Mountain Rampage (28 page)

Chuck tentatively moved his arms and legs. No broken bones. He put a hand to the side of his head to find blood oozing from a cut where the tree trunk had gouged his scalp.

The driver's door of the wrecker, facing the night sky, opened. The truck's headlights produced enough ambient light for Chuck to watch as Jake clambered out of the cab and slid down the windshield to the ground, his cigarette still clamped in the corner of his mouth. Chuck crouched in the brush as Jake peered past him into the dark forest. The truck engine, no longer running, ticked as it cooled. The smell of spilled gasoline filled the night air.

Behind the waist-high screen of scrub oak, Chuck pulled his phone from his pocket, holding it low to the ground.

Jake took a drag on his cigarette, released the smoke. “I know you're in there,” he said.

Chuck pressed buttons on his phone, shoved it back in his pocket, and rose, showing himself. “You deserve what happened just now. You killed those sheep.”

“Damn right I did. God didn't put them there just to prance around and look pretty. He put them there to make use of.”

“But you left their carcasses to rot in the forest. You didn't even use the meat.”

For the first time, a note of uncertainty entered Jake's voice. “I'm done with all that now. I won't be doing it no more.”

Chuck made a show of extracting his phone from his pocket. “Too late. I'm calling the police.”

“Be my guest. Won't nothin' come of it.” Jake took his cigarette from his mouth and pointed it at the toolbox bolted behind the cab of the truck. “You can't do nothin' without no evidence.” He faced the wrecker, his cigarette raised.

“No,” Chuck yelled. “
Don't
.”

F
ORTY
-S
IX

Jake flicked his cigarette at the spot where the crumpled hood of the upended wrecker met the ground. “Glad my insurance is all paid up,” he said.

A tongue of orange flame raced beneath the truck, followed by an oxygen-sucking
whoomp
from the engine compartment. Flames climbed around the sides of the wrecker and leapt, crackling, into the night air.

Jake shot Chuck a cruel smile, his face framed by the flickering light of the flames curling from the truck's engine compartment. He set off at a brisk walk down the drive toward the conference center, disappearing into the darkness, as the fire enveloped the cab of the truck.

Chuck dashed around the truck and climbed the wrecker's undercarriage hand over hand, flames flickering around him. He reached into the open driver's door to grab the key ring from where it hung in the ignition.

Black smoke enveloped him as he sidestepped along the truck's drive shaft to the toolbox. He climbed higher, leaning against the underside of the flatbed. He pulled his flashlight from where it was still wedged in his back pocket and aimed its beam at the ring of keys, flipping to the one he'd used earlier.

The smoke grew thicker as he unlocked the toolbox, threw open the lid, and latched onto two ram horns as they tumbled from the sideways box along with the sacks of calaverite. He pinned the horns to his chest and pulled the heavy rifle case out of the box.

He jumped to the ground and ran from the burning truck, kicking one of the fallen sacks of calaverite ahead of him. Free of the smoke, he stopped and filled his lungs with fresh air, the sack of calaverite at his feet, the horns and case clutched in his arms.

The truck exploded behind him, the force of the blast sending him sprawling to the road. The horns and rifle case tumbled to the ground. He covered his head as flaming bits of metal fell around him.

A sudden quiet followed the explosion. Chuck rose to his knees. The light of the crackling flames, bright around the burning truck, revealed a metal culvert extending beneath the road a few yards away. Chuck ran to the drainage pipe and shoved the horns, rifle case, and sack of calaverite deep into its black mouth.

He turned to see the scrub oak at the edge of the drive beside the truck burst into flames. He watched in horror as the fire climbed from the brush into the branches of a tall, roadside ponderosa. The water-starved tree lit up like a Roman candle, the flames sweeping upward from branch to branch. The heat of the fire radiated off Chuck's face. In seconds, the flames leapt up the slope to the next ponderosa in the forest.

Chuck calculated the advancing flames' natural line of travel. From the first ponderosa to the second, and on up the forested slope, the fire would burn straight for Janelle and the girls in the cabin, less than three hundred yards away.

He sprinted into the forest, paralleling the flames. Already the blaze had a twenty-yard head start on him as it burned from tree to tree up the slope.

A sudden gust surged past him, drawn by the voracious appetite of the flames. Ponderosas exploded into fireballs one after another, sending blasts of heat rolling back past him before the breeze again rushed into the fire. Light from the exploding trees probed the forest ahead, illuminating his way.

Digging for traction in the soft forest duff, Chuck gained on the conflagration. Dodging tree trunks and leaping fallen logs, he drew even with the head of the fire, then, as he neared the cabin, drew a few yards ahead of the blaze.

He burst from the trees onto the driveway in front of the cabin just as Janelle and the girls, lit by the oncoming flames, rushed across the deck and down the front stairs. Chuck dove into the driver's seat of the pickup while Janelle hoisted the girls into the back seat and tumbled in behind them.

Chuck grabbed the keys from the console, fired up the engine, and executed a T-turn off the parking area, the rear bumper ramming the trunk of a tree with a solid
chunk
. Flaming cinders floated past the windshield as he threw the truck into drive and floored it, spinning the pickup back onto the driveway. Smoke obscured the beams of the headlights as he sped along the two-track away from the cabin and accelerated down the driveway through the forest.

Twenty-five yards ahead, an arm of the racing fire leapt the rutted drive, leaving a solid sheet of flames in its wake.

F
ORTY
-S
EVEN

Chuck gripped the steering wheel and gunned the engine, aiming for the wall of flames. The girls screamed from the back seat as the truck rushed into the blazing barrier.

For a long second, all was black and flickering orange. Then the pickup broke through the fire. Burning embers fell away from the hood as they sped down the drive, the acrid scent of wood smoke thick in the truck's cab.

The headlights lit the driveway, now free of fire, as it descended through the trees. Chuck glanced in the rearview mirror. The girls clung, whimpering, to each other.

“It's okay,” he told them. “It's all right. We're safe now.”

“What happened?” Janelle asked from her seat beside the girls, her voice shaking.

“Truck wreck. The fire took off from there. I've never seen anything move so fast.”

“Parker?”

“No. A tow-truck driver.”

“Did anybody get hurt?” Carmelita asked.

“The driver wasn't injured,” Chuck told her. Unfortunately.

Janelle looked back at the flames obscuring the driveway. “The cabin,” she moaned.

“It's gone,” Chuck said. “Or it will be.” Shame sliced through him—he had set in motion the chain of events that had led Jake to start the fire.

“My dollies!” Rosie sobbed. “My clothes!”

“Hush,
bambina
,” Janelle consoled her. “We're safe. Understand? That's all that matters.”

In his side mirror, Chuck caught sight of the flames climbing into the night sky above the forest canopy. He twisted his hands on the steering wheel, unable to convince himself that what he saw was real.

They exited the forest behind the lodge and conference center. Guests' faces plastered the lodge's rear windows. Chuck swung the truck around to the front of the lodge, where a stream of fire trucks and volunteer firefighter vehicles turned into the resort entrance and poured down the entry road to the open valley floor.

He spun the wheel, skidding away from the oncoming vehicles and speeding along the road around the grass fields toward the dormitories. He glanced over his shoulder, taking in the clogged entry road behind them. “We can't get out of here right now,” he told Janelle.

He slid to a stop in front of Raven House, hopped from the truck, and looked back the way they'd come. A broad stretch of forest behind the lodge and conference center was ablaze, flames leaping more than a hundred feet into the air. Across the fields, the screech of sirens from emergency vehicles intermingled with the roar of the flames as firefighters aligned their trucks in a defensive perimeter around the two massive log structures. Guests streamed from the lodge, past the emergency personnel, and onto the grass, most dragging suitcases or lugging duffles, many with youngsters by the hand.

Chuck swallowed, his mouth parched, reminding himself over and over that it was Jake who had flicked his cigarette beneath the wrecker, igniting the blaze.

The flames already extended well beyond the cabin. If the fire maintained its present speed, it would burn its way up and out of the broad valley that was home to the resort in less than an hour. From there, it would cross the boundary line into the national park. Not until running out of fuel upon reaching tree line high in the Mummy Range would the flames die out. A huge swath of forest—ponderosa lower down, white fir and blue spruce at higher elevations—would be incinerated.

Janelle and the girls climbed out of the truck, huddling near
Chuck as they took in the awful spectacle. He drew them close. Rosie wrapped her arms around his waist. He cupped the back of her head in his hand. “The fire can't get to us here,” he told her.

Janelle looked west, past the dormitories and dining hall, at the dark forest rising beyond. “You're sure?”

Chuck pointed to the southwest, equidistant between the cabin, by now surely burned, and the dormitories. “The valley slopes uphill away from us. The fire should keep running that way.”

“Good.” Janelle pressed her palm to Rosie's head over the back of Chuck's hand. “Let's go find your uncle,” she told the girls.

“Yeah,” Carmelita whispered, her eyes fixed on the fire. “Uncle Clarence.”

Chuck turned with Janelle and the girls to find the students filing out the front door of Raven House carrying their personal belongings. Kirina and Clarence followed the last of the students down the front steps and away from the building.

The girls ran to their uncle, who knelt and pulled them to him. He stared over their heads at the towering flames to the south.

Next door to Raven House, the international workers made their way out of Falcon House and gathered at the edge of the fields.

More guests emerged from the cabins and condos arrayed along the north side of the fields, opposite the lodge and conference center. Additional emergency vehicles flowed through the resort entrance—wildland fire trucks, police cars, and more private vehicles of volunteer firefighters, magnetic lights flashing on their roofs. The vehicles joined the defensive perimeter around the historic log lodge and conference center, closest to the flames.

Chuck counted the students as they made their way onto the green expanse of fields in front of Raven House. Eleven.

He hurried over to Clarence and Kirina as they joined the students. “We're one short. Who's missing?”

Clarence and Kirina scanned the students.

“Sheila,” Kirina said.

Chuck clenched his jaw. “Check her room, would you?”

Kirina ran back inside as a firefighter, hustling across the fields in floppy rubber boots, approached from the direction of the lodge. His large stomach pressed against his fluorescent-yellow slicker and waterproof pants. Sideburns extended below his broad-brimmed helmet.

“I'm Lieutenant Robinson,” he said between heavy breaths, coming to a stop midway between the students and the employees from Falcon House and addressing both groups. “I need all of you to remain where you are, out here on the grass where it's safe, until we can find a way to get you into town. A shelter is being arranged at the high school.”

Jeremy spoke up. “What makes you think it's safe where we're at?”

The lieutenant aimed a thick finger at the fire. “As long as it maintains its course, you'll be fine out here in the open.”

“And if it doesn't?”

“We'll deal with it then. The fire is still very active behind the lodge. We're concentrating our resources there right now.”

“Yeah, but—” Jeremy began.

The firefighter held up a hand. “I have to keep moving.” He set off toward the resort guests grouped at the north end of the fields.

Chuck turned to the students. “You heard him,” he said, aware that the employees from Falcon House, huddled twenty yards away, were listening as well. “We're okay out here in the fields.”

“For now,” Jeremy said, prompting several students to cast apprehensive glances at the flames rising to the south. Smoke
billowed into the sky above the fire, obscuring the stars.