim with concentration. ‘Nose up slowly.’

Ben followed her instructions and there was a bump as the back wheels hit the road.

‘We’re down,’ said Kelly. ‘Stick forward. Brake on.’ Ben squeezed the brake. Lampposts and signs whizzed past at a frightening speed. Coming in at 110 kilometres per hour had been scary enough in the desert, but in a built-up area it felt positively suicidal. Ben was braking, but the road surface was slick with water and the tyres had no friction.

The bridge led into a roundabout. Ahead was a black and white chevron sign. There was no way they would stop in time. ‘Oh no!’ gasped Kelly.

‘I’ll have to steer around it!’ yelled Ben. He pulled the plane hard left.

And Kelly pumped the pedals hard right.

The microlight skidded on the wet road and slid sideways past a row of burned-out cars.

‘Don’t you know which way to go round a round-about?’ yelled Ben.

‘We don’t have roundabouts in the States,’ retorted Kelly.

Water and oil were smeared all over the road, turning it into a skating rink. The plane skidded forwards,
jolting its two passengers with every bump in the road, and Ben visualized the spindly undercarriage hitting a pothole and snapping. He tried the brake but the wheels had locked. They would just have to wait until the microlight slowed down by itself.

Behind the cars was a burned-out building. Soot streaked its white façade; its windows were blackened holes and pockets of orange fire still glowed in its interior. The building next to it was still burning, pumping dark smoke into the sky

Kelly tried to grab Ben’s arm with her mittened hand. ‘Ben, look!’

Ben followed her gaze and his blood ran cold.

Two doors along from the burning building was a petrol station. So far the flames hadn’t reached it, but it would only take one stray spark to ignite the whole thing.

And the microlight was heading straight towards it.

Ben grasped the stick firmly and squeezed the brake. The wheels were still locked. Nothing happened.

He unfastened his seat belt, then reached across and undid Kelly’s. ‘We’ve got to bale out – now.’

She held up her hands, helpless. ‘I can’t open my door.’

‘Come out my side.’ Ben flicked open the door catch.

Kelly looked down at the road, an expression of horror on her face. She looked like she had frozen.

‘Don’t be so feeble!’ yelled Ben. He clambered awkwardly out of the cockpit, then leaned back in to grab Kelly by the scruff of her neck and drag her across to the opening. She came out backwards, her bandaged hands painfully smacking into the ground as she half-fell, half-climbed out of the plane. Ben rolled on the tarmac, then got straight to his feet, easing the pain from his bashed elbows and knees. Kelly crouched on the ground, her eyes on the microlight, her hands tucked under her armpits.

The plane crunched side on into a yellow rubbish skip. The metal frame bent like wire and the taut wing material tore loose to hang down in ribbons. The steel cables that held the entire structure together from pedals to rudder snapped, whipping into the air. The cables swung into the Perspex cockpit and shattered it.

Ben winced. ‘Oops. I’m glad we weren’t inside when that happened. Did you have it insured?’

‘You’re not even old enough to know what insurance is.’ Kelly sat up and gazed around at the smoking buildings. ‘Talk about out of the frying pan … How do you propose we’re going to get out of here? Or find your mother, come to that.’

‘We can get out on the river. I know how to drive a boat.’

‘Yeah? Better than you fly a plane, I hope.’ Kelly got to her feet. As she did so, something fell out of her pocket; she tried to catch it, but it slipped out of her bandaged hands and hit the tarmac. Her phone. She gave Ben an appealing look.

He shook his head. ‘Surely you don’t trust me to pick it up for you – I might break it,’ he said crossly. ‘After all, I’m really useless, according to you.’

‘Please. I’m sure you’re great with boats. And your flying’s really not too bad.’

Ben picked up the phone and tried to dial Bel. His own had been left in the plane. Kelly’s picture of the red and pink power chute glowed but the keyboard didn’t respond.

‘I think it’s broken.’

‘Oh
great
!’ Kelly stamped her foot. If she could have grabbed the phone in her bandaged mittens, she looked about ready to throw it in the river.

But Ben had an idea. He turned the phone display towards Kelly. ‘You bought one of these chute things this morning, didn’t you. Where’s the shop?’

‘Whitmoor Square. It’s just over there by the park we tried to land in.’

He slipped the phone back into her pocket. ‘That’s where we’re going. We’ll get some of those chute things, pick Mum up, and then head out towards the sea.’ He started running in the direction of the park.

Kelly set off after him. ‘I thought you were going to get a boat.’

‘I don’t see any boats,’ said Ben. ‘And we can’t take a boat up on the tram station roof.’

As Ben ran, he saw something he really didn’t like. The fire from the burning building had spread. Already the offices next door to the petrol station were ablaze. It was only a matter of time before the petrol tanks caught. Then the whole place was going to go sky high.

Ben was a good runner. Being tall for his age, he usually made good times on the athletics field. Kelly seemed to be pretty fit too and she had no trouble keeping up. They set off at a good pace down a road lined with dripping, black buildings.

As they ran, waves of heat pressed against them on all sides like a wall and thick drifts of smoke clogged their lungs. Coughing, Ben stopped for a moment and waited with hands on knees. Sprinting was easy enough in clean air, but it wasn’t so easy when you had to hold your breath.

He looked round and saw Kelly staggering along.
She looked as though she had already run a marathon. He leaned on an abandoned car to try and get his breath, and saw through the window that there was a bottle of water and a navy blue sweatshirt on the passenger seat. He pulled open the door, grabbed the sweatshirt and ripped it in two. He seized the water and poured it out over the material, then ran back to Kelly.

He took her by the elbow and held the wet material up to her face. ‘I’m going to tie this on your face like a mask,’ he said. ‘You’ll find it easier to breathe.’ His words came out in gasps between the drifting clouds of smoke. He also wanted to warn her that the petrol station was going to blow, but he didn’t have the breath.

She nodded, and stood while he fastened the material behind her head. Then he held the other piece over his mouth and started to run. Kelly followed, her eyes over the top of the mask wide with fear.

A fire-engine siren reverberated between the build
ing
s. Ben looked round, expecting to see a truck heading towards them, but then realized it must have been a few streets away. The damp air magnified the sound.

As he set off again, he looked at the burned-out buildings – they were straight out of a nightmare. A thought occurred to him and he wished it hadn’t – would the shop they were looking for still be there? Or would the flames have already gutted it?

Kelly buffeted him with her bandaged hand. ‘Not that way; over here.’ The mask had slipped down around her neck. She tried to push it up as she led the way into a shopping precinct.