Burn It Down

by Jess Anastasi

  His mind wouldn’t give him any answers, just kept telling him to run, but then a picture of the deer fleeing toward the lake flashed out of nowhere.

  The lake. He had to get into the water. It was the only way he was going to survive.

  It took him a long moment to orientate himself. He had one chance at this. If he ran in the wrong direction, he was as good as dead. After doing a quick but complete lap of the now-burning toilet block and overlaying it with what he remembered of the campground when it wasn’t blanketed in smoke, he made a precise turn and hurried into a stumbling run, coughing every step of the way.

  He didn’t know how long he ran. It felt like forever as the heat became more unbearable, making his skin itch. The scenery never changed, just shrubs and trees, smoke and heat. Shit. What if he’d run in the wrong direction? What if he was going deeper into the forest? His mind whirled without any clear thought, only a panic over whether to keep going, change direction, or stop altogether. But his legs kept carrying him forward, fear and the desperation to survive overriding his confusion and hesitation.

  Just when he finally started to slow, thinking he definitely should have reached the lake by now, the ground underneath his feet gave way to sand, and then he was staggering into the cool, relieving embrace of the water.

  He paused when he was knee-deep, digging his phone out of his pocket, but when he tapped the screen, it stayed blank. Dammit to hell. It must have overheated and turned off or malfunctioned. He couldn’t call Jared to warn him about McDowell. He tossed the device onto the sand. If it got wet, it was useless any way. At least if it stayed dry he could hope it’d turn back on again once it’d cooled down. Right now, all he could do was try to save himself.

  There were animals standing in the shallows—some of them went dashing away from him, but others were obviously more scared of the fire and paid him no mind. He slogged deeper and deeper into the water until it reached his ribs and then launched off his feet into a fast swim.

  Troy stroked outward without any real plan, but about a hundred yards offshore, he spotted the pontoon used by swimmers and fisherman, and switched directions toward it.

  When he reached the large square platform, he grabbed on like the lifeline it was. He glanced over his shoulder, back toward the shore, but then wished he hadn’t looked. Everything was burning. All he could see were flames roaring over the forest, some of them twisting high above the tree line in a fiery vortex. The smoke had completely blanked out the sun, so it was almost as dark as night. Blasts of heat and flares of sparking embers were flickering out across the water as if reaching for him. He moved around the pontoon until he was on the side facing away from the shore and held on to the rubber rigging so he didn’t have to tread water to keep himself afloat.

  Out here, the radiant heat wasn’t anywhere near as bad and the smoke not as thick. Still, his throat felt raw and he could barely breathe without coughing. Dizziness made his brain feel like it was sloshing around inside his skull, and now that he was relatively safe from the fire, a sudden exhaustion teased the edge of his consciousness. He rested his cheek against his hand, blinking and trying to keep the heavy darkness at bay. Because if he lost his hold on lucidity while he was still in the water, he knew he’d sink into the murky depths of the lake and never come up again.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  “STOP THE car,” Jared ordered Buck, who immediately stomped on the brake and brought them to a jerking halt. “We can’t go any farther.”

  He swallowed against the lump at the back of his tongue, but it didn’t make a difference; his throat stayed swollen so thick he could barely breathe.

  “It doesn’t look that bad,” Buck ventured, worry creasing his brow as he cut a look from Jared to the trail ahead of them leading up to the second campground.

  “It’s deceptive and why people drive straight into wildfires that end up killing them.”

  To the average person, it would have looked safe enough, if a little smoky, but that was only because of the powerful updraft and the way the fire had become so big it was on the verge of becoming its own weather system.

  And Troy was out there somewhere, right in the middle of it with nowhere to go.

  Buck put the SUV into reverse. “There’s a second trail closer to the lake—”

  “It won’t be any safer.” The words were sharp, but his voice cracked. “I’m sorry, it’s just—”

  “You don’t need to apologize, son.” Buck squeezed his forearm briefly.

  “The main fire front will be right on top of the campground by now.” This time he managed a tone a little closer to normal, but the emotion was impossible to suppress. “We can’t do anything but wait it out.”

  “Try not to think the worst.” Buck reached down to put the car out of gear but left the engine running so the AC kept the interior a little cooler. “Never met anyone more resilient and smarter than Troy Hurst. If there’s a way out, he’ll have found it.”

  He wished he had even a smidge of Buck’s confidence in Troy’s ability to survive in the worst fire conditions in the recent history of Texas, but every burned body he’d ever seen, every story he’d heard about people getting caught up in a wildfires when they’d thought they had plenty of time to escape came rushing at him to create a churn of sharp-edged awareness, cutting him deeper with every passing moment.

  He didn’t want to think the worst, refused to directly acknowledge the idea, even though it was circling the periphery of his mind with vicious intent. But he also knew the reality of his job, and the fear of losing Troy—that inexplicable weight in his gut that’d been whispering something bad was going to happen to him—was now a howling tempest he could no longer ignore or shove aside.

  His phone pinged, and he banged his elbow sharply into the door in his haste to pull it out of his pocket. But when he tapped on the screen with a shaking finger, it was a text message from Del. Lewis and Aaron had refused to leave without seeing him and Troy, so they were making themselves useful at the command tent the EFD had set up on the lakeshore, handing out bottles of water to exhausted firefighters who were stopping in for short breaks before heading back out to the fire front.

  “News?” Buck asked a little awkwardly, as if he was desperate to know but wasn’t sure if it was rude to inquire.

  “Not on Troy. It was just a message from my brother.” He typed a quick reply, telling Del he’d see them soon, not able to put anything in his mind into words right now. That would make it real. And Troy being missing or dead was a reality he refused to live in.

  Buck fiddled with the SUV’s radio until he found a local station with rolling coverage of the fire. The hosts were discussing the likelihood of Everness being evacuated. At this point, he was pretty sure evacuation was a foregone conclusion. He wouldn’t be surprised to find out the authorities were preparing to release the alert now. The fire was nowhere near close to being brought under control, and with wind gusts still to peak later that night ahead of a weak change, the fire would likely only continue to gain in strength.

  He attempted to call Troy again. He’d lost count of how many times he’d tried since he and Buck had started up the track and passed the main camping ground. But unsurprisingly it went straight to voicemail like it had every other time. He also sent yet another text and hoped Troy gave him hell later for what were arguably stalker levels of messages in the past fifteen minutes.

  Jared forced his mind to go blank against the churning thoughts—he couldn’t do anything but wait. Worrying himself sick wouldn’t help Troy.

  He refused to look at the clock in the dashboard, instead concentrating on the color of the sky and the way the smoke moved, aerial water bombers crossing back and forth in a rotating pattern, so he had no idea how much time had passed when he finally glanced over at Buck sitting tensely behind the wheel.

  “It should be safe enough now. But take it easy and be ready to stop if I tell you.”

  Just because the fire front had moved on didn�
��t mean it couldn’t suddenly turn and put them in the crosshairs. Plus there was the danger of falling trees and flare-ups where burning embers gained new life in the blustery hot wind.

  Buck gave a tight nod and eased the car into gear to crawl ahead on the trail. It was the exact opposite of what his instincts were telling him to do—race ahead as fast as he could, heedless of any danger, to make sure Troy was okay.

  The silence between him and Buck was heavy and prickly, becoming worse the farther along the trail they drove and the true destruction of the fire become evident. The forest had been absolutely incinerated. He’d attended a number of forest fires over the years, both since he’d started with EFD and when he’d been working in Houston. But nothing measured up to the destruction this blaze had wrought in such a short amount of time.

  They rounded a bend, and Jared sucked in a sharp breath even as Buck gently tapped the brakes. His heart thrumming hard enough to make him dizzy, Jared shoved open the door and scrambled out before the SUV had even come to a complete stop.

  The charred remains of an ATV were sitting in the middle of the track.

  “Jared, hold up a minute,” Buck called after him.

  “No!” He skidded to a stop in front of the ATV, carefully looking over the blackened frame for a body. “I have to find him. I have to know.”

  Buck stepped up next to him, clasping his arm gently. “We should call it in. Get a whole crew up here to search.”

  He pulled out of Buck’s grasp. “If he’s hurt—if he’s been burned, he might not have time for us to wait for anyone else to get up here. We have to search for him now.”

  Buck stared at him for a long moment, expression clearly showing he didn’t think Jared should be the one to do this. That they were inevitably going to find—

  No. Shock and pain shuddered through him. That reality he refused to face looming so much closer, suffocating him, making his entire body ache like the knowledge was slowly poisoning him.

  “Okay, we’ll start searching. But I’m going to radio for backup.”

  “Go ahead,” he replied impatiently, stalking away from the ATV, gaze crisscrossing the trail and natural gutters at each side, desperately hoping not to find anything, even as each second he didn’t know Troy’s fate made it feel like he was dying inside.

  Buck caught up to him after a moment, and by unspoken agreement, they split up to walk parallel to either side of the trail, searching in a more focused way.

  They rounded another slight bend, and Jared spotted a lump against the bottom of a tree that didn’t fit uniformly into the gray-and-black hellscape of the burned forest. He stumbled to a stop, torn between the instinct to run over there and the knowledge borne of his job at what he’d find.

  Buck swore under his breath but didn’t seem to be fighting any similar inner battle. He ran over but stopped about three feet away and then bent over to put his hands on his knees, dropping his head, despair in every line of his body.

  “Oh fuck,” Jared gasped, spinning away from the sight. He only managed to take two steps before his legs gave out and he dropped heavily to his knees.

  A low keening noise of absolute unmitigated pain reached him, and it took a second to realize he was the one making the sound. He tried to suck in a breath, but he couldn’t breathe. Everything inside him hurt; not just his heart, but every single cell within him was rending like he was going into multi-organ failure.

  He didn’t know how long he knelt there, but a rumbling sounded from somewhere nearby, and then someone was helping him to his feet. Buck walked him to the rig that’d pulled up next to them. Brody jumped out, hair a wild mess, face streaked with soot and concern shining in his gaze.

  A conversation went on around him, but it was like he’d disconnected from the world. Like he wasn’t really there any longer. Because he couldn’t live in a world where Troy was dead.

  Just as the thought finally solidified in his mind, Brody tugged him in for a tight hug, murmuring something in his ear.

  “Brody, he’s gone.” The words came out in a mangled rush, barely coherent around the sob strangling him.

  “I’m sorry, Jared. I’m so fucking sorry.” Brody held him tighter for a long moment before speaking with someone else.

  The fire engine rolled onward while Brody kept an arm around his shoulder and steered him toward the SUV. Buck got in behind the wheel and slammed the door hard, while he and Brody got into the back seat.

  As Buck turned the SUV around, the folded note on the dashboard caught his attention.

  “It was Kevin,” he announced without any real thought.

  “What was Kevin?” Brody asked, sounding both confused and worried.

  “Kevin McDowell, my ex-boyfriend. He lit the fire. He killed Troy.” His voice was coming out in a weird monotone, but it was probably better than being hysterical.

  “Then the cops will catch him, and hopefully the asshole will get the death penalty.” Brody sounded angry, and Buck muttered an agreement, but all Jared felt was empty inside.

  The trip back to the lake where the command tent was set up went by in a blur. As he climbed wearily out of the car, feeling about a million years old, Del hurried over to meet him. The smile on his face fell away as his brother took in his appearance.

  “Jared, what happened?”

  He could only shake his head and collapse into the hug Del pulled him into.

  “They said someone had died,” Del said hoarsely. “Please don’t tell me—”

  “It was Troy,” he whispered, a trembling setting into his limbs like some kind of delayed shock.

  “Oh God, Jared.” Del’s grip became almost painful, but he welcomed the ache because at least it momentarily distracted him from the hurt inside.

  The fire chief approached and cleared his throat, making Del release him.

  “Winters, I just heard. I’m sorry.” The fire chief was in turnout gear like the rest of them, dirty from the tips of his hair down to the soles of his boots. “I think it’d be a good idea if your brother took you home.”

  “No,” he blurted out automatically. “The fire—”

  “You can’t go out there like this,” Del said gently, which was somehow worse than Del ordering him not to go.

  “He’s right,” the chief agreed. “You’d be more of a hindrance than a help. I can’t risk you putting yourself or anyone else in danger, given the circumstances.”

  “Then I’m going to search every fucking square inch of this park and the town—the entire state of Texas if I have to—until I find Kevin!”

  Both Del’s eyebrows shot toward his hairline, and the fire chief actually took a step back.

  “Um, Jared, it’d probably be a better idea to let the authorities deal with that.” Del wrapped a light hand around his biceps, as if he thought he was going to run off right this second.

  He took a shallow breath, because Del was right. But he just didn’t know what else he was supposed to do with himself.

  “Fine,” he muttered darkly, hanging on to the anger because it was an easier, less painful emotion to deal with right now. “But I don’t want to leave. Not yet. Not until they bring Troy out.”

  Del shared a look with the fire chief. They seemed to reach some kind of silent agreement and the fire chief focused on him again.

  “It could be hours—”

  “I know,” he bit out before being hit by another wave of pain that made his eyes sting and then overflow with a sudden torrent. “I know. But I’m not leaving him.”

  “Okay, Jared.” Del rubbed his back between his shoulder blades, expression burning with love and understanding. “We’ll wait.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  TROY WASN’T sure whether he dozed in the water or was in some kind of catatonic postshock daze, hanging on to the rigging with his fingers and elbows locked in place. But when a violent shivering set into his limbs, it woke him right up, and he distantly realized he needed to get out of the water before he got hypothermia. I
t might have been late summer, but the lake water always stayed chilly.

  His fingers ached as he unclamped the death grip that’d been keeping him above water, and of course as soon as he let go, he went under. He flailed for a moment, limbs uncoordinated and struggling to work properly, but he managed to fight his way back to the surface and suck in a long breath of air, which of course caught in his raw throat and left him coughing again.

  The sun had started setting, but the evening light was offset in weird tones by the glow of the fire in the distance, making for a strangely colored twilight. He stroked clumsily toward the shore that seemed like it was a million miles away. He honestly didn’t remember swimming that far to get away from the fire.

  Falling into a kind of automatic but ungainly rhythm, he didn’t even realize he’d reached the shallows until his knees hit the bottom. He struggled to his feet and lurched forward a few steps but then stumbled onto his hands. The shakes had set in even worse, and he couldn’t find the energy to get himself to his feet, so he crawled the rest of the way out of the water.

  When he reached the beach, he glanced blearily around for where he’d tossed his cell phone and eventually spotted it a few yards off to his right. A low burst of energy flared up within him. He could finally call Jared and warn him about Kevin. He managed to get his feet under him and staggered over, but when he dropped to his knees in the sand and ash, he found his phone was now a melted lump of glass, metal, and plastic. He couldn’t even be pissed off about the destruction of the device. It was a stark visual that he would have ended up much the same way if he hadn’t made it into the water in time.

  Except now he had no way of warning Jared that Kevin was coming for him…. Unless Kevin hadn’t made it out of the fire. It made him a horrible person, made his gut clench with unease, but truthfully, part of him hoped Kevin hadn’t made it out, if only for the sake of Jared’s safety. Of course, his goddamn conscience hoped the exact opposite, because even a heartless bastard like McDowell didn’t deserve what would have been a horrible death. He’d come close enough to say that with all certainty.