Those Who Wish Me Dead

by Michael Koryta

  “Tell me what to do,” he said. “I’ve got the first-aid kit, but it’s so bad, and I don’t know what to use, I don’t know what to do, you’ve got to tell me what to—”

  “Stop,” Hannah said.

  He stopped talking, waited on her. Hannah blinked and breathed and now she saw the woman behind him, and for an instant she was afraid, because the woman held a gun. Her eyes held no harm, though. The woman’s face was wrapped in bandages and she looked down at Hannah and said, “We’ll get it fixed. It’s not going to kill you.”

  “Of course not,” Hannah said. She didn’t look where the other two were looking, though, at the places where it felt as if her legs were on fire. That was a trauma basic—let somebody else look. You didn’t need to see it yourself.

  So everything was good, then. Everything was fine.

  No.

  Nick’s voice, maybe. Brandon’s? She couldn’t tell. It was so faint.

  Look.

  Who was talking? And whoever was talking was wrong, she wasn’t supposed to look, it wasn’t going to help a damn thing. She wished she could hear him better, the voice was too soft and the sound of the fire was a roar now, advancing through the timber, and—

  Oh. That was it. Yes, that was it.

  “I need to look at the fire,” she said. “Help me.”

  “No,” the woman said. “Lie still. Let me see what I can—”

  “Let me see the fire.”

  They helped her while she turned. The pain turned with her—it wasn’t about to let her sneak away. She got her first glimpse of her wounds without intending to, managed to keep her eyes away from her knee, where the pain was worst and the bleeding heaviest, but she saw her left foot, the beautiful White’s fire boot now with a jagged hole in the black leather, blood bubbling through it. A surge of nausea rose but she looked away and fixed her eyes on the flames, and while the pain didn’t step aside, the sickness did.

  The fire was near the edge of the timberline now, and then it was open grass, and then it was them. The route Hannah had wanted to take originally, backtracking into the high rocks, was no longer an option. They’d been delayed long enough to allow the fire to find the drainages, and it was moving through them fast.

  If you died in a fire, you died at two speeds, Nick had told Hannah more than once. One was measured with a clock, and the other with a stopwatch. Your death began in the poor decisions you’d made that led you to the place you did not belong, and your death ended in the poor decisions you made trying to escape it. They were on the stopwatch now, and she knew it was running fast.

  Time, time is our friend, because for us, there is no end…

  “Hannah?”

  She was aware then that Connor had been saying her name over and over, and she blinked hard and refocused and said, “I’m fine. I’m just thinking.”

  “We go back, right?” Connor said. “Isn’t that what you said we should do? I can carry you. We can carry—”

  “We’re not going to get high enough, fast enough.”

  “We’ll run,” he said.

  “It will run faster.”

  The speed of fire increased going uphill, one of the great evil tricks of a forest fire. They were on a slope of about thirty-five, maybe forty degrees. At thirty degrees, the speed of the fire would double. It would also have more of the wind by then, because right now the trees it was burning through were shielding some of the wind. By the time it reached the dry grass, empty of trees and on the upslope, it would turn from a marathon runner into a sprinter, and they’d be trying to cross directly in front of it.

  No chance.

  Somewhere behind her, just out of sight but so close she could feel his breath on her ear, Nick said, “Hannah? Deploy or die.”

  “I had a fire shelter,” Hannah said. She was losing focus, though, losing the place and time, was telling them about another day and another fire, and so she was annoyed when Connor began to open his pack, paying no attention to her. It took her a moment to realize that he was getting out the fire shelter. The one he’d brought down from the tower. The one she’d said she would never get inside.

  “That works?” the woman named Allison said. She sounded beyond skeptical. Hannah got that. Everyone who’d ever looked at a fire shelter did.

  “It works.”

  But not always. It was wrong to tell them lies; you should never lie at the end. Whether the fire shelter worked or not was a matter of heat and speed. If the fire passed over them quickly, the fire shelter might save them. If it lingered, though…then it was the worst kind of end. You’d be better off sitting and waiting like Brandon had.

  Hannah pushed herself up on the heels of her hands and then closed her eyes when the pain came on. When she opened them again, her mind was clearer but the pain was sharper.

  “Connor?” she said. “Listen to me now. Do what I say. You need to get that shelter up. Can you do that for me?”

  He nodded. His hands were shaking, but he nodded.

  She told him how to do it, and it took him only two tries, even with the shaking hands. He was good like that, but the fire shelters were also designed to be deployed by shaking hands. It was the only way they were ever put up.

  Even as he deployed the shelter, she was doing the math and coming up short. You were supposed to have one shelter per person, and she had three people and one shelter. She’d heard of only one time, ever, when three people had survived in the same shelter. It was the Thirtymile fire. But back in South Canyon, where thirteen lives had been lost, attempts to share shelters had failed tragically.

  In Hannah’s mind, that still left an odd man out here in the slopes above Silver Gate.

  “That’s going to work?” Allison Serbin said. “You’re serious?”

  The flimsy, tube-shaped tent hardly looked inspiring. Particularly not against the awesome backdrop of scarlet terror behind them.

  “It works. You’re going to get inside of that,” she said. “And you’re going to stay there.”

  She was looking at both of them, and Allison Serbin seemed to understand the problem, because she said, “Jace, listen to her and get in it,” without suggesting anyone join him.

  “You go with him,” Hannah said.

  “What?”

  “It’ll be tight. But it’s worked before.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “You’ll be fine?”

  Hannah looked away from her. “Please get in,” she said. “You don’t understand how far we’ve come. I can’t lose him here.” Her voice broke on that and she gave up trying for any more words.

  Allison stared at her for a moment, and then she said, “Okay. I’m getting in.”

  Hannah nodded. There were tears on her face but she didn’t care. “Thank you,” she said. “Connor…I mean Jace…please get in.”

  “What about you?”

  What about her. She said, “You remember the promise I made to you? I said you were getting home. I promised you that. But what did you promise me?”

  “That I wouldn’t make you get in this.”

  “Be true to your word,” she said.

  “It’s not fair,” he said.

  “Didn’t say it was. But we made an agreement. Be true to your word.”

  “No. We’ll carry you. I can carry you.”

  Hannah looked away from him and over to Allison and said, “Help. Please.”

  Allison took his arm and finally the boy listened; he dropped to all fours and crawled inside the shimmering silver fabric that rippled against the wind and the heat. Allison knelt to follow.

  “You pull it shut, and you wait,” Hannah told them. “Now, guys, it’s going to be bad.” She was crying freely. “It’s going to be worse than you think, but it will work. You just promise me that you won’t get out too early.”

  She was so dizzy that the words were very hard to organize now. She wasn’t sure how many of them she was actually saying.

  The fire thr
ew a sparkling spiral onto the edge of the grass no more than a hundred feet from them, some limb or pinecone that exploded out of a tree like an advance scout, and the grass to the east of her, toward the creek, began to burn and then smoldered out. This was how it would begin, with the spot fires, and this was how they did their most devious work, jumping trench lines and gulches and even creeks. She looked at the spot fire as it sputtered out; that one was not quite hot enough, not quite strong enough, but it wouldn’t be long now before one was.

  “You did it again,” she whispered. The boy was going to die—after all of this, he was going to die burning. A second chance had walked out of the wilderness and into her arms and she was going to kill this one too. The fire shelter would buy them a bit of time, but not enough. There was too much fuel around it. For them to have a chance in there, the fire would need to pass by fast, a desperate hunter in search of fuel. But she’d set their shelter up in grass that was knee-high and deadly dry. They’d melt inside of the shelter, and they’d go slow.

  Words from the dead found her then, more memory than ghost, although it was hard to separate them now. The last thing Nick had said that wasn’t a scream. The final thing he’d wanted—shouted—was for her to deploy her fire shelter. The second-to-last thing, though, the last thing he’d said calmly, was that he wished there were grass around them.

  At the bottom of Shepherd Mountain, there had been none. It was all deadfall and jack pines and some fescue clumps, but no open stretches of grass, and he’d wished for some, and Hannah was the only person on the crew who’d understood why in the hell he had desired to be standing amid faster-burning fuel.

  You need it to pass by in a hurry.

  Up here, it wouldn’t. Up here it would burn slowly and they would die inside that shelter.

  They were still not running. What in the hell was the matter with them? Ethan had saved them, damn it, he’d come so far and fought so hard, and he’d won, he’d dropped the son of a bitch, and they wouldn’t even give him the simple gift of running? The fire below was a constant roll of thunder now, he could feel its strength in the stone beneath him, and he thought with great sorrow that it had to be far worse down there, too powerful to imagine, and so killing Jack wasn’t enough to help them, because he couldn’t kill the fire. They had given up, and he could do no more for them now but watch.

  He didn’t want to watch. Couldn’t. And so he brought them centered in the scope and he prepared to say good-bye because he refused to see it end like this, but instead of looking away then, he stared, entranced.

  They had some sort of a strange silver tent out. It looked like the material on the emergency blankets he handed out to each group, and he realized then what it was: a fire shelter, the sort they dispatched to the crews on the fire line. Where they’d come up with it, he couldn’t imagine—it didn’t seem like it’d be standard issue in a fire tower—but there it was.

  While he watched, Hannah and Connor argued, and then he crawled inside, and then his wife followed, joining the boy in the tent, and the other woman sat in her own blood beside a dead man and waited to join him.

  You need to take the shot, Ethan thought. It will be better for her. Faster.

  But he couldn’t do that.

  The blood clouded the scope again and washed the woman away from him and that was the last he saw.

  43

  It was the wrong way to die. Jace knew that before he got into the shelter, and once he was inside and he couldn’t see Hannah anymore, he was sure of it. It would have been better for all of them to sit there and wait, and then she would not be alone, none of them would be. Right now, it was just like the quarry, hiding and waiting, and if he was going to die like that, then he should have let it happen long ago.

  “I’m getting out,” he said.

  “No, you’re not.” Allison Serbin had her arms tight around him, and he began to fight her, kicking and wriggling. She fought with him until they heard Hannah’s voice.

  “Connor! Connor! Get out here. Fast.”

  “Listen to her!” he said. “Let me listen to her!”

  Allison Serbin either gave up and released him or he finally fought free of her; he wasn’t sure and it didn’t matter. He was out of the awful shelter again, back into the world, and while it was a terrible world, filled with the smells of smoke and heat and blood, it was better than the tent. He’d come out facing what remained of Jack Blackwell’s head; there was not much of it to speak of, and he felt a strange, savage happiness, although once such a thing would have made him ill.

  At least he didn’t get me. Neither of them did.

  But it was his brother’s fire. He’d said so himself.

  Hannah said, “You told me you could build a fire. You told me you were good at it.”

  He had no idea what she was talking about. He just turned to her and nodded.

  “Were you telling the truth?” Her voice was urgent, her eyes clear for the first time since the bullets had found her legs. “Do not lie to me now. Can you build a fire and do it fast?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re going to need to do it.”

  “What?”

  “You have one chance,” she said. “You can save yourself and save her. But, buddy, you’ve got to be able to do it, and do it fast.”

  He nodded again. He felt light-headed, glad he was on his hands and knees, anchored to the ground.

  “Listen to me,” she said. “You’re the one who doesn’t make mistakes, right? You can’t make one now. You’ve got to listen and do exactly what I say. If you do that, you’re going home. I promise.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Okay. You see the grass down there? That little plateau?”

  He followed her pointing finger. She was indicating the last thing between them and fire in the trees. A circle of grass that died out at the rocks where they sat now. It was maybe a hundred yards away from them, and just fifty in front of the fire.

  “Yes.”

  “You’re going to make a fire there,” she said. “And you’re going to let it spread.”

  He looked back at her. Was she in shock? Was this what happened when you went into shock?

  “It will work,” she said. “Here’s why: You’re stealing what the fire needs. Do you understand that? It’s going to need—”

  “Fuel and oxygen,” he said, thinking of the brace piece, the way you’d give it that lift to provide fresh air, keep the flame from drowning. The way the fire was smothered by larger pieces of wood. But this was no campfire. This was a monster.

  “Yes. You’re robbing it of the fuel.”

  “It won’t work. Not on that. It’s too big! It will never burn out.”

  “No,” she said. She wiped her face with her hand and left a streak of blood across her forehead. “It won’t burn out. The fire will move faster. That’s what we need. It has to go over that shelter fast, do you see?”

  He wasn’t sure, but before he could answer, she said, “Go down there and start a fire, Connor. Can you do that?”

  “I can do that,” he said. He didn’t think his legs would hold him when he stood, but they did. The fire steel was in his pocket. He removed it and held it in a sweating, shaking hand and said, “I’ll go make a fire.”

  Allison tried to go with him. Tried to stop him, actually, but when Hannah Faber yelled at her, she paused, turned back, looked in her eyes, and saw the truth in them.

  “It’s your only chance,” Hannah said. Very soft. “If he can do it, you bring the shelter down and set it up in the ashes.”

  “Won’t it melt?”

  “Not down there. Not at that heat. Just set it up the way you have it, and make sure it’s as close to the center as you can. Once the fire gets there, it’s going to race. It will have no choice.”

  Allison looked away from her and back down to where the boy walked alone. He seemed smaller than ever before, his silhouette framed against the orange sky.

  “You believe this,” sh
e said.

  “It’s the only chance. And, listen—when you get back in there with him, you hold him tight, understand? You’d better hold him tight.”

  Allison looked at Hannah’s blood-soaked right leg and the devastated left foot, then back into her intense eyes, and nodded. “I won’t let it be for nothing.”

  Jace picked up a brace piece as he walked, a perfect length of deadfall, and he was thinking that he didn’t have time to get kindling, there was no way he had enough time, but then he remembered that it didn’t matter. All he needed to do was make the grass catch. He wasn’t trying to build a campfire. Just burn the grass.

  Every step was hotter, and louder. His mouth was so dry, his tongue felt fat and swollen against his lips.

  I can save them.

  He walked on, closer, closer, and only when he was in the middle of the ring of grass did he stop. He knelt then and dropped the brace piece—he didn’t need it, just the spark—and he tore handfuls of dry grass out and set them in a loose pile at his feet. He held the fire steel and prepared to strike it, knowing that he could do it, that he could get that shower of sparks.

  He dropped the tool on the first strike. His hands were shaking too badly.

  You’re going to kill them.

  He grabbed it again, and that was when he heard the scream. It was loud, but it didn’t last long. It came from the woman who’d been thrown off the horse.

  The fire had found her.

  That’s what’s going to happen. That’s what it will feel like, Jace, that’s how you’re going to die.

  Stop being Jace. Be what Hannah still called him. Connor Reynolds could start this fire; he had before.

  He gripped the fire steel in his left hand and the striker in his right and this time he didn’t drop it when he made contact. Sparks fell in a shower into the grass.

  Died immediately.

  He was starting to panic, but then he remembered the first day, Ethan telling him to slow down, slow down, and he tried again, and then again, and on the fourth time, some of the grass caught.