by H. L. Wegley
Occasional bursts of gunfire now sounded in the distance, coming from the other side of the ridge. Not the burping of AK-47s, more of a staccato cracking like—it was Steve’s M4.
Steve must be at the river, harassing Suarez from behind. In the process, he was buying Drew and Beth more time by making it harder for Suarez’s men to advance. But this was a brief reprieve, because, eventually, they would fire at Steve to cover the gunmen who would advance.
Steve was one of the elite warfighters, most capable on the planet based on both training and experience. Drew must trust that Steve would be okay, and Drew must focus on saving Beth.
Regardless, the chase had not ended.
For several minutes, Beth and Drew climbed up the sloping valley, working their way through the pines.
Beth tugged on his arm. “Take a look at the ridge behind us.”
Flashlight beams bounced wildly as Suarez’s army topped the ridge and hurried down it to the mouth of the valley.
“How does he keep guessing correctly? We might have turned south or north.”
“Drew, we’ve been going steadily westward since we left the place where … where they—”
“Yeah. The place I carried you out of.” A place that held terrible memories for Beth.
Her arms circled his neck and she clung to him. Finally, tears came. She needed to cry out all the terror from that horror-filled hour she’d spent in captivity.
She also needed to let go of her guilt about leaving that note. Maybe the arms around his neck were her way of doing that.
But Suarez had gained on them.
As much as Drew wanted to hold her and wipe away her tears, there was no more time for crying or consoling.
Flashlight beams appeared through the trees only a quarter-mile behind them.
While he held Beth, the night grew pitch black.
Either the lightning had stopped, or something was blocking it from view.
“Beth, I’ve got a really bad feeling about this.”
“About me?”
“No.” He cupped her cheek. “Not about you. About what’s going on up there.” He pointed upward. “Have you noticed how dark and quiet it’s gotten? I think Suarez must have noticed too. The lights aren’t moving in the lower end of the valley.”
Beth curled an arm around his waist and turned toward Suarez’s position. “What do you think is happening?”
“That moisture and unstable air from the east—the activity we saw earlier near Prineville—has made it here. The push from the Pacific is undercutting it, and we’re about to see the roof blow off the tropopause.”
“I thought you said the lid would blow off. Is there a difference?”
He blew out a sharp sigh. “I think there is a supercell overhead right now.”
“Does that mean the atmosphere’s about to supersize a thunderstorm?”
“Yeah. Any time now.”
“What should we do?”
“If we stay here, Suarez will reach us and—”
“Then we can’t stay here.”
“But if we go higher up the valley, near the top of the ridge, the chance of that supercell unloading on us gets worse.”
Beth touched her arm and then her cheeks. She put one hand on her hair. “This feels weird. I feel weird. My hair feels weird, like it’s—”
“Beth, it’s standing up. Crouch near the ground, but don’t touch it.” He pulled Beth down to his crouching position.
The strong electrostatic charge sent a tingling sensation over Drew’s head and down his arms. “Lightning’s going to hit something around here, really soon.”
“Something like us?”
“I don’t know. Lightning is unpredictable.”
He looked to the east, down toward the mouth of the valley.
The lights of Suarez’s men were moving again, maybe only three-hundred yards away.
“We’ve got no choice, Beth. They’ve closed on us. We need to run for the split rock at the upper end of the valley.”
A blinding lightning bolt struck something in the lower end of the valley. The sound of the thunder was strange, almost like a growl instead of a rumble or a crack.
He tried to recall the material about severe thunderstorms his professor had covered in Meteorology 101. Lightning behaved strangely inside a vortex in a supercell. Maybe that accounted for the strange sound.
A tree exploded into flame. Another and then another burst into flame until a line of burning trees blocked the entrance to the valley.
He’d been worried about tornadoes or microbursts, but this could be far worse. Drew stood mesmerized by the powerful, destructive forces being unleashed.
“Drew? Drew?” How long had she been pulling on his shirt?
“I’m coming. Race you to the split rock.” Drew took off up the valley holding her hand.
“You’re not funny, Drew West.”
He stopped less than a minute later, when the back of his neck became hot. The area around them lit up with bright yellow light. Drew turned toward the fire.
Beth turned with him and stared at the flames. She pressed one hand over her heart. “May God, help us.”
“Maybe He just did. Either that or He has some hellish plans for taking us home.”
Beth clung to him as they watched flames shooting upward, spinning, swirling, two- or three-hundred feet into the air.
The forest had become a tinderbox this summer, but it had gotten a lot more than the tiny spark it needed to set it afire.
The flames appeared to reach out toward them, as tree after tree burst into flames.
The downrush from the thunderstorm to the east of them had begun. It may not be a microburst, but when the air hit the ground, gale-force winds blew westward.
A hot blast hit Drew in the face. He turned away.
“Beth, this a strong downrush from the thunderstorm. It’s going to push the fire toward us at forty or fifty miles-per-hour. Run for the rocks and don’t stop for anything.”
She glanced his way. “It will get Suarez before it gets us, won’t it?”
“I don’t know, Beth. There’s no way to know.” But it would probably cut Steve off. That would keep him safe after he completed his job.
Drew clung to Beth’s hand as they sprinted up the valley, their way lit by the inferno.
The rock cliff came into view one-hundred yards ahead. Then a wall of smoke hit them, nearly knocking Drew off his feet. The scorching hot air enveloped them, smothering Drew and filling the upper end of the valley.
Beth coughed and gasped, then coughed some more. “I can’t breathe, Drew.”
“Don’t stop. Just a little further.” The back of Drew’s neck stung from the fire’s radiant heat. As much as he wanted to, he couldn’t look back. He had to protect his eyes from the hot, dry blast hitting his back.
How much further? He didn’t know, because now he couldn’t see anything. Couldn’t breathe.
Drew’s coughing started. It became incessant.
Beth fell to the ground beside him.
She would die if he didn’t get her out of the smoke and heat soon.
He scooped her up in his arms but stumbled as he tried to run.
Drew’s strength had drained far beyond what physical exertion could account for. Maybe the explosive nature of the fire left the air oxygen-depleted. The smoke also stole oxygen from Drew’s body as smoke filled his lungs.
Beth’s raspy breathing sounds, like an asthmatic, were audible above the noise of the fire.
He’d heard that five minutes of smoke inhalation could kill a person. If so, he’d already used up a minute of his time.
Drew willed himself to keep moving forward, but he had slowed to a clumsy walk. The ground at his feet was visible from the intense light, but ahead of him … nothing but smoke.
Maybe the fire had jumped ahead of them, spread by the wind that ripped at his clothing and blew Beth’s hair.
Inside the valley, the wind had been blowing away from the fire. That
gave him an idea and a small measure of hope. He could navigate by that wind.
Using Beth’s hair, blown by the gale, as a compass, Drew moved with the wind. Moving away from the fire would also be moving up the valley toward the rock.
He drew deeper breaths to satisfy the craving for oxygen. That only brought deeper coughs. His coughs truncated each breath, giving him less air and a greater desire for oxygen—an endless cycle of choking that would soon kill him.
His back seemed sunburned. The bare skin on his neck felt like it had been baked.
The burning deep inside in his chest became as intense as the stinging on his neck.
Drew’s feet dragged the ground with each step. He had to keep going for Beth, but he had no strength left.
Help me, please. Beth doesn’t deserve any of this.
A sudden impact knocked him to the ground. He tried to stand with Beth in his arms but didn’t have the strength.
Drew shook his head to overcome the stunned feeling. When he did, blood trickled down his forehead and clouded the vision in his right eye.
The realization hit him that he had cracked his head on the rock. Drew had reached the upper end of the valley.
Now he needed to find the opening that led to the crack in the rock.
The narrow passage through the rock promontory lay somewhere to the right of the center of the valley. Hopefully, he had run directly up the center as he followed the wind.
From somewhere deep inside, Drew found the strength to stand. He slung Beth over his back in a fireman’s carry and slid along the rock to his right.
Dizziness almost sent him to the ground. He stopped and coughed. Then choked and fell forward to the ground.
But he hadn’t hit the rock. He’d fallen into an opening.
Hope sent what little adrenaline was left in him coursing through his body.
He pulled Beth to the domino-like slab that hid the split in the rock. He dragged her around it and pulled her into the crevice. Cool air rushed in from the other side of the mountain, evidently drawn in by the updraft created by the fire.
Drew stood and sucked in fresh air. His first attempts were shallow breaths that ended in coughing spasms and intense pain in his lungs.
He coughed up the crud from his lungs and gradually his breaths became deeper, more satisfying.
Drew dropped to the ground beside Beth. She struggled to breath and appeared to be unconscious.
What had they said in his first aid course about treating smoke inhalation? His brain was still too foggy to recall. Mouth-to-mouth was the only thing that made sense.
He stretched her out on the ground, tilted her head back and opened her mouth to open her airway. Drew took a breath, pressed his lips to hers, and breathed out until her chest rose.
Beth coughed hard. That became a coughing spasm, with short gasps between coughs.
Still coughing hard, Beth reached for him.
“Breathe in then cough it out. Try to breathe in as much as you can before you cough.”
Over the next minute, Beth’s breathing grew deeper and the coughing more productive. Her lungs were clearing.
Drew sat, leaned against the rock wall, and listened to the fire. Its roar echoed through the crack in the rock with the sound of a jet engine.
Mixed with the sounds of the fire were other noises.
Drew focused his hearing on the higher frequency sounds.
They grew in intensity. Terrible sounds. Human sounds. Screaming and shrill shrieking from mouths that no longer sounded human.
Beth crawled beside him and put her hands over her ears.
Suarez and his men had been trapped in the box canyon that had become a literal hell on earth.
The evidence said justice would be served on Hector Suarez this night. As much as cartel murderers deserved it, hearing them die was gruesome and ghastly. Drew was glad Beth had chosen not to listen.
That Beth had covered her ears confirmed one of the reasons he held her in such high regard. She wanted justice, not vengeance. Distinguishing between the two was not something Drew was good at. Maybe Beth could help him, if her feelings about him hadn’t changed.
The person who had brought Drew and Beth together, Suarez, became the person keeping them from what they most wanted, time together to let their relationship grow. Maybe they would now get that time.
From what Drew had seen, there was no way any of Suarez’s men who had pursued them into the canyon could escape from the fire, except through the cleft in the rock. Drew had only found it with God’s help.
Steve would have been on the east side of the fire. He could retreat to safety. He also had the Deschutes River for protection if he needed it.
Those who were dying in the canyon—Drew wasn’t their judge, but it seemed just to him that the inferno should serve as a preview of their coming judgment. They were evil, murderers of women and children. And they had killed Beth’s family.
Suarez and his cartel goons were getting what they had given to innocent people, a terrible death.
But what if one of those men, insane from the torment, stumbled into the crack and reached them? The thought jarred him.
He rose to his feet. “Beth, can you walk?”
No reply.
“I need you to try to stand. The passageway is too narrow for me to carry you.”
“They … might … find us Drew. Help me walk.” She struggled to stand, made it to her feet and stopped. “What’s happening out there?”
“Sounds like Jonathan Edwards is preaching that sermon again and those sinners are in the hands of an angry God. If I remember correctly, he said God’s enemies are like dry stubble before devouring flames, and it’s easy for God to cast them into Hell.”
“I wish it were easier to keep us out of it.”
“Are you talking about what we just came through or Jesus and his sacrifice?”
“Drew, I can’t even think, let alone make profound statements.” She struggled to her knees.
He lifted her to her feet. “Let me hold you upright. Try to walk. Because, Beth, we need to get out of here.”
* * *
Suarez slowed and turned his head toward the fire. He quickly turned back and continued his pursuit of the girl. Was he chasing the girl or being chased by the flames?
In an instant, the sky exploded into light bringing the brightness of noon to the valley filled with pine trees. The radiant heat hit the back of Suarez’s neck leaving his skin stinging.
One of his men ran beside him now. “El Capitan, it is like the flames of Hell.”
“Manuel, there is no such thing as Hell.” Not for Hector Suarez. Only for superstitious peons.
Manuel cried out as a tree, only fifty yards behind them, exploded into flame. “I fear you are wrong, El Capitan.” Manuel tripped on a dead bush and fell to the ground.
Words poured out of the man's mouth now. “Dios te salve, Maria. Llena eres de gracia … “
Useless words of prayer.
Suarez ran into a rock wall. He couldn't climb it, and he was inside a box canyon, trapped on three sides with the fire closing in on the fourth side. He could flee no further.
Was there no way to make it to the ridge to safety?
I am El Capitan. I refuse to die like this. It will not happen.
The row of trees nearest to him detonated. The flames scorched his skin.
Suarez covered his eyes with his hands. Brighter than the sun, the light came through the flesh in his hands, through his eyelids, and it reached his eyes.
The burning of his flesh intensified.
Suarez fought back against it. He would not surrender to the fire.
“There is no Hell!” As he yelled the words, images scrolled through his mind's eye. A town in flames. Bodies burning, leaving the air filled with the odor of death.
It was hell for those people, and now it is your turn.
He had not spoken those words. They been spoken to him.
The tree beside him
exploded into flame with a loud whoosh.
Noooo!” Suarez cried out his protest in a long, rebellious yell, until it involuntarily morphed to a scream when the fire enveloped him.
* * *
Drew held Beth’s shoulders and guided her out of the crack in the rock. They emerged into an area of cool, clean air on the west side of the peak.
The glow of the fire lit the ridge above them and provided enough light to see what Drew needed to see, Beth’s face.
He laid a hand on her shoulder. “Let’s stop to catch our breath and to make sure no one survived by finding this passage. I’ve still got my Governor if we need it.”
Beth turned and put her arms around his neck.
“Ouch. My neck feels like it’s sunburned.”
“I’m sorry, Drew.” She hung her head. “I’m sorry for a lot of things. What I said—I’m a liar. Can you ever forgive me for that?”
“Didn’t you tell a lie another time and then regretted it?” It was a low blow. He shouldn’t have said that.
Tears overflowed one eye, then the other. Now, she had two streams flowing down her cheeks. She raised her hands toward him, then pulled them back and shook her head.
“Three words, Beth. Forgiving you would be the easiest thing in the world to do if I heard those three words.”
She wiped her cheeks. “I forgive you is only three words too. It sounds like an even trade. But …”
“It’s that INTJ girl thing, right?”
“It’s hard for me to say things that I feel. And I’m terrible at it. It’s something you’ll just have to get used to.”
“Are you saying you’ll give me the chance to get used to it?”
“Yes. If you still want me. I’ve thought about spending my life with you since that moment when you took Suarez down at the canyon, disarmed him, and saved my life. You should have known that.”
“How could I? Most of the time you play your emotional cards pretty close to your, uh … chest.” He paused. “I forgive you, Beth. Will you forgive me for being so stubborn when it comes to certain things like—”
“You mean things like beating the tar—or do you call it beating the living crud—out of someone to protect the people you love?”
“There are some other words for it but, yeah, that’s what I mean. You made a point of telling me how much you disapproved of—”
