THE FIRES WITHIN

iUniverse, Inc.

Chapter One

Alerts went out as far north as Cooke City, Montana.

Helicopters roared low across roads jammed with firefighting equipment, stranded tourists, sightseers, and locals trying to get home.

The wind had shifted.

That meant the danger, which for months had been "off somewhere" in the distance, was coming closer. Now, "off somewhere" was only a few miles away with smoke thick, black, dangerous and as mean as a disturbed rattlesnake. The winds were violently spewing leaping tongues of flames in every direction. The swirls of fire were creating their own super-hot blasts of winds which urged them to huge spouts of flames leaping from treetop to treetop looking, for all the world, like bursts from a huge flame thrower manned by some unseen giant.

With the normal temperatures soaring in the desert-dry August afternoon and the firefighting equipment losing the hard-fought war of attrition against the steadily increasing demands for their services, the combination was creating a desperate situation. It was already the worst fire season on record in the great Yellowstone National Park south of where the helicopters now searched for the trapped men, and everyone knew as they raced against the encroaching flames that the situation was just about out of control.

No one talked much about the body that the firefighters had accidentally uncovered while trenching in one of their many attempts to stop the spreading flames. The men were too tired and too busy with their own firefighting tasks to pay much attention. Since there had never been talk of a missing person in the general area for as long as anyone could remember, the discovery excited little attention other than the routine business of turning the remains over to the now besieged authorities for investigation and identification, if possible. Identification would be difficult since it wasn't actually a body. Rather it was the skeleton of an apparently murdered woman hastily buried in a shallow grave some time ago. All that could be told from the badly decomposed remains was that the victim was a small-framed woman who had been shot through the head before being hidden deep in the woods under thick scoops of black earth. A single spent bullet was found beneath the skull. The firefighters who discovered "Ginny Doe," as they dubbed her, and the investigators who followed, couldn't tell for certain how long Ginny Doe had been slowly decomposing in her obscure grave. Probably four or five years. If the fire had not been heading in that particular direction, who knows how long she would have remained undiscovered.

Another five years? Forever? A crime well done.

When Jane heard about "Ginny Doe," for some inexplicable reason she found herself fantasizing the girl's murder over and over again. All the lurid imaginings were to become a bitter recurring dream.

Who was the murdered woman? And why was Jane so preoccupied with the long ago murder of a total stranger? She hadn't the slightest notion.

Jane Marcheson was one of the locals trying to get home after putting in an uncomfortable day working at the library in Velusia. Only seventeen miles west of Cooke City, the library was in the direct path of the fires.

Jane was one of the many volunteers who, for most of the past week, had been helping to pack all the volumes in the Velusia library to be moved to a safer storage area until the danger was over. Maybe the building would fall to the fires, but at least the books, the essence of any library, could be saved. Tim Lunde's mother, Gloria, had been the librarian ever since Jane could remember. When Gloria told her she needed help, Jane readily volunteered. It was a backbreaking task. But Jane was 23, tall for a girl, thin and physically quite strong. Living alone with her mother, Valerie, and hiking frequently through the woods, it was amazing how much power those extended hikes had given to growing young limbs. Even so, Jane's arms were not as strong as her legs and the books seemed to get heavier with each passing hour. The smoky haze lingering over the area where the library was located didn't help. Some of the volunteers had been wheezing and coughing all day.

Now the job was finally finished, her throat parched, her thick honey-colored hair crushed under a tight, sooty bandana, her hazel eyes tearing to a lucent green.

"Thanks, Janie," Gloria Lunde said with her gravely voice and her expansive smile. "You've been a big help."

"I'll think about you when I'm soaking out the aches in a hot tub tonight," Jane laughed, thinking again that Gloria Lunde, whom she had known all her life, was the only one she knew who still called her Janie.

Gloria thrust out her thickening middle with a groan and rubbed the small of her own sore back with both hands. "I know what you mean."

Jane said her goodbyes quickly and jumped into the blue Ford Station wagon illegally parked in a spot reserved for the handicapped. No one seemed to mind the liberty during these hectic emergency days. Not too many handicapped still around anyway.

Knowing the back roads well, Jane managed to skirt the main roads where the luckless tourists and sightseers were hampering the steady flow of what, in these parts, was usually sparse traffic.

Ten firefighters had been trapped in a sudden hotspot in the "Eagle Bar Fire" section. All avenues of escape had been cut off by the encircling walls of flames. Anyone close to the scene, aware that the ten endangered men had to be plucked out by helicopter, realized how out of control the situation was becoming.

"C'mon, c'mon," shouted Bugger, a Vietnam vet pilot who seemed to be holding the roaring chopper in suspension by the strength of his wrists alone. In his forties, retrained as a 'copter pilot specializing in circumstances where rappelling was essential, he was tough, seasoned and accustomed to hazardous situations. The ache in his teeth, clenched behind a tightlipped grimace separating the long straggly ends of his graying mustache, attested to the effort.

Hot sparks were scattering like huge, voracious fireflies igniting drought-dried limbs even before they touched.

"C'mon!"

Dangling by the horse-collar above the swirls of acrid smoke during the hastily rigged emergency rescue, the harshly seasoned firefighters knew they were being lifted out of the jaws of Hell. And none too soon. The last few to be pulled up were always the most anxious. Every moment counted and every moment they had to await their turn seemed a lifetime.

"Help him get aboard," Bugger shouted hoarsely to Beethead, his 'Nam buddy who had retrained with him for Forest Service. Not being able to separate at the end of the war, they had remained almost symbiotically attached to one another and, without discussion, paralleled their lives. "Hurry it the hell up!"

"It'll take as long as it takes," Beethead said easily, but he was working with quick, steady, nerveless precision while Bugger breathed his tension in and out with grunts and groans.

The ferocious sound of the fire was almost worse than the parching heat and the blankets of soot and ash spreading over miles of acres yet unscorched.

As the helicopter rescue scene played itself out over and over, the dangling bodies swayed in the hot wind for what seemed like interminable moments of...