Smoke Season

CHAPTER 27

Mel had never seen Carbon in such chaos. Even the old highway, usually underutilized as a bypass for the new interstate, was choked with oncoming cars. Vehicles made use of both lanes, north and south, in their exodus, and Lewis veered to the shoulder of the road and eased to a crawl, churning up dust along with the smoke.

“They’re gonna kill me,” the boy they’d picked up at the grow kept repeating as cars honked, people yelled, and arms flung out of windows, sometimes to wave others forward in an act of cooperation but more often in a show of anger or frustration as motorists cut in front of one another in an attempt to merge.

“I would worry more about that , if I were you,” Lewis said, pointing at the billowing smoke toward the north, and at the sight, Mel tapped down a rise of bile in her throat. What did this second fire mean for Sam’s place, a.k.a. her daughters’ current sanctuary?

We’ll know when we know, she told herself in a desperate mantra. First, though, they had to get back to Carbon. Get there, get there, get there. She leaned forward against the dash, trying to see past the ash raining down, as if thrusting herself forward could urge their vehicle faster.

Lewis’s knuckles were white on the wheel. “You will be helping me record a report,” he informed the boy tightly, who hugged his scrawny knees to his chest, hunched between Mel and True. “And you’ll be talking to the DEA.”

“They’ll kill me,” he repeated. Mel wasn’t sure if he meant the Feds or Fallows, but he looked like he might puke, so probably the latter.

“We’ll get you somewhere safe,” Lewis told him, his mouth set in a grim line, “and go from there.”

But the closer they got to town, the closer they got to the fires, and the worse the congestion and panic became. Several cars were now driving on the soft shoulder like Lewis, careening in their direction in a confusing game of chicken.

“Watch out!” True yelled as Lewis slammed on the brakes to avoid hitting a deer leaping out in front of the vehicle, the animal intent on its own exodus. Mel glimpsed a raccoon running parallel to the road, loping in pace with the cars, a sight she’d never seen in daylight. Dogs barked, children cried, and people shouted.

“This is insane,” True said as a delivery truck laid on its horn and just wouldn’t stop. “Do they really think anyone can go any faster?”

But Mel only heard faster . She nodded urgently. Yes. Faster. Faster, faster, faster. Her family depended on it. With a tiny register of surprise, Mel realized this title didn’t only mean her children. She needed to lay eyes on Sam, too.

At the Carbon city limits sign, several additional roads merged, and cars became bumper-to-bumper. One Carbon Rural truck had been haphazardly parked in the turnout by the sign, lights and siren going. Two firefighters attempted to direct traffic through the dense smoke. Mel didn’t recognize either of them in their full jumpsuits and N95s, but Lewis hit the brakes.

“Janet!” he called out the window, and one of the firefighters turned toward them, her expression glassy. “What’s the latest status?” he asked her. “Where’s this new fire burning?”

Janet shook her head and pointed to her ear, indicating that she couldn’t hear the question.

“Just ... report to White and Hernandez at the school,” she said, “if you can. They’re evacuating it.”

“The school?” Lewis shouted. “We thought that was the evacuation site!”

Why were they quibbling over evac sites? Mel shook Lewis’s shoulder. “We have to go directly up Highline!”

But Janet shook her head fervently before hopping out of the way of a rogue Chevy pickup, and when Lewis hit the gas, navigating another block past the Quik Save, Mel understood why: the Flatiron Fire was a wall of flame directly across the road, fanning east.

The heat of it hit Mel’s skin even through the truck cab. Next to her, True’s face had gone white, and their Fallows grow passenger cried out and attempted to yank his door open; Lewis hit the child-lock button just in time.

“Knock it off!”

Where was the kid planning to go, anyway? People still trying to escape this block had fully panicked; abandoned cars had been left directly in the roadway, their inhabitants fleeing on foot, their vehicles immediately becoming obstacles to others. Horns continued to blare as people attempted insane maneuvers to get around the abandoned vehicles, bumping over curbs and onto sidewalks. More animals ran wild here in town: dogs clawing their way out of opened and abandoned crates, cats dashing between cars, more raccoons coexisting with the domestic pets, all driven to flee.

A half dozen additional fire rigs faced off with the wall of fire on the east side of town, where the combined efforts of multiple agencies seemed to be making slow but steady progress. Still, the fire had completely swallowed the East Carbon Apartments, and Happy Daze mobile-home park appeared to be next. Teams of hand crews dashed back and forth between vehicles, grabbing gear and assisting with hoses. It was terrifying to see the coveted privatized crews, so highly trained in wildland fighting, now scrambling to be of any use in the urban setting.

Lewis swung a left at the next intersection, his destination clearly Carbon High, and Mel let out a sharp yell of disapproval. “What about Highline?”

“You heard Janet,” he snapped back, his jaw set, his face dripping sweat.

“Lewis! Please!” She made a mad grab for the wheel.

True pulled Mel back from trying to overpower him in her panic. “The girls are probably already there, at the school,” she shouted. “We should go there first.”

Mel shook off her arm. Because what if they weren’t?

They crossed the bridge over the Outlaw, and she spotted the River Eddy through the smoke, its usual picturesque backdrop with the river below now a hellscape in varying shades of angry red.

At Carbon High, chaos reigned. It seemed no one knew whether to stay or go. Multiple fire vehicles staged, at the ready to load passengers. Refugees from the fire who had either abandoned or lost their cars queued in the parking lot, adding to the fray. Lewis struggled to find a place to pull off the road, but Mel flung herself out of the truck before he’d even come to a complete stop.

“Astor! Annie!”

She and True wove between shell-shocked citizens and fully suited-up firefighters, but within minutes, she knew her family wasn’t among the refugees. “True! 7They’re not here!”

“Then we’re going to them!”

Back at the truck, however, Lewis shook his head emphatically. “I won’t do it, Mel. I can’t abandon my crew, and neither can you.” The word again echoed between them, despite being unsaid.

“Lewis! This is my family ! My girls! What if it was Susan or Jacob?”

“Dammit!” he cursed, kicking at the tires in frustration and fear. Tears mixed with the sweat that dripped from his face. He took a deep, bracing breath, coughed up a storm, and then very deliberately hefted the bags of evidence to his shoulder and laid the keys on the bench seat. “Junior here and I are going to check in with White,” he said, a hitch in his voice as he nodded in the direction of the assembled fire engines. A command tent had been hastily erected in their midst. “We’ll only be gone a minute.”

He yanked the kid out of the cab and, turning his back to Mel and True, walked him resolutely toward the fray. The second they’d disappeared into the crowd, True and Mel both pounced on the keys as one. True snagged them first, and had already slid into the driver’s seat and hit the gas by the time Mel slammed shut the passenger-side door.

True fought her way toward Highline at a reckless pace. Past the sheriff’s department personnel stationed at the junction, ineffectively barring traffic. Past the houses along the lower end of the road. Even with the windshield wipers going a mile a minute, she could barely see a thing, ash and sparks raining down on the glass as she took the turns by memory, or instinct, or something in between.

Could this fire-department vehicle even make the drive? Could anything less than a wildland engine at this point? True cast a sidelong glance at Mel, but if she was wondering the same thing, she wasn’t voicing her concerns, her mouth moving in an endless whispered mantra of Go, go, go.

She hit a pothole head-on, and the truck lurched. “Shit. Sorry.” She gripped the wheel tighter, reestablishing them on the road. She tried to make out the status of the houses they passed along the lower part of Highline, trying to gauge from them how Sam’s might be faring; were they smoldering? Burning outright? Escaping the worst of the carnage? But visibility was at about two feet, max, so she strained to see forward instead. Only forward. It was the only way she’d get to Sam and the kids with herself, this vehicle, and Mel all in one piece.

A sudden impact to the back side of the truck sent them abruptly skidding again. True’s seat belt bit into her shoulder as she was thrown forward.

“True!” Mel yelled, bracing an arm against the dash.

“Sorry! I don’t know what that was.” Had they hit something? God, some one ? True strained to see behind her in the rearview mirror and thought she could make out two orbs ... headlights milky in the smoke. Another vehicle?

“Is it Lewis?” Mel shouted, twisting in her seat for a better look. “Rogue Rural?”

But this vehicle was so close, so— bam!

Another impact, this one accompanied by the unmistakable sound of crunching metal and glass. Someone had crashed into them from behind. True laid on the horn. Could they not see their truck through the smoke?

“They’re coming up alongside us!” Mel yelled.

True veered left, trying in vain to avoid a third impact, which sent the truck into a tight tailspin. The fourth spun them into a doughnut pattern, the resulting cloud of smoke, dust, and ash leaving them blinded. True had the impulsive thought that they’d traded one natural disaster for another, entering inexplicably into the eye of a tornado. “What the fuck!”

The other vehicle had slammed on their brakes and now blocked Highline at a perpendicular angle. Several figures piled out of the rig as True threw the truck into reverse.

“Can you get around them?” Mel shouted, but no, she couldn’t. She couldn’t even maneuver around one of them ... and at least five men now blocked the road. Who? Why? And then the weak beam of their headlights finally illuminated the vehicle that had slammed into them, and the adrenaline tightened into a leaden ball of fear in True’s gut. The familiar Fallows, Inc. wrap peeling on the driver’s-side door told them all they needed to know.

“Mel. Oh my God.”

Pounding on the windows elicited a cry of alarm from Mel, who shouted again for True to “Hurry! Go!” but the men had already yanked open their doors, and strong arms already pulled at True, jerking her roughly out of the truck.

“Mel!”

Fallows himself gripped Mel by the shoulders, shaking her. “Give it up!” he yelled at her.

“What?” Mel gasped, her voice tightened in shock and fear.

“My guys saw you at the site.” He continued to yell over the constant roar of the wind and fire. Fallows’s men tightened their circle around Mel and True, expressionless in their Buffs and bandannas to ward off the smoke, sidearms on every hip. “Saw you go in my shed and take what you wanted. You think I don’t have surveillance? You think you two can stiff me what you owe me, and then rob me blind, all at once? You’re stupider than you look!”

He jerked Mel’s shoulders with every sentence, practically throwing her to the ground, and True shook her own captor and launched herself at him, managing to slam a shoulder into his side before three guys pulled her away. A sharp stab of pain shot down her arm as her hand was yanked behind her back, and then her head hit something hard. A side window or maybe a door. She tasted metal as her mouth filled with blood.

She fought to keep consciousness as Fallows shoved Mel toward one of his goons and then pivoted to spit at True’s feet before frisking her with rough, callused hands. “Give it up. The cash you snatched. Where is it?” When she shook her head, still seeing spots, he fisted his hand and sent it into her gut. Then again. “You wanna be treated like one of the guys? You will be.” A third blow sent her knees into the dirt, and a fourth brought her face to the ground, where she had a hazy, horizontal view of their go bags and gear being tossed from the inside of the truck cab, ripped open, and searched.

“Please,” she heard Mel beg, and True tried to lift her head to see her. “We don’t have it! We just need to get to my kids. I’ll do anything. Please.” The desperation in her voice landed harder than Fallows’s fists. True knew she meant it.

She managed to find her feet again in time to see Fallows yank Mel up against him, laughing when her head jerked awkwardly at the sudden impact. True bit back a sob, her own impotence the hardest gut punch of all. A scathing look contorted Fallows’s face above his bandanna as he pressed his face right up to Mel’s. “You can see your precious children when I have what’s mine.”

Nausea roiled in True’s gut, and she spit out more blood as an ugly realization dawned in her clouded head. Fallows had blocked their path, right here, right now, for this exact purpose. He’d stooped even lower than True had imagined he could go, exploiting a mother’s primal need for her kids in hopes of wringing something out of her that she couldn’t even give.

Mel continued to claw at Fallows in an effort to escape, and True knew if she found a way to slip free of the vise grip that held her, she would run the rest of the way up Highline on foot if she had to. And she’d only get more desperate the closer the fire crept.

True tried to call out to her, her voice snatched by the howl of the wind. She took a staggered step in her direction, the need to get to her, to help her, burning through some of the pain. Vision still blurring, she homed in on the sight of Fallows’s sidearm. Could she grab it while his attention was on Mel? Or would his men be on True within one step? It was a risk, but True had just decided it was riskier not to when—sirens! Cutting through even the roar of the fire. At the sight of a sheriff’s department Suburban, Fallows’s men scattered as if on instinct, making a leap for their truck, and Fallows released Mel. But not fast enough.

“They rammed us off the road!” True shouted as the deputy who had been stationed at the base of Highline leaped out of his vehicle, his hand already on the service revolver on his belt. His partner took Fallows by force and cuffed him deftly as Mel sank to her knees in the dirt.

Relief washed through True to see her freed, only to feel another clutch of panic as Fallows’s getaway vehicle peeled out, nearly hitting her. It left their boss in the dust, however, just as another car, this one a civilian sedan of some sort, skidded to a stop. Lewis alighted from the driver’s seat, swearing loudly.

“Got about halfway across the parking lot to White before realizing there was no way in hell I wasn’t coming up here to back you up,” he told Mel, who had scrambled to her feet in relief at the sight of him. “When the sheriff detail said they’d just seen Fallows screaming up here in your wake, I knew that meant trouble.”

He turned toward the deputies. “He’s threatening them for what we discovered at the Fallows property,” he shouted as they shoved Fallows into the patrol rig.

“You can’t prove that!” Fallows bellowed back.

“Two full evidence bags of guns, ammo, and cash say otherwise,” Lewis told him, “all to be processed by the DEA ASAP.”

“Fine, fine,” the deputy shouted, coughing on each word. “In the meantime, you’re under arrest for assault and reckless driving,” he told Fallows. “Not to mention obstructing an emergency-evacuation route.”

True heard this from what felt like very far away, hands braced on her knees, still trying to fully come to. Her head rang from her impact with the car. She managed to lift her head and confirm that Fallows was really in cuffs, that Mel was still here, trying to shake off Lewis’s concern for her. It was so hard to see anything in these conditions.

The deputy also eyed the billowing smoke, all that obscured the red wall of Flatiron somewhere behind it, and turned to his partner. “We’d better get downhill.”

At this, Mel grabbed Lewis’s arm. “The kids!” she shouted. “The house! We’ve wasted too much time already!”

Lewis nodded. “I know, I know, but this is all I could get my hands on.” He gestured frantically toward the Honda Civic he’d commandeered. The tire rubber was already melting off the axles.

“We can get the rest of the way up in the department rig,” Mel insisted, gesturing toward the truck she and True had hijacked, which still sat at a haphazard angle on the road where Fallows had hit it. “It’s made it this far.”

One deputy shouted to them, waving them back, and True caught the words restricted and hazardous and no time before his partner urged him, “Forget it, just go!” and then they were gone, peeling out in the dirt back in the direction of Carbon, Fallows in the rear seat.

Lewis looked like he might want to follow suit, but he, too, could see there was no stopping Mel.

“We can try,” he shouted, “but we stay only long enough to hold off the fire until an EMS vehicle can get up here for Annie.” He waved Mel toward the department rig. “Load up. True, you head down in the Honda.”

True just shot him a look while hefting herself back up into the battered truck behind Mel. She swiped roughly at the sweat pouring off her face. “When hell freezes over, Lewis.”

“Wouldn’t that be a welcome development right about now,” he shot back, sliding into the driver’s seat and hitting the gas.