Wildland

by Rebecca Hodge

  Scott went silent for a spell. Twice they heard splashing, and Malcolm pictured him losing his balance. Things couldn’t be easy down there.

  “Nothing.” Scott’s voice dragged. “They’re not here.”

  “Keep going,” Malcolm said. “You’re doing great.” He fervently hoped that was true. What the hell was really going on down there? Scott could be traveling in circles, for all he knew. So close, so close to success. What if Nirav was really there and Scott missed him?

  “Head … hurts … hard to think.”

  The bad air must be taking its toll. A wave of utter hopelessness forced Malcolm to lean hard against the cabin wall. This wasn’t going to work. They were too late to save them. Nirav, I’m so sorry.

  Desperation must have shown on his face, because Pete reached out to squeeze his shoulder. “Still time.” But even he sounded doubtful.

  “Anything yet?” Malcolm finally asked. Scott was getting more and more confused, less and less likely to be able to continue. If he got much worse, they would need to have him return to the pickup point, or they would lose him, too.

  No answer. Malcolm repeated it. Still nothing. Then a long, drawn-out spell of coughing. “Something … here … deeper water.” Scott’s voice was so hoarse, his words were almost indecipherable.

  Malcolm leaned forward. “What? What is it?”

  “Hang on … a shape … it’s moving … oh my god … a person … Lily.” The last word was a hoarse shriek. There was garbled noise at that point, nothing that could be understood.

  “What’s going on?” Malcolm tried not to scream. Was Lily really there? Was Scott hallucinating?

  A choking sob came through the headphones. “Here. Alive. All three.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  THURSDAY, 12:40 PM

  Kat turned to see what could sound so human, what new threat approached. An upright ash-coated creature—a bear?—struggled toward them. Kat tried to focus, think, react.

  The animal lurched closer, waving its front legs, grunting strange sounds.

  Lily gasped and leaned toward the animal, not away. She croaked the words, Dad, you came, but Kat still didn’t understand. The creature kept coming, only a few feet away now, and then it registered.

  Human.

  A man.

  Scott?

  Kat’s knees gave way, and she pitched forward. Juni disappeared underwater, thrashing in her arms, and Kat forced herself upright, pulling the dog’s head back into the smoke-laden air.

  Scott. His hair streamed water and ash, his reddened face looked scalded, and he stumbled with each step. He splashed toward Lily and swept her to his chest, squashing Tye between them. “You’re here.”

  “How?” Kat couldn’t manage to say anything beyond the single word. Had he followed them somehow? Was he as trapped as they were?

  Lily pulled back from her father and shifted Tye so she could hold his harness in one hand. “Can we get out?”

  Scott nodded.

  Nirav moved on Kat’s back, half awake at last, and he reached out and touched Scott’s arm, his shoulder, his face, as if confirming he was real and not imagined. “Papa?”

  “In the helicopter.” Scott made it sound like such rescues arrived every day, but Kat fought against a wave of dizziness and disbelief. Nirav’s hands tightened on her shoulders, and for the first time in that endless day, he gave a choking sob.

  “Can’t land.” Scott gestured toward his webbed harness, and Kat made the vague connection to the noise they’d heard.

  Scott’s headphones squawked, and Kat jumped. Voices, invisible people out there, people here to rescue the children. The children will be safe. The words filled her, soaking their way into her exhausted body the way liquid saturates a sponge. The children will be safe. Nothing else mattered.

  Scott listened to the static-filled noise and nodded. “Yes.” He coughed, appeared to listen again. “Yes … no.” He glanced at the three of them. “Bad shape … two dogs.” A long spell of squawking came from the headphones. “No, dogs. D-O-G-S. Dogs. Two of them.” He shook his head. Shrugged. “Will do … yes.”

  He turned to Lily. “Can you walk?” He gestured to the rope tied to his harness. It floated in long curls on the surface of the water and disappeared off into the smoke.

  Lily nodded, but she leaned against him. “I can walk.”

  Kat was forgetting something. Something important. The piece she groped for fell into place. “Scott. Another man. He was here.”

  Scott looked around at the surrounding smoke. “Here? In the pond?”

  “No. He went downhill. Down the trail.”

  Scott shook his head. “Toward the lake?” Kat nodded, and Scott reported the fact to the helicopter. He listened. “Yes … yes. Agreed … no chance at all.” He turned to Kat. “They’re radioing it in to the fire teams. They’ll search. Here, let me take the boy.”

  No chance at all. The blunt words seemed to seal Kevin’s fate, and in that moment, Kat didn’t want to let Nirav go, didn’t want to lose the tight grip of his hands on her shoulders, the badly needed reassurance that he was still okay. But she couldn’t carry him any farther.

  Nirav reached for Scott, and Kat straightened as his weight left her, the relief unspeakably wonderful. The next moment, a wave of foul water splashed her face. When she cleared her eyes, Nirav was completely underwater, hardly struggling. Scott grabbed him, pulled him out, and held him as he coughed up the foul liquid he’d inhaled. He finally got the boy settled on his back. Nirav’s head sagged forward, but Kat saw that he held on this time with both hands.

  Kat tightened her hold on Juni. Almost there. She could do this.

  Scott looked at Kat. “The dogs …” He shook his head.

  Lily gasped and gave her father a horrified look.

  Kat met his eyes. Abandon the dogs? After all this. “We’ve come so far.” The hoarseness of her voice didn’t hide her pleading tone.

  Nirav leaned forward over Scott’s shoulder so he could look him in the eye. “Dogs are coming. They …” He appeared to grope for his next words; then his voice disappeared in a long spasm of coughing.

  Scott let out an audible sigh and shook his head one more time. “We’ll try. No guarantees.”

  He stepped forward and tried to lift Juni out of Kat’s arms. He pried her stiffened fingers one at a time from their taloned hold on the dog’s fur. Juni didn’t even open her eyes, but her chest still rose and fell. At least she was alive.

  Kat rubbed her aching shoulders. No dog in her arms. No child on her back. A wave of dizziness threw her off-balance, and she grabbed Scott’s arm for an instant to recover.

  “Not far. Stay together.” Scott shifted Juni onto one arm and used the other to pull the floating rope toward him until it tightened into a straight path. “This leads to the pickup point.” He placed it in Lily’s hands. “You first.” His voice rasped as hoarsely now as everyone else’s. “Kat, stay close. Watch the boy.”

  Kat nodded. Follow Scott. Don’t let Nirav fall. She repeated it to herself. She stepped off the boulder and forced her way through the water, an amazingly easy task without added weight.

  Focus on Nirav’s red shirt. One foot in front of the other. Ignore the heat, the smoke, the fire. The water got deeper, the bottom rockier—they were crossing the middle of the pond. Kat’s bare feet were numb with cold, and she slipped again and again on the uneven bottom.

  Focus on Nirav’s red shirt. Concentrate. Keep going. The water got shallower closer to shore, the smoke thicker, the fire louder. The red shirt got smaller. Kat stumbled, smashed her bruised shin against a rock, fell forward, dropped the rope, sucked in foul water, and retched it back up.

  The red shirt. Gone. The rope. Gone. Kat opened her mouth to call for help, but then she stopped.

  The children were safe.

  The dogs were safe.

  If she stopped, if she stayed right here, she wouldn’t burn. She would simply fill with smoke, embrace it, and becom
e part of it. She would slip into the water and drown. A far less daunting fate than fighting forward one more time—only to wait for her cancer to take her.

  Here it was at last. A final decision. Exactly the reason she’d come to these mountains, to accept her inevitable future, the approaching endgame. She waited for a sense of relief to envelop her. Waited for calm. For peace.

  Instead, every aching muscle, every cut, scratch, and burn, shrieked their damage. Her eyes were dried raisins, her throat so raw and swollen she could no longer swallow. Every nerve in her body reminded her she was still alive.

  A flood of memories rocked her. Jim, at the little bistro on King Street, down on one knee, promising a life together. Sara, toddling through her first steps. Jim, the morning she rolled to his side of the bed to tell him he was running late, only to find his body cold and stiff. Sara now, her love for her bewildering succession of dogs, her determination to have Kat fight on as long as possible. Malcolm. Lily. Nirav. The sickening fear of failing them.

  Scene after scene tumbled through Kat’s head, the random pattern of a life. She would miss it. All of it.

  Something brushed against Kat’s side, and she hesitated before she looked down, afraid to see another dead animal, or worse, another live one.

  Not an animal. The slack coil of Scott’s rope floated beside her. Kat picked it up. Heavy, wet, slimy with the ash that crusted the surface of the pond. A lifeline that would lead her to Scott, Malcolm, and the children.

  A chance.

  A chance, if she wanted to take it.

  Malcolm’s deep rasping voice echoed in her head. I finally decided to embrace what life handed me, even though it wasn’t what I was seeking.

  In the end, the choice was surprisingly easy.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  THURSDAY, 12:45 PM

  All hell broke loose in the helicopter the instant Scott found Kat and the children. Pete and Lou let out shouts of delight, and Pete pummeled the deck with one fist, his face ecstatic. “Fucking unbelievable!”

  All Malcolm could do was sit, frozen. Stunned.

  Scott had done it. Nirav was alive.

  His relief left him deeply shaken. If things had worked differently—if he’d lost his son—he wasn’t sure how he would have faced the next day.

  But they still had a way go. Scott was leading the group to the pickup point, following the guide rope back to the anchor. Malcolm wanted details on Nirav’s condition, and he wanted to talk to him, but he forced himself to be patient. He couldn’t risk distracting Scott and perhaps prompting some sort of mistake.

  Pete sat by the open cargo door, ready to lower the cable as soon as Scott reported in. “I can’t believe they have two dogs with them.”

  Unbelievable indeed. “Do you have anything they can use to bring the dogs up?”

  “No. They’ll have to make do with the regular harnesses.”

  Maybe that would work. Malcolm tried to picture anything else that could go wrong. “They may have trouble finding the cable in all that crap. Do you have any sort of flare we could use?”

  Pete nodded and opened a small compartment. “Good idea.” He dug out a handful of flares and duct-taped one near the free end of the cable, ready to light.

  That should help. Their positioning wouldn’t be exact. They’d heard nothing from below for a good long while. “How’s it going, Scott?”

  “Okay.” Scott’s comments had grown shorter and his coughing spells longer. “Should be almost there.”

  “Dad! Where’s …”

  Malcolm tried to make out the rest, but Lily’s voice wasn’t strong enough for Scott’s microphone to pick up everything.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked. “What’s happening?” So many things could still go wrong.

  The pause that followed was endless. “Kat’s not with us.”

  Malcolm turned away, staring sightlessly at the winch to avoid meeting Pete’s eyes. He didn’t think he could mask his distress. He had promised himself he would save Kat along with Nirav. If they lost her now, it meant failure.

  Exhaustion. Poor visibility. Lack of oxygen. There were an infinite number of reasons for Kat to get confused or lost. The last thing he wanted was to save the children and lose her. She’d done a phenomenal job, but they needed to get the children out before they could consider any additional search. “Keep going,” he told Scott. His voice gave no hint of the turmoil that scrambled his insides. “Let’s get the children out, and then we’ll see if there’s anything we can do.”

  “Okay.” The single word dragged with fatigue. “We’re here. We’re at the pickup point.”

  “Great.” Pete’s crisp voice spit from the headphones, all business. “We’re coming lower. I’m sending down two harnesses. The children can come together. Clip both onto the single hook.” He lit the flare, which spewed out an arc of brilliant yellow sparks as the winch dropped it downward. “Look for the flare.”

  “Send both children at the same time?” Scott’s confusion was getting worse.

  “Yes. The cable will take their weight easily. We can’t waste time.”

  Malcolm started itemizing the millions of ways things could still go fubar, but he stopped himself. He needed to have faith. Scott had done the impossible; he’d found Kat and the children. Hopefully he could keep going long enough to get the children out and find Kat again.

  “I see the flare,” Scott said. “Okay, I’ve got the cable. Lily, you and Nirav go first.”

  Malcolm and Pete peered into the smoke, listening intently.

  “No!” Lily’s voice carried up to them clearly—she must be yelling close to her dad. “Not without you.”

  “Honey, you need—”

  “No! No! I won’t.” Her voice squeaked in panic.

  “Okay. Okay. Calm down. Your mother—”

  Lily didn’t let him finish. “No. You take me.”

  Malcolm tried to picture what he would do in Scott’s place. It made the most sense to get the two children out first, but Lily’s fear was understandable. He’d be tempted to simply order her to behave, but that was probably an impulse born of his lack of understanding of twelve-year-old girls. Scott was going to have to figure this one out on his own.

  He waited through a long silence but finally couldn’t stand it any longer. “What’s happening?”

  “Sending your boy. And the big dog. If I can manage it.”

  Pete shook his head, but at least a decision had been made. Malcolm would have Nirav with him in only moments, but they were adding the risk of a freaked-out dog as it was lifted through the air. Special ops used dogs all the time in parachute drops and rappels, but those dogs had tons of special training. “Muzzle the dog. It might panic.”

  “Are you kidding me? With what?” Scott’s exasperation made it sound like he was at the end of his endurance.

  Malcolm let it drop. He’d have to just hope for the best. The minutes dragged on, and he tried to be patient. It would take time for Scott to fit the harness around Juni, adjust a separate harness for Nirav, and then attach the cable to both Nirav and the dog. Why didn’t Nirav say something loud enough to be picked up by microphone? Then again, he was usually soft-spoken. That was probably why his voice didn’t come through. But Scott wasn’t reassuring the boy or telling him what was happening. He had to be as frightened as Lily was.

  The horrifying possibility that Nirav couldn’t speak forced itself into Malcolm’s list of worries, and his chest compressed inward, his lungs full of concrete with no room for air. Come on, come on, come on.

  At last, Scott gave the signal they’d waited for. “Okay. Take it up.”

  Pete started the winch again, and Malcolm leaned as far out of the helicopter as he dared, trying to see. Nothing but swirling smoke. Still nothing. Still nothing. Then, a vague shape, darker than the rest. It got bigger. More defined, but still hard to make out—an amorphous lump hanging at the end of the steel cable. Closer, then closer still, and at last it reached the heli
copter’s side—two inert bodies, Nirav and Juni. Neither was moving. Juni’s tongue lolled out of her mouth, a sickly bluish gray. No wonder Scott scoffed at the idea of a muzzle.

  “Nirav! Nirav!” His son didn’t even flinch.

  Pete guided the two in, and Malcolm slid over beside them, damning his injured arm and its relentless pain. He felt at once for Nirav’s pulse, couldn’t find it, then finally felt a few beats. Weak and irregular. Nirav’s breathing was horribly shallow. His eyes were half open, but he didn’t seem aware of what was happening, and his face shimmered sickly white under a coating of ash. Malcolm had gotten so used to coughing that it didn’t register anymore, but Nirav wasn’t coughing. Wasn’t coughing at all. That had to be a bad sign. Malcolm’s heart seized down hard. He’d imagined Nirav, rescued and safe. Now he could only pray they could get him to a hospital in time to save him.

  Pete attached two more empty harnesses to the winch and sent the cable down with another brilliant flare. “On its way,” he said to Scott. He turned to Malcolm. “Is that dog even alive?”

  Malcolm shook his head and checked Juni. Alive, yes, but cut, burned, and barely breathing. The surface of her fur was dry—the heat of the fire had vaporized all available moisture on the journey up—but her undercoat was soaking wet. How in hell had Kat managed two dogs in deep water?

  He helped Pete shift Juni and Nirav off to one side, out of the way for the next rescue. Two more trips and they’d have everyone in the helicopter. They could head to the trauma center in Asheville.

  Nirav clung to the dog like a limpet, his fingers twined in Juni’s fur, and Malcolm tried to convince himself it was a good sign. “Hang on, Nirav, just hang on.” He didn’t think his son could hear him, but saying the words helped. He whispered a fervent prayer and wished he knew which Hindu god Nirav would want him to address. “I’m here, Nirav. I’m right here. You’re safe now.”