And up close, the destruction was laid bare now. The fire erased bushes. Gnawed and toppled branches. Turned bark to hunks of shimmering ember.
It was everywhere. Lurching and flailing. Crackling and spitting.
And spreading endlessly.
It was too much, too powerful, Darger thought. People were going to die. They couldn’t get them all out in time, could they?
She watched a branch fall out in the woods, sparks exploding everywhere as it disappeared into the flames engulfing the forest floor. The little glowing specks swirled up and spread on the wind, lifted by the hot air rising from the inferno.
She sensed some shift in Luck’s posture out of the corner of her eye, his shoulders hunching further in a way that reminded her of a possum. She followed his gaze to the road ahead.
Police lights spiraled there. The red and blue shine almost drowned out by the scarlet and yellow glow fluttering over everything. After a second, she could hear the sirens, too — a many-voiced warbling, crying out. They sounded tinny and small from back here.
They’d caught up with the rest of the pack, and now they followed the twisting road in single file. She watched the line of them rise over a little hill and then fall away to nothing on the other side, noting an ambulance and at least one city bus among the procession.
Darger felt her resolve strengthen the tiniest bit at seeing the fleet of vehicles. At being a part of the cavalcade. They were part of something bigger now, her and Luck.
She cast off her bashfulness, reached out and entwined her fingers with Luck’s.
She expected him to balk. To at least raise an eyebrow. But he only squeezed her hand, as if holding hands with her was the most natural thing in the world.
A moment later, he turned to look at her. When he spoke, his voice was quiet and low, a little raspy.
“Almost there.”
Chapter 57
Klootey’s hands vibrate along with the steering wheel. The rough patches where time and the elements had worn away this rural road seem to wreak havoc on the cruiser. The tires judder over the chewed up stuff and jolt at the potholes, that latter always seeming to stand the vehicle upright, like the car keeps stubbing its toe.
Unperturbed by the choppy ride, he writhes in the driver’s seat. Snakelike movements twisting his torso. That electricity throbs through his body again. Pins and needles. He feels it surge in his blood, in his bones, in his teeth.
He rockets out toward the hospital along with so many other law enforcement and fire department vehicles. A whole fleet of them springing into motion. Too late, he hopes. A doomed mission.
Tonight is the night. The night he has waited for his whole life long.
The grand finale unfolds upon them. Blooming. Becoming.
The forest fire he set into motion some hours ago rages fierce. Releases its fury upon an unsuspecting public.
The wind chose to aid him, chose to become his ally. The Santa Anas blow just so, just right, flowing northwest to southwest, the heat picking up as the gusts curl back toward the Pacific. It feeds the flames. Nurses them. Looses them like something wild, something meant to run free, something that could never be tamed. Never.
And so the flames creep over the hills and down the valleys, crawling ever closer to the hospital. Even now, the fire’s fingers begin to close around it, the fiery grip growing tighter by the second.
He snorts as he crosses the wooden bridge. Tires rocking over the planks in a series of thumps.
The giddiness swells until he can’t contain the giggles. They come spilling out. Intense laughter. Insane. High-pitched little chirps like some noise a squirrel would make.
And he can’t stop. Can’t stop the laughing that cascades from his mouth, drizzling little specks of drool now and again.
Thank Christ Bishop had the day off. If his partner had been here, it would have really killed the mood. Not to mention that Klootey isn’t entirely sure he would have been able to keep a straight face through this whole thing. It’s just too much.
Tears are rushing down his cheeks now. An ache forms in his abdomen, something like a cramp in the cluster of muscles where the laughter seems to spring from.
He looks out at the woods through tear-filled eyes. Cheeks sharp with the pain of a held smile, all clenched up to bare his teeth.
The laughter grows so intense it becomes unpleasant. Reminds him of being a little kid, being tickled so long and hard he began to worry the laughs would never stop, he’d be stuck that way, hurting and laughing and scared. Powerless to control himself at all.
When he crests that fateful hill, reaches the edge of the fire, sees the blaze consuming the woods with his own two eyes, he laughs even harder.
Chapter 58
The hospital took shape, a dark form nestled into the crook of a valley, with steep ridges surrounding it. A dead-end location, that was for sure.
The lights in the parking lot shone brighter than those on the building, somehow making its bulk murky and ominous — something muscular waiting for them in the shadows.
It was clear to Darger that the building had been situated to take advantage of the scenery of the surrounding hillside. She imagined the rooms on the back of the hospital had spectacular views, but she wasn’t sure just now that it had been worth it.
The woods there were already burning — another slope of writhing orange stretching up to form a strange backdrop to the scene. The trees seemed to thrash with the blaze, ripping swells of fire that moved without pattern, without mercy.
The fire encroached on the building from all sides, closing around it like a trap. The vast sea of asphalt out front helped keep it at bay for now, held it at a distance from this side, but from what they’d been told, the back would offer little such protection. That was where the problems would arise, where the building would eventually succumb to the inferno.
The patter of the blood beating in Darger’s ears grew stronger, louder. Here was yet another sight to take her breath away. She fought it right away this time, concentrated to keep breathing.
Everything here was tinted red, she realized. A flickering red light reflecting from every surface, glittering over all the windshields in the parking lot, dancing over the building’s facade, scarlet ripples that shimmered and twisted, bright and hot and threatening.
Drawing closer, she could see movement in the parking lot now. The people scurrying out of the building like rodents. Lines of them streamed into buses and vans parked out front. Another mob clustered on the sidewalk in front of the building, waiting to be directed to a vehicle. Everyone looked twitchy, antsy, nervous, scared — their body language screamed it with such force that she could read it from a great distance.
Two uniformed officers directed traffic in the lot, one swinging glowing sticks like an air traffic controller, another doing the same job with bare hands. They mostly seemed to be keeping the way clear for the buses and other cargo vehicles full of people to get out, halting the incoming swell of law enforcement to make it happen.
The Lexus slowed as they entered this line of waiting vehicles, and Darger watched packed buses go by one after the other, heading for safety, getting out. They still had a ways to go to clear the hospital, judging by that twitchy mob out front, but they were making steady progress.
Finally they reached the front of the line. So close to the action. A bare hand held them just shy of the gates as a couple of vans squeezed out, and then the glowing batons waved them through to the lot.
They zipped up toward the front of the building, the Lexus growling a little as Luck jammed on the accelerator. They parked as close as they could, the brakes squealing and all of reality seeming to jerk to a halt as Luck went from full speed to parked a little too quickly, the car crooked as hell in the spot. Before Darger could comment on the rough landing, he was out of the car, jogging toward the crowd at the front of the building.
There was a line of nurses and other hospital staff pushing wheelchairs. A few were even ma
neuvering gurneys across the parking lot. Darger hadn’t even stopped to consider that some of the patients wouldn’t be mobile.
Another group of uniformed officers directed the foot traffic here, waving groups into the buses and vans and keeping the others as calm as they could. Luck raced up to a mustached cop in the middle of the fray, Darger following a few paces behind him.
“Is everyone out?” Luck said.
The officer squinted at him a second, and then seemed to either recognize him or realize who he must be.
“Yeah, we think so.”
Luck scoffed.
“You think so?”
The officer grimaced, lips curling down hard at the corners and nose wrinkling like he’d just taken a big swig of skunky beer. His mustache twitched twice. He went back to waving another load of people into a police truck as he answered.
“It got chaotic, OK? We ran out of gurneys. The nurses were having to load the patients into vehicles before going back inside for more, and we’re out here loading people up as fast as the buses arrive. It made it impossible to keep count. But the group that just came out, they say this is everyone.”
The muscles along Luck’s jawline twitched with irritation. He looked at Darger.
“What do you think?”
“I think we go in and make sure.”
The mustached officer grabbed Luck’s sleeve as they pushed past him.
“Look, buddy, they’re saying we’ve got minutes until the fire breaches the back of the building. No one’s going to wait around for you just because you got a hard-on to play hero. You got that?”
Luck pulled out of his grip.
“Yeah, I got it.”
As they approached the front doors of the hospital, Darger could see the fire occupying the hill behind it, the flames creeping closer and closer. It felt like they were walking into Hell.
Chapter 59
Darger pushed through two sets of front doors to enter the hospital, Luck trailing just behind her.
The lobby smelled like menthol cough drops, the air in here cooler than outside, quieter — lacking both the sizzle of the fire and the smoke smell. The only sound was the muted buzz of the fluorescent bulbs above. The quiet made Darger’s skin crawl.
It looked strange with nobody behind the front desk — no bustle of nurses answering phones and checking charts, no sign of life at all aside from the potted palms manning every corner with their fronds outstretched, and even those may have been artificial.
They seemed to take in the lobby slowly, walking the first few paces as they sized it up. Once they had the lay of the land, their walking picked up to a jog.
Hallways sprawled out from the desk, three branches.
“Should we split up?” Darger said.
Luck squinted as he answered.
“Yeah, but let’s take this first piece together. Get a feel for the building.”
Darger nodded. He must have felt the same niggling doubts about being here, about going off on his own in this expansive building.
They hustled down the hall, Darger taking the left and Luck the right, checking each doorway for anyone left behind. The clatter of their footsteps echoed everywhere in the quiet, in the emptiness, his and her steps falling in and out of time. Something about it gave Darger a chill she couldn’t quite shake.
She peered into room after room, spotting empty beds in each of them. Most of them sported mussed sheets, wadded up blankets. Some beds had half-eaten trays of food suspended over them — Jell-O cups and what looked like congealing beef stroganoff. All evidence of the rapid escape the patients made not so long ago.
And it occurred to Darger that she was experiencing that strange sensation that only occurred in the most dramatic moments in life — the camera in her brain was on now, recording this moment. Saving every image, every thought, every feeling to be parsed, picked over, analyzed in detail at a later time and date. However all of this turned out, she would play these memories back over and over again. The point-of-view shot of her running down the hall, heart pounding, breath heaving in and out. The movies would open in her head at random, come to her when she least expected it, infect her dreams from here on out.
She swallowed. Felt and heard a click in her throat, dry flesh shifting there inside her neck. It almost seemed to be cracking, though she knew that couldn’t be true.
When they reached the end of the hallway, they returned to the lobby and split up.
“I’ll take right, you take left,” Luck said.
Darger nodded.
“Let’s do it.”
They parted ways then, and she got the faintest jolt of adrenaline as she veered down the empty hospital wing, a tingle roiling over her scalp. Now the sound of the footsteps changed, parting, Luck’s trailing off and Darger’s lighter footfalls echoing on their own.
She pattered on, considering a zigzag to check both sides of the hall and quickly decided to stick to one. She could check the opposite side on the way back.
The tile floor shifted by underfoot, square frames of beige terrazzo flecked with black sliding by one by one, reminding her of an old TV with a vertical hold problem.
The hospital seemed larger now that she was alone. More desolate, its sense of eeriness enhanced. It ultimately was small by hospital standards, just one floor, perhaps a hundred beds at the most, but it didn’t seem small just now. Not at all.
Something crashed ahead and Darger jumped, freezing on the spot. A nurse appeared, tugging a gurney through a doorway.
Spotting Darger, she said, “Oh, thank God. I thought I was the only one left.”
Regaining her ability to move, Darger took a step forward.
“Do you need help?”
“No, I’ve got this. I’m pretty sure there’s just one more after this. Down the hall. Second to last on the left.”
And that was it. The woman disappeared around a corner before Darger even realized what she’d meant.
There was another patient still waiting to be evacuated.
Darger hurried down the hallway, coming to a halt in front of the second to last door. A sign on the door read Authorized Personnel Only. It appeared to be a stock room and when Darger tried the door handle, it was locked.
Well, that couldn’t be right.
She backed away from the door, looking both ways, checking her count of the doors. This was undeniably the second to last door on the left. The nurse had even gestured to this side of the hall.
She checked the last door and found the room empty.
Moving across the corridor, Darger peered into the last and second to last rooms on this side. Empty.
Fuck.
She ping-ponged back to the other side, thrusting her head into the third door, expecting more of the same. More empty beds and mussed sheets.
But then she saw it. Bulges plumping the blankets in one of the beds. The undeniable shape of legs outlined in layers of fabric.
She stopped. Gaped. Bobbed back onto her heels as though she’d slammed the brakes. She held her breath a second as she processed the image laid out before her.
The legs had a withered look. Frail. Skinny as sticks. She couldn’t see the face from this angle, but she knew it must be a kid or an elderly person just based on the scrawniness of the limbs, likely heavily medicated to have somehow missed on all the commotion.
She glanced about for a gurney or a wheelchair. Saw neither. Then she remembered the policeman out front saying they’d run out of gurneys.
She could wait for the nurse to return, but there wasn’t time. And that was assuming the nurse was planning on returning at all.
She stepped into the room, the frame of the doorway slowly relenting to reveal the patient little by little — first the chest, then shoulders, then face.
It was an old woman, eyes closed, chest rising and falling. She had gray hair bordering on white in closely cropped curls, and something in the tangle of wrinkles near her eyes and lips spoke of someone who smiled a lot — even now
she seemed to wear the subtlest grin, the corners of her lips turned up just a bit. Her eyelids moved, that thin skin shifting as the eyeballs beneath flicked back and forth. She must have been dreaming.
Darger approached slowly, not sure why exactly, some reverence taking hold of her. When she reached the bed, she put a hand on the lone exposed arm, some halfhearted attempt to wake the woman that had no effect. Her skin felt warm and soft.
Darger took another breath, moved her hands to the woman’s shoulders and gave her a good shake.
“Ma’am. Can you hear me? The building is being evacuated.”
Still no response.
She shuffled quickly back to the door.
“Luck,” she yelled out. “I’ve got one!”
She heard his footsteps stop in the distance, hold quiet for a second, and then resume, this time growing louder as they moved back toward her.
Back at the old woman’s bedside, Darger peeled back the blankets to reveal the rest of the stick body swathed only in the thin hospital gown, light blue. Then she unhooked the IV from the back of the woman’s hand, the pump shrieking angrily.
Luck clattered into the room behind Darger. Stopped. His wild eyes flicked from the woman in the bed to meet Darger’s.
“What have we got?”
“She’s out. Medicated, I think. We’ll have to carry her.”
Luck nodded, resolve seeming to replace whatever shock had been in his eyes a second ago. He bent over, collecting the woman in his arms like a sleeping child.
Her eyelids stirred again. Opened for a split second. Some expressionless look occupying them for a moment, a couple of nonsense syllables murmuring from her lips. And then she was out again, her limp arms dangling like noodles.
Out from under the blanket now, the floppy body somehow reminded Darger of a baby bird, frail and featherless.
“You got her?” Darger asked. “I can help carry.”
“She barely weighs anything. Just help me with the doors when we come to them.”
Darger nodded and led the way, turning back to watch Luck finagle himself and his burden sideways through the doorway. In the open expanse of the hallway, they picked up speed.
Violet Darger (Book 6): Night On Fire Page 25