Free The Portal in the Forest by Matt Dymerski

strip torn from my shirt. The kids all
seemed worried that I had stopped, but Danny barked at them to keep
moving.
    Eventually, the limping boy - Ryan, if I
remembered right, maybe nine years old - caught up to me.
    His entire face was bright red from exertion,
and dripping sweat. The wall of fire was louder here, and more
audible without the group's crunching footfalls. I watched him
until he reached me.
    "I hurt my ankle," he gasped.
    "Hold onto my arm," I offered, taking the
pressure off his hurt leg as much as I could. We began staggering
forward. "We're going to make it, don't you worry."
    He had no breath for a reply. I could feel
the heat on our backs growing, and searing breezes began ruffling
our clothes.
    "I don't wanna die," he said, unprompted.
    I looked, and saw tears flowing down his
face. "You're not going to die."
    He gasped with resigned terror. "We're not
going fast enough."
    I set my jaw, my thoughts on the people that
had died on this world. "I'm not going to leave you behind."
Out of options, I bent down, and had him climb up on my back. "We
are all getting out of this godforsaken place."
    I huffed forward, tapping into reserves I
never knew I had. He was no baby, and heavy on my back, but I
ignored the pain in my feet and the heavy weight in my muscles and
pushed on - until I looked further ahead, and saw a scattering of
children lying where they'd fallen from exhaustion.
    I couldn't carry them all.
    "Get up!" I screamed, still a hundred feet
away from the first fallen child.
    She pushed herself up weakly.
    "That's it! That's it, get up! Get up!
Keep going! "
    Stumbling forward, she began to walk again,
her head low and her eyes hollow.
    Which reminded me - I'd have given anything
for a few iWorkers. Those things would have walked the children
right to the limits of their endurance without an issue.
    And thoughts like that, I'm sure, were what
led that world to its fate…
    "You!" I shouted again, approaching a prone
ten-year-old boy whose name I desperately wanted to remember. "Get
up! You're not going to die in this oven. All you have to do is
walk another mile or two and you can fall down and rest as long as
you want."
    He still didn't move.
    Finally reaching him, I pushed him with my
shoed foot.
    He groaned.
    "Get up, goddamnit!"
    Trembling, he took my hand, and started
walking again after another push.
    Ahead, two more children lay stretched out on
obsidian, and, ahead of them, I saw four more collapsed in various
positions.
    Even if I did get them up, we were moving too
slowly. I could feel the blazing heat at our backs, and I dared not
look. "Get up!" I screamed, desperate. "Please, just get up!"
    The first one we reached, a girl, tried to
get up - and fell back onto her wide plate of black glass.
    It was about then that the horrible tree of
approaching decisions manifested itself to me. I'd burned all our
spare time, and the cleansing wall was nearly upon us.
    I couldn't save them all.
    Was this what the people on the Moon had
felt, unable to feed billions of people?
    They had to be left behind…
    I could carry one… but the others had to be
left behind…
    I already had one boy on my back. Did he
deserve to live simply because he had faltered first?
    Could I possibly live with putting him down,
and picking up another child?
    I became aware of an added wetness in my
sweat - tears? I hadn't cried in so long, and now, here, forced to
make the worst decision… it was simply happening, somewhere fuzzy,
somewhere outside my cold and calculating survival instincts. Part
of me knew the tragedy - but I couldn't directly feel that part of
me, not anymore.
    I could save one. Which one? One clung to my
back, screaming as the corona at the base of the wall of fire began
dancing toward us. Six children lay sprawled out before me and
ahead of me. Should I choose by age? Youngest, or oldest? Gender?
Boy, or girl? Or should I choose the smartest, the most capable I'd
seen?
    No.
    I refused to accept it.
    It was