Primal Threat

by Earl Emerson

  Flames began licking at their backsides. Zak hadn’t noticed that the fire was so close until he rode into the ditch and then quickly back out. He’d felt the heat on his back at the same instant he locked eyes with Stephens, which added to his fury. Now he pedaled harder and felt his quads and the little muscles directly over each knee begin to cramp, felt a glow on his backside like sunburn. If it got even the tiniest bit worse, he was going to go down. All he could do was suffer until he died. That was all any of them could do. Then the heat backed off just a fraction.

  Even though Zak would have sworn neither of them had any more strength in their legs, he and Muldaur continued to speed up. It took a superhuman effort, but they caught Giancarlo and passed him. “Come on, Giancarlo,” Zak said. “Stick with us.”

  “I can’t. I went too hard. I’m cramping.”

  “You can make it.”

  “When you guys get out, tell my wife I love her.”

  “The fire’s right behind us,” Zak said. “You have to keep going.”

  As they spoke with Giancarlo, Zak heard the flames behind them creeping through the trees. As near as he could tell, the fire was traveling slightly faster than they were. It would take down Giancarlo, and then it would take them down. They’d slowed after overtaking their friend, and now, if they didn’t speed up again, the fire would roll over all three of them in a minute. Zak knew exactly how it would happen. They’d wilt from the radiant heat before the flames even touched them.

  “I know, I know,” Muldaur muttered when he saw Zak glancing back down the mountain. “We’ve gotta pick it up.”

  “I’m not sure I can go any faster.”

  “You can, and you will.”

  The wind began blowing on their backs, hot and breezy, scouring the road until they could see the disabled Ford in the center of the track. For a split second Zak feared it was an ambush and that Scooter and Bloomquist would come running around the side of the vehicle with rocks to smash their skulls, but as they steered around the truck he saw that the occupants were gone.

  As they rode into another bank of fast-moving smoke that had filtered up through the trees, Zak veered to the left. “Look out. Runners.”

  The first struggling runner was Roger Bloomquist in shorts, sneakers, and a Hawaiian shirt flapping around his waist. Zak didn’t think he’d ever heard anyone breathing so hard. “Back off a bit. You keep going like this, you’re going to collapse.”

  “Jesus Christ!” Bloomquist gasped. It took him several seconds to find enough air to finish the utterance. “I am trying to back off.”

  “Try walking,” Muldaur said as he came past. “Walk and run. Get your breath back. It’s a long haul to the top.” It was an eerie feeling, Zak thought, to be giving encouragement to someone he was pretty sure would be dead in a few minutes.

  Scooter was 150 yards in front of Bloomquist, scuffling along in a lopsided gait no doubt contrived to protect his broken collarbone. He looked as haggard as Bloomquist. As Zak recalled, they still had a long way to go, at least ten minutes on a bike, twenty or more on foot. As they closed in on him, Scooter began zigzagging in a deliberate effort to keep them from passing.

  “On your left,” Zak said, but Scooter cut to the left, and then when Zak moved to the right, he swerved in that direction. After several attempts, Zak pulled alongside, and even then Scooter tried to match Zak’s speed.

  “Fuckers,” Scooter hissed through clenched teeth.

  “Slow down. Pace yourself,” Zak said. “You keep going this hard, you’re going to blow up. You need to maintain as even a pace as possible.”

  “What I need is for you to…die…fucker.” Scooter’s words came out in gasps as he approached a steeper portion of the road. He’d taken all of his fear and anger out on Zak. Just for a moment, as they made their way up the steeper section, the wind died and everything grew quiet except for the sound of Scooter’s footfalls and Zak’s tires on the road, their breathing, and the flames crackling in the woods behind them.

  “Fuck you, chump!” Scooter said, as he accelerated away from Zak.

  “Slow him down,” Muldaur said, from behind. “He’s going to kill himself.”

  “I’m trying.”

  As the grade grew steeper, Scooter took more distance out of them until the wind shifted and he vanished ahead of them in another cloud of smoke. They began coughing as the smoke grew denser. Far behind, they could hear Giancarlo coughing as well. After a few minutes the smoke thinned and the grade eased and Zak was able to drop his chain one cog in the rear and raise his tempo. Though wheezing now, Muldaur remained on his tail. They both knew once a rider lost touch with another rider, his pace dwindled significantly, so it was good he’d remained in contact. Whoever didn’t keep in front of the fire would go down. There would be no begging and no second chances. Actually, Zak thought, there might be some begging.

  They continued to ride in tandem, Zak and Muldaur, and as the road grew less steep Zak spotted the Porsche up ahead in the ditch, two wheels in the shallow depression, two wheels in the air but just barely touching the road. Both the front and rear passenger’s doors were ajar. Not far up the road Zak saw three figures running.

  The next runner they caught up to was Fred, who, as Zak watched, slowed from what had been a staggering lope to what was now a laborious walk. Behind them, Zak heard the fire roaring to life again. He heard shouting, too. There wasn’t anything he could do to help those he’d left behind, as a cloud of smoke and ash passed overhead and scores of hot cinders began speckling the branches of nearby firs, setting them alight. Once again he found himself overtaking Scooter, who appeared out of nowhere in the smoke. As weary as he looked, Scooter made a crude attempt to reach for Zak with his good arm. Zak pedaled out of reach before he could fasten on. Behind, Muldaur said, “Don’t even think about it.” Scooter had done exactly what Zak warned him not to, and was now for all intents and purposes finished. He was stumbling, his lungs making a noise that sounded like a loose air fitting.

  With the fire getting louder, roiling gusts blowing in various directions at once, and the speed of the wind picking up so that he had to work to hold his front wheel steady, Zak realized the fire could go anywhere. It might jump ahead. Or it could sweep over them from behind, as it had been threatening to do. Muldaur came abreast and, after drinking it dry, unleashed his CamelBak and dropped it to the road. He chucked a half-full water bottle that had been in a holder on his down tube, too. Zak followed suit, draining his hydration pack and letting it drop to the road, along with the walkie-talkie and virtually everything else he was carrying. The less weight, the better. At this point a few ounces might cost them their lives.

  Keeping a steady focus, Zak sighted Jennifer jogging with determination. She looked as if she had enough strength in her legs to carry her to the top at her current pace. He caught her at a point where a little-used secondary road led off to the right and seemed to flatten out. Zak knew both roads would have the same elevation gain if they ended on top of the mountain, so the flattening would be temporary, but he could see where it would be tempting. The temptation proved too much for Jennifer.

  Zak spotted Stephens fifty yards up the side road, resting with his hands on his knees, cocking his head to watch Zak.

  “Don’t do it!” Zak yelled. “You don’t know where it goes.”

  “It has to go up,” Stephens shouted.

  “Does it? The quarry road was a dead end.”

  By way of reply, Stephens turned his back and began jogging away, trailed by Jennifer, as two deer galloped across the road between Jennifer and Zak.

  “I don’t like it,” Muldaur gasped.

  “Not much we can do.”

  “God, it’s windy.”

  After they passed the spur road, the mountain grew smokier, and soon they were riding in smoke so thick and dark it turned the day into night. Here the main road followed the natural contours of the mountainside. As they pedaled, they got a sense that the flames were paralleling
them in the woods on their right, which meant the fire must have at some point crossed the road Stephens and Jennifer took.

  “Holy shit, what is that?” Zak asked, glancing into the woods below them. The roaring fire sounded like an army of giants marching through the woods. Forty yards distant, a dark orange glow shone through the trees.

  “It’s right there.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Speed up, man.”

  “You think I can go faster?”

  “Giancarlo?” Muldaur yelled. “Giancarlo? Hurry.” Zak turned around and saw that Giancarlo was out of sight and too far back to hear them.

  The smoke lifted as more wind came down on them, and Zak saw flames leaping sixty feet into the air to their left. There was howling on their right, but fire was coming up the mountainside from below, too. The immediate heat on his left shoulder forced him to steer to the right side of the road as far as he dared. He could feel the growing heat on his bare left arm and leg. For a moment he wasn’t sure whether to stop or keep going. Or whether to turn around and take a dive down the mountain. He turned his head so his face would be the last part burned. What an ugly pass they had come to when he had to decide which parts of his body he wanted burned last. Then the heat dissipated, dying down as suddenly as it had revved up, though his left side still felt hot. When he turned his head, the flames were gone and the wind was blowing smoke lazily down the mountain instead of furiously up.

  “Are you okay?” Muldaur asked.

  “I guess.” The hairs on his left arm were singed, and his arm looked sunburned. “You?”

  “I think it burned all my curlies. I won’t have to shave my balls for a year.”

  “You shave your balls?”

  “My wife likes it.”

  “I’ll have to remember that if you don’t make it.”

  “Yeah. You do that. What does Nadine like…in case you don’t make it?”

  “Nadine likes a guy with a pure heart.”

  “Shit. I’ll never be able to fake that.”

  Even after Zak reached the top, it took a few moments to realize his odyssey had finally concluded. As he struggled with the fact that he was now safe, two wildland firefighters strode out of the haze on the plateau like an apparition and asked him if he was all right. He said he was.

  He wasn’t going to get shot and he wasn’t going to get broiled, and as he stood beside the two firefighters, watching Muldaur work his way to the top, he allowed himself some water from a canteen the woman offered, marveling at how feeble and weakened Muldaur appeared, at how wobbly his bike was, and how he looked as if he was about to fall over with each pedal stroke. Was it possible that Zak had looked that bad?

  Then, as he and Muldaur waited for what seemed like an eternity alongside the two firefighters, Giancarlo came out of the smoke like a wraith and poured on the power. As he watched his friend climb, Zak wondered whether Stephens and Jennifer had been forced to backtrack to the main road and, if so, whether the flames had caught them and cut them down. He wondered if the shouts he’d heard as they were climbing hadn’t actually been screams. He wondered whether Bloomquist, Scooter, and Fred were going to make it. And Kasey. Where was Kasey?

  It wasn’t until that moment that he realized he hadn’t seen Nadine’s brother outside the Porsche. He’d seen everyone else on the road, but not Kasey. “You see Kasey running?” Zak asked.

  “Not me,” said Muldaur.

  “I didn’t see much of anything,” said Giancarlo, who’d reached them by then. Remarkably, he didn’t appear to be burned.

  Zak suddenly had a vision of himself having to explain to Nadine and her skeptical family how all this had happened. He would have to detail every action and decision of the day again and again, not only to the authorities, but to the family. It was going to be hard enough to account for the three deaths he knew of already, but if Nadine’s brother came up missing or dead, it would mean the end of Zak’s already tenuous relationship with her.

  It took a series of radio transmissions between one of the firefighters and her supervisor, who was apparently somewhere to the east of them, for Zak to get the full picture. Stephens had made contact with another firefighting crew. He was safe. He did not know the whereabouts of the others, and the last time he’d seen him, Kasey was in the Porsche. In fact, word was relayed from Stephens that he didn’t recall seeing Kasey get out.

  “Shit,” Zak said.

  “What is it?” Muldaur asked.

  “Kasey’s still in the car. He probably thinks that’s the safest place. I’m going down.”

  “You’ll never find him in all this smoke,” said Muldaur.

  “If you go down, you’ll never make it back up,” added Giancarlo.

  “I have to go. He’s stuck in the car.”

  “Maybe he was stuck,” said Muldaur. “But he must have gotten out by now.”

  “I can’t take that chance.”

  The way Zak saw it, things boiled down to Nadine and how badly he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her. If her brother died up here, Zak would lose her. Until he met Nadine, he’d never understood the expression wanting to grow old with, but this was the woman he wanted digging in the garden outside his window when he was creaky and aching and his digestion had gone bad…although to be truthful he had no idea whether Nadine liked to garden or not.

  “Where’d the fire go?” Zak asked. “Why didn’t it keep coming up?”

  The second wildland firefighter, a reedy young man who had been looking nervous since the moment Zak first saw him, said, “We’ve been watching it all day. These mountains have magnified the effects of the wind. There’s no telling. There’s no telling where it’s headed next. I mean, it’s just as likely to hit a section as it is to skip over it. You get anywhere close to it, and it’s going to be like a blowtorch. Down below, they had winds of almost sixty miles an hour. One direction. Then another. It’s the weirdest fire we’ve fought all summer. It’s a bellows effect of the pass that keeps changing things so quickly. You got wind coming through there like a hurricane. They had to close I-Ninety this morning because of the winds.”

  “What about the helicopter? We saw a helicopter earlier.”

  “They’ve got engine trouble. They’re back in Fall City working on it.”

  “So there’s no truck or anything up here?”

  “Not unless you brought one.”

  “Don’t do it!” Muldaur said.

  He got up to speed in fifty yards, and then, as soon as he hit the smoke, he held his breath for as long as possible, finding his first intake of smoky air even more foul tasting than he remembered. As he descended, the smoke continued to grow thicker.

  There were alternating patches of burnout on the mountainside, so that half a mile down he found a huge charred area, both sides of the road scoured clean, timbers smoldering, and then a quarter mile later the trees were green and unspoiled again. He went through two clean sections and two burned ones. Then the smoke thinned and the wind picked up, and he found himself with a death grip on his handlebars. He knew the fire came right behind the wind and that he was coasting into the most dangerous area.

  The mountain had an indentation with a small gully on the right that the road builders had filled in and which became a crease as it climbed the mountain on Zak’s left. It was on this section where Zak found the first body. The fire had roared up the gully, burning everything he could see below and most of the trees in the crease above. The body was facedown in the center of the road, and he couldn’t tell who it was until he turned it over. The clothing that had been pressed against the dirt had kept almost all of its original color, and unless he’d given his Hawaiian shirt to someone else, this was Roger Bloomquist.

  Zak let the body sag back to its original position and remounted. On the trip down the mountain he’d been gulping air when there was air to gulp, but now he was holding his breath for the simple reason that he was in shock. He’d been a firefighter for seven years, but aside from phot
os in some early training sessions, he’d never seen a burn victim, at least not a dead one. As he coasted into the bowels of uncertainty, he tried to think about what Bloomquist must have gone through in his last few minutes. He wondered what his last thoughts were, and he wondered, too, what his might be when he got caught by the flames.

  The second body was within shouting distance of the first, and had it not been obscured by smoke he would have seen it while he was still bending over the original corpse. He began crying, more at the futility and senselessness of these deaths than anything else. He never cried on the job, but this was different. He’d known these people. And their deaths had been so needless. They might have driven to the top of the mountain a long time ago if they hadn’t tried to go back down through the fire. The second corpse was curled into a ball, arms extended as if picking berries. Closing in on the body, he braked to a stop. How odd that this person had a history and a memory and maybe a thousand or so people who knew his name, and now with only a slight change in wind direction he’d become a lump of charcoal.

  He stared for much longer than he probably should have, trying to identify the body without touching it. Eventually, he recognized the leather sandals. He looked for and could barely see the tattoo of a dollar sign on his ankle. Scooter. All of his crap had finally led to his own death. Had Scooter been willing to take Zak’s advice about slowing down, he might have made it out on foot, but in the end even the hideously out-of-shape Bloomquist had overtaken him.

  It was hard to believe how far down the mountain he had to coast in the violent winds to find the Porsche. The area around the SUV was untouched, the trees covered with soot and tinted by smoke, but still ripe and awaiting ignition. Ironically, had Scooter and Bloomquist hunkered down here, they might still be alive, because this area was relatively unscathed.