“We need to move.” Kat stopped to cough. “The center of the pond. We can’t stay here.”
Lily looked back and forth along the dam, and their danger seemed to sink in. She nodded, and her hold on Kat’s arm relaxed a fraction. “Where?”
Good question.
“Follow close. We’ll find a place.” A place where Lily could stand. Kat hoped such a spot existed. Why hadn’t she checked the depth of the rest of the pond in those moments before the fire hit?
“What about … the dogs?” Lily coughed between each phrase, the smoke worsening every moment.
Kat’s arms tightened around Nirav, and she swallowed hard. The dogs couldn’t stay on the dam, but they couldn’t stand in deep water. She looked from the two anxious children to the two wet panting dogs. Her logical self argued that trying to save the dogs put the rest of them at risk, but she couldn’t abandon anyone.
“We’ll try.”
If it came down to a choice of saving Lily and Nirav or saving Juni and Tye, the dogs would have to go, but perhaps they hadn’t yet reached that disastrous moment.
“Nirav, get on my back.”
“No fall.” Nirav’s voice shook.
“No. You won’t fall.”
With Lily’s help, Kat got him to shift onto her back to ride piggyback, his arms wrapped over her shoulders. He abandoned her shoulder bag on the dam, but he clutched the now-useless bowl, its edge digging into her collarbone. What a shame he hadn’t fixated on a tiny token that would fit in a pocket, but she didn’t have the heart to make him drop it. She reached toward her chest without thinking, to touch the precious necklace that wasn’t there, and the stab of its loss pierced her all over again. This bit of her history, gone, like everything else abandoned to the fire.
Nirav’s weight settled better on her back, and Kat released Tye’s leash from the dam and lowered him into the water, her hands laced under his chest. He hung in her arms, panting, a slow ooze of blood dripping from the wound on his neck, each drop creating an instant’s pink on the ash-covered surface of the pond.
“Come on, Lily.” Kat stepped away from the dam.
The water rose to her neck within two steps, the original path of the stream deep here. Lily started treading water.
“Juni, come.” Juni yipped and leaped into the water, swimming strongly. Lily grabbed her collar as she swam past, and Juni towed her forward.
They inched ahead, and at last, halfway between the center of the pond and the shore, Kat cracked her shin against a large boulder. The new bruise was worth it. She stepped onto it, caught her balance as she slipped. “Here.”
Lily let go of Juni, and Kat pulled the girl up beside her, Nirav still holding tight to her shoulders. The slick, uneven surface of the rock meant they were forced to stand shoulder to shoulder in order to fit, but at least Lily could touch bottom here. The wind, an enemy until now, became an ally, swirling occasional gusts of clear air around their perch as the hot fire sucked in the cooler air over the pond. They breathed the snatches of fresh air hungrily, desperate for each instant’s respite. All too soon, the smoke returned, and Kat’s head pounded again.
Juni whined and swam in circles around them. For the moment, she swam well, her head and shoulders high and her stroke strong.
How long could a dog swim? Kat had no idea.
Flames encircled the entire circumference of the pond now, and when Kat looked back at the dam, it, too, exhaled smoke along its full length.
Time passed. Kat’s muscles weakened. Her knees threatened to buckle. The bodies of dead animals drifted past. A rabbit. Two frogs. A baby blue jay, too young to fly.
The flaming trees began to disintegrate, dropping more debris into the water. Crashes and splashes echoed from all directions, the noises even more frightening because they couldn’t see what caused them. A claustrophobic terror, like being attacked while blindfolded. Juni kept circling them, but she swam lower in the water now, her movements choppy. The struggle to breathe, to stand upright, took all of Kat’s energy. Coherent thoughts hovered just out of reach.
An explosive cracking sound echoed across the water, and an enormous dark shape plummeted out of the smoke. It fell at an angle, hitting the surface of the pond with a thwack that sent a wave of water into their faces.
Lily screamed. Nirav called out something in Hindi. Kat tried to blink pond water out of her eyes. They were all unharmed, but Kat’s initial relief proved short-lived.
“Where’s Juni?”
They couldn’t see her. She had been swimming in the area where the tree fell.
“Juni!” Kat and Lily and Nirav called as loud as they could.
At last, what might have been a whimper came from the direction of the fallen fir. The tree lay steaming in the pond, its broken branches tangled one on top of another. Several jutted out of the water, still burning.
“Lily, stay here. Don’t move. Hold Tye.” Kat thrust the pup into Lily’s arms.
She stepped off the boulder before she even thought it through. Nirav tightened his hold on her shoulders, and she forced her way toward shore. She sank deep in the clinging muck, a slow-motion nightmare. Walking got easier as the pond got shallower, but Nirav gained twenty pounds on her back without the water to support some of his weight.
“Juni!”
Another whimper, but Kat couldn’t tell where it came from. The smoke thickened here, so close to shore. Everything looked hazy, and Kat couldn’t tell how much was smoke and how much was the fault of her raw, streaming eyes.
“There.” Nirav pointed left, and Kat headed that way, turning every few steps to make sure Lily still stood safely on her rock. Kat had promised herself she wouldn’t jeopardize the children to save the dogs, but here she was, putting all of them at risk.
They found Juni at last. The main trunk and its branches had missed her, but as the large tree fell, it had taken down several smaller trees with it. Juni’s back legs dangled underwater, a thick branch pinned her chest, and blood dripped from a gash at the base of her ear. She whined and struggled when she saw Kat, but she couldn’t move. Kat needed to lift several large branches to free her, and she couldn’t do it with Nirav on her back.
“Nirav. Stand in the water. It’s not deep here.”
He shook his head against her shoulder. No.
“Nirav, we need to help Juni.”
There were a long few seconds of silence, broken only by Juni’s whimpers.
“I help.” Nirav’s voice shook, but he slid down Kat’s back to stand waist-deep in the water. One hand still clutched his precious bowl, the other the tail of Kat’s blouse.
Kat grabbed the uppermost branch of the heap that trapped Juni and pulled it to the side. The second one still smoldered, and she took the bowl from Nirav and doused a handhold, handed the bowl back, then pulled the branch off the dog, clearing loose debris.
Another enormous cracking sound echoed over the pond, and Lily screamed. Kat froze. A giant splash echoed behind her. She whirled, fearing the worst, but Lily still stood safe on her rock. The tree had fallen somewhere out of sight, leaving Kat with an indelible image of what might have happened if it had struck Lily.
She turned back to Juni. With the top branches gone, she could see the trap more clearly. Juni had scrambled up so that her chest rested on one of the submerged branches, and the support held her partly out of the water. She couldn’t move any farther because a broken branch arced over the main trunk and then over her shoulders with only an inch of clearance. The branch was big. It looked heavy. Kat took a deep breath and lifted, her arms shaking with strain. She managed to create only an extra three or four inches of space.
“Juni, come. Come here.”
Juni tried, Kat gave her credit, but she needed to move sideways to get out, and she couldn’t get traction.
Kat tried to shift the branch to the side, but it wouldn’t budge. She needed to pull Juni out, but she needed to keep holding up the branch to do it.
It couldn’t be
done. A caustic wave of hopelessness burned her eyes and throat with an intensity that surpassed even the effects of the smoke. She was going to have to let go of the branch again, which meant abandoning the dog.
At that moment, Nirav let go of her blouse and forced his way through the water, pushing aside the remaining tangle of twigs and leaves, making a beeline for the trapped dog.
“Nirav, stop.” Parts of the tree still smoldered. “Come back.”
Nirav didn’t pause.
Kat couldn’t let go of the branch for fear of hitting him. “You can’t pull her out. Too heavy.” Her coughs made every word a challenge.
Nirav ignored her.
When he reached Juni, he spoke a few words to her in Hindi in a quiet voice, but he made no attempt to take hold of her. Instead, he reached over Juni’s shoulders with the arm that held his bowl, and he wedged it under the branch Kat was struggling to hold up. It created a brace against the main trunk, holding the branch in place.
Nirav hit the bowl hard several times with the heel of his good hand, wedging it in securely.
“Yes.” Kat couldn’t manage to say more, the word of praise acid in her scalded throat.
She eased off on the branch. The bowl held. She waded forward, grabbed Nirav, and pulled him away from the path the branch would take if it slipped. Then she got a firm hold on Juni’s collar and dragged her sideways out of the snarl. Blood smeared the dog’s head, raw scrapes covered her back and side, and she could barely keep her head out of the water.
Kat hunched forward. Nirav climbed onto her back again, his weight oppressive, and she kept one hand on Juni’s collar and slipped her other arm under the dog’s chest to keep her afloat. They made their slow way back to Lily, leaving Nirav’s bowl behind, still braced against the tree. The deep water was even more of a challenge now with Juni’s extra weight. It was a relief to return to the boulder, where the smoke was a little less dense and the wind carried occasional puffs of fresh air.
Lily struggled with questions between coughs. “Is Juni all right?”
Kat didn’t even try to answer. Lily gave up trying to talk and slumped against Kat’s shoulder as she held Tye, Kat struggled to keep Juni’s head out of the water, and Nirav clung to Kat’s shoulders. Kat’s arms and back ached; her burned hand throbbed; her feet and legs were dead with cold. They were running out of air, and they were running out of time.
She had spent a lifetime taking the future for granted, but now she wouldn’t see the leaves transform in the fall. She wouldn’t see sunrise or moonrise again. She wouldn’t have a last conversation with Sara. In the past three weeks, Kat had thought a lot about dying, but it had all been distant visions of an abstract event. Now that death was real and immediate, she could only focus on taking one shallow breath after another.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
THURSDAY, 11:35 AM
Lou retraced their original route, guiding the helicopter toward the thin stream Malcolm and Scott had noticed earlier. The roadbed itself burned along most of its length now, its flaming grasses a blackening path, easy to follow. Malcolm peered through his open doorway into thick smoke that clogged his throat and lungs. Scott clutched his precious handhold, fighting for balance as the chopper jerked and shuddered through shifting updrafts. He muttered under his breath, and it took Malcolm a few moments to make out the words. Let her be safe. Let her be safe. Let her be safe. His plea paralleled the one that had taken up permanent residence in Malcolm’s heart.
“Slower.” Malcolm shifted to lean forward between the pilots’ chairs, searching the ground in front of them, anxious not to miss their landmark.
The helicopter eased back, but the dense smoke here blurred all details on the ground. Occasional gusts of wind revealed a patch of dirt or a random boulder, but they could fly over a hundred stream beds without seeing them. He strained to find anything at all that would give them a clue they were in the right place, but he failed. No landmarks. None.
At last, they reached a zone where the smoke thinned. The rockslide.
“We’ve overshot.” “Too far.” Scott and Malcolm spoke at the same time.
“Agreed.” Lou held the chopper in place.
Pete held a pair of calipers to the trail map, the constant vibrations of the helicopter making exact measurements a challenge. He double-checked instruments on the dashboard and jotted down a few numbers. “Okay. Reverse course. I’ll tell you when to stop.”
Malcolm nodded approval. The stream bed should be close.
The helicopter turned and moved on again, but nothing was visible except smoke and fire.
“Stop.” Pete said. “If this map is scaled right, the stream is right below us.”
Malcolm leaned out the door on his side, straining to see through the swirling fog of gray. Pointless. They could have been hovering over a stream or a highway. Hell, they could have been hovering over a whole city.
“We’re in a low spot between two hills.” He gestured to the vague shapes on either side. “The map can’t be too far off. Turn here. Calculate the distance to the pond.”
Scott kept glancing at Malcolm, as if trying to gauge his level of confidence, but Malcolm was struggling to keep his face neutral. Too early for optimism. Too many challenges still ahead.
Pete gave a new heading, and Lou made the adjustment. Her hands shifted her joystick in micro-increments, her feet did something with the pedals, and the helicopter began its turn, smoothly at first. Then, without any warning, the chopper gave a sharp sudden lurch, dropped straight down at least two stories, and canted hard to the right.
Scott yelped, and he swung out through the open cargo door, restrained from plunging to the ground only by his death grip on the safety strap and the toes of his tennis shoes, scrabbling across the slick deck for traction. It was a slow-motion replay of the instant the hiker had dragged him out. Malcolm, thrown off-balance, reached out to try to grab Scott and pull him back, and a final jerk of the helicopter tossed him hard against the edge of Lou’s chair. His injured elbow smashed against the chair’s metal frame with a cracking sound, and Malcolm dropped to his knees in agony.
Lou and Pete fought the helicopter back level, and Scott pulled himself back into the cargo hold. The helicopter surged upward, regaining the altitude they’d lost. Scott clutched the back of Lou’s chair, gasping as if he’d never get enough air again.
“Choppy thermals.” Lou’s tone was half explanation, half apology. “You two okay?”
Malcolm struggled to find breath enough to talk. What had started as a likely hairline fracture near his elbow had exploded after impact into something much worse. His elbow looked disjointed. Disconnected. A sharp point of broken bone poked up, tenting the blackening skin. Worst of all, a nerve must have gotten caught in the break somehow, and it sent electrified jolts of pain shooting up the full length of his arm. His sling still held the arm in place, but even without it, Malcolm doubted he would have been able to move it.
Scott seemed to pull himself together, and his gaze fell on Malcolm’s arm.
“Shit, what happened?” Scott crouched beside him.
Malcolm tipped his head toward the metal frame of Lou’s chair, but he made no effort to speak, his jaw locked tight in his effort not to moan out loud. He carefully moved his supporting hand away from his injured arm, and Scott’s sick expression reinforced his own assessment.
Pete twisted in his chair to look. “Fuck.” He inspected the damage, his eyes wide and worried.
“I’m okay.” Malcolm heard the double-length stretch of the simple words and saw Scott’s disbelief. Yeah, all right, he was definitely not okay, but that didn’t matter. “Give me a minute.” He turned his head to one side. “Can’t lose my son. Can’t.”
He hadn’t intended to say those last words out loud, but Scott reached out and briefly rested his hand on Malcolm’s good shoulder. When it came right down to it, they were both just fathers, doing the best they could.
Malcolm closed his eyes, and he
tried the same breathing trick he’d used before. This time, the attempt to get on top of his pain didn’t work very well. His teeth no longer ground together, but the nerve in his arm—torn or crushed or whatever—still screamed its agony, and the fracture itself hurt like hell. If he’d been out in the field on his own with time to recover, he would have holed up for twenty-four hours before moving on. That was definitely not an option here.
Pete sat frozen. Lou held the chopper in a slow circle.
“Go.” Malcolm gave himself points—his voice shook only slightly. “Go to the pond.”
“Are you sure?” Lou asked.
“Go. Now.” Malcolm used his legs to slide himself across the floor, and he wedged his body against the wall of the cabin. “Scott, you’re my eyes. Tell me what you see.”
Scott stared at him, slack-jawed. He licked his lips, but he didn’t move.
Pete looked from Malcolm to Scott and tapped the map. “We’re here.”
Scott shook himself and shifted into the position Malcolm usually occupied between the pilot seats. He looked at the map. “We’re still above the spot where the stream crosses the old roadbed?”
“Yes.”
“Head toward the pond.” Scott cleared his throat and squared his shoulders, but the tremor in his voice trumpeted his uncertainty.
Lou turned the chopper down the mountain, toward the valley. Toward the worst of the fire.
Malcolm stayed on the floor, but he watched their progress out the open door. His clothing, his arms and hands, every exposed surface of the helicopter, were flecked with soot. His eyes watered from the smoke, or maybe from the pain, but his tears dried instantly. As the smoke got thicker, every excruciating breath was a nightmare.
“Stop here,” called Pete.
The tone of the engine changed, but there was no other way to know they were stationary—Malcolm tried to identify details below them, but he could find no point of reference. Smoke cloaked everything, a swirling shroud pockmarked by flames.
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