“Ow!” Tony yelped as a branch whipped back and slapped him across the face. “Holy frosty Fudgsicles, Craig! Watch it!”
The five young people were trotting as quickly as they dared through the boggy terrain. The forest had gone unnaturally quiet. No chirping birds. No buzzing insects. Tendrils of smoke were once again curling around their ears, and the air felt heavy.
“Sorry, Tony,” Craig apologized, looking over his shoulder. “I thought you were farther back.”
“Not so much,” moaned Tony, rubbing the red welt across his cheek.
“Hurry up, you guys,” Shawn called anxiously. He moved up beside Colin, who was leading. “Recognize any landmarks yet?” Shawn asked him in a low voice. Colin shook his head. “Not yet. But we’ve still got a lot of ground to cover.”
“And not a lot of time to cover it in,” coughed Shawn. His eyes were beginning to water in the smoky haze.
“Pit!” called Petra, pointing out another scum-covered pool, half-hidden by tangled underbrush. “Watch your step.” The five young people picked their way carefully around the innocuous-looking puddle and jogged on through muggy heat. Tony wiped the sweat from his forehead and glanced back at the water.
“Uh, guys?” he called. “How come we can’t just wait out the fire in one of these pools? It seems weird to be running from a fire when there’s water all around us.”
Ahead of him, Petra was already shaking her head. “No good, Tony. When the fire gets here, the air temperature will shoot up hotter than an oven. Air that hot would cook your lungs. If the smoke didn’t kill you first, that is.”
“Don’t you ever have any good news?” Tony complained as he followed her.
When they passed another pool, they paused. Borrowing Petra’s stick pin (and Tony’s head), Shawn quickly made another compass and checked their direction. “We need to veer a little more to the right,” he said, putting the pin in his pocket. They adjusted their course slightly, but had only been hiking for a few minutes when Shawn stopped again.
“Do you guys hear that?”
They halted, listening.
It was coming from behind them: a low, rushing, roaring sound, like waves washing ashore on a rocky beach. The rushing noise became a crackling noise.
And then:
“Fire!” yelled Shawn. The dark shadows pooling beneath the underbrush morphed into smoke. Tentacles of flame flicked out of the foliage. As they watched in horror, the fire divided with serpentine speed, slithering up tree trunks, strangling bushes. Long fingers of flame began crawling across the ground towards them.
“Go go go!” shouted Colin. They bolted.
“Stay together! Stay together!” Shawn choked as he ran.
But it was impossible.
Shawn’s eyes blurred, filled with tears from the stinging smoke. He lunged blindly through the trees, following the noise of the others crashing through the brush. The heat was horrible. Sparks sizzled through the air. Out of the corner of his streaming eyes, Shawn thought he glimpsed a large, dark shape racing through the trees just off to his left. Was it an animal or a person? He couldn’t be sure.
“Petra! Craig!” he gasped. “Where are you? Tony!”
He thought he heard Craig shout in reply and swerved towards the sound. His brother’s panicked face loomed out of the smoke. Shawn grabbed Craig’s sleeve and towed him forward.
“Come on! Come on!”
Another figure materialized out of the smoky gloom, loping along beside them. Colin. The boys couldn’t spare any breath for talk. They needed every molecule of oxygen they could suck out of this toxic air just to keep moving.
They ran until every breath felt like a knife sliding in and out of their lungs.
Finally the roar of the fire receded. The smoke thinned slightly. Abruptly, the forest ended, spitting them out into a bowl-shaped valley, hemmed in on three sides by cliffs of white gypsum. The boys staggered to a halt.
Still coughing and gagging from the smoke, Shawn looked around him.
“Where are the others?”
“Don’t know,” wheezed Colin. He was bent over, panting, his hands on his knees. “Lost sight of them in the smoke.”
Craig ran back to the entrance of the valley and cupped his hands around his mouth.
“Tony! Petra!” he called.
Shawn joined him, shouting at the indifferent trees.
“Petra! Tony! Hobart!” But his voice, ragged from exhaustion and smoke, couldn’t penetrate the smoky forest. There was no answer.