“Hope, are you okay?” Lance was right behind her, dragging her back to her feet with his hand under her arm.
His strength stunned her. The mild-mannered guy nearly picked her up with one hand. But her attention was on the scene in front of her. Joel staggered onto the porch with Perry hanging across his shoulders. Relief had her knees buckling. She would have fallen back to the ground if Lance wasn’t holding her.
Joel got to the steps and flames shot up around him. The fire crackled and there was a loud bang from inside the cabin.
Hope needed to get to them. She took a step and ran into Jeff. He stood there, holding a blanket and staring blankly into the flaring orange.
Snatching it out of his hands, she rushed forward. She met Joel halfway down the stairs. The fire followed them. In a blind panic, she threw the blanket over Perry’s body and patted out the flickers on his back and sleeve.
At the bottom and a good fifteen feet away from the porch, Joel dropped to his knees. He rolled Perry off him and onto the ground. Joel followed a second later as he hacked and his body shook.
She slid down, ignoring the way the ground soaked her jeans and the residual pain from her knee injury. “Are you okay?”
A second coughing fit stopped whatever Joel was about to say. Slapping his hands against the ground, he turned around and got up on his hands and knees.
The noise plus the crackling of the fire drowned out his words. She looked up at him. “What?”
He put his hands over his mouth like a funnel. “Where are Charlie and Cam?”
Then she remembered the hose and the danger. Perry hadn’t moved and Joel’s skin was warm to the touch. Soot stained his forehead and she saw a hole in the back of his shirt where she guessed a spark had hit him.
“We need to get this fire out.” She got up, thinking to grab Lance, until she felt a hand on her leg.
Looking down, she watched Joel use her for balance as he struggled to his feet. His chest caved from coughing, but his grip was strong. “We need a hose,” he said over the shuddering cough.
“Cam is getting it.” She pushed Joel farther from the fire and toward Jeff and cleaner air. “Lance and I will go.”
Joel was already shaking his head. He pointed at the far side of the cabin. “We all go.”
“What about Perry?” Lance asked as he stared at the still body.
“He’s dead.”
The sharp words stabbed into her. They’d lost Perry. It would have been Joel, too, if he’d stayed in the cabin another minute or two. Even now she heard wood break as the roof shifted.
She only shook herself out of the nightmare when Joel started moving. She reached for him just as she saw Cam and Charlie come around the corner with a hose and buckets.
Joel straightened as his coughing abated. “Everyone move.”
“It won’t reach,” Cam called out the problem as he yanked on the thick hose dragging behind him. “We have to get this fire out now.”
Charlie motioned to Lance and Jeff. “You two come with me and get the barrels.”
She had no idea what that meant. Desperate to do something, she stood by Cam and Joel on the side of the fiery cabin and took over the job of spraying water. The hose was heavier than she’d expected and slipped through her hands twice, sending water shooting up and soaking her.
With a tighter grip, she tried again. This hose was nothing like one she’d seen in gardens. It was thicker and heavier. Heaving it under her arm, she aimed the stream at the flames peeking through the cabin wall.
As the flames grew, crashing thundered around them. The fire raged and more beams fell. More than once Joel and Cam stomped out small fires that jumped the cabin and took hold on the forest floor.
“Figures it’s not raining now,” Cam said.
Joel headed for the porch again. “We can’t reach around to the front door and I need to get water in there. If I can get higher...”
When he eyed up the roof her gut twisted until she thought it would explode inside her. “No.”
Cam sided with her and grabbed Joel just as he started to move. “No way. It’s caving in. You’ll go right down into the fire. Honestly, it will tick me off to have to go in after you.”
“We don’t have a choice.”
“Shove something into the side. Make a hole.” She screamed to be heard over the mix of fire and banging and water.
Both men stared at her.
She tried again. “Crash it in if you have to, just make an opening wide enough for me to get the water in.”
This time they moved. After a quick look around, Joel motioned to the impossible-to-move logs they used as a seat around the fire pit. They each took an end and pulled.
She saw the strain on their faces and shaking in their arms. Somehow they carried it over to the cabin’s side. Heat pulsed off the building in waves. Sweat rolled down her back, and her face felt on fire, like the worst, most intense sunburn ever.