But the sound.Jesus, the sound.Fires roar andhowlas they make their own wind systems, and this one sounds like demons shrieking out of hell.
“I’m gonna need you to stand,” I tell Porter.
“You can’t get both of us down,” he says, his teeth clenched tightly.Sweat is running off his face and onto the rock below his head, and I can see every vein in his forehead standing out.
I kneel on my good knee next to him and offer one hand.
“Casden,go.That’s a direct order,” he says.It’s a last resort and he knows it, sayingdirect orderlike it’ll trigger some latent military switch in my brain and I’ll suddenly just leave him there.
Instead, I laugh.
“Fuck orders,” I tell him.“I don’t leave men behind.”
Reluctantly, he takes my hand.I pull him into a sitting position, and then he uses my knee to push himself up on his good leg until we’re both standing.He’s unsteady, but he’s still got his pack.
“This is gonna hurt,” I say, bending at the waist.
“No shit,” he mutters, but he still gasps when I drape him over my shoulders and stand.
Fucking hell, he’s heavy, but there’s so much adrenaline in my system right now that it doesn’t matter.I think I could lift a car if I needed to.
I pick my way down the rock slope slowly, carefully, smoke and rain blowing over us, the fire raging nearby.My eyes sting and my lungs already hurt, but I keep fucking moving.
I remember hauling Clementine up the stairs to the fire lookout.She was a lot lighter.
Hunter, I like your muscles,I think, and in the smoke and the rain and the heat, I smile.
Next to me there’s a crackle, and then Porter’s talking quietly and urgently into his radio.He doesn’t mention that he’s on my back, just that we’ve got no choice but to deploy.
The radio goes quiet.
“Godspeed,” the man’s voice on the other end says.
When we reach the gravel fan at the bottom of the slide, it’s almost unbearably hot, wind whipping against my clothes and face.I put Porter down as gently as I can, and he balances on his good leg and tears into his pack, bringing out the silver tent.
I’m so utterly spent that I’m shaking as I get my pack off.Porter shouts something but I can’t hear him over the roar and thehowlof the fire, the hot wind pushing us both against the rock wall.I swear I can almost feel my skin brighten and blister in the heat, but I don’t stop.I don’t even look at the fire.
I grab my shelter and shake out the long half-cylinder.Porter does the same, leaning against the rock wall, unsteady on one leg, and I glance at the fire one last time, heat and smoke rolling toward us.An ember lands on the sleeve of my jacket and goes out, singeing it.
Then, suddenly, everything seems very matter-of-fact, like there’s no more point in being afraid because I’ve got only one option left, and this is it.
“Get in,” Porter shouts, and I pull the shelter over myself.I lie face-down on the gravel, my hands and feet anchoring it to the ground as best I can, and I press my face into the rocks, getting as low as I can.
Now the fire is even closer, closer than I’ve ever been to a fire.It sounds like there’s a freight train bearing down on me, and I do the last thing I learned in training.
I turn my radio off, just in case, and now I’m alone in this flimsy tube, holding it down as tightly as I can.Superheated air and smoke rushes through the gaps, no matter how small I try to make them, and the temperature is already sweltering, my skin starting to feel like it’s on fire.
I press my face into the gravel harder and try to breathe, but even the stone below me is hot.
I shift, trying to get a better angle, and I feel the lump in my pocket.Clementine’s rock, from the waterfall.I remember tossing her into the ice-cold water, her stretched out naked on that rock, and I grab the handles on my shelter and I press them down into the earth as hard as I can.
ChapterThirty-Three
Clementine
I lookat the radio on the table, everyone standing around it.There’s a staticky, hard-to-understand voice coming out of it.He’s talking to Mike and Mike is talking back, but all I know is I heard the wordshave to deployand everyone around the table went silent, even Kim.
Hunter’s there, and he has to deploy, and I don’t even know what that fuckingmeansbut I can tell it’s very, very bad and the gym feels like it’s flickering in and out of reality.
