Alec was next to Mark. He was punching and kicking and elbowing and picking people up, tossing them away like bags of garbage. At some point he’d lost the torch he’d grabbed, too busy using both hands to fight off the attackers. The man was every bit the soldier he’d once been.
An arm slipped around Mark’s neck from behind and yanked him off his feet, started squeezing the breath out of him. Mark gripped the log in both hands, then hammered it backward in desperation. He missed, pulled it back, then tried again, swinging it with every bit of strength he could muster while the oxygen rushed from his lungs. He felt the solid blow as he connected, heard the crunch of cartilage and the man’s scream. Sweet air rushed into his chest as the arm loosened its grip.
Mark fell to the ground, sucking the life back into his lungs. Alec was bent over to catch his own breath. They had a slight reprieve, but one look showed that more people were coming their way.
Alec helped Mark to his feet. They turned up slope and half crawled, half climbed into the thicker cover of the trees. Mark heard the cries of pursuit behind them—these people didn’t want anyone escaping. He and Alec hit a spot that was a little flatter and burst into an all-out sprint. And that was when Mark spotted it, about a hundred yards ahead of them.
A huge section of the forest was engulfed in flames.
Between them and their camp. Where they’d left Trina, Lana and Deedee.
Chapter 27
The trees and shrubbery of the woods were already half dead—a tinderbox ready to light up. It had been a few weeks since the last torrential storm, and anything that had regrown since the flares was parched. Misty tendrils of smoke bled along the ground at their feet, and the smell of burning wood laced the air.
“It’s gonna spread like wildfire,” Alec shouted.
Mark thought he was joking, but the man looked grave. “It is a wildfire!” he shouted back.
But Alec had already started running straight toward the distant flames, which seemed to have grown in the moments since it had begun. Mark set off after him, knowing they had to make it to the other side of the inferno before it got too big—they had to get to Trina and Deedee and Lana. The two of them tore through the undergrowth, kicking past thick briars, dodging trees and low-hanging limbs. The sound of pursuit still rang out from behind, but it had lessened, as if even their deranged pursuers understood it was crazy to head into a forest fire. But Mark could hear lingering catcalls and whistles haunting the woods.
He ran on, throwing all of his focus into making it back to Trina.
The fire got closer, crackling and spitting and roaring. A wind had picked up, fanning the flames; a huge branch toppled from far above and crashed through the canopy, throwing sparks everywhere until it finally hit the ground. Alec continued to head for the heart of the blazing section of woods, not slowing down, as if his one final goal was to run to a fiery death and end it all.
“Shouldn’t we veer off?” Mark shouted up to him. “Where are you going?”
Alec answered without turning back and Mark had to strain to hear him. “I want to be as close as possible! Run along its edges so we know exactly where we are! And maybe lose those psychos while we’re at it!”
“Do you know exactly where we are?” Mark was moving as quickly as he could, but the soldier still stayed ahead of him.
“Yes” came the curt reply. But he pulled out his compass and looked at it as he ran.
The smoke had grown thicker, making it hard to breathe. The fire took up Mark’s entire field of vision now, the flames close and high and illuminating the night. The heat surged out in waves, washing across Mark’s face only to be sucked away by the wind gusting from behind him.
But as they got closer, now only a few dozen feet away, the waves didn’t matter anymore. The temperature had skyrocketed; Mark was drenched in sweat and was so hot it felt as if his skin might melt. Just when he thought Alec might’ve lost his marbles after all, the man suddenly made a sharp turn to the right, running parallel to the expanding line of flames. Mark stayed as close to him as he could, putting his life in the former soldier’s hands for the umpteenth time since they’d met in the subtrans tunnels.
Intense heat pulsed across his body as he ran; sweltering wind from the left, cooler air from the right. His clothes were so hot against his skin, they felt as if they might combust at any second even though they were drenched in sweat. His hair was dry, though, any moisture sucked away by the searing air. He imagined the follicles on the cusp of drying out and falling to the ground like pine needles. And his eyes. They felt as if they were being baked in their sockets; he squinted and rubbed them, tried to force tears, but there was nothing.