Keeping track of distance is proving impossible too. With nothing but the sound of sharp stones grating against dirt where the terrain has been cut away, my mind swirls with the most outlandish possibilities.
What if they’re trapped?
What if they’re injured?
What if we can’t get to them?
We smell it before we see it, the air filling with thick smoke. We both climb faster, closing in on the cloud of billowing gray, and then… my heart plummets in my chest.
Fire. So much fire. It forms a giant arc around a channel of trees.
“I can’t see them from here!” I scream as I stumble closer. Trip and fall on a jagged rock. It pierces my left hand, and my palm stings as a sticky substance oozes from my skin. It’s so hot, so intense as I close in, but I can’t tear my eyes away from the orange barrier that’s keeping me from them.
Where’s the opening?
My dad’s in front of me, blocking the sea of orange I’m ready to fight. I think I hear “Hailey,stop!” but my feet, my hands, my entire body scream and pound against him, saying:Don’t you dare! Don’t ever stop until they’re safe from this!
He curses when he touches the spot his radio used to be. “We need a water drop.”
I dodge around his body. I can’t wait for him to figure out what to do next, and I refuse to believe that it’s too late. Therehasto be another way in.
I dive back down the hillside, and my dad catches my hand. I drag him with me. We’re both sliding now. He’s hollering something else, but the crackle and hiss are covering up whatever it is until…
Over there. I make out what he’s trying to communicate from the point of his finger.
A hot pink ribbon flutters from a tree branch. There’s a small patch of soil the size of a pillow beneath it.
As fast as our legs carry us, tripping over sticks and sage, we run for it.
Where the black line ends.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
REED
Dean cranes his neck as far as his pinned body will allow. His eyes travel to where mine gape at the tip of the hot tree. Rushing in a raging arc toward our escape route, flames eat up what’s left of the unburned fuel.
This is not happening.
If I leave him here, he’ll die. And if I stay, I’ll die with him. With bleak options I try again, refusing to give up. I won’t let this tree stand between me and my friend.
I move farther up the trunk where it’s narrower and heave on the stock with no success.
Dean’s head lolls to the side, his eyes starting to lose focus again, and I rush back over to him.
“No, no, no. You’ve got to stay awake.”
I watch the flames creep closer and climb the unfallen trees to our right as I scream toward the sky: “I can do this!”
An ember shower rains down over our heads, dropping hot ash onto our helmets and beards. It singes the tips of our hair to burnt black crisps.
A strangled something falls from Dean's lips. It could have been a whisper, a scream. I can’t tell when all it sounds like isthe sputtering and sizzling of fire so close I can feel the hair on my arms wilting under the heat.
Minutes. That’s all I have left before we’re nothing but ash.
I make out the syllables of my name. He’s chanting, “Morgan. Morgan. Morgan.”
I can save you, I mouth back.
