He was alive. Apart from hypothermia and a touch of smoke inhalation, he was fine.
He glanced around at the changed landscape, charred trunks standing where there had once been forest, scrub and duff burned down to the soil. Flames lapped at smoldering logs, smoke twisting in the wind, the air still acrid. Out in the middle of the lake, the moose was now grazing, the fire already forgotten. Apart from that, there was no sign of life—no birds singing, no animals, no Bear.
Austin trudged along in wet clothing and boots, making his way toward his truck, slowed by bone-deep cold. It had to be eighty degrees outside today. If he kept moving, he’d warm up.
Okay, so that’s not how hypothermia worked.
He needed help.
Once he reached his truck, he would check in with Dispatch and head back to town. He’d drowned both his handheld radio and cell phone in the lake—not that either of them worked up here anyway.
Yeah, Sutherland wasn’t going to like his losing a radio. He’d probably take money out of Austin’s paycheck to replace it.
Shit.
Then again, a few thousand bucks wasn’t a bad price to pay for being alive—and saving the journal and photograph from destruction.
God, it had been close.
If he had tripped, if he had kept running for his truck instead of the lake…
The thought made him shiver—or maybe that was the hypothermia.
He knew more about wildfire now than he’d ever wanted to know—the unbearable heat, the deafening roar, the way the trees seemed to scream and groan as flames consumed them. When heat radiating off the blaze had become too hot for him, he’d ducked all the way under, only to inhale smoke when he’d come back up for air.
In that moment, he’d thought it was over, that he was a goner. He’d coughed his lungs out, thoughts of Lexi and Emily racing through his mind. How much he was going to hurt them by leaving them like this. How Emily was almost the same age as Lexi had been when her mother had died. How he’d always thought that he and Lexi would have more children.
What a lucky son of a bitch he was. Lexi still had a husband. Emily still had her father. And he and Lexi could still have more children. Unless he collapsed out here and went into a fucking hypothermic coma.
He found himself grinning at the idiotic thought of freezing to death on a hot summer day because of a fire, except that it wasn’t funny.
Keep moving.
His legs were sluggish, his feet clumsy as he stumbled over the blackened ground like a drunk. If he stopped now, he might not get moving again. He needed to get to his truck, call in, get help.
Then it struck him.
They probably thought he was dead.
They knew where he’d gone. They must know that the fire had burned through here. They would expect him to have hauled his ass out of here by now. Though they knew his handheld radio couldn’t reach them, the radio in his truck could. They would know from his silence that something had gone wrong.
Maybe they would send help.
And maybe you’d better get out your first-aid kit and grab the emergency blanket.
Okay, he could do that.
He lowered his pack to the ground and found it singed, small holes burned through the fabric by embers, some of the straps partially melted. He opened the front pocket and pulled out the folded square of reflective fabric. Cold must have dulled his brain because it took him a few minutes to figure out how to unfold the thing.
It could be worse.
He could be lying dead here.
He slipped on his pack again, wrapped the blanket around his shoulders, and set off toward the truck once more. With no forest to block his view, he could see part of his truck where it sat to the west and up on the road. It wasn’t too much farther now—maybe three hundred yards.
He could make that—no problem.
One foot in front of the other.