The Middle of Somewhere(88)

Liz bent over, hands on her knees, coughing. She swallowed, the taste of sour charcoal burning her throat. As she got up, Dante pulled her into a hug. She put her arms around him and he exhaled as if he’d been holding his breath a long time. His jacket smelled of ash, and she could feel the warmth of his body through it. He stepped back and held her by the shoulders. The flashlight lay in the grass. She couldn’t see his face.

“Are you all right?” His voice was gravelly from the smoke.

She nodded.

He pulled her close again. “I could have lost you.”

She held him tighter and bit her lip to quell the surge of relief rushing through her—for being alive, and for that meaning something to him. Fear and fatigue had shredded her, so however much he cared, at that moment it seemed enough.

“Dante, I’m so sorry I hurt you.”

He nodded, brushing his face against her hair. “I wish I could say it doesn’t matter. But I can’t.”

A tide of sadness and regret rolled through her. The apology she’d already offered many times came to her lips but she didn’t utter it.

He let go of her and cast his eyes at the gear strewn around them. “We should take care of this stuff.” He picked up the flashlight and handed it to her. “You hold the light and I’ll carry everything across.”

The creek was shallow and only a dozen feet wide, so the task was finished in minutes. Liz joined him on the far side. He picked up the water bottles and handed her one. She drank, the cool liquid easing her raw throat.

He said, “This was the Roots, wasn’t it?”

“Had to be. No lightning and no campfire. I can’t think of anything else.”

“They could’ve killed us.”

“I know.” She drank more water. This time it made her shiver. “We should put on some more clothes before we get chilled.”

They located their clothes amid the sleeping bags and collapsed tent. Dante was missing a sock but found a dirty one in his backpack. They sat on their backpacks, facing the campsite, and drew their sleeping bags around their shoulders.

Liz was almost breathing normally again. She checked the time. Five thirty. She tried to remember how far they had to go today. Not too far, she thought. She pictured the map but the miles along each segment kept sliding off. She gave up.

Across the meadow were a few scattered flames, all at ground level. In the beam of the flashlight, smoke still billowed in the same direction but, it seemed, with less force.

Dante said, “Should we be doing anything about the fire?”

She shrugged, which made her cough. She wiped her eyes with her sleeve. “We could dump water on it with the cook pot, but I’m not thrilled about doing it in the dark. Too easy to fall. Besides, the wind seems to be dropping.”

“The fire doesn’t look that big.”

“The smoke was bad enough. And you can never tell with fire. If we had been asleep—” Her voice was blocked by a lump in her throat.

He put a hand on her shoulder, left it there a minute, then took it back. He pointed at the eastern sky. “First light.”

“New day,” she said, without conviction.

As soon as light permitted, they carried water from the river in bottles and the cook pot and dumped it on the hot spots. The closest was a few yards from where the tent had been. The wind had died down completely, and the smoke became a low fog.

There was a lot to do. Their belongings were scattered. Soot coated everything and had to be washed or shaken off. Liz and Dante attended to their tasks in silence. Liz felt dizzy and untethered from lack of sleep and too much adrenaline. She fumbled the dishes as she rinsed them in the creek and had to run downstream after a cup that floated away from her. Several times she thought she heard someone approaching from the woods, and her heart leapt into her throat, but it turned out to be a squirrel, or nothing. As she returned to camp, she noticed Dante kept looking up from what he was doing and peering into the trees. What would they do if the Roots came after them again, other than run? They were, in truth, defenseless. The best they could hope for was to find other people, and soon. She said so to Dante.

He nodded, but didn’t say more. His shoulders were slumped and he moved with deliberation. She’d never seen him so beaten. He was tired, scared and sad.

“I’ll make coffee,” she said.

“Good idea.”

She filled the pot, lit the stove and placed the pot on it. A memory flashed so vividly she thought she was hallucinating and lowered herself onto a rock. Her mother stood before her, asking Liz to show her where the coffee was. Gabriel was dead. Her mother steered her toward the shower. One foot in front of the other. Coffee, shower, food. Normalcy, routine, sanity.