Escape from Fire Lake

by Robert Vernon

  “Now, I knew we offered some of the best service in town, but since when did we start valet parking?” Pop joked as he stepped out of the vehicle.

  “Pop, have you seen Mike?” asked Gail, rushing up to meet him.

  From the tone of her voice, Pop sensed something was wrong. His eyes quickly scanned the others’ faces. Nobody was smiling.

  “Uh, no. What’s up?”

  “He didn’t show up for our meeting,” Ben said.

  “We haven’t seen him since before noon,” Winnie added.

  “Pop, he hasn’t called or anything.” Gail took a deep breath to calm her emotions. “We were hoping he was with you.”

  Pop cared very deeply for Mike. Sure, he was his grandfather, but since the plane crash, Pop had had to step in and act more as a father figure. Their relationship had grown very close over the past several years, and especially after Gail and Mike moved to Ambrosia. If there was one thing Pop knew about Mike, it was that he was responsible. True, the boy was always running off in search of another wild adventure—he was like his dad that way—but Mike wouldn’t just disappear without telling someone.

  “That doesn’t sound like Mike,” Pop said finally. “Let’s go look for him first. Then we’d better call Smitty.”

  After locking up the diner, Gail and Grandma joined Pop in the front seat of the Suburban. The kids piled into the back.

  As Pop pulled onto the highway, Gail hoped that her worries were unfounded and that Mike would show up with some logical explanation. But in the pit of her stomach, she had a growing sense of dread. She had already lost a husband—she couldn’t bear the thought of losing her son as well.

  It was going to be a long ride into town.

  Chapter 4

  MIKE FOWLER WAS IN TROUBLE, and he knew it. Armed robbery carried a lengthy prison sentence. With so much on the line, these men couldn’t just let him go.

  The one called Josh tied Mike’s hands together behind his back and then hog-tied him by wrapping his wrists and feet together. Mike was then roughly returned to the back of the truck for “safekeeping.”

  As for Jake, Mike had been forced to hold him back when they were captured. Although the dog was full of fight, Mike knew the robbers wouldn’t have given a second thought to shooting him on the spot. Jake now lay at Mike’s side, a short rope tethering him to an inside brace of the truck.

  As the truck droned down the road, Josh sat with his legs crossed just a few feet away from Mike. He was busy going through the money bags, trying to establish how much the boy had tossed out onto the highway. He wasn’t in the best of moods, to say the least.

  Mike held his breath as Josh reached over and picked up the red gym bag. Luckily, the robber only checked to make sure the teak box was still there; he didn’t open it. Mike was tempted to just come right out and tell him that he had taken the statuette and put it in his coat pocket. But he had made it this far without them knowing—maybe he could use it as a bargaining tool later.

  Josh finished taking inventory of the bank loot and returned to make sure the knots holding Mike’s hands and feet were secure. The boy had been a nuisance. The only real hitch in Josh’s plan.

  “So, Mikey, I guess you’re one of those nosy types. You know, the kind that can’t keep out of other people’s business.”

  “It’s what I do,” Mike said a little sheepishly. He knew it was going to sound corny, but he went ahead and said it anyway. “I’m a . . . detective.”

  “Yeah?” Josh responded in mock surprise. “What a coincidence. I’m Batman! Robin’s driving the truck.” Josh began to laugh, tickled at his own joke.

  Mike slowly lowered his head. He knew when he was being made fun of. “This is wrong,” he finally said. “This money isn’t yours.”

  Josh’s laughing stopped. “Oh, Mr. Detective Man is going to tell me about right and wrong now,” Josh said with a hint of anger in his voice. “Well, I’ve got a news flash for ya, Mikey. You made a wrong move snooping around. And I don’t like complications.”

  A shiver ran up and down Mike’s spine. The way Josh had said the word complications gave Mike a sense of dread, like Josh had a way of dealing with complications.

  “Are you going to kill me?” asked Mike, his voice slightly cracking.

  “Oh, I’d never do anything like that,” Josh said with a hurt look on his face. He grabbed the side of the truck and eased himself to a stooping position.

  As Mike looked up at him, he could see that his face had changed.

  “Not when the desert can do it for me,” Josh said with a ghastly grin.

  As the weight of those words slowly sank into Mike’s mind, Josh banged on the back of the cab with his fist.

  “Seth! Pull over!” he yelled.

  The truck slowed to a stop on the shoulder of the road, and Josh jumped out. As he tied down the canvas flaps, he took one last look in at Mike and said, “By the way, bright boy, leaving that trail of money was just a waste of your time and my good cash. If anybody does find one of those bills, I’m willing to bet that they don’t tell anyone and just keep it for themselves.” He paused for a moment and then added, “But just in case a Good Samaritan does come along . . . well, I think we’d best get off the main road for a while and have ourselves a little off-road adventure!”

  Josh chuckled on his way to the cab of the truck. Once he was inside, the truck eased its way back onto the highway.

  They had not traveled over ten miles before the truck pulled off onto a lonely dirt road. The only thing that marked the road was a sign: FIRE LAKE WILDERNESS AREA: ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK!

  News of the bank robbery spread fast in Ambrosia. Although the town was too small to have its own local news telecast, by evening the sheriff’s office had been swamped with phone calls from inquiring minds. The police dispatcher, Arlene, was doing her best to field the calls, while on the desks behind her, two FBI agents and a state trooper were busy setting up a small command post.

  The door to Sheriff Smitty’s office was off to one side. The office itself was not very big, but at least it afforded some privacy. Smitty sat at his desk, slowly rubbing his forehead with his index fingers. It had been a long day, and he was working on one whale of a migraine headache. And the fact that Mike Fowler was now missing was only making it worse.

  Pop and Kate Fowler were seated across from him. Gail Fowler nervously paced the floor while Winnie, Ben, and Spence looked on.

  Smitty closed his eyes, trying to concentrate on one problem at a time. “And you’ve checked the whole town for him?”

  “The best we could in the dark,” Pop said, leaning forward in his chair.

  “Officially, I can’t mount a search for him until he’s been gone for twenty-four hours.” Smitty hated to say that so matter-of-factly. He knew it sounded cold. He had known the Fowlers for years and counted them as friends. But he couldn’t just tell the FBI agents waiting outside that he was dropping the bank-robbery investigation to go looking for a missing kid. He had rules and regulations to abide by.

  “Look,” he said, “maybe I can put out an APB.”

  Gail stopped in her tracks and gave him an astonished look. “An APB? That’s it?”

  “I’m sorry, Gail. I’m doing my job. The bank robbery has us absolutely swamped with details.”

  “Details?” Gail began. “Smitty, Mike never—”

  “Gail,” Smitty interrupted, “I understand. Believe me, I do. I’d like to know where he is, too.”

  Gail slowly sat down in one of the chairs. She was close to tears.

  “Look, missing persons usually show up on their own. Mike’s a smart kid. He’ll turn up,” Smitty said, trying to reassure them.

  “Is there anything else we can do, Smitty?” asked Pop.

  “I’m afraid you’ve done what you can tonight, Pop. You’d best go on home and wait for tomorrow. We’ll keep our eyes open for him.”

  That’s it, then, Gail thought. All we can do is wait.

  An old fam
iliar feeling of dread washed over her. She had waited patiently once before . . . and her husband never was found.

  Mike guessed that at least three hours had passed since they left the paved highway. As the truck finally slowed to a stop, he tried to estimate how far they might have come. He had no way of telling, really. Since he had not been able to look out and see plants and bushes go by, it was almost impossible to gauge the speed of the truck. But he had been bounced around a lot. That was for sure. He had plenty of bruises that reminded him of that. So they must have been moving at a pretty fast clip.

  As Mike listened to the robbers’ footsteps approach the back of the truck, he realized that it didn’t really matter how many miles they had traveled. Whether it was one hundred miles or only fifty, it still meant the same thing: They were a long way from any witnesses. The robbers could now do what they wanted with him.

  Josh opened the canvas flaps, lowered the tailgate, and hopped into the back of the truck. He untied Mike’s feet and motioned for Seth to join him.

  “Get the dog,” Josh said, pulling Mike toward the tailgate.

  Jake let out a low growl as Seth gingerly approached.

  “That dog better not cause any trouble,” Josh warned Mike.

  “It’s okay, boy,” Mike yelled back to Jake. “Go with him.”

  Obeying his master, Jake reluctantly allowed Seth to take his lead and followed him out of the truck.

  Josh and Seth led their captives around to the front of the truck, where they stood backlit by the headlights.

  “End of the line, Mikey boy,” Josh said, spinning Mike around to face him.

  This is it! thought Mike. The moment of truth!

  Out of the corner of his eye, Mike saw Josh’s hand reach for something in his belt. Although he was afraid to look, Mike forced his eyes to focus on what the robber now held in his hand. It was a gun!

  Seth saw it, too, and the expression on his face said that he was as surprised as Mike.

  “Now, Josh,” Seth stammered, dropping Jake’s rope and moving forward. “We agreed—”

  “Back off!” yelled Josh. “I know what I’m doing!” Josh raised the gun above his head and fired it twice into the air.

  It takes hunting dogs months, sometimes years, of practice to get used to the sound of a gun going off. Jake wasn’t a hunting dog. At the sound of the shots, he spooked and took off running through the brush as fast as he could.

  “Jake!” Mike screamed.

  Jake hesitated, wanting to return to his master. But Josh fired another deafening salvo of shots.

  “Run, Jake! Run!” yelled Josh. “Watch out for the bobcats!”

  Mike watched as Jake ran even faster, finally disappearing into the darkness.

  “You didn’t have to do that,” Seth said, slightly dumbfounded by what had just occurred.

  Josh was getting tired of his partner questioning his actions. And he had definitely had enough of the pesky kid. He pulled a knife from his pocket, snapped the blade into place, and held it up for them both to see.

  “I don’t like complications,” he growled.

  Josh spun Mike roughly around and quickly cut the rope, releasing his hands. He then walked around Mike to look at him face-to-face.

  “See? I’m a good guy. But now you’re gonna find out what all your mighty ideas do for you when there’s no one around to wipe your nose.” Josh stuck a steely finger into Mike’s chest. “You’re all alone, hotshot.”

  Sticking the knife back into his pocket, Josh turned and headed for the truck.

  “Tie up the back,” he said, motioning for Seth to follow him. “Let’s go.”

  Seth hesitated for a moment. He knew that they had to get rid of the kid. After all, he was the only one who knew what they were driving and in which direction they were headed. But to leave him out in the middle of the desert was like sentencing him to a slow death.

  Seth glanced over to make sure Josh wasn’t looking. Confident that he was unwatched, Seth reached into his back pocket and pulled out a liter-sized bottle of water. He quickly passed it over to Mike.

  “Um, good luck, kid,” Seth said with a sympathetic look on his face. He then turned and trotted to the back of the truck.

  All Mike could do was stand there and watch as they secured the truck down and then finally drove off into the distance. Mike’s eyes followed the retreating red taillights as long as they could. After a while, they were only fleeting pinpoints—and then they were gone.

  Then Mike slumped to the ground, realizing the full measure of his situation. He was utterly lost . . . and all alone.

  Chapter 5

  THE SANDSTORM HIT WITHOUT WARNING. It had been almost an hour since the robbers had left, and Mike had spent most of that time shouting as loud as he could for Jake. He was beginning to lose his voice when he thought he heard something. But it turned out to be only the howl of the wind as it announced the coming blizzard of sand.

  Mike had heard about sandstorms—how they erased the desert landscape and could blow buildings to the ground. But he wasn’t prepared for what he was about to experience.

  It hit all at once. The roar of the wind was deafening. Fine particles of sand stung his face like the attack of a million tiny bees. He turned his back to the onslaught and tried to look for cover, but he couldn’t see any farther than a foot away. A large gust of wind pushed him to the ground, and it was then that he realized he couldn’t breathe!

  Each gasp of breath brought thousands of minuscule grains of sand into his lungs. He choked and gagged until he finally discovered that pulling his jacket over his head made the air breathable. He eventually removed his jacket altogether and made a small tent for his head. The only thing he could do was lie on the ground, holding the jacket over his head, and wait for the storm to pass.

  When Mike awoke in the morning, he was surprised that he had slept. The last thing he remembered was thinking that the storm would never end.

  He tried to move, but it felt like he was encased in a large bowl of Jell-O. He discovered that the storm had buried him in almost a foot of sand. He slowly rose out of it, like a mummy from one of those old movies on the Late Late Show.

  As the first light of dawn lit up the sky, Mike wiped the sand from his eyes and took in his real first look at his surroundings. As far as the eye could see was just more of the same: a desolate panorama of desert. No tire tracks. No roads. Not a single sign of civilization. And no Jake!

  “Jake! . . . Jake! . . . Jaaake!” Mike called, pivoting so he could be heard in all directions. “Jake, where are you?”

  Mike stood there for a moment listening for any kind of answer. But none came.

  Resigned to the fact that he was all alone, Mike bitterly dropped to his knees and then fell back to a sitting position. After a moment, he realized that it would do no good to just sit and feel sorry for himself. He had to do something constructive.

  He decided to take an inventory of what he had on him. Maybe he could discover something that would come in handy later. He dug into his coat pocket, and the first thing he found was the jade statuette.

  “Lot of help you’ll be,” he said, tossing it aside.

  His hand went to the empty leather pouch that usually held his compass. Boy, could I use that about now, he thought.

  Next, he reached into his back pocket and pulled out his pocket Bible. He opened it up and began thumbing through its pages.

  Looking at it reminded him of his father. He remembered the last time he had ever seen him. His father had carefully wrapped the compass and the pocket Bible together in a box for Mike’s birthday. And when he gave it to Mike, he had said, “As long as you keep these with you, your paths will always be straight.”

  The fluttering of the Bible’s pages in the wind brought Mike back to reality. Focusing on the page that it happened to have opened to, his eyes went wide. A verse seemed to pop off the page in front of him. “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”

  Mike smiled and
closed his eyes. “Thank You, Lord,” he prayed. “Thank You for being here with me right now! You know what kind of a fix I’m in. Please help me. Amen.”

  Mike opened his eyes and noticed the water bottle sticking out of his coat pocket. He recognized that God had already been at work. Something had made Seth decide to give the water bottle to him. And Mike knew what that something was—God’s provision.

  Seeing the water bottle made Mike realize just how thirsty he was. The sandstorm had lined his mouth and throat with a thin layer of dust, and he could feel the grittiness of the sand between his teeth. He could use a drink about now, he decided, as long as he was careful to ration it for later.

  He carefully unscrewed the lid and was in the middle of taking a small swig when he heard it—the distant bark of a dog!

  “Jake?” Mike whispered, hardly daring to believe his ears.

  Being careful not to spill any of his precious water, he quickly screwed the cap back on and leapt to his feet.

  “Jake!” he yelled, cupping his hands together around his mouth.

  This time he was sure he heard an answer and turned to look in that direction. At first he saw nothing, and then there was some movement on a distant rise. It was Jake all right. He didn’t quite look the same because he was covered with light brown dust, but Mike knew it was Jake.

  Seeing his master, Jake raced toward him, still trailing the rope tied to his collar. He never slowed down and then leapt the last five yards, knocking Mike over onto his back.

  “Jake!” Mike cried between Jake’s happy reunion licks. “Oh, man, I knew you’d come back for me.”

  The two joyously wrestled around for a few minutes until Mike finally sat back to take a breather. Revitalized, he leaned on one arm, petting the dog, and took stock of the situation. He couldn’t fool himself. He was still up a creek without a paddle. He was hopelessly lost and an awfully long way from home.