“Was it fun?”
She loved him for the genuine quality of the question. It was something adults would never ask; they’d search for a different word, wonder if it had been rewarding or a rush or something of that nature, but they’d want to know the same thing this kid did: Was it fun? She was silent for a long time, looking down into the shifting lights in the blackness, shapes that moved like scarlet shadows, a role reversal of light and dark.
“I worked with some wonderful people,” she said. “And I got to see some things that were…special. Majestic. There were days when, yes, it was fun. There were days when it was inspiring. Made you think of who you were in the world.”
“Why did you quit?”
“Because,” she said, “I got a taste of the other kinds of days.”
“What does that mean?”
“Sometimes you lose to it.”
“To the fire?”
“Yeah.”
“Did somebody get hurt?”
“A lot of people got hurt.”
Lightning flashed regularly and closer now than before. The warm wind wavered between calm and howling. Stars disappeared in the west as the clouds thickened and crept along. Moisture was heavy in the air. Every warning was being offered, the mountains whispering one imperative instruction: Get low, get low, get low. She glanced back at the fire. Miles away still. Not a chance in this world that it would climb toward them fast enough. Not a chance. And if these lightning storms blew in, and they were exposed on top…
“We’re going to go another quarter of a mile,” she said. “Maybe half, no more. And then we’re going to shut it down for the night. It’ll be windy, and it might be rainy. But we’re going to stay up top, where we can see what’s happening. In the morning, we’ll figure out how to call for help.”
“Ethan said people should always be off the peaks when it storms. He said at this altitude, you’re already sitting on an aluminum roof, and the last thing you should do is start climbing an aluminum ladder.”
“Ethan sounds like a very smart guy,” she said, reaching for her pack. “But I don’t know if Ethan’s been burned yet, Connor. I have. We’re going to stay on top.”
He didn’t argue, just walked on with her, but she knew he wasn’t altogether wrong. Storms were coming, there was no question of that. The wind was gusting just as hard as it had been but now it was sticky-hot; it had swung around to the southwest, and when the gusts came, they howled. Looking back toward the tower, you could see a sky littered with stars, the Milky Way never more stunning than it was in Montana at night, but to the west, the stars vanished, and that was trouble. The front that had pushed all this warm air ahead of it and caused havoc with the fires was about to reveal itself for the monster it was, and Hannah expected it to be a hell of a storm. It had been building too long to go any other way.
The question was, How long before it arrived? She didn’t want to be on the peaks when it came, but hiking down the steep, rock-scree slopes at night was begging to break an ankle. If one of them got hurt, both of them were likely to die come morning.
She also didn’t want to go down into the tree-lined drainages. The fire was still far away, but not far enough for her comfort. And with a wind like that behind the blaze? No. She wouldn’t chance it. They’d stay high as long as they could, and they’d camp if they had to, and if the rain came, maybe it would slow the spread of the flames.
Or maybe you’ll get killed by lightning.
It was a greater risk than the fire, she knew. But still…
Deploy or die, Hannah! Deploy or die!
She wouldn’t take them down into those gulches yet. Not until she knew what the wind was going to do. Up here on the high rocks there was nothing for the fire to eat. Below them lay the land of the burnout, where scorched trees glittered like a field of candles, tributes to the dead, and that led all the way to where the main blaze raged, several thousand feet down. The wind and the terrain would hold the fire there.
“How long are your legs?”
Hannah stopped walking and looked at Connor. He’d been in front since they left-after informing her of the importance of rotating pace setters so that they didn’t wear each other out-and he hadn’t talked much as the first mile fell behind them and darkness came on.
“Pardon?”
“Are they the same length?”
“I don’t follow, Connor.”
“Some people have one leg that’s a little longer than the other. I don’t know about mine. They look the same, but it’s probably not an obvious difference. Do you know about yours?”
“I’m pretty sure they’re the same.”
“Well, if they’re not, we should know.”
“Yeah?”
“We’ll be veering in that direction. If your legs aren’t even. You veer without even thinking about it. That’s one way you get lost.”
“Connor, we can still see what we’re walking toward. We aren’t going to get lost.”
“It’s just something to keep in mind,” he said. There was a touch of defensiveness in his voice. He was full of these random facts, and while many of them-like the length of people’s legs-were useless, she had to concede that the boots had been a decent idea, and leaving the light on a very good one, and bringing the map so obvious as to embarrass her. She also realized that he took comfort in the odd collection of wilderness trivia. It was where he’d gone to convince himself that it was worth getting up off the floor and trying to run. Where he went to keep the fear away.
“What else?” she said.
“Nothing.” He was disgruntled now, and she couldn’t have that.
“No,” she said, “I’m serious. What else should we be thinking about?”
He was silent for a moment and then said, “We’re going uphill.”
“Yes.”
“Well, that’s a good thing, I think, except for the storm.”
“Why is that?”
“Most people go downhill when they’re lost. I forget exactly what the percentage is, but it’s high. We’re not lost, but we’re trying to get out, so it’s about the same thing, and most of the time, people who want out of the woods head downhill.”
“Makes sense.”
“Not necessarily. If people are looking for you, it’s a lot easier for them to see you if you’re up high than if you’re down in a valley. You can signal better from up high. And you can always see a lot better. Like in your tower, right? It was easier to figure out the route from your tower than it would have been on the ground, just looking at the map.”
“Good point.” She liked this, wanted to keep him talking. The closer they got to that fire, the sharper the teeth of her memories became. Distraction was valuable.
“Lost skiers always want to go downhill,” he said. “Percentage-wise, that is. And lost mountain climbers want to go up. That’s pretty obvious when you think about it. It’s, like, their habit, you know? So even though things have gotten bad for them, their habits aren’t gone. Those stay.”
“Right.”
“It’s a profile. Like the way they try to figure out who a serial killer is. If someone is lost, they’ll make a profile of that person. So that’s what they’ll be doing to find us. They’ll be trying to think like us. I wonder what they’ll come up with. I mean, who are we, right? We don’t have a profile. Maybe I do, and maybe you do, but when they put us together? I think we’d be pretty confusing.”
“I certainly hope so.” Their pace was unbearably slow, but it had to be. It was hard walking, and unlike Connor, Hannah didn’t have a headlamp, so she was using a flashlight. The footwork was treacherous and if you dared to look more than a few steps ahead, the sudden shift in light was disorienting. So they marched on slowly, heads down, twin lights in a dark, windy world. She hadn’t hiked the mountains at night-without a fire crew, at least-in exactly thirteen months. At the start of the last season, she and Nick had taken an overnight trip to a lake fed by glacier melt and had camped alone there beside its frigid waters.