Fire
Page 15
She was pretty sure she’d been on the road at the river. But after that, it wasn’t impossible she’d taken an animal trail up and out. To be safe, she might have to go all the way back to the river.
Water might become a problem for her tonight. She didn’t want to use the river for drinking water. Giardia, for one thing. But if she had to, better Giardia symptoms in a day than dying of thirst now. The day had turned hotter, and there was a breeze that made it through the burned-out forest easily, seeming to sap more moisture from her with every minutes. She avoided getting the next water bottle out, making herself wait a few more minutes.
And then she realized another option was available. She could walk all the way back to her car, where there was more water waiting, in bottles. Safe water. And she’d be more likely to be found near the cars.
Well, crap. It was the smart thing to do. But knowing that James and her mother were out there, thinking she probably died, looking for her burned body...? No. She couldn’t camp out at her car and wait for rescue, not knowing that. She had to take the matter into her own hands.
Thing was, she was dragging. She’d been walking slowly, and she doubted she had hiked five miles in total. But she wasn’t breathing right still. No energy. It was hard going, and fatigue was starting to settle on her. Maybe that was why she’d lost the road—mental fatigue, lack of attention. Her brain might not be working quite right either.
Tough. She could suck it up and keep moving north, out of here.
She made it back to the river, having wasted almost three hours on her detour, feeling disgusted with herself that she had. Had it been any other time, some weekend she was camping, and it had happened, she’d have been able to think of it as a pleasant side trip. Not today.
Of course, when had she last had that much time to fool around all weekend? Months and months ago.
Okay, she promised whoever might be listening. I am getting the message here. I’ll be kinder to James and take weekends off more often. We might have to go back to paying just one mortgage payment per month, rather than two—
And then she remembered that she might have no house. Not that a bank would quit demanding a payment. But ideally, insurance would cover what was remaining on the mortgage.
Back to her bargaining. When we have a house again, I’ll work less. Like normal hours, forty a week, only when James is gone to his job. I’ll stop a half-hour before he comes home and make food, or set out cheese and crackers and chill some wine, and pay more attention to him. I’ll appreciate the little things, like a good cheese and a good wine and talking our days over with each other. I won’t be such a workaholic. I’ll go in the woods on purpose from time to time, for fun, and stop and smell the roses or whatever there is to smell.
Which would hopefully smell better than smoke and ashes and her own sweat, which was what she smelled now.
She ate the pepperoni while she rested to get the stinkiest food gone. A bear would smell it before anything else. She washed her hands thoroughly in the river, finding more burns. And though she’d never do it under normal circumstances, she left the wrapper in the woods. There. If a bear smelled it, he’d find it, not her.
Sylvia drank only a third of the next-to-last bottle of water, though she wanted more, and forced herself back to her feet. She filled the empty two bottles with water, figured out which one was leaking, and dumped it back out, stepping on it to crush it before putting it back into the case. The other, filled with river water, she tore the paper wrapper off to tell her which it was. She’d drink it last. It went back into the briefcase. The open, good bottle in hand, she started walking north again, slowly, carefully checking where her feet were falling, making sure she was on the road.
A half-hour later, she saw one of those little brown road signs they had on fire roads sometimes, the rectangles with three numbers on them, and was reassured she was on the right track. But sundown was going to catch her out here if she didn’t hurry.
She had kept walking and kept walking, forcing herself beyond what she had thought she could manage. She drank the rest of the bottle of water she’d opened at the river and held onto the last good one, forcing one foot in front of the other. No way could she stop now. If she sat to rest, she knew she’d never get up. One foot in front of the other. Keep to the fire road. Keep moving. Just keep moving.
She was wheezing and standing still when they found her, unable to force herself to go one more step. She’d never been so glad to see another person in her life. “I need help,” she gasped out.
But she must have looked a mess, because the men who came at her were making shushing noises at her, and two were yelling at each other back at an SUV. One got on a radio. She didn’t pass out, but she was so tired and numbed with fatigue, she sat down a little quickly. She wasn’t quite tracking what they were doing. One came over to her and started asking her questions, only a few of which made any sense.
A half-hour later, when an ambulance pulled up to meet her rescuers where they’d taken her in their SUV—to the cult temple city, in fact, to meet on a paved road—did she understand that she might be in worse shape than she’d imagined.
Chapter 29
James jerked to a halt, staring into the open doors of the ambulance, convincing himself this wasn’t a dream. Her forehead was shining with ointment or something, and he could see burns on her face. She was missing some hair and the rest was soot-covered. She had an oxygen mask on. But it was her. It was Sylvia. If it was a hallucination, she’d look perfect, right? She looked like she’d been through hell, and therefore this had to be real.
He stumbled forward, and she reached out her hand to him. When he touched it that first time, the fear that he was dreaming evaporated, the fear of her being dead fleeing like a nightmare upon waking to see the sun shining in a beautiful blue sky. He held onto her hand, and he started crying. “I was so scared,” he said. And the tears overwhelmed him and he tried to say, “I love you,” but all he could do was move his lips.
She nodded and pulled the oxygen mask aside. “Me too,” she said. Her voice was rough.
The paramedic with her shushed her and put the oxygen mask over her face. That dear, beloved face. The one he’d be seeing for the rest of his life.
She’d made it. He dashed at his tears, but they wouldn’t stop. The relief was too great. The paramedic said, “You okay to drive? You can follow us to the hospital.”
“I’m fine. I’m great!” he said.
The sheriff’s deputy stepped up. “I can drive you if you need me to.”
“No, I’ll get it together.” He dashed his tears away again and wrestled his emotions under his control. “I can drive.”
“I’ll follow you to the county line, just in case. To make sure you’re driving okay.”
The ambulance door shut, and his heart twisted at losing the sight of her. But she was okay. She could talk. She could sit up. Whatever was wrong with her, they’d fix. He ran back to his car. The ambulance siren started up again. And he fell in behind the ambulance, which went damned fast. He kept up. Behind him, the sheriff followed, his siren and lights going as well. At the county line, that one peeled off and a new sheriff car fell in behind from the new county. Whether it was a kind consideration or them not trusting him to drive, he didn’t care. It just meant he got there faster, could be with her sooner.
They were taking her to the big hospital in Sacramento, it looked like. He should have asked, but he’d follow them wherever they took her. To San Francisco, if need be. He didn’t want to let her out of his sight.
He’d call her mom first thing when he stopped. Then his mother. Then everybody who had called when he had a breather at the hospital. He had good news now. He wanted the whole damned world to know.
Epilogue
“Ready?” he said. Sylvia was settled in a wheelchair. She could walk fine. Just hospital regulations, them pushing her along to the door in the chair.
“You’ll love the place,” her mother said,
as they navigated the halls of the hospital. “I have curtains and a shower curtain up and everything.” James had handed her over a credit card for that sort of thing, but she’d refused to take it, saying she had enough money to furnish a temporary apartment for her baby girl. James had paid for furniture rental. It’d suffice for now. Until they decided what to do.
They didn’t know yet. Part of them wanted to rebuild in Pinedrops. But they were both afraid of wildfire, James no less than Sylvia. It was too soon to make a forever decision. Right now, they just wanted to enjoy being alive, and being with each other.
“Thanks for helping, Mom,” Sylvia said. She shared a smile with James. It’d be hard to convince Francine to go home, but Sylvia would manage. A few days with her mother while Jim worked, and Sylvia’d have her back on a plane.
James’s boss had known of a good apartment for rent in Sacramento. It allowed James to get to work in twenty minutes, and Sylvia could work from anywhere once she felt up to it. It wasn’t Pinedrops, and it wasn’t their home with a beautiful view, but one day not too far in the future, they’d have a house again.
Sylvia would be fine. She had a few burns that would scar, but to James she was the most beautiful woman in the world, scars or not.
“I’m not,” she’d said to him in the hospital a few days ago, touching the bandages on her neck and face, looking into a hand mirror she’d insisted he get her.
“You are to me. You always will be.”
“I hope they can do something later on, if they scar.”
“I hope so too for your sake, or that they don’t scar at all, but for my sake, I want you any way I can have you. You could be entirely bald, and I’d still be thrilled to spend our lives together.”
“That’ll grow back, they say. It’s just these scars on my cheek I’m worried about.”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry you went through what you did. I’m sorry I wasn’t there to help you.”
She’d put down the mirror and looked up at him. “I think of the two of us, I had the easier time.” She reached for him and they sat in her hospital bed and just held on to each other, gently, so he wouldn’t irritate any of the sore places where she’d been burned. In a way, to James, every time they held each other felt like the miracle of her showing up alive all over again. He knew he’d get used to it in time. He knew they’d probably even have spats in the future. But for now, every moment was a gift, every touch was a benediction. He relished them all.
“James?” Sylvia’s voice brought him out of the memory of that moment.
“Yes?” While he’d been remembering, they’d already reached the back door, and the orderly stood there, waiting to take back the wheelchair.
“I’m ready,” Sylvia said.
“Good. Let’s go home.” He gave her his hand and helped her balance as she stood from the wheelchair.
The day was cloudy, and cooler than last week had been. The rains would arrive by tomorrow, and wildfire season would be over—for this year, at least. California was not done with wildfires though—not by a long shot. It’d keep happening, and the more people who moved here, the more damage there’d be to homes. There wasn’t an end in sight.
They left the hospital through the back door and out into a staff parking lot. Sylvia’s story had made the papers and even TV news, and there were reporters waiting like vultures out front. The hospital had been great about getting them out of here without that hassle. Sylvia took his arm and let him lead her to his car, though she was perfectly capable of walking on her own.
His mother-in-law fussed over getting her seated in the front passenger seat, and then she got into the back. James got in. Sylvia reached over and took his hand. They exchanged a smile.
Then he started the car, put it into gear, and they headed off for their new life.
The End
Author’s Note
There is no Pinedrops, California. The area where I put it is certainly real, as are the surrounding towns that are named, but the place James and Sylvia lived in the pages above doesn’t exist.
I confess, wildfires terrify me. I’ve been writing natural disaster thrillers for ten years, and it took me this long to be brave enough to write this one. Sylvia’s animal panic reaction in Chapter 7 was mine in 1991, when the cloud of the Oakland, California fire drifted over my head in San Francisco and changed the color of my world. I had no television, and the radio wasn’t on, so I hadn’t heard of it on the news. The cloud itself was my news. My body knew to run before my brain could catch up, and though I soon understood that I was protected by a vast stretch of water and would not have to flee, I still wanted to run. I knew then I never wanted to get any closer to a wildfire than where I was at that moment. Not until the smoke blew away the next day did I stop clutching the arms of chairs and looking around myself like a wild thing, heart pounding, trying to find a way out.
For this book, I’ve read every narrative I can find of survivors of wildfires, and I thank them for being so honest and forthcoming to interviewers so I could vicariously experience their moments of fear, fleeing, and loss. Australia’s wildfires and California’s wildfires, and a few others here and there, were my model fires. I mined these articles and video interviews for tiny details to add to the realism of this novel, and I watched far too many unnerving videos taken in wildfires as people fled through flames and rains of sparks. Several books about fire jumpers helped me understand the firefighters’ perspective better, and though I didn’t use a lot of that research in this book, I found it interesting. Investigative articles and books on the electrical grid in the US and the problems of its aging helped me understand the broader picture of that, and the aging US grid is something else that frightens me. In the West, it’s a constant fire threat.
Fast, deadly, and painful when they catch you, wildfires are the very worst disaster fear I have. Stay safe out there.
Also by Lou Cadle
Gray, a post-apocalyptic disaster series:
Gray, Part I
Gray, Part II
Gray, Part III
Gray, The Complete Collection
A stand-alone post-apocalyptic novel:
41 Days
World War II spy thriller
Code Name: Beatriz
Stand-alone natural disaster novels:
Erupt
Quake
Storm
Blizzard
Wildfire (coming in 2020)
Hurricane (coming in 2021)
Crow Vector: Pandemic
Dawn of Mammals series, time-travel adventure:
Saber Tooth
Terror Crane
Hell Pig
Killer Pack
Mammoth
Oil Apocalypse series, post-oil near-future survival adventure
Slashed
Bleeding
Bled Dry
Parched
Desolated
If you'd like to know about new releases, sign up for my mailing list at www.loucadle.com, and I'll give you a link to a free short story collection as a thank you!
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Epilogue
Author’s Note
Also by Lou Cadle