Go! the voices whisper. Keep following the deer.
As I run down the steep slope after their bounding shapes, I spot what they were making for: a stream about twenty feet across. Nervously dancing back and forth, they are now standing in it, the water just past their bellies.
My back feels like it’s already on fire. The sound of the conflagration is so loud it’s more a sensation than a sound, like a giant hand pushing me forward.
I leap into the water. Right before my head goes under, I snatch one final breath of scorching air. I keep my eyes open. Around me, burning branches hit the water. The legs of one of the deer churn past. Above me, there’s an eerie glow, brighter than any hell I’ve ever imagined, as the wall of flames reaches us. I curl into a ball and will myself not to float. Will myself not to breathe as the fire roars over us.
But finally I have to. Yanking my wet T-shirt over my mouth, I pray the fabric will somehow protect my lungs from the hot gases. I put my feet under me and, with my shoulders rounded, stand up just enough that my mouth clears the water. Immediately my T-shirt dries out and then crisps on my back. Hot ash freckles my neck. I smell the sweet stench of burning hair. I suck in a breath and sink again, but the water seems lower. Has it boiled away at the edges, turned to steam?
I don’t know how many times I repeat this—holding my breath until my lungs burn like the air above me—until I think it might be safe to stay on my feet. I swipe the water from my eyes and look around. A few hundred feet ahead, the fire is working its way up a slope. It’s so bright I have to squint to look at it.
Around me, what had been lush forest just an hour ago has been transformed into a nightmare lunar landscape, blackened and charred. A few trees still have burning branches, while others have been reduced to limbless trunks like blackened telephone poles.
Smoke clings to the ground, low enough that even just standing up, I’m out of the worst of it.
Amazingly, the deer have survived, too, although their flanks are dotted with burned patches. A look passes between me and the mama deer, a look beyond words, but still filled with understanding.
I start to laugh. I’m alive. I’m still alive.
The mama deer looks over my shoulder at something behind me. Her ears flick forward.
“Well, hello there,” a man says.
His voice is a kick to the gut. I turn around. It’s Stephen Spaulding. Half his hair is gone. Burned off. And that side of his face is red and black from a terrible burn that’s closed one eye. But he’s still got his gun, and now he aims it at me, steadying it with his other hand.
Get back under. I fall more than dive back into the stream. Bullets stitch the water. One of my foster families liked to watch MythBusters, and thanks to that show I know bullets can’t go very far in water. The problem is, I can’t remember the exact distance. Eighteen inches? Two feet? Whatever it is, I need to stay lower than that.
I want to swim away, but with my cuffed hands, about the best I can do is pull myself forward underwater, grabbing at stones, most of which are yanked free from the muck. If I get to my feet, or even raise my head to breathe, he’ll shoot me. If he gets impatient, he can just wade into the creek, pull me up like some huge fish, and put the nose of his gun against my head.
But I can’t stay under the surface forever. Once more, I’m forced to raise my head to breathe. This time, I keep moving away from him, even though it means I have my back to him. With the water fighting me at every step, I try to zigzag, hoping he won’t be able to aim.
I suck in a panting breath, ready to dive back under. A terrible groaning sound fills the air. It’s like no sound I’ve ever heard. I turn. It’s the deer. The mama deer. I can see the neat dark hole in her throat. He’s shot her.
“No!” I scream for the first time. I reach out as if to put my hand over the hole, as if I can stop the blood, as red and shiny as paint, that begins to fountain out, but she’s thrashing, going down. Her fawn watches, skittering back and forth.
“Olivia!”
At the sound of Duncan’s shout, I turn. But I can’t see him, just Stephen and the blackened landscape.
“Here!” I scream, my voice cracking from the smoke. “I’m over here! In the stream.”
Stephen’s distracted now, his gun swinging between me and the direction from which Duncan’s voice came. Above him, a tree now reduced to a blackened skeleton still has one huge limb burning.
“Duncan, be careful!” I shout. I’m moving downstream, trying to put more distance between me and Stephen as well as get closer to Duncan. “Stephen’s here, and he’s got a gun!”
The landscape is as black as a nightmare. When Duncan appears, he’s the only splash of color in it. He’s running flat out, a rifle in both hands.
Stephen raises his own gun.
“Watch out!” I scream at Duncan. “He’s—”
My warning is cut short by a shot.
Red blooms on Duncan’s chest. He falls so hard he somersaults forward, a broken boy, and then lies unmoving in an awkward sprawl. My scream is caught in my throat.
Stephen Spaulding turns toward me, ready to complete his circle of death. The circle that has been drawn around nearly everyone I love: my father, my mother, Nora, and Duncan. And now he will add me.
Above him, that one remaining limb begins to creak as the fire eats through it. Starts to move. But Stephen only has eyes and ears for me. As fast as I can, I move to my left. He matches me step for step as he steadies his hand.
I stare straight into the round, empty eye of the gun.
Just as the limb snaps off, still on fire, and crashes into him.