CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THURSDAY, 9:00 AM
Kat and the children walked in silence, Lily still in the lead, picking their path through a tangle of brambles. Kat focused on the small square footage of ground that lay between her feet and Lily’s.
Her feet. Ten more steps, she promised herself, and she counted them off. There. That proved endurable. Now ten more.
The pain was insistent. She tried to distract herself by thinking of happier times—picnics, parties, vacations, holidays—but reality kept intruding. If only she could talk one more time with Sara, apologize for their disagreement, let her know how amazing she was. She set such an example to the world with her dedication to her animals. If only Kat could let her know one last time that she was loved. Her eyes filled with tears, and they weren’t due to her feet. She had so much to say, now that she had no chance to say it.
She had counted dozens of sets of ten when Lily stopped and whirled to look behind them. She threw her head back and checked the sky, her body tensed and focused. “What’s that noise?”
The forest still embraced its eerie silence. It took a moment for Kat to hear what Lily meant. An engine. Up high. An airplane, or maybe a helicopter.
Nirav pointed back the way they had come. Kat squinted, searching for anything that moved. The smoke cloud didn’t hug the ground here, but it hovered close to the treetops, cloaking the sky, thick and impenetrable. Trying to find an airplane in its shifting mass was like trying to glimpse a straight-pin in a wad of gray-black cotton.
Lily waved her arms over her head. “Over here! We’re here!” Even as she shouted, the engine noise faded and disappeared. Lily’s arms dropped and her shoulders shrank. “They didn’t see us. We have to go back. We need to signal them.”
Kat seized Lily’s arm. “We can’t go back.”
“How will they know we’re down here?”
“We can’t signal unless we can see them.”
Lily glared.
Kat shifted her weight uncomfortably. “We need to keep going, Lily.”
Nirav looked back and forth between them and then pointed in the direction they were headed. “We are walking now.” He waved Lily forward with both hands.
Outnumbered, Lily spun on her heels and stomped ahead, her back unyielding.
Kat started counting steps again. Maybe there really was someone out there, looking, but if she and the children couldn’t spot the airplane from the ground, they were equally invisible to anyone searching. Assuming anyone even realized they were out here. Assuming Scott or Malcolm had escaped the flames, hadn’t been trapped, too. If they were alive, they must be frantic, but believing in a sensational rescue from the sky was as hopeless as believing in a miracle cure for her cancer.
Lily checked the sky at frequent intervals, but none of them heard any more engine noise.
They kept walking. Trees. Shrubs. Vines. Tangles of dead branches. An occasional scramble over a rotting log. A rabbit, munching greenery, froze as they passed. A lone squirrel scolded from a tree. After another half hour of slow progress, they reached a more open spot. A web of laurel and rhododendron still fenced them in on the left, but on the right, a huge slab of ancient granite angled up and out of the mountainside, overhanging the valley below.
“Wait here a minute.” Kat’s whole body ached, and more than anything else, she wanted to sit down and rest, the constant fear more exhausting than the distance they’d traveled. She needed to close her eyes for a moment’s escape. But if she stopped moving, she’d never be able to force herself back onto her feet again. “Let me see if I can tell where we are.”
Lily and Nirav collapsed to the ground where they stood, and the dogs both flopped on their bellies, panting. Kat gingerly picked her way up the rugged incline, placing each damaged foot with care to avoid a fall or a twisted ankle.
At the highest point of the slab, the rock leveled and smoothed, and Kat inched forward to the very edge of the natural overlook. On a day with no smoke, no fire, the view here would probably extend for miles. Today, gray haze masked the distant scenery, but the smoke swirled and shifted, allowing Kat to catch occasional glimpses of the terrain below.
Off to the right, where the fire must have started, blackened zones marked where everything worth devouring had already been eaten. Closer in, yellow and orange flames spiked high. Patches of deceptive green poured smoke into the sky, burning invisibly low to the ground, and narrow bands of fire stretched up the sides of the mountains in multiple places, grasping at the slopes like greedy fingers.
No sign of other human beings. Kat’s insides twisted into a tight knot. She had almost believed they had a chance, but she could find no reassurance in what she saw. Dragging the children here had only delayed the inevitable.
She looked back and forth and tried to orient herself. A break in the smoke let her see the crescent lake far below her, and she rocked backward, dismayed. They should be farther north by now, the lake well behind them. She focused on the area to her right, and in a flash, she understood where they were and how they had traveled. She fought down a panic-driven wave of nausea as the truth battered its way through her last shred of optimism.
They had followed the road, and the road followed the ridge. But the ridge wasn’t straight. Kat recalled the persistent right-hand bends she’d noticed—they had traveled in a long U-shaped curve. Her cottage, the cottage where they’d started, the cottage with the great view, stood at one end of the curve, and Kat now stood at the other. Even though they’d traveled a mile by car and thrashed through another mile, perhaps two, on foot, Kat could see their starting point, far less than a mile away. Smoke billowed from that stretch of ridgeline, thick and angry, and Kat pictured her little cottage in flames. Her photographs, her plans to create something lasting for Sara, gone with all the rest.
She and the children were better off than they would have been if they’d stayed at the cottage, but they hadn’t escaped. Far from it. Kat brushed her hair away from her face, her hands trembling. Even as she stood there, the fire quickened forward—standing dead trees flaring like Roman candles, the hot dry breeze nudging the fire ever onward, nibbling its way toward them.
Footsteps crunched on loose rocks behind her, and Kat turned. Lily scrambled up the last few feet to join her. She saw the fire, gasped, and took a hasty step away from the rocky edge. “I thought we left the fire behind us.”
“So did I.”
“We’re going to die, aren’t we?” Lily’s voice was adult and strangely matter-of-fact, and her face looked oddly calm, as if she were so numb the danger no longer felt real.
“No. We’re not going to die.” Kat choked on the words. She couldn’t let these children die. But they were running out of options. What they needed was water and lots of it. The one place flames couldn’t go. But the fire lay between them and the lake, an effective blockade. “With the drought, all the water up here on the mountain has disappeared. The crescent lake is down there and it has all the water we’d ever need. If we could only get there …”
Lily’s eyes were fixed on the flames, mesmerized, but then she turned to Kat. “What about the beaver pond?”
It took a moment for the words to sink in. “What beaver pond?”
“I told you at dinner. The one Dad and I hiked to.”
Kat restrained a sudden soaring hope and tried to recall the details. “Think back to that hike. This could be important. You said you started at the big lake.”
“Yeah.”
“You were the one who read the map.”
Lily nodded.
“You hiked uphill and reached a pond. You looked down and saw the lake where you’d started.”
“No smoke like this. A pretty view.”
“Close your eyes. Think about the way the lake looked when you saw it from above.” If Lily could only remember …
Lily raised her eyebrows, thought, then bit her lip. “I can’t remember.” Her voice was shaking. “The fire. It’s coming now.
I can’t remember yesterday.”
Kat stifled a sudden urge to scream and instead forced her voice to sound patient. “Focus. Please. A pretty view. You probably took a picture with your phone.”
“My phone is with Dad. I knew it wouldn’t work at your place.”
“I know, Lily. That’s okay. Think about the way the picture looked. The shape of the lake. We need to figure out where the beaver pond is, and if you can remember the way the lake looked, that will help figure it out.”
Lily glanced again at the fire. “I said I can’t remember.”
“Lily!” Kat’s patience snapped, and she suspected her face was as savage as her voice. She reined herself in. “Try again. Please.”
Lily frowned and fidgeted, but at least this time she closed her eyes. “We ate a snack. Walked to the overlook. Dad told me to take a picture so I could show Mom how far up we had climbed.” Her eyes flew open, and she grabbed Kat’s arm. “I remember! I can see it.”
“Good. Look down at the lake now. Wait until the smoke shifts so you can see its shape.”
They stood side by side, silent, and at last the smoke thinned briefly over the lake, and they could see its distinctive crescent through the haze.
“It’s not the same. We’re not at the right angle. I think we were more over that way yesterday.” Lily pointed to the left, the direction they were already heading on the road, and a small bubble of hope jostled some of Kat’s fears to the side.
“Were you higher on the mountain or lower? Did the lake look bigger? Or smaller?”
“Bigger. We must have been lower down, but not much lower.” This time, she said it with confidence.
Kat tried to work up enough spit to swallow. She had wished for plenty of water, and perhaps this offered them their chance. If Lily was right, then the beaver pond should be below them. The fire had cut them off from the big lake, but hopefully Lily’s pond was high enough on the mountain that the flames hadn’t reached it yet.
“How big was the beaver pond?”
“Pretty big.”
Kat maintained eye contact and said nothing. Lily mangled her lower lip with her teeth again and considered the question further.
“If we were standing at one edge, then the other edge would be at that big tree.”
Kat gauged the distance to the fir tree Lily indicated. Assuming she could believe the recollection of a twelve-year-old, that meant a pond about the size of a football field. Would that be big enough to protect them from the fire?
Lily turned her back on the view and took Kat’s hand. “The fire is coming.”
“I know.”
Kat looked toward the valley once again, a fire-driven miniature hell. She inspected the forest where Lily had pointed, but she found no sign of a pond. They couldn’t force their way through the trees at random, hoping to blindly find water. For the moment, all they could do was continue to follow the old road. If they found a stream, or even a dried-up gully, leading downhill in the direction of Lily’s pond, then she would need to decide the direction they’d take.
A decision. A major one. She had come here to the mountains seeking a respite from decisions, but the weight of this one pressed down with a force that made her knees buckle.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
THURSDAY, 9:15 AM
It took two endless forevers for the chopper to reach the coordinates where the hikers waited for rescue. Malcolm stopped watching their progress, chaffing at the delay, anxious to get back in action. Sitting still, doing nothing while they headed in the wrong direction, only gave him time—too much time—to imagine Nirav trapped below. Lost. Frightened. Injured. He forced himself not to visualize anything worse. Life could not be so cruel—to let this child into his life and then snatch him away so soon. Malcolm swallowed the lump that had cemented in the back of his throat.
He knew they had reached the fire when the helicopter began bucking again, protesting the hot updrafts, and he shook himself back to the present moment.
“There they are.” Lou slowed. Malcolm looked through the cockpit windshield, and Scott shifted out of his corner to look out the open door. They hovered over a steep uneven slope, and at its base four small figures waved frantically, their arms semaphores of panic.
“Fools,” Scott said. “Of course we see you. That’s why we’re hovering right above you.”
He had a point. Two women and one man stood clustered together, and nearby a second man lay stretched on the ground beside a heap of large backpacks. Lou slowly pivoted the helicopter, and the fire came fully into view, the flames only fifty yards from the hikers. Their panic became understandable. Smoke swirled in all directions, and hot air gusted through the open helicopter door. Malcolm tried to avoid it, but the moisture in his eyes and nose evaporated in an instant, and his eyelids scraped across his eyeballs like steel wool.
“I don’t see anywhere to land,” Pete said.
Lou gave Malcolm a hasty look. “You win another trip down.”
Not as simple as he’d hoped, but he couldn’t fault their assessment. No place to land. They’d need to bring people up one at a time, and the guy with the leg fracture was going to have a rough transit. “Anything we can use as a splint?”
“First aid stuff is in back.”
Malcolm crouched low and inched around the far side of the winch to reach the back of the cargo space. He should have anticipated better, gathered supplies well before they arrived. These thoughts of Nirav were throwing him off his game.
First aid had been part of his training, and he rummaged through the contents of a bin marked with a giant red cross to assemble what he might need. Bandages, a pair of gloves, and a small squishy packet labeled inflatable leg splint. No morphine, which wasn’t surprising, but that wasn’t going to make broken-leg guy very happy.
Pete got out of his chair to run the winch. Scott shifted away from the open door and then back again, once again in the way no matter where he was.
Malcolm came forward and sat at the open door. Get down. Pick up these hikers. Get on our way. That was the mission.
Pete handed him two additional harnesses, and Malcolm ran through his mental checklist: wind gusting at five to ten here, cable under greater strain but should be able to take it, fire splitting off into two arms now, both getting too close. “Ready.”
The helicopter bounced and rocked back and forth. Scott looked a little green and clung to his strap.
“Rougher ride this go-round,” Lou said. “Don’t waste time.”
Malcolm grunted. Yeah, no kidding. He stepped out, Pete let out cable, and Malcolm dropped.
They were higher up now than when he’d gone down to investigate the car, and the cable—a slender steel thread—jerked and twisted on the way down. Malcolm landed hard only ten yards from the group of hikers, disconnected the cable, and hurried over to them. He was still in headset range, so he left it in place. “Everyone okay?” The three standing hikers began talking at once—thought you’d never get here, fire is getting closer, didn’t know what to do—and Malcolm let the jabber wash past him. He knelt by the silent figure on the ground.
“What’s your name?” he asked quietly.
“Trip.”
How appropriate. Midtwenties and fit, but the taut strain in his voice evidenced his pain. Bad tibial fracture—jagged ends of bone stuck out horrifically through pierced skin. No serious bleeding. Major blood vessels intact. A serious cut above his right elbow showed bloody mangled muscle and oozed steadily. Malcolm ripped open packages even as he inspected the damage. He looked up and picked the person who looked the least panicked, a small blonde woman in too-new hiking boots. “You. Help with this splint.”
She flinched but obeyed. One of the advantages of years of giving orders was that people knew at once that he meant it. He handed the deflated splint to her—an elongated version of the sort of water wings he’d seen children use in swimming pools, designed to encase the leg from foot to hip. He spoke to Trip. “This isn’t going to
be fun.”
He lifted the injured leg, trying to keep the fracture as stable as possible while the woman slid the plastic sleeve in place. Trip moaned, and by the time the task was done and the leg rested once again on the ground, he was unconscious.
Malcolm pointed at the standing man, a tall redhead with a serious sunburn. “Blow up the splint. I’ll work on this arm.” The man gulped but knelt and got to it. By the time Malcolm had slapped a bandage on Trip’s arm and strapped him into one of the spare harnesses, the leg was immobilized, rigid in transparent plastic that unfortunately did nothing to mask the ghastly break.
“Pete.”
“Roger.”
“Ready for the cable.”
“Roger that.”
The helicopter dropped closer, the cable flailing. “Watch it, all of you,” Malcolm said. “Don’t get hit.”
The hikers pulled back. Lou dropped lower, letting the cable coil on the ground so Malcolm could snag it safely. “Okay, we need to lift Trip together. Keep that leg from hitting anything that would puncture the splint.”
The four of them lined up, two on each side, and Malcolm attached the cable. Pete took up the slack, and they lifted Trip, supporting the leg. He ended up dangling in the air, his face bloodless, his head lolling, his injured leg rigid in its splint. As soon as he rose out of reach, Malcolm quit watching. Trip was Pete’s problem now. He glanced at the fire—getting closer, smoke thickening—and then he turned to the girl who had helped with the splint. “What’s your name?”
“Melissa.” Her eyes were fixed upward, where Trip was being dragged into the helicopter.
Malcolm held out the second spare harness. “You’re next.” He helped her adjust it, then went to grab the cable, which Pete had lowered again along with the harness Trip had worn. Malcolm pulled the cable back toward Melissa and discovered she had put her bulky backpack on. “Leave the pack here.”
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