The pressure wave brought heat as well. It rolled over them with the intensity of a heat lamp, and it continued to grow.

“This is the path!” Copley yelled, and he cut to the left. “Watch the chain!” He shouted as he cleared it in one stride, like a hurdler.

Caleb cleared it in one, too, but Luke had to stop and swing his legs over one at a time. Victoria did it Luke’s way, if only to guard against catching her foot in the chain and doing a face-plant on the crumbled gravel path.

Three more flashes, these farther away, but in the strobe, she caught the maw of the mine. It was a black rectangular thing, inserted into the face of a sheer wall of rock. She’d seen similar openings from the highway traveling through mine country, but they impressed her as being bigger than this. Certainly, the ones she’d visited while campaigning had been much larger. The shaft measured about eight feet by eight feet, and the perspective given by First Sergeant Copley in the entry made it look even smaller.

Copley disappeared into the darkness beyond the opening, but Caleb and Luke stopped at the entry. They were holding hands as they turned back to wait for their mom and the major. Victoria caught a look of terrified wonderment in their faces as they stared at the sky beyond and behind her. The darkness had turned red, and the air seemed to be roiling, as if the wind were wrestling with itself.

“My God, what is that?” Victoria asked no one in particular.

“The world is on fire,” McCrea said.

“What about Adam?” Luke asked. “Is he going to be okay?”

The next pressure wave knocked them all to the ground.

* * *

Adam Emerson rolled onto his back, totally spent, totally satisfied. “Wow,” he said.

Emma rolled with him and laid her head on his chest, tickling his nipple with her fingers. “Yeah,” she said. “Wow. Happy birthday.”

“Maybe I should bring a lighter-weight sleeping bag next time.”

Adam blamed the weatherman. The news said the temperature would dip into the fifties tonight, so he’d packed accordingly. He doubted that it ever got below seventy. Welcome to the mountains of West Virginia.

“So, Emma Carson, how does it feel not to be a felon anymore?”

She lifted her head. “Huh?”

“I’m finally eighteen. You’re not a child abuser anymore.” He yelped when Emma grabbed a fistful of his crotch and squeezed.

“Now I’m an abuser,” she said.

“Hurts sooo good . . .”

She squeezed harder. “Age of consent is sixteen.”

“Okay, okay. Hurts not so good.”

She let go and gave him a little rub.

“Uh-oh,” Adam said. “I think the swelling started.” He rolled his hips away before she could do something really painful.

Emma pulled the sleeping bag open, sat upright, then zipped open the tent door.

“Where are you going?”