No answer, and now I couldn’t see them at all. I rolled Bill toward the front door. From behind came roaring protest. The door collapsed and flames shot forward as I shoved the wheelchair. Groping the air for Aimee and Bill. Screaming with clogged lungs: “Someone’s out there! Stay low—”

My words were choked off by convulsive coughing. I made it to the door, reached for the knob, and the hot metal broiled my hand.

Handicapped push door, idiot. I shouldered it hard, shoved Bill’s chair, lurched outside, eyes burning, retching, coughing.

Running into the darkness and aiming the chair to the left as a bullet impacted against a front window.

Smoke billowed out of the house, a smothering curtain of it. Good cover, but poisonous. I ran as far from the gravel drive as possible, into the underbrush that formed at the house’s eastern border. Racing with the chair, struggling to manipulate the contraption over rocks and vines, getting caught in the underbrush. Unable to free the chair.

Jammed. I lifted Bill out of the chair, slung him over my shoulder, and ran, adrenaline-stoked again, but his weight bore down and I could barely breathe and after ten steps I was on the verge of collapse.

My legs buckled. I visualized them as iron rods, forced them straight, lost my breath completely, stopped, shifted the load, panted and coughed. Feeling the dangle of Bill’s ruined legs knocking against my thighs, the dry skin of one palm against the back of my neck as he held on tight.

He said something—I felt it rather than heard it—and I resumed carrying him into the forest. Pulled off ten more steps, counted each one, twenty, thirty, stopped again to force air into my lungs.

I looked back at the house. None of the Halloween glare of fire, just smoke, funnels of it, so dark it bled easily into the night sky.

Then, the spot where the little green house had stood was suddenly engulfed by a crimson ball haloed in lime green.

The kerosene stink of a stale campground. Something igniting—the kitchen stove. The explosion threw me to the earth. Bill landed on top of me.

No sign of Aimee or Bert.

I stared back at the house, wondering if the fire would spread to the forest. Not good for the forest, but maybe good for us if it attracted attention.

Nothing but silence. No spread; the firebreak serving its purpose.

I rolled Bill off me and propped myself up on my elbows. His glasses had come loose. His mouth moved soundlessly.

I said, “You okay?”

“I—yeah. Where’s . . .”

“Let’s keep moving.”

“Where is she?”

“She’s fine, Bill, come on.”

“I need to—”

I got hold of his shoulder.

“Leave me here,” he said. “Let me go, I’ve had enough.”

I began lifting him.

“Please,” he said.

My burned hand began to throb. Everything throbbed.