16. Ash
ASH
I stay up way too late pretending my laptop can outpace reality, but no magic spreadsheet can hold off the future waiting back home.
It comes into the shadows once Kael’s asleep: making less money, grinding years longer, learning a new job, transitioning my old team, telling my parents, answering questions…
Anxiety keeps handing out third and fourth winds, and the bill comes due only when I finally crash.
I jolt awake at the banging.
The air’s wrong. Heat soaks the room. Sweat glues my shirt to my skin. My eyes sting when I open them, and it’s like I’m looking through a dirty lens. Light leaks through the boarded windows, a sickly orange haloed in smoke.
Kael bolts upright on the couch, blinking. The air tastes acrid, and no amount of wishful thinking can blame it on the long-cold furnace.
My phone is dead, which means no alarm and no way for Jenny to reach us.
I know, with sickening certainty, that this is my fault.
“ASH? KAEL?” A muffled voice shouts from outside.
“Hello! We’re here!” Kael yells back, raising his voice over a low, distant roar I recognize even though I’ve never heard it before. He scrambles to his feet, turning to me with a relieved grin. “We’re saved!”
No we’re not.
“In here!” I shout.
“Get out of there, boys!” a second voice, a woman’s, calls out.
I yank my dead phone’s cord from the still-glowing laptop, shove both into my backpack, and sling it over one shoulder.
Kael is fussing with his sleeve without realizing we don’t have time, and I grab his arm to haul him toward the pried-open doorway. He stumbles, still half asleep, sweatshirt riding up over his waist.
A woman appears in the gap of a doorway with a towel pressed to her face.
“Walt!” she coughs. “’Round back! In here!”
“Rocky!” Kael tears his hand from mine and spins back toward the interior.
“Kael, no—”
The woman clamps a hand around my elbow and yanks me outside.
Smoke claws straight down my throat. The air is a wall of heat, one solid, pressurized blast pushing at us from the tree line.
She shoves her damp, soot-stained towel over my mouth and nose, cool for a single breath, still yelling for Kael.
The pines that ring the clearing are on fire.
Our tree watchmen are going up one by one, flames racing from crown to crown, leaping and licking inward toward the Inskip Inn at the center.
Even through the towel, the smell of burning pine overwhelms everything.
Heat radiates up through the packed dirt into my shoes.
Kael staggers toward us out of the doorway.
As soon as he hits the threshold, the smoke folds him double in a coughing fit.
I throw an arm around his shoulders, haul him close, and press the towel hard over his mouth.
His glasses jab my cheek. For half a breath we’re shoulder to shoulder before he yanks the towel for himself.
An older man rounds the corner, his thick snow-white beard and deep-set wrinkles bracketing his frown. He grabs us by the arms.
“Let’s go!” he bellows, voice shredded, neck veins standing out beneath his own towel.
Guilt gnaws at me as Kael stares, stunned, at the encroaching wall of flame. He tries to hand the towel back to the woman, but she pushes it at his face, shaking her head.
“Nearly got yourselves killed,” the man growls. “Damn fools.”
“I know,” I say. “I’m sorry. I—”
“Walt,” the woman cuts in, firm. “Time an’ a place.”
The woman’s name is stitched over her pocket: Sharon.
Walt grumbles and hauls us into a full sprint toward a bright red, old pickup at the edge of the clearing. There’s no room in the cab for four. He throws a hand toward the tool-cluttered bed.
We scramble up, Kael and I dropping in beside an assortment of chains, tarps, and a chainsaw. Sharon slides behind the wheel, Walt into the passenger seat, and both front windows crank down.
“Hang on!” she yells.
The truck fishtails, spitting dirt that snuffs a few glowing embers, then finds grip and lurches forward.
I brace in the bed, fingers hooked over the rim, watching the orange sky fill with smoke. A helicopter is somewhere overhead. Now that we’re farther from the inn I can hear the rotors, but the air’s too thick to see it.
The Inskip disappears behind us, and with it goes the illusion that leaving the building means we’re safe. Fire is licking along the roadside now, crawling through underbrush.
We’re nowhere near out of this. We might not make it out.
Kael’s thigh is pressed to mine, our shoulders slamming together with every rut in the road. I feel his breath on my cheek when he turns to look at me, and when our eyes lock, I see his fear, trust, and hope, all edging against confusion about how we got here.
“My alarm!” I shout over the wind. “My phone died! I used it to charge my laptop and forgot to switch it back!”
His eyes go wide, his mouth opening to say something when the truck fishtails harder and slams us against the cab as we skid to a stop.
“Oh dear God,” Sharon breathes from the front.
Kael surges to his feet, one hand over his mouth, eyes fixed on the obstacle ahead.
A tree has fallen across the road.
Flames roar on one side, and the slope’s too forested on the other. The heat from the burning trunks is nothing like it was inside the inn, but it’s still a blast furnace from this distance.
“Walt, get the chainsaw,” Sharon orders. “Walt?” When he doesn’t answer, she yanks her door open. “Walt!” she cries, leaning across the seat as his head lolls. “Walt, dammit—don’t you dare.” Sweat beads on her forehead when she looks up at us. “Boys! Chainsaw.”
Kael vaults out of the bed first. Sharon throws herself at the tree trunk. She’s barely taller than its diameter, wading through half-broken branches to shove with everything she’s got. The tree doesn’t budge.
I wrestle the chainsaw out of the bed. It’s heavier than it looked, the weight dragging at my arms as I lug it to Walt’s side and pull open his door.
He’s upright in the passenger seat, eyes open but unfocused, breath shallow and too fast. I jostle his shoulder and get no response.
“Bring it here!” Sharon calls.
I stagger back to the tree and set the saw down between us. It thuds under its own weight.
“Is he okay?” I ask.
“We get out of here, he will be.” Sharon jerks her chin at the saw. “Know how to run that?”
My hope stutters. Before I can admit I don’t, Kael steps forward. He wraps his hands around the handle, bare forearms flexing, with his face set.
“Ever used one?” Sharon asks.
“Nope,” he says, planting a shoe on the base to steady it.
I open my mouth to tell him you don’t kick it, but he’s already grabbed a pull cord I hadn’t even seen.
The engine sputters, coughs, and then roars to life.