by Rachel Hanna
The top of a mountain was the ultimate circle. She could descend in any direction. She just didn't know which was the right one.
In the end, it didn't matter. Any descent would put her much closer to help from other hikers or rangers or her friends if she accidentally got the right path and she might as well face it the only way she was ending up on the right path was by mistake, or at least by chance.
So she should just go down. Especially since the smoke was starting to sting her eyes.
Only down was burning.
"So the opposite of down is out of this nasty little oubliette," she said, recalling a word from Labyrinth which meant some kind of hole-like puzzle.
Or something. She thought she had both the meaning and the word wrong.
But the consideration had calmed her. "Monster? Over here." She'd head out of the circle of trees, away from the cliff. She wanted to head down the mountain only down was currently on fire.
So what other courses of action were open to her? Staying on top of Mount Palomar made no sense. The air was only just becoming thick and she could hear ranger planes and trucks starting up but they had no way of knowing she was here. Unless her friends had reached the rangers. Then she might be blundering around here and be perfectly safe – maybe the rangers knew where she was, knew where the fire was, and would be round to fetch her before nightfall.
"Not knowing sucks" she told Monster, and crouched down to wrap her arms around the Lab's neck. His whining didn't improve her outlook. If he was afraid, so was she.OK, so sitting still wasn't an option. She never had been the type to just sit and wait for rescue. Time to go. Down might be dangerous. But up might be a terminal trap. If the fire came, it would climb the fall-dry foliage up the side of the mountain in a heartbeat.
Taylor bit her lip. Down, then. She'd see as much as she could and she'd go through the far end of the clearing when she went, just to the inside of the circle of trees. She'd eschew the path because she at least knew where down was from where she was now. The coyotes had gone down. She'd follow in their footsteps only a quarter turn of the circle back – down the way she thought she'd come.
Taylor took a very deep breath.
When it made her cough instead of clearing her mind, she panicked again. Her footsteps to the side of the mountain were just short of a run. The way the coyotes had taken wouldn't work for her – she was neither coyote nor mountain goat. Even Monster might have trouble with this decline. To her left when she faced off the mountain into the valley the clearing blending into mountain. That way's up, she thought, which corresponded with her belief in which way she'd entered the clearing.
Keeping that in mind, she reversed her steps and looked out the other way. That side was more gradual and probably just beyond the wall of trees she'd come through would be the path that led the same away, and far more gradually. Enough so she might be able to run it, though she'd promised herself nothing as inadvisable as running down a mountain path she was unfamiliar with.
Her glance down there showed she was right. It was a more gradual descent. It was almost undoubtedly the direction of east, from which she'd come. It probably paralleled the damned path she'd been on, which she was starting to hate for its very reticence in showing itself.
And it was on fire.
Taylor stepped back and instinctively clutched Monster's leash tighter before the dog could think to bound down the side of the mountain in a Here's how you do it, follow me! motion. Suddenly there was far less air and that was imagination but it left her no less dizzy and not a bit less scared.
She tried her phone again. No signal. Now she was probably dealing with the smoke as well. Taylor had no idea how cell phones worked. She might work for a tech company, but that didn't mean that the weren't some sides of tech that didn't just seem like magic.
And magic didn't always work. Magic, according to most novels, demanded sacrifice. That thought made her shudder. Peering down again she saw the fire was climbing swiftly. She could still hear the planes in the air but they didn't know she was here. Now clouds of smoke were rising. She didn't have time to see if they could fly through if or if they could see her. She had to get her and Monster out of there.
"Time to go, Monst," she said and started for the edge of the trees. The instant she crashed through the other side of them, still amazed she couldn't remember doing it in the first place, she found herself on the path.
"Good," she said. She'd count blessings. Concentrate on whatever went right. Better than the way her thoughts were tending. "Now." She looked at Monster and memory, canceled by the events of the last 50 minutes, stirred. They'd been coming up the trail, still happy, enjoying the day, thinking how slow everyone else was and that no, she wasn't going to stop, if they couldn't keep up they could meet her on top, and Monster had disappeared very briefly into the woods on her left side.
Instantly she'd called him, shouting him back to her side. She had no idea what was up here – badgers, lions, squirrels – but she didn't want Monster crashing about by himself. She'd just pulled the leash out and was ready to clip it on him when he'd come back soaking wet and muddy, and done the Labrador equivalent of tradition: he done a thorough ear/jowl/ruff/coat shake, his fur moving in counter sway to his violent shaking and the water and mud splattering her. Mud still clung to her shorts and t-shirt. She should have remembered this.
Because this meant there was a body of water over there and if she was lucky, it was a creek. Giving Monster's collar a sharp tug, she led him with her, tromping through the underbrush, as jumpy as Jessie now about snakes and wishing the ground were a little more clear and a lot more wet so she could see if there were crushed plants or Labrador tracks.
Minutes after they left the path, she came to the stream and here she could see some disturbance down stream, where something large had dug wildly at the side in the mud, happy for the simple fact of water and mud and sunshine.
Good. That was the Lab she was going to get down the mountainside.
"Come on, you," she said, and tugged his leash again, leading him directly into the water. Monster took one look at what she was doing and where she was heading and then barked and grinned, staring at her like she was a goddess. If only she'd known all she had to do to make him adore her was wallow in mud.
"We're going down the river without a paddle," she told him and broke into only slightly hysterical sounding laughter. Better than tears. She was on her feet and moving, they were in water, and far enough to the side away from the valleys and the fire that the air was a tiny bit cleaner.
Still no running. She wasn't going to break her neck or injure her dog. But moving slow was hard to do. They could hear the sounds of the fire now, eating up the side of the mountain, and the Lab kept tugging on the leash, trying to force Taylor to go faster. She couldn't blame him.
Partway down she tried calling again. If her friends could answer, she could find out if where they were was more or less smoky and whether or not there were flames. Maybe she'd need to guide them back to her, though the air was becoming increasingly ugly. Tangible, thick, gray.
"I'm coming, Monster," she said, and started coughing again. Her eyes watered and this time she stopped just long enough to thoroughly soak her t-shirt with water before pulling it up over her face. First breath she sucked in droplets of water, caught them in her throat and couldn't stop coughing. Her eyes streamed tears. She couldn't see or breathe but she could hear the increasingly frantic dog and the sound of the fire coming closer.
I have to get out of here!
She opened her eyes, spat the water out, cleared her throat, put the shirt back over her face, and started to run, following Monster down the creek, splashing in rocks and mud. One foot slipped off a rock that shifted at the wrong minute and pain lanced up into her ankle. She didn't have time to worry about it; the fire was rapidly making its way to them.
Now they were coming out of the trees, into the willow bushes and scratchy prickly bushes. She had more air above her a
nd more light, felt less oppressively hemmed in, but at the same time the branches snagged her clothes, her back, the leash, the dog, and every bit of exposed skin on her. Swearing, starting to cry without wanting to, she trailed behind the dog, stopping long enough to put on her sunglasses. She felt like her vision was compromised then but her eyes were protected from branches and the tears from the smoke slowed a little.
The creek, following the natural bend of the mountain and the path that led up it, suddenly rounded an outcropping of rocks and hillside.
On the other side, she could see the fire. It was still a ways off, but it was at the base of the mountain for sure. It was moving faster than she was. By the time she got there, the way out of the foliage and off the mountain and out of the valleys – all of it would be blocked.
"Oh, god, Monster." She crouched in the stream next to him for a minute, soaking both of them, wrapping her arms around him. She couldn't think what else to do. If the mountain was going to catch, it would. Two sides were already falling to encroaching flames. If she followed the creek back up, maybe she could go higher, but eventually wouldn't the flames just circle the whole thing or climb up and over from where she'd been? She was rapidly depleting all her energy, which reminded her – she offed the pack and pulled out an energy bar, clamped it still wrapped between her teeth and pulled out a handful of kibble for Monster. He wolfed it, wagged the Tail of Doom, smacked her several times with it which made her give a shaky laugh despite everything. He was drinking water as they went so she had a slug of the bottled water, opened the energy bar, ate half of it and pocketed the rest, then stood. Monster was already pulling hard on the leash, the look in his eyes very clear: Let's go.
"Hope you know something about what's going to happen that I don't know," she said. And followed him down the creek.
They were within shouting distance of the bottom of the hill when she heard the sound like a million mile an hour wind screaming up at her.
No!
She'd come all the way down, turning her ankle a couple times more, the pain constant and nagging but not stopping her. Monster was bleeding from a branch that had caught him across the muzzle and they were both covered in mud and soaked through in case that gave them a chance to cross a line of flames that was thin. Even then she knew they'd just be in the burning valley, but she was starting to think anything off the mountain was preferable. Surely the Forest Service Rangers would put out the surrounding valley first and mountain second. Mountain had no where else to go unless it really did continue up and west into a complete range of mountains. She had no idea. She was lousy at maps and when they'd left in the morning, she'd had no intention of needing to read one, no intention of being separated from her people, and no intention of needing to know anything past the path she was supposed to be on.
"Fucking path."
That almost felt good. She said it again, then laughed, sounding definitely hysterical, but laughed because Monster barked at her, like he was scolding her.
The laughter ended instantly. The sound was almost on top of them. The trees were bending from what she guessed was the fire wind. The willows were almost flat.
She gritted her teeth, wrapped her arms around her dog, held on for dear life. The water in the creek splashed up at them as if trying to flow backwards.
Taylor cried and hung on.
Chapter Five
Tanner crested the edge of the mountain, coming in from the east. He'd headed east the entire trip and circled round once he was there, trying to see the lay of the land. He'd been in contact with the rangers, who now knew they had a missing hiker in the midst of a fire that was spreading fast, feeding on dry autumn underbrush. The ranger he'd talked to had said "Oh, holy fuck," before even thinking about radio protocol, if they worried about such things, and Tanner didn't blame him. What was down there was a cluster fuck waiting to happen. Duncan and his friends were probably still down there, probably still separated, but Tanner hadn't been able to get through to them. If Duncan had listened, and he probably had, he'd gotten his people down and was evacuating to the ranger stations, cutting between the flames. Bad news would be if they were trapped in their vehicles. Better news would be if they were moving and had just gotten turned around from not knowing the area and driving in the smoke or trying to avoid flames.
He didn't have time to think about them. He crabbed the helicopter into the wind, following the rise of the land, fighting fire wind and the currents that flow against mountainsides. He brought the chopper up sharply over the top of the mountain, then stared a sweep down the side where lay the path the hikers had followed. First sweep he didn't see anything except the flames at the base of the mountain, right where someone trying to get down and get out would run into them. He banked, turned, started back up, watching as the turbulence from the rotors flattened the trees and bushes, opening up the view in some instances and closing it down in others.
About halfway up, he spotted her. She was tiny, blond, ponytail, the right hiker, and that was good news, it wouldn't have been that unusual to find another stranded hiker or two and everything would slow him down. She was crouched in the creek bed – good girl! – her arms around a big black Labrador. That cinched it. This was Taylor Adams. Now he just needed her to look up at him.
Because right now, she had no idea he was there and the way she crouched, hanging on to her dog, her face buried in his wet, muddy fur, looked like she'd just given up.
Chapter Six
When the wind around her picked up and the sound crescendo'd, Taylor raised her head. Whatever was going on, if it was fire winds, they were different than what she'd expected. If it was a firestorm moving up at her, she wanted to know about it. She had no intention of going out with her head buried in her dog's ruff; she thought better of herself than that. In the split second between the sound reaching the screaming point and Taylor looking up, she thought of everything left undone in her life – a battle with her sister that had never been resolved, friends forgotten along the way to getting through college, her father divorced from her mother and Taylor taking sides, which she shouldn't have, the guys who had dumped her, and not being the one to come back strong from it after Zach left her, her longing to be loved, the five pounds she'd never lost, the –
Overdue library books, damn, girl, this is the best you can come up with when your life flashes in front of your eyes?
At the very least, sorrow she'd brought Monster to this horrible end.
Taylor looked up.
The helicopter looked balanced on thin air. The rotors chopped frantically fast, sending the willows flat and the dust high. It looked like it was right there, within touching distance, but she understood instantly it was above the tree line, higher than she could, say, climb.
She understood it was real, it was there, it was for her. She'd done her best to get her and Monster out of the forest and now –
"Help!" she shouted, as if the bright red and white helicopter with SEArch & Rescue painted on the side wasn't there for her. She waved her arms over her head and felt her hair whipped into a frenzy. Monster barked.
The pilot, helmet, glasses, alien-looking behind the clear bubble of glass or plastic or whatever it was, gave her a thumbs up. Then a voice, amplified over a PA system, said, "I'm sending down a basket. I can't land. Strap yourself in first and the dog second."
Yeah, no, because that made no sense. Minute she tried to do anything like that Monster either bolted or turned into something as containable as live Jell-O. She gave the pilot a thumbs up in response, grinning and lying. No way she was risking losing her dog. Not now.
The helicopter which had been at an angle, now hung straight and improbable in front of her, and the sound of a winch filled the air. The afternoon that had been so eerie and silent had opened up to a cacophony of sound that was deafening.
"I'm never going hiking again," she said aloud as the basket began to lower toward her. Heart pounding, uncertain she could really get in anything that looke
d so damn flimsy, she gathered it to her, discovered she could pull Monster with her so at least they got in at the same time, then buckled him in before she buckled her in. Anyone who had a dog would understand.
"Ready?" the pilot boomed.
She gave him a thumbs up and the winch started again. Taylor's stomach instantly lurched unhappily. She did not particularly like heights and she liked them far less when she wasn't in control of what was happening with them. She expected him to winch her up, but there didn't seem to be anybody else on the craft, which was weird, she thought, and he boomed at her, "Here we go, hang on, do not let go," and suddenly the helicopter was turning, powering away from the damn path, the basket following along obediently, Taylor's stomach seeming to remain back in the creek. She held tight to Monster, afraid he'd panic and try to bolt despite the carabiners attached to his collar, but he just stopped panting, shut his mouth and stared around curiously, ears up. She felt more like whining than he did, apparently.
The flight was fast, not that she was letting go of the basket or the dog to check her stopwatch, but even in her terror it didn't take long, then they were hovering over a ranger station and instructions were coming from the crew on the ground and the guy in the air when all she really needed to know was he was putting down the basket and she should probably get out of it.
She did. Happily. The minute strong hands grabbed the sides of the basket she unclipped Monster and herself and was out of it before the rangers around her could even assist.
One of them motioned at the pilot he could take off, but instead the red and white waited for them to move back, then landed without powering down. Taylor shaded her eyes, watching as the cockpit door opened and the pilot emerged. He'd taken off the helmet, and was wearing aviator glasses, a skin tight gray t-shirt with a logo on it that matched the one of the side of the chopper showing what looked like waves and he wore the kind of heavy pants firemen wore. He jogged over to them, high fived one of the rangers, the others already heading back to inside jobs, and looked at Taylor.
