The charred remains of a telephone pole still lay on the ground, and a huge black scar cut across the pavement. I closed my eyes, but it still came back. Glass shattering. Flame and dust and debris and death, the child still screaming in my ears, Adam’s eyes lifeless under the barricade. And a new memory from moments before I hit the window.
Shaylee, screaming, her hair on fire, skin blistering as she was eaten by the flames.
Gagging, I opened my eyes.
“Are you okay?” Noah asked.
My pulse raced, and my skin was burning. I didn’t want to talk about it. Slowing my breathing down, I tried to answer. “Yeah, sorry. Just a bit carsick. Can I roll the window down?”
“Sure,” he replied. The concern in his voice was comforting, and the fresh air coming into the cabin helped. I pushed the thoughts out of my head.
Taking a deep breath, I smiled. Everything was going to be okay.
FIVE
The Western Highway is a key road that connects all the towns in our region. It winds slowly across the landscape, following the ridges and hills and giving amazing views of the mountains and plains around our town. The sun was still fairly high, but later on it would blaze a brilliant, deep orange as it cast fiery red streaks across the sky. I’d seen it a million times before, but it had never stopped being beautiful to me.
When I was a child, Dad and I used to watch the sunset at Carlyle’s Lookout, a spot not many people knew about despite the absolutely breathtaking view right to the horizon. It was our own private sanctuary, and as the cool air started drifting in from the south, we would sit on the warm car bonnet together. Dad would wrap me in his arms, and we would watch as stars blinked into being across lush green farmland, the lights of towns and isolated homes switching on as twilight came. With the electric stars below and real ones in the purple sky above, I used to pretend Dad and I were floating in space, worlds away from trouble, and that we could stay there forever. Even the constant fights at home seemed to fade into the distance, and for a moment, it would feel like everything was okay.
I tried to recapture that feeling as Noah’s truck edged onto the highway, but it was just beyond reach, dried up the same as the now yellow grass and skeletal trees. Five years of drought had scourged the land, and even the once huge Murrugal River now trickled across dead hills. As we drove, red dirt swirled at the sides of cracked asphalt. The highway itself was in reasonable condition, but the edges were badly maintained and full of gaps.
The car jolted, and Noah swore.
I smiled. “Out here we drive towards the centre of the road if there’s nothing the opposite way. You can really smash your suspension up on the edges if you’re not careful.”
“Oh. Sorry. I’m a townie at heart, I guess.” Noah moved the car to the middle of the road. “Good thing we’re here already.”
He slowed to take an exit. The Boulders. Of course.
Swinging around into our field of view were the imposing lumps of rock known as the Boulders. Huge semi-spheres made of red sandstone, they were a popular tourist attraction for people passing through. There were close to thirty of these giant bulbs gathered together, each at least ten storeys high, and between them were dozens of walking trails. As a girl, I always imagined a bunch of giants had been playing marbles and left their game half-finished. The thought made me a bit nervous any time my family went walking there, as if those giants would return one day and finish what they’d started.
This was all part of Ettney National Park, and there were signs reminding us to register our walk with the Parks Department, and stick to the trails, and take an emergency locator beacon. No one ever bothered to do that with the Boulders. It was a straight forward walk, not like in the mountains. Every few years, people went missing up there, leaving all their things behind. A few weeks before my accident, three teens from Cawley High had disappeared up there on a camping trip. Creepy stuff. They’d most likely fallen off a cliff or drowned in the river, but it was enough to freak people out. Nobody local went to the mountains. Not if you could help it.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Noah interrupted my thoughts.
“And what is that?”
“You’re thinking you’ve been here a hundred times before, and I must be a real moron to bring you here considering every local I’ve talked to comes here all the time. Right?”
I didn’t answer. He was right, but I didn’t want to make him feel bad. Being here with him sure beat the last time I was here—a school excursion on a scorching day with twenty other sweaty, tired students listening to Mr. Gregson drone endlessly on about local history.
“Trust me,” Noah said. “This, I guarantee you have never seen before.”
We followed the winding road down into the parking area. Signs warned against everything from lighting fires to hunting with a bow and arrow, and we pulled into a dusty space marked out by a faded line of paint.
The empty lot meant no one else was around, and the sun was dipping lower on the horizon. It had been a long drive, but we had about an hour and a half of daylight left. Plenty of time to walk one of the smaller tracks.
Noah stopped, looking slowly between three different entrance signs, yellow letters etched into green logs with the names and lengths of each track.
“Do you even know where you’re going?” I laughed, walking over to stand next to him. The day was cooling down, and I was close enough to feel the heat radiating off his body.
“Just give me a minute. I’ve got to remember which trail it is. Trust me.” He looked straight into my eyes, and his intensity and the smell of his skin formed an intoxicating mix. My stomach jumped, and my breath left for just a moment. “This way.” Noah had made up his mind and started down the centre of the three paths. He glanced back over his shoulder. “We might have to hurry. We need to get there before sunset.”
I frowned. “Get where?” His obscure answers were frustrating.
He smiled and kept walking, so I tried to go with the flow.
After about half an hour, we reached the first of the Boulders. The towering amber form overshadowed the trail, and as we passed between the giant figures, they seemed to swallow up the trail. I felt like an ant scrambling through pebbles in the schoolyard, insignificant and tiny. The sky, tracing narrow spaces between the boulders, was beginning to fade into a warm orange. Clouds were streaked bright yellow, and I stared at the tiger pattern formed by the intersection of rock and the sky beyond. The sunset was going to be incredible. It was a shame I was going to miss it down here in this maze. The Boulders blazed red towards their tops as the sun hit them, but the light reflected and filtered down, bouncing from rock to rock until finally it came to rest as a cool purple blanket covering us down on the darkening path.
A few trees and shrubs dotted the edges of the worn track, which was littered with footprints and rubbish. A bird screeched close to my head, startled, and flew out of a bush. It flapped up between the stones and out into the quiet sky.
Noah stopped, and I almost ran into him from behind. “Here. It’s definitely here.”
“If you’re talking about old cans and a freaked-out magpie, then yes.”
“What did I say about trust, hey?” He disappeared into some underbrush on our left. There was rustling, scraping, and then the soft clink of rubble against stone. After a minute, Noah’s face reappeared. I couldn’t see his neck or body, and the gleeful look on his floating head made me snort with laughter.
“Come on!” His hand took mine, and he pulled me gently into the leafy understory. Several steps into the scrub, we came to the side of one of the boulders.
There was a dark hole about half my height. It looked like I could just squeeze through. Fresh stones and rocks were scattered around the entrance, like it had recently been dug out.
I frowned and dropped his hand. “Are you sure this is safe?”
“Nope.” He smiled, and his enthusiasm was contagious. He stretched his hand out toward me.
With a
deep breath, I grabbed his outstretched palm and followed him into the dank tunnel. Only a few steps in, the crumbling walls widened into a dark space. I couldn’t yet see the perimeter, but my footsteps made long echoes. This place was big.
“Where are we?” My voice bounced around the expanse.
“We’re inside one of the Boulders. I don’t know if they’re all like this, but this one is mostly hollow.”
Details emerged as my eyes adjusted to the dark. Large rocks littered the floor of the cavern, which was about the size of a basketball court and as wide as it was high. Crystal stalactites clung to the ceiling, left over from when this whole place was underwater. Local historians thought the Boulders were formed by some sort of ancient flood plain, and the evidence here of swirling water backed up their ideas. Dust twisted in eddies around our feet.
I’d been holding my breath and exhaled slowly. This place felt sacred, like we were the first ones to have ever set foot in it.
“How did you even find this?”
Noah didn’t answer my question but smiled at the wonder in my eyes. “Cool, huh? But that’s not the best bit.” He checked his watch. “Any minute now. We made it just in time.”
Just then, the whole cavern came ablaze, orange light flooding down the walls to fill the dome. The change was dazzling.
A tiny hole in the top of the boulder was open to the sky, rimmed by stalactites that formed a natural lens. As the sun set, it hit the crest of the boulder at just the right angle to reflect light through the stalactites and down into the chamber, setting the whole place on fire with the setting sun.
A pool of water toward the far end of the cave reflected that light, causing shimmering ripples to dance back up along the walls to the roof. A smile burst out of me. After everything that had happened recently, it was so good to have some beauty back in my life. I didn’t speak. It would have ruined the moment.
The blaze faded after a few minutes, swallowed up once again by the dark as the sun dipped below the horizon. Lights appeared on the cavern roof. Thousands upon thousands of sparkling diamonds lit up the whole dome.
They were glow worms, waking up to shine their own galaxy in the stalactites above.
It was magic.
I drew closer to Noah and nestled against his shoulder as he put an arm around me. His heart beat a strong rhythm through his chest, and mine tried to join it. He was a bit taller than me, and his breath brushed past my forehead. His eyes caught every single light in the cavern as he smiled at me. I returned it. There was nothing more to do except be in the moment. And try to remember to breathe.
SIX
We lay down on a flat rock to get a better view of the glow worms. It was cold, and I moved closer to Noah to stay warm, and because I wanted to be near him. Maybe I was just emotional from everything that had happened lately, and he was a useful escape, but this was the first I’d felt all right in a long time. He put his arm out, and I rested my head on his chest. “Why’d you bring me here?”
“You’re different, Ari. Special.”
I’d been hearing that a lot lately. I still wasn’t sure if it was good. “I don’t get it.”
“You don’t have to.” We said nothing more, and one by one the glow worms blinked back out, bathing Noah and I in a purple gloom a lot darker than before. Noah glanced at his watch, the electric blue face illuminating his face for a moment. Concern etched his forehead. “Light’s almost gone. Better get you home.”
He switched on his phone’s torch and lit up the tunnel as we picked our way over debris and back to the entrance. It was dim, only allowing us to see a few steps in front of us, but Noah knew where he was going and managed to lead us back out onto the open track. There was barely enough light now to make out the difference between the rocks and the sky, and the only clue we weren’t still inside were the stars.
We stood on the path for a minute, getting our bearings. No use heading blindly off in the wrong direction. “How did you even find that place?” I asked.
“It’s a long story,” he replied. “Guess I got lucky.”
I frowned. He wasn’t telling me the whole story.
Before I could complain, he continued, “It seemed like such a special place that I wasn’t going to tell anyone about it, but then I saw you, and …” He looked into my eyes.
My heart felt like it was going to leap out of my chest and fly off like the bird we startled earlier. Noah leaned in, brushing my hair back from my cheek. I closed my eyes.
A blast threw me to the ground.
My arms scraped across the gravel, and my skin burned. Flames cast red streaks in the air above my head.
Noah pulled me up, his eyes wild. “Run.” he ordered. “Now!”
A second flame burst behind us, blistering my back. There was something wrong about these flames. They weren’t normal.
Someone yelled behind me, and three more blasts went off, one after the other. They were getting closer.
Someone was shooting at us.
Smoke swirled in plumes, and I lost Noah. The flames burst again, one on my left, another on my right. I had to run, and it didn’t matter in what direction. If I stayed still, I was dead.
Holding one arm up to shield my eyes from the smoke, I chose left. Another bolt of fire exploded above my head, and I swore.
The flames lit up the scrub around me, and in a few seconds, the whole bush was on fire. After years of drought, it was desperate to burn. Ash choked the air, and an ember singed my hand. I swore again.
The fire spread across the path in front of me, and I skidded to a halt. I had nowhere to go but back. The shooter was herding me, forcing me back. I turned to find a way out.
Three figures stood in a swirling vortex, a tornado of fire burning around them, twisting up into the sky. They were half concealed by smoke and debris, but I could see they were cloaked in hoods, each with a black and featureless mask over their face. They stood unaffected by the flames. It was like a portal to hell. Together, they stepped towards me.
I froze. I was completely trapped.
A hand gripped mine, and I jumped. Noah stood behind me. Somehow, flames no longer blocked our escape.
“Face them,” he ordered, tugging me backwards. “Don’t let them out of your sight. Don’t even blink.” Our hunters still advanced—and they broke into a jog. “Scratch that!” Noah shouted. “Run!”
Flames again filled the air. Sprinting as fast as we could, we rounded a tight corner in the trail and hit a six-way intersection. The path forked off in all directions. Noah took the one on the right, and I followed. A short way down, he dove behind a huge rock beside the path and pulled me after him.
The figures stopped at the crossroads, unsure which way we’d gone.
“Close your eyes,” Noah whispered.
“What?”
“Just close your eyes and don’t open them until I tell you, no matter what you hear. Trust me.” He reached out and squeezed my hand.
I closed my eyes. The backs of my eyelids glowed orange, lit up by flames. There was a low rumble, and the ground started to buck. A mind-crunching crack split the air, and an avalanche followed, spraying dust and rock over my face. Debris cut my cheek, but I kept my eyes closed, fists clenched. Sweat dripped down my forehead.
Then the air cooled. The world behind my eyelids returned to black.
“Open your eyes.” Noah’s voice seemed to come from far away, even though he still held my hand. The crack had dulled my hearing, hopefully only for a few minutes.
I opened my eyes, and sweat poured into them. The fire had gone, and so had the figures. In their place was a smouldering quarry of stone that had broken off the tallest of the Boulders and blocked the path. And strangest of all …
Noah’s eyes were bleeding.
“We need to leave,” he said. “Now. That only slowed them down.”
“W-What happened to you?” My voice shook.
“Doesn’t matter right now. Let’s go.”
“We
need to call someone, we need the cops, and you look like you need an ambulance!” I fumbled for my phone that was still safe in my back pocket.
“Ari, there’s no reception out here. Besides, we can’t call anyone. Not right now.” He put his hand on my shoulder. “Trust me. I’ll explain everything when we get out of here. We need to leave.”
“No!” I shrieked. This was the second time I’d almost been killed in as many weeks, and something inside me had snapped. I shoved his hand from my shoulder and stormed a few paces away. All of the tension and fear and stress from the accident and the last few terrifying minutes came screaming out. “I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what the hell is going on!” I slumped against the rock, sobbing.
He stood still for a moment, and took a deep breath. “Ari, you’ve probably worked out I haven’t been entirely honest with you. But I think now it’s—”
A ball of flame exploded next to his leg, burning it badly. He cried out and fell to his knees, no longer able to support his weight. Smoke rose from the wound, and as it cleared, I saw it looked like someone had carved out a chunk of Noah’s leg with a chainsaw. It smelled like burned meat. Gagging, I looked away—to see a figure behind Noah, moving towards us both.
I screamed.
“Ari! Run!” Noah called. I wanted to help him, but I froze. I couldn’t run. I couldn’t move. Fear made sure I couldn’t save him.
Another fireball burned Noah’s arm, appearing from nowhere and disappearing just as fast. He choked on the pain.
Again, I tried to run to him, help him, carry him to safety, and again, my feet stayed still. But I couldn’t look away. Smoke poured from his mouth.
His eyes glazed over, and the whole world stopped. My feet finally sprung free, and I was at his side as he slumped toward the ground, right into my arms. But I wasn’t strong enough, and we fell backward, his body trapping me.
“Noah! Noah!”
He didn’t move, and he wasn’t breathing.
The Fire Unseen Page 4
