The heat from the fire had veiled the air in an elemental static that distorted vision. They ran through the only visible break and climbed over the fence as fast as they could, unable to make out whatever it was Ciarra was screaming. When the cold began to offer solace, Aria knew that she had run far enough to ensure that she could stay beyond the span of the flames. She turned back around.
Aria’s imagination was plagued by worst-case scenarios. She tried to decipher who was and who wasn’t OK through the turbulent screen of fire. Anthony was pouring his last two bottles of water onto a group of flames that were nipping at the edges of his tarp. It was an exercise in futility. He tried to untie the ropes that affixed it to the tree before giving up his efforts and running toward them. Wolf, who had woken up Robert just in time, was yanking the older man to safety. Robert was visibly in a daze. Already mauled by age, he was lethargic and still half asleep.
It took them all a minute to comb through the dizzy collage of disbelief in order to accept what was occurring. Luke ran to what tents and cars that he could, checking to see if anyone was still in them before he couldn’t access them anymore. Palin’s crazed barking cried out above it all. She was barking in the direction of Ciarra, who was manically squeezing the liquid from a small pile of white jugs of lighter fluid before throwing them toward the fire. “I know one of you fuckers did it … Come out and show yourself!” she screamed, before throwing another one. “I know you’re all fucking narcs.”
The holocaust of her fury was painted across the car lot as the fire that was decimating all of it. From the spaghetti-like trails that the flames followed, Aria could see that while they had been sleeping, Ciarra had poured lighter fluid in a deranged maze across the expanse of the lot.
Terrified that Mike had been killed by Ciarra’s rage, Aria scanned for him frantically until she found his outline. He was standing just outside the fence behind his tent, watching it burn to the ground. He did not intervene in the destruction. He watched everything he had to his name evaporate into smoke and ash, as if he deserved it. His arms were folded in defeat. He made no attempt to respond to Ciarra, who continued screaming insults and fueling the fire until there was no more lighter fluid left. Watching her tantrum, Mike thought about how much Ciarra was just like her mother. From the years he had been married to her, Mike had learned that confronting either of them once they had tipped over the edge like this would only add fuel to the fire.
Ciarra abandoned the scene before a fire truck arrived but only made it a few blocks before she was arrested. Aria, Taylor and Anthony eventually ventured around the perimeter of the chain-link fence to reunite with Luke, Robert, Wolf, Mike and Darren. But once they did, they barely talked. Instead, they all stood in the darkness just beyond the reach of the light being discharged by the fire; watching the firemen scamper around the lot, watching everything turn black. There was nothing to be done.
The fire that had taken everything was a flicker compared to the forest fire of guilt that Aria felt, knowing that in a way, because she had been the one to report Ciarra, she was the one to blame for all this. The people standing next to her were the people in the world who were already the most powerless and already the poorest. Now, because of her decision, the only thing they had was their lives and whatever items they could grab before running.
Darren was the one who anguished her the most. Because of his gruff, military demeanor, before tonight Aria had not imagined that he could cry. But Darren was crying. He stood in front of the rest of them, chaotically pacing back and forth. Each time he stopped, it seemed like he might run straight into the flames toward his camper. Each time he stopped, he re-evaluated the reality of his powerlessness to save his things. What shard of safety he possessed had been taken from him. The only relationships he had, which were with his things, were lost. Since he was a hoarder, it was a thousand times worse for him than it was for the rest of them.
Eventually, he went down on his knees and elbows in the dirt. He held his head with his hands and started rocking back and forth. Except for Palin, who by alerting them had most likely saved all of their lives, no one went to comfort Darren. They felt as powerless to comfort him as they felt about the fire. He began to hyperventilate and pull sticks and handfuls of soil toward himself and hug them as a barren replacement for the things that he had lost. The sight of him doing it made Aria start to cry.
With nowhere to be, once the ground had given way to ash and only the heat of what happened remained, they divided up. Luke, Wolf and Anthony took Darren deeper into nature to spend what was left of the night there. Robert and Mike started walking toward the city. But they didn’t sleep that night. Instead, they found a gas station, sat on one of the picnic tables outside and spent the night trying to help each other make sense of what had happened.
Taylor’s resistance to staying with Dan had been cremated along with the rest of his things. He took the fire as a sign from God that he was meant to move in with Dan, so he called him on the
