7:13 A.M.
“RUN!” WYATT YELLED AGAIN.
Crack! Clack! On the scree slope above them, the burning log was shoving rocks out of its path with a sound like thunder.
With shouts and screams, everyone scattered. They weren’t running to anything, just away from the deadly missile bearing down on them.
Pulling Natalia behind him, Wyatt veered off the trail to the left. On Wyatt’s back, Trask was wailing as he jostled up and down.
Natalia ran at a slant, looking back over her shoulder. With horror, she saw the burning log cleave through the underbrush, cutting across the trail they had just been on, leaving fire in its wake. Through the smoke, she saw some of the others trying to scramble out of the way just before the trunk reached them.
AJ was close behind her. A dozen feet farther back, Marco was screaming, “B! B!” as Blue barked frantically.
But Beatriz was nowhere in sight.
Neither were Ryan or Lisa. Or Susan. Or Darryl or Zion.
Far ahead of them came a bang. The burning log had finally run into something big enough to stop it. But it had already done its damage. Only a few hundred feet away, the flames that had sprung up in its wake began to nibble here, take large mouthfuls there.
The forest fire was no longer behind them. It was here.
Hurrying back to Marco, Wyatt grabbed his wrist. “Beatriz must be on the other side of the new fire. We’ll catch up with her later. But right now, we all have to get out of here.”
Marco gave him a wild-eyed look. But something in Wyatt’s words or expression must have gotten through to him, because he turned his back on the flames and started running away.
The fire was already growing. Watching the flickers skitter and flow, swirl and twine, Natalia felt as frozen as she had six years earlier, when she had watched the fire race up the kitchen curtains.
“Natalia! We’ve got to go! Come on!”
Wyatt’s words helped break the spell. She tore her gaze away to turn and follow Wyatt, Marco, and Blue, with AJ at her heels.
Hurtling through the prickly undergrowth with outstretched hands, she tried to protect her face as branches slapped against her palms. Under her feet, small sticks snapped like tiny bones breaking. Her heart was a hammer in her chest and her mouth filled with the flat metallic taste of adrenaline.
Bouncing on Wyatt’s back, Trask was kicking and flailing. She reached out to pat him, but he was too wrought up for a random touch to soothe him. A branch whipped her face but she barely felt it.
What had happened to his parents? With their injuries, had Ryan and Lisa been too slow to get out of the way of the log or the fire it had left behind? Was Trask now an orphan? At his age, he would surely grow up with no memory of his parents.
If he grew up at all.
And what about Zion? Had Darryl and Zion moved fast enough?
At the thought of one or both boys dying, it all came crashing down on Natalia. They had come so far and survived so much, and for what? Just to die a few miles short of their destination?
Ahead of her, Wyatt threaded through trees and swerved around clumps of brambles. Now he squeezed between two trees only to be confronted by dense underbrush. He started to back up, then looked over his shoulder, past Natalia, and swore.
Already feeling hollowed out, she turned. The flames were just two hundred yards away. Some were spot fires not much bigger than a human hand waving a frantic warning. Some were jagged lines creeping ever closer, flaring up when they found a new source of fuel. All of them sizzling, snapping, and getting louder by the second. All of them gradually merging into a single conflagration.
With renewed energy, Wyatt turned back and forced his way through the closely packed ground cover. Natalia was following close on his heels when tendrils snagged the laces of her boot. She went sprawling headlong, scratching her face and arms. A big hand appeared in her field of vision. AJ’s. Without a word, he pulled Natalia to her feet and they were off again.
Embers trailing thin plumes of smoke began to fall all around them. Some landed on her clothes, peppering them with tiny holes. The roar was rising. Now blizzards of orange sparks flew past them, and then bunches of needles lit up like flares. The air was as hot as a pottery kiln. Natalia’s tongue felt fat and swollen against her dry lips, while sweat streamed down her spine. When she wiped her stinging eyes, her palm came away smeared gray with ash.
And then a new smell was layered over the scent of woodsmoke. The sickening stench of burning hair.
A hand slapped her head from behind. Hard. Natalia turned, startled.
“Sorry!” It was Marco. “Your hair was on fire.”
“Oh.” She hadn’t felt a thing. “Thanks.”
They raced on, picking their way through a gauntlet of spot fires. The air was starting to tremble. Burning sticks, pine cones, and even branches began raining down all around them. They broke into a thrashing run, stumbling on rocks and brush. Blue galloped alongside, barking as if to encourage them.
Their pace was a compromise between two identical agonies. Too slow and they would burn to death. Too fast and they would trip and fall—and then burn to death.
Natalia imagined what it would be like, their lungs searing, their pack straps melting on their backs as they stumbled their last steps before the fire ate them up.
Finally, they burst through a line of trees. Natalia saw what Wyatt must have been making for. A lake, with a rocky shore.
Ahead of them was a long stretch of water. Behind them a horseshoe of fire.
“Take off your boots, tie them together, and hang them around your neck,” Wyatt said between gasps. “We’ll need them on the other side of the lake. AJ and Natalia, you’re going to have to ditch your packs.”
This close to the water, the air had a colder, cleaner sent. Natalia tried to pull it deep into her lungs as she shrugged off her backpack and pulled off her boots. She tied them together and put them around her neck, staring out at the long expanse of smooth water. But every move was just delaying the inevitable.
In his Teva sandals, Marco splashed in. AJ was the first out of his boots and into the lake. Blue launched himself into the water, which was rippling from the wind created by the fire.
“Can you tighten the straps on Trask?” Wyatt asked her. His face was smeared with ash. “I don’t need him to go floating off.” He said floating but she knew he meant sinking.
As she tightened the straps she murmured reassurances, her lips close to Trask’s ear. He had finally stopped screaming.
“You’re okay. It’ll be okay.” She was saying it as much for herself as she was for him.
But Trask didn’t seem to believe her any more than she did. His breathing didn’t slow. His chest kept rising and falling in the same too-rapid rhythm. His eyes were swollen, and he seemed too exhausted to cry.
“They’re tight.” Natalia clapped Wyatt’s shoulder.
“Thanks. Now get in the water. Hurry!”
Even though she could feel the hairs on her arms crisping, she wanted nothing more than to collapse. Instead, she shouted the truth.
“I can’t swim that far!”