by Cassie Cole
“You have to believe me,” he insisted. “The Sherpa wasn’t really supposed to crash!”
“Fuck the Sherpa,” Derek said. “Your fake stunt was designed to make us bail out over a dangerous stretch of the valley! You were trying to have us killed!”
“I…” Edwards’ face turned from red to white. “I didn’t know it was meant to hurt you! Wallace claimed it was some sort of training exercise! Why wouldn’t I trust him?”
Trace let go of his shirt, dropping him back to the ground. He turned away, disgusted.
“As much as I’d like to keep Scooby-Do’ing this mystery,” Foxy cut in, “we have a lot of ground to cover and we don’t know how fast the fire is spreading. We need to get moving.”
“What do we do with him?” I asked.
“Fuckin’ leave him for all I care,” Foxy said. “I’m not in the habit of doing favors for guys who try to murder me, and he’ll only slow us down.”
“Just because Edwards nearly got us killed doesn’t mean we can do the same to him,” Derek said slowly. “We’re better than that.”
“Plus, right now he’s our only witness,” I said. “We have to take him with us.”
“I said we’re better than that,” Derek hissed. He paused to give each of us an astonished look. “We’re taking Edwards with us because that’s the right thing to do, not because he has useful information. We don’t leave people behind, regardless of the circumstances. Understand.”
I winced when I realized why Derek was so passionate about this. Leaving someone behind wasn’t something Derek could entertain with a cavalier attitude. Foxy looked sufficiently cowed by his scolding, and Trace nodded solemnly.
“But first, repeat everything you just said about Wallace for the camera.” I pulled out my phone and aimed it at Edwards. “Just in case you decide to change your story later.”
I took a quick video of his confession. Only then did we help him to his feet and continued our march through the valley.
Even without Edwards, it would have been slow traveling. The ground sloped downward enough that we had to lean back while moving, and the pine needles covering the forest floor made every step dangerous. We came to several high rocky areas that abruptly dropped off twenty feet, requiring us to stop and go around to find a safe way down. Even the areas in the valley that flattened out were thick with trees and low branches that constantly scraped against us oppressively.
The wind howled and swirled. Sometimes it shifted and blew directly in our face, but most of the time it was a hot wind pushing down on us from behind, bringing with it the smell of smoke and death.
I checked my phone for signal every so often. No luck.
“I’m down to a third of my canteen,” I announced after three hours of walking.
“I’m about the same,” Trace said. “Ration what you have left. Maybe we’ll find a stream.”
None of us talked about the large, looming problems. We had no way of contacting Redding Base, or anyone else for that matter. Based on Trace’s map and a rough idea of where we’d landed, there was nothing for fifteen miles in any direction. Based on our current pace, we wouldn’t find civilization or help until the evening. Which was rapidly approaching, as well as I could tell based on the hazy blob of the sun falling to the west.
“I suppose our malfunctioning radios isn’t a coincidence?” Trace asked after a while.
Edwards looked like he wanted to cry. “Wallace did that himself. Said it was part of the training exercise.”
“Why haven’t they found us by now?” I wondered. “Are our transponders working?”
Edwards stared at the ground. “Those were disabled as well. If I had known…”
I sighed and tried not to stare at the man who had inadvertently tried to kill us.
“I told you,” Derek said. “I told you, but you wouldn’t listen.”
“Told us what?” Foxy asked.
“That you were in danger so long as I was around. I should have disappeared while I had the chance. I never should have let you stop me.”
“We would have still tried to gather evidence against Wallace,” I said. “We wouldn’t have let you get pushed out for nothing. Then Wallace would have orchestrated this kind of accident to get us off his case.”
“You don’t know that,” Derek insisted. “All the danger might have gone away once I left.”
“This is a dumb game,” Foxy said. “We can play coulda, shoulda, woulda when we get home.”
“When we get home, I’m going to make Wallace pay,” Trace said. “For a commander to sacrifice his own people… when I see Wallace, I’m going to make sure he never holds another position of power again in his life.”
None of us pointed out that he could only do that if we got home, a prospect which was looking less and less likely.
“You guys have to believe me,” Edwards whined. “I had no idea.”
Derek had an arm around him and was helping him walk now. “Because you didn’t try to find out. You just obeyed Wallace without thinking.”
“Willful ignorance is still fucking shitty,” Foxy agreed.
Edwards sighed and continued hobbling along with our help. “Maybe you’re right. I should have questioned my orders. But I was an Army grunt, and I had it hammered into me that…”
“Shut up,” Trace hissed.
“I’m just trying to explain why—”
“I said shut up.” Trace had stopped moving and was staring at the sky. “Do you guys hear an airplane?”
I cocked my head. The howl of wind was an ever-present drum against my ears, making it impossible to hear anything else farther than a stone’s throw away.
“Wait,” I said. “I hear it! That’s a plane!”
“A Sherpa!” Foxy said.
Trace pointed. “We need to get to a high point!
“I’ve got flares,” I said.
“Me too. Come on!”
We sprinted to the north, up one side of the valley which ended at a ridge. The terrain quickly grew steep, making it more like a climb up a flight of stairs. I clawed at the dirt and pine needles while scrambling upwards, eager for every yard forward we advanced. Trace was to my right and just as frantic.
We reached a flat outcropping below the top of the ridge. Trace and I stopped to listen, confirming that the plane was still somewhere overhead.
“There’s too much smoke cover here. We need to get to that part of the ridge!”
I followed him along the rocks that led toward the mountain ridge. We ran as fast as we dared, knowing that one slipped foot would end with a broken ankle or twisted knee. All the while, the airplane engine droned somewhere overhead. It was louder than before. Closer. But for how long?
Finally we climbed through part of the smoke deck and reached the line of the ridge. Our view wasn’t perfectly clear, but half the sky was blue.
“Where is it?” I demanded. “I don’t see it!”
“There!” Trace pointed. To the west, a C23 Sherpa was flying right on the edge of the clouds. It was moving perpendicular to us, and would be out of sight within a minute.
I reached inside my PG bag and pulled out one of the emergency flares. It was similar to a road flare, although it burned about ten times as bright. I removed the red cap to reveal the tip, then struck the cap against it like I was lighting a match.
The tip hissed and burned orange, too brilliant to look at directly. I began to wave it in the air…
…and then it fizzled out.
“What the…” I muttered.
I grabbed my second flare and lit it too. Just like the first, it fizzled out before it could scarcely begin.
“No,” I breathed, dumbfounded. “No!”
Trace was cursing to himself next to me, with one flare already discarded on the ground. He ripped open the bottom of the second flare. The powder contents should have poured out, but only a few grains fell out onto his hand.
He held it up for me to see. The inside of the flare was emp
ty.
“They fucked with our emergency gear,” I said, aghast. “Are you kidding me?”
Trace let out a roar of anger and frustration which echoed throughout the valley.
From up here, where our view wasn’t obscured by as much smoke, I had a tremendous view of the valleys on either side of us. The flames of the wildfire were spreading rapidly to the left and to the right, threatening to encircle our position below. Like the pincering claws of a crab closing around our untouched section of the valley.
I held back my despair as the Sherpa engine dimmed in the distance.
42
Haley
We rushed back down the ridge as quickly as we could.
“We need to move,” Trace said when we reached the others. “We’re getting encircled.”
“It’s clear up on the ridge,” I said while helping Edwards to his feet. “We can see the fires spreading.”
Trace nodded. “We also need to get to higher ground as we move. It’s the only way to get spotted by planes.”
“Think we can get up there with Edwards’ knee?” Foxy asked.
Trace didn’t respond. “Let’s go.”
We continued down the valley at as brisk a pace as we could maintain. We kept an eye out for a path up to the ridge that would be easier for Edwards to climb, but it seemed to only get worse the farther west we moved. Soon there were sheer cliffs and rock faces along that side. I’d have trouble scaling that even with climbing gear.
“How far was the fire?” Derek asked.
“Tough to tell. But it was clearly encircling us,” I replied.
“How much time do we have? Hours? Minutes?”
“Stop thinking about it and keep moving,” Trace growled.
“Oh, right,” Foxy said. “Just stop thinking about it. Why didn’t I try that before now?”
I took Foxy’s hand and held it for the next few hundred yards.
Eventually the valley flattened out, allowing us to move easier than the previous steady decline. But the smoke cover here was getting worse. Not enough to obscure our vision by a lot, but enough that soon we were all fighting coughs from the tingling, burning sensation in our throats.
Then the temperature started rising. That was a bad sign. The fire was getting close.
“We need to get to higher ground,” Trace said. “We can’t wait any longer.”
He guided us straight toward the ridge. It wasn’t a sheer rock face like we’d had for the past hour, but it was still a steep incline of rocks and loose dirt.
We moved slowly while aiding Edwards, climbing up on hands and knees to keep from sliding down. One of us would climb ahead and grab hold of a tree, wait for Edwards to get close enough to grab onto, then pull him a few yards further. The torn ACL didn’t hinder crawling as much as walking, but he still had very little range of motion in his left leg. In the end, he looked like a lame dog trying to scramble home for its supper.
There was a scare when Trace planted his foot on a rock, and then the soil gave out and it fell away. The gallon-sized rock plummeted below us, narrowly missing smashing into Foxy’s head. He gazed down at the rock as it tumbled down into the valley, then stared up with horror.
“Sorry,” Trace winced. “Everyone watch your footing.”
With the way we had to keep shuffling Edwards up between us, we advanced at a pace of about ten feet every minute. It was agonizingly slow, and sweat soon covered my face and neck. I tried to pretend it was only from exertion, and not from the ambient temperature in the valley rising steadily.
It took over an hour to climb up to the ridge. All of us were exhausted, so we collapsed on the top peak of the ridge to catch our breath. The air was cooler and clearer up here… but not by a lot. The sun was already fading hard to the west, casting everything in a grey-and-orange haze.
“You three should go ahead,” Trace said in between coughs. “I’ll stick with Edwards and help him along while you, Foxy, and Derek go for help.”
“And leave you behind? Fat chance,” I said.
“Haley…”
“Absolutely not,” I insisted. “Right now, we’re alternating helping Edwards every few minutes. We can keep up a solid pace that way. If we leave you behind, you’ll quickly get tired. And don’t make a joke about how you’re a big strong man who doesn’t get tired, because I’m not in the mood for it.”
“We’re not leaving you, boss,” Foxy said.
“Then just you.” Trace locked onto my eyes passionately. Pleadingly. “The rest of us will stay back and help Edwards. We won’t get tired that way. You can get out ahead of us and find help. You have a chance to avoid encirclement.”
I thought about it. For a few seconds I let the idea swirl around in my head. The urge to sprint along the ridge unencumbered was a freeing, appealing thought. I could reach the end of the valley within an hour, if I was lucky. After that it would be a straight shot to the Trinity River. I would be safe. I could get help for the others.
I dismissed the idea before it could take hold. “I’m not leaving you,” I told Trace. I turned to Foxy and Derek and added, “I’m not leaving any of you. If roles were reversed, you would all stay with me.”
“That’s awfully sweet of you…” Edwards said.
“I wasn’t talking to you!” I snapped.
Trace chuckled, and then Foxy and Derek were laughing. The infectious sound of their joy was impossible to fight, and then I was joining in. There on the ridge, surrounded by fire, we were finding an excuse to laugh.
That’s how you knew you’d found your soulmate—or soulmates. You could all find humor in even the most dire situations.
A shame to realize they’re my soulmates right before we all die.
“Shit,” Foxy said after a moment. “I see flames back there.”
We groaned as we saw the licking tendrils through the haze of smoke. He was right.
The fire was here.
We continued our desperate flight down the ridge. There was a slight decline, and the terrain here was much rockier than in the valley itself, so we had to pick our way carefully across the boulders and stones. Edwards was even slower going downhill than he was going up, and constantly cried out in pain as he tried to put more weight on his knee to speed things up. The poor guy was doing everything he could to not slow us down, and he was in agony for it.
When we came to a stretch of the ridge that was flat and grassy, it was a relief to all of us. “Let’s pick up the pace and gain some distance on the fire here!” Trace called out. He ducked in front of Edwards and lifted him on his back. “Double time!”
Jogging was a wonderful increase of pace, but it didn’t feel like we were gaining anything. I could see flames everywhere on the right side of the ridge, stretching far ahead of me into the haze. And the left side was much the same, though deeper into the valley and not at our altitude yet. We were clearly being encircled.
Trace must have recognized this too, because he started jogging faster with Edwards bouncing on his back. I did the same, lengthening my stride and leaping over rocks. I tried not to look, but the fire in the valley to my left pulled my eyes like a magnet. How had it spread so quickly?
I landed weird, and my ankle popped.
I cried out, and the ground rushed up and slammed into my chest and chin. My teeth clicked hard. There was a stabbing pain in my gut, and the wind was knocked out of me. I rolled along the ridge and came to a stop.
“Haley!” Foxy shouted.
No, I can’t stop, I have to keep moving, I thought frantically. But my ankle was an inferno of pain as I tried to put weight on it, and I collapsed back to my knees in another yelp of pain.
“You okay?” Trace asked.
“Rolled my ankle. I’m fine. Just give me a minute.” I pushed up on my other foot and tried to put the tiniest amount of weight on my wounded ankle. The ache was so deep that I became nauseous.
“I got you,” Foxy said, ducking in front of me. “Piggy-back time.”
&nbs
p; “I don’t—ohh,” I moaned as another wave of pain hit my ankle. “Yeah, okay. Just for a little bit.”
I wrapped my legs around Foxy’s waist and my arms around his neck. He held my legs up by the thighs and resumed walking down the ridge.
We were going much slower than before.
All of us knew it, but none of us would acknowledge it. The fire was all around us now, tendrils of orange-red flame cutting through the darkness like sunburned ghosts. Only the path down the ridge before us lay unmolested by fire. Foxy was strong, but after a few minutes I could tell he was growing tired.
“I got her,” Derek said, taking his place. I moved from one of my lover’s back to the other like a spider monkey, and then we continued down the ridge.
The smoke grew thicker. Part of that was our altitude decreasing, but I knew it was because the fire was getting worse all around us. I pulled out my phone and checked for a signal. Still nothing. Even worse, the ambient air temperature had risen so much that after a few seconds my phone was scalding hot as the metal absorbed the heat.
“Anything?” Foxy asked behind me.
“Just checking my Twitter feed,” I said. “Did you know Beyoncé is coming to Redding next summer?”
None of them laughed at the joke.
Finally, the easy part of the ridge ended and we were greeted with another rocky section. Derek put me down so we could scale down the rocks, but then Trace groaned.
It took me a moment to realize what he saw.
Below us, the ridge widened out for thirty or forty yards. There was enough soil to sustain a copse of pine trees and smaller shrubs too.
All of it was on fire.
Flames to the left. Fire to the right. Inferno directly ahead of us. At last, we had been encircled by the fire.
“Oh,” Derek said.
Trace sat on the edge of the rock and pulled his knees to his chin. “Fuck. We gave it a good shot.”
I tried putting weight on my ankle. It was better than before, but still flared with pain. It wasn’t broken, then. Just sprained. Not that it mattered, now.
