The sun beat down relentlessly on the group of firefighters assembled in the vacant lot in Clarksville. Captain Frank Monahan's Engine Company was in training, and the senior members were letting the probies practice coordinated operations, spraying water toward the base of a water tower and covering each other's advances under the direction of Lieutenant Westwood. It was the first 100-degree day of the summer, and the probies were hot and tired, sweating in their heavy turnout gear, only slightly refreshed when the wind blew the water back into their faces. They were, of course, enjoying every minute of it. Frank stood in front of Engine 4, watching the evolution.

"Looks like I got a pretty good recruit, Captain," said Danny Prestinari, Engine 4's pump operator. "That Brett Larson is officer material. Too bad about the babe."

"You're referring to Probationary Firefighter Molly Messina, I presume?" asked Frank. "I think she's officer material, Presto. But we won't know a thing until we see them in action."

"Yeah, right. Five bucks says I can knock her off the line," Presto retorted, his hand on the pump throttle.

"You're on."

Presto cranked the throttle, and the hoses stiffened as the pump surged. The firefighters felt the rising water pressure and braced themselves, struggling to keep the nozzles from wrenching free. One probie lost the battle, and the free end of the hose whipped around, knocking the crew on the line to the ground. Jimmy quickly shut down the line and radioed Westwood.

"Four-Chauffeur to Four-Attack-Alpha. Everyone OK, Lieutenant?"

"We're fine, Presto. Larson just needs to learn to brace better, that's all."

Monahan grinned as Jimmy handed him a five.

"My probie stayed with it."

"Just wait, Captain. We'll know for sure when the action comes."

Across the street, the shimmering heat caused pressures to rise inexorably in the cylinders stacked none-too-neatly in the fenced enclosure behind Jackson's Gas Products. The economic downturn had caught old man Jackson with too much inventory and too few buyers, and poorly-maintained gas cylinders filled the bottle yard. Inevitably, a relief valve popped open on an overheated container of propylene.

Jackson's bookkeeper was sitting in the office when she heard a bang followed by the deafening shriek of escaping gas. She saw a white vapor cloud deep within the bottle yard ignite. As she ran for the door, an explosion blew her outside. Then the wall fell on top of her.

The firefighters across the street stared in awe as a fireball rose above the bottle yard. Everyone except Frank.

"Four-Command to Clarksville Dispatch; Engine 4 is on scene with a major fire at Jackson's Gas Products. We're going to need mutual aid."

He listened just long enough to confirm his call had been heard, and then started giving orders. The good news was that, because of the training, they were already hooked up to a hydrant. The bad news was that the engine was set up too close to the fire.

"OK, we're stuck here, we're short-handed, and we're going to be on defense. Vicente, take the B line to the corner and put water on the yard from the Elm Street side. Callahan, you take C line to Walnut Street. Westwood, take A line and the probies; set up at the front gate. Listen to your radios! If it gets untenable, fall back to here."

Monahan watched; the orders were swiftly executed. He turned to Prestinari. "Presto, be ready to feed the deck gun; we may need it to cover our butts if things go south."

"I'm on it!"

In the bottle yard, the fire grew as the heat forced more relief valves to open. This isn't good at all, thought Monahan. If the fire gets too hot too soon, the relief valves won't be able to keep up, and--

BLAM!

Monahan's worst fears were realized when the end of a cylinder let go, rocketing the remains straight up, pinwheeling fire across the sky.

"Four-Command, Dispatch, we have bottles exploding. Recommend a two block perimeter. We could really use some help down here..."

"It's on the way, Captain."

"Four-Attack-Alpha to Four-Command," Westwood called. "Frankie, we see a person down outside the office; we're going in."

Damn it! "Four-Command to Four-Attack-Bravo, reposition to cover Attack-Alpha. Attack-Charlie, cover Attack-Bravo." Monahan turned to his pump operator. "Get the deck gun going."

Presto pulled the valve to the deck gun and cranked the pumper's throttle as high as it would go. A great wide swath of water surged across the lot toward the remains of the office, landing just short. Monahan watched Westwood and the two probies advance into the yard as gas flames burned and bottles lit off all around them. One of the firefighters let go of the line and ran ahead into the smoke beyond the curtains of falling water.

"Who was that?" asked Presto.

"Messina."

Seconds later, Messina reappeared, the victim on her back.

The whole bottle yard was on fire now, with thick black smoke rising into the sky, gas bottles exploding like popcorn, and debris rocketing everywhere. Frank gave orders for the firefighters to fall back behind Engine 4, where they gave first aid to the bookkeeper and awaited reinforcements.

Monahan looked at Molly Messina, covered with dirt, soot and sweat, grinning from ear to ear, and smiled.

"Definitely officer material," he said to himself.

“Where are you off to?”

Kaden picked up the keys and looked over at his mum in the lounge room, accidentally catching a glimpse of the photos of his father on the sideboard. “Just out,” he said.

“Oh c’mon, Kade, please. Just stay in,” there was no nagging in her voice, but Kaden could tell she was close to tears. “You want to talk about it?”

Kaden shook his head. No, he thought, you want to talk about it. “Mum, I’m going out.”

“Fine . . .” He turned back to where his mum was standing in the doorway. She looked vulnerable – much older, gaunt without her make up on – but Kaden couldn’t stand it in the house any longer. “See ya,” he said and walked out, wishing he didn’t feel so bad for leaving her alone.

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”Don’t worry, Kade. You’ll be fine!” His dad smiled at him as he climbed up into the fire truck, looking comfortable in his yellow uniform. His dad had been a long-time volunteer with the CFA, but this was Kaden’s first time out in a real bushfire. He’d done the drills, done the training, but he’d never been out in such heat and the wind was blowing harsh northerlies like a blast furnace.

Kaden smiled back and walked over to the crew in the second truck. “Yeah, no worries, Dad . . .”

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He took his mum’s car, leaving his Monaro behind. He was fixing it up with his dad’s help and he hadn’t been able to touch it since, leaving it to gather a thin layer of dust in the garage. Driving slowly down the driveway, he watched out of the rear-view mirror as the house grew distant. He waited until he was over the cattle grid and onto the sealed road before he put his foot down, speeding as he left the paddocks and the hills and headed into the mountains.

Even with his high beams on, he could barely see the trees beside the winding road. The once-white trunks of the eucalypts were all turned to black, absorbing the light they used to reflect back. He had reached the outskirts of the fire . . .

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They had set off into the National Park, heading after a small spot fire lit by embers from the main front - an angry, growing blaze burning south-west away from their position. No one expected the conditions to be this fierce and Kaden felt light-headed from the scorching heat.

They were on a fire track, winning the battle against the little outbreak when the wind suddenly whipped around, blowing up dry leaves, ash and dust. Kaden saw his father working with the men and women from the first truck down the very end of the track and turned back to his work manning the pump . . .

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Kaden pulled up to a picnic spot, not far from the track. He hadn’t been able go down it since. He grabbed the beer he’d hidden under the driver’s seat and walked over to the picnic table, climbing onto the brand new tabletop: the picnic area had been rebuilt and the tracks cleared for walkers, yet there was barely a hint of regrowth in the forest three months after the fire. Kaden looked up at the moon through the bare, spindly branches that once were full of leaves and hugged himself in the icy night air, wishing he could cry or scream or do something.

He finished his beer and threw it idly away, watching it smash against the new brick barbeque. He jumped off the table and over to the broken bottle; taking a deep breath, he found a broken shard, big enough to hold in his hand and set off down the track.

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The fire front moved so quickly they didn’t have a chance. The change had blown the smoke all around, blocking out the sun, and sent the fire racing towards them through the treetops: the only warning they had was the roar of a thousand jet engines as it sped down the mountainside.

Everyone ran back to the truck and Kaden dropped to the ground, rolling under the vehicle. The heat was so intense he thought he would die and he buried his face into the dust. After what could have been seconds or forever he heard the fire pass and the men from his crew shouting, jumping out of the truck. Crawling out, he looked down the track to where the first truck was smouldering, red paint puckered and black, and he fell to his knees . . .

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He tried to turn back, but told himself he had to keep going. After walking for twenty minutes down the track, past the eerie pocket the fire didn’t catch and saved his life, he reached the end. The moon shone down, lighting the barren landscape unhindered by forest canopy, and Kaden could still make out the melted rubber from the truck’s tyres. A wreath had been nailed to a tree nearby, left for one of the other six volunteers who died in that blaze, and Kaden felt his stomach turn to ice. This was the place his father died.

Taking the shard of glass, he walked up to the next tree, carving deep, white letters into the blackened trunk: R.I.P Robert Alan Birchwood 1/11/1964 – 23/1/2009.

Kaden paused, then wrote in large letters underneath: D A D.

Like all fires it started small. A careless nail had scraped the insulation from the live wire. Current flowed through the nail heating it red hot. There wasn't much air so the wood smoldered slowly, but that was enough.

“It's about time you finished that damn basement! All you do is work these days.”

“I'm going to bed. You can come or not.”

It took hours for the line of barely burning wood to reach the air space in the dropped ceiling, but once it did it went from slow patient burn to roaring flame in seconds. It bit into the floor above, by the time the smoke alarm went off the fire owned the main level of the house. It roared like a hungry beast.

“The smoke alarm!”

“The downstairs is blocked, go out the window. I'll get the kids.”

The fire devoured the main floor, but once again it lacked air. Thick black smoke poured up the stairs. Between the heat and the smoke the man barely made it down the hall to the room where his daughters slept. He slipped through their door and coughed. Smoke curled under the closed door. Using a chair to smash a window he lowered one girl then the other out as far as he could with their sheet. He followed them more clumsily. They ran across the yard and he lifted them over the fence to the neighbour's yard. He could hear his wife screaming as she banged the neighbour's door.

The fire was smothering in its own smoke. The flames licked slowly up the walls and scratched at the ceiling. The lead figurines on the mantel melted and ran across the stone. The fire waited. Gradually the floor above burned. The door to the girl's room turned black, then a trickle of flame appeared on the inside. The door burned faster until it collapsed. The fire breathed in the fresh oxygen rich air and it howled in triumph. Half burnt smoke caught fire again and a fiery tornado formed in the house. Flames exploded through the walls and roof shooting higher than the trees.

Sirens approached from all directions. Fire trucks appeared and fire fighters ran in organized chaos connecting hoses. The fire lit the scene macabre red. Heat from the fire had called flames from the cedar siding of the house next door. Fire fighters hacked their way into the house and went looking for its residents. Others gathered on the street to watch the battle.

Hoses were turned, not on the burning house, but on its neighbours. The fire on the cedar house wasn't strong enough to fight the water that poured onto it. Even as the water turned to steam, the fire gave up. The occupants staggered into the street led by their rescuers. On the other side of the main fire, aluminum siding buckled and hissed with the heat, but no flame found a niche.

With the closest neighbours safe the fire crew turned their attention to the main fire. It roared defiance at them. The heat turned the water into steam before it reached the flames. More trucks arrived and new crews took the place of men and women who were gasping from heat and exertion.

The fire broke into the garage and found the cars and gasoline. The explosion threw flames yet farther into the air and sent the garage door tumbling across the yard. It crashed into a fire truck and a fire fighter who was too exhausted to move quickly. His companions in this battle pulled him to safety before they returned to the fight. The ambulance wailed as it carried the casualty away.

Now the fire's success was killing it. The house fell in on itself sending tongue of flame shooting high into the air, but this was the monster's dying gasps. It wasn't lack of air this time that was killing the fire, but lack of fuel. The voracious flames had consumed everything that could burn. The heat could crack concrete and shatter glass, but it couldn't make them burn. As the fuel ran out the heat lessened and water began to fall at the base of the flames. The fire fought. It snarled and hid. It found pockets of flammables and roared into life again, but each pocket burned was a blow to the heart of the fire.

The sun rose from a flame red sky to light the scene. Hoses ran every which way while streams of black water ran down the street. The crowds faded away leaving a man clutching his wife and daughters. Someone had wrapped a blanket around the family. Even now some stood with them as they surveyed the devastation.

“Where are we going to live Mommy?”

“Not everything.” The man held his family tighter. “The most important thing we still have.”

The man knelt and hugged his weeping family, his own tears cutting tracks through the dirt on his face. They watched as fire fighters began probing for hot spots while others just sat and enjoyed the luxury of breathing without a mask.

So the fire ended, as all fires do, in ashes and perhaps, the hope of rebirth.

It was all about the honey.

My brother, Ben, always older and wiser than us girls, discovered a beehive in an old stump on the edge of the back pasture by the woods. He knew from the hive my father used to have at our old house, that bees make honey, and fresh honey tastes good! An expert on nature at the age of thirteen, he naturally decided that smoking the bees out of the stump was the thing to do.

Brilliance flying in the face of logic has always been a trait of the McDuff family. There was the time my mom decided to use the dishwasher door as a step stool to get a seldom-used dish from the top shelf of a cabinet. She figured the dishwasher wasn’t going anywhere. Then my dad, while re-attaching the dishwasher door, thought that since the dishwasher wasn’t turned on, how could there be any power to it? We had to get a new dishwasher, and almost a new father, after that incident.

Then there was the time my sister thought that if a little pinch of goldfish food was good, a whole container would be excellent! She was so upset when she found the fish floating belly-up in its bowl, and cried throughout the porcelain “burial at sea”. My other sister showed her keen intellectual skills by deciding to keep pet scorpions in her empty cricket cage. That plan changed with the first scorpion she picked up. Or how about when I, in my own spate of brilliance, thought it would be kinder to the tree to climb only on the dead branches. I thought I’d never get out of the hospital!

Anyway, Ben thought long and hard (for about 10 seconds) about the best way to smoke out the bees. He gathered newspaper and a pack of matches and headed for the back pasture. He swears to this day that he was only trying to get the paper to smoke, but that old stump went up in flames almost immediately! There was plenty of smoke, all right, and luckily, too. The fire department could see the smoke across the pastures and woods from their building. One fireman rushed out to find the exact location of the fire while the rest of the firemen readied the trucks.

My dad heard the siren as the car came up our bumpy driveway. He went outside to see what was up, saw the smoke, and knew it was coming from our property. The fireman radioed Dispatch, and the fire trucks arrived shortly. Dad guided them up the driveway, around the well, around the barn, between the trees, and through the pasture. There would be time afterwards to survey the damage to the well casing from one of the big wheels, so he took off after the trucks to see if the whole woods was going up in flames, and we all followed.

Luck was with us that day, as the fire had only spread to one tree by the time the firemen started pumping water onto the flames. My brother came out of hiding, unable to resist the excitement. Dad knew immediately who was responsible; you should have seen the look on his face as he grabbed my brother’s arm! I believe my brother’s life was saved by the Fire Chief that day, as he came over to ask some questions. We all listened gleefully as the story came out. Ben was not cited, but boy, I don’t think he could sit down for a week after that whipping!

With the fire out, it was time for the fire trucks to leave. The car left first, then the hook and ladder truck. Then went the pumper truck. I said, then went the pumper truck.

Nope. It was stuck up to the axle in mud. No amount of spinning its wheels or rocking back and forth helped. The firemen radioed Dispatch, who called a wrecker. Once again, my father directed a truck up the bumpy driveway, around the well, the barn, the trees, and through the pasture. The damage to the barn could wait until after all heavy equipment was gone. He then found the wrecker with a winch attached to the fire truck, trying to pull it out. However, the mostly-full pumper truck was heavier than the wrecker, and pulled the wrecker forward just enough so that it, too, was mired in mud.

The next wrecker stopped halfway between a huge black walnut tree and the first wrecker. Using the force of a thick tow chain wrapped around the tree, and a winch going to the first wrecker, it was able to stabilize the first wrecker enough to allow it to pull the fire truck forward some. This made enough room for the first wrecker to be pulled out of the mud, yet still reach the pumper truck. Then the first wrecker pulled the fire truck a bit more, loosened the winch, backed up, and the second wrecker tightened its winch. These maneuvers were repeated until the fire truck was safely on dry ground. After disconnecting, all three trucks were able to turn around and leave. That’s when Dad was finally able to examine the damage to the well, barn, tree, and mailbox, and put in a claim for repairs.

We never did get any honey.

A flick of a finger, a drop of an ash, long forgotten before it even touches the floor.

The small ember smoldered, glowing faintly red and slowly turning gray. A slight breeze swept in through the broken window and fanned it to life as it flickered to deep red, and the paper lying below it gave up a wisp of smoke that slowly grew and finally a finger of flame circled the ember and spread outward eating its way through the daily news.

Its edges curling, the paper sent up puffs of smoke. The wind gusting through the pane of glass created a whirlwind of air that rushed around the room and sent small flakes of glowing paper sailing through the air. Most out, but some still glowed red and angry. They settled slowly around the room and began to feed. Their hunger growing as they raced to be the first to devour the food supply at hand.

The air swooping in and lifting and scattering even more small almost lifeless little flames, they swirled around the room and up into the ceiling. The panels composing the rooms ceiling dipping and yawning into the room, their bellies exposed and yellowed as the small grayish red pieces landed and gave birth to larger flames. The room reeked of burning plastic as the tiles in the ceiling began to drip down onto the floor creating puddles of fire that race across the aged hardwood floor.

A river of fire raced within the broken and splintered cracks of the tongue and groove wood that made up the flooring. It reached a wall and found a dangling ripped curtain and swooped upwards again looking for home. The flames licking the wallpaper that curled and blackened as it raced passed looking for more food, more air. It ate at the frame of the window, the paint peeling with the intensity of the attack.

The temperature in the room rose as the smoke thickened and blackened like waste being given off after a meal consumed. The smoke swirled as the small gust of air swept in through the broken pane. The fire turning orange and red in turn as it consumed all that it was capable of using for fuel to feed its newborns as they raced outwards from the small ember that sat at its center. It was long gone now, that first dying ember that felt it self burning out and struggled to give birth. It would be proud of what it had created, this monster that ate all that came before it and never sated it continued to hunt down more fuel to feed its growing family as more and more small flickers came from the whole and started anew.

They raced like siblings trying valiantly to outdo the other as they flickered and flared and spread through the room, finally finding the door and slipping under through the small gap at the bottom to find a carpet. They challenged each other as they smoldered at the edges and smoke curled up from under the door and upward from the carpet, the smoke following the course of their cousins and raced to the ceiling to fan out and create a black hovering cloud of choking vapors. Flames flickered and grew on the carpet and then raced across the room in search of more, always more. Never enough.

The old home engulfed, it lit up the empty neighborhood that was due to be demolished. The architect long gone, his plans already lying on his sketch table, completed. The fire would purify, it would do the job that the wrecking crews were suppose to do. There would not be much to cart away when it finally found the last morsel of food and slowly faded to gray and then crumpled in the wind dying or dead, it would be blown by the wind until it landed or was no more. The wind seemed to sigh as it wound its way through the ravaged building, it felt the presence of those who had moved on long ago and yet left so much behind. It felt the passing of time and it knew its part as the last of the fire smoldered and sent inconsistent flames licking upward in search of a food that it had long since consumed.

Engorged, it would die. Killed by its own need to eat all that came before it.