“I’ve wasted enough time,” she said vehemently. Buttons didn’t even look up from his bed. “We have to get going.” The sleeping dog trembled and whimpered as if he were having bad dreams. “I guess I have to get going as soon as I figure out what to do with you.” Emily stood over the poodle and worried what she should do next. Buttons was worn out. He was also lame, meaning Emily would have to carry him if she took him along when she hiked out.
Buttons started to snore, making Emily smile. “Get a good rest, little buddy,” she whispered. “You deserve it. You saved my butt. Matt’s too.”
Emily was thinking about leaving Buttons in the RV. It was a comfortable and familiar space to him. However, she knew it was wrong to leave an animal in a locked vehicle, especially in hot weather.
She considered the dilemma, took another look around the motorhome, and came up with up with a possible solution. The door and several windows were equipped with screens. She opened a sliding glass window and felt a slight breeze come through the screen. Emily thought that if she opened everything with a screen the interior of the RV wouldn’t overheat.
There was lots of canned dog food, so she could open several cans and put them on the floor beside a large bowl of water. If Buttons had to go to the bathroom, too bad for the people who would have to clean it up. Emily suspected the dog’s owners wouldn’t mind too much.
She found two heavy bowls in a cupboard and decided to fill both of them with water. That way Buttons wouldn’t go thirsty if he accidentally tipped one over.
There was snack food and bottled drinks inside almost every cupboard, so Emily knew she wouldn’t have worry about hunger or dehydration during the hike. What she did need was something to carry the supplies. When she stood up, planning to search the motorhome for a bag or container, she nearly fell over. Her legs were so wobbly that she had to hold onto the table for support. After a few moments she felt steady enough on her feet to resume the search.
Almost instantly she saw exactly what she was looking for. There was a large beach bag next to the driver’s seat. She took a quick peek inside and saw a towel, some romance novels, and sunscreen. She dumped the bag’s contents onto the passenger seat, confident she now had something large and durable enough to carry food and water. She held the bag upside down and gave it a final shake. A set of keys fell out. Keys for the motorhome.
Emily was delighted with her discovery. “Good news, Buttons!” The dog reluctantly opened an eye. “I don’t have to leave you behind, after all,” she said, voice shaking. “I’ve already done a couple of B&E’s, knocked down a door with an axe, and used a rock to smash a car window. Stealing a vehicle shouldn’t be a big deal for a badass like me.”
She picked up the keys.
Twenty-Eight
Emily realized there were some huge advantages to driving instead of walking. It would take her less time to drive to the nearest town than it would take her to limp a few hundred metres. Time was important. Matt needed help as quickly as possible and Emily suspected she was too weak to hike very far. She couldn’t even stand up without feeling light headed.
Although the driving idea was very attractive, she could also see a potential flaw in it. The problem was that Emily only had a vague idea of how to drive. Many of the kids she went to school with were preoccupied with getting their driver’s licence. Some, boys especially, could hardly talk about anything else. Many of them bragged they’d already done a little driving with a parent on a country road or empty parking lot. One girl, who was notoriously rich and spoiled, had taken her father’s Corvette without permission and rear-ended a police car. Emily wasn’t surprised when the car thief, already queen of the mean girls, saw her status among all the other cool kids rise even higher.
Emily had never been particularly interested in learning how to drive, although she’d always planned to eventually get her licence. She rarely watched what her parents did when they were driving, preferring to daydream or watch the scenery.
One thing she did know is that vehicles come with an owner’s manual. Her mother sometimes referred to hers when she needed clarification on something, such as how to reset the clock or find out why a red light had suddenly appeared on the dashboard display. Emily understood that the traditional place to keep these booklets is in the glove compartment.
The compartment was right where she expected it to be, between the driver’s and front passenger seats. Inside was a jumbled pile of maps, novels, sunglasses, and energy bars. At the very bottom was the owner’s manual. She opened it and started reading.
Starting the vehicle seemed easy enough. Emily had seen her parents do it scores of times, even if she hadn’t really been paying attention. She tentatively adjusted the driver’s seat, which looked and felt like an expensive recliner. First she determined that her feet could reach the gas and brake pedals. The next thing was to find out which was which. The manual provided the answer.
“Gas on the right. Brake on the left,” she read aloud, a habit she had developed while studying. “And where I’m sitting is called the cockpit.”
Then she found the illustration that identified the various gears. Park and neutral seemed very much alike. She decided drive and reverse were probably the important ones, since they controlled whether the vehicle was going forward or backward.
Because the interior lights were working Emily suspected the RV’s batteries were strong and the engine would also start, but there was only one way to find out for certain.
She took a deep breath, put the key into the ignition, and turned. The dashboard display immediately came on. The engine turned over, but didn’t stay on. Puzzled, she leaned over the steering wheel and tried again. Her foot accidentally touched the gas pedal as she turned the key and the engine started purring. “Give the engine some gas when trying to start it,” she muttered. “Must remember that.”
Her next problem was the windshield. Most of it was covered in fire retardant. Only a small section on the driver’s side was clean, making it difficult to see the road.
Emily thought it would be relatively easy to wash the rust-coloured chemicals off the windshield. It wasn’t. After going outside, spraying the windshield with water and rubbing with a dishtowel, she realized she was just smearing the dye and making the problem worse. Emily decided there was no time to look for another way of cleaning off the fire retardant. She was already feeling guilty about the length of time she’d stayed at the campground. There was a small bit of windshield, no larger than the cover of an average paperback book, she could look through. It wasn’t much, but it would have to do. There was a slightly larger section of clean glass on the passenger side window, allowing her to see the edge of the road.
Eric Rossi had expertly backed his motorhome into the campsite. The front of the vehicle was pointing directly at the campground access road. That was a piece of luck. Emily didn’t fancy the idea of trying to back up the big vehicle.
As she was about to climb back into the motorhome it occurred to her that the bottom step was very close to the ground. The steps might be damaged if the RV went over a bump. Emily fiddled with them for a moment and discovered they easily folded up.
With a growing sense of dread, Emily got into the driver’s seat, peered through the clean patch of windshield, and put the vehicle into drive. Not knowing any better she floored the gas pedal and screamed aloud when the motorhome jumped forward like a rabbit. There was a loud metallic clang from outside. She slammed on the brakes and the vehicle came to an abrupt stop. When she took her foot off the brake the motorhome started moving forward again, although much more gently.
“Park!” she yelled, nearly overcome with anxiety. “Put the stupid thing in park.” She shifted to park, wondered briefly if it should be in neutral instead, and then went outside to see what she’d run over.
The loud bang had been caused by a pair of folding lawn chairs that had been left leaning against the back bumper. They’d hit the ground when the RV moved forward. Nothing had
been damaged. Relieved, she went back inside.
“I’ve been wasting too much time,” she said through gritted teeth.
She took a deep breath and put the vehicle into gear. Even without her foot on the gas it moved slowly, but smoothly, forward. Steering it was surprisingly easy, and although her heart was racing, Emily had no difficulty getting out of the campsite. She tentatively put her foot on the gas and gently pressed down. The vehicle immediately picked up speed, causing her to gasp. A quick glance at the vehicle’s head-up display showed she was only going ten kilometres an hour.
Trembling and sweating she steered the vehicle onto the access road and out of the campground. It was a narrow lane, barely wide enough to allow two vehicles to pass each other. Both sides of the dirt road had been heavily treed and one of the burned trunks had toppled across the road during the fire.
Emily, who was having a lot of trouble seeing through the windshield, noticed the log at the last moment and immediately slammed on the brakes. Once again the vehicle came to an uncomfortably fast stop.
From inside the motorhome Emily couldn’t tell how significant the obstacle was. Deciding to inspect it up close, she put the vehicle in neutral and went outside.
The tree had been tall, but not much thicker than one of her legs. The branches were all gone, leaving just a black trunk behind. She decided the RV could go over the log without much difficulty. The question was whether it would be better to go over it slowly or to go as quickly as possible.
Emily turned to get back into the motorhome and was startled to see that it was rolling backwards and picking up speed. She yelped in alarm and raced after it. There was a slight curve in the road and the vehicle was veering toward the remnants of a very large tree. Running as fast as she could she climbed through the door, nearly stumbling in the process, ran to the cockpit, and just as a rear wheel went off the road, hit the brakes.
“There’s a reason they call it park,” she yelled, furious at herself. “When you park a vehicle, put it in PARK. That should be obvious.”
Emily didn’t even want to see how close she’d come to getting the motorhome stuck or damaged. She slowly drove forward, reached the log, and gunned it. The vehicle easily went over the obstacle, but she nearly flew right out of the seat.
“Probably should have taken that a little slower.”
Emily looked to the back of the vehicle to see how Buttons was doing. The jolt from going over the log had awakened the poodle, and he looked at Emily with concern.
“Don’t worry,” she told Buttons. “I’ll take it slower the rest of the way.”
The dog whimpered, apparently unconvinced.
A pungent haze still hung over the burnt landscape, red chemicals covered most of the windshield, and because Emily had vision in just one eye she could hardly see where she was driving. She stayed in the middle of the lane and tried to control a rising sense of panic.
She nearly ran into another fallen tree. It was much larger than the first one. There was no way Emily could go around or over it. She stopped the vehicle, put it in park, and got out to have a closer look.
The first thing she noticed was that the highway was only a few metres away. She’d almost accomplished one of her main goals. The highway was wide and smooth. Once on it she knew she could drive all the way to Vancouver. There were lots of towns and farms before then, and it seemed likely the nearest people were only a few kilometres away.
Matt’s suffering had to be brought to an end and that meant she had to get onto the highway. The only thing standing in her way was the tree. The trunk had snapped in half when it hit the ground. She wondered if that might work to her advantage. Emily gingerly touched the tree to see if it was hot. It wasn’t, so she grabbed the trunk and pulled. It hardly budged. She wasn’t strong enough to move it on her own.
Emily glanced back at the motorhome. It had just occurred to her that maybe she could use the powerful vehicle to pull the tree out of the way. The front bumper was flush to the vehicle, preventing her from tying her rope to it. She checked the back end and discovered there was a trailer hitch. It was the perfect place to tie her rope. Now all she had to do was turn the vehicle around so she could tie the trunk to the hitch.
The road wasn’t wide, so there was very little room to manoeuvre. Emily remembered that her father could turn his pickup truck around in tight spaces by repeatedly backing up and then driving forward for short distances. Although Emily wasn’t sure she could pull it off she decided she had to try, for Matt’s sake.
She put the vehicle in reverse and turned the steering wheel. Then something wonderful happened. The RV had a back-up camera, and as soon as the vehicle was put in reverse a dashboard monitor came on. She could see exactly where she was going. The camera was a priceless tool and Emily felt a huge sense of relief.
She drove backwards a few metres, turned the steering wheel, drove forward, and then repeated the process. In less time than she’d thought possible the vehicle’s back end pointed directly at the tree. Emily took out the rope tied one end to the trailer hitch and the other to the shorter section of trunk.
Back behind the steering wheel Emily gently pressed down on the gas pedal, unsure how much power was required to move the tree. The engine revved, but the motorhome didn’t move. She gave it more gas and the vehicle slowly started to move forward. The sound of something heavy being dragged across a rough surface could be heard over the sound of the engine. The tree didn’t have to be moved very far, so Emily only drove for a few seconds. Her plan had worked. The top section of the tree had been pulled free. Half the road was now open. It looked wide enough to drive the RV through. She untied the rope and put it back in the fanny pack, just in case it was needed again.
Turning the motorhome around again went a little smoother and faster the second time. When she successfully squeezed past the larger section of tree trunk she exhaled in relief and whispered, “I’m sorry this has taken so long, Matt. Hopefully things will go better now.”
Twenty-Nine
Emily paused at the highway. Should she turn left or right? She knew Big Jim had driven past some tiny communities and homesteads on the way to the campground. That was probably the logical way to go. For all she knew there was nothing but bush if she turned to her right. She turned left. The cockpit display informed her that she was heading west and had nearly a full tank of gas.
She quickly discovered that by following the highway’s centre line she could stay right in the middle of the road, which made her feel more comfortable. Luckily there was no oncoming traffic. As her confidence rose, so did her speed. In a matter of minutes she had travelled farther than she would have been able to walk in a whole day.
As she drove the smoke began to thin out. There was even an occasional glimpse of sky. The forest on both sides of the road had been completely destroyed. She passed the smoking ruins of what had once been a farm. Only the foundations remained of a house, barn, and several smaller buildings. Emily hoped everyone, including the animals, had escaped.
She kept an anxious eye on the speedometre. Trial and error convinced her that the fastest she felt comfortable at was about twenty kilometres an hour. She knew it was ridiculously slow for a highway, but she didn’t want to risk an accident by going faster. So far she hadn’t even put a scratch on Eric’s RV. Knowing that made her feel proud.
It occurred to her that the motorhome had a radio. She was starved for news about the fire. Uncertain of where the radio controls were, and not wanting to take her eyes off the painted line, Emily decided to pull over and take another look at the owner’s manual.
She gently touched the brakes and was pleased to see the motorhome responded by gradually slowing down. Parking in the middle of the highway seemed unnecessarily risky. At some point the road would have to be reopened. Perhaps it had been already. A big truck might come barrelling down the road at any moment.
Looking for a safe spot to pull over she put her face close to the windshield and peered
through the clear section of glass. She was astonished to see a ditch filled with green vegetation. None of the grass, weeds, and brush had been burned. Trembling with excitement, she put the vehicle in park. She moved to the passenger side seat, looked out the side window, and discovered that she’d reached the boundary of the fire zone.
Buttons could tell the motorhome had stopped. He jumped out of his bed and sat in front of the door.
“I’ll bet you need a bathroom break,” said Emily. She stood up, felt woozy, held onto the back of the seat to steady herself, and then walked slowly to the door. As soon as the door opened Buttons jumped gingerly to the ground. One of his paws was obviously still sore.
By coincidence Emily had parked the RV right where the fire had been stopped. When she looked to the right there was nothing but devastation, but on her left there was green pasture and a red barn.
A horse stood in the pasture, looking at something in the blackened brush. The animal did not appear to be injured or perturbed. Then Emily noticed something that caused her to gasp out loud. Parked close to the barn were two pickup trucks. They were crew cabs, dark green in colour. They were close enough that Emily could identify the BC Forest Service logos on the doors. Where were the firefighters? Emily couldn’t see anybody. Then she noticed that the horse was staring at a nearby thicket. She wondered if the horse knew something that she didn’t.
Moments later a man wearing a red shirt and yellow helmet came out from behind the brush. He was carrying something that looked like a long-handled spade. The man stopped and poked at the ground with the tool. A second firefighter appeared. The two men spoke briefly and then one of them pointed toward a thin plume of smoke rising from a stump in the burned area.
“Hello!” called Emily. Her voice was too weak to carry far. The firefighters didn’t hear her. For a moment Emily thought of walking over to where the men were working. There was a barbed wire fence between her and the firefighters and she realized she didn’t have the strength to climb over it. Her legs were wobbly and she still felt faint. She called again, but the men still didn’t hear her. Their attention was focused on a small group of firefighters working their way through the blackened trunks.
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