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weight shifted, forcing pressure on the ruined knee.

"I got a lipstick," Jennifer offered. "But I don't s'pose it's the same."

Newt was beyond banter. His face was the dirty gray of ash and sky, all his will needed to form a wall around the pain in his leg.

The slope was close to thirty degrees but the forest was comprised of slightly older growth than farther up. Trees were six to eight feet apart and there wasn't too much undergrowth. Anna's boots dug deep in the duff as she hauled up, one step at a time, the side of the stretcher in one hand, the jump kit in the other. The position was awkward and she knew she wasn't helping much with Hamlin's weight.

Across Newt's chest she could see Short struggling to maintain her end of the bargain. Jennifer's strength was all from the waist down, good wide hips and strong thighs like a figure skater. Anna knew her shoulders and arms would be aching with the strain as she fought to take some of the weight up for Stephen and John.

Cool air gusted from behind. Though it caressed her sweaty skin, it made the little hairs on the back of Anna's neck crawl.

"Dump the jump kit," LeFleur ordered as he picked up the pace. "Len, give a pulaski to Anna. Keep moving."

Anna dropped the medical bag and used Nims's pulaski like an ice axe, clawing up the hill. LeFleur's breathing rasped deep in his chest, the cords of his neck distended and the flesh between the rim of his hard hat and his collar was a deep red.

"Switch out soon," she said to Stephen. He nodded. The foot of the stretcher weighed less and he was both bigger and younger than the crew boss. "Next flat spot. I take the head, Nims, you get the foot. Got that?"

LeFleur grunted.

The vegetation closed in, branches scratching at their faces and arms. The pounding of her heart was the only sound Anna was aware of. Oblivious to anything but the pain in her left shoulder from pulling Hamlin and the small square of real estate directly in front of her boot toes, she trudged on. Quite independently of conscious thought, her mind clicked through numbers trying to find a rhythm to pass the time, keep cadence. Waltz time: ONE, two, three, ONE, two, three.

A place not deserving of the name "clearing" opened up slightly at the base of a ledge of volcanic rock about eighteen inches high and fifty feet long that formed a brow half a mile below spike. Long ago soil had laid down a blanket covering all but the lip and the rock was hidden by a dense cover of waist-high shrubs.

Momentarily free of the trees, they stopped. Short fell to her knees, sucking in lungfuls of air. Hands on thighs, LeFleur tried to catch his breath. Even Hamlin was gasping, fighting pain and shock.

"Sounds like a TB ward around here," Stephen said. "Switch out." The EMT grasped the front of the Utter. "Nims?"

Leonard Nims was sweating and his breath was coming fast but he was the freshest of the five. He handed LeFleur the tools and lifted the foot of the litter. Anna and Jennifer switched sides.

"Got to stretch out the other arm," Short said to Newt. "I'll still look like a gorilla but leastways both sets of knuckles'll be draggin'."

"Let's do it," Stephen said.

The words were followed by a low rumble. Faint, visceral, it was like the sound of a freight train coming down the tracks. The noise welled up from the bottom of the canyon. They looked back as one.

The far side of the ravine blossomed in fire. A mushroom cloud poured up in a deadly column and fire spun a tornado of destruction through the forest's crown, pulling oxygen from the air and creating weather of its own. Flame boiled down into the canyon bottom.

"Jesus fucking Christ," Lindstrom whispered. "Firestorm."

Chapter Four

NEVER HAD ANNA seen anything so beautiful. Raw, naked power blooming in red and orange and black. Tornadoes of pure fire shrieking through the treetops, an enraged elemental beast slaking a hunger so old only stones and gods remembered.

Exhilaration rose in her throat, a sense of