China Lake (45 page)

The wind was whipping his hair across his face, half obscuring his eyes, but I knew he meant it. It tore my heart to speak the plain facts. ‘‘Jesse, you can’t. It’s not your car; it doesn’t have hand controls.’’

‘‘I know. The keys, Evan.’’

Jesse Blackburn, patron saint of the unpredictable, strikes again. With the heat and flames billowing up, he intended to do it.

I said, ‘‘How do you plan to drive? You can’t work the pedals.’’

‘‘We don’t have time to argue. Open the goddamn door.’’

I did. He lurched against the driver’s seat and I helped him pull himself in.

He held out a hand. ‘‘Keys.’’

I gave them to him, and he fired up the engine. He looked over at Brian. My brother was slumped against the car door, breathing like a fish on the dock.

Jesse said, ‘‘Get me a stick. Something big.’’

I found him an oak branch about three feet long. When I handed it to him, he said, ‘‘We’re going to make it. Go find Luke.’’

Then he jammed the branch down on the gas pedal, shoved the car into low gear, and lurched away. I watched him go, heart hammering.

Alone in the heat and the roar, I turned and plunged down the ravine.

I crashed down the trail, punching my way through tinder-dry brush that scratched and pulled on my shirt like skeletal hands. Smoke barreled overhead. Flames towered behind me in the wind.

In 1990, just up the road, an arsonist had stepped out into a windy afternoon, stared down the mountains at brush so dry and overgrown it might as well have been gasoline, and lit a single match. He ignited the Painted Cave Fire. The wind sent the flames downhill like a blowtorch, advancing a mile every five minutes. Five hundred homes burned. People evacuated, whole neighborhoods throwing the kids and pets and wedding photos into their cars and hauling for the beach, or fleeing on foot. Not all of them made it.

With a single match. And Chenille had primed the pyre with a garageful of explosives.

I ran, smoke stinging my eyes and lungs, through thick brush now glowing red under the lurid sky. I didn’t see anybody ahead, couldn’t hear Luke anymore in the hiss of the wind. Then I saw a child’s shoe lying on the narrow trail, Luke’s shoe. I kept going, saw Tabitha ahead, fighting her way through the chaparral. She was panting, nearly staggering with exhaustion, but not conceding anything.

When I caught up, she pointed down the trail. ‘‘I saw them. She must be heading for a road down there.’’

‘‘Come on.’’ I pulled her along, knowing that roads were scarce up here. It was miles down the mountain. Miles. I looked back over my shoulder. To my shock and horror, the flames had spread into a phalanx wider than a football field. The fire was probably three hundred meters behind us, but it was gathering strength and starting to roll down the hill.

I said, ‘‘Run. We can catch them.’’

She looked anguished. But she ran, wheezing, sweating, arms grabbing at the air. I thought about how little she had eaten during this ordeal, which worried and impressed me.

Then she said, ‘‘There they are!’’

Below us on the trail, Luke’s bright blue shirt flashed through the bushes. Chenille’s camouflage gear was barely visible. I sprinted, closing on them, glad that Chenille outweighed me, because I was faster and more agile than she was. Luke’s shirt streaked in and out of the brush, slowed, and jinked onto a new heading, up the far side of the ravine.

Closer. Uphill now, my legs and lungs screaming. Luke saw me and cried out. Chenille half turned. Her face contorted, and then I was on her, tackling her with everything I had, crashing into her midsection.

I barely budged her. She grunted, kept her grip on Luke’s arm, and punched me in the shoulder. It hurt, but the pain turned to rage and I planted my feet, grabbed her around the thighs, and lifted, toppling her off balance. We fell to the trail. Punches rained on my back.

Then, like a banshee, a revenant, Tabitha’s thin form appeared above us and started kicking Chenille. She bashed her ribs, her buttocks, her legs with a steel and force I could not believe she possessed. The look on her face was unhinged. She kept kicking, completely forgetting the pistol in her hand. Chenille guttered and groaned and let go of Luke.

I dove on Chenille and punched her in the face. Her head banged back with a thud.

I yelled, ‘‘Go, Tabitha. Get him out of here!’’

But Tabitha staggered above us, teeth out like a feral animal. ‘‘Kill her!’’

I knew I couldn’t hold Chenille. Even battered, she had a meaty strength and was trying to bunch herself under me. I said, ‘‘Go!’’

Tabitha suddenly remembered the pistol. Shouting at me to move, she brought it around with a shaking hand and pointed it at Chenille. That was when Chenille whipped into a wrestling move, flipping me, knocking us both into Tabitha. She cried out, fell backward, and the gun went flying into the bushes.

It was absurd, three women wrestling in the dirt while a fire was booming in our direction. I looked up at Luke and said, ‘‘Run!’’ Then I grabbed Chenille by the hair and pulled. She yelled and windmilled her arms at me, a huge, rage-knotted human who smelled like smoke and sweat. I pulled harder, keeping her focused on me, and Tabitha managed to squirm out from under the dogpile. She gripped Luke’s hand and together they ran up the trail, climbing away from us.

I watched them grow hazy in the thickening smoke. Beneath me, Chenille squirmed. I punched her, kneed her, bounced on her chest, appalled at my enthusiastic barbarity, keeping it up until I felt her weaken. Then I scrambled off her to follow Tabitha and Luke.

She grabbed my leg.

I looked down and saw her hanging on to me, her face gnarled. Her lips drew back and she said, ‘‘Demon!’’ She clawed her way up my leg. ‘‘You’re defying scripture. Give him back!’’

I grunted and cried, trying to break free. Her hold was terrific.

‘‘He should be mine!’’ Her voice was half scream, half sob. ‘‘Brian used me, him and all the rest, used me up. He owes me!’’

She sank her teeth into my calf.

Screaming, I fell to the ground. She spun and pounced on top of me. Lowered her face close enough to kiss me. She looked catastrophic. She pulled something shiny from her pocket and waved it in front of my eyes. It was a vial.

‘‘Well, sister, screw you,’’ she said. ‘‘Welcome to the Apocalypse.’’

She brought the vial down on a rock next to my head, smashing it. Started to cry, then to laugh, then to scream.

Holding my breath, I shoved her off me. She didn’t resist. I crawled away, started to run, trying not to breathe, but gasped, wondering if I was about to drop dead. Kept going, climbing uphill. I shot a glance back over my shoulder to see if she was coming after me. She wasn’t. She was standing on the trail with her fists raised, like a boxer celebrating a victory, as the fire swept toward her down the mountainside.

I ran up the trail, climbing the far side of the ravine. Thinking, It doesn’t matter whether Chenille just poisoned me, because I can’t do a thing about it. All I can do is run. I’ll live, or I won’t.
Inshallah
, whatever God wills.

Thinking, Will me out of here. Come on, God, get behind me, dammit. The trail was steep, the brush clinging, the smoke choking. I felt desperately thirsty. Uphill I saw Tabitha struggling beyond exhaustion, out of fuel if not out of grit, carrying Luke on her back. Then I looked back downhill and felt an emotional blast. Digging in, I climbed toward Tabitha with everything I had, knowing how much
everything
was going to have to be.

The flames had jumped the bottom of the ravine and started ascending the hill behind me, only a hundred yards back. And fire, unlike human beings, accelerates when running uphill.

Beyond Tabitha rose the crest of the ravine. If we could reach the crest, we could make it. When the fire hit the top the wind might catch it, might shift it to run along the ridgeline. We could get the downhill slide, get a breather, get out. But the ravine was steep and we were slowing, fighting every step.

I looked back again. The flames were closer.

I drew in a hot, hard breath. Throw the dice, Delaney. Bet you can outrun the bitch, the beast coming behind you. Screw fire as purifier, renewer, ecological balancer. I didn’t want to be purified, renewed, recycled, turned into potting ash, carbon, fossil fuel. Forget all that circle-of-life crap, and run.

I yelled aloud and pumped my arms and legs, hard, harder than I thought I could, knowing I had to find the strength or there wouldn’t be anything left to hold back for. At the sound of my cry Tabitha accelerated, only to slip on the trail. She fell to her knees. Jolted, Luke slid off her back to the ground.

I reached her, pulled her to her feet. Behind us the flames swallowed chaparral and jumped from treetop to treetop, leapfrogging toward us, roaring like a freight train. Smoke and terrible heat pressed down on us. Hot ash and sparks stung our skin. Luke sat on the trail like a zombie, staring at it.

I crouched down. ‘‘Get on, piggyback.’’

His face looked numb with terror. But he climbed on my back, and I ran with him clinging to me like a second skin, a second heart. Behind me Tabitha fought to keep pace, wheezing, saying, ‘‘Hold on, sweet pea.’’ Any scrap of hostility I still felt toward her dropped away. I simply couldn’t carry it.

Upward, upward, freight train running at us, thirst deepening, smoke lowering, heat.
The crest,
I prayed.
The crest.
It was hidden in the smoke, but I knew it was there, pushed on, tears streaming from my eyes, coughing. Then, for a moment the wind cut, shifted, cleared the smoke. I stumbled to a halt, feeling as if I’d been stabbed. We were almost at the top, but the trail petered out into a line of boulders that ran along the crest like battlements, blocking our path.

A sob escaped Tabitha’s mouth.

The flames were fifty yards behind us now, a howling maw. I saw no alternative. Over the roar I yelled, ‘‘We have to climb them. It’s our only chance.’’

Her chest was heaving. She nodded.

We scrambled up to the boulders. They were sandstone, ten feet high, rough, chunky, normally easy to climb. But not with Luke on my back. I got three feet and a loose hunk of rock broke under my foot. Off balance, I said, ‘‘Hold on!’’ and jumped back down.

I grabbed Tabitha’s arm. ‘‘I’ll climb up and you hand him to me.’’

She nodded. Her face no longer looked delicate, but jewel-hard. She took him in her arms and I started climbing again, awkwardly, feeling a shudder in my arms and legs, desperate to get up without knocking loose more rock, hearing Tabitha’s voice like a snare drum below me, rolling in cut time. ‘‘Hurry, Evan. Hurry, hurry, hurry.’’

Then my hand topped the boulder. I winched up, and through the smoke I could see the downhill slope—the air clear, the land untouched. I stretched myself flat on top of the rock and reached down for Luke.

My arms weren’t long enough. He reached up but was three feet short.

Tabitha spoke to him and he started a rickety monkey climb onto her shoulders, balancing precariously, fingers digging into her hair for balance, small chest gulping in and out. She took a step onto the first boulder. I kept stretching down, still too far away, and she strained another step. The flames surfed ever higher, swaying, roaring, leaping into the trees just behind her. Luke stretched his hand. His eyes were empty, as though looking at me through a wall beyond time and space.

Still out of reach. Tabitha stepped up onto a loose rock. It tilted. She yelled, threw herself forward against the boulder, and caught herself. Her legs were shuddering wildly, doing an Elvis. Her tank was running on fumes. She met my gaze. In her eyes should have been desperation, but instead I saw brilliance, lightning: faith.

‘‘Reach down for him, Ev.’’ Her voice was shaking. ‘‘Luke, climb.’’ But Luke was frozen, clinging to her, starting to cry. She shouted, ‘‘Come on! Hold on to the rock. Reach for Aunt Evvie, and go! Now!’’ Slowly his hand came up toward me. I stretched and grasped his wrist. She said, ‘‘Climb, climb!’’

His feet started windmilling against the boulder, and he grabbed me with both hands. I pulled him up.

He scrambled into my arms. For a second I clutched him, then said, ‘‘Keep going; scoot down the far side of the rocks. It’ll be safer there.’’ He clambered away. I turned back, knowing I’d have to help Tabitha to the top.

I lay flat again and stretched down. The flames were almost on us. Twenty feet behind Tabitha a tall tree had ignited, backlighting her with an insane bloom of fire, a monstrous red stripe switching and thrashing at the sky. She reached for my hand. Her fingers, warm with my brother’s blood, touched mine. Above her came a cracking sound, the noise of a heavy limb about to break off the flaming tree. She looked up, saw it twist and swing toward her. I said, ‘‘Look out!’’ and she jumped down, just getting clear before the limb crashed against the rock where she’d been standing.

She landed on all fours but got up again, checking the line of boulders for somewhere else to climb, wiping her sweaty curls off her face with one hand. Spotting a route, she started to the right. The burning tree gave way and swept down like a great red tail, embers arcing out behind it. It crashed on top of her.

I scrambled to my knees but she was gone, swallowed up. My voice mixed with the howl of the fire, screaming.

I slid down the far side of the rocks. Luke was standing at the bottom. I grabbed his hand and ran, downhill now.

‘‘Where’s my mom?’’

‘‘We have to run; we have to keep going.’’

I said nothing else, but ran until grief overtook me and I had to look back. The flames were cresting the lip of the ravine, ready to barrel down, having taken one game woman and getting a taste for it. This was it, the truth. It was the instant when the universe shrugs. It’s the moment when you’re running on desire and a belief in free will, and you feel a tap on the shoulder, and turn to find inevitability standing there.