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Fire engines. Police. Ambulances. They pour onto the narrow road outside the farm, lights painting the smoky sky, doors slamming as personnel spill out, and my stomach drops through the ground.
No.
No.
They cannot be here for Poet.
Please not for Poet.
I’m halfway to the gate before I register the lack of urgency in the men and women gathered around the vehicles. Firefighters lean against their engines, faces painted with grime and dirt. A paramedic sits on the rear step of an ambulance while police unroll maps across the bonnets of their cars.
They are regrouping.
Resting.
Relief crashes into me so viscerally my knees almost buckle. But I catch myself as Mal and Dav follow me out into the yard. Turn away from Mal’s subtle concern, grateful all over again he’s with me, and not one of my friends who find it harder to mask their real feelings. Turn away from the bitter frustration that isn’t far behind the relief.
Poet and Folk are still out there while everyone else has stopped. I take another mindless step towards the road.
“Oscar.”
Mal’s voice feels a million miles away.
“Oscar.”
I spin around again. The ground trembles beneath my feet and I follow the direction Mal’s pointing in.
Lights.
High on the ridge beyond the top fields, two white beams shining through the smoke, growing brighter—stronger—with every second I’m caught frozen and staring.
At a tractor.
Crawling over the horizon as though it’s emerging from the lair of the gods, work lights glowing through the haze, engine labouring as it rolls over the ridge and descends towards the farm.
My heart stops.
Restarts with a force that has me lurching into motion again. Has me running to meet Poet’s beloved Edna as she rumbles free of the apocalypse and reaches the last gate.
It’s already open.
The tractor seems to list sideways as she rolls through. Mudguards hang at unnatural angles. Soot blackens the paintwork and one of the lights flickers out as finally, the tractor eases to a halt.
Ash and scorched mud cake the tyres. The engine coughs and dies, and for one impossible moment, nothing happens.
I’m still running, but the world stops turning.
Then the cab door swings open. A man jumps down and hits the ground with a pained curse and new relief surges through me. But it doesn’t last—the figure coughing and gripping the tractor for support isn’t Poet, and I disregard him with little conscious thought.
I blow past him—past Folk, I realise distantly—and reach the cab.
Poet is still inside. One hand clings to the wheel, the other braces against the doorframe. Blood has dried in dark streaks on his face, on his torso mottled with soot and grime, and his hands—his beautiful, competent hands—are torn to shreds, every knuckle stripped raw.
His gaze finds mine. Sheer exhaustion seeps from it and every bound nerve inside me gives way.
“Po?” I reach into the cab and slide an arm around his back, lifting him clear and lowering him to the ground, taking every ounce of solid muscle and dead weight he’ll let me hold.
I set him gently on his feet.
