Primal Threat - Earl Emerson [121]
“Stephens!” Giancarlo shouted. “Stephens!”
They set the riderless bike upright against a tree to better mark the spot, then pedaled back to the three-way intersection and headed toward the lake and the access road to the cabins. Muldaur had one of the worst headaches of his life and attributed it to the vast quantities of smoke he’d inhaled in the past hour. His head throbbed so badly he was afraid he might be on the verge of a stroke. Muldaur had come into this weekend feeling he was the strongest rider in the group, but Zak had been taking measured pulls alongside him all day and was beginning to look stronger by the minute. He’d been training hard this summer, and despite the smoke it was showing.
They took the narrow game trail that led to the lake, dodging low branches in the smoke, until they found the short stretch of beach eighty yards from the road. The water’s edge was barely visible in the murk. Despite the fact that they needed to get organized and keep moving now that the lakefront didn’t look viable, Zak got off his bike and waded into the water, scooping handfuls of the lake into his mouth, removing his hydration pack and filling it with water.
“You drink that, you’re going to get giardiasis,” Giancarlo said.
“How long does it take to start?”
“Good point.”
Giancarlo dropped his bike and stepped into the water, too, while Muldaur picked up a series of shiny brass rifle casings from the sand. He’d hoped to find a layer of clean air clinging to the water, but the glassy surface attracted smoke like a hooker in church attracted unwanted looks. Zak waded into the shallows until Muldaur couldn’t see him, though he was no more than twenty feet distant. He sank down into the lake until only his head was showing. “What if we just sit here? I mean, if we don’t do anything else. Just float. What if we do that?”
“We’d die from smoke inhalation,” Muldaur replied.
“What if we don’t give a damn?”
“I don’t believe you don’t give a damn.”
“What if I don’t care what you believe?”
“We’ve got to get away from here and you know it. We’ve been through worse than this in the fire department.”
“Have we?”
“Well, maybe not. But we’ll make it out of here. Zak, if I really believed we were going to find good air out there somewhere on the lake, I’d be the first one in.”
“I’m just so tired I think I’m going to drop dead.”
“Me, too,” said Giancarlo. “But the deal when you get in a situation like this is, you keep going until you drop. And then you get up and go some more. You never quit.”
“Let’s get going before we talk ourselves to death.”
Once they were moving again, Muldaur was sorry he hadn’t taken a dip with the others. Their shoes were squishing and their Lycra shorts were shiny with the wet, and he envied the coolness they must be feeling, however temporary. The road that headed north out of the Lake Hancock basin climbed sooner than he remembered, and the heat from their work began to build quickly. Giancarlo had already disappeared in the smoke above them, while Muldaur and Zak rode one in front of the other as they had been doing most of the day. Muldaur had a queer feeling in the pit of his stomach that Zak’s unwillingness to do another climb put him a leg up on Zak if things got desperate again, which made him also feel that if only one of them was going to die, it would be Zak. He immediately felt guilty for having the thought.
Once they began climbing, his legs felt wooden. Earlier, he’d strained every muscle in his calves, quads, and buttocks, and had been pushing through the pain with each pedal stroke, but now he felt as if he were made out of wood.
By the time they’d ascended five hundred vertical feet, the smoke on the road behind them began to get sketchy. They were catching glimpses of Giancarlo up ahead, and astonishingly he was holding his own; he may even have gained ground since they began. Was it possible Muldaur and Zak had shot their wad on the earlier climbs and Giancarlo was now beating them the way Stephens had been?
Without