“I’ll check it out.” Lucas stepped forward and put his hands to his eyes and leaned down and pushed his face right up against the window of the car.
I looked up at Olivia for an explanation as to what we were doing now.
“Nobody here.” Lucas opened the door and I heard a chiming sound. “Keys are in it. Let’s see if it starts.”
“But the owner could be around here somewhere,” she protested. “I don’t think we can just take it.”
Lucas walked around to the other side of the car and shook his head. “This thing is all scorched on this side, and the tires are blistered. I think whoever was driving this got out somehow and escaped. I don’t think he’s coming back anytime soon.”
“So we’re doing Grand Theft Auto now?” Olivia asked.
Lucas wiped his forehead with his sleeve. He grinned at her. “Not at all. We left our Jeep, now we’re taking a Toyota. It’s sort of like a lending library. Leave one, take one.”
Car ride!
Lucas did not roll down the windows, but when he started the car, delicious air began blowing from the front to where I sat in the back seat.
“Almost out of gas. Maybe that’s why he stopped.”
“Hope he was able to get a ride from somebody.”
The tension that had been crackling between the two of them had eased, but I could still detect an undercurrent of worry. They were both sweating, and their sweat smelled of fear. I panted anxiously.
We drove downhill. At one point, I felt the car engine stop vibrating, though we were still rolling.
“Coasting. Conserving gas,” Lucas explained.
“But can you stop? Aren’t they power brakes?”
Lucas pushed his foot down and I felt the car slow. He nodded at Olivia. “We’re okay, and if we run into a problem, I’ll turn the engine back on.”
As we rolled quietly along, I heard something approaching from down the hill in front of us—a heavy engine sound, familiar. I stared at Lucas, waiting for him to hear it, too. We rounded a bend, our new car still silent, and Lucas sat up straight. “Whoa!”
He reached forward and keys jangled and our motor came to life. He steered us to the side of the road and stopped. I watched out the window, wagging, as the source of the loud noises drove past us—two lumbering trucks of the kind that Mack liked to ride, followed by a steady procession of cars, all headed in the opposite direction. I noticed several people waving their arms at us out the windows.
Lucas turned to Olivia. “They’re all going uphill. Fools.”
Olivia laughed. “What do they know?”
“I guess maybe we should join them.” Lucas sat for a moment while the rest of the cars flowed past. Then I swayed as our new car turned around and headed up the hill, following the line of vehicles.
Olivia twisted in her seat, smiled at me, and then stared out the window behind me. “Hard to say what’s going on downhill, but obviously there’s a reason the trucks are going this way and not that way.”
“I’ll see if I can catch up and we can ask them.”
We started moving faster, but then after a short while, the car went quiet again. Lucas steered over to the side of the road and we coasted to a stop. “How would you feel if I told you we just ran out of gas?”
“Huh,” Olivia replied pensively. “So now what?”
Lucas pressed his lips together and shrugged. “You have any cell reception yet?”
Olivia pulled out her phone and frowned at it. “Nothing.”
“We’re probably not going to get anything for a while. I imagine the fire can’t be good for the cell towers.” Lucas shrugged again. “I guess we walk uphill.”
Walk! Still on leash, I sniffed along the side of the road, finding animal smells but no dogs. Heavy gusts of wind whistled at us.
“How many cars and trucks would you say passed by?” Lucas asked.
Olivia reflected for a moment. “Maybe … twenty? It was a lot.”
“My guess is that they’re all from a small town from somewhere down the mountain and they just did an organized evacuation. So even though we don’t know where we’re going, they do.”
“What if where they are going is a dozen miles from here?”
“You wanted to hike today, remember?”
We walked steadily. At first I pulled on my leash, eager to get wherever we were going, but after a time I fell into step next to my people and just opened my nose to the experience.
“How’s your arm?” Lucas asked.
Olivia glanced down. “Good. No bleeding, and I don’t really feel it. All that work on grapes really paid off.”
I could still smell smoke. It danced in and out on the air currents, sometimes heavy, sometimes a mere tickle, but always there.
I glanced back the way we’d come because I’d heard it again, that same engine noise. After a moment, both Olivia and Lucas halted, twisting around to look behind us.
In the far distance, another one of those huge trucks ponderously approached us. Lucas handed my leash to Olivia and stepped out into the middle of the road. He waved his arms and the big truck eased to a halt. A man leaned out the window, but it wasn’t Mack.
“We ran out of gas,” Lucas told the man.
“That your Toyota back there?”
Lucas nodded. “Yeah. Well, no, but it’s a long story. Is there fire down the hill? We were passed by a lot of cars.”
“Not yet, but it’s coming. We just cleared the last people out of the town of Norwalk. You two like a lift?”
Car ride in the big truck!
Lucas and Olivia sat on a metal seat and talked to a man who was dressed like Mack, while I lay at their feet. The heavy vibrations on the floor made me drowsy. I slept, but jumped to my feet, wagging, when I felt the truck come to a halt.
“What’s going on? Why are we stopping here?” Olivia asked.
“Hard to say,” the man dressed like Mack replied.
We climbed down. Parked in the road up ahead were the two huge trucks, plus a line of other vehicles. People were standing up out of their cars, opening doors, and I saw a small brown dog and a larger white one. The white one strained at his leash to reach me, but his person held him fast. I wagged but stuck to my boy’s side as we joined a circle of people.
Suddenly, I smelled Mack! He was here, but there were so many other people that I couldn’t tell where.
A man in a white shirt stood in the center of the ring of people. “Okay, I don’t know everything, but here’s the situation. The fire has jumped the break we dug yesterday, blocking our way going forward. And as you know, the way back downhill takes us to the middle of the evacuation zone. There’s no easy way to say this, folks. We’re right in the path of the fire.”
Whatever the man in the white shirt was saying, it caused people to stiffen and start talking to one another, alarm audible in their rising voices.
“You mean we could die up here?” a woman asked.
White Shirt Man nodded grimly. “I’ve radioed for help. They’re putting county resources to working on a way to get us out of here. But for the moment, we’re trapped.”
People were talking even more loudly. I looked over at the big white dog, and he looked back at me. We were both doing Sit.
“We need to go back to town,” someone said loudly.
“They said the town was going to catch on fire,” another person objected.
“There’s a trail,” someone offered.
“What? Please, quiet down!” White Shirt Man called loudly to the crowd. “Sir, would you repeat what you just said?”
A thin man wearing shorts stepped forward. “It’s an old two-track, about a thousand yards back. I ride down it sometimes. It leads to an old mining camp, and there’s a road from there to the highway.”
“Show me.”
The thin man and White Shirt Man pushed through the people and walked away. As everyone returned to their cars or stood around to talk, I saw Mack and dragged Olivia over to him. His
back was to me, but he turned when I jumped up and put my paws on him.
“Bella?”
“Well, hey, Mack. This is getting to be a habit.” Lucas greeted with a tight grin.
Mack gave me a hug and I licked his proffered hand. “Were you two down in Norwalk?”
Olivia shook her head. “We were camping and ran from the fire. It was … We had a challenging night.”
“Man, I was thinking about you. I knew you were spending the night in the mountains and was worried. I tried to call you, but my phone’s not working. I’m glad you’re safe.” Mack brightened. “Oh, one of the reasons I wanted to call is that my captain passed me a message. That guy from the museum? He made it. He’s breathing on his own, even.”
I glanced up at my boy, sensing his relief. He touched my head with his hand when I nosed it. “That’s great to hear. Thanks.”
“Congratulations, Doc,” Mack said. “You saved a life.”
Olivia hugged Lucas. “I’m so proud of you.”
I turned because the white male dog was lifting his leg upwind of me. We stared at each other for a moment.
“So, what’s the latest, Mack? How big is the fire?” Lucas asked.
Mack shook his head. “I don’t think we know that yet. It’s just moving faster than anyone expected.” He gestured up into the air. “This wind.”
“Are we going to be rescued? Helicopters?” Olivia asked.
Mack looked worried. “I don’t know.”
When White Shirt Man returned, people once again surrounded him. I lost track of the white dog but saw the small brown one. She was a female and was panting nervously.
“Here’s what we need to do,” the man announced loudly. People instantly fell silent. “Any SUV or pickup with a high clearance, you’re going to be fine on the two-track. We’ll send the fire trucks down ahead of you. Small cars, though, the trail is too rough. So, grab what you need and let’s consolidate into the vehicles that can make it.”
A man dressed like Mack shook his head. “We’re going off-roading. In a fire truck.”
White Shirt Man nodded firmly. “I’m not going to lie to you, this could get pretty bad. But we better go now.”
People immediately began talking and leaning into their cars and pulling things out. Then they were leaping into trucks and shutting doors with a bang.
Mack turned to us. “Want to ride with me?”
Eight
I was astounded when we climbed up on Mack’s truck for a car ride—not in it, on it!
I was lifted up onto a flat surface. I saw that many people were crammed into seats in the front, but some of us, including Mack, were on the very top, toward the back wheels. Some of Mack’s friends stood on small metal platforms on the sides, clinging to handles. My boy took a firm grip on my collar with one hand and grasped a metal rail with the other. Olivia was next to him, holding the railing with both hands.
Cars were backing up and turning. I watched alertly for the big white male dog and the small nervous female. I wanted to bark at them from the roof of the truck.
We bounced and creaked as we drove back down the mountain a bit, following the other two big trucks. We were the last truck in a line of vehicles. The trees along the side of the road were lush with leaves being thrashed by the ever-present wind. I expected the warm blowing air to whisk away the smoke, yet the bite of burning wood never left my nose. Nobody talked, but everyone coughed occasionally.
I brightened when we rattled to a stop. White Shirt Man stood on an outside platform of the truck, at the front of the halted procession. He leaned forward and pointed. “That’s it!”
White Shirt Man and some of Mack’s friends jumped down as the driver opened his door and stepped out. They stood with their hands on their hips, staring into the trees as if watching for squirrels. I wagged, thinking we were going to climb off the truck ourselves, but other than loosening his grip a little Lucas made no move to go anywhere.
“You want me to drive down that?” the driver demanded.
I looked to Lucas, who was watching the conversation. His hair and face smelled like smoke. He glanced at me but did not issue any commands.
“Well, now,” Mack murmured. “This will certainly be interesting.”
Olivia shook her head. “How can they expect the truck to make it down that? It’s not even a real road. The fire trucks are too wide.”
“I think you’re right,” Lucas agreed, “but if this part of the forest starts burning, I want to be on the truck and not on foot. Probably be okay.”
“You’d be surprised at what fifty thousand pounds and six hundred horsepower can do,” Mack interjected. “We’ve never gotten stuck in snow, and we can mow down small trees like they’re nothing.”
“Not going to be fun if the truck tips over, though,” Olivia pointed out.
Mack grinned at her. “What part of that wouldn’t be fun?”
Olivia shook her head at him and Lucas laughed. I wagged at the familiar sound.
Mack’s friends returned to the trucks, which snorted back to life. Lucas’s hand tightened on my collar again. With a lurch, we started to drive into the trees. We were moving more slowly, but our truck was swaying from side to side, sometimes to such an extent that Olivia and Lucas exchanged glances, their eyes wide. We kept hitting thin trees, cracking them loudly. With every jolt I slid a little, my claws digging fruitlessly at the slick surface underfoot. Here, in a place where the fire had not touched, the ordinary sound of the leaves being tossed in the stiff wind was comforting to me, but I was starting to understand that we were probably soon going to be smelling burning wood and seeing smoke and flames. Something had changed in our world. But as long as my boy kept me with him, I knew he would make sure I was never in danger.
We twisted and turned and bumped and were so jarred I had to stand with my legs splayed to keep from being flung. Several times Olivia and Lucas were tossed into the air and then landed hard, looking uncomfortable. When we all leaned precariously to the side, my boy’s arm went rigid as he held my collar, and he took in a breath and didn’t exhale until the truck righted itself.
“That was close!” he exclaimed, then coughed. “What do we do if we think we’re tipping over?”
We were all jolted as the front of the truck swiped a tree, and then we started to lean again.
“Jump,” Mack replied grimly.
Lucas looked at Olivia. “I’ll throw Bella as far as I can. Then we go together, okay?”
We leaned over even farther. Olivia nodded tensely. “Do you think she’ll understand to get out of the way of the truck?”
Now we were really leaning. I felt Lucas start to lift me up in the air. “She’ll have to.”
“I’ll help you,” Mack said. His hands reached out and grabbed me on either side, just in front of my tail.
With a boom, the truck straightened back up. I skidded on the metal surface, nearly falling over. I wagged at my boy, seeking reassurance that this was all intentional. People understand things about car rides that dogs don’t. They know where they are going, and they know why sometimes the windows are down and sometimes they are not.
In front of us, the line of vehicles rose and fell into the deep ruts in the road. I peered at them but still couldn’t spot the other two dogs.
There was another bang, a rattle so fierce along the length of the truck that Olivia gasped.
“Hang on!” the driver yelled.
“Good dog,” Lucas told me.
I found myself thinking of the last car ride in the Jeep. That too had been a steep and bouncy journey. I hoped we weren’t going to drive into a lake again.
A few moments later, the truck stopped weaving and made a really sharp turn. Suddenly we were on a road that was much less bumpy, with gravel crunching underneath the tires. Lucas and Olivia grinned at each other, and I could feel my boy’s relief in the way his hand relaxed on my collar. We gained speed, the truck vibrating beneath us.
“I wouldn’t want t
o do that again,” Mack observed.
Olivia leaned forward and looked at him. “We’re so lucky you showed up. We’d still be walking.”
Mack smiled and shrugged. “Some things are just meant to be.”
“You seem to be doing really well with this, Mack,” Lucas observed carefully.
“Yeah.” The two of them exchanged a long look, and then Mack turned to Olivia. “I don’t know if I ever told you, but I was at the VA for PTSD. So you’d think this whole situation would be coming at me all kinds of ways, right? But nobody died this time. It’s not the same as Zhari. It’s…” He shrugged. “I can’t explain it. But this feels important, and positive, and the other thing just felt tragic and horrible.”
The smoother ride lasted for a long while. I was able to lie down, conscious of my boy’s hand still resting on my collar. From that position I wasn’t able to spot squirrels and other dogs, but some car rides are like that, and dogs simply have to adjust.
Before long I recognized the smells that meant we were approaching a town. After another swaying turn, we saw buildings on each side of the road, and our truck slowed.
A man dressed like Mack was standing in the middle of the street. He waved at us and the trucks all stopped. I climbed to my feet to watch.
The man walked to the lead truck and looked at the driver. “Welcome to hell,” he greeted. He climbed up and stood on the outside of the driver door and pointed and we trundled slowly forward.
Cars filled the streets, some of them honking, many with dogs. I responded to them appropriately.
“No barks, Bella.”
Though Lucas clearly did not understand the situation—there were dogs in cars!—I did as I was told, even though No Barks is one of those commands that rarely results in a treat for a good dog.
Lucas looked from one side to the other. “Where are we?”
“It’s Paraiso,” Olivia replied. “Maybe thirty thousand people. I’ve come up here before when their shelter has too many animals and they need me to take some back down to Denver.”
A Dog's Courage--A Dog's Way Home Novel Page 6