by Earl Emerson
Even though saving his own butt had been the number one priority during the dash to the top, Zak felt now as if his life depended on how Stephens and Giancarlo fared. For six years Giancarlo had been one of his best friends, and he couldn’t imagine how bad it would be to lose him like this; nor could he imagine telling Giancarlo’s wife how they’d left him to the flames, or what it would mean to Giancarlo’s family. Surely this would haunt Zak for the rest of his life in the same way that his sister’s death haunted him. And even though Stephens continued to irk him at every turn, Zak certainly didn’t want to see him hurt. It was all too horrible to contemplate.
“He’s coming,” Muldaur said, gasping for breath.
“Who’s coming?” Zak was too tired to lift his head off his forearms.
“I don’t know. It’s still too smoky to see for sure.”
Zak looked up for the first time since they stopped and in the distance recognized Stephens by the subtleties in his riding style. It took a painfully long time for the man to reach them, casting glances back over his shoulder to see if the fire was closing in. Zak couldn’t believe how relieved he felt. When Stephens reached the flat part of the road, he pushed only hard enough for his bike to glide to a halt next to Muldaur’s, then unclipped, put a foot down, and sipped from his hydration pack, gasping for breath. “You didn’t wait for one second.”
“We didn’t wait for Giancarlo, either,” said Muldaur. “But that doesn’t mean we don’t care.”
Stephens coughed up some phlegm and spat onto the road, “I don’t get it. I thought it was overtaking us. I mean…uh, I really thought we were finished. Like it was going to jump up through those trees and grab us.”
“It almost did,” Zak said. “We were lucky. You get mixed up in something this screwed up, half the time it’s luck that saves you.”
“Or doesn’t save you,” added Muldaur.
“There he is,” said Muldaur. All three of them peered down the mountain at a figure riding out of the smoke, Giancarlo being chased up the mountain by a wall of orange. Maybe they had outrun it, but Giancarlo hadn’t, at least not yet. It was hard to tell how close the flames were to him, but they could see the effect the heat was having on his efforts. Flames were consuming trees and brush on either side of the road now, but, in addition to the burning vegetation, a sheet of yellow seemed to be running up the road on its own.
“Don’t die, Giancarlo,” pleaded Zak, “just don’t die.”
He was 150 yards from the top now—the fire right behind him—riding like a demon, head low, pulling up on the pedals with his cleats as well as pushing down, working the handlebars with his muscular arms and shoulders, using every part of his body to get more power into the cranks.
“I think it’s going to get him and us both,” Muldaur said, making motions as if to ride.
“I’m not leaving.”
They waited for what seemed like half a lifetime, watching Giancarlo compete against a wall of flame three times taller than man and bike. Zak knew there was some point at which, if they didn’t leave, it would be too late, that Giancarlo might go down and they might go down, too. He didn’t know where the point of no return was, and although he tried his damnedest to calculate where it might be, his brain simply refused the assignment.
“Come on, Giancarlo,” Muldaur screamed, his voice hoarse from the smoke they’d been inhaling all afternoon.
Together they cheered Giancarlo up the last hundred feet, then turned and began riding with him. Zak pushed him from one side, while Muldaur stretched out a hand and pushed from the other. Giancarlo was heavy, and to make it harder he ceased pedaling as soon as he crested the top. Through the palms of his fingerless gloves Zak could feel the heat radiating off Giancarlo’s back. Parts of his jersey had melted. His hair was singed. The back of his neck looked sunburned, but he was intact.
“You okay, buddy?” Zak asked.
“I’ve been better.”
“We couldn’t wait for you.”
“I know. Don’t worry about it.”
“We wanted to, but…”
“Hey. I wouldn’t have waited.”
“We thought you were finished,” Muldaur said. “I thought we were dead, and then we made it and turned around, and truthfully…I never expected to see you up here.”
“It died down just long enough for me to get away.”
“Maybe there is a God,” said Zak.
“You know there is,” said Giancarlo. “He just pulled me up that hill.” Stephens was in front in the drifting smoke, having left the lip of the mountain before any of them.
Zak had never seen Giancarlo this tired. The dressing on his leg was filthy with blood and ash. His face was sooty. There was a dried ring of white around his mouth, probably salt. He wondered how much more riding they would have to do and whether Giancarlo would hold up. Then he wondered whether he would hold up.
55
Headlights bright, the white Ford came plowing through the bank of gray and almost struck Stephens, who swerved at the last moment; and then the truck braked to avoid the sudden apparition and went partially off the road. It was hard to tell who was more stunned, Scooter, who was driving now, or Roger Bloomquist who was sitting beside him. “You’re not headed back down?” asked Zak. “We were just down there, and it wasn’t pretty.”
“We know there’s going to be some flame,” said Scooter, addressing Stephens instead of Zak, “but we’ll just have to blast through. We’ve been watching the fire line. It’s not very deep. We can get through.”
“People have tried to get through that kind of flame in a vehicle before,” said Zak. “It never works.”
“The hell.”
Before they could say anything more, Scooter gunned the motor, and the Ford shot dirt out from beneath its tires, heading for the brow of the hill. Zak could see that although their warning had hardened Scooter’s stance, it had weakened Bloomquist’s to the point that he looked near tears.
“I wonder where the rest of them are,” Muldaur said.
The walkie-talkie in Zak’s jersey pocket began squawking. “Scooter? We’re at the south end of the lake, and it doesn’t look good. Did you check the north side?”
The cyclists proceeded slowly through the smoke so the next vehicle wouldn’t hit them. Zak began to rethink his tentative plan to jump into the lake. It wouldn’t do much good to escape the flames if they smothered in the smoke. “We’ve already taken enough smoke,” Muldaur said, as if reading Zak’s mind.
“You thinking about the lake, too?”
“It seemed like a good idea while we were climbing.”
Zak drank from his hydration pack until he’d sucked it dry. It held a hundred ounces and had been full an hour ago. He tried to think through their options, but rational thought eluded him. It was a sign of how much the smoke, the exertion, and the loss of water weight through sweating had confused his brain. He knew there were a limited number of paths they might take off this plateau, and he knew they were approaching a three-way intersection, but no matter how hard he tried, he could not wrap his brain around where the various roads led. It was frightening to realize just how badly his cognitive processes had failed. It would be the second or third time they’d gone through the intersection in the past hour.
Without the threat of a major forest fire on their tails, the others—except for Stephens, who had disappeared in front again—were riding a whole lot slower now, each feeling this was a time to reassess and, if possible, recover.
They heard the accident before they saw it. The bike had bounced off the Porsche’s front fender, but Stephens, who had rolled to the side of the road and was already getting up, didn’t appear to be too injured. The headlights of the Porsche looked bright yellow until Zak took off his sunglasses.
Fred was already out of the Porsche and screaming at Stephens. “Why don’t you watch where you’re going? You were in the middle of the road!”
“I’m not trying to get in your way,” Stephens
said, picking up his bicycle. “I’m really not.”
“Well, you were in our way!” Fred towered over Stephens but backed off when the other three cyclists converged on them. Jennifer got out and stood beside the passenger’s door. Kasey winged open the driver’s door and stood with one foot on the packed earth and the other inside the vehicle. It occurred to Zak that perhaps because they were now weaponless, these people were afraid of them, two men and a woman, sans guns, facing four cyclists who had every right to be madder than hell at the way they’d been treated all day. Large as he was, even Fred showed signs of being intimidated. What they didn’t know was that a couple of fourth graders could have pushed all four of the cyclists over with a broom.
Before anybody else could say anything, the walkie-talkie in the Porsche and the one in Zak’s rear jersey pocket rattled in unison. “Commando Two to Commando One. We’re in trouble. Commando Two to…don’t—”
It was Scooter’s voice, but the message ended in a trail of static. Kasey grabbed the walkie-talkie from out of the Porsche and tried to raise his friend. Fred gave the four cyclists a look that indicated the stolen walkie-talkie was clear evidence that every accusation they’d leveled against them was valid.
“They were headed down,” Stephens said.
“Which way is down?”
“You boys turned around?” Muldaur asked.
“Which way is down?” Kasey repeated.
“Tell us what you found up the mountain, and we’ll tell you which way is down.”
“Fire,” Jennifer said. “We found a ton of fire creeping down the side of the mountain toward the lake. The road to the south is impassable.”
“Down is back there,” said Zak. “We warned them not to go.”
The three of them climbed into the Porsche and slammed the doors. Jennifer locked hers.
Muldaur said, “Fuck you,” and pedaled past them. Zak and Giancarlo followed. As they rode, the radio in Zak’s back pocket sizzled when Jennifer tried to raise Scooter and Bloomquist. It was the only noise any of them heard. Even the whirring from knobby mountain bike tires on the road seemed softened by the smoke.
When they reached the intersection, it became apparent that Stephens wasn’t with them. “Hey, where is he?” Giancarlo said. “I know he’s not in front this time.” They rode in circles in the road for half a minute, calling him and giving him a chance to catch up.
“We can’t wait,” said Muldaur.
“He’s your friend,” said Zak.
“No, he’s all of ours. But we can’t wait.”
56
Prior to this morning, Kasey had only seen one dead body in his life, his grandmother at her funeral, so he wasn’t happy about any of this. The fact that they’d started two of the fires that were now chasing them up and down the mountain had become a nagging kernel of guilt he was doing his best to bury. The fires were fingering their way up the mountain, one from the site of the wreck and a second from the camp. Kasey knew the fire at the camp had swelled to become the torrent of yellow that was charging at them now.
The squabble came after they’d reversed up the mountain and turned around at the viewpoint near the top. Scooter and Bloomquist climbed into the bed of the tall Ford for a better look at the fires below them. Scooter swore the road was passable and all they had to do was drive down the way they’d come up, but Kasey knew he couldn’t possibly see enough of the road to know if that was true. Jennifer said she was not going down. Bloomquist sided with Scooter in wanting to descend. “The quickest way home is the way we came,” he said. Fred wanted to go down, too, but only to find the rifles the cyclists had thrown into the trees, so he could reload them from the boxes of ammo he still had in the glove box.
In the end they decided Scooter and Bloomquist would drive the pickup north, while Kasey, with Fred and Jennifer as passengers, would head south. Whoever found a way out would radio the other team. If all else failed, Scooter might try going back down, but not before okaying it with Kasey.
Thinking they would climb into some cleaner air once they reached the next grade, Kasey drove Jennifer and Fred around the end of the lake through dense smoke, but by the time they got to the south end of the basin they could hear fire raging above them. “I’m not going up,” Fred said. “No way.”
It was when they drove back through the intersection that they struck the bicyclist.
It was a shock to realize Scooter and Bloomquist had apparently gone down the mountainside without telling them. That they had to get this information from the cyclists galled Kasey. After they made it clear they weren’t giving them rides, three of the cyclists pedaled off into the smoke, their faces sooty and their eyes embodying the thousand-yard stare of men who knew they didn’t have long to live. It was a measure of their weariness that they didn’t put up too much of an argument.
Kasey still hadn’t decided quite which direction to drive when Stephens, the remaining cyclist, walked around and rapped on his window. “Don’t roll it down,” said Fred.
Kasey pushed the button and lowered his window, but only halfway. It was hard to hear what Stephens was saying over the stereo and the ineffective air conditioner, which was running full blast. “I said I know you, uh, you fellas don’t want to give me a ride, but…well, it would be worth your while if you did. There are going to be inquiries. The county sheriff ’s office is going to be looking into what went on out here. Accusations are going to be hurled.”
“And?”
“Basically, it’s going to be your word against theirs.”
“We don’t mind if you all end up in jail,” said Fred from the backseat.
“A very good case can be made for their side,” Stephens said. “Chuck falls. You shoot at us. We send a guy down to talk things over. You shoot him. Twice. We light off some firecrackers and run. You shoot at us again and pursue us.”
“Those really were firecrackers?” asked Kasey.
“Of course they were.”
“But you guys busted the gate,” said Fred.
“I don’t know anything about the gate.”
“Fuck you,” Fred said.
“No,” Kasey said. “Wait a minute. So what’s your point, Stephens?”
“It’s just…I feel I have so much in common with you guys. I mean, those firemen…they stick together, but we’re…from a different segment of the population.”
“Which segment is that?”
“We’re in the top one percentile. Your family is. I am. I should be in here with you guys.”
Kasey thought Stephens’s salary couldn’t possible be anywhere close to the Newcastle family income, but that wasn’t his concern right now. “Look, buddy. We don’t have a lot of time. Try putting it in English.”
“Okay. Yeah. Sure. You leave me here with these guys…there’s no telling what might happen when the police ask questions. I can see things both ways. They have some valid points. But so do you. I can see your side of things, and it would make your case unbeatable if you have me to back you up.”
“Just tell me one thing,” Kasey said, casting a sidelong look over his shoulder at Fred. “That revolver your friend had this morning. Was it loaded?”
“Well, right now…I’d have to say it was.”
“Was it really?”
“Don’t ask him shit!” Fred tipped forward in his seat, bellowing into Kasey’s ear.
Kasey said, “So you’re saying if we give you a ride, you’ll help us put those guys in prison, where they belong?”
“I don’t owe them any loyalty.”
“What if we give you a ride and you renege on the deal later?”
“That’s not going to happen. I don’t renege on deals. Ask anyone.”
57
Zak, Muldaur, and Giancarlo decided to go back and check on Stephens. It irritated Muldaur that they were being forced to retrace their progress in this smoke, because their time on the bike and maybe their time on earth was going to be limited by the volume of smoke they inhaled. It w
as having a palpable effect on his leg muscles, his throat was thick with it, and he could almost feel it nestling in his lungs.
In the solid wall of gray, they spotted Stephens’s bike on a mat of pine needles beside the road. Just the bicycle: no Stephens, and no sport utility vehicle.
“Stephens!” Giancarlo shouted. “Stephens!”
They set the riderless bike upright against a tree to better mark the spot, then pedaled back to the three-way intersection and headed toward the lake and the access road to the cabins. Muldaur had one of the worst headaches of his life and attributed it to the vast quantities of smoke he’d inhaled in the past hour. His head throbbed so badly he was afraid he might be on the verge of a stroke. Muldaur had come into this weekend feeling he was the strongest rider in the group, but Zak had been taking measured pulls alongside him all day and was beginning to look stronger by the minute. He’d been training hard this summer, and despite the smoke it was showing.
They took the narrow game trail that led to the lake, dodging low branches in the smoke, until they found the short stretch of beach eighty yards from the road. The water’s edge was barely visible in the murk. Despite the fact that they needed to get organized and keep moving now that the lakefront didn’t look viable, Zak got off his bike and waded into the water, scooping handfuls of the lake into his mouth, removing his hydration pack and filling it with water.
“You drink that, you’re going to get giardiasis,” Giancarlo said.
“How long does it take to start?”
“Good point.”
Giancarlo dropped his bike and stepped into the water, too, while Muldaur picked up a series of shiny brass rifle casings from the sand. He’d hoped to find a layer of clean air clinging to the water, but the glassy surface attracted smoke like a hooker in church attracted unwanted looks. Zak waded into the shallows until Muldaur couldn’t see him, though he was no more than twenty feet distant. He sank down into the lake until only his head was showing. “What if we just sit here? I mean, if we don’t do anything else. Just float. What if we do that?”