The Premonition: A Pandemic Story

by Michael Lewis

One fire in particular had captivated his and Richard’s imagination when they’d read of it years earlier. It was known as the Mann Gulch fire, after the area in Montana that had burned back in 1949. A decade earlier the U.S. Forest Service had created an elite team of smokejumpers who parachuted into fires. One August afternoon, fifteen young men, most between the ages of seventeen and twenty-three, parachuted into what they thought was a small and simple fire. They landed by 4:10 p.m. and began to hike down into Mann Gulch, with their heavy packs and Pulaski axes on their backs. They didn’t know each other and, as they hiked, split into smaller groups. To their right was a steep ridge, to their left a creek. The fire they’d been sent to fight burned safely on the other side of that creek, or so they imagined. There weren’t many trees, just tall grass, but they were unable to see much ahead of them. A mile or so down the gulch, the creek drained into the Missouri River. Their plan was to walk to the river, cross over the creek, and fight the fire with the river at their backs. The river at their backs was their escape route. But as they neared the river, there came a shocking sight: fire. It had jumped across the creek and now blocked them from the river. Worse, it was moving across the grass toward them. One moment the fire had been invisible, the next a terrifying wall of flames thirty feet high. It was now 5:45. They turned to flee, but the only escape route was up and ...