“Yes,” I replied, looking at the red-eyed man.
It hadn’t been twenty minutes since I’d arrived here, and now he was here.
It was almost like he had been right behind me, moving through the same smoke and terror.
The thought sent a strange shiver down my spine, but in this nightmare, his sudden presence was the only solid thing.
“We can walk, too,” a woman from the group of adults said, her voice trembling but clear.
“Here, too,” another man added, pulling a sniffling boy closer to his legs.
“Great,” the Alpha replied.
His gaze swept away from me, taking in the whole huddled, soot-streaked group.
He turned back toward the wall of fire and smoke, his posture rigid with focus.
“We have to move. There’s a service access path to the east. It’s our only clear—”
A sound like a thunderclap split the air, followed by an agonized groan of splitting wood.
One of the massive, ancient pines at the edge of our rocky hollow, its trunk completely eaten by fire, gave way.
It didn’t just fall.
It snapped and crashed down with a deafening roar, landing directly across the path he’d been pointing to.
The impact shook the ground under our feet, and a volcano of sparks and burning debris exploded into the air.
“Oh, fuck,” the Alpha hissed.
The curse was a sharp, violent sound that cut through the noise.
The wall of fire was now a barricade of solid, blazing timber.
The exit was gone.
Screaming erupted instantly.
The fragile calm shattered.
The children I’d been trying to soothe began to wail in pure terror.
Adults who had been holding it together broke, clutching each other.
Panic, hot and mindless, took over.
A few people bolted from the hollow, scrambling back up toward the burning treeline without any direction, just the need to run.
The people around us screamed and ran to what they thought was a safer place within the rocky hollow, pressing back against the stone.
But it was an illusion.
We were trapped.
We couldn’t go left or right or anywhere.
The fire was closing in from all sides now, and the only clear path was blocked by a tree the size of a small house.
We were trapped here.
The murmuring started immediately, a low, frantic current beneath the roar of the flames.
“We’re going to burn…” “Oh, gods, the children…” “What do we do?”
The red-eyed man, the Alpha, looked around, his eyes scanning the shifting walls of fire, the collapsed tree and our terrified faces.
For just a second, I saw it, a flicker of cold, rapid calculation.
He was assessing a trap with no exit.
He was confused about what to do next, but he masked it perfectly behind a face of calm.
From what the people around were whispering—”The Alpha is here…
he’ll know what to do…” it was confirmed.
He was definitely the Alpha of this whole territory.
“Are we gonna die, Alpha?” a young voice piped up, thick with tears.
It was a little boy, maybe seven, clinging to his father’s leg.
“No,” the Alpha replied instantly.
His voice soft.
“I’m going to get you out of here. Okay?”
“Okay,” the little boy whispered, burying his face against his father.
It wasn’t a convincing promise, not with the fire roaring around us, but the sheer certainty in his voice was like a blanket thrown over the panic.
It settled people.
It calmed the frantic energy.
It calmed me down, too.
A part of my brain wondered why.
Was it because of the park bond?
I didn’t know.
All I knew was the icy fist of terror in my chest loosened, when he spoke.
He turned his head slightly, his body still tense.
He looked like he was listening for something beyond the crackle and roar.
Was he listening for…
water?
“Is there a river around here?” I asked the pups, keeping my voice low.
The Alpha’s head snapped toward me.
Those red eyes pinned me in place.
“Yes,” Malcolm replied, not noticing the intense stare.
“There’s a little stream nearby. But it’s very small.”
“But it leads to the big river in River Town!” Jonathan added, his eyes wide.
“River Town is so pretty. They have boats.”
“Where is River Town?” I asked.
“That way,” Catherine said, pointing a grimy finger vaguely to the west.
“Where—” I started to ask for more detail, but the Alpha’s voice cut me off.
“Where is this stream, exactly?” he asked.
His focus was entirely on the children now.
I looked at him, surprised he was taking their word so seriously.
“This way!” Jonathan said, pointing toward the back of our rocky hollow, where the ground sloped down into thicker, smokier underbrush.
“Just right behind these rocks. But it’s really long.”
All three of them nodded in solemn agreement.
“Oh, really?” the Alpha asked.
He crouched down slightly, bringing himself closer to their eye level.
The sight was surreal, this powerful, fearsome man listening intently to three soot-covered kids.
“Yes,” Malcolm said, gesturing with his hands as if measuring.
“It’s so long that it goes all the way down to Pop-Pop’s!”
Pop-Pop’s was the famous candy shop on the far side of the central district.
They sold every type of candy you could think of.
The idea that a tiny stream in this park connected all the way there seemed impossible.
I doubted any adult even knew this stream existed.
The only water features in the park everyone knew about were the decorative ponds in the middle, which went nowhere.
“Do you want to show me where it is?” the Alpha asked them.
“We can,” Malcolm said, puffing out his small chest.
“But you’ve got to be careful.”
“Okay,” the Alpha said, his tone grave, as if agreeing to a serious condition.
“Very careful, so you don’t fall in,” Jonathan added, nodding emphatically.
God, I almost let out a strangled laugh.
I couldn’t believe these little pups were telling an Alpha to be careful.
It was ridiculous.
“I’ll be very careful. I promise,” the Alpha said.
He sounded utterly sincere.
“Okay,” Jonathan said, satisfied.
“Let’s go.”
The Alpha stood up and followed behind them as they started picking their way through the rocks at the back of the hollow.
“Hey,” I called out.
The three of them—Malcolm, Jonathan, and the Alpha—turned to look at me.
“Hold your Malcolm’s hand,” I told Jonathan.
“Okay,” Jonathan said, immediately grabbing Malcolm’s hand.
The three of them disappeared into the smoke and brush, the Alpha’s dark form a shadow behind the children.
The rest of us were left in the hollow, the air growing hotter, the sounds of the fire closer.
The wait was agony.
Every second stretched thin.
People coughed, cried quietly, and stared into the smoke where they’d vanished.
A few minutes later, they returned.
The Alpha emerged first, his expression unreadable.
The pups trailed behind him, looking strangely proud.
The Alpha’s eyes found mine immediately across the crowded space.
The murmuring stopped.
All the hope in the hollow was pinned on him now.
“I’ve got a plan,” he announced.
“Can you swim?”
“Swim?” several voices echoed, mine among them.
The question seemed to come from another, saner world.
“Yes,” he repeated, his gaze sweeping over us.
“Swim. Can you swim?”
One by one, hesitant nods and quiet “yes”s came from the adults.
The children, those who were old enough, nodded too, some with a spark of wild excitement cutting through their fear.
Swimming was an adventure.
My own mind went blank.
Can I still swim?
When was the last time I’d deliberately swam?
I couldn’t remember.
It was a skill from a childhood so distant it felt like someone else’s story.
My body, however, held the memory.
The instinct was there, buried under layers of fear and survival.
“Yes,” I heard myself say, the word feeling thin.
“Then we have a plan,” the Alpha said.
“Everyone, get in a line and follow the kids. We get in the water, and we are going to swim. The stream is deeper than it looks where it cuts through. The water will protect us from the heat and take us out of the fire’s path”
Immediately, everyone got in a line.
The Alpha waited at the back.
“Go,” he said.
I went to the front and followed the kids.
We picked our way through the rocky gap.
And there it was, the stream.
It wasn’t big, but it was long, cutting a dark line through the forest.
And where the kids led us, the bank dropped away sharply into a deeper, narrow channel.
The water was dark and moved with a quiet, steady pull.
It looked deep
I carried Catherine in my arms.
“Hold on tight,” I told her.
She nodded, her small face serious.
I helped others find their footing on the slippery bank and get into the water.
The shock of the cold was instant and brutal.
Gasps and cries filled the air.
The Alpha was the last to arrive at the bank.
“Malcolm, hold Jonathan’s hand!” I called to them as they splashed toward the deeper part.
They didn’t listen and jumped into the deeper water anyway, letting out shocked yelps as the cold swallowed them.
“Jonathan! Malcolm!” I shouted, my heart lurching.
They surfaced, sputtering, and reluctantly grabbed each other’s hands, paddling to stay afloat in the current.
A few of the other adults, witnessing the absurd normality of kids messing around in the water even now, let out shaky, half-hysterical laughs.
The sound was weird, but it loosened something tight in the air.
“You should get in,” the Alpha said from right behind me.
I startled.
I hadn’t taken note that everyone had gotten into the water except us.
Catherine and I were the last ones on the bank.
The water below looked black and endless.
I quickly stepped off the edge.
The drop was sudden.
The cold hit me like a physical blow, climbing to my chest and stealing my breath.
Catherine gasped and clung tighter.
I adjusted my grip, keeping her head well above the water.
A second later, a heavy splash sounded beside me.
The Alpha was in the water.