Leaves and used dog bandages. Kat tried not to think about it. She wedged her sandals back on and stood up. Her blue-wrapped feet were bulky, and the strap between her toes still ground in painfully, but the huge improvement might make more walking possible.
“Thank you, Nirav.”
The boy’s eyes crinkled for an instant and his mouth twitched, but a full smile never reached the rest of his face. He picked up Tye’s leash and took Kat by the hand again. “More water now.” He tugged her to follow him downstream.
Lily gave Kat one last pitiful look as if hoping for a change in plan, but she followed. Tye shook himself, spraying them all with muddy water.
The only path available lay along the stream itself, and it didn’t take long before Kat missed the relative luxury of the roadbed. Low tree branches smacked her in the face, loose rocks turned underfoot, and sometimes the only way forward meant splashing directly through the shallow water. She stumbled and jammed her big toe into a boulder, and it swelled in seconds. Its throb provided a new counterpoint to the rhythmic pulse of her cuts and blisters. The dogs didn’t seem to mind the rough terrain, but Lily and Nirav walked ever more slowly, their feet dragging in water-soaked socks and tennis shoes.
The smoke thickened noticeably as they moved downhill, no longer just a vague nuisance. Kat tried to breathe through her nose to filter the worst of it, but when she tried to talk, she tasted ash and started coughing. They could now hear the fire again, a low indistinct roar, punctuated by the snaps and crashes of damaged trees.
Lily stayed close, and Nirav clutched Kat’s hand in a painful grip. Tye continued to lag, and Juni grew increasingly nervous, whining and nosing Kat’s leg. Once, Juni turned around as if intending to head back uphill, and she returned reluctantly when Kat called her back. Kat clipped her leash on, and Juni walked by her side with her tail tucked.
Juni wasn’t the only creature who thought they were headed in the wrong direction. They were seeing animals again, all headed uphill, not down. They glimpsed a doe with twin fawns moving through the trees, and a possum disappeared into weeds when they got too close. Even a bobcat approached, trotting openly toward them up the stream bed, ignoring the excited whines of the dogs.
Kat let go of Nirav, stepped back, and picked up an apple-sized rock, but Nirav seized her wrist. “Stay.”
Kat let her arm fall to her side, but she didn’t loosen her grip on the rock. The cat leaped into the trees with an arrogant glance and disappeared. The entire animal kingdom seemed to be scoffing at her decision to head for the pond.
A particularly loud crash sounded directly in front of them, and Lily froze. “We need to go back.” Her last word disappeared into a coughing spasm.
Kat stopped, indecisive, and Lily dropped to her knees, her head drooping. She was near exhaustion. They should have reached the pond by now, if it was even there. The fire roared louder ahead of them, an ancient monster heralding its impending attack.
A patch of reddish-brown to one side of their route caught Kat’s eye, and she stepped closer. A small rabbit. Dead. Its coat was a hideous patchwork of burns—singed hair, blackened skin, raw muscle. One ear was only a ragged strip of cartilage. All four feet were black and harshly blistered. Instead of finding peace in death, its lifeless eyes looked wide with terror.
Was this the fate that awaited them? Hair burning, then skin, then flesh. Horrific pain, immeasurable fear, and a panicked attempt to run across a flaming landscape. A foolish, hopeless attempt that was doomed from the outset.
Kat’s heart ricocheted off her ribs, beating fast enough to propel her on a race of her own. In her head, she could hear the children’s screams, their desperate pleas, but she could do nothing to help.
She had made a horrible, irretrievable mistake. There was no way to outrun the fire now—they were its prey. They should have stayed on the road.
She turned her back on the rabbit. Her feet refused to move closer to the fire, but they also refused to retrace their steps.
Nirav looked back and forth between Kat, immobile, and Lily, still huddled on the ground. He started downhill. His coughs rattled like an old man’s, and he turned frequently to check on them, but he walked ahead with Tye to peer around a large boulder in the stream bed.
“Water,” he called.
Lily ran, and Kat limped up beside them. Lily grabbed her by the arm. “Look, there’s the bridge.” She pointed.
Kat’s heart slowed its efforts to flee, and she nodded, unable to speak. Ten yards ahead, two weathered planks spanned the gully. Beyond them lay the marshy margin of a pond.
CHAPTER TWENTY
THURSDAY, 10:20 AM
Malcolm stared unseeing out the side window as the helicopter swooped down the mountainside, retracing their path, erasing their progress. They flew high over the forest, above the smoke, and they made good time, but the additional delay weighed intolerably. The hikers had indeed been at risk. Trip could never have walked out or been carried by his companions, and any rational person would label this rescue a good deed. He’d done the right thing, but in doing so he might have failed Nirav when his son needed him most. The caustic thought ate away at his insides, far more painful than his damaged arm.
The helicopter lost altitude. Two new fire engines and a half dozen additional pickup trucks now lined the roadway below them. Firefighters were unloading two Bobcats from a flatbed truck, and a bulldozer belched smoke of its own, already busy carving a rough firebreak. Despite the additional equipment, the small cadre of volunteers looked hopelessly outmatched by the endless expanse of flames. They had protected the road, but beyond that frail barrier, the fire burned viciously.
The chopper hovered over the landing field and settled with a hard bump to the ground, returning them to the exact place where they’d started. Malcolm checked his watch. 1037. Time moved too fast, and they moved too slowly.
An ambulance waited on the road next to the clearing, and two attendants in white uniforms pulled a stretcher out of the back and jogged toward them as soon as the rotors slowed. Good. Now they could dump this extra weight and get back out there.
Malcolm slid the side door open and eased himself slowly to the ground, trying not to move his bad arm, which hurt like hell. Scott followed out of the cramped space, bracing his back as he stood up straight.
“Your patient’s in the back—broken leg,” Malcolm said to the medics. “We need to leave as soon as possible—there are other people trapped in the fire.”
The first medic, a tall guy with a shaggy haircut and bleary eyes, waved the three uninjured hikers out of the chopper and crawled into the back with Trip.
Lou and Pete clambered from the cockpit to stretch, and they came over to join the others. Now that Lou had emerged from her pilot chair, she turned out to be of medium height, lean and wiry. When she pulled off her thin leather gloves, she revealed bright red fingernails, and when she brushed her hair out of her face, each ear held three or four different pierced earrings.
The medic with the stretcher looked pointedly at Malcolm’s arm. “Are you coming with us?”
“I’m fine.” Malcolm hadn’t intended to bark, but his words sent the guy back a few steps. There was no time to waste. “Get them out of here.”
“We’ll hurry,” the medic said, but when Malcolm glanced into the cabin of the helicopter, the first guy was checking Brandon’s blood pressure. This was a hurry?
Lou looked closely at Malcolm’s elbow, even more black and swollen than it had been in the helicopter. “That looks bad. Could be a fracture.”
“Later.” Malcolm cupped the injury again in his good hand. Let’s go.
Lou turned to the waiting medic. “Aren’t you Jill Olsen’s brother? She and I were in the same year at Franklin High.” When the guy admitted the connection, Lou touched his arm and gestured across the field. “Let’s go get some supplies from your ambulance.”
The medic gave one more glance at his associate, still piddling around, shrugged, and
followed her.
Scott started pacing, his impatience radiating. “This is crazy. We jerked this guy off the ground at the end of a steel cable, and now they can’t even shift him three feet?”
Malcolm glanced at his watch every twenty seconds. “We need to go,” he said to Shaggy-Hair Medic in the chopper, who was now drawing up some sort of clear liquid into a syringe, every movement in slow motion, as if he forced his arms through heavy syrup.
“Almost there,” the man replied. He didn’t look up, and he didn’t alter his deliberate pace.
Malcolm exchanged frustrated glances with Scott. Once again, they were on the same side.
Lou came jogging back. She held up a roll of tape and a long strip of cloth that looked like it had recently been a pillowcase. “I can make your arm more comfortable until you get it checked out properly.”
Malcolm started to shake his head, his I’m fine reflex primed and ready, but he stopped himself. It might help. “Thanks.”
Lou worked swiftly, fashioning a makeshift sling from the cloth and using a half dozen yards of tape around his chest to pin both the arm and the sling tight to his ribs. The exposed elbow still looked dreadful, but at least it couldn’t move. “Thanks. That helps a lot.”
“No problem,” Lou said, back to her no-nonsense self. “Got to keep a winning team in action.”
Scott glanced at his cell phone. “Is that whole mountain a dead zone? Lily knows my number. Kat should have her phone with her. But there’s no message. No missed call.”
Lou’s lips tightened, and she nodded. “They’d have to go a long way to pick up a signal. If you need to reach anyone, you’d better do it here.”
Scott frowned and looked at his phone for a long minute, but then he put it back in his pocket. “I should call my ex. Let her know what’s going on. But what the hell should I tell her?”
No one answered.
Malcolm had no one to call about Nirav. He was Nirav’s entire family. But if there had been someone else, he would have let them know. He would have called Kat’s daughter if he’d known her number. As it was, he would worry on her behalf. It was his job to make sure Kat got home safe.
Scott looked off to the distance. “I keep thinking if only. If only I’d woken up sooner. If only we’d made it to Kat’s before the road was blocked. If. If. If.” His fist thudded against his thigh, and he walked away from the others.
The same self-accusation churned Malcolm’s insides. If only he hadn’t let Nirav out of his sight.
Brandon, Melissa, and that Vi-person stood off to the side with their mountain of gear, and Malcolm caught snatches of conversation as they revisited their escape.
“Thought we’d be burned alive …”
“My mother is going to freak …”
“That rescue was worse than the fire …”
Rescue worse than the fire? Easy for Brandon to say, standing in safety with his friends, smoke and flames and terror already a fading memory. Nirav and the others were in mortal danger, and these hikers were already practicing stories for their next keg party.
Scott stomped back to where Malcolm and Pete waited. “Broken leg or not, I’m going to drag that fool out of there.”
Malcolm gave his watch yet another glance. “One more minute and I’ll help you.”
“Count me in,” Pete said.
“Okay. Ready.” Shaggy-Hair Medic waved to his companion, and at last they shifted an unconscious Trip out of the helicopter and strapped him onto the stretcher with exaggerated care. The three other hikers surrounded him, half dragging, half carrying their backpacks, and the little huddle of people moved toward the ambulance. Malcolm erased them from his head as soon as he turned toward the helicopter; finding Nirav was the only thing relevant.
He hurried on board with Scott close behind, and Lou had the engine turning over before they’d even closed the cargo door. Unloading the backpackers had taken an agonizing fifteen minutes. Malcolm slipped his headset back into place as they lifted off.
“Back to the rockslide?” Lou asked.
“Yes. Fast as possible.” Malcolm moved toward the map that was still clipped to the console between the pilots’ seats. There were no agonizing howls of protest from his arm this time—the sling and tape definitely helped. The edge of his foot hit something, and he looked down. The missing sat phone. It was half hidden under Lou’s chair—it must have been fully hidden when that first call came in from the fire chief. Weird that it had moved clear across the cabin from where he had left it.
He picked it up and pivoted to one side to clip it to his belt, awkward with only his left hand. He would have thought nothing more about it, but he happened to meet Scott’s eyes, and Scott immediately hunched forward and looked down, the personification of guilt. Damn. Scott hadn’t wanted to detour to pick up the hikers, but Malcolm wouldn’t have expected him to be quite that sneaky. He couldn’t decide whether to be impressed or irritated.
He turned back to the map. “We spotted the hat. They must have crossed that rockslide.” His finger tapped the spot. “We should keep following the old roadbed. It’s the most likely path.”
“Makes sense,” Pete said.
Scott crouched behind Lou, braced against the right-hand cargo-hold wall. “Are there any hiking trails intersecting the old road?”
Pete shook his head. “None shown.”
“Good.” Malcolm tried to make his voice sound confident. “That will keep Kat and the children on the roadbed. Follow it, and it should lead to Nirav.”
Lou flew a straight line to the rockslide, staying high above the fire, but when they arrived, she dropped low to the ground. The relentless flames had edged uphill in their absence, and thick dark smoke snaked in all directions, buffeted by gusts of wind. Malcolm could glimpse only random patches of landscape through the shifting swirls.
He stepped back into the cargo space. “Scott—you take the door on the right, looking downhill. I’ll take the left.” If Kat had detoured off the road, it was most likely she would head uphill, away from the fire, and he trusted his search capabilities more than Scott’s. “Pete—you’re in charge of looking out front. Lou—take it slow. Don’t want to miss them.”
Scott opened the cargo door on his side, taking a firm grip on his grab-loop before he inched carefully to the brink. He acted even more hesitant now than he had earlier, and when he pulled his glasses off to wipe them clean, he did it with one hand, refusing to let go of his handhold. Malcolm wondered whether he was remembering the moment when Brandon had jerked him off-balance, almost dragging him out of the helicopter. At least Scott was still functioning.
Malcolm opened his door, too. With both doors open, smoke poured in, adding more ash to the film already gumming every surface inside the helicopter. His eyes watered, and his throat stung as if scalded.
He was used to conducting search-and-rescue operations with drone and satellite support. With a slew of experts at his side and specialized equipment lined up and waiting. Now, in the most important search operation of his life, he was leaning out of a helicopter, trying to glimpse his son through hazy smoke by simply looking. He tried to hang on to some shred of hope, but every heartbeat pumped only despair.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
THURSDAY, 10:40 AM
The bridge consisted of two shaky weathered boards, but it provided a way for hikers to cross the gully when water filled the stream. Kat bent double to duck beneath the planks, and when she straightened on the other side, the beaver pond, an actual pond full of actual water, stretched in front of her. They’d made it. Kat’s spirits lifted slightly from rock bottom, where they’d been anchored.
A rough tumble of logs and debris along the opposite end of the pond dammed the creek, creating a pool at least thirty yards across at its widest point. Bigger would be better, but if the fire got this far, it might offer them a fighting chance.
“Lily, we wouldn’t have known this was here without you.” A surge of gratitude added emphasis to he
r words. If the children hadn’t been with her and she had somehow headed out on her own, she’d be up on the mountain right now, alone.
“Are we safe here?”
“Yes.” Kat hoped. For now. With luck.
“No fire here.” Nirav patted Tye. “No fire is good.”
Kat shared Nirav’s outlook. The pond lay in a hollow, protected on all sides by steep surrounding hills. Here, her eyes didn’t water, her nose didn’t burn, her tongue didn’t taste like pine sap. Maybe she’d done the right thing after all in bringing the children this way.
But maybe not. Tall green grasses grew at the water’s edge, but beyond them, dead plants formed a drought-stricken tangle that looked ready to blaze at the first spark. Dead tree stumps, left by the beavers, and dead standing trees, far too many of them, ringed the pond’s fringe. If the fire got close enough, this tinder would flare in an instant. Their only chance of survival would lie in the water.
“I’m going to see what the bottom’s like,” Kat said. The children straightened, watching her. “Wait here.”
Kat waded into the cold, mucky-looking water and sank deep into slimy mud that worsened with every step. She bent and wrestled her sandals off, but without them, her makeshift bandages slipped and slid, and she kept stepping on sharp hidden lumps. Submerged vines and branches grabbed and scratched at her ankles and legs. She’d imagined some sort of smooth, sandy place to stand, but what she’d gotten was a treacherous quagmire.
She struggled back toward shore and lurched out of the water, her legs coated in mud and green slime, her bandages hopelessly wet and sagging. She pulled the wraps off and tossed them aside.
“Gross.” Lily wrinkled her nose. “We don’t have to go in there, do we?”
“We’ll see. Does this trail loop around the pond?”
“Yeah, that’s the way Dad and I got here.” She pointed. “It goes along this edge and then leads down into the valley.”
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