Charisma

by Steven Barnes

  Frankie Darling was there within moments, beating out Ocean’s smoldering clothes with his navy jacket. Patrick arrived a moment later, stripped off his own shirt and beat at the flames as well. Frantically, the boys rolled Ocean over once, twice, muffling fire in dirt. Ocean lay broken, eyes open and staring, twisted like a burned, broken puppet. Frankie’s face went blank, as if someone had turned off the light behind his eyes.

  “Frankie…?” Patrick called, but his friend was already standing, dusting his hands on his pants, his entire body shivering as if he stood naked in a blizzard.

  There Vivian found them. She tried to shelter Patrick’s eyes from the sight of Ocean’s singed body, but he twisted away from her. “Mom—we’ve got to help the others!” He didn’t seem frightened at that moment—he was all purpose and concern for his friends.

  “All right,” she said. “But together. Stay with me.” The fire continued to devour the bunkhouses and other standing buildings. Vivian yanked one kid after another out of the cabins, where they had scrambled in an attempt to save their belongings. “Leave it!” she screamed. “Leave everything!”

  Heather stared at her uncomprehendingly. “But my clothes!” She tried to gather an armful of jeans and shirts.

  Vivian tore them out of her hands and pushed her toward the door, ignoring wails of protests. “Are you crazy? It’s just cloth!” Smoke was already seeping through the window, and the wall outside was aflame. “Now move!”

  81

  The winds were peaking now, whipping dirt and leaves, grass and burning needles into a flaming dust devil. The mini-twister grew almost magically, climbing toward the brooding, cloudless sky, swirling and churning until it formed a thirty-foot tornado of fire. It capered impossibly in the commons between the buildings, like a creature escaped from the very pits of hell.

  The campers stared at the apparition, hypnotically fascinated, temporarily beyond the capacity for reason or flight. The blazing funnel seemed more than merely some lethal but natural phenomenon. It was an omen, a savage portent, and they viewed it with almost superstitious awe.

  In blind flight, Janie almost stumbled over Ocean’s smoldering body, knew he was dead and heard the sob break in her throat. She hardened her heart and pulled at two of the transfixed children. “Damn it, move!”

  The tornado moved south to brush the edge of the mess hall. Flaming shingles exploded from the roof, scattering embers like grenade fragments. The kids cried, and batted at the burns, but still seemed almost petrified, unable to move, to think, as if the twister had triggered some deep and atavistic death wish.

  Then Vivian and Patrick emerged from Heather’s cabin, the teenager struggling helplessly in their grasp. When she saw the kids staring at the twister she followed their gaze, and for a moment was equally transfixed. Then she sucked a blistering lungful of hot air and screamed: “Damn you all—MOVE IT!!”

  At first they just stood, staring at her and then at the tornado. Then Heather began stumbling north. In another few seconds all of the kids were running, leaving the dancing swirling tower of flame to lurch among the smoldering ruins of Camp Charisma Lake.

  * * *

  Renny Sands was exhausted. The two kids had fought with him at first, made him carry them, and he had tried it for the first few hundred feet. Then he set them down and stared at them. “What are your names?” he asked.

  “Clint.”

  “Trey.”

  “All right,” Renny said. “Clint, Trey—do you want to live?” Two small faces bobbed emphatically. “Then we’re going to run, all right? I can’t carry you, but I can get you there safely if you run, all right?”

  More nods. He grabbed their hands and they all began to flee toward the northern plateau, dreaming of water, of the lake. The lake. Certainly, there would be safety at the lake. Please, God, he prayed. Let there be safety.

  The thick-bodied counselor named Jason was ahead of all of them. Displaying surprising speed, he’d made it across the plateau and was heading up the final rise to the lake when he stiffened, screamed, and fell back down, tumbling down the incline, crashing against brush and rocks, his fingers clutching at his leg. He slid to a stop at the bottom, moaning and trying to crawl. He collapsed, and fainted.

  * * *

  “Jesus,” Schott said, wiping his head. From his position on the western ridge, he could see the entire valley: the dancing fire-twister, the smoking ruin of the car, the twisted corpses and the screaming, milling children, scattering like ants. “God amighty.” The custom-made slugs were blunt moldings of specialized acrylic and lead shot, traveling at subsonic velocities with sufficient power to bruise and break bone without piercing the skin. They made little noise, and the plastic binder would burn in the fire, reduce to ash and a scattering of melted lead pellets indistinguishable from the debris around them.

  From his vantage point he had targeted Jason, as one of the other men had taken out the camp owner’s wife as she attempted to drive to safety. As they would cripple anyone who threatened to escape from the trap.

  He fed another plastic slug into his rifle, and began to aim. He swore he could actually feel his soul shriveling as he did, but it was too late now. Too late for any of them, below or above, to escape hell.

  With a silent prayer, his finger tightened on the trigger once again.

  * * *

  Renny realized something was horribly wrong. The first of the counselors should have made it to the top of the ridge, but instead Jason slid back down the hill, clutching at his leg. Was it his imagination? Or had he heard a gunshot?

  Have a warm day.

  For some reason he could not even imagine, D’Angelo had decided to kill him, and the counselors, and every child in the camp.

  But … this was so obscenely elaborate, so incredibly organized … how in the world could anyone possibly have planned it all in twenty-four hours? Or less?

  The only answer was that he couldn’t. And that meant that he had planned this before he knew Renny was coming.

  Which meant that Renny Sand wasn’t the target.

  Then who…?

  That question might never be answered. And if he did manage to riddle it out, the solution might be buried with his charred and broken bones.

  * * *

  Whatever small amount of discipline the children had retained was dissolving completely. A general walla of crying and screaming and wailing rose up as they slid into a collective malaise. The anguish and fear was communicable, jumping from camper to camper like a virus, overwhelming, shutting down the capacity for individual thought and action. As fire licked up from below, the heat rolled up the side of the mountain like a tide, the air itself rose, funneling, swirling back in a heated cycle, driving the campers north toward the lake. Its imagined safety was their only hope. When the first of the plastic slugs knocked Jason back down, even that tiny hope evaporated.

  They were very close to utter, mindless panic, to a reversion from the logical human to the animal, mortal terror chewing away thought and discipline and education, leaving only a blind rush for survival. Frustrate that urge as well and all that was left was the glandular response, and that meant no more than milling and stampeding in a circle, then finally huddling in pockets and waiting for the devouring flames to deliver them from despair.

  * * *

  Kelly Kerrigan’s scalp wound was a driving torment, but with that odd, unpredictable anomaly that sometimes occurs during moments of great stress, her senses seemed almost supernaturally acute.

  She had heard the sniper rifle’s first muffled crack, had watched and listened for another pop and a puff of smoke to find the assassin.

  There he was. Two hundred yards away, neatly nestled on the ridge above the valley. That distance was simplicity itself, on a range. She had occasionally hit the mark at three-fifty with the Sharps. But those shots were on good days, under perfect conditions, without the handicap of a throbbing head wound.

  Her limbs were weak as she took the first shot.
Eight pounds of steel and wood smashed back into her shoulder, and she grunted with pain and effort.

  * * *

  The .44 hand-loaded slug flew at just under 1100 feet per second, traveled for a fraction more than one-fifth of a heartbeat. It transferred all of its energy to the bone and soft tissue of Chuck’s head, detonating his skull like a grenade. The sniper dropped like a stone, bereft of the slightest suspicion that he had been killed.

  * * *

  Destiny heard the .44’s roar. And then another. Every plastic slug had been carefully underpowered to diminish the report, but the Sharps could be mistaken for nothing but a high-powered hunting rifle.

  A shot.

  Around her, the sniffling and screaming stopped. Something else, something deeper triggered within them. There were enemies about. Human enemies.

  They were hunted.

  The representations, values and philosophies transferred from Alexander Marcus had failed them when it came to dealing with a natural disaster, but human foes were a different matter. However strange the environment, however bizarre and indirect the weapons, this was war.

  And war Alexander Marcus had understood.

  Destiny’s eyes found the red and white sports hut, and her mind remembered what it contained.

  * * *

  Denise, Mathias and Heather died in the valley north of the camp, as a foehn wind downdraft met the rising hot air. The air blended and churned upwards into a vertical column, sucking the oxygen out of the entire pocket. They suffocated in the open, two campers and one counselor, gasping and clawing at the ground, crawling toward the lake.

  The surviving children weren’t operating on logic now. What moved them was older, and colder. The wind moved in pulses, driving the fire and smoke up. They pulled T-shirts up around their mouths and noses to protect their lungs, and began to climb.

  “Which way?” Vivian panted.

  Patrick studied the route to the lake. And then the valley walls. The fire was coming from the south, driving toward the north. Certainly that was the way to run. Wasn’t it?

  “Patrick, do you hear me?”

  Suddenly he wasn’t in the valley. Patrick was standing far above himself, as if suspended from a zeppelin. And from there he saw everything: the valley, the lake, the camp, the fire. The campers. He saw the fire sweeping north, and knew, knew that if they ran north the fire would outrun them. They hadn’t a prayer.

  But east, or west, running perpendicular to the breeze …

  Yes. It was just insane enough to work.

  He grabbed his mother’s hands. “Listen to me,” he yelled above the screaming wind. “You have to trust me.”

  “What are you talking about? We have to run!”

  “If you don’t listen to me, we’re going to die.” His voice was calm, and cold, and older than his years, and in spite of her terror, Vivian’s expression went from one of tension to bafflement.

  “Mom,” her son said, “I know what we have to do.…”

  * * *

  Hennings swept the ridge with his binoculars, looking for Chuck. He had heard a boom, a sound deeper than the reverberations of the .32 plastic slugs, something alien and somehow alarming. And now he couldn’t find Chuck.

  He peered between shoals of drifting smoke, studying the valley floor. As he did, the wind shifted, diffusing the smoke, obscuring his view. Dammit: so much smoke! D’Angelo hadn’t really taken that into account, but it wasn’t necessarily fatal. It might mean that the children were suffocating, that this horrendous, mind-numbing job was almost over.

  Although D’Angelo’s brutal plan was apparently working, Hennings couldn’t ignore the fact that Wisher and Woodcock had never returned from Diablo. And now Chuck was gone.

  Hennings took a deep breath, calming himself. Even if something had happened to Chuck (what?), Schott, Silvestri, and the deadly D’Angelo remained. Together, they would get it done.

  The alternative was unthinkable.

  If Hennings could have seen through the smoke he would have been less optimistic. Concealed by the shifting, impenetrable haze, Vivian and a dozen of the surviving kids, led by Patrick in a spontaneous act of counterintuitive perception, had climbed the ridges to the east and west. Once there, panting and choking, they clambered down to safety on the far side. Once safe, they would be able to rest. And once rested, they would have time to think.

  * * *

  Hennings continued to scan his binoculars north and south, slow steady sweeps that covered the length and breadth of the killing zone. During the brief moments when the wind shifted sufficiently to give him a view across the valley, he spotted another of the kids climbing up the incline, and gritted his teeth. Time to get back to work. He picked up his rifle, checked the sights, and raised it to his shoulder.

  * * *

  Twenty yards south of Hennings, Destiny had clambered up the ridge. She crouched, hidden from the killer by an overhanging bush. Struggling not to make a sound, she pulled her bow off her shoulder, and without pause positioned it carefully, nocked an arrow, and drew.

  Smoke drifted up from the valley, obscuring her target. Choking back a cough, Destiny waited. She dared not blink, or swallow, or give in to fatigue. Instinct told her that she would have only a moment, only a second in which to act. Her eyes burned, and she blinked them one at a time, praying that the same clouds of ash that blinded her would prevent her unknown enemy from acting.

  For a moment the smoke parted, giving her the barest view. She saw the rifleman, crouched, aiming down at her friends. She whispered that briefest and sincerest of prayers: Please God, then released and watched the arrow fly twenty-four feet to strike Hennings in the throat.

  He reared back, eyes mad with agony, unable to scream, hands fumbling for the shaft. He struggled his way up to standing, and tugged at the arrow, but couldn’t extract it. Blood gushed from his mouth. He staggered, crazed now. Destiny could not move from his line of sight, even when Hennings finally spied her.

  All strength in Destiny’s arms and legs and mind drained to nothing as Hennings raised his rifle and sighted at her. He managed to get the rifle halfway up, and still Destiny could not move, the roar of her own blood a deafening wall of sound.

  Hennings fired, but the slug went wild and short. He crumpled to his knees, his eyes already filming over, his mouth set in an odd, crimsoned mask of resignation. He fell over onto his side, kicked his legs a few times, and made an aimless crawling gesture. Then he collapsed and was still.

  * * *

  Spread by explosion and convection, the fire blazed out of control now. Smoke had been sighted by helicopters and picnickers with cell phones. Fire units from as far away as Prescott roared toward the Folly, the good men and women who drove them counting the minutes and seconds, knowing the time lag between alarm and response, knowing the distances involved, and fearing for the lives of the children trapped in that valley.

  Even without the threat of the riflemen, the firefighters’ fears were justified. The afternooner whirled a constellation of sparks up out of the saddle, away from the Folly and into the forest beyond, sweeping a wall of flame that the kids were lucky to have beaten to the crest. The fortunate ones fled through the forest, seeking the road on the far side of the lake, and safety.

  * * *

  Kelly sighted again, blinking hard. Her vision doubled and then cleared as she sighted down the slot at Silvestri, who crouched on the western ridge. Wait for it. She took a deep breath, let it out, and fired. Sighted again, this time at Schott, and fired a second time. Unfortunately this time Kelly had unseated the Sharps just a bit, allowed just a hair of space between the butt and her shoulder, but it was enough. At recoil, the rifle’s stock slammed back into her shoulder, shattering it.

  The bullets traveled for just over half a second. The first took Silvestri in the body. He stumbled forward, dropped to his knees, and was still.

  The second shot went wild. Schott stared at his partner, disbelieving, not realizing that death had pa
ssed less than two feet from his head.

  The echo of the shots still rang across the valley, a rolling boom completely unlike the crack of the rifles carried by his team. As the haze cleared he glimpsed the kids climbing up the valley’s east and west faces. With Woodcock and Wisher missing, Silvestri and maybe Chuck shot by someone unknown, it was over. There was no way to keep the trap sealed. All he could do was run for it.

  And he did, making it along the ridge south. The wind blew northwest now, and he figured that the fire would follow it. With a little luck …

  Schott felt the branches slapping against his leg, and at first thought that the pain in his ankle was a deep, ugly thorn scratch.

  He looked down at his calf, and saw the blood oozing through the rip in his pant leg. Someone scuttled back into the bushes, and he couldn’t see who or what it was.

  Schott pivoted to the right. He didn’t have time to register the blur, never saw the arrow before it drove into his gut. Even with most of the energy absorbed by his heavy shirt, the head penetrated two inches. He screamed, grabbed the shaft and wrenched it out, just in time to feel another pain in his back. He pivoted and reached around to wrench an X-acto craft knife from the hand of a skinny black girl who was even now creeping back into the brush. He stared at the blade in his hand, his own blood leaking from it, and felt momentarily disconnected from reality. This was all a dream. It had to be.

  Something very like a whimper escaped his throat. He took another hobbling step, then a big hick-looking kid stepped out, his face set as serious as Death.

  The kid walked right up to him. The world was spinning, and now there were other kids, appearing out of the brush, seared, dirty, smudged, their eyes hollow and cold, carrying screwdrivers and folding knifes, kitchen cutlery and even a garden rake.

  Schott took another step back. The big kid put his palms flat against Schott’s chest, and pushed hard.

  Schott slid backwards down the incline, into the burning underbrush, screaming all the way.

  * * *