Wildfire

by Rodman Philbrick

  Great advice if you happen to sight a bear in the woods or on a trail, or even in your own backyard. But not in the vehicle you desperately need to escape from a smoldering fire that’s going to burst into full-blown flames any second.

  Trying not to make any sudden or threatening moves, I whisper, “Delphy? Back up, slowly.”

  We stop about twenty yards away. The air is thickening with smoke.

  “It doesn’t want to leave.” Delphy shifts her stick. “It’s scared, I think.”

  The bear is upright in the back seat now, nodding its head back and forth, back and forth. Not full-grown but not a cub, either. Probably scared, like Delphy says. Scared of the storm, scared of the fire. No cave or den for shelter, so it picked the Jeep.

  And scared is when a bear is most dangerous. Like Dad said, usually a bear will run away rather than confront a human. But if it doesn’t, things can get ugly quick.

  “I don’t know what to do! Should we leave the Jeep and run?”

  Then Delphy does something I never would have expected, or I’d have tried to stop her. She marches up to the Jeep and uses her stick to press on the horn. She stands her ground, making the horn blare. And the bear bolts out of the back seat and scampers off into the woods, away from the fire.

  “Nice meeting you, bear!” she calls out, then climbs into the passenger seat, waiting for me.

  I get in. “That was really dangerous.”

  She smiles, as pleased with herself as I was for jumping from the deer stand. “Everything we do is dangerous. It’s the only way to stay alive.”

  We drive down the logging trail, away from the smoke. The forest gets a little thinner and more of the sky is visible over our heads. The sunshine makes it even hotter, which hardly seems possible. The trail becomes straighter, and we seem to be on a ridge, with the ground falling away on either side. Not exactly climbing a mountain, but on higher ground for sure.

  Everything is going really good until the engine sputters and dies.

  Out of gas. It finally happened.

  Delphy doesn’t say anything. We just sit there for a while, baking in the airless heat. We should be really upset, but for some reason we’re not. Maybe the storm and the fire and the bear was all the upset we could handle.

  “Shall we take a little walk?” Delphy suggests.

  She slings her backpack over her shoulder, gets a good grip on her walking stick, and off we go, following the logging trail. No way am I going back in the woods, even if it isn’t quite so dense.

  The trail curves gently to the right. For a while, it keeps level and then starts to head down.

  We both see it at the same time, glittering through the trees.

  A long blue lake.

  We work our way down the wooded slope to the curving shoreline. Delphy drops her walking stick and backpack. She keeps going, right into the water, and doesn’t stop until she’s waist-high. “You have to do it, Sam,” she says, waving me to join her. “It’s amazing.”

  I cast a wary eye for water snakes, but they like muddy bottoms and weeds and this is clear and sandy. Too inviting to resist. I don’t go in as deep as Delphy, not being as tall, but after days on the run, in the constant heat, the cool clean water is like heaven. I bend my knees and sink down, holding my breath as my head goes under. Amazing is right.

  I come up spouting.

  Delphy smooths the wet hair out of her eyes. “Where’s the camp?” she asks. “Which way?”

  I close my eyes and picture what I saw from the top of the tree. “That way.” I point. “Somewhere along this shore.”

  “Is it far?”

  “I don’t know. A few miles? Maybe less.”

  We slog out of the water. I start to shake myself dry and Delphy goes, “Hey, wait! My beach towel!” She pulls it out of the backpack and tosses it to me. “You first.”

  I rub down fast and hand it back.

  “Not what I had in mind when I thought I was going for a midnight swim.” Delphy, drying her hair, sounds almost cheerful. “Jason Dean, you don’t know what you missed.”

  Should I tell her Jason Dean doesn’t exist? No, I don’t want to hurt her feelings. She’s smart. She’ll figure it out.

  I take off my shoes, dry them on the grass, and put them back on. Soggy, but tolerable. The only bad thing is the mosquitoes, but Delphy is in such a good mood, getting bit doesn’t seem to bother her. “Take a sip, everybody!” She holds her arms out to the bugs. “Come one, come all!”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “Crazy happy. There’s a difference.”

  We prepare ourselves for a long hike, but the camp is much closer than I thought. Around the next bend, we come upon a curving notch of shoreline with a white sandy beach and volleyball courts. Back from the lake is a big, white-shingled building with two huge stone chimneys, one on each end. Along the edge of the lake are a dozen or so smaller buildings, similar to the cabins at Camp Wabanaski.

  “Hello!” I shout. “Anybody home?”

  Silence. As to be expected, the place was evacuated. We work our way around the main building, still shouting in case somebody stayed behind, and locate the entrance, which has a big banner strung along the porch roof:

  MARVEL LAKE SURVIVAL SKILLS CAMP BUILDING STRENGTH, CHARACTER & ENDURANCE

  Delphy shakes her head, laughing. “Just my luck, a survival camp. They probably eat nuts and berries.”

  “There’s a dining hall inside.” I’m peering through the windows. “Check it out. Maybe you can find a phone. I’ll look for a road.”

  “You want me to do the breaking and entering, is that it?” She sounds amused.

  I try the latch. “No breaking required.” I swing open the unlocked door for her and turn to go. As I head out to look for a road, she cautions me. “Be careful.”

  “Always. I won’t be long.”

  A neatly landscaped gravel drive runs off into the woods, heading uphill. Could be several miles to a paved road, but I want to get some idea of what we’re up against. It’s really great we found the camp, which means shelter and water and probably food, even if it is nuts and berries, but there’s a tinge of smoke in the air, and we can’t be that many miles from the spreading lightning fire, or for that matter from the main fire line behind it. So the camp is temporary shelter, at best.

  I start out jogging along the gravel road, hoping I can find some gasoline in the camp and a way to get the Jeep down from the logging trail. The lawns are mowed, so they must have power mowers, right? Unless survival camp means push mowers. Which is possible. No, don’t think that way. Be positive. One thing at a time. See where the gravel road goes, then worry about the Jeep.

  I jog uphill for a mile or so in the crushing heat, sweat pouring into my eyes, until I get this pain in my side that feels like a knife shoved into my ribs. I rest for a bit, bent over and panting, and the pain eases. Okay, so I’m not exactly a track star. And I’m thinking maybe I don’t want to get too far along the gravel roadway, not just yet. What if I get cut off by the fire? Delphy on one side of the flames, me on the other?

  It’s when I turn to go back that I notice the sign. Must have missed it with my eyes full of sweat. A little arrow-shaped sign nailed to a tree. Hand-painted but easy to read.

  SR 12B—7.2 MILES

  State Road 12B. No clue as to where it might lead, but chances are it will be a real paved road. It has to go somewhere that’s populated, or the state wouldn’t bother building a road, right? Somewhere with people, that’s all that matters.

  I’m walking briskly when a bell begins to ring. Like the shimmering bong of a church bell, but that can’t be it. Maybe it’s an emergency signal. Maybe Delphy’s in trouble.

  I start running.

  Turns out to be a dinner bell, not an emergency signal. Delphy noticed the rope hanging in a corner of the dining room and rang the bell to let me know there’s enough food in the pantry to last a year, at least.

  “Ten kinds of cereal, five kinds of cookies. C
anned goods galore, in big restaurant cans. Vegetables, meats, soups, sauces. At least five dozen eggs. Flour and cornmeal and baking powder and tons of ingredients to make stuff. No electricity—I don’t think this place has any—but the stoves and refrigerators run on propane, and they have a huge tank of propane out back, so we’re good there. Fridges packed with gallon jugs of milk, at least ten pounds of butter, trays of Jell-O, blocks of processed cheese.”

  “All that, but no phone?”

  She shakes her head and sighs. “We’re out in the middle of nowhere. No landlines, and like I said, no electricity. The lamps use oil, I think. They’re not kidding about being into survival.”

  We’re in the dining hall, which looks like it could seat fifty or so, easy, with a soaring cathedral roof made out of hand-carved wood beams, and very cool stone fireplaces on opposite walls, and a view of the long, narrow lake that shoots out from the beach like a blue arrow aimed at the horizon. It’s a grand room, way better than the dining area at Camp Wabanaski, and a bit cooler than outside. My guess, the camp caters to out-of-state families with kids who need a little toughening up, or who want an adventure. Cold-water showers—Delphy already checked—and lots of activities like hiking, climbing, and learning to live off the land. So Delphy had it right when she said nuts and berries.

  Not that anybody is going hungry, not when they’re eating in this dining hall, that’s for sure. But the no-electricity setup makes me wonder, because summer camps have to be able to alert the authorities or call for an ambulance—at this location, probably by air—if one of the kids gets seriously ill or injured. Right? When I mention this to Delphy she goes, “Cell phones?”

  “Maybe,” I say. “But way out here? Where are the cell towers?”

  “Smoke signals?”

  That makes me grin. “Ha ha. I’m thinking maybe some kind of two-way emergency radio. The kind you can talk on. Maybe a police radio kind of deal. They knew enough to evacuate, right?”

  “That makes sense.”

  “Okay, if it was you in charge, where would you keep the emergency radio?”

  She thinks about it. “The office? I saw a room that could be the office, out by the main entrance.”

  She leads me to it and I agree, this has to be the camp office. A wooden desk and a big swivel chair, several filing cabinets, and knotty pine walls plastered with photographs of kids on survival trips. White-water rafting, canoe portaging, rock climbing with helmets and harnesses and complicated-looking ropes. The kids look happy to be working so hard—most are pumping fists in the air. There’s a good-sized map pinned to a corkboard. Marvel Lake Survival Skills Camp is marked on the map with a red star, and it shows the access road connecting to the state road, just like the sign said. It also shows we’re about as far to the north and west as you can get and still be in Maine.

  I point to the star and say, “That’s why the only station we can pick up is WRPZ. We’re pretty much in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by mountains.”

  “Mountains that are burning,” Delphy reminds me.

  Tinder-dry forests. Wildfires. I’d rather not think about it, but there’s no getting away from the fact that a clock is ticking. We have to find a way to get rescued, or rescue ourselves, before the fire finds us.

  We search everywhere. The shelves are packed with books about birds and wildlife, but there’s no sign of a two-way police radio.

  Delphy opens all the desk drawers. No electronics. But she does find an instruction manual for a satellite phone.

  I slump into the swivel chair, exasperated. “That’s how they make contact. A satellite phone. Probably took it with them when they evacuated.”

  “Definitely.” Delphy looks as disappointed as I feel.

  “It’s okay.” I’m trying to sound upbeat. “Back to plan A. We’re only seven miles from a paved road. If I can find some gas, and a way to get the Jeep over to the gravel road, we can be back to civilization in an hour.”

  She brightens. “Seriously? If you can’t find any gas, I can walk seven miles if I have to. I don’t care how much it hurts, if it will get us home.”

  “Let’s find some gas. Hiking seven miles on a sprained ankle is a bad idea. What if the fire catches up and crosses the gravel road before we get there? No way to outrace a fire on foot. If it comes to that, we might be better off staying right where we are: In case of fire, jump in the lake and hope the smoke doesn’t kill us.”

  “Where do we start?” she asks.

  “With fuel of our own. Did you say there are five kinds of cookies?”

  After eating—cookies plus a couple of premade salami sandwiches we find in the big refrigerators (Delphy even locates some ballpark mustard. I swear it’s the best sandwich I’ve ever had in my life)—it’s down to business.

  The search for gasoline. Which we absolutely need to make an escape.

  When I ask her to take it easy and rest her ankle, Delphy gives me an are-you-crazy? look, props herself on her stick, and swings down the steps onto the lawn.

  “You take that side, I’ll take this one,” she says. “We’re looking for sheds and storage areas, right?”

  “And lawn mowers and chain saws and weed whackers. Like that. They all need gas.”

  I remember seeing some storage units next to one of the cabins. Before heading to check it out, I study the horizon to the east, beyond the far end of the lake. I don’t want Delphy to worry about it too much, but for the last hour or so, gray clouds have been edging up over the horizon.

  Are they storm clouds or distant smoke? Rain or fire? Can’t be sure, one way or the other. Whatever they are, they seem to be slowly creeping closer.

  Delphy is so into it, I’m almost sorry it’s me who finds the gasoline. Twenty gallons, neatly lined up in red five-gallon plastic containers, with spouts and funnels. Fuel for a big, professional mowing machine housed in the shed.

  She hobbles in, sees me beaming, and goes, “Is that enough?”

  “Enough for two hundred miles. We can drive all the way home on this amount.”

  “I thought you said it was only seven miles?”

  “Seven to a paved road. Not sure how far that is from getting rescued. But this will get us there, I promise.”

  She folds her arms across her chest. “Today?”

  “Yes, today, if I can find a way to connect the Jeep up to the gravel road.”

  She shakes her head, amused. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the last few days, it’s that you always find a way. You go, I’ll pack up whatever supplies I can scrounge, and when you get back here—zoom, we’re gone!”

  What she said about me always finding a way makes me feel really good, and gives me the energy to start lugging a five-gallon can up the slope to the logging trail. Panting and sweating and keeping an eye out on the way for a path big enough for the Jeep. The slope is okay for walking, but there are parts too steep for any vehicle, even a sturdy Jeep. I’m being super careful, because the Jeep is our only hope of escape. The fire may not be moving very fast today, with the wind so calm, but it’s getting closer. I can feel it. I can smell it. I know it in my bones.

  I finally haul the heavy container up to the logging trail, and there’s the Jeep, waiting patiently. Okay, I’m aware it’s only a hunk of steel, and it doesn’t have a mind of its own, and it can’t be “waiting patiently.” But I feel like we’re connected somehow, me and that machine. From the very first, when we sped away from the flames at the logging camp and I barely knew how to steer, it’s like the machine was taking care of me. Like it had been waiting for a chance to save my life.

  Delphy isn’t there to hear me being weird, so as I pour gas into the tank, me and the Jeep have a one-sided conversation. “Once we get rescued, you’ll have to go back to your real owner. I know that. But maybe he’ll let me visit. And when I’m old enough to get a driver’s license, maybe I’ll have saved up enough to buy you. Would that be okay?”

  In my head, the Jeep says yes. Which is just me
saying yes, but still it makes me feel better. Without this brave little machine, made for a soldier in a long-ago war, me and Delphy would be dead for sure. So forgive me if I get all mushy about it.

  On second thought, I don’t care what anybody thinks. The Jeep is my friend, get used to it.

  With five gallons in the tank, the Jeep is good to go. It starts right up, and I slowly steer along the rutted logging trail, searching for a place where we can cross down the slope to Camp Survival.

  Sounds like it should be easy, but it isn’t. Everywhere I look, it seems to be either too steep and rocky, or too thick with trees. I can’t risk getting stuck halfway down. Can’t risk making a mistake. This is our chance, this hunk of steel and tires, and every instinct tells me I have to treat it like it’s made of glass. It may be tough and reliable, but things can go wrong in an instant.

  The old logging trail slowly curves down toward the lake. There are fewer trees blocking the way to the camp. The main building is clearly visible through the thinning trees, and beside it the gravel road, maybe a quarter mile away.

  So close.

  I get out and explore on foot. No problem navigating around the trees or avoiding the boulders strewn through this part of the forest. The problem is right at the end, where the woodlands meet the camp lawn. There’s about a four-foot drop over a steep, rocky ledge. No way to get past that without ripping out the bottom of the Jeep and breaking an axle.

  Delphy sees me exploring along the edge and lopes over, swinging on her stick. She’s excited to see the Jeep so near, just a little ways uphill through the trees.

  “I’ve put together a bunch of supplies. Food and water and stuff. And if you must know, more TP. Just in case the road is long.”

  “Great,” I say, without much enthusiasm.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “This is as close as the logging trail gets to the camp,” I explain, discouraged. “Beyond this, it starts to curve away, up into the hills. So the Jeep has to cross over in this area. Somehow. Except I don’t know how.”