Falling Into the Fire

The pulse came on a Tuesday. By Friday, the west was empty and the fires no longer got fought. Wren Okafor runs Ridge Nine, one of the last functioning fire crews in the country. She has built her people into a family, refused three town councils, and kept the pass clear for three winters running. Then a burned evacuee wakes up in the crew's infirmary. Tomas — a cook from Philadelphia with no useful skills and an opinion about how the crew spends its daylight. Wren plans to send him on. Tomas proves to be good at exactly the things the crew cannot do: he keeps books, feeds thirty people on nothing, and runs a vaccination schedule that saves two towns. They work together. And then they don't. And then they do again. When a fire runs the wrong way through a mountain pass, Wren disobeys the council and takes the crew in. Tomas is the only person who can drive the water truck on the switchbacks. He drives it. The town burns. The people don't. Wren comes out of it burned to the bone. Tomas spends the winter keeping her alive. Some fires are fought. Some are kept.