“One. Two. Three!”
Under you go, back into the lake. You pull yourself through the dark water as best you can with your clothes on. You’re not sure what you’re going to find on the other side, but still, you come up, preparing for fire and brimstone. Instead, what you find is the calm of utter devastation. The wind has stopped. The fire is gone. And everything around you has either been scorched beyond recognition or completely devoured. It’s a barren, black landscape of burnt matchstick-trees and volcanic glowing coals. Diana comes up next and stares in awe at the depleted land around you. She’s speechless. It’s shocking that you’re alive.
“Let’s go,” you say.
You both move sluggishly toward a large rock sticking out from the bank. You don’t think about whether you can make it; you just have to. So you propel yourself another fifty feet by way of a glorified dog paddle, barely staying afloat. But when you get to the wet rock, whatever fuel you have left disappears, and you have to inch yourself onto it with your elbows like a wounded soldier. Your whole body is convulsing with shivers. Diana’s is too. You know you can’t go to sleep, but that’s what your body is telling you to do. It’s only when you hear the quiet voice in the distance that you sit up straight.
“Is anybody there?!”
FORTY-FOUR
Your heart starts hammering.
“OVER HERE!” screams Diana.
She gets to her feet first, but neither of you can see anyone. There’s still a thick pall of smoke in the air, and you can’t even find the glow of flames farther to the north. The voice sounded male, but it was hard to tell whose it was. You walk across the burnt forest, the ground still sizzling and popping beneath your feet. The world around you looks so devoid of life and color, it feels like an unsettled planet, or maybe some kind of purgatory where you might linger for centuries awaiting your fate.
“TROY!” Diana yells. “WILL! FRAN!”
There’s no answer this time, and you wonder if you actually hallucinated the voice you heard. The sound of Diana’s chattering teeth is all you can hear, along with the low whistle of some whirring bugs who seem attracted to the burnt wood. A small fire burns what remains of the grass beneath your soggy boots.
The cold feels so deep in your body, you’re not sure how you’ll ever be warm again. But you know the first step is getting out of your freezing, wet clothes. As you walk, you start to peel them off, and Diana does the same. The air is warmer from the fire, but not warm enough to save you on its own. By the time you’re both inyour underwear and boots, you know you’re going to have to do something more urgent or you won’t be able to go on.
“GUYS!” yells Diana into the smoke. “WHERE ARE YOU?!”
No response again.
“Diana,” you say through hiccuping breaths. “We need to get warm or we’re not going to make it.”
She kicks at the thin stump of a tree, and it shatters into uncountable pieces.
“I know,” she says through chattering teeth. “But there’s not much left to burn.”
She’s right; even though the fire moved through quickly, all the brush has been burned down to stubs and the trees are husks of what they used to be. As you make your way around the lake, searching for something that hasn’t been completely swallowed, you eventually stumble upon a smoldering log, too big to burn in one go. You put your hands over it and find it still warm.
“Here,” you say. “Help me with this. Maybe we can…”
You start kicking at it, and she joins in until the log rolls over. Then you begin to blow on the side that’s still red. You don’t have a lot of excess oxygen, but you use what you can spare until finally, a small flame comes to life in a single burst.
“I can’t believe we’re trying to create more fire,” says Diana.
You keep blowing, and eventually the log catches in earnest, and then you get as close to it as you possibly can without lighting yourself on fire. Diana edges closer as well. The heat is not enough, but it’s something. You huddle together around the small fire, trying to get some life back into your extremities. Your feet and hands are numb, and you don’t know if you’ll ever be able to feel them again.
You lay out your clothes where they’ll dry, then you sit absolutely still, letting your body shiver until it finally starts to subside. You don’t black out, but you’re not sure if it’s two minutes or two hours before the two of you can finally stand again. Your legs are tingling and painful when you do, but you have more sensation in them. Your compulsive shaking has faded too, but your body feels like it’s been pricked with a thousand needles.
“The voice sounded like it was coming from this way,” says Diana.
You put on your pants, which are now just a little damp, and follow her along the charred shore of the lake, swiping smoke out of your path with an outstretched arm. Once you’ve built up enough lung stamina, you scream again:
“HEYYYYYY!”
And this time, the response is a little closer.
“Over here!”
The words cut through the smoke and darkness, and you’re able to follow the sound, more or less. Finally, you come to a crescent of sandy shore and you see two bodies standing absolutely still. Whatever happiness you feel at the sight of them is undercut by your immediate realization that somebody is missing. Then you see that they’re looking down.
“He’s been burned,” says Will. “Really bad. And he’s not conscious.”
