Truly Like Lightning

by David Duchovny

  “Man, I don’t like not knowing shit,” one of the uniforms said. “They sent us in to fuck with a half hard-on.”

  “Maybe we should wait for more intel.”

  “Oh, you wanna wait till the movie comes out, see what you should do?”

  Dark stopped the debate: “Ladies, stop bitching.”

  “He’s a different type of cat, huh?”

  The sergeant smiled with something like respect. “Yes, a different type of cat. And our dicks are always hard. Hard but fair, right, boys?”

  “Right,” the boys answered.

  “Okay, Adams,” the sergeant continued, “get back in the car and drive it to the side of the house, on the right there, view of the back right, too. Jacko, you get up to the left side, get yourself some view of the back, too, okay? Let’s pin him down and wait for more backup. He’ll see the numbers and he’ll quit. He’s a father that loves his son. He’s just confused right now. I’ll get him talking, man to man, father to father, Christian to Christian.”

  “What if I get a shot at the white supremacist asshole?” Adams asked.

  “No one said he’s a white supremacist.”

  “Sarge, if it waddles like a duck and quacks like a duck…”

  “Adams, hush now,” Sergeant Dark said. “I haven’t heard him quack at all.”

  “That bullet fuckin’ quacked.”

  “If I get a shot at him, I take it?” Jacko asked. “If he’s looking for suicide by cop and threatening that boy, do I give it to him?”

  “Boys, boys, boys.” Dark extended his arms. “Chill. This isn’t that movie. No crossfire, now, okay? Nobody takes a shot. Do not give him a shot. We are gonna tire him out. No one-on-one ball. Team play. Copy?”

  “Copy.”

  “Copy.”

  “Jacko? Let me hear you.”

  “Copy, Sarge. No one-on-one.”

  The men nodded solemnly at one another. They all had some training for something like this, but they were cops, not one of them had ever been in an actual deadly hostage situation. A couple hours ago, they were eating lunch in San Bernardino and bullshitting about women and sports, thinking about working out more and eating less. Now this. Life and death. They were each terrified in their own way of this sudden crucible, harboring dreams of heroism, ashamed of the growing fear in their bellies, the nightmare of potential cowardice.

  “I been married three times. And I got six kids,” Dark said. “I know how to deal with hostage takers.” The men laughed out some relief at the cool of their beloved Sergeant Coors. “Let’s keep talking to him on the bullhorn. If he comes out with the boy, shooting, do not shoot the boy, do not shoot at him when he’s near the boy. If you see any children, do not shoot. Even if he is shooting—duck and cover. And stay with me on the walkie! Clear?”

  “Clear, Sarge.”

  “There may be other children in the house that you cannot see. Is that clear?”

  “Clear, Sarge.”

  “Nobody gets hurt today. That’s the movie we’re making. This ain’t Waco. Let’s keep him pinned down and get him talking, sit on him, tire him out. Get SWAT out here. Go!”

  Two uniformed men dove at the one car, and two at the other, the sergeant and another man remaining behind the third car. The two cars drove off to separate sides of the house. A couple bullets dinged them as they skidded into position. Sergeant Dark radioed in that the situation was escalating quickly, and he requested SWAT and maybe helicopters. His radio was shit out here though. The desert scrambled everything. He felt like his request had been heard, hoped, but he wasn’t 100 percent sure. The boys didn’t need to know that.

  From her position in the barn, Mary could see the cop cars come into view, and the guns trained on the house, on Bronson and Hyrum. Her fog was lifting now. She stayed very still, trying to ensure that the cops wouldn’t be drawn to any movement, and that the kids were well hidden and silent at the back of the barn, safe from any bullet angles. The cops had taken their positions, shielded from Bronson by their cars, but Mary had a clear, and for her, easy shot at each of the four cops. She was an excellent marksman. She stayed low but lifted her gun slowly, balancing it on an empty window frame, and waited for the shot she wasn’t at all sure, even given the chance, she could take.

  From inside the home, Bronson saw the two cop cars pull up to the sides of the house. He knew they wanted simultaneous views of the front and back, and that’s what he wanted for them, too. He wanted them to see inside, to see what he was doing, to try to get a step ahead of him. They were only about thirty yards apart; the cops could see Hyrum and him talking, but couldn’t make out the words.

  “Bronson Powers!” came the voice over the bullhorn. “My name is Sergeant Paul Dark. I’m with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department. I’d like to talk.”

  Bronson’s response was to take a few shots at one of the cop cars, and watch the men dive down and then come back up. Bronson reloaded. Hyrum aimed his gun out of the other side of the house at the other car.

  “Don’t hit anyone, son,” Bronson yelled across the room.

  “I know,” Hyrum replied. “If I wanted to hit one, one would get hit.” Bronson marveled at the cold-bloodedness of the young boy. How he used to get such a kick out of what a little warrior he was, and how that same nature troubled him today—that maybe something darker was there. He smelled the scent of the spent bullets in the air, sulfurous, like the devil.

  “Come back to me now,” Bronson called to Hyrum. The boy did as he was told and jogged to his father’s side.

  Sergeant Dark’s voice floated in on the bullhorn—“Bronson. Stop shooting. We don’t want anyone to get hurt today. I’m here to listen. Let’s find a solution.”

  Bronson yelled out to the cop cars, “Hey! Hey!” till he made eye contact with them. Then he quickly grabbed Hyrum by the throat and held the gun to his head. “I’m gonna kill him now if you make another move! He’s mine to do with what I want!”

  “Help!” Hyrum yelled. “He’s gonna kill me! He’s fuckin’ crazy! Please help me now!” Bronson was taken aback that the kid was such a good actor. He seemed like he really meant it.

  He whispered, “Good,” in Hyrum’s ear. “But don’t say ‘fuck.’”

  From her vantage point, Mary could see the cops react, reposition slightly, and point their weapons. She couldn’t see Bronson and Hyrum inside, but she knew enough about a gun to know that the cops were aiming at a hard target now, not just covering a general direction. She aimed, too. She had a clear shot at the side of the head of both cops. Resting the gun on the window ledge took the shake out of her hands. She felt the trigger metal fold neatly into the crease of her finger. She used to like to shoot. She knew she couldn’t kill a cop; she also knew she might if they started shooting at her man and her boy.

  One cop spoke into his shoulder radio: “Sarge, he’s got his gun on the kid, he’s threatening the kid. The kid is crying out for help.”

  “Clear shot on the dad?” Dark asked.

  “Negative.”

  “I got an angle, but it’s not great. He’s … the kid.”

  “What? Do … sh…” The walkie was cutting in and out. “What? What do I…?”

  “Get ready to … nothing.”

  “Ready to what, Sarge?”

  “Ready.”

  “I got a cl … got a … no … shot.” The walkie was garbled and inconsistent.

  “What?”

  “Missed.”

  “What? Fuckin’ walkie! Fuckin’ desert is fuckin’ with us.”

  “Missed.”

  “Jesus Fuck, I told you not to shoot, Jacko,” Dark yelled.

  “Radio problems,” Jacko said. Now there was nothing but static.

  The sergeant threw down his walkie. It seemed to him that the desert was siding with Bronson. “We’re a hundred fuckin’ yards away and the fuckin’ radios don’t work. Someone get me a couple plastic cups and some string.”

  “Sir?”

  The
bullet shattered the window by Bronson, glass cutting his cheek. Mary drew a bead on the cop closest to her. She could see he was very young, in his mid-twenties maybe. She was about to pull her trigger when Bronson, still holding Hyrum by the neck in a half nelson, fired a few shots at the cop cars and then sprinted to another room off the living room, out of sight of the cops. The uniforms had ducked back down behind the squad cars. Mary took her finger off her trigger. Sergeant Dark couldn’t tell if anybody’d been hurt.

  “Talk to me! Anybody hit?”

  “Shit! He ran,” one of the cops said, hunkered down behind the car.

  “Ran where?”

  “Lost eyes ah…! He dis … into … house. He’s.… ing … gun … boy! Orders?”

  “Fuck me! Ran where? I’m blind here. What about the boy?” Dark grabbed the walkie. “Wait! Do not…!”

  “Don’t what, Sarge?”

  “Don’t…”

  “Sarge?” The cop waited. “Orders? Sarge? Can’t hear you. We’re going in, Sarge! He’s gonna kill the boy! We’re going in!!” The radio started crackling again.

  Sergeant Dark threw the walkie down, stood up, waving his arms, and screamed to his men near the house—“No! Don’t go in! I think he wants you to go in!”

  He had just gotten the attention of the men when a shot dinged his shoulder. He went down. “Fuck!” he said, gritting his teeth. “The man’s got good aim. Thought I was outta range. That was a rifle. This guy’s good. Give me the bullhorn.”

  The cops nearer to the house hadn’t heard their sergeant yell for them to stay out, but they saw him take a hit and go down. They tried the walkie again—nothing. “They shot Coors. Go time!” Jacko yelled.

  The four cops charged out from behind the flanking vehicles toward the house. The decisive movement emboldened them, and the righteousness of their rescue mission fortified them. By the time their sergeant got on the bullhorn again to try to stop them, their adrenaline and the blood rushing to their ears made them deaf. They were almost to the house. Bronson peeked out a window and saw them making their move. He didn’t shoot.

  From the barn, Mary saw the cops running too, and she was about to start shooting when it came to her, that rotten egg smell—it was a smell from the Hollywood sets, from her working days, her time as a stuntwoman and sword swallower. Of course she knew that smell. From stunt days of fire. It was an accelerant, carbon disulfide. What the hell was Bronson doing with accelerant on his hands?

  Before she could hazard a guess, the answer came from without. The cops had charged the house, breaking down the door, four of the six storming inside. They hadn’t been in the house ten seconds when the first explosion came, a good one, a real professional FX doozy. The force and heat of it drove Mary to the ground even out at the barn. She yelled at the kids to stay down, and by the time she got back up, she saw two of the cops on fire, running around, screaming inside the house. It looked like a movie, Bronson’s movie, but it smelled like real life.

  Now another explosion shook the wood planks, and knocked her down. “What’s happening, Mom?” Beautiful wailed. “It’s the fire, isn’t it? The fire!”

  “Alvin! Get back, Beautiful! Get down, all of you and shut up!” Mary ordered.

  “It’s the fire! I told you! The fire!” Beautiful shouted.

  Mary turned back momentarily to look at Beautiful, who was lost in her own prophecies of doom now seemingly coming true. Mary made a move to console her, to lay calming hands on her, when a third explosion rocked her sideways, driving her head against the side of the barn and drawing blood from her brow. The children shrieked. Beautiful bolted. Mary recovered quickly and caught Beautiful up in her arms to soothe her, but the child was mesmerized by her own visions, inconsolable and desperate, looking to run like a spooked horse.

  Mary heard/felt another explosion, the fourth, in the house, and now the fire caught and the wooden structure went up like kindling in a huge flame in the hot dry desert air. Mary held tight to Beautiful as she stood up again to see. Bronson and Hyrum were still in there. She heard the screams of the other cops, as smaller pops rocked the house like a cache of fireworks. All the tricks of Bronson’s former trade making illusions now bearing real, deadly fruit. She saw glimpses through the windows and heard the dark-uniformed, burning men hurl themselves, writhing and lurching in agony, unable to find an exit in the heat and smoke. She held Beautiful’s face against her breast, keeping the child blind, repeating mindlessly the lie, “There’s no fire … there’s nothing … there’s no fire.”

  “I can smell the fire!” Beautiful screamed. “It’s here! It’s happening! This is the end!”

  Suddenly, the back door of the house flew open and a Hollywood-worthy fireball came rolling out, hungry for more oxygen, and inside that fireball, Mary made out two burning figures running within it, like they were riding in and on an orange wave—a man and a boy. “Oh Jesus, God,” she prayed to herself. “Don’t make me watch my loved ones burn to death.” Her mouth opened instinctively, as if she were preparing to swallow fire again, as she had on the Venice Boardwalk long ago. She closed her mouth; she could not swallow this fire.

  Beautiful kept chanting, “It’s here. It’s happening!”

  Mary was going to lose her temper. “Beautiful—that’s not helping! Children, stay down! Look away!”

  Mary turned again and watched in horror as the larger burning figure grabbed a fire extinguisher that she hadn’t noticed was lying out back there with a couple of knapsacks, and pushed the smaller one down and doused him, rolling him over, rolling him until the flames had been smothered, and he was just smoldering and smoking. Then the smaller figure took the extinguisher and doused the still burning larger one until his fire was out, too. White foam was flying and dark black smoke rose into the air off their bodies.

  And there, under the foam and ash, standing now, the larger figure grabbed the smaller one’s face in his hands and ripped it off, up and over his scalp. Mary felt the bile rise in her throat, till she recognized the face was not a face, but a mask, a flame-retardant barrier, a Pyrex faceplate (she’d worn a few in her day), and under the mask was Hyrum, gulping for air. Now she recognized the flame-retardant suits from yesteryear, as the figures quickly removed their hot, charred Kevlar outer layer. The larger figure pulled his face off too—also gasping. Neither would have been able to breathe the last minute or so with their faceplates affixed over their noses and mouths. Their masks on the ground, Bronson and Hyrum stood there, hands on their knees, gasping hard for air, but alive, and seemingly unhurt. Bronson had been holding on to this rarefied special effects equipment, squirreling it away, for years. Once every five years or so, when he would make small burns to control the invasive cheatgrass around the property that gave too much cover and fuel for a possible wildfire, he would also do a burn for the kids where he put on a flame-retardant suit and set himself alight, and then come back to life.

  “Gives them the right sense of respect for the old man,” he’d say. “When you see a man burn and live, you tend to do what that man says—worked on Moses…” He’d laugh. “Plus, it’s fucking fun.”

  She was frozen in place. Bronson and Hyrum stripped off the layer of Insulite and the rest of their flame-retardant suits, threw on the two knapsacks, and stumbled to the horses, who were spooked by the explosions and fire, stomping, crying out, and banging at their stalls. As she watched Bronson and Hyrum run, she had the thought that she’d never seen either of them so alive. They passed right by her, close enough to touch, but she didn’t reach out or try to talk to them, but rather let them pass by; it was like they were on a movie screen to her. Her attention was drawn to the embers from the burning house buffeted on the wind in all four directions. These glowing handfuls of fire were beautiful, sentient-seeming, like fireflies, but bigger, like incandescent butterflies dancing and landing where they would. She, almost smiling, watched some settle on the barn as if they would pollinate with fire. She snapped out of her appreciation of this be
auty when she realized the broad beams of the barn had caught too. The desiccated wood would go up like kindling in minutes. She ran to release the other horses from their stalls.

  Before getting on his horse, Hyrum made a detour to the pens that held the cow, the pigs, the chickens, and the ostriches. He pulled his gun from the knapsack and jogged up to the milk cow. He put the muzzle to the animal’s head.

  Bronson turned back from his horse and saw. “What are you doing, Hy?”

  “Fernanda’s gonna burn. They’re all gonna burn. I don’t want her to suffer.” Bronson was moved by this act of mercy.

  “Don’t shoot her,” he said, “just open the gate and shoo her out. She’ll run to safety.” He didn’t know if that was true or not, but on top of everything else, he didn’t want his son putting a bullet through a beloved cow’s head.

  “Okay,” Hyrum said. He unlatched the gate. The cow didn’t budge. She licked the boy’s face instead. Hyrum hugged the animal around its broad neck and started to weep. “Dad? What do I do? Fernanda won’t leave.”

  “Shoo her. Smack her ass!” Bronson jumped off his horse. They didn’t have time for this shit. He ran into the pen and kicked at the old cow’s rear end. She turned around at him, accusing, refusing to budge her 1,500-pound bulk, her big wet brown eyes hurt by this human betrayal.

  The scene was bedlam. The sounds of distress at the fire and confusion coming from the pigs, chickens, and horses were horrible: pure animal fear. Made it hard for Bronson to think. “Shoo!” he yelled, and fired his gun right near the cow’s head. She bolted at the noise and stumbled out of the gate, running blindly this way and that, toward the fire and away. “Come on, Hyrum!” Bronson yelled. He sprinted to release the other animals from their enclosures. Hyrum helped shoo the terrified beasts out into the open. “They’re animals. They’re smart. They’ll find a way to safety. God will see to them. C’mon!”

  Bronson could tell Hyrum didn’t want to leave till he saw all the creatures free and clear, so he grabbed his arm. “Come on, son! That’s all we can do.” Hyrum wiped his eyes and mouth of tears and spittle with the back of his arm, and put his gun back in his knapsack. They jumped back on their horses, who were only too happy to gallop away from the nearby fire spreading and the madness of humans, and disappeared into the desert. “Don’t look back, son,” Bronson said, “just keep riding now.”