“Do what you want,” Danny said. “Go. But”-a note of desperation entered his voice-“please don’t go yet. A coupla minutes, okay? That’s all we need. Okay?”
Wish said nothing.
“The guy is going to come down. It’s a matter of seconds! I need this!” Danny said. “We both do!”
A wavering glow advanced down the mountain toward them.
“Three minutes,” Wish said.
Two deer burst out of the bush, making Wish’s heart stop, and pounded past them along the trail. “It’s moving fast,” Wish said. There were people down below. “Danny.”
“What?”
“We could climb down to the street and catch him at his car, if it’s really down there. Shoot him there.”
“One hundred thousand dollars,” Danny said. “One hundred thousand buckaroos. Remember why we’re here. Worth some risk, right? This way, we can’t miss.” He reached into his shirt pocket and popped a handful of barbecued sunflower seeds into his mouth. Danny ate when he was nervous: jelly beans, candy, seeds. “No more hitting up the family for five bucks to go to town. No more sleeping on the couch.”
“Danny-feel that heat! Take a look up there. It’s like-a wave of fire coming down. It’s almost on top of us.” Wish tried to compress his dread into reasonable-sounding words.
“Now, you listen, Wishywashy. You stay here until I say go. You owe me this-”
Old business at a time like this. Just like Danny to resort to emotional blackmail or anything else that might work to get what he wanted. “We have to warn those people below.”
“Keep down,” Danny ordered, voice urgent. Lifting his head slowly above the slab of rock he froze, nose pointing, eyes big.
His own eyes burning and straining, Wish straightened and peered up the trail. How could Danny see anything through that dust and smoke?
By now the fire had moved close enough for them to feel the whomps as it jumped from tree to tree, setting each one off. Leaves flared red like blue match tops side by side in a box. Branches cracked. Trees tottered and collapsed. Hot wind roared.
Wish had never been so frightened. Shaking behind Danny, he wished to God he had stayed home when Danny came by with this crazy idea, he wished he had listened to his mother, he wished he had stayed back in Tahoe, where it was safe.
A line of trees exploded. Against the light of their dying, Wish thought he saw a figure standing on the curve of the trail. Was that someone watching the fire?
“Hey!” Danny pointed. “See that over there?”
“You see somebody?” Wish asked.
“There he is! That’s him!”
“Where?” Wish asked, untangling his camera. “Point. I can’t see anything.”
“There!”
Wish flipped a button, turning his camera on. He raised it. Dust and flying cinders blew into his eyes. He wasted a second wiping the lens. Putting an eye to the lens he saw nothing but liquid fire coming his way. Blinded by the intensity of the blaze, he pressed the telephoto button, aimed, and shot toward the burning trees. He shot as many times in as many directions as he could.
Out of memory to shoot any more photos, he popped out the memory card and pushed it into his pocket and reloaded, circling the site again. “He’s gone, Danny. Oh, man. I’m sorry. I can’t see. I don’t…”
But Danny was up, stomping around in the rocks, black eyes burning as orange as the flames. Smoke billowed white clouds across the clearing. He coughed. “Big surprise! You missed him!”
Wish swung into a wide arc, snapping pictures, flashing ugly hard white futilely into the hellish glow of the woods on fire.
“See him? See him now? No, of course not! Because you missed him! All right, we’ll catch up with him.”
Wish grabbed for Danny’s arm. “This is the end, Danny,” he said. “It’s over!”
“The end?” Danny stood still as a totem, wrathful, sweating, his eyes narrow against the smoke.
“We’ll catch him some other time. We’ll die if we don’t get out of here!” Wish pulled at him. Danny didn’t budge. “Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!”
“But it’s not done yet. It’s not over yet. We’ll catch up with him. He’s stupid, he saw us and he’s hiding somewhere.”
“I’m going, and you’re going with me!”
Orange flames flowed like lava above them, toward them, inexorable. They would both burn if they didn’t leave instantly, and finally even Danny seemed to realize that. They took off through the woods, away from treetops that blazed and blew like palms in a tropical sunset.
Wish, running behind Danny, peeled off his jacket and T-shirt, and wrapped them around his waist. At some point he noticed he’d dropped the camera.
When he straightened up, Danny was gone, and what was worse, what was so much worse, was that he was surrounded by a ring of flame higher than the highest tree. “Danny!” he yelled, choking on smoke. Had he run off to catch the guy on his own? The woods, the wind, the inferno, swallowed his words. The hillside roared its death cries. How had the fire moved so fast?
Now, the trail forgotten, he ran blindly downward. He scraped past branches, stumbling over fallen trees, screaming and chittering like the jackrabbits and deer and chipmunks, running with them, unable to see through the smoke and past the dense band of heat, a million candles blazing all around him. The sky was on fire. He ran toward… what? The road? Death?
He fell. Down in the dirt, still ahead of the roaring wind and fire, he tried to think. He called again, gasping for air. He stood up on the strong legs that had hiked so many Sierra trails with Danny, and found them wobbly. Should he crawl, stay low? He didn’t know. He felt too clumsy to run and too panicky to think.
When his head came up, he heard a shout. And there he was, Danny, climbing up through the trees, wheezing, calling to him, reaching out his big knobby hand.
“You-where did you-!”
“Take it easy,” said Danny. “Follow me.” He pulled Wish forward.
Wish held back.
“Calm down. Follow me.”
“There’s fire over there, actual flames, see that? And this smoke. I can barely see you. I can’t breathe!”
“Trust me, Willis. I’ve got a plan.” For a moment the smoke cleared and Wish saw Danny at his most crazed. Holding arms with singed hair over their foreheads against the burning tree limbs, they moved back out onto the trail. No need for the flashlight anymore-Wish had dropped it in the rocks anyway. They rushed downward, sliding, sweating, panting, reckless, hell-bent toward the road.
“Don’t stop,” Danny commanded when Wish slowed.
“Just one second-can’t breathe-”
“Run or it’ll catch us. We’re almost back to the road-”
“I don’t see-any-freaking-road-” Each word a seared, heaving breath-
Death flew low over their heads in a ragged blazing cloak, setting fires wherever it touched down. They ducked. “Another hundred feet,” Danny said. “Follow me.” And Danny walked through trees, wiggling his fingers. “We got it made now, ol’ buddy, ol’ pal. Follow Danny, now.” Danny moved on ahead, a tall half-lit figure.
Wish took one stumbling step toward him.
And saw several things. Danny, disappearing into the white soup. A wall of fire rearing up like a tsunami in front, bigger than Wish, ready to take him down.
And then two blackened hands reaching out from behind the tree trunk right next to him, holding up a big sharp rock with white stipples and granite lines. He saw the fingers raise it up. He saw the rock crash down toward him.
Wish lurched to one side. He howled, but the noise he made got lost in the belligerent, ripping, tearing fire. Losing his balance, he toppled to the ground.
PART ONE
1
N INA REILLY WIPED HER GOGGLES AND watched Paul swim. He stroked smoothly, kicking underwater, moving up and down the lane without stopping, like a pacing porpoise. He wore his yellow snorkel and goggles, and she could hear his lungs laboring when he came close.
Enjoying the pattern of the water on the ceiling of the condo-association pool, she returned to backstroking in another lane. Pull hard back with the arms, keep the legs stiff, and windmill that water. The two of them were going nowhere, but it felt like lovemaking, the cool slap of the water he churned up, the water rippling back to him, a water bed without the plastic.
She touched the wall. He turned at the far end. As he swam down the lane she had the strangest feeling about him, as if the pale watery creature before her solidified before her eyes. Hanging on to the rough concrete wall of the pool, she thought, he might swim toward me with that silly yellow snorkel for the rest of my life. How many years do I have left? Forty years, if I get lucky? She was in her mid-thirties, Paul was over forty. How long did they have? A lifetime? A summer?
Well, that’s what I came down here to find out, she said to herself.
He hit the wall and came up grinning, goggles fogged up. “Done?” he said. Then, “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.”
“Your face says different.”
“I’m trying to see the future.”
“What do you see?” He pulled himself over until his face was inches from hers, his hazel eyes reddened by the chlorine, the lashes beaded, the water making rivulets along his nose, red lines across his forehead and cheeks from the goggles.
“You.”
