by L. B. Carter
He turned to her, wrinkles in his forehead. “You of all people should understand how specialized someone’s field gets.”
“I hoped maybe you read a paper once or something.” She turned back. Another tree caught in a sudden gush, and she cringed, pain flaring coincidentally in her hand as she fisted it. “Let’s go.” She couldn’t see far down the road, smoke and the brilliance hiding their fate. “I need to get to my sister.”
Ace inhaled audibly through his nose, nostrils flaring, then touched the gas pedal, crawling their truck slowly through the danger. “Keep on this side. I don’t know how strong the glass is on this truck.”
Henley unbuckled and shifted over to sit perpendicular on Ace’s lap, his arms caging her in to reach the steering wheel. She stared out at the dancing oranges and yellows and reds beyond the passenger window, keeping her head back—out of his line of sight and as far from the horror as possible. The roaring got louder as they got further into the fire. The trees looked so desolate.
“What can I do?” she whispered.
“Nothing,” Ace reassured, his voice rumbling through his chest against her side.
She cringed.
“I mean that this isn’t on you. This is for my mother to sort out and the fire departments.”
She looked up at his face, the scruff from their days on the road stubbling his wide chin, his dark lashes reaching out below his hairline. “And what if they get hurt?” Like his father. “This is my fault,” she insisted, turning back to take in her greatest mistake, acknowledging it completely.
The window suddenly gave a few sharp cracks and burst into the car. Henley tucked in her arms and ducked into Ace’s shirt, her waist screaming at the movement, and his right arm circled her head. The roar was in the truck now, shouting right at her. She couldn’t avoid it.
Ace swore again, and their crawl pulled to a stop.
Henley sat up and turned to witness the tree that cracked like a gunshot and tipped across their path with a massive crash. It was a carcass, blackened, crisped and broken, massive pieces missing and limbs broken off on the road. Fire licked across it, scurrying for fresh fuel on the other side.
“I’m sorry,” Ace said, his deep voice low. His hand let go of her to shift the truck into reverse, then he slid his arm back around, gently crossing her wounds, holding her close as they reversed away from the fire.
◆◆◆
“They’ll be okay,” Ace promised, his dark eyes soft for once on Henley. She refocused on her hands under the table in her lap.
“You can’t promise that. You don’t know. Don’t lie to me again.” She winced and glanced up to see his mouth turned further down and her heart catching. “Sorry,” she sighed. They were getting good at apologizing to each other. “I don’t mean to take my worry out on you. I’m just—”
“Your mother is fine.” Ace’s father said, hanging up the phone and coming back to sit at the long rectangular table in their family home.
Henley let out a long exhalation, slouching in the chair.
Ace gave her a little encouraging smile and a see-I-told-you-so cock to his eyebrows.
“She’s at one of the stadiums down south that they had people evacuate to a few days ago.”
“And my sister? She’s with her?”
Mr. Acton placed the cell on the table, keeping his other arm concealed below like Henley. He shook his head, hair similar in texture to Ace’s but many inches shorter, shifting. “My contacts in the department said she was already gone.”
Henley surged upright in her seat. “Gone? Gone where?”
He shrugged, sharing a confused look with his son, who didn’t respond; Ace knew what Henley’s fear was. “I assume your mother sent her away during the voluntary evacuation period before she finally gave up the house when Marissa elevated the alert to mandatory evacuation in that area. She was one of the ones the fire department picked up.”
“No,” Henley said and stood up. “She wasn’t.” She started to the door.
“Hen,” Ace called, sounding just like her Daddy.
She froze, eyes shutting, in the middle of the living room. “I know. I promised.” She didn’t turn. “But I have to get to her before it’s too late. The order of the deal was my family, then yours.”
“It’s already too late,” he responded, his voice soft but like a flick of electricity to her heart.
“Then I have to break her out. Like you did for me.” Desperation held Henley’s apprehension at bay, barely. She couldn’t lose her sister to them. She couldn’t lose her, too.
“We will. But we need to plan first. In case you’ve forgotten, our previous method was not ideal.”
Henley turned slowly around. Ace was facing her in front of the table, his eyes hard on her without the screen of his glasses. He’d accepted some replacement contacts from his mother grudgingly. His father still sat behind him, watching the two of them.
“We?” she asked.
Ace smiled. “If you’re going to ‘plow’ into BSTU, you’ll need a Bus.” He smiled, a full grin, exposing his teeth. “I follow the terms of my deals.”
Henley’s breath stuttered, a wobbly smile pulling at her lips. “No, I need an Ace in the hole.”
“Semantics.” He laughed deeply.
“Okay. Okay.” She breathed, her ribs smarting. She walked slowly back to Ace, tipping her head back to look at him. “But I’m in charge of things once we get there. No commands. I’m much better with people.”
He nodded. “Deal. And no changing the terms and conditions on me after we shake on it,” he warned. He raised a pointer finger. “And no punching.”
She smiled. “I won’t.” She held out her false hand since her other was too fragile, and he moved it up and down. Warmth infused her body though she couldn’t physically feel his hand enveloping hers.
“You’re her,” Mr. Acton breathed, staring at her hand. His eyes lifted. “You’re okay.” The dark eyes like Ace’s shifted to his son. “You watched over her. Brought her back to me.”
They moved back to sit at the table.
“I’m so glad. And to see you doing so well. A student at BSTU with my boy? And that—” He nodded at the contraption she had placed in her lap once more. “—shows me that you haven’t let my failure slow you down. I’m overjoyed.” His smile slipped. “I’m just sorry I couldn’t get to you sooner, prevent you that hardship. And… your father.”
“No,” she shook her head resolute. “I’m better than I was before. What happened pushed me to go to school, to learn, to improve upon myself.”
“This makes it all worth it. But… now you have to leave. Already.” Mr. Acton’s face fell, the dark circles under his eyes looking more pronounced. He turned a dispirited expression on Ace. “I’ll miss you, son. It’s boring without you here and with your mother back at work, covering for your sister.”
Henley felt for the man. He’d clearly been struggling a lot harder than she.
Ace was uncomfortable under the pressure, his jaw muscle twitching. “We’ll come back. Henley has a promise to uphold.”
Ace’s father’s dark eyes slid to her.
Henley nodded. “That’s right. And I keep my promises. I’m going to help you.”
He blinked at her.
She took a deep breath. “It’s not an ordinary prosthetic.” She peeled the glove off, exposing the wires and metallic glint of all the inner workings. Her design. No longer embarrassed, she found pride flared at the sight. “I’m an engineer.”
He gazed at it amazed.
“I can make you better than before. I can build you one of these. I hope. Once I get a look at your injury to compare to mine.” She felt like a salesman, but it was true, it was how she felt. “And I’ll make sure it’s both water- and fireproof.”
He was at a loss for words.
“You can be a hero again, Dad.” Ace said softly. “That’s why I brought her here. Though, your help with locating her family was also useful.” He inclined
his head in acknowledgment.
Mr. Acton shook his head, pulling back from the magic Henley had been weaving. “Oh, you shouldn’t have made her come. No, you need to go save your family. That’s what my Marissa taught me. Family first.” His good hand tapped the table like a gavel.
“I will. But I also want to help,” Henley insisted. “You saved me so I could help people. Let me help you.”
He hesitated, mouth twisting, then pulled his arm from under the table, laying it on the lacquered surface.
The sleeve was rolled up, and unlike Henley’s amputation, he still had an arm, but the skin was taught, fingers oddly shaped, angled and stiff, grafts clearly patching his arm like a quilt. She doubted he had any feeling, let alone use, in the fingers.
Henley studied it, her mind whirring, planning, designing.
“You can fix this,” he dead-panned with a scoff. He shook his head, hiding the mangled appendage from their sight again. “Nothing can make me a hero again. No, I saved you so that you can go live your life, not come back here with me. Mine has ended.”
“You’re still a hero, Dad,” Ace said softly, eyes downcast.
His words pulled at Henley’s heart, and Ace’s helplessness, his inability to cheer up his father, ached like an unhealed wound. He was still here, his father …but he also wasn’t.
“I can make you a superhero,” Henley announced with conviction. His eyes rose to hers, and she held them, keeping her gaze confident. She would. She would help him. She was testament to her skills. “I want to. Please allow me.”
Slowly, his chin dipped, lowering to chest.
Ace looked away, blinking hard.
Henley swallowed at the rejection for Mr. Acton’s sake, for Ace’s.
But… then his chin rose again and repeated the movement a few more times, gaining speed. “All right.”
Ace looked up sharply. “All right? You’ll let her?”
“Yes. On the condition she goes to help her family first.” He blinked at his son. “I-I didn’t think you’d ever see me as a hero after I left you that day.”
Ace’s head shake was adamant. “That was the day you really became a hero.”
Henley was tearing up, watching the Actons rekindle their relationship.
Mr. Acton placed his good hand on Ace’s shoulder. “I’m proud of you, son. Thank you for looking out for this young lady like I asked. You’re more a hero than I ever was.”
Ace looked over at Henley. “No, she is.” Henley smiled back. “I plan to continue to observe her because I don’t yet have her solved.” Henley laughed, tickled that his opinion of her reciprocated hers of him. “She’s just what I needed.”
◆◆◆
“Oh, wait, before you go, I have something I’ve been holding on to for you.”
Henley and Ace paused in the living room, while Mr. Acton vanished into the study around the corner. She bounced on the balls of her feet, anxious to get on the road again and head right back east as soon as they’d arrived after stopping to see her mother.
They were basically nomads. Henley hadn’t felt truly at home since her father’s passing, and anyway, their second home might not be standing, and BSTU no longer felt like a safe haven.
This time they’d do the crossing right, though. They were going to pick up supplies from Mrs. Acton first in addition to the truck that far outperformed Lindy’s… even Reed’s baby.
Mr. Acton emerged again, carrying a bundle of blanket in his good hand. He held it out to Henley. She exchanged looks with Ace whose expression conveyed that he didn’t know what it was.
She took it gingerly. It was about the size of a tablet and just as heavy, bearing something inside the folds. Carefully, she unfolded the blanket, the aroma of smoke filling her nose before the object was fully unwrapped. Her bad hand lifted to cover a huge gasp, her good one supporting the preserved item.
Cooked paint had flecked off the rim, and what remained was further faded than it had been the last time she’s seen it to a desaturated earthy orange. The glass was missing over the face, and the interior singed, the edges of the white disk curled and blackened. Minnie’s dress was sooty and half burned away. One of Mickey’s hands was gone, that devastating forest fire having taken three limbs with it that day… and a life. But the mice’s smiles still shone, their timeless dance still ongoing.
Henley’s vision blurred as she gulped back a clogged throat, feeling like her lungs were bursting. “You saved it,” she choked out and sniffed back a sob.
She could hear her father pointing to that one long arm, crossed over Micky’s chest, repeating the minutes it associated with and smiling down at her, calling her his clucking Hen.
She pulled the clock gently to her chest, looking up at Mr. Acton, who was smiling fondly and with compassion.
A tear tracked down his cheek. “I’m sorry I couldn’t save him, too. I thought that—” He took a breath. “—this might be something you’d like to remember him by.”
She shook her head, hair swinging, and moved to embrace the retired fireman softly, her improved hand curling gingerly around her memento between them. “You couldn’t save him,” she said into his shoulder, knowing that now, absolving both of them of their guilt. Fire was an unstoppable force at times; humans were not made to withstand it. Trapped under a tree as Henley’s Daddy was, if Mr. Acton had stayed, Ace’s father would also have been consumed. “But by leaving him, you saved me. And that’s what he would have wanted…” Her sentence fell with a sob.
She pulled back and gave a watery smile, lifting the clock without removing it from her breast. “Thank you,” she managed, voice cracking.
Before Mr. Acton could reply, his phone rang, a sharp trill. He blinked, swallowed, and took a reorienting breath. “That’ll be your mother, Ace. Let me just go see what she needs before you two head off.”
Henley uncurled the clock to stare at the resilient couple as Ace came over to take a look.
“That expression—wonder,” Ace said. “It’s you.”
Henley looked up at him, but he was staring at Minnie. She hovered a finger over the female mouse in her flouncing dress and nodded. “That’s how I used to look at my dad when he’d dance with me in the living room.”
“No.” Ace shook his head, long, finally-clean hair swishing back and forth. “I mean, I’m sure that’s true, but it’s how you look at the world and everything in it. Like it’s full of adventure and surprises. Like you’ll never get bored of it. Like there’s always more there, something interesting, to capture your interest.”
“Look at you, with the long sentences and intuitive psychoanalysis.” The gibe lacked conviction. She couldn’t remove her attention and thoughts from the couple, finally seeing what Ace saw, unable to stop crying.
“Actually, son,” Mr. Acton interrupted, sauntering back again with phone in hand. Marissa was brief like her son. “That’s how you look at her.” He raised a brow and laughed.
They both looked up, shocked, Ace’s dark irises connecting with Henley’s brown. Ace’s surprise could either stem from what Mr. Acton had said or his laugh, which seemed foreign, something his father hadn’t done in a while.
“Just like I did with your mother. She was my hero. And I will be hers again,” he referenced Henley’s promise. “Now that I have no reason to wallow.”
Ace looked back at Henley, and a fiery blush flamed her cheeks.
She returned her gaze to the clock, instead seeing her face in that burnt spot over Minnie’s; seeing Ace’s instead of Mickey’s side she was pressed into; seeing her holding him up, supporting him while he went about his business happily instead of just cuddled up; seeing the awe and wonder in her expression, ready to learn the few bits of information he had to offer, regardless of how many times he’d repeated them over the hours and days and years.
She looked up at Ace, who was watching her closely. “Well then, what do you say? Is it time, to go?”
He didn’t quite smile, but his face softened an
d his eyes dropped to her lips as she smiled.
“Actually, there’s a hang-up.” Mr. Acton ruined the moment with a frown.
“What?” Ace cast a glance at his father’s phone then back at his father’s unhappy face. “What did Mom say?”
“The fire’s jumped east of the intercontinental,” he said heavily.
“What? Impossible. That’s a huge distance for it to cross, and the bridge is down.”
“Improbable.” Henley deduced the process that had occurred with a flutter of horror kindling at the base of her spine. “It is Professor Tate’s fault.”
“What?” Ace asked urgently.
Henley laughed despite what was going on. “Questions,” she admonished, then answered him. “The traffic jam. She left a long line of vehicles across the waterway like a trail of gunpowder, or a gasoline-soaked shirt… or a fallen tree.”
“Or the wick of a firecracker,” Ace added, realization hardening his jaw. “Those old diesel-engine cars from the mid-country are incredibly combustible.”
Henley shook her head. “Any tech is flammable.” She raised her hand—the other one—reminding him of the drone explosion that had restarted it all.
“Fire is a determined force,” Mr. Acton philosophized, haunting experiences flaring behind his eyes. “And with the drought over there, it’s basically prepped kindling. Your mother has diverted all relief efforts she can spare that way, but it’s going to spread fast. They’ll be overwhelmed—they won’t be able to get to everyone. Not in time.”
Ace cursed as Henley’s eyes widened, and she spun to Ace.
“Sirena,” Ace gasped.
“Reed,” Henley said.
“Jen,” they intoned together.
“We have to go,” Henley told Ace’s father as Ace bolted for the door. “I’m sorry. We’ll be back like I promised,” she called over her shoulder, racing after his son.
“How will you get there with the bridge down? Your mother said to tell you she can’t spare extra resources for you after all.” Mr. Acton trailed them to the door.
Ace skidded to a halt in the front lawn, the air heavy with fire pollution, cursing again.