Page 158 of The Fire Line

Jay stopped trying to manage himself.

He needed the help.

“Don’t talk,” Harris said close to his ear. “Just breathe when you can.”

Jay nodded weakly.

Harris kept him turned against his chest, one arm firm beneath Jay’s shoulders and the other steady across his ribs while the coughing tore through him. Every attempt at a full breath seemed to trigger another, and for a while all Jay could do was let Harris hold his upper body clear of the ground until his lungs finally stopped fighting him.

When the fit eased, Harris didn’t lower him immediately.

Jay lay partly on his side against him, his head tucked near Harris’s shoulder, trying to recover something resembling a normal breath.

“You dizzy?” Harris asked.

Jay nodded.

“How bad?”

He lifted one hand and made a vague motion somewhere between some and I have no idea.

Harris understood anyway.

“Stay like this.”

Ordinarily Jay might have objected to the instruction. At that moment, remaining exactly where he was sounded excellent.

Harris’s arm stayed around him, not shielding him from the fire now, simply supporting him because Jay’s body had temporarily become unreliable.

Outside, the ridge still burned in scattered patches and smoke continued moving through the trees. Nothing about the place qualified as safe, but the worst of the heat had moved east.

Jay let his head settle more fully against Harris’s shoulder and closed his eyes for one second.

Harris’s grip tightened.

Jay opened them again.

“I’m here,” he rasped.

“I know.”

This time Harris sounded like he needed the answer anyway.

26

Anything Except This

For several minutes after the worst of the fire moved east, Harris let himself pretend the granite still counted as shelter.

It had saved them from the fire front. That didn’t mean they could stay there.

The wind that had driven flame over the ridge was now pushing smoke back beneath the ledge, where the shallow recess trapped it against the stone. There was nowhere for it to clear. Each gust brought another dirty layer rolling along the ground, thick enough that Harris could watch it gather in the beam of the flashlight before it swallowed the light entirely. The heat had eased, but the air was getting worse.

Jay was breathing roughly beside him, too fast, with a thin catch every few breaths that Harris had started listening for without meaning to. He had panicked when the smoke first thickened and pulled too much of it deep before Harris managed to slow him down. Now every breath seemed to cost him more than the one before.

Harris’s own throat felt flayed raw, and anything deeper than a shallow breath threatened a cough, but Jay had gotten the worst of it. Harris could feel that much without knowing anything more technical than what his hand told him where it rested over Jay’s ribs: the rise beneath his palm was too shallow, the pauses too long.

Staying put was no longer the safer choice.