They climbed out of the Lexus into the burning night. The air dry, dryer than what seemed possible, somehow reminiscent of toasty paper fresh out of a copy machine.
Everything turned up as soon as she stepped through the door — the noise, the brightness, the heat — all of them intensifying. Overwhelming.
She didn’t hesitate. Her feet carried her to the fallen trees, pausing for only a moment to pick out the clearest path, hopping and skipping her way through, feet finding just the right marks as though she were using a stone path to cross a stream.
The fire was right there, surrounding her from the shins down, strange orange shapes licking at her ankles, forked tongues touching her but somehow not quite able to leave their marks.
But she cleared it. She hurdled the tangle of burning deadfall and kept going, pressing deeper into the dark, peering behind her shoulder to make sure Luck made it all right. When she confirmed that he was right behind her, she continued on.
They ran down the middle of the road, the sound of their footsteps somehow dull against the rumble and hiss of the fire. Moving away from the cluster of fallen trees, away from the trapped Lexus.
We just need to get the hospital parking lot. That’s all. That’s it. It was the only thought worth having just now, Darger knew. The only thing that was real in this situation.
The fire roared, angrier than before. A raging force. Chemical fury.
The world around them blurred with heat distortion. The air itself dancing the hateful dance of the fire. Shimmering with sadistic glee. Bending all the lines. Warping reality.
Darger pulled out in front of Luck. Lifting her knees. Landing on the middle of her foot. Keeping her feet beneath her, under her hips. All these things she half-remembered about running form came from some long-forgotten high school gym class, her brain regurgitating the tips now, coughing them up in bits and pieces, fragments of memory somehow jarred loose by the crisis.
Her new mantra played over and over in her head, slowly breaking down to simpler and simpler grammatical constructions. We need to get to the hospital parking lot, turned to Need to get to the hospital, which turned to, Get to the hospital, and finally just Hospital.
The trees cracked everywhere around them. Deep, thick cracks from the heat, like snapping bones but bigger and meaner and louder.
She held her wadded-up jacket to her mouth. The makeshift respirator seemed to be working so far. She didn’t know how long that would last. Didn’t even want to think about it.
Just go.
Perhaps a half-mile into the run, deliriousness began clawing at Darger’s brain like a beetle in her skull. That dizziness twirling in her mind again. A throbbing nothingness that made her queasy. It gave her thoughts a feverish hysteria, sent them racing down nonsense paths that lost track of the real and the imagined.
The shimmer seemed to intensify around her. Everything warped and smeared and swimmy along the edges. The smoke stung her eyes, and the steady flow of tears only made it all the worse, refracting light into orange halos around everything.
She felt insane. Doomed. Running through a fucking nightmare. Through the gates of Hell.
To where? For what?
She tried to focus on her task, the singular word pumping in her head in time with her heartbeat. Hospital. Hospital. Hospital.
But the fire was right there. All around them. A thrashing thing that seemed alive. Only wanting to get closer, closer, closer. Fire only knew how to destroy, seemed to want it more than anything.
The heat swelled in her cheeks until they stung with it. The fire was brighter now. Blinding in its intensity. She had to squint to see at all. Eyes slitted. Just able to make out that pair of glowing yellow lines in the middle of the road.
She tried to look ahead, to see the hospital somewhere in the distance. But she could make out only fire and darkness. Form and void with no detail to be discerned. For all she knew they were still miles from the building, may never even get close.
She couldn’t let that thought in, though. Could only keep going. Keep that word pulsing in her head, the carrot just out of reach.
Hospital. Hospital.
And then the Lexus exploded behind them.
There was a concussive boom like thunder. It seemed to travel along the ground, flinging her forward like a stiff push. She felt the rumble of the blast in the arches of her feet, in the meat of her ankles and calves — a miniature earthquake that sent a quiver into her bones.
They both stopped. Turned to look at the blaze rising where the car had been, shoulders squared to it, hands cupped around their brows to try to make out details in the endless bright. Finally Darger saw the contours of the twisted metal — what was moments ago Luck’s prized Lexus.
The debris rained down for a bit. Audible sprinkles of luxury automobile pelting the ground, now closer to a fine powder than the body of a car.
He swiveled back the other way, ran on toward the hospital, his face blank from what she could see.
Darger followed his lead, relieved to be in motion again. She stayed close to Luck for now, keeping pace alongside him. Watching him in a series of little glances, trying to read his reaction.
She half-expected him to bemoan the loss as they carried on, to make some sarcastic little jab about Lexuses and Toyotas, at the very least. She thought for sure the adorable banter would chime in here, lighten the moment if just faintly.
But Casey Luck said nothing at all.
Chapter 67
Darger fought for breath now as she ran. Lips wheezing where they adhered to the wadded up jacket. The air seemed thinner, as if the fire burned out the oxygen and turned it to tufts of black smoke. She didn’t know if that was real or not, but it felt that way.
The road looked shiny and wet. Perhaps the asphalt going soft from the heat, partially melting beneath their feet.
“How much farther?” she said between pants, removing the fabric from her maw long enough to be heard.
Luck squinted. Pulled his jacket away from his lips. He seemed to be struggling for breath even worse than she was.
“It’s around one more bend and down a hill.”
Darger thought about that a second.
“So how much farther?”
“Maybe half a mile. Probably less.”
Luck swiped a hand at his brow before he went on, sweat leaking down from everywhere he touched. Rivulets running free like little rivers. He looked soaked now from head to toe, hair all mashed to his head, clothes sopping, hanging heavy with the moisture as though he’d just climbed out of a pool after having been thrown in.
Darger looked down and noted that the same was true of her clothes as well, that sogginess making the shirt bag funny. Rumpled and slack.
“I’ve been thinking,” Luck said. “About what we’ll do.”
He took a couple breaths from his wet jacket before he went on.
“When we get there, I mean. We should head for the center of the lot and then lay low.”
Another breath from the jacket. His voice sounded hoarse now, thin and raspy, and he lifted it to be heard above the fire’s roar, almost yelling.
“We’ll try not to breathe smoke, mostly. I’m hoping that a chopper will be able to swoop in and get us sooner than later.”
This time he took a longer breath, eyelids fluttering as he did.
“Obviously the parking lot gives them ample room to land, but the concern is the smoke. Visibility. Also maybe heat. It affects the air, could mess with the propellers if it’s hot enough. We might have to wait a while before it’s safe for them to make a landing. I’m not sure.”
He locked eyes with her then, and she thought he looked more like himself finally. Tired. Scared. But he looked like Luck.
“I think that’s our best hope, anyway,” he said, wrapping up his speech.
He shrugged this time as he took a breath, which she took to mean he wasn’t sure about any of this.
Darger nodded along with all that he said and k
ept nodding even after. It felt good to look forward, to see a picture painted in her imagination, a picture of the future, a picture of a way this might work out. It was the first time she’d dared to think about how they might survive in much detail, and it seemed more promising than she’d anticipated. Not the worst odds after all, maybe.
Now Darger saw the bend Luck was talking about, the fire seeming to curve oddly around the little slice of land, that void and flaming form twisting in a way that it hadn’t until now. Strange but reassuring in this moment.
Almost there.
She picked up her knees a little higher again, inspired. And she pulled a few paces in front of Luck, her endorphin rush finding a second wind, flooding her veins with faith, belief, conviction, hope. The chemicals in her brain convinced her once again that she might be able to run forever if she needed to. Probably could, in fact.
The tree cracked just next to her. Shattered. Burst. A two-syllabled split as loud as a shotgun blast.
And she saw the tumbling tree trunk out of the corner of her eye, a hulking sequoia-looking motherfucker, another disturbance in the flames. Tipping. Listing. Falling right at them.
She powered forward, opening up into a full sprint. Knees lifting higher and higher. Jacket no longer at her mouth as she pumped her arms. Not sure where she got the energy for this burst but thankful for it.
The massive tree bashed into a row of smaller trees as it sank, the whole mess of them dropping. Headed straight at her place in the road.
But Darger zipped right past all of them, weaving a little to miss a few scraggly branches. She felt weightless in this moment. Unstoppable.
The impact once more seemed to shake the earth itself, threatened to bash a hole in the asphalt.
Sparks exploded everywhere around her. Blinded her for the moment. Hands lifted to protect her eyes and hair from the tiny embers flitting around.
She stopped then. Waiting to hear the footsteps catching up behind her. Waiting. Waiting until the goose bumps rippled over her soggy flesh, streaks of cold creeping up her spine to grab her by the scruff of the neck.
When she looked back, she saw that Luck was down, a dark lump slouched among the fallen trees.
Chapter 68
“My heart can’t take this,” Beck says, her voice all soft.
It takes Klootey a second to realize she’s talking to him, big eyes blinking in his direction.
“I can’t stop thinking about Darger and Luck stranded in that.” She gestures to the news footage of the fire on the TV.
“Yeah, yeah. Me, too,” he says.
He hopes that’s the end of the conversation, but she goes on.
“I just keep picturing them out there. Trapped. The fire raging toward them.”
He almost laughs again. Mops the back of his hand over his lip to avoid it.
“Oh, same here. I been picturing nothing else, believe me.”
She squints at him. Then shakes her head. A little shudder grabbing her by the shoulders and shaking.
Damn it. He needs to get her off the scent, off the topic. He’s too tense to talk about this. Maybe if he reassures her.
“I mean, I think they’ll make it,” Klootey says. “Somehow, some way. If anyone is smart enough to get out of a situation like that, it’d be Agent Darger, you know?”
“Yeah, maybe.”
It occurs to him only after this exchange that he is covering up, redirecting her. Feels threatened by her. Like maybe she can see him a little bit. Those little glimpses of Jim people sometimes get in his other life, his real life.
Could that be what he’s seeing in the squint of her eyes? In the way she looks at him with her head angled a little bit, an expression that reminds him of a suspicious dog?
Could be paranoia, though. She’s pretty green as a cop. Pretty naive. Some backward bitch from way out the in the boonies. Probably washes her clothes in a stream, runs it up and down a washing board or some nonsense.
“So you’re from out there in Yucaipa, right?”
“Yessir. I don’t blame you if you’re only vaguely familiar with it. Most people on the task force hadn’t been there before the church fire. Some hadn’t even heard of it.”
“Nah. I know it well. Used to go camping out in Wildwood Canyon State Park every summer when I was a teenager. I went through a survivalist phase, big time. Sleeping out in the roughage. Catching and cooking random shit like Bear Grylls or something. Kind of nuts, right? I guess there are worse hobbies a young kid can have.”
Beck nods. A little smile taking the place on her lips where the frown had been. Good.
“That’s for sure.”
Talking about her hometown seems to trigger her hospitality, polite conversation now. Perfect. Keep her mind off Darger and Luck for a bit.
“What do folks do for fun out in Yucaipa? I remember thinking the fishing would be good, back when I used to hang there.”
“Oh yeah. We’ve got all kinds of wildlife and outdoorsy interests to partake in. Fishing. Hiking. Hunting.”
Just in the middle of her spiel, Klootey’s phone rings. He checks the display. Holds up a finger.
“Sorry, it’s my ma. Probably saw the fire on the news and got spooked.”
“Take it.”
He answers the phone. As always, his mom’s voice is so loud in his ear that he has to hold it away from his head and turn the volume down.
By the time he catches up with what she’s saying, she’s mid-rant.
“Gas it up. That’s all I ask. If you want to borrow my vehicle, it’s the least you can do, T.J. It’s common courtesy.”
“What are you ranting about this time, Ma? You realize I was just in a harrowing situation? We’re talking life-threatening.”
“Oh. Well, it must have been the life-threatening situation that prevented you from putting gas in the car last night.”
“It’s just a major forest fire. That’s all. No big whoop. Turn on the TV. Any channel. You’ll see what I’m talking about.”
“I’m watching Wheel right now. No fire I can see.”
He looks up to see Beck making a funny face at him again, her lips pursed. He can’t decide if she’s amused or disgusted. Even with the volume down, his ma’s voice is still loud. No doubt Beck can hear every word of this conversation.
He winds his finger next to his head and points at the phone, then moves the phone away from his mouth and makes some cuckoo clock noises, which Beck huffs out a laugh at.
“I don’t suppose you’ll be around for family dinner on Sunday. That’d be typical,” his Ma says, launching into a new line of verbal assault.
Beck steps away then. He watches her exit through the glass door and disappear around the corner as he fends off his mom, whose rant continues on, changing subjects every minute or so as though she’s working from a list.
A few topics later, he sees the podunk cop on the phone in the hallway, pacing back and forth. Maybe his call reminded her to call her own mother.
Anyway, he is glad to be rid of her. One less thing to worry about.
Chapter 69
The flames licked up from the fallen mess of tree branches as Darger rushed to get to Luck. The heat swelled, pressing in on her from all sides. She waded into the fire, eyes squinted to slits, taking choppy steps, arms out wide to keep her balance, feet finding gaps in the orange and weaving, weaving.
Air whooshed up endlessly from the conflagration. That endless exhale breathing on her now, hot breath that smelled like smoke and ash. So close. It occupied the air around her, the time, the space, the night around her.
Her mind remained clear, though, finding that intense focus she sometimes experienced in the most stressful moments.
One thought mattered for the time being. A singular idea. She needed to get Luck out of here. Free of the fire. After that, she could worry about everything else.
She was close now. A few more steps and she could reach him, touch him, pull him out.
She found him crum
pled in the fetal position among the burning debris, the odor of burnt hair hanging everywhere. It was an acrid stench that clung to Darger’s nostrils, seemed to attach itself to the flesh in her sinuses, never to leave her. Part of her wondered if it was hers or his or both.
Luck moved not at all from what she could see. A motionless lump. Face down on the asphalt. Utterly still. A dark place among the wreckage. The one thing not on fire.
He was unconscious. Maybe worse.
She stooped over him and felt along the clammy shoulders, searching for a place to grab him securely. Her hands snaked under his armpits, scooping and lifting. His jacket looked like a dark puddle in the flickering light. She grabbed it and draped it over her shoulder. He may need that later. She hoped he’d need it, anyway.
She dragged his dead weight along. He was heavy and slippery, and she had to stop every few steps to regain her grip on him. He still lay face down so she couldn’t see the extent of the damage, maybe didn’t want to see.
She just needed to pull him clear of the fire. That was all she could think about. The rest of the night, the rest of her life, would happen after that. It could be worried over when it arrived.
She muscled him over a couple of small branches, moving quickly to try to keep the both of them out of the flames for more than fleeting encounters. It was during the heave that got him over the second branch that she saw it.
Luck’s ankle was broken. Badly.
White bone jutted out from the bottom of the calf. Glittering in the fire’s glow. The foot tilted at the wrong angle. Floppy like an uncontrolled puppet. A compound fracture. Possibly a dislocated ankle too.
The injury was wrong. Deeply wrong. She almost puked at the sight of it.
Blood sheened on the leg, the ankle, the edge of the bone, the sides of his shoe. With the limb tucked partially in shadow, it was too dark to see how bad the bleeding was, but she didn’t think it was too bad. At least that was a positive.
She kept moving, powering through.
If the ankle was the worst of it, he’d be OK. He would be OK. And if he wasn’t…
Violet Darger (Book 6): Night On Fire Page 28
