Lilly nodded to the outside. "There's a few cars out there. Look." I followed her gaze. A glint of light flickered in the distance. Squinting, I realized it was the windshield from a moving car out among the distant ridges.
The car—No, there was a line of cars, all made small by distance—were traveled g up the steep mountainside. They were between a natural meadow-like break in the trees. I didn't recognize the road, but there were plenty of roads and trails crisscrossing the national forest.
I didn't have time to focus the binoculars before they were gently, but firmly, taken from my grasp by my older cousin.
I sighed and let Terry have them before I turned back to the window. Terry was taller. He might have a better vantage point.
Bringing the binoculars to his face, Terry twisted the knob on the nose-piece. "I see five cars... No, six," he said after a moment. "I think they’re heading away from the fire."
"Can you see who's driving?" Clarissa asked.
Can you see if they are adults? Her real question hung in the air, unsaid.
"Too far away." Terry cleaned the lens with the end of his shirt before peering out again. "I think... The one in front is really short over the steering wheel." He let out a breath. "It's a kid."
Damn. Another data-point for the ‘all the adults turned’ theory.
"Is there any way to get their attention? Show them we are here?" Merlot asked, half-hopefully. She held Baby Jane, patting her bottom as if to reassure herself.
Lilly snorted. "How? By smoke signal?"
"We don't want them to show up here. We need to keep the food for ourselves." Terry still had the binoculars and ignored Lilly's impatient motions to let her see. "Besides, I think they're using one of the old forest service roads. It doesn't connect with the highway until you get past Mount Tallac."
"So, where are they going?" Clarissa asked.
I remembered hiking near there with Mom a couple years ago. That was the day she taught me that Jeffrey pine bark smelled like vanilla when you put your nose right to the trunk. I pushed the memory away. "It leads down to the basin and the lake, eventually. They probably think they're going to get help in town."
We all fell silent, watching as a line of cars crawled slowly up the mountain ridge. The caravan became plainly visible after they got above the tree line—the elevation where no more vegetation would grow and the mountain was bare to the elements. They'd have to cross over it to come down the other side again.
I knew that Terry was probably right about looking after ourselves. But it didn't alleviate the cold, sick feeling in my gut. How desperate were those other kids to risk crossing the mountain? Yes, we had to guard our resources. But if there was a way to warn them...
Didn’t they know about the griffins?
I pictured it: If they were latchkey kids, or stayed home from school yesterday and their parents never returned.... The electricity went out and they couldn’t call for help. What would I do if I didn't know better?
Stepping to the side, I glanced out the window to an angle where the sun would set in a few hours. What I saw made the cold feeling expand, and I gave it voice before I could stop myself. A low, moaned, "Oh no."
“What?” Clarissa asked, suddenly at my side.
Then her breath caught as she saw it.
High up in the sky to the west was a ragged line of flying griffins. They, too, were made small by distance, but the bulky-shaped bodies couldn't be anything else. They didn't fly like geese did, in a nice V formation. Or even like the ragged clumps of migrating songbirds. The griffins bunched and separated in a race against one another to the same goal.
I heard Clarissa swallow. "Do you think the griffins see them?"
The cold feeling in my gut said yes. Instead, I reached and gave the round porthole window a push. It was already unlocked, and the frame pivoted sideways to open a crack.
We had all heard the morning and evening shrieking of the griffins, but the faint noise that filtered in was different. Less of a shriek, and more of a high-pitched 'Eeee-Eeee' cry, which reminded me of those canned dolphins sounds from old TV shows.
The calls were taken up by other throats, echoing around the forest. Some of them were startlingly nearby. Soon, other griffins took to the air. Waves of them threw themselves from pine trees and dashed across the open sky. All headed in the same direction.
"They're hungry." Clarissa's voice sounded distant.
I glanced back to the mountain and thought I caught the moment someone in the cars realized they were in trouble. A faint echo of a beeping horn was nearly drowned out among the excited cries of the griffins. One of the cars broke the line as if it was trying to turn around, maybe head back for the safety of the trees. It tilted on the steep soil as a tire must've slid.
No, I thought. Slow down. Don't panic. Don't—
The car angled up sharply as the inexperienced driver punched the gas.
Merlot gave a cry as it tilted sideways on the road, then fell back, rolling onto its side, and effectively blocking the other cars from escape.
The first of the griffins swooped and landed. Even though it was too far to see details, I looked away.
"Can you tell if anyone made it out?" I asked Terry after a few moments. Maybe, once night fell, we could hike up and see if there were any survivors.
My cousin shook his head. He lowered the binoculars. His face was pale.
When I'd gathered enough courage to look out the window again, I couldn't see the cars for all the feathered bodies swarming on them. Dozens of other griffins wheeled overhead like vultures. Still more rose from the forest and headed that way, though surely there would be nothing left when they got there.
Merlot softly wept.
"And that's why you don't go out in the daylight," Lilly muttered.
Too many predators, I thought. There won't be enough food to keep them all alive. Soon, they’ll be starving.
How long until they learned how to break into houses?
CHAPTER NINE
- Clarissa -
The next morning must have been the start of a banner day, because I didn’t wake up in absolute terror when the griffins screeched their morning wake up call. Just the normal sort of ‘freaked out’. It only took a few minutes for me to fall back asleep on a comfy piece of carpet. I guess you could get used to anything.
When I woke again, I had kicked the single blanket off, and it was mid-afternoon. No one else stirred in the house. Ben, curled up on the loveseat above me, was snoring loudly.
At least that hadn't changed. I used to be able to hear him through the wall separating our bedrooms back in the apartment.
No, don't think about the apartment. Or Mom. Or my friends... I was supposed to go shopping in Reno with Darcy next week...
I sat up and rubbed at my face. Only then did I register the smell of smoke in the air. It wasn’t the acidic burn of charred food, but spicy wood scent. I’d grown up in the Sierra Nevada mountains. I knew the smell of a forest fire.
Padding across the living room, I parted the window blinds to look out. The air outside was thick and gray with low-hanging smoke. Not good.
There was no point in waking Ben or the others. Not yet. Instead, I made my way up the stairs and to the attic.
Through the porthole window was more of the same: Gray haze so thick I couldn't see more than a hundred feet in any direction.
Yesterday, the billowing smoke had been pretty far off and blowing away from the house. The direction of the wind must've changed. Or, more likely, the fire did.
What am I going to do?
Dylan and Lilly had said the casinos at Stateline had been burning. I hadn't let myself think on that very much, mostly because I didn't want Ben to see me break down.
Our mom was gone. Either turned into a monster, or died in a fire. I hoped she was a griffin and had chosen to fly far, far away. She never liked Lake Tahoe, and always talked of figuring out a way for us to move back to the town where she'd grown up in T
exas. She didn't deserve to die here.
And what had happened to all my friends? Darcy, and Laura, and MacKenzie, and her stupid boyfriend with the frosted hair. It's not like I could call them, but most lived near the casinos just like Ben and I.
Between the griffins and the fire, the city would be Hell.
My fists clenched. I knew this was a stupid, unproductive track for my thoughts to take. But now I had a moment to myself, it was like a dam breaking. All my piled up fears and doubts had become too much. What would my friends think about my new feathers? It wasn’t like a cool tattoo, or anything. Real feathers were growing out of me, and they were freaky. And if the forest fire didn’t get us, would my griffinitis?
Tears ran down my cheeks. I couldn't stop them.
Alone, in somebody else's attic, without Ben to worry about seeing me, I put my head in my hands and cried.
****
Of course, crying didn't help anything. It didn't even make me feel better. After my tears dried, I was thirsty and had a headache. Plus, my face was puffy. I was an ugly crier.
That's how Merlot found me.
"Oh." Merlot paused in surprise at the top of the stairs. Baby Jane dozed in the crook of her arm. "Clarissa, I didn't know you were here. I thought you and Ben slept in the living room?"
I shook my head and turned a little away to hide my face. If she noticed my cheeks were all blotchy from crying, she didn't say anything. "No." I waved to the window. "I was just checking if I could see anything out there."
Merlot walked over and peered out the window to the gray haze. "Oh, yuck. I'm glad we’re inside. I don't want to be breathing that stuff."
I almost laughed, then realized she was serious. ”The fire probably changed direction. That's why we’re in the smoke right now."
Merlot's pimply face went slack with shock. I guess I couldn't blame her. Three days ago, forest fires were something other people worried about. They were annoying, ruined mountainside views, and could be a little scary if one burned close to your house. But you were never in any real danger. There were evacuation notices and firefighters to stop the flames from getting close.
Now, there wasn't anyone around to tell us when to leave, or where it was safe to go.
"Oh my God." Merlot put her hand to her mouth and looked from me to the window and back again. "You mean, it's coming this way? What do we do? How long do we have?" Her voice ended on a squeak.
"I don't know," I said. “We’ll probably be able to see the fire again once it gets dark. The flames will stand out."
She shifted baby Jane around, who was looking more awake. Maybe she was picking up on Merlot's fear.
"Well, we can't stay here. We’re in the middle of the forest! Oh, my God." Merlot looked to the smoke again. "My family has a home right outside Carson City. We can go there. It's a nice big house, only about forty minutes down the hill—"
She was getting worked up. "All we know is the wind changed direction." I tried to keep my voice soothing. “Going to Carson City is not a good idea. It has a lot more people than South Lake Tahoe, right? That means more griffins.”
“But we wouldn’t be in the middle of a forest!”
She had a point. Carson City was in a high desert. Not many trees around. “Which means we’d have a lot less cover to hide in,” I replied, but I could hear a little bit of annoyance in my voice. I didn't plan to stand around and do nothing, but we couldn't act until we knew more. Plus, I wasn't going to risk going out in daylight, even with all the smoke. Who knew what griffins could see, or smell?
Hot frustration built in the pit of my stomach. I hated feeling trapped. I also didn’t like Merlot voicing the same fears I was trying to keep at bay.
I let out a breath and tried to let it go. I used to be more patient than this. "No matter what, we can't travel anywhere until the sun sets. I'm sure we’re okay right now. The flames were pretty far off yesterday."
Merlot cast another nervous glance out the window. But at that moment, Jane began to whimper. Much to my relief, she turned her attention back to the baby.
"Why don't you take care of Jane," I said. "I'll wake up Terry and the others, and we’ll figure out what to do together, okay?"
Merlot still looked nervous, but nodded.
****
By the time I knocked on Terry's bedroom door, Baby Jane started wailing, which woke up the entire house. Soon, everyone had gone up to the attic to look at the smoke.
We were all worried, but Terry pointed out that we couldn’t go anywhere in the daylight, anyway.
What happened to those kids in the caravan was fresh in my mind. From the looks everyone exchanged, I wasn’t the only one thinking about them.
It was still a few hours until dark. Hungry and bored, I went searching for something to eat. We’d forgotten to hook up the large stainless steel refrigerator in the kitchen to the generator. The spoiled food inside was starting to stink. But the meat downstairs was still frozen.
After sorting through the white butcher-paper packets (I was quick about it just in case, but didn’t feel spacey like yesterday) I tried my hand at cooking ribs. The oven was gas-powered, and Lilly knew how to kindle the pilot-light with a lighter.
I put the ribs in the oven, seasoned with salt and pepper, and hoped for the best.
A couple hours later, the ribs were black on one end, so I figured they must've been cooked in the middle. I gave it an extra twenty minutes just in case. Food poisoning was the last thing we needed.
Then, I realized we didn't have any barbecue sauce. So, ketchup it was. Also, I forgot about cooking potatoes or another side dish. For some reason, noodles and salad didn't sound great. There were some canned peas in the cupboard which I poured out into a bowl, where it sat untouched in the middle of the table.
I’ll admit it: The dinner sucked. We all managed to saw through the tough ribs, but the mood was grim. No one spoke much.
I had tried my best to reassure Merlot, and Terry had said his part, but were were trapped in the house. No one knew if we were about to be surrounded by a rampaging wildfire. More than once, I caught Ben glancing out the window.
The sun finally set, along with the griffin’s goodnight screeching. Smoke, or no, it sounded like there were plenty of them around. Their cries bounced all through the smoke with an effect that made it impossible to tell where one began and the other ended. Straight out of horror movies.
Terry found a deck of cards and tried to get Merlot and Ben to play Go Fish.
I stood from the table. “I’m going up to the attic.”
Ben threw down his cards and came immediately to my side. Everyone else followed us up.
It was barely after dusk, but the gathering darkness allowed the flames to stand out from the smoke. I caught my breath as I looked out: A bright yellow and orange ribbon stretched from one end of the Tahoe basin to the other. It didn’t look super-close, but it was hard to tell for sure.
"I was thinking... the smoke’s low to the ground," Dylan said. He hadn't spoken much today, I noticed. He was the type to be quiet and observant.
"So?" Lilly asked.
He shrugged a heavy shoulder. “Mean’s the wind isn't actually pushing the fire along. It’s spread a lot, but I think it would've been a lot worse if there was wind kicking up. That might be a good thing."
"A good thing?" Merlot squeaked. "Do you see that? What if it comes this way and we can't get out in time? Let’s go to my house in Carson City."
"She's right," Terry said.
I turned to him, surprised. "Are you insane? We can't go to Carson City."
“No, not about that.” He shook his head. "I'm sorry, Merlot. No, running to a bigger city isn’t a good idea.”
Merlot jutted her chin out. "Well, I'm going."
"Don't be stupid," Lilly snapped. "You can't drive, and even if you could, the fire might be across the highway by now. Fires fall trees. You'll be trapped, and you will burn alive. That baby, too."
Merlot went p
ale.
"Lilly, that is not helpful," Dylan said.
Lilly flicked dismissive fingers at her brother and turned back to the window, uncaring. “Sorry, not sorry. She needs to stop being an idiot.”
"But we’ll burn up if we stay here!" Ben turned to me. "Clarissa, I want to go home. Do you think the fire has reached our apartment yet?"
The pleading look in his eyes broke my heart. "I think it might have,” I said softly, speaking as much to him as Merlot. “Our best chance is if we stick together."
Merlot was stubborn. "But we can't just stay here!"
“For the love of—” Lilly started.
Terry raised his voice to drown out Lilly. "What I mean is, we have a boat in the garage. We can use the Hummer’s hitch to back it down to the dock. That fire won’t be able to cross the lake."
"Are you kidding?" Lilly demanded, which was almost the same thing I was thinking, except fewer curse words. "Do you know how far sound travels over water? And we will be kinda visible to anything that’s watching the lake—"
"The griffins don't seem to care unless there’s light," Terry said.
"You don't know that for sure!"
She and Terry started squabbling. I turned back to the window. Agreeing with Lilly made my stomach feel queasy, but what was the expression? Even a stopped clock was right twice a day.
The griffins had ignored houses so far, but they liked moving vehicles. And they’d have no problem flying across a lake to get at us.
I didn’t know what to do. All my life, other people made the hard decisions. It was part of being a kid, I guess. I didn't get to choose where I lived, if I had to get up for school, what to do if a natural disaster happened—which it never did. There were firefighters and policeman, a president to make important announcements over the TV, and the radio to turn to for National Weather Service information during blizzards.
Under Wicked Sky: Book 1 Page 7