Today was Sunday, so I was in no hurry to get out of bed. As I rolled over and stretched, I heard my father shouted, “Oh, dear, fire!” There was unmistakable urgency in his voice. Upon hearing that, I got up and hurried downstairs. And my mother who was preparing breakfast also stopped cooking immediately. My father showed us a video shot by some witness, where we saw a fire inside a building. My mother stood beside him and shook her head.

“What a pity! Is it local?” my mother asked. As a policeman, my father had a keen observation ability. “It’s your hospital!” he watched the screen carefully and said in surprise.

It turned out that a building of the hospital where my mother worked as a head nurse was on fire. We found out later that an old wire first caused the building to catch fire and it began to spread. The camera captured the firefighters’ figures in black and orange uniform as they aimed endless streams of water at the fire.

“I have to get there,” said my mother, feeling anxious. My father and I offered to go with her. She threw on uniform and drove to the site.

Luckily, the fire didn’t spread to the building where my mother worked. After making sure that it was safe, we came to my mother’s office. My mother’s co-workers came to the office off and on as well. They were horrified at the sight of the next building but still thought about how to help.

Through a front window, I suddenly saw the rows of medical records in the next building, and I hurried to tell my mother. She felt really nervous and instantly consulted with her co-workers about how to cope. The situation was very urgent. They knew that if they waited until the firefighters who were busy evacuating (疏散) patients got here, those recordings might burn up. The fire broke out before the records, which were irreplaceable histories of their patients, could be entered into the computer.

They decided to rescue the records, and my father and I offered to help.

Finally, some firefighters arrived.

Brady was a recently retired search and rescue dog. He was not happy and missed his owner Al because Al had gone out on a rescue mission without him. Al’s nephew Steve took Brady along when he and his friend Zach went on an overnight hike. But suddenly Steve and Zach smelled something burning and they realized that the lightning had set the woods on fire. Wind-blown flame had leaped from the top of one tree to another. The long dry summer had turned the forest into a tinderbox（火绒盒）, and the thunderstorm wasn’t helping much. It had more wind and lightning than rain. Zach pulled Steve’s arm. “Let’s go! We can make it back to the river we crossed today.” Steve snapped Brady’s leash to his collar, and their heads down against the strong fire-wind, they hurried down the trail they had followed earlier. The air was full of smoke, and pine branches snapped from burning trees with a cannon-like sound. Steven kept his eyes fixed on the trail. All they had to do was to make it down to the river.

Brady barked a sharp warning. Ahead of them lay a dense curtain of smoke across the trail. They’d never make it through, so they’d have to find another escape route. The dog was pulling at his leash, trying to draw them away from the smoke. This was what Brady was trained to do, and yet Steve was uneasy. It seemed to him they were moving away from the river.

Brady lifted his head and smelled the smoke-laden wind. Next moment, the dog ran away and disappeared. The boys yelled and shouted for him, but he didn’t come back.

They had no choice but to leave him behind. They went up a slope（斜坡）. They couldn’t blame Brady for panicking and escaping. They themselves wanted to run even though they didn’t have a clue which way. They hadn’t gone far when there was a familiar back, and Brady came running toward them.

65-year-old Mr. Fairfax had retired from teaching. He was very interested in adventure. This time he made an adventure on a sparsely (稀少地) populated land. In the cold winter, he tried a new place and forgot to bring his cell phone, the only time on the trip. He trekked (艰苦跋涉) more than half an mile with two dogs to a harvested wheat field.

With his dark staring eyes at the horizon in expectation of another rabbit, Mr. Fairfax stepped on the thin snow on a canal. Suddenly, it collapsed (坍塌) and dropped him four feet to the bottom.

Realizing that he was in trouble and was going to hurt himself, Mr. Fairfax was suddenly picking up a lot of speed. His left leg hit first, and he lay on his side to reach for his shotgun, unloaded it and used it as a crutch (拐杖). He spent an hour and a half climbing the canal but slipped and slid back down when he was partly up. This time, one of his feet got fixed between two rocks. Mr. Fairfax told himself that if he didn’t get himself out of that canal, he wasn’t going to have a very good night.

Mr. Fairfax walked his foot free and climbed more slowly and cautiously out of the canal. He immediately realized the difficulty of the task before him. The accident occurred about 2 p.m., and it was nearing 5 p.m. with the road far away as the sun was setting.

Mr. Fairfax focused on crawling to safety. Even with his gun supporting him, hopping was impractical. Instead, he sat down and pushed himself backward less than 40 inches at a time with his good leg. He was determined and sure that he must hold on. He was in exhaustion and had more frequent breaks. Temperatures dropped overnight, and his gloves and boots got wet. His hands and feet soon were completely numb.

Mr. Fairfax’s dogs had been playing in the field and eventually came up to him.

However, gleams (微光) of daylight remained — Mr. Fairfax saw the sixth car.