Page 60 of Smoke Season

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 wordagainechoed between them, despite being unsaid.

“Lewis! This is myfamily! 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 ofGo, 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, someone? True strained to see behind her in the rearview mirror andthought 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 familiarFallows, 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!”

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