Firestorm

by Ronnie Dauber

  Don climbed out and stood there right in the middle of everyone as he tried to untie the rope that we had around his chest. Meagan told him to move to the side and then she untied the rope and threw it onto the deck. To our surprise, he didn’t go anywhere but instead he asked if he could help.

  Before we went any further, Brad and I took a few seconds to put our socks and boots back on and then he quickly grabbed the back end of the stretcher while Ali grabbed the front end. We all moved swiftly off the dock and onto the grass. I took a deep breath and was so relieved that we had made it home.

  But then suddenly there was a loud piercing sound that reminded me of the colossal fire crackers on July 4th. Shooting ambers fired into the water from the other side and landed in the middle of the river. Others shot straight up into the sky. I was amazed at how we had just escaped the many calamities that seemed to follow us, and I hoped and prayed that we would continue until we were home free.

  The guys picked the stretcher up just as Grandpa began to cough and roll his eyes around in their sockets. Meagan yelled for me to come and I practically dove at him as they put the stretcher back onto the ground. That’s when he began to vomit so Ali and Meagan quickly rolled him towards me onto his side and I grabbed his shirt sleeve to help hold him there.

  We hadn’t eaten for a full day and we were all hungry and tired, and the stench of the vomit churned my stomach. We didn’t really have anything to wipe his face with so I used my hand to wipe his face and then I wiped my hand on the grass. We had to move fast because his leg bled terribly with each heave.

  We let him roll onto his back again and Meagan took his hand as she stroked his forehead.

  “Wow, he’s so hot. Can you guys carry him up the path to their back yard? Sarah and I will run ahead to get Nana and a phone.”

  Ali motioned for us to go but when we took the first step, Don began to scream hysterically.

  “No, you can’t go up there. They’re waiting for us there. It’s too dangerous.”

  I held Don by the arms and tried to stare at him in the eyes.

  “It’s okay, Don. We’re home now. Meagan and I are going to find a phone at the house and call for help. It’ll be okay. Just stay with the guys.”

  “No, it won’t be okay. They’re hiding in the trees over there and they’ll get you as soon as you get inside the house. You can’t go in there. It’s not safe. Pete, listen to me. I’m trying to help you.”

  Meagan and I looked at each other and then at the guys. We weren’t sure what to do because Don had been right about almost everything else and we didn’t know if this was a warning of some kind or just his fears coming out. I was about to say something when Meagan pulled on my arm.

  “Come on. We don’t have time for this. We need to find Nana and get to a phone.”

  Suddenly there was a large crackle from the forest just to the right of us that made all of us jump. Ali yelled to Meagan to get to the house.

  “Never mind that, we need a phone and the keys to your grandfather’s truck. We’re going to have to meet the ambulance in their little town because I don’t think they’re going to come out here so close to the fire.”

  Meagan and I shot up the path as fast as we could towards the house, but as we ran I kept my eyes on the forest beside us and I could see the smoke in the distance. I could smell it and it was sending shivers up and down my back.

  Meagan got to the porch before I did and we both shouted out for Nana but she didn’t answer.

  “Maybe someone came and took her already, Sarah. I don’t see her anywhere, do you?”

  “No, but here are the keys to the truck.”

  And that’s when I remembered that the truck wasn’t working.

  “Meg, we forgot that Grandpa was having problems with the truck. Remember? Now what do we do?”

  Meagan grabbed the keys and yelled to the guys who were almost at the back door.

  “We forgot the truck isn’t working. Grandpa said something about the battery. Do you think you can get it going?”

  They laid Grandpa on the grass and then Ali grabbed the keys and huffed.

  “What else? Come on, Brad. Let’s take a look.”

  While they ran to the truck Don sat on the ground beside Grandpa and said he didn’t want to go inside the house. So, Meagan and I left him there while we ran back inside to find Nana. We checked every room and closest and yelled for her but there was no answer.

  “Sarah, she must have gone. She’s obviously not going to stay here when the forest is on fire.”

  “But Meg, I’m not so sure. I mean, Grandpa was injured out there and then we went out there. She wouldn’t just up and leave when her family was lost in a forest that’s on fire. That’s not like her. I don’t think she would.”

  “Well, she’s not here. She’s not answering us.”

  “I know. Maybe she’s in the front yard or pacing on the roadway out front. Come on, let’s check.”

  We searched the front yard and both directions of the road and she wasn’t there. Then we split up and each ran along one side of the house to the back doorstep and still she wasn’t there. A creepy feeling came over me and sent goose bumps up my arms.

  “Meg, you don’t suppose she headed into the forest, do you?”

  We both stood and stared at each other for a second. My chest pounded and I’m sure my face was as drained as hers.

  “She wouldn’t have. She was afraid of the forest, Sarah. Oh god, but then with us all lost out there she may have overcome that fear and gone in. I know she would never have left without us. Do you really think that’s what she did?”

  Don was still sitting on the ground beside Grandpa and so Meagan and I ran over to the guys who had the truck hood open, trying to get the truck going. Ali was under the hood and Brad was inside the cab.

  “Okay, Brad. Try again.”

  Brad turned the key and all that came out was a coughing sound from the engine. When he stopped turning the key, Ali jumped down and pointed to the road.

  “The driveway’s on a downhill slope and so is the road. Maybe we can push this thing and get it to catch that way.”

  Brad jumped out of the cab and tapped my arm.

  “Can you steer it while we push?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  Meagan ran to the back of the truck with the guys and the three of them got in position. At first the truck rolled slowly down the long gravel driveway but then it picked up a bit of speed and I had to brake so I could turn and that stopped the process.

  “Sorry, but if I didn’t hit the brakes we were going right into that tree.”

  Ali wiped his forehead as he ran to the side of the truck.

  “No problem. The road slopes so we’ll try it again there. And this time don’t touch the brakes until it comes on, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  The truck began to roll slowly and the engine coughed a few times and then it suddenly came on.

  “Yes, it’s working.”

  I applied the gas and drove for a few hundred feet and then stopped it and backed it up to where I’d left the others. Brad and Meagan jumped into the back of the truck, and I moved over so that Ali could take over the wheel and back the truck up all the way into the driveway. He put the gear in park and we all jumped out.

  “Okay, we’ll leave this running but we have to work fast before it conks out again. So, let’s get him in here and get him to the hospital.”

  Meagan ran beside Ali into the backyard.

  “Look guys, Nana is not in the house. We looked everywhere and we think she may have gone into the trail to try and find us.”

  Ali stopped and his face went white as he clenched his jaw.

  “That’s great, just great. Look, this guy isn’t going to be able to just lay here and wait while we search for your grandmother. Besides that, look behind you. It’s not going to be that long until it gets here.”

  The tension around us just kept building.

  “We searched the h
ouse and the yard and she’s not there. Maybe she left a note or something. Come on, Meg, let’s go check.”

  We ran back into the house and checked all the logical places where she might leave a note like on the fridge door or on the kitchen table, but there was no sign of a note anywhere. As I turned to run out the back door, however, I noticed her indoor sandals lying by the back door.

  “Meg, look! Her sandals are there and her shoes are gone, her garden shoes. Now I know she’s gone into the forest looking for us.”

  “Oh, Sarah, I think you’re right. There’s her shoes she wears to go shopping so she hasn’t gone into town. She must have gone in the forest. Look, there’s one of the guy’s cell phones on the little table there – and there’s the other one. She probably couldn’t work either of them and so just decided to go looking for us on her own.”

  We ran out the back door where the guys were just about to lift the stretcher. Brad chuckled when he saw the phone.

  “Hey, that’s mine. So, did you call for an ambulance?”

  Meagan was about to hand Ali his but instead kept it and stepped away from where we were talking so she could call. Ali shook his head and huffed as he motioned for us to look at Grandpa.

  “If he doesn’t get medical attention like right now he might not make it. We’re gonna have to split up but one of us has to get him to a doctor. We can’t wait any longer.”

  Brad wiped the sweat from his eyes.

  “Okay, you drive him into town, take Don with you, and I’ll go back with the girls to try and find the grandmother. Once you get him to the ambulance you can head back for us.”

  Ali squinted and shook his head forcefully.

  “Crap, this is not good. You guys shouldn’t go back in there and we don’t even know that she’s gone in for sure. I think we should all just get in the truck and get out of here.”

  And that’s all I wanted to do, but I knew Nana well enough to know that she went looking for us. The guys carried Grandpa to the truck and laid him in the back and Don climbed in beside him, saying that he’d watch over him. Meagan and Ali hugged for second as she handed him his cell phone. He took it and shoved it in the pocket in his shorts.

  “I don’t like this but if we don’t get him to a doctor he’s not going to make it. I’ll be back for you just as soon as I can and when you find her, start walking on the road and I’ll pick you up there.”

  My insides were shaking and the last thing I wanted was to head back into the burning forest, but Nana was in there and we had to get her out. As we were running back in, the fear ringing in my ears was even louder than the crackling fire ahead of us.

  Chapter 17

  A Step in Time

  The forest was very dark and quiet this time, not like before when it was vibrant with life and streams of sunshine radiating through the overhanging branches. The stench of dead wet smoke lingered along the trail even though there were no actual clouds of smoke in sight.

  Brad stopped us almost immediately and opened his cell phone.

  “We should just call the police and see if they sent someone here to get her in the first place or if they can send a rescue team out now. I’m just going to run back to the open area there so we can get reception. Did you two want to just go in a bit and start looking for her?”

  We waited with him for a few seconds and as usual, he was put on hold so Meagan and I wandered inside the forest and called out for Nana. There was no response and with each breath I took, the knots inside my chest tightened. I felt as if we were on an endless mission with no idea when Nana came into the forest and no clue as to how far she may be – if she even went inside.

  “The smell of smoke is getting heavier, Meg. If it’s that bad here, it’ll be worse in there so wouldn’t she have just turned around to get out of it?”

  Meagan kept walking ahead of me along the path and yelled back.

  “Who knows? She’s upset, desperate, probably panicking, so she could do anything. We just have to keep looking and calling for her – unless Brad says that they have her.”

  We didn’t want to travel too far into the forest and get separated from Brad, and yet on the other hand we did want to keep searching for her. I looked back to see Brad and he was holding the cell phone to his one ear while his other hand covered his other ear, so I guessed that he was talking to someone. We continued to walk straight along the path but the heaviness of the dead air was getting to us, and I knew that we weren’t going to get far in here.

  “Meg, I can hardly breathe and we don’t even have the clouds of smoke on us, yet. I’m not sure that Nana would keep going or even stay in here with it like this – even if she was panicking.”

  “Yeah, but if she’s really worried about Grandpa and about us I don’t think she’d even notice it, would she? I just hope that Brad says they have her.”

  I was about to suggest that we just run for it but Brad was jogging towards us and I was anxious to hear what he had to say.

  “Okay, I talked to a guy at the police station in town and he said that some neighbors down the road had come here to get both of them but she refused to go because she was waiting for her husband to get back.”

  My heart just thumped against my chest and Meagan put her arm through mine as we waited for Brad to take a breath.

  “She told them she was going in here to look for us but the neighbour told her not to and that they’d send a rescue team out for us. He told her to stay in her house and wait for the rescue team, and apparently she agreed to stay.”

  Meagan’s face was red and her arms were shaking as much as mine.

  “So? Did the rescue team come?”

  “He just said that they sent it out a while ago, however long ago that is, I don’t know. It was hard to hear him plus he put me on hold a few times.”

  As we stood there staring at each other, the daunting odor of the encroaching smoke began slipping in through the trees and around us. The dream was pounding inside my head and I wanted to get out of the forest, but I had to keep looking for Nana.

  “That doesn’t help us. Gees, where would she be?”

  Brad took off his cap and rubbed his sweaty head.

  “You know her better than I do. Would she wait for help? Does she trust anyone to come out here? Is she stubborn? Does she listen? What?”

  Meagan and I looked at each other to find the answers in each other’s eyes. We thought we knew her but in times of panic, even the most obvious patterns of people change.

  “Meg, she’s like my dad – like your dad. And on top of that, she’s afraid of the woods, doesn’t know them at all and usually trusts in other people to carry these types of burdens. So, maybe she tried to come in here but got scared and left and she’s, she’s…..”

  Meagan slapped her leg.

  “Exactly. She’s probably - Brad, where did you say they told her to wait?”

  “In the house.”

  “But Meg, you and I searched inside the house and she’s not there. Maybe the rescue team came already and they just haven’t reported that they have her, yet.”

  Brad squinted and looked back at the entrance to the trail.

  “Maybe - or maybe your grandmother is hiding in the house in a place to stay safe.”

  Meagan beat me to the punch in asking why she’d hide.

  “Because she’s afraid the smoke will get inside but she knows she has to wait for the rescue team and that she’ll hear them when they come in to the house.”

  Meagan’s voice was getting anxious.

  “Then why didn’t she answer when Sarah and I called for her? That doesn’t make any sense, Brad.”

  “Okay, okay. So, what do you want to do? We’re running out of time.”

  My thoughts were to return to the house and search it again, and I began to grab at straws for ideas of what might have happened to Nana.

  “Maybe she was up all night worrying and crying and fell asleep and didn’t hear us.”

  Meagan shook her head as sh
e looked back at the smoke in the forest.

  “Yeah, but Sarah, even if she was tired she would have heard us in the house when we were calling for her. She was waiting for us so she’d hear us when we called.”

  Brad was getting antsy and began looking in every direction.

  “Let’s continue here until we can’t go any further and then we’ll head back to the house to search it again. We’re here now so we should do what we can do now.”

  We agreed with him because it seemed to make sense to at least look a little bit in here, since that’s why we were here in the first place. We ran along the shaded path towards the center of the forest and called for Nana along the way. But by the time we reached the fork in the path, my chest pounded and Brad suggested we turn back.

  “It’s getting so hot in here and the air is getting cloudy. We’re not going to survive if we go much further and I really don’t think she would stay in here at this point, either.”

  Meagan covered her mouth with her hand and nodded, and as much as I wanted to keep looking, I knew that Brad was right. So, we turned around to head back and that’s when I noticed a big shiny red hair clip on the ground just inside the other path.

  “That’s Nana’s hair pin. She did come in here. She must have run up that path and dropped her pin.”

  We turned and ran along the other path as fast as we could and yelled for Nana all along it, but there was no sign of her anywhere. Brad was in the lead and turned around as he was trekking.

  “This takes us back to the house, doesn’t it?”

  We told him that it did and my insides quivered with the excitement.

  “So, she came in to find us, couldn’t and then left because she was afraid or the smoke was too much or whatever, and then took this path back to the house.”

  Meagan squealed with excitement.

  “So she’s probably at the house and we couldn’t find her before because she was in here at that time. Oh, thank God.”

  We ran even faster and minutes later we were at the top of a hill and we could see the house, so we got off the path and cut through the trees. As we stepped out of the forest and onto the field that ran along the side of their house, we all stopped and gazed at the forest. The smoke clouds were rolling in and we could hear the burning fire in the distance.