Smoke was thick, and fire was spreading rapidly. Everywhere he looked was like a hellish nightmare.
“Staircase is out!” McCready roared. Jim was a few paces behind him and Haley. O’Brien was somewhere down at the bottom, probably trying to establish contact with the group.
“All this for a couple of homeless punks!” Haley yelled. “We’re gonna die because of those assholes!”
They weren’t fire scientists – the guys who determined how fires got started – but it didn’t take a genius to realize that the couple of homeless punks that Haley was referring to were the ones who started this blaze. Whether on purpose or because they’d dozed off around the fire, it didn’t really matter. What mattered was that the Forest had shown up, done a quick sweep and found those two, and upon hearing the
