The Narrow Path To War

by D L Frizzell

  “Good thing,” she said.

  Alex shrugged. He didn't feel like talking, and hadn't really heard what she said anyway. Her cryptic conversations were hard enough to follow without the grief he felt weighing him down. "We're not going to be able to take the train," he said. With a dawning realization, he frowned at her. "Did you just say it was a good thing no one is left to eat this food?"

  “Good thing it’s going to rain,” she clarified.

  "Miss Runaway," Alex said, "this isn't really a place that gets a lot of rain. Maybe a few times a year." He wondered if she was being intentionally difficult, and so dropped the matter. He picked some vegetables of his own and took them back to his horse, who was standing dutifully in the middle of the road. As Alex fed him, Kate prodded the bug mule out of the garden to get closer to Alex.

  "It's going to rain," she said, and pointed to the north. Alex followed her gesture. Black billowing clouds covered the horizon to the north.

  “Dammit!” he exclaimed. "That's not rain, it's smoke!" There was only one thing in that direction that could burn so fiercely. "We need to get back to Edgewood."

  "It's going to rain," she insisted.

  “The grove is on fire,” he shouted. He stepped behind his horse and untied the bug mule’s leash from his horse. “The bug mule is too slow,” he said, "and I can't leave you here alone." He released her shackles from the saddle horn and pulled her down from the mule's back.

  “Wait,” she held up her hands. She took the harness off the mule and kicked it in the belly, sending it back into the garden. “She’ll be okay now.” Then she picked up the bundle of evidence that Niko had provided and carried it to Alex’s horse.

  Alex was prepping his saddle for a second rider and saw what she was doing. “Leave it."

  She shook her head and held the saddlebag firmly to her chest.

  "Have it your way," he said. “You're going to have to sit in front of me. We’ll be going fast.” He mounted his horse, then reached down for her. She grabbed his wrist with both hands and he pulled her up easily. Once situated, he spurred the horse back towards Edgewood.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  It was twelve hours later when Alex and Kate arrived on foot at the ranger station in Edgewood. Alex led his horse by the reins while Kate walked beside it, her hands still shackled. She was stroking the horse’s neck.

  The flames were visible now, rising high into the sky northeast of town. A black pall of smoke drifted through Edgewood, making it a ghost town. The streets were deserted and, except for a siren blaring from the refinery across town, deathly quiet.

  “I need to get to the fire and help put it out,” Alex told Kate. “You’ll be safe in your cell.”

  "Okay," she said. She walked into the ranger's office ahead of Alex and opened the cell herself. Alex locked her in.

  “Your horse is tired,” she said. "Don't ride him too far."

  “Don't worry about him,” he said. “I'll tie him up by the barn."

  Kate nodded.

  Alex ran out of the jail and climbed on his horse. It resisted at first, but accelerated to a gallop when he nudged it with his spurs. He raced to the barn, where he tied it off at a drinking trough.

  The smoke was thicker within the grove, so it took him a few minutes to find his way to the switching station. Standing where four pairs of rails converged, Seneca and Zand led the firefighting efforts.

  “What can I do?” Alex shouted over the sound of the fire.

  "What the hell are you doing here?" Seneca yelled.

  "I saw the smoke," Alex replied. "I came back to help."

  “If it wasn’t clear before,” Seneca yelled, “let me explain. I don’t want you here! We have a thousand people fighting this fire already. One more won’t make a difference. Go back to Celestial City where you’ll be safe!”

  Half of the northeast quarter was engulfed in flames. Burning both trees and soil, the blaze moved toward the switching station. Alex could see a line of people, men and women alike, shoveling dirt into the clearing between the rails and the burning trees. The fire crews worked in teams, with one team shoveling as much as they could before becoming overwhelmed by the heat. When they stepped back to cool off, the next team stepped forward. He could tell they were exhausted.

  Then he remembered the scene at the maglev station, the burned corpses among the embers still vivid in his memory.

  “No,” he told Seneca. “I’m staying.”

  Seneca glared at him. “Well, stop talking and start shoveling, then,” he shouted. "This is the choke point! We stop the fire before it gets to the switching station, or we don't stop it. Understand?"

  Alex nodded. Seneca shook his head and stormed off to check on his fire crews.

  “What’s wrong with him?” Alex shouted to Niko, who, despite being exhausted, was surprisingly calm.

  "Listen,” Niko glanced at the fire, “you should talk to him about it after we put this fire out, okay?”

  “Right,” Alex replied. “Where do you want me?”

  “We need shovelers,” Niko said. “People are starting to collapse from exhaustion. But the thing is, we need a better plan.” He kicked the ground and pointed to a clump of sand that flipped over. “See that?” he asked. “The ground is sticky. It's saturated with tree sap.”

  “Then that means people are shoveling fuel onto the fire,” Alex said. "What's the point in that?"

  “We're trying to create a fire break,” Niko replied. "If we can dig down to the dry soil and create a path wide enough, we hope the fire will remain contained within the northeast sector. We'll lose a quarter of the grove, but that's better than losing everything, including the town."

  "There's too much sap," Alex said. "I can see puddles of it everywhere."

  "It can't be helped," Niko said. "But it's not the worst part. The real problem is that all the rails we use to transport sap back to the refinery are made of wood."

  Alex looked at the rails that ran down the center of each roadway between the grove sections. They were indeed made of wood. "Can't you tear them up?" he asked.

  "No can do," Niko said. "Each segment of the rail is anchored in a concrete foundation for permanence. The lumber comes from Tundrasian hardwood trees. It's so dense, it would take us days to tear it out. It's the closest thing we have to steel around here."

  "Wouldn't it resist fire, then?"

  "Under most conditions," Niko said. "But this fire has gone beyond most conditions." Niko looked worried for the first time. "They will burn, Alex. These rails are decades old. With the sap in the ground underneath them, it's basically a giant fuse leading straight to the refinery."

  “But the fire will stop when it reaches the clean dirt, right?” Alex asked.

  “I really don’t know,” Niko replied. “We’ve never had a fire this big before. It depends how effective the fire break is, and how wide the crews can make it. I’m afraid the heat from the fire will cause the sap across the fire break to catch fire, even without direct contact.

  “Colonel Seneca says you're very smart,” Niko added. “Grab a shovel, pitch in, and think about ways we can protect those rails. Right now, if we find nothing better than what we’re doing, we won't be able to save Edgewood.”

  “Okay,” Alex replied, and ran off. Once he had a shovel in hand, he joined Private Strapp, whom he'd seen earlier near the switching station.

  “Here to keep me company?” Bryden joked wearily when he saw Alex run up.

  “Yeah. How does all this work?”

  Strapp seemed grateful for a chance to rest his arms. He pointed down the roadways where a rail system was laid out. “The grove is set up like a marksman’s target,” he shouted. “It's a bunch of giant circles spreading out from the center. There are three sets of rails that connect each ring to the switching station at the center.” He pointed briefly in three directions of the compass. “North, west, and east.”

  “Yeah. What about south?”

  Strapp nodded this t
ime, seemingly unwilling to lift his hands off the shovel handle. “There are two sets of rails going south toward Edgewood and the refinery. That’s the big one. If we can’t put the fires out in the northeast sector, it will spread to the entire grove. If we can’t stop that, we have to focus on those last two rails to keep the whole town from going up in flames. Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  “The circular rings are just wide enough to get the rail carts through,” Strapp continued. “The fire will jump those trails easy, so we can’t really spend any time on them. All we can do is finish this fire break along the main railways back to the switching station. We dig up the wet dirt, throw it on the trees, and keep digging until the ground is dry.”

  “How far into the ground does the sap go?” Alex shouted.

  Strapp held one hand about thirty centimeters above the other. Alex winced. “You’ll need to wear something so you don’t get blisters,” Strapp said, and wiggled his gloved fingers in the air.”

  Alex pulled a pair out of his back pocket and put them on. "So, the fire is going to burn down the whole northeast quarter?"

  "With luck, that's all it will burn down," Bryden answered. “In reality…” he shrugged.

  Alex looked at the amount of sap permeating the ground. “In reality, we’re fighting fire with fuel.”

  “Afraid so, yeah. But what else can we do?” Strapp said. He got a fresh grip on his shovel and started digging again.

  Alex dug, too. He outpaced Strapp and everyone else on the line. That was hardly a surprise. Everybody else had been digging for twelve hours or more. As much as the fire crews had done up to this point, however, they were only postponing the inevitable. In truth, their efforts were wasted on a lost cause. Strapp had been absolutely right, though. What else could they do?

  The fire continued to grow, spreading inexorably toward the switching station. Alex worked harder, though in his thoughts he knew it would ultimately be futile. There could be four times the number of people on the fire crews. It still wouldn’t be enough. The outer rings of the grove were burning stronger than ever. They would continue to burn long after the inner rings ignited. That’s why sap was such a valuable source of energy, after all; it burned hot, and it burned a long time. The fact that the workers had been taken off of their harvesting duties to create the colonel’s skirmish line only increased the grove’s flammability. Worse, the crews were getting more spread out as the fireline increased in size. Exhaustion was setting in. The only fire breaks – the railways that segmented the four quarters of the grove, were little better than fuses that would transport the destruction all the way to Edgewood. Niko was right; without a new strategy, all would be lost.

  Alex noticed that the crews were already backing away from the northeast sector, standing on the far side of the rails because of the incredible heat radiating from the burning trees. They only approached fires near the rails for a few moments at a time. Many had already suffered burns, which took them out of the fight, as well as those who were needed to evacuate them.

  "Where are the trucks?" Alex shouted to Strapp. "We could use those to bring water to the rails."

  Strapp set his shovel down just long enough to point to several particularly intense areas of flame within the trees. "In the fire now," he said. "The colonel sent them out there as soon as the fire was reported." He looked down at his shovel before speaking under his breath. "Those guys were my friends.”

  They both looked up when they heard gunshots. A squad of armed soldiers had started firing into the blaze. Alex looked to Strapp for an explanation.

  "The guys in the trucks weren't killed by the fire," the private growled, a sudden hatred rising in his voice.

  Soldiers rapid-fired into the trees, and Alex watched as other men traded shovels for guns. They flanked the northeast section on each side, inexplicably shooting into the flames. After a few minutes, he saw Seneca running through the smoke, waving for them to cease fire. The shooters nodded, then ran back to their shovels and got back to work.

  "Dammit," Alex shouted when a gust of wind breathed additional life into the inferno.

  Strapp stared blankly at Alex, and then wearily got back to shoveling sap-soaked gravel.

  Alex looked toward town and saw clear air around the barn where his horse was still standing. Beside it, a corral was built in the shadows of an escarpment. It looked like a drinking hole for the grovers' animals. Water there was plentiful but it was too far to reach with buckets.

  "What about using the rails to move water?" Alex yelled over the increased roar of flames. He pointed to numerous carts in the distance near the barn, indicated a separate railway that passed by the corral.

  Strapp shook his head. "The carts are used for carrying raw sap. The stuff is very thick in its raw form, so the carts never had to be waterproofed. We couldn’t transport water in them; most of it would leak out before we got them here."

  Captain Hathan-Fen ran towards them from the fireline and got Strapp's attention. "Get the rest of your squad!" she ordered him, "Join me with the crew on the north roadway!"

  "What's wrong?" Alex shouted.

  "The rails are starting to ignite!" She pointed back to where she had come from. Sure enough, one of the rails was on fire, just as Niko had feared. Shovelers were piling clean dirt and pouring water on it from their meager reserves. They put the fire out, but smoke was already pouring from several other places. It was only a matter of time before they started burning also.

  "Yes, ma'am!" Strapp trotted off to get the rest of his squad while Hathan-Fen returned to her crew.

  Alex looked at the rail. There wasn't enough water, there weren't enough workers, and time was running out. He they would fail soon. The fire would get close enough to make it impossible for the workers to survive the heat. The rails would ignite, dirt or no dirt, water or no water, and then spread to the refinery. After that, the town would be lost. He picked up a sticky ball of mud, dirt that had been saturated with sap that had gone unharvested for only a few days. Then he stopped working.

  "Don’t stop now, Vonn!" Strapp yelled as he hurried by with his squad mates.

  Alex didn't hear him. He picked up his shovel and ran back to the switching station.

  Zand and Seneca were having a close discussion with a group of men from town. He ran up to get Niko’s attention and stopped in his tracks when he saw who was with them.

  "Hello, deputy," Marshal Redland said as he stepped forward from the group.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Alex gaped at Redland, unable to believe his eyes.

  "What’s wrong?" Redland asked.

  "I..." Alex's mind raced. He momentarily forgot what brought him there, as images of scorched bodies in the burned train station came to mind. "Why are you here?" he yelled angrily.

  "Let’s talk later," Redland answered. "Do you have something for us?"

  "Spit it out, Vonn," Seneca shouted. “We’re busy here.”

  Alex forced the grisly memory from his mind and focused on his idea. “Do you know if those sap carts can be pushed by hand?”

  “No,” Niko replied. “We have handcars that move them.”

  “Are they in the barn over there?”

  “Sure, lots of them,” Niko replied. “We have all the dirt we need here, though!”

  “I don't want dirt!” Alex yelled. When they just stared at him, he explained. “Colonel, I have an idea,” Alex said to Seneca. “We can use mud to cover the rails.”

  “Use the dirt!” Seneca shouted, still angry at Alex. “It’s every damn where!”

  “The dirt is full of sap!" Alex argued. "The mud will bake dry and insulate the rails. They’ll get hot, but they won’t catch fire because the air can't get through the mud!"

  Seneca shot a look to Zand. Niko looked at the firewall and saw flames bursting up through the sand in more places than before. Soldiers were now spending as much time fighting fires in areas that were already covered, leaving the uncovered sections to wait
. He thought about Alex’s idea with quick deliberation. “It’s heavier because it’s wet,” he said, thinking out loud. “But the stuff is like cement when it dries, and we have plenty around the corral. Yes, it could work.”

  "And it won't leak out of the carts," Alex added.

  Seneca made his decision. He grabbed a lieutenant by the arm. "Do what Deputy Vonn tells you. Take a squad."

  The lieutenant nodded and ran off to find those who could help. Alex ran ahead to the barn to get the carts ready. He found a dozen sap carts lined up on one rail, with hand-operated cars on a switching rail. The rails ran from the barn to the grove, with junctions that connected them for maneuvering carts around each other. Alex climbed aboard the first rocker-operated handcar. He quickly figured out how to work the mechanism, then began pushing it up and down until he had enough momentum to carry him to the first junction. The adjoining rail had sap carts lined up in easy reach. Alex had the first cart attached in time for the squad to arrive.

  "Get this to the corral and fill it with mud," he told them. They jumped on and got the handcar moving, pushing the cart ahead of them.

  The soldiers formed two groups with their shovels. Four of them ran to the edge of the pond and began heaving shovelfuls of mud at the ground next to the cart. The other four shoveled it from the ground into the cart.

  When it was as full as they could get it, Alex and three soldiers jumped onto the handcar to start rocking the lever. The handcar pushed the cart ahead of it, picking up speed quickly with a push from the other soldiers. They raced toward the fire while the rest ran back to pair up another handcar at the pond.

  Seneca and Niko were waiting at the junction for them. When they saw the handcar approaching with a load of mud, they switched the cars onto the eastern rail and told them to go all the way to the end.

  The heat of the fire was much higher at the edge of the grove. The crews there were dousing themselves with the last of their water to cool themselves. Alex braked a few meters from the end of the wooden rails and dropped the cart’s tailgate. The mud slid out, covering the rails and the gravel between them. Two soldiers reversed the handcar’s direction and started backing it up while Alex and the last soldier heaped the rest of the mud out of the cart. Steam spewed from the mud as it came in contact with the ground. The nearby fire crew understood what Alex was doing, so they hurried in to help spread the mud. They were able to cover about a three-meter stretch that Alex guessed would protect the rails.