“Yeah.” Dad nodded one more time. “Only thing I worry about now is whether Cal 's boys will try an end-around through the dead zone. If they do, we've got problems.”
But they didn't, not while the light held. Liz wondered why not. Scavengers and scroungers did come in here sometimes. Most people in this alternate stayed away from places where H-bombs had fallen, though. They had to know the fallout wasn't poisonous any more, or the scavengers wouldn't go in. Still, lingering fear or superstition kept almost everybody away.
The sun went down. The stars started coming out. Dad stopped the horses and gave them their feed bags. They chomped happily on oats and hay. The Mendozas, not so happily, ate bread and smoked pork and sauerkraut and raisins. They drank rough red wine that would have got any vintner in the home timeline fired. It was safer than the local water, which was guaranteed to give you the runs.
“Isn't this fun?'' Dad said as they got ready to sleep in the cramped wagon. “Isn't this cozy?”
“Fun?” Liz said. “As a matter of fact, no.”
“Too blasted cozy, if anybody wants to know what I think,” Mom added.
“Everybody's a critic,” Dad said. Liz gave him a dirty look. He could fall asleep in thirty seconds and keep sleeping through anything this side of the crack of doom. Trouble was, he thought everybody else could do the same thing. Most normal human beings couldn't, and he didn't get it.
“Warmer tomorrow,” Mom said. “Breeze isn't off the ocean anymore.”
“That's true.” Dad sniffed. “You can smell the smoke from all the fires.”
The horses could smell it, too, and they didn't like it. They snorted and shifted their feet, as if to say they would rather be somewhere else. Liz would rather have been somewhere else, too. Then she noticed a red-gold glow on the eastern horizon. She watched it for a little while, and decided she wasn't imagining things.
Pointing, she said, “That fire's getting closer.”
“Don't be silly. It's-” Dad broke off. He started watching the fire, too. After a few seconds, he said something incendiary himself. Then he said something even worse: “You're right.''
He jumped out of the wagon. “What are you doing?” Liz asked.
“Harnessing the horses,” he answered. “No fire departments around here worth the paper they're printed on. We've got to get away, because nobody will put that out before it gets here. And horses are faster than people.”
That all made good sense, however much Liz wished it didn't. She also wished he could hitch up the horses faster. The job looked easy, but it wasn't, not if you wanted to do it right.
While he worked, of course, the flames didn't stop. Mom said, “You want to hurry that along there?” She sounded much calmer than she could possibly have felt.
“I am hurrying,” Dad snapped.
“Well, hurry faster,” Mom told him.
The breeze blew harder. It sent a puff of smoke that made Liz cough. Stop that, she thought, but it didn't. After what seemed forever, Dad jumped back into the wagon. He flicked the reins. The horses went off at a trot without so much as a giddyap. They'd probably wondered what was taking so long, too.
From everything Liz had heard, fire made horses stupid.
From everything she'd seen, horses were no big threat to get fives on their AP tests anyway. But, this once, panic worked for the Mendozas. not against them. The horses wanted to get away from the fires, and so did the people they were pulling.
It was going to be closer than it had any business being. In the home timeline, Dad would have been on his cell phone yelling his head off. A water-dropping plane or helicopter would have splatted the leading edge of the flames. That would have slowed them down enough to let endangered people get away. And, of course, in the home timeline, they wouldn't have been stuck in a horse-drawn wagon to begin with.
No cell phones here. No water-dropping airplanes or copters, either. And the wagon was the fastest way to escape they had. The only other choice was getting out and running. If the horses freaked and stood still, they would have to try that. Liz didn't think it seemed like a whole lot of fun.
Things ran past them in the night. Coyotes and raccoons and feral cats hated the fire, and feared it, too. So did rats and mice and hamsters and squirrels and… everything, really.
When she looked back on that night, none of it stuck in her mind as a whole lot of fun. The fire got closer and closer and hotter and hotter. The smoke got thicker and nastier, till she felt as if she were smoking about ten packs of cigarettes every time she breathed in. Mom gave her a hanky soaked in water to put over her nose and mouth. It helped some-till it dried out. That didn't take nearly long enough. She soaked it herself the next time. Mom splashed the fabric of the wagon to keep embers from catching.
Mom also rigged makeshift breathing masks for herself and Dad. “Shall I make some for the horses, too?” she asked.
“I don't think they'd put up with it,” Dad answered. “Besides, do you want to stop and find out?”
Mom automatically looked back over her right shoulder. So did Liz. and wished she hadn't. The Harries were much too close, much too big, and much, much too hot. Dad's question kind of answered itself. In case it didn't, Mom took care of things: “Now that you mention it, no.”
“About what I figured.” Dad snapped the whip above the horses' backs. They were already doing all they could, but he wanted to make sure they kept on paying attention.
“'What happens if the smoke gets them?” Liz asked through the bit of cloth that wasn't keeping as much smoke out of her lungs as she wished it would.
'“We jump down and we hold on to each other and we hustle,” Dad said. “Next question?”
Liz decided she didn't have a next question. The answer to the one she'd just asked gave her plenty to chew on all by itself.
Mom looked over her shoulder again. Liz admired her nerve. She didn't want to know exactly how close those leaping, crackling flames were. If things were going to turn out badly, couldn't it be a surprise? If you knew you were about to get roasted… Well, what could you do? Scream, maybe, and then stick an apple in your mouth.
Except she didn't have an apple. She didn't think the flames would stop when she was just done to a turn, either-not that it would matter to her one way or the other at that stage of things.
Then Mom said, “We're gaining.”
“What?” Liz wasn't sure she'd heard right. Nobody ever talked about how loud a really big fire was up close. The people who knew things like that were mostly either firefighters or dead.
“We're gaining,” Mom said again. Liz could hear her better this time. Maybe Mom talked louder. Maybe they were a little farther from the flames. If they were…
“We're gaining!” Liz said joyfully.
She looked over her shoulder then. The flames were still too close, but they weren't way too close any more. That looked like progress, all right.
“Just hope sparks and embers don't set the wagon roof on fire,” Dad said. Liz gave him a reproachful stare, not because that wasn't possible but because it was. They couldn't stop it if it did happen, so she didn't want to hear about it.
Heart pounding as loud as the flames were roaring, she looked over her shoulder once more. The fire was definitely farther away now. She approved of that. She would have approved even more if it were a mile beyond the moon.
A few minutes later, Dad let the horses slow down. “I'm pretty sure we're good,” he said. “It's burning straight west, pretty much, and we've got north of it.”
“What do we do now?” Mom asked.
“How about we sleep for a week?” Dad said.
“Works for me,” Liz said. “And you know what else? I bet we've got so much soot on our faces, nobody can recognize us.”