“Adam!” Emma was pulling hard through the water to close the gap between them. As he turned, her hand landed on his arm, and their free hands found each other.

“Are you hurt?”

“I don’t care,” she said.

That was neither a yes nor a no, and she was right. It didn’t matter. The fire was relentless, voracious as it consumed everything on the other side of the river. Even at this distance, growing shorter with every second, the radiant heat was nearly unbearable.

They’d come to a stop just a few yards past the bridge, at a section of the bank that was four or five feet below the edge. Roots and vines dangled through the dirt wall, providing hand- and footholds they could use to climb up to the fire road.

“You first,” Adam said.

Emma made quick work of the climb, and then it was his turn. By the time he reached the top, Emma was already opening the door to the Bronco. As Adam ran to join her, he shrugged out of his ruck, and when he got to the truck, he opened the tailgate and tossed the ruck onto the deck as Emma started the engine. As he slid into the shotgun seat and closed the door, he gasped at how fast the fire was progressing.

“The river’s not going to stop it, is it?” Emma asked.

“I don’t think so.”

She jammed the manual transmission into gear, stomped on the accelerator and engaged the clutch, launching Adam back in his seat.

“You have to turn around to get back to the school,” he said.

“We don’t have time.”

“The road dead-ends.”

She jammed the brakes and whipped the wheel first to the right and then to the left to execute a U-turn. It took two tries, and she left some red paint on a tree trunk, but she got it done. Then it was pedal-to-the-metal time. She launched a plume of dirt and stone as she took off again.

She gasped. “Oh, shit, Adam. Look.”

The bridge was burning now.

Within seconds, the woods on their left had caught fire, and the wall of flame was advancing fast.

“Go, go, go!” Adam urged. The view through the windshield was like a tour of the Underworld. Firebrands rained down like molten snowflakes, starting their own fires at every spot where they landed. He turned in his seat, and the view back there was even worse.

“It’s like it’s alive,” he said.

“It’s chasing us,” Emma said. “And it wants to eat us whole.”

She was way outdriving visibility. The air was blacker than night and the Bronco’s headlights could barely penetrate the fog of smoke and ash as Emma navigated the narrow, unpaved road. The steering looked sloppy as shit, requiring huge corrections in the wheel to keep the vehicle away from rocks and trees.