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Where the hell was Rosie now? She had an hour headstart on me.
I couldn’t—wouldn’t—entertain the possibility she was caught in the fire. Instead, I kept thinking about the liquid in the footage. I was sure it was petrol. Or kerosene. I was also sure Rosie had captured footage of the arsonist.
And now, we just might catch the arsonist fleeing the scene.
The quickest way to get to the burrow from here was on foot, following the fire break along their boundary with the national park to where it reached ours.
Once I was jogging along the fire break, I heard a car rev in the distance and whipped around. The engine noise then became softer. Shit, they were fading, not approaching.
Where was the brigade? Come on Ryan or Bruce, or whoever.
I kept up my speed, my legs screaming to slow down.
Smoke was blowing over now.
Embers were on the breeze.
Shit.
I stopped and called out for Rosie. And again as I gulped for air.
Nothing.
I kept running, my legs screaming with my effort. I fell against a tree, my eyes stinging from the smoke, and called out a third time.
“Here!”
Success!I pushed off the tree and passed by a distinctive boulder near Hades’ burrow.
“Rosie!” I screamed into the bush.
“Tom?” Rosie’s voice was strained. I caught a flash of high-vis orange through the bush and charged through the undergrowth and over small boulders, not caring if I slipped and twisted an ankle. I was bulletproof right now.
“Tom! Over here!”
“You have to get off the mountain right now!” I jumped over one last boulder and crashed into her.
Rosie held me tight, shaking, pale. “I know! I am, I just—look!” She pointed down to our feet.
A dead wombat. Its hips were out of shape like it had been hit by a car.
“She’s got a joey. I was about to check its health when I heard you.”
As she bent down to examine the wombat, I caught the sight of flames from where I’d come. The unmistakable smell of petrol was all around.
My heart pounded. “Rosie, we need to leave right now.”
“It’s alive. I’ve got it.”
“It was arson. They stole the trail camera,” Rosie said plainly, scooping up the joey into her jumper under her high vis jacket. “There’s petrol on the ground further up.”
I grabbed Rosie by the arm. “We’re … cut off.”
I couldn’t say trapped.
“What?” She adjusted the joey in her arms, coughing on the smoke. “Oh god.”
“The wind is blowing the embers across the mountain, not up. We need shelter.”
