Primal Threat - Earl Emerson [123]
“Whatever was here is gone now.”
“I’m telling you, it was…the flames were thirty feet high. Fifty feet high. I don’t mind admitting I’ve never been so scared in my life. It’s completely unpredictable. Why take a chance?”
“Where’d it go?” Kasey asked.
“I’m not sure. At one point it was in front of us. The wind was blowing every which way.”
“If it was in front of you, you’d be dead,” said Fred, matter-offactly. “Jesus. You guys are all liars.”
“Why don’t you call them?” Kasey said, handing a walkie-talkie to Jennifer. “See what Scooter found down here?”
While she tried to raise Scooter, Kasey let the Porsche roll down the hill.
“I can’t raise them,” said Jennifer.
“Jesus!” Fred Finnigan exclaimed. The Porsche slid to a halt.
Bursting through a cloud of smoke, the Ford pickup was speeding up the hill backward, slewing from side to side on the narrow road. Beyond the pickup a large, dark cloud was chasing it up the mountain like something out of a cartoon. In another fifteen seconds the Ford would collide with the Porsche, and the cloud would overtake them all. Kasey pushed the gear lever into reverse, wrenched around to look out the back window, and floored the accelerator.
When they got to the top, Scooter rolled down the window in the Ford and yelled at them, “Did you see that?”
“See it?” Kasey yelled back. “It almost caught all of us.”
After they turned around and were racing along the level roads in the woods, Stephens twisted around to evaluate the luggage space behind the rear seats. If they weren’t hauling too much gear, he would importune Kasey to stop and pick up his bicycle. There was no point in leaving a three-thousand-dollar machine out here where the fire would destroy it. He pulled one corner of the storage cover up. “Jesus Christ! What’s he doing here?” Morse’s eyes were open, and his head was twisted to one side, grit and pebbles imprinted into both cheeks. His dull, dried-out eyes appeared to be staring directly at Stephens.
Fred looked over his shoulder casually and said, “Kasey likes carrying him around. We were thinking of mounting him on the hood when we drive back into town.”
Nobody else spoke. Still turned toward the back, Stephens peered out the rear window. Flames had come up the hill and were licking the opening to the woods behind them, highlighting the dark tunnel of trees alongside the road with a brilliant burst of flame. They were actually being chased now, and by a fire that had traversed a quarter mile in only a few minutes.
“Jesus!” Stephens said, surprised by his own profanity. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
Stephens was no longer in control of his own destiny, and it was making him feel increasingly uneasy. He was riding in the back of a car with a man who detested him and who may or may not have been drinking all day—the floor was littered with empties—and panic seemed to have overtaken the driver in a way he hadn’t witnessed in any of the cyclists. That was the attribute he admired most about the firefighters, the fact that they were able to take every adverse circumstance in stride, although their gallows humor was certainly annoying and even puzzling. At least they were never on the verge of losing their minds the way these people seemed to be.
Several times the Porsche strayed to the side of the road in the smoke, and either Jennifer or Fred had to scream at Kasey to get him back on track. On top of everything else, the engine was beginning to misfire. “Maybe we should stop and take out the air filter,” said Stephens. “It’s probably clogged from all this smoke in the air.” Kasey’s reply was to slam his foot on the accelerator. The flames in his rearview mirror had scared the wits out of him. Stephens himself was shaking, more frightened now than he’d been all day. Fred’s nostrils were tinged with soot. The interior of the car was full of smoke. If he didn’t know better, Stephens would have thought Fred was whimpering.
They were past the lake now, heading northeast. It was the same road he’d ridden up with the others