Dave Eggers - Heroes of the Frontier

“The lightning goes after the trees, right?” Paul asked.

“I don’t know,” Josie said. How could she not know? Stay away from water or go toward water? Into the trees or away from the trees?

Then again, they hadn’t seen lightning yet, so she held out hope that they could make it to the forest before the real storm came, if it came at all. The forest seemed the safest option. They could rest there, stay dry.

“Let’s run,” Josie said.

Paul and Ana’s eyes spoke of their exhaustion, but this was quickly replaced by the spark of a necessary task.

“We’re going to run to that bunch of trees, okay?” Josie said.

They nodded. Ana positioned herself in a sprinter’s start.

“Ready?” Josie asked. “Let’s go.”

They took off, away from the water and across the flowered meadow, not caring what colors they crushed underfoot.

“Yes!” Ana roared behind her.

Josie turned and saw Ana’s tiny feet fly over rocks and bramble, her big orange head leaping like a candle carried by a rabbit. She watched Paul’s face, set with purpose. The trees were only a few hundred yards away now. They would make it. When they were near the first great pines, Josie felt silly, having made this more dramatic than it needed to be. After all, they were simply outside, running in a developing storm. She didn’t want her children to be afraid of the rain, or the thunder, or lightning, even if, given their altitude, the storm might be coming from a perilously close distance. Before the forest there was an array of small jagged boulders, and among them Josie stopped, allowing Paul and Ana to pass her, smiling as she watched them fly by her, pumping their arms, both of them grinning wildly.

“Good, good!” Josie roared, almost jubilant.

A screaming crack ripped open the sky above. The world went white and Josie’s back seized as if whipped. In front of her, Paul and Ana were frozen in the white light for a few long seconds, photographed in mid-stride. She had the momentary thought that they had been struck, that this was what it was to be struck by lightning, that her children were being eliminated from the world. But the light turned off, the world returned to color, and her children continued moving, continued living, and the flash was followed by a thunderclap so loud she stopped and threw herself to the ground.

“Get down!” she yelled to Paul and Ana. “And come here.”

Paul and Ana crawled to her, and she draped herself over the two of them. They stayed low for a minute as the sky growled and panted, as if impatiently looking for Josie and her children.

“I’m scared,” Ana said. “Will the lightning hit us?”

“No,” Paul said firmly. “Not while we’re low like this. Make yourself small,” he said, and Ana shrunk, holding her knees with her arms.

“Good,” he said.

“Okay. We’re going to run again,” Josie said. “Just to the trees.” She looked up, seeing they were no more than a hundred yards away from the next forest.

“Ready?” she asked.

Paul and Ana nodded, ready to push off and run. Josie paused a moment longer than she had planned, and she had no reason why. For a fleeting moment she looked into the forest, and ran her eyes up the length of the tallest tree, wondering briefly if it was true that the lightning would strike the tallest object in any field.

“Are we going?” Paul asked.

And then the world tore open. A sickening light filled the forest and a blue-white bolt split the tree, the one she’d just been contemplating, a quick ax driven down its spine.

“Shit,” Josie said.

“Mom, will it get us now?” Ana asked.

Josie said no, it wouldn’t get them. That last strike was the closest the lightning would come, she told them, though she had no reason to believe this was true. If anything, the lightning was getting closer each time. It seemed to be acting with intent.

They waited, watching the charred remains of the split tree smolder, a narrow plume of grey smoke spreading upward. The thunder roared again, sounding like a tank moving across the roof of the sky. Josie ran all available options through her mind. They could stay where they were, but they’d get soaked. The rain would come soon, she was sure, and the sun would set, and the dark would be absolute. They would be wet and cold and unable to find their way back. They had to continue, now. She could see the trail winding up the next mile or so, interrupted by small stands of trees. They would have to sprint between them between lightning strikes.

“We’re going to that next forest,” she told her children. “It’s just a few hundred yards.” But the path there was wide open, unprotected, and while they ran across the expanse they would be easy targets for whatever malevolent force was patrolling their progress.

“No, Mama,” Ana said. “No, please.”

Paul explained that the lightning had just struck the trees, so why would they go where the lightning had just struck?

“It won’t strike there again,” she said, not believing herself. “And it’s going to rain soon, okay? We have to move.” She had some irrational hope that there was something, some human structure, even a discarded tent, at the lake. “One, two, three,” she said, and they ran again, their shoulders hunched, their heads fearing reprisal from above.

The first raindrops fell on their sprinting forms as they found the shelter of the trees. They passed the tree that had been struck, smelling its charred wood, the scent strangely clean, and continued until the forest thickened, dark with low boughs. Josie stopped and Paul and Ana gathered around her, and the three of them, out of breath, sat down against the wide trunk of an ancient pine.

“Can’t we just stay here?” Ana asked, and Josie thought it very possible they could stay there, at least for a spell, in hopes the storm might pass. As she was contemplating this, though, the rain came heavier and a gust of cold wind shot through the trees. The temperature seemed to drop twenty degrees, and the rain drenched them in seconds. She looked down at Ana, who was wearing a short-sleeved shirt. Her eyes were wide and her teeth began chattering. No, Josie thought. No. Only one option. She took off her own shirt. “Let me put this on you,” she told Ana, and Ana gave her a horrified look.

“Put it on,” Josie said firmly.

Ana threw the shirt over her head and it draped awkwardly over her torso and rested across her knees.

“You’re going in just that?” Paul asked, nodding toward Josie’s white bra, a utilitarian style with a tiny fringe of lace.

“I’m fine,” Josie said, mistaking his statement for one of concern. He was embarrassed for her, she realized. He didn’t want his mother running across a mountain trail in a bra.

“Let me see that map,” Josie said, asking Paul for the hand-drawn rendering he’d made when they’d begun. Josie wasn’t sure what she expected to find on it, but she had begun to think their forward push was ill-advised. They were heading further into the storm, into territory they knew nothing about, but if they turned back, no matter how long it took or how wet and cold they got, they could be sure to find the town. Paul hesitated for a moment, then a grave look overtook his face. He pulled the paper from his pocket, unfolded it and hovered over it, protecting it from the rain.

Above, two jets collided. There could be no other explanation. Josie had never heard thunder so loud. The raindrops grew still bigger. Her children, already soaked, somehow grew wetter, colder. Josie estimated the temperature was in the high fifties and would drop ten degrees in the next hour.

Now she looked at the map, and though it was as rudimentary as the one he’d copied it from, showing only a meandering trail leading to an oval lake, there was that tidy rectangle next to the oval. It had to be some kind of structure, she thought. Even an outhouse would be life-saving.