Chapter 1

Chapter 1

It doesn’t matter how many times you have been through it, the sound of rocks smashing the side of the rig still makes the hair stand up on your arms. Donny is still too new to know any better, pressing his soft face against the plastic widows trying to see who was throwing them. It was a rare opportunity for them to see the face of the target of their rage. It was rewarded with a well-aimed bottle. The original windows of the crew rig had been destroyed long before any of its current occupants had boarded. Now replaced with the almost opaque poly-something or other plastic, rocks and bottles were more a reminder than actual threat. The crew members that weren’t already asleep shared a quiet laugh at Donny’s introduction to the natives.

The bewildered look plastered across the kid’s face is just one more reason to hate him. A fleeting urge to throw something at Donny is quickly replaced with self directed anger. What is it about the kid that makes me so angry? It isnt as though he fucked up more than most. No, it's something else. Maybe it's the length of time the look of bewilderment lingers on his face, as though he was actually surprised by the rocks being thrown. It’s a little late to be naive about what we are to these people. I’m not as delusional as him and can recognize that a small part of this feeling is due to the fact that I too had pressed my face against the sweaty, UV damaged shield and tried to see why they hated us so much. It didn’t take long to find out why. There was a time when things were different, the hands empty of rocks and bottles. Our presence here would have been seen as a sign of hope, not now, not anymore. On the fire maps this community is nothing more than a nameless gray shaded area surrounded by red and orange. Gray is used to denote the presence of a non natural terrain feature, a blimp in the rolling sea of flammable shit. For us gray areas mean natural fire breaks in the form of roads. The people that have been hanging on here have already done a lot of the work for us, removing brush and fuel away from the homes and roads. Trying to stave off a day like today. Our role in all of this is simple, stay ahead of the fire and put as many hurdles in its way as we can. Cutting fire lines is punishing work, every inch of life has to be scraped from the earth for fear it might sustain the insatiable appetite of wildfires. The natives watched as we spent the last two days cutting our fire lines around their homes, leaving them between our lines and the fire still burning over the next hill. Some of them knew what was happening but then they also knew what living in the gray areas meant. The slower ones watched as we stopped working and sat waiting near our vehicles. They, waiting for some sign of what was going to happen, us knowing what’s about to happen but waiting for the winds to change direction or die down. I stand watching them as the wind plays across my face. I can’t understand why people are still trying to cling onto places like this. The familiar feeling of acid burning in my stomach accompanies thoughts like this one. The alternative wasn’t much better but pretending hope still existed for any of the hundreds of gray areas still out there, just makes it all worse. Despite them being too far away I can feel their eyes searching for hope. They’re looking in the wrong direction, as I feel the wind pressing against my back, “load up!”. Normally I would have waited for the guard unit but we might not get another break in the wind for a while, why make them wait any longer. As the crew climbs aboard our rigs I hang off the back of the last one, holding myself low, letting the drip torch hover a few inches above the ground, catching the dry grass, watching as the winds push the spreading flames towards the gray area.

If you listen to the talking heads on the screen the problem started with the Greenwood Fire back in 2030 and like all things fed to you through a screen there’s some truth to it but it’s not as simple as that. Hell,some even say it’s the Europeans' fault because they came up with the forest management ideas that would prioritize production over regeneration long before we were even a country. To what extent there is any truth in that it doesn't really matter. We shit the bed so many times that it would be childish to think that anything started with just that one fire. There aren’t many left that argue a century of suppressing every wildfire did us any favors but then there has always been niche audiences for certain brands of stupidity. By the time the droughts started the land was already primed for fire and just like so much of our history we were finding ways to make it an even bigger blaze. The kindling was gathered in the summer of 2022 when the state of Florida sued to stop one of the only two private issuers of homeowner issuance from leaving the state. It's complicated like most things but at the root of it was rampant fraud. It worked like this, the state was one of the lease regulated insurance markets in the country but somewhere along the way to the governor’s mansion a politician promised to make issuers pay to replace storm damaged roofs. It sounded good to voters and like most nice things people found ways to fuck it up for everyone. A knock on your door, “Did you know that some of your roof shingles look loose?'' That was usually how it started quickly followed by the neat little flier outlining your right to a new roof on account of the last hurricane that came through, even if it didn’t come within two hundred miles of your home. Not convinced yet? How about if the roofing contractor throws in a little something for the inconvenience of getting you a new roof? The losses to the insurance companies were staggering when compared to the normally grossly profitable home insurance market. In the spring of 2022 some executive got a hair up his ass at the thought of not being able to afford an even bigger house in Vail and decided enough was enough, nobody fucks with his bonus. Notice was given to the state of the company’s intention to disenroll the remaining policy holders unless significant alterations to the insurance laws were made. The then Governor resented the fact that he was being asked to enact unpopular changes in the middle of his ramp up for his presidential run, after all he wasn’t even in office when the original law had been passed. Why the fuck should he have to ruin his chances at the white house over someone else’s mistake? The state decided  after much careful consideration to punt the problem into someone else's administration and filed suit against the company. In what many called a remarkable short amount of time the case had landed four years later in front of the supreme court where a decidedly conservative court wanted to know what right a state had in forcing a company to lose money over a problem the state clearly created? This was how Dymor, once the second largest insurance provider in the state of Florida, was allowed to cut and run. While they congratulated themselves on avoiding being marginally less profitable, others were watching too.

  The National Guard unit finally arrived to clear the road. The Natives aren’t stupid, they know what happens if they keep it up much longer. The Guardsmen are only marginally better regarded then the men hiding in the fire service vehicles. Just last month a Guard Unit opened fire on a community down south of them. It made local news but the bigger media outlets lost interest in covering the ugliness of it all a long time ago. I close my eyes and try to guess which rock will be the last. There’s always one last futile thud as they give into their new reality. By this time tomorrow whatever wasn’t destroyed in our back burn, the approaching wildfire will finish off. Whatever bit of  community was still hanging on here and whatever hope they had of saving it was now driving slowly past them in beat to shit vehicles once designed for the streets of Baghdad. It was Greenwood all over again.

June 27th 2028 the call went out for a CalFire hotshot crew. Smoke was reported just outside the old mining town of Joe Walker Town. It was the 5636th wildland fire in California that year. A fire patrol aircraft confirmed it was an active brush fire burning near the western foothills that separated Joe Walker Town from the much more inhabited Bakersfield. The plan was for the Hotshot crew of 19 wildland firefighters to helicopter close enough to the fire to start cutting protective fire lines and hopefully slow its spread until more resources could be brought in if needed. Most of the fires the Hotshots had already fought that year were small ones like this one and with quick action on their part were fairly easy to contain. Cutting fire lines is physically demanding work especially in the heat of a Southern California summer. The crew had to remove all combustible material along the line to stop the fire from moving past it. The width of the line could be anywhere from one to three feet for a hand crew or even bigger if heavy equipment is brought in. It was clear the moment that the crew touched down on the small ridge running east to west that this wasn’t going to be like the other fires they had seen that year. The fire was closing in on the eastern slope that framed the lowland area the former town laid in. Fire hadn’t burned in this area for decades and the result was a steady buildup of combustible fuels. The droughts had killed off large portions of the scrub pines that dotted the area while seasonal growth of small vegetation choked those that remained. On the ridge the crew was able to navigate with ease but the dried out brush made moving along the slope challenging. The crew boss immediately radioed in the conditions and called for more resources. The problem as always was committing a limited amount of resources meant coming ever closer to having an empty cupboard. Up north was a real fire burning in the thousands of acres. As the crew boss looked down towards the still unnamed fire he could see how dangerous the situation was. The fire so far was contained in the low area at the base of the low hills and was being kept in check by the lack of wind which was unusual for the time of year. A westward change would drive the fire towards the east slopes and give it a launch pad into the more rugged heavily fueled hills. His crew was on the wrong ridge to do anything about it. He radioed for a second crew to cover the north south line. As he walked his crew toward the higher ground near them they marched past one of the dozen or so abandoned mines that once made Joe Walker a town. Nailed to one of the timbers over the open hole tunneled into the hillside was a hand painted sign. Word came over the radio that the Three Rivers fire was threatening to break containment and CalFire was committing the last available crews to stop it. As the crew boss stood listening to this news a breeze kicked up the dust around them temporarily obscuring the sign he was still staring at, “Tell em I’m establishing Pay Day command and declaring condition 5.”

What followed this singular moment in time would be a first for CalFire. The declaration of Condition 5 was no small matter and was only used when the conditions on the ground represented the highest danger for explosive fire growth. This would be the first time the most proficient fire agency in the world couldn’t answer the call. Within twenty four hours of the radio call the Pay Day fire had already burned over twenty thousand acres. Gusting winds common to the area combined with a lack of humidity change over night helped to spread the fire well beyond where it first started. Almost overnight a new fear emerged as the fire was now threatening the many oil fields that populate the outskirts of Bakersfield. Kerns River oil field being the most densely developed oil field in the state happened to also be the fifth largest producing field in the US. The Pay Day fire had become not just a threat to homes and scrub land but the US economy. Everyone could see it happening in real time and quietly discussions were occurring. Crews were pulled from every place they could be found including many of the large fires burning in the state. Small town fire departments all over the country sent volunteers and fire rigs to help. Images flooded the nightly news of people lining the highways in Oregon as crews from there and Washington State drove south, silently waving. The whole country watched as social media filled up with videos of oil wells erupting into towering infernos sending flaming oil a hundred feet into the air. It looked like something not seen since the first Gulf War. It is immensely hard to put out an oil well fire as the pressure of the well continually feeds the fire. Each well ablaze had to be capped which could take days or even weeks of incredibly dangerous work. The National Guard was already activated to assist with the fires and equipped with heavy equipment tried desperately to contain as many of the fires as possible. Even when they were successful the well heads were destroyed leading to many leaking, forming massive pools of crude sitting on the surface waiting for the ground to absorb it. The embers rained down from the burning hills and ignited these pools causing the air to become so thick with toxic black smoke that even aircraft couldn’t operate. These burning pools of oil revealed the decades of decay that had been allowed to occur as many older wells had been abandoned and left to rot. Slowly leaking oil into the surrounding ground a new phenomenon was born as the fire reached deep into the earth. These deep oil fires still burn decades later. The crews coming from around the country had never seen anything like it and as they tried to wrap their heads around the hellscape they were seeing word came from back home of new wildfires emerging in their states and in some cases their own backyards.

2028 would go down as the most destructive fire season ever. In total area burned the Pay Day fire ranked 4127th in the country at just under 50,000 total acres burned. The cost of protecting the oil fields and the city of Bakersfield made Payday one of the most expensive fires ever fought, but the real damage was done by the thousands of other fires, many much smaller. Every crew pulled to fight the Pay Day fire meant another fire running loose. The crews pulled from other states meant already stretched rural fire departments were even more understaffed. In California alone over ten thousand homes were lost to fires that season. No one knows the real cost of that fire season because it’s not as simple as just counting the number of acres burned. As the last oil well fire was put out a group of people met around a boardroom table and discussed their options.

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

The rumbling of the fire rig finally stopped as the driver shut down the massive diesel engine. I join Donny and the rest of the crew gathering our gear in preparation for exiting through the rear doors. Any fear of bottles or rocks being thrown was left far behind, they could tell because the driver had shut the engine off. They only did that if they were sure it was safe. A few of the crew grunted at the cushiness of the drivers job ferrying crews between camp and fires. You had to have connections to get a job like that. Whatever ill feelings towards the diver were short lived as the crew felt the relief that came with making it back to camp. I hate it at camp which makes me the exception. The feeling of relief the others enjoyed was because they felt safe away from the fires. I know this safety is owed to the fact that the contractors didn’t want to risk losing their equipment. No such worries for the crews. Long rows of converted semi-trailers served as barracks for sleeping in while others formed mobile field kitchens or any number of other services the crews might need. We were still in time for chow though just barely. If we were lucky we might even get a full portion.

Crews tended to eat based on rank. We had been on the line for over a week so there was no telling which crews were in camp at the moment. The stenciled lettering on the back of brush coats showed we belonged to 2/2034. The crew pronounced it “Second of the Twenty Thirty four” and despite our lack of connections the crew did share a fair bit of clout in most camps. Part of this was because we always seemed to be given the more shit assignments, which means the other crews don’t have to do it. The other reason is the Second is the only crew left from the Twenty Thirty Four.  The rest have either perished in the over three decades since the unit was stood up or crossed the line. We were almost all short timers with one to two years left before we would cross the line and be given resident status. This was also why the fire bosses kept throwing us into the worst of it, pulling every last ounce out of us right up to the end. The food was slopped onto our trays by the contract workers. Their uniforms might have been white at one point but the industrial washers weren’t very good at removing the soot that covered everything this time of year. Instead they looked ghoulish in drab gray, faces hidden behind their bulky respirators. Everything in camp was run by private contractors mostly from the big three. The workers were all residents that couldn’t find work elsewhere. Years ago they tried farming it out to what they liked to call foreign nationals but even that time honored tradition failed just like the rest of the economy. In the end it was cheaper to hire locals. There was even a chance one of the ghouls lived in the community we had just abandoned.

The crew was in luck, one of the crews billeted of this camp failed to turn up meaning there is still enough chow for full rations. I lay awake in my rack. It's just after ten at night and I’m the only one in the barracks trailer. We got word the missing crew from earlier was burned out, caught on the wrong side of an ash slide. The Second was being tasked with recovery which meant we would be given an extra two hours rack time.It had nothing to do with the crew, the powers that be seem to think the drivers might need the extra sleep time to help them deal with the stress of watching us pick through the wreckage. We’re not going to complain this time.The crew is using the extra time to enjoy some of the camp’s other amenities. The far end of the camp contains a couple of trailers not on the books. Circled around to leave only one way in and out, three armed Camp Patrollers keep a watch on things just in case. It’s been a while since I last visited the back trailers but no doubt at least one of them is a brothel, another for gambling. I know Eleanor doesn’t care what I do but some part of me finds it unsettling, so I’m turning in early. The brothels are the weird offspring of the practical meeting the reality of having an all-male fire service. In the beginning it was almost something from a utopian painting as men and women worked the fire line side by side. As the rest of society broke down, so did the morals and values that kept such a dream alive. Everyone has a racket and as things broke down people began looking for ways to race to the most despicable lows of humanity. The Federal government ended women in the fire service as a last ditch effort, signaling their inability to maintain even basic human rights within their ranks. Not long after the brothels began springing up in camps. It’s illegal for non-residents to work, which is an issue when the brothels are almost entirely filled with non-resident women. To get around this the women offer their services in exchange for a promise of marriage. If the feds, or god forbid the states, ever decide to raid the brothels, they would find a number of soon to be wed couples engaged in copulation which was enough legal cover to convince the fire bosses to allow the brothels, of course they also skimmed a nice percentage off the operations. Everyone’s got a racket. This gave rise to the term Fire Bride. Interestingly for the non-resident women that worked as Fire Brides, it was one of the few ways they could safely make money.

The brothels were protected rackets with offenders having to answer to fire bosses that could and would send their asses straight into the inferno. Back home in the Bricks, women had it the worst. At least for the Fire Brides they didn’t have to offer their hands in marriage for free. Of course crews don’t get paid so you get creative the longer you go. Most start out looting shit but if you are smart about it, there are always ways to make money. The door to the trailer opens letting the music from the back of the camp spill in. I can tell by the sound of his tentative steps in the dark of the trailer it's Donny. “Boss you awake?'' The whisper barely carries over the music. The dumb fuck left the door the open. “What do you want, Donny.” He’s been with us for most of our current tour. One of the few that isn’t a short timer. I hate everything about the kid but I also know it’s not his fault. Donny spent most of his life living as a resident out in Colorado. His father had somehow convinced a resident woman to marry him, giving him and Donny temporary resident status, Donny’s mother had split when things got rough, taking Eleanor and fleeing to Washington state, eventually ending up in a different Green Zone. His father died just after Donny turned fourteen. The state of Colorado emancipated Donny on his behalf as his step mom hadn’t legally adopted him. Now an adult in the view of the state he was remanded back to his original status as a non-resident. Following a series of riots, Donny was able to get a transfer to the Seattle Green Zone to be with his sister Eleanor. By the time Donny turned sixteen, two years of living in the non-resident Bricks had convinced him to sign up. Too young to be useful to anyone, the fire service has been punting him around for the last three years. It's hard enough to get a crew to accept you, and Donny was still so childlike about the world around him that most crews dumped him as soon as they could. I’d be looking to do the same at the end of this tour if he wasn’t Eleanor’s brother. It was the only thing she had ever asked of me, to keep him safe. The women didn’t care about anything except pathetic little Donny. I know why he is here whispering in the dark. “The answer is no Donny. You don’t need to go and get mixed up with that shit.” I won’t sell Donny smack. It's got nothing to do with morals or shit like that. Everything about the kid tells me he will fall apart the moment he starts using. I’ve seen it happen enough times to know the look. The kid is paper thin and the second he finds an escape from reality, he is never going to come back. Eleanor wouldn’t forgive me for that. Better to wait it out and hope he becomes someone else’s problem. Sure he could buy from some other crew, if he was brave enough to try it, but he wasn’t. “I just need something…” his voice trailed out but I knew what he was trying to say. Seeing all of those natives shook him up more than he realizes. I reach into my bag tucked safely under my head. Small bottle, I check the label in the little bit of light from the still open door. “Here, swallow these, don’t chew em.” I gave him two tablets. “Thanks boss.” I listen in awe to all of the noise Donny makes as he tries to find his rack. It takes about twenty minutes before his breathing takes on the steady quality of sleep. The kid doesn’t need dope, not yet anyways. Two aspirin was enough. As Donny’s snores mix with the sounds of camp from the still open door, my mind turns back to the gray area. Anything to take my mind off the fact that Donny is able to sleep but I’m not. Fuck Eleanor, maybe.  

Palmore was one of the two largest homeowner insurance providers left in the state of California when the Pay Day fire kicked off and it wasn’t by choice. Nearly every national insurance provided had some part of the market in the state due the sheer size of the market. Each company competed to insure the least riskiest homes which often meant those inside city limits. The problem for these companies was that in order to operate in the state they had to play by the rules set by state. More so than any other state in the country California epitomized what happens when you kick the can down the road. The largest housing market in the country had also been one of the hottest for decades. Oddly enough, part of the problem was the result of nuclear weapons. Back before the weapons became so powerful and accurate, the U.S. government became worried about what would happen if Russian warheads landed in major metropolitan areas. The solution was dispersal. Starting in the fifties the government started pushing the idea of not putting all of your eggs in one basket.Reliable highways and expanding infrastructure meant people could and should reside outside core urban areas targeted by the Ruskies. This was the birth of urban sprawl. For a generation the answer to every problem was to build further outside the problem area. When social problems occurred in cities, mostly white communities fled just as they had when faced with nuclear annihilation. To feed the increasing need for homes outside the urban core areas, tract developments sprang up. Each of these new homes was increasingly being built in what the experts called the Wildland Urban Interface (WUI). This wording was used because of the fear of scaring away home buyers.  WUI is just a polite way of saying an area that can, will, and has burned at some point. This is not something people and communities were eager to talk about at first.

The problem wasn’t only that more homes were being built in areas that traditionally burn, these homes were to house the most prolific source of wildfires, people. Each new home meant more powerlines that could spark fires, vehicles from which burning cigarettes could be thrown, and of course the ever present dump fuck kids playing with matches. You would have thought someone would have pointed out the risk of wildfires to these homes as being a major problem. Some did at first but the solution was simple, CalFire. More funding to suppress wildfires before they could threaten homes. This just made things worse as it gave people an even more false sense of safety in building in these areas. Not everyone was naive to the growing threat however. Just like it was those seeking to profit from exploiting the available land in the WUI, it all comes down to money. The threat of wildfires making homes uninsurable prompted the state of California to pass the FAIR Insurance Act. The intent was to use fees on insurance policies to form a pool covering the most at risk properties. This plan came about due to the private insurance market not wanting to take on the risk presented by some of the homes being built in the WUI. It's easy to forget how important homeowners insurance is to the American dream. No lender will lend on a property not insured, which means every time a new home was built in the WUI, some bean counter had to look at the risk vs. the profits of insuring the home. Each time a new buyer put an offer down on an already built house, this process had to occur again. While the FAIR act was designed to solve a relatively small problem at the time, less than 1% of all homes in the state when passed in the 1960’s, a much bigger problem was brewing. What insurance providers signing off on new construction didn’t realize was that climate change was going to screw up all of their neat little calculations. By the end 1990s the early years of the decades-long drought was already in full swing. Fire Bosses and planners were quietly talking about “climate” as a moving target and no longer a fixed element.

The FAIR Act had been bolstered over the years but rumbles about costs were growing. While the FAIR act created an insurer of last resort, in the form of the State, the actual funding and management of policies came from the private insurance companies. They were required to keep these high risk properties on their books as a cost of operating in the State. To cover these high risk policies, the insurers charged a premium on all policies, not a popular thing to do. This strategy also created increased tension between the State and insurers as increases in premiums were capped on a yearly basis, preventing insurers from raising prices enough to cover the actual risk they were insuring. As the century came to a close The nation as a whole was setting records yearly for wildfire damages and cost. California was facing an even bigger problem as housing demand continued to outstrip the market’s capacity to build. Young couples began putting off having children because they couldn’t afford more than tiny cramped apartments. Employers complained about having to pay their workers more to afford tiny apartments. Through it all insurers watched as their risks grew while profits slowed. Each year larger and larger fires took a bigger bite out the industry’s dough pile.

Beginning in the early 2000s insurers began withdrawing from the home insurance market in California. Seeing the trend the state issued a moratorium on dis-enrollment.  Unlike Florida, the insurance market in California was highly regulated, some said too regulated, meaning the state had the power to force insurers to continue homeowner policies under emergency powers. What was billed as a short term patch until the state could fix some of the issues causing the insurers to flee, became like the droughts, decades long with no end in sight. That is until the US Supreme Court agreed to hear Palmore Insurance’s appeal. After losing for two decades in the state’s court system Palmore was granted a lifeline, or as was more likely, they had found a way to purchase one. Citing Florida V. Dymor, the nation’s highest court, ruled in Palmore’s favor, claiming that the state of California had over reached its authority to regulate the insurance provider in part because of the Commerce Clause. This little appreciated act prevents states from interfering with cross border commercial activities as that job falls to the Federal Government. Palmore owned several luxury condos in a Florida complex owned by the then sitting president of the United States. The court believed the company’s claim that it conducted business at these properties and thus qualified as an interstate entity. Even before the ink could dry two million of the highest risk homeowners received disenrollment notices. The kindling was being gathered.

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

The other crews have all left by the time we assemble. Most are headed north towards the Juno fire, reports of its jumping containment came in around midnight. A couple of the crews will be rotating out with us at the end of the week, not because the fire bosses want them to, but science has shown 4 week rotations with one week breaks is the most effective use of a human over a twenty year period. Any more and the rate of “loss” is economically unacceptable. Your last week on tour is always the roughest. The Fire Bosses might have to follow the four week rule but that doesn’t stop them from getting every last ounce out of you before you rotate. Most fatalities occur in the fourth week. The Second was used to being put into the shittiest jobs so it came as a surprise to get such a cush assignment. After nearly twenty years of doing this shit it all starts to blur together a bit, the tours, fires, faces. I’ve been with this crew since the beginning and so have a handful of the other eleven men. With the exception of Donny, we are all within sight of crossing the line. Five years ago, the previous Crew Boss, Daniel Temple, crossed the line and left the crew to me. There isn’t a lot of loyalty to be found out here these days but we would have followed Temple into any fire. For some fucked up reason the crew has done the same for me. We’re split, six to a rig, not counting the driver. Teddy being my anchorman will ride with five in one rig, I’ll take the rest with me. Having been together since the Second was stood up, I trust Teddy’s knowledge of fires and terrain over anyone else’s, hell Temple would have left him the crew if it wasn’t for Teddy’s behavior at camp. Working a line means Teddy and I are at the far ends, directing and pushing the crew. The job of recovery isn’t one most crews relish but at this point we have done enough of them to learn to value the extra time away from the fire lines. Shifting through the burned out wrecks is still back breaking but it beats scraping ground. In the beginning recovery was focused on bringing back the bodies but as shit kept getting worse the real racket became the vehicles and equipment. Local Fire Bosses could sell the salvaged parts back to the contractors which were so focused on the bottom line they would take any chance they could to save a few bucks. Most of the field managers for the big three received bonuses for being under budget, and if they thought they might not make it, they could still buy the salvaged parts and charge their employers full price. Everyone’s got a racket. This was one of the first ways crews made money out here, that was until the Fire Bosses figured it out. Now rigs are inspected when they return to make sure the Bosses aren’t missing out. The driver said it was only a couple of hours west of camp where the crew got caught in the slide. Nothing to do but enjoy being tossed around in the back of the rig. 

I’ve seen images of what this part of the state used to look like. Unbroke forests running right up to some invisible line on the higher mountains. Not any more. Even the rendings of what post reclamation is supposed to look like don’t match what once was here. For one thing the sky in those images lacks the omnipresent orange coloring that never really goes away as much as changes in shades. In place of what once was, is now a mosaic of old burns that have plighted the landscape of nearly all life. Here and there are small pockets of unburned areas that have somehow survived the megafires over the decades. Intermixed in all this are the areas under reclamation by ClimaX, small stands of trees struggling to grow in moonscape left by the last megafire to hit the area. The one good thing these little forests have going for them is that there just isn’t enough fuel around for a big fire to reach them. The low brush and grasses that are always the first to recolonize after a fire are dry and primed to burn but evidence of controlled burns show even they won't get far. On some of the bigger tree stands, the trees are blackened from these controlled burns. Often set in the early part of the year before all of the moisture has left the area, crews like ours are sent out to manage these burns. It beats working uncontained lines on a big fire. Most of the western United States looked much like this place. Some areas were blessed with micro climates that could still support such a quaint concept as a fire season. Looking at a map of the west these days showed small pockets of yellow shaded regions, mostly surrounding the much smaller green smudges on the map. Anything shaded in red was considered outside the ability of the fire services to actively control. Orange area’s were a toss up. This all changed of course once you hit the Missouri River. Everything east of that body of water was considered outside the firebox and falls under different rules. The only exception in the west is the state of Texas which chose to go it alone. Its just one unbroken sea of red. 

We finally arrived, having driven up a narrow canyon service road. Passing filthy ClimaX signs weathering on the side of the road. Each proudly proclaiming the company's hard work to reclaim the area, restoring the natural ecosystem to its pre industrial fire state. The last one they had passed was little more than a twisted skeleton having been burned in the last fire. At one time this area was a national forest, now all that was left was the road and burnt out slopes. With so little fuel left to burn, the road wasn’t being maintained anymore, making their journey all that much harder. Just pass a switchback, the drivers pulled the rigs over. A widened area of the road would allow them to turn around if needed. The crew had to walk the last bit to reach the wrecks. At the point where the road doubled back on itself the slope gave way to a full view of the canyon. The crew paused long enough to see the path of the last fire that had burned through the area, racing up the narrow space, probably driven by the high winds common to the summers here. Teddy and I were thinking the same thing as we looked at each other. This fire was more than two years ago, what was a crew doing out here? We should have known something was up sooner. Ash slides are common but not this late in the season.

The winters in most of California were now marred by torrential rains. Often this meant what was once an entire year worth of rain for an area like this, now fell in a matter of weeks or even days. The ash and loose debris from the fires would wash downhill with the rains, building unstable dams at choke points. This late into the fire season, it was the risk of one of these dams bursting that caused ash flows, but they were halfway up the canyon’s slope nowhere near where the impounded water and ash was. Rounding the bend in the road the crew got their first look at the wrecks. One rig was laying upside down in the dried up drain ditch, half buried in the collapsed slope above it, the six wheels of the fifteen ton MRAP vehicle pointed up to the sky like a giant dead beetle. The second rig sat forty feet behind the other stopped in the middle of the dirt road. Both had been traveling down the canyon when something had gone wrong. I could see a giant crater in the roadway, almost two feet deep. We had heard of natives using pipe bombs to disable rigs before but whatever left this crater was much larger. Both rigs had been burnt out, the fire not spreading beyond due to the lack of fuel. The last fire through the area had burned hot enough to kill off the microbes in soil, meaning even with the winter and spring rains nothing was going to grow back anytime soon.

Teddy was inspecting the dead beetle when he called me over. “Look at this…” I could see what he was indicating even before I reached the vehicle. The windows of the rig were melted but still partially intact. It didn’t seem like much but it was just the first sign that these were not normal fire service rigs. The windows had to be original spec, meant for the battlefield. Our vehicle windows would have burned up in an instant given the amount of scoring on these ones. Looking in through the melted openings of the windows you could tell the fires were started inside the rig instead of from the outside. The driver’s door was partially open, something that can only be done from the inside once the rig is occupied. Teddy crawled inside and made his way towards the back of the rig, “Nothing, no gear, guns, or bodies.” It was Donny that let out an audible gasp even though we all had been holding our breath. The other vehicle was a similar story. Teddy started organizing the salvaging of the two rigs before returning to where I was now standing, looking out into the canyon from the downhill side of the road. “What are you thinking happened boss?” It was a good question. “They are new or at least better kept rigs for sure. No guns though.” The presence of guns could have meant they had belonged to one of the private security services that were becoming an ever present reminder of how fucked things had gotten. In the green zones or back in the cities outside the fire regions there were still plenty of folks with enough money to pay for extra protection from the masses. There were always rumors about roving armed gangs but not out in the red zones. And they couldn’t have been Guardsmen, the National Guard’s rigs were in just as rough shape as the ones the fire service used. “Someone already pulled the good stuff from the looks of it. Left the guts though.” Radios, crew gear and fuel cans had all been taken but whoever stripped that stuff left a ton shit behind.

The MRAP still sitting in the road had no damage to the engine compartment. The fires set inside of both rigs damaged a lot of the interior parts that were worth something but they left a lot of valuable engine and drivetrain parts behind. All the Second had to do was unbolt the parts and lug them back to the rigs still waiting at the switchback. The good news was they wouldn’t return empty handed. Fire bosses hate it when you show up empty handed. A dark brown spot on the edge of the road had caught my attention, “What do you make of that?” Teddy bent down and ran a finger though the dirt mixing the substance further into the lighter color gravel. “You think they shot the crew here and pushed them over the edge?” It was as good a guess as any, as we looked down the steep slope. A body would drop a long way before finally landing in the rough rocks jutting out from the hillside. It would be hard to see from here. “Fuck it, grab what we can. Take the pictures for the missing shit and let’s get out of here.” It took a little over an hour to secure what they could. It was a royal bitch hauling everything back to the waiting rigs. Maybe whoever got there first did them a favor burning out the interiors. Before leaving I took a look at the driver’s maps to see how much further the road went. Sitting at the high point of the canyon was a small gray area. No name, or number listed, just a miniscule gray square. Whatever it was, this was where the missing crew had been coming from. As the rigs rumbled back down the canyon, I caught a glimpse of something on the back of the burnt out ClimaX sign, a crudely spray painted red fist. Vida De Fuego had been here.

By the end of 2029 the writing was on the wall. Beginning in the early 2000s, one out every two new homes being built in the state of California, was built in a high fire danger area. By 2020 this meant that 11 million homes occupied the most risky areas for wildfires. Images of the Golden Gate Bridge obscured by the eerie red clouds of smoke had become a yearly tradition, and for a tiny town in Washington state, the first rumbles about refugees had already begun. The small town located on the Olympic Peninsula two hours west of Seattle, had always been caught between great historical changes. Port Townsend was known for its Victorian buildings, many of them three stories tall lining the few blocks of downtown. Built to lure the railroad companies to choose it as the terminus for its western reaches, the dream of becoming a major port city died when the railroad ended in another sleepy town called Seattle. What followed was decades of stagnant growth as residents clung on to the only economic lifeline they had left, the local papermill. This obscurity had allowed Port Townsend to become a quiet and safe place for those that struggled to find refuge. A thriving wooden boat and craftsmen community began to emerge bringing with it artisans and a whole host of other creatives that had finally found a home. By the 1990s Port Townsend was being recognized for its safe if somewhat weird community. Titles like “Best Small Town” and “Safest Place to Raise a Family” were being thrown around.

Before long Port Townsend became a desirable place to live for a wider range of people, despite the lack of economic opportunities. Most of the new arrivals were those retiring or with the economic means to survive the lack of tourists during the winter months. When the decade ended, locals were already used to hearing “California” when asking where their new neighbors were from. When the Great Recession hit in 2007/2008 and the growing city of Port Townsend wasn’t spared, but unlike other areas property prices really didn’t suffer, it was more like they sort of froze in place for a few years. This was the first real sign of danger to locals that had bought homes in the community before it became trendy. It was even more troubling for those already struggling to find an affordable home. These were the people that had been born here, or bought one of the decaying structures before Sunset magazine told them too. They watched as the housing market was flooded with cash offers for homes that should have been nearly worthless. Who can afford to live in a place with no jobs? Three years after the country learned the name “Mortgage Backed Security'' the city of Port Townsend was back in business. Sure there were some people that got hurt in the recession, lost their life savings, facing the real possibility that they would never be able to retire, but they were many more ready to purchase their failed dreams. For the working class, the area offered few jobs that made purchasing a home a reality. The city had little interest in them, they couldn’t afford to buy a two bedroom home for nearly a million dollars.

In a state with no income tax, property and sales taxes rule supreme. As the big fires in California started becoming household names, Port Townsend was fast becoming a refuge for those with the means to escape the fires. We didn’t call them refugees or migrants at the time but that was what they were. At the end of 2022, despite the Covid pandemic, the average home price for Port Townsend was nearly $650,000 while the average income for the community was $29,000 per person. Yard signs telling Californians to go home sprang up. It didn’t help that across the street from many of them an older home was being torn down to make way for someone’s idea of what a modern home should look like. The old wooden boats sitting in front yards that once brought the town its charm were now seen as eyesores hurting property values from going even higher. New arrivals complained about the smell from the papermill and openly celebrated its financial decline. Real locals became a dying species, more hardened in their opposition to newcomers. After the Pay Day fire, outright protests occurred in the city of Port Townsend. In a weird twist both old and new residents marched past the historic city hall demanding action to stop the sale of city property.

Following the 2026 fire season California saw a mass exodus of nearly 1.5 million residents. 2021 was the first time in over a hundred years that California had seen a population decrease, as just over a 100,000 people left the state. Five years later the trend had finally crossed the million mark. The city of Port Townsend saw a huge jump in property values as migrants of means looked for a safe landing spot. Seeing the opportunity the City decided to offer part of the old high school campus up for sale. The site contained a set of buildings the city couldn’t afford to retrofit to meet the state's earthquake requirements. The slow decline in attendance due to fewer families being able to afford to live in the community left the buildings unused. Residents weren’t fooled by the win-win the city was selling. Developers wanted to build multi unit dwellings that would drastically increase the number of residents in their precious town. Residents cited the already strained local healthcare system, outdated infrastructure, and the overdrawn water supply as reasons to stop the development. Residents that only escaped to the city two years ago, demanded that the door be shut on these newcomers for fear their new town would be ruined by outsiders. In the end a compromise of sorts was made, the thirteen acre piece of land was sold at public auction with the stipulation that any development on the property meet the county density requirements for undeveloped land. The property went for north of forty million dollars despite the buyer only being able to build four homes on it. The buyer was a former Palmor insurance executive wanting to build his dream home in the quaint little Victorian seaport of Port Townsend. 

Chapter 4

Chapter 4

I could give a fuck about what the Fire Bosses say, but its worrisome when they don’t say anything. No demand to know why the most valuable parts weren’t brought back, why no bodies. Nothing. We had only been back a couple of hours when we got word we would be rotating early. In almost twenty years of working this shit, I had never heard of a crew being rotated early. We were going back days before scheduled. The crew was ecstatic, not even caring they would miss chow. In a few minutes the transport bus would arrive to take them “home” for their week off. Teddy made eye contact with me, he didn’t like it either. “What do you think boss?” I thought it stunk of something. “When was the last time you got anything for free?” a grunt was his only response. I knew what Teddy was thinking, the Fire Bosses were getting us out of camp before the rest of the crews got back. It takes a lot of power to get drivers to do a night run and we would have to overnight it to the Oregon border. The only answer I could come up with was that the fire bosses thought we saw something they didn’t want shared. The image of the red fist painted on the back of the sign came instantly to my mind.

Rumors about Vida De Fuego, simply called VDF, weren’t anything new, in fact most people thought of them as an urban myth meant to scare the new guys. It seemed impossible for the Fire Bosses to be worried about that. Sit around any camp long enough and you’ll hear dozens of stories about them. No, whatever the reason was, it was clear the Bosses wanted the Second out of camp as soon as possible. Telling Teddy I would be back quickly, I made a beeline to the small circle of trailers at the back of camp, the crew thinking the itch had hit me. There was only one camp guard at the moment as the Second was the only crew in camp. “It’s a bit early, you know.” I ignored the guard, I still had money on me, I hadn't had time to stash, and the nice thing about cash was it worked anytime of the day. I found what I was looking for outside one of the doors built into the side of the trailer. The Fire Brides posted clip boards complete with time slots, allowing their prospective husband to sign up for a specific time to express their love. I was looking for one that already had names on it. Finding one with half a sheet worth, I knew this Bride had what I wanted. Knocking loudly on the door, it was thirty seconds before a voice sounded on the other side, “Your too early love, signup for later.” I knocked again, I could see the guard radio something in and begin moving my direction. The door swung open revealing a young woman with flowing black hair, or at least it would have been flowing if she hadn’t just woken up. “You got some balls love.” The lack of fear in her eyes spoke volumes. “This guy bothering you Maria lee?” The guard was now standing behind me at the bottom of the steps leading up to the trailer door. I pulled a wad of cash out of the concealed pocket of my field shirt, “I’m rotating out in an hour.”

The Fire Bride thought about it for a half second before dismissing the guard with a wave of her hand. The Fire Bosses might run the crews and camps but not this part. Marie Lee stepped aside to allow me in. Few took the risk of carrying cash on them when rotating. Too many ways to have it confiscated off you, non-residents weren’t supposed to be working. There were only a few options available to most crew members who wanted to avoid losing what little money that had scraped, and the Fire Brides knew they were at the top of the list of ways to spend it. The room was little more than an eight by eight space containing a single bed and small couch. A doorway led to Marie Lee’s living space. This was an area strictly off limits to her numerous husbands. “Well lover what will it be?” Wanting to get this unexpected early customer over with quickly, she had laid out on the bed. I sat on the couch and pulled a few bills out of the bundle I had shown her earlier. “I want to know what you’ve heard about the crew that wrecked yesterday.” Marie Lee had been slowly removing the baggy clothing she had been sleeping in but at my words, she covered herself up again, maybe this was going to be easier then she had thought. “What makes you think I heard anything?” She wasn’t sure how smart this guy was. He was wearing a crew boss field shirt, but then again most crew bosses were little more than thugs. “You have half the camp already signed up for tonight, including a couple of Fire Bosses.” My words were calm and matter of fact. I knew she was testing me to see how easily I might be separated from my money. I drew two more bills out and set them next to me. Fuck it, The chances I could get the cash past security in the Green Zone was about zero.

Chewing her lip in a decidedly unsexy way, Marie Lee made a decision, “Yeah I might have heard about that. Some outside crew was supposed to make camp last night but got caught in a slide.” This was the first mention of the missing crew being from “outside”. This meant the crew wasn’t assigned to the Battalion stationed in this sector. “How outside were they?” Marie Lee thought about it for a moment, “I don’t know, someone said something about down south but that’s all I remember.” Aside from their obvious attraction, the Fire Brides also tended to be the best source of information in any camp. For some dumb biological reason men felt the need to impress these women, maybe to assuage their hubris at having to pay them for sex. What this meant was they tried to show how important they were by sharing the more interesting parts of their jobs. No doubt some dumbass Fire Boss let slip to Marie Lee that a crew had been lost. What else might have they said? “Any idea what they were doing out there?” I regretted the question almost immediately as Marie Lee’s eyes shone bright for a second. “Oh, so you think they were making a run?” The term “making a run” meant a crew was smuggling something for the Fire Bosses. It was a fast way to make some cash but also damn risky. Crews making a run were fair game for anyone. It would make sense that the wrecks they had seen were making a run. Someone probably found out about it and ambushed the poor bastards. Marie Lee was already thinking about what my questions might mean for her. If one of the Fire Bosses in camp was running a network, that information could be worth a fortune, maybe even enough to set her up for a bit. I could see the gears turning in her head, I needed to change the subject, “Have you heard anything about Vida De Fuego lately?” It felt a little stupid to be asking this woman about the bogeyman but the red fist was still stuck in my mind. “You mean you haven’t heard?” The look of surprise on Marie Lee’s oval-shaped face was real, “They torched a ClimaX tree farm a couple of weeks ago.” She wasn’t sure if this Crew Boss was acting shocked or not, but he still had a fist full of bills. “For a couple of more, I’ll tell you what the Fire Bosses are saying about the VDF.” I pulled a couple of more bills out and set them on top of the others. “I’ve heard they have been hitting lots of ClimaX sites and even burned out a National Guard unit running security for that new Green Zone they are trying to open near Junction.” She could tell the shock was real this time. I hadn’t heard any of this, not even a whisper. They were always talking about opening new Green Zones, hell that was a major part of why ClimaX got the contracts for remediation, but this was the first time he had heard an actual new Green Zone was being built in central California. Marie Lee could see I was lost in thought but hadn’t put my money away, “You said you’re rotating out early?” She was leaning forward now allowing me a clear view of her ample breasts, “You going far?” Still feeling like I was waking up for a surreal dream, I mumble something about up north. “That’s a long trip, gets kind of lonely doesn’t it.” Her Hands were now on my knees. My hands had been resting in my lap still holding on to the cluster of bills I had pulled out earlier. She moved them out of her way, tossing the bills down next to the others. Fuck it.