The fire had burned the woods to the south of the highway. The ground was black, the ponderosas white stalks, their branches curled and naked. The woods to the north, where the fire hadn’t jumped the highway, were pristine, tall pines and alders, prairie grass an unbelievable yellow-green. And then, every so often, a single tree would be burning like a torch.
“It’s jumping the highway,” Susan said. It was getting hard to breathe and Susan closed the vents on the dash, though it didn’t do any good.
“I know,” said Henry.
Susan coughed and lifted a hand to her mouth, trying to filter out the ash with her fingers. “The ranger said that if it jumped the highway, we should turn back,” she said. Breathe through your nose, the ranger had also said. But her nose was packed with cotton.
“It’s too late,” Henry said. He jammed a finger behind them and Susan turned to see that both sides of the road were on fire now.
There was an explosion and Susan braced herself, hands on the dash, thinking that a tire might have blown. But the car stayed on the road. She was disoriented for a moment and turned to Henry for an explanation, but he was leaning over the steering wheel, trying to see through the smoke. Then she realized: It was the trees. The trees were exploding.
Susan heard Henry say “Shit,” and looked up just in time to see an elk, standing stock-still in the center of the lane.
Henry slammed on the brakes and the car spun.
Susan squeezed her eyes shut as the inertia of the car pressed her against the passenger-side door. She heard the tangled metal sound of the car hitting the guardrail and opened her eyes long enough to see orange sparks fly as the car ruptured it. The car lunged down the hill and then flipped, and she was upside down, hands pressed against the roof of the car. She closed her eyes again. The sound of the metal roof of the car sliding down the hillside smashing into the charcoaled skeletons of trees was loud, like an animal baying, and she thought of Parker in that moment, going off the bridge. How time slows down during car accidents, so he must have had time to think, to know what was happening, just like she did now.
And then it was quiet.
She was still alive.
She did a mental inventory of her body parts. Feet. Legs. Arms. Hands. She was still whole. She opened her eyes. Dust swirled inside the car and stung her eyes and made her cough.
“You okay?” Henry asked.
“I think so,” Susan said. “Did we hit it?” She didn’t know why she was so concerned about the elk.
“Can you get out?” Henry asked.
She struggled to get out of the car, unclipping her seat belt and falling on her shoulders and then to a fetal position on her side. The car was full of glass and dirt and her shoulder hurt from the impact but she made herself keep moving. The windshield was broken and she slithered out onto the blackened soil. It was still warm, the charcoal like burned toast in her mouth.
She scrambled away from the car, trying to get out of the dust storm of soot that the crash had stirred up. The car had come to rest against a blackened tree. It had spun entirely around and was facing the road, the trunk against the tree, the hood up the incline. The wheels were still spinning. Susan shook the twigs and beads of auto glass from her hair and stood up, but a wave of light-headedness forced her back to her haunches, coughing.
Her nose. She touched her face. The bandage was still on. Her face hurt. But not more than normal.
She looked up. They were thirty feet from the road, overlooking the lake. She blinked against the blinding smoke. Beyond the lake the surrounding hillsides were devastated, charred relics of trees; it looked like the end of the world.
She heard Henry get loose with a thud, and in a minute he pulled himself through the windshield. “Radio’s busted,” he said.
He moved around to the back of the car. “Fuck,” he said. “Trunk’s jammed.”
Susan half slid down the embankment to join him. The trunk of the Crown Vic was wrapped around the tree.
“You think?” she said.
“Emergency kit’s in there,” Henry muttered. “Flair gun, flashlight, everything.” He rubbed his forehead for a minute. “Okay,” he said. “We’ll have to walk out.” He started up the darkened hillside.
“Come on,” he said, turning back.
Susan didn’t budge. “The ranger said to stay in the car.”
“The car is upside down,” Henry said.
Susan crossed her arms. “I’m staying here.”
“I’m not leaving you,” Henry said, holding out a hand.
“No, really,” Susan said. “It’s okay. Leave me.”
“Come on, Susan. It’s going to be dark soon. We’ll have a better chance on the road.”
Susan stared at him for another minute and then turned back to the car, got down on her hands and knees, and crawled halfway through the passenger window.
“Susan,” Henry groaned.
She saw what she was looking for in the backseat and grabbed it. “I’m getting my purse,” she said. She backed out of the car and stood up, pausing to brush the glass off the knees of her jeans.
Henry held out his hand again and she took it. “I’m never coming to the woods again,” she said, as he pulled her up the hillside.
The elk was gone. “We must not have hit it,” Susan said.