Wildland

by Rebecca Hodge

  “We’ve been careful. We should have found them if they were still on the road.” The shreds of hope he clung to were growing more and more tattered. If Kat and the children weren’t on the road, the odds of finding them plummeted.

  They couldn’t give up. Below them, acres and acres of national forest. Peaks and valleys. Gullies and hollows. Ravines and chasms. A full-scale army could hide down there. An instant of panic swelled through his chest, and he forced it aside. Focus.

  He turned and looked at Scott. “Where the hell are they?” The anguish and frustration he thought he had just suppressed came through loud and clear in his voice.

  Scott’s whole body tensed. “What do you mean, where are they? You said they would follow the road!”

  My decision. My fault. The knowledge was acid. If they failed, he would never forgive himself.

  Malcolm traced his finger on the map along the line they had traveled. “No way Kat and the kids could have climbed uphill—it’s too steep. The road stops here. I doubt they could have made it this far this fast anyway.” He turned again to Scott. “Could we have flown over without seeing them?”

  “This engine is loud, and we were flying low. They should have heard us.”

  Malcolm agreed. “Pete. Lou. What do you think?”

  Pete answered at once. “We took it slow. With four of us searching, we should have seen them, even with the smoke.”

  “Agreed.” Lou sounded unperturbed, a pilot doing her job. Malcolm envied her emotional distance. Usually he was the dispassionate one. She kept fine-tuning their course, holding over the point where the roadbed ended.

  “So where the hell are they?” Malcolm asked again, this time addressing them all. “No way to go forward beyond this point. No way to go uphill without rock-climbing gear. Stupid to head down the mountain, closer to the fire, and so far, Kat hasn’t acted stupid.”

  No one answered. Scott sagged against the cabin wall.

  They couldn’t give up. They couldn’t. Malcolm wadded the map into a badly folded clump with his uninjured hand, unsure of the next move. He prided himself on always knowing what action to take. Such indecision was agony.

  Scott stared at the crumpled map, his face desperate. Then he straightened, galvanized, his whole attitude suddenly purposeful. “Our hike. Water. Lily was the one with the map. She checked it every two seconds.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Hand me the map.” Scott flattened it again on the vibrating floor. Malcolm shifted across to look over his shoulder.

  “Which trail is it?” Scott spoke under his breath, but the words came through clearly in the headphones. “Which trail?” He put his finger on the crescent lake. “We parked here.” His finger traced a dotted line. “Not this trail—it just goes around the lake. Here. This one. We hiked this one.” He traced a dotted line that left the lake and switchbacked up the side of the mountain.

  Malcolm resisted the urge to shake him. Come on, man, get to the point.

  “Here.” Scott tapped a small blue circle on the trail. “A pond. Lily’s been here. She might remember. They might head for water.” He took a deep breath. “Where’s the rockslide where we saw the hat?”

  Malcolm pointed to a spot on the map only inches from Scott’s pond. “Here.”

  Scott slid his finger uphill, across the topographic markings, following the thin line of the stream that fed the pond until it intersected the path of the old road. “We flew over a rocky gully here.”

  Malcolm nodded, a fizzing hope building. “I remember.” He clapped Scott on the shoulder and got a startled look in return. “Lou, retrace our course. We’re looking for a stream—more rocks than water—a hundred yards or so this side of the rockslide.”

  “Got it.” The helicopter accelerated forward.

  Malcolm inspected the map again. A pond. Big enough to show on the map. Kat would have had to turn toward the fire, but if they reached water in time, it could have bought them the time they needed. “I hope—” He broke off, startled by a vibration on his hip. He reached back and unclipped the sat phone from his belt. The phone vibrated in his hand, the light on top flashing to signal an incoming call.

  “You’re not going to answer that, are you?” Scott’s voice was incredulous, the voice of someone who would have hidden the phone again if he’d had the chance.

  Malcolm hesitated. He didn’t want to be ordered away from their search, but maybe, just maybe, some miracle had occurred, and Kat and the children had already been rescued. “It could be good news this time.” Malcolm clicked the speaker button and thumbed the volume knob to max. “Yes.”

  A squawking voice filled the cabin, audible even over the engine noise. “This is USFS Director Ted Mitchell. You are flying in a fire zone without authorization. Air support is en route. Clear the area.”

  “No. Hell no.” Scott’s protest echoed.

  Malcolm met his eyes and mouthed wait. Not the right time to piss this director off. He spoke into the phone. “Have you located our children?”

  “Rescue operations will be implemented. Clear the area.”

  “We have a strong lead. We’re going to follow it.”

  “All civilian flights are required to clear the fire zone. Now.”

  Scott grabbed Malcolm’s arm. “You can’t do this. Not again.”

  Malcolm shrugged him off, but he didn’t say anything into the phone. Mitchell had jurisdiction. Chain-of-command dictated that Malcolm should obey the order, and twenty years of military training conditioned him to comply. If others had obeyed orders, he wouldn’t now have a ravaged face.

  But this wasn’t the military and this time there weren’t hikers’ lives at risk. He glanced at his watch. 1121. More than five hours since he’d wakened to the fire. They had run out of time. Another rescue team, directed back to where they hoped the children were, would be too late.

  The phone blared again. “Acknowledge.” Malcolm said nothing. A pause. “Confirm.”

  Malcolm clutched the phone with whitened fingers.

  Nirav. My son.

  With a casual flip of his wrist, he tossed the still-squawking satellite phone out the open cargo door. It smashed against the skid, bounced high, and tumbled out of sight.

  “Lou.” Malcolm snapped the single syllable, hoping a little attitude would tip the balance and get her to go along. “Turn off your radio.”

  Lou didn’t respond.

  Malcolm waited for her to protest. As she’d pointed out earlier, she was the one whose license was at stake; she was the one responsible. It had to be her call, but he willed her to go along. If they didn’t keep going, Kat and the children would die. He held his breath, his heart pounding so hard, every beat pulsed in his fingertips.

  A long, silent pause. Then Lou reached out with a slim gloved hand and turned a black knob on the dashboard all the way to the left. The tiny green light above it disappeared, and Malcolm took a slow, even breath. “Thank you.”

  Lou waved one hand in a broad it-doesn’t-matter gesture. “I have nieces and nephews. If they were down there …” She paused. “But I sure as hell hope you know what you’re doing.”

  Malcolm sure as hell agreed. They had only one slim chance left, and he clung to that single hope with all the desperate strength he could marshal.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  THURSDAY, 11:25 AM

  Kat and the children waited, but Kevin didn’t return, and the smoke grew thicker every second.

  Nirav tugged on Kat’s shirt and pointed up the trail toward the overlook. His voice shook, and his face paled. “Fire here now.”

  He was right. Through the smoke, Kat could see the first tentative flames. The dry underbrush caught first, crackling merrily, deceptively benign. Nirav took two steps back, and Kat grabbed his shoulder, afraid he might simply turn and run. Lily, too, looked toward the fire and bleached white, perhaps realizing for the first time the consequences of what they faced. She shook her head over and over again. “I
want my mother.”

  A pocket of sap exploded nearby. They all jumped.

  “Time to get moving.” Kat scooped Tye into her arms. Nirav still had a firm hold of the leash, and Kat gently opened his fingers to take it. She had marveled at his composure, but the sight of actual flames had stripped away any last pretense of calm. The whites of his eyes framed enormous pupils, his breathing raced, and he moved in mechanical jerks. He looked from the fire to the dog, shaking, his good hand tracing the scars on his damaged arm with trembling fingers. Finally, he seized Lily’s hand.

  Kat kicked off her sandals for the last time—no place left to walk to—and plunged into the water. “Lily and Nirav, come on. Juni, come.”

  Juni jumped into the pond at once and swam easily toward Kat. Lily splashed in behind her, and Nirav took a cautious few steps into the shallows. The logs Kat had eyed for the dogs looked inadequate now that the time had come to use them, but she wrestled Tye into place and knotted his leash around one of the branches to keep him there.

  Lily reached the middle of the dam. She had to tip her head back to keep her nose and mouth above water, but she helped Kat boost the Lab onto the platform. Juni crouched across the branches, panting heavily and whining.

  “Stay.” Juni gave Kat a wild-eyed look, but she obeyed. Tye quit pulling at his leash and pressed his body tightly against the larger dog.

  Kat helped Lily step onto one of the boulders she’d spotted, and Lily’s tense face relaxed a bit once she stood on a solid surface, only waist-deep in water. She grabbed hold of one of the sticks that jutted from the dam to keep her balance, and she patted Juni on the head.

  Two dogs and one child in place. Kat turned again to Nirav, who stood in the shallow water near shore, staring at the fire, making no attempt to wade any deeper. Her shoulder bag hung limply over his arm. “Your turn, Nirav. Come on, it’s not safe there.”

  He shook his head and glanced her way. “Too much water.” He added something lengthy in Hindi, his body visibly shaking and his face a mask of pure terror.

  “Kat, I don’t think he can swim,” Lily’s shrill voice telegraphed her panic.

  Of course. No wonder he hesitated. Kat waded back to him and held out both arms. “I’ll carry you. I promise.”

  “No. No.” He kept shaking his head, the fire closing in.

  Kat doubted he even heard her anymore. She lifted him and he thrashed hard against her, panicked. But when she reached deeper water, he clutched her shoulders and buried his face against her, too frightened to fight any longer.

  Kat headed toward Lily, awkward with Nirav’s weight. The shoulder bag he still held thumped against Kat’s side, and she lost her footing and almost fell when she stepped into an unexpected hole, but she made it to the dam and found a thick branch a short distance from Lily and the dogs, strong enough to hold Nirav’s weight.

  She had to pry his fingers off her skin and hoist him up to safety, but once he perched on the dam, out of the water, a fraction of his rigid tension left his body. Her useless shoulder bag sat on the dam beside him.

  Kat took a deep breath and took stock. She and Nirav were closest to the shore they’d started from. The dogs crouched unhappily on their logs near the midpoint of the dam. Lily stood beside them, perched on her rock, petting and reassuring them. Kat stood chest-deep in water and ankle-deep in mud. The cold seeped steadily into her legs even as the heat seared her face and neck.

  “Kat, look.” Lily pointed back to where they had entered the water.

  Wisps of smoke rose from the log the children had used as a bench. Ash drifted toward them, coating their wet hair with a thick gray paste. Dark shapes plopped into the water, sending out rings of concentric ripples—frogs and turtles fleeing shore. A long black snake—six feet? eight?—slithered across a log and disappeared beneath the pond’s surface. Kat’s skin crawled.

  A sizzling sound erupted behind her, and Kat turned and checked the opposite end of the dam. Flames moved ever closer to the pond on that side as well, not one fire, but hundreds of individual encroachers, a swarm of fires that surrounded and surged forward. Her adrenaline commanded her to run, but all she could do was stand frozen, her muscles cramping in knotted tension.

  “Papa come now. Papa come now.” Nirav spoke the wish in a fervent whisper. His eyes never wavered from the closest fires, and he was trembling so hard, it shook Kat’s arm. A shrub burst into flames at the end of the dam, a patch of grasses and vines now smoldered, a towering oak had smoke streaming from its trunk and lower branches. Its leaves quaked in the hot updraft.

  “All right, Lily?” Kat’s parched throat seized up, the sharp pain piercing like dozens of individual needles. It was difficult to yell.

  Lily looked at Kat, her eyes raw, her cheeks red. She nodded a yes but then buried her face against Tye’s fur.

  They waited. Minutes passed, every second prolonged into an eternity. They had staked their claim to safety, and the next move belonged to the enemy.

  Kat kept looking toward the trail, expecting Kevin. But he didn’t come. Had he been right? Had he made it out? Was he even now safe and rescued, leaving the children the victims of her deadly judgment?

  She closed her eyes for a moment, trying to blot out reality. Over the years, there had been events that had been life-altering, and she’d known their impact at the time. Her wedding day. Sara’s birth. Her decision to teach. Her cancer diagnosis. Jim’s death. Some she had chosen. Some she hadn’t. None had prepared her for this wait, a wait with little hope and few options, heavy with the knowledge that the choices she’d made that day had doomed these two precious children.

  Sara would learn what had happened and know her as a failure. Malcolm and Scott would revile her. All she wanted was a chance to change the odds. But all she could do was watch the fire and wait.

  Smoke swirled from every direction, and all of them, human and dog alike, coughed each time a deep breath sucked in too much gray. Heat seared the inside of Kat’s nose and mouth. She and Lily ducked underwater often, the cold depths a welcome relief, and they all drank the scummy water, heedless of the unidentifiable floating bits. They tried pulling wet clothing up to protect their faces, but that made it even harder to breathe. Kat splashed water on Nirav, and Lily did the same for the dogs, but clothes, skin, hair, and fur dried again in seconds.

  The noise intensified. Sharp explosions, loud as gunshots. A deep whooshing from the fire itself, a wind from hell. Crashes in the distance as branches and whole trees fell from great heights.

  With a loud crunch, a flaming branch launched itself onto the dam, landing only a few feet from Kat and Nirav. They both cried out, and Kat recoiled. She jerked her hand from Nirav’s. “Don’t move.”

  She waded along the edge of the dam and grabbed a section of the branch that hadn’t yet burst into flames. The bark scalded her hand and she yelped, but she held on long enough to drag the branch off the dam and into the water. The flames sizzled out, but twigs and leaves on the dam still glowed red.

  She plunged her burned hand into the water for a moment, then cupped her hands and tossed water onto the embers. For every hot coal she doused, two more sprang up, her puny efforts overwhelmed.

  Wet wood shouldn’t burn. She had counted on that as an unquestionable fact, but this fire parched everything in its path. Once it caught, the rotted wood of the dam burned all too well, threatening to turn their safe retreat into a funeral pyre.

  “Kat.” It was Nirav’s shout, the first time he’d ever spoken her name, and Kat startled, almost losing her balance as she turned. Nirav had snapped out of his trance, and he rooted around in the shoulder bag beside him. He pulled out his precious bowl and held it toward her.

  Kat forced her way through the water, back to the boy, and took the bowl. Damn. I should have remembered we had it.

  It took several long minutes to douse the smoldering areas with bowl after bowl of water.

  Maybe they could do this. Keep the dam wet as a safe zone while the fi
re burned itself out around them.

  “Kat. Over here.” Lily’s penetrating screech shattered her optimism.

  Flames had advanced from the surrounding grasses onto the opposite end of the dam, and the section closest to shore burned as bright as a campfire.

  Kat inched as close as she could, her eyes stinging from the smoke. The heat, intolerable for more than a few seconds, repeatedly drove her back, but she poured water over the flames, flinging it in a high arc, her arms tiring. The water hissed and sizzled and the wood smoldered, but then caught again. She needed a fire hose, not a bowl.

  The dam was going to go.

  In synchrony with this thought, a horrible cracking sounded behind her, and she turned to see the flaming oak tree begin to lean over Nirav’s end of the dam.

  “Nirav, look out!” Kat and Lily both screamed at the same moment. Nirav gave a frightened glance upward and leaped into the water. The tree gave way, falling with a crash, one of its flaming branches hitting the spot where he had been sitting.

  Kat thrashed forward, thrusting the bowl at Lily when she passed her, moving toward Nirav as fast as she could through the deep water. Nirav’s arms flailed, and he sputtered and coughed. Kat grabbed his good arm, and she pulled him up so he could hang onto her shoulders, his chest heaving against hers. She carried him back to Lily and the dogs, his fingers digging into her shoulders like claws.

  Lily sobbed.

  Nirav coughed and retched up foul pond water.

  Kat’s head pounded, and her burned hand throbbed.

  “We’re going to die.” Lily clutched at Kat’s arm.

  Kat tried to take a deep breath to answer, but that only triggered an endless bout of coughing. Each hacking jolt stabbed deep, and her heavy, useless lungs clenched in spasms. The end of the dam where the tree had landed burned steadily, and at Lily’s end, where Kat had tried to wet things down, the wood crackled with flames as if she’d never made the effort. Twenty feet of dam separated the two fires, and Kat and the children crowded together in the middle of the span.