Primal Threat - Earl Emerson [128]
“It’s right there.”
“Jesus.”
“Speed up, man.”
“You think I can go faster?”
“Giancarlo?” Muldaur yelled. “Giancarlo? Hurry.” Zak turned around and saw that Giancarlo was out of sight and too far back to hear them.
The smoke lifted as more wind came down on them, and Zak saw flames leaping sixty feet into the air to their left. There was howling on their right, but fire was coming up the mountainside from below, too. The immediate heat on his left shoulder forced him to steer to the right side of the road as far as he dared. He could feel the growing heat on his bare left arm and leg. For a moment he wasn’t sure whether to stop or keep going. Or whether to turn around and take a dive down the mountain. He turned his head so his face would be the last part burned. What an ugly pass they had come to when he had to decide which parts of his body he wanted burned last. Then the heat dissipated, dying down as suddenly as it had revved up, though his left side still felt hot. When he turned his head, the flames were gone and the wind was blowing smoke lazily down the mountain instead of furiously up.
“Are you okay?” Muldaur asked.
“I guess.” The hairs on his left arm were singed, and his arm looked sunburned. “You?”
“I think it burned all my curlies. I won’t have to shave my balls for a year.”
“You shave your balls?”
“My wife likes it.”
“I’ll have to remember that if you don’t make it.”
“Yeah. You do that. What does Nadine like…in case you don’t make it?”
“Nadine likes a guy with a pure heart.”
“Shit. I’ll never be able to fake that.”
Even after Zak reached the top, it took a few moments to realize his odyssey had finally concluded. As he struggled with the fact that he was now safe, two wildland firefighters strode out of the haze on the plateau like an apparition and asked him if he was all right. He said he was.
He wasn’t going to get shot and he wasn’t going to get broiled, and as he stood beside the two firefighters, watching Muldaur work his way to the top, he allowed himself some water from a canteen the woman offered, marveling at how feeble and weakened Muldaur appeared, at how wobbly his bike was, and how he looked as if he was about to fall over with each pedal stroke. Was it possible that Zak had looked that bad?
Then, as he and Muldaur waited for what seemed like an eternity alongside the two firefighters, Giancarlo came out of the smoke like a wraith and poured on the power. As he watched his friend climb, Zak wondered whether Stephens and Jennifer had been forced to backtrack to the main road and, if so, whether the flames had caught them and cut them down. He wondered if the shouts he’d heard as they were climbing hadn’t actually been screams. He wondered whether Bloomquist, Scooter, and Fred were going to make it. And Kasey. Where was Kasey?
It wasn’t until that moment that he realized he hadn’t seen Nadine’s brother outside the Porsche. He’d seen everyone else on the road, but not Kasey. “You see Kasey running?” Zak asked.
“Not me,” said Muldaur.
“I didn’t see much of anything,” said Giancarlo, who’d reached them by then. Remarkably, he didn’t appear to be burned.
Zak suddenly had a vision of himself having to explain to Nadine and her skeptical family how all this had happened. He would have to detail every action and decision of the day again and again, not only to the authorities, but to the family. It was going to be hard enough to account for the three deaths he knew of already, but if Nadine’s brother came up missing or dead, it would mean the end of Zak’s already tenuous relationship with her.
It took a series of radio transmissions between one of the firefighters and her supervisor, who was apparently somewhere to the east of them, for Zak to get the full picture. Stephens had made contact with another firefighting crew. He was safe. He did not know the whereabouts of the others, and the last time he’d seen him, Kasey was in the Porsche. In fact, word was relayed from