Darger realized her heart was pounding again, hitting that out of control gallop like it had in the car, but this time it wasn’t a bad thing. They were fucking doing it.
She surged forward, feet thudding against the tile floor. Glancing back, she realized Luck was falling behind. She slowed her pace to let him catch up.
“You see anyone else?” he asked.
“I passed a nurse. She said she was pretty sure this was the last patient.”
Luck let out an angry huff.
“Pretty sure?” he said in the same tone he’d used to the policeman out front. “Just like they think they got everyone out? Jesus Christ. This whole operation is a shitshow.”
The hallway opened up into the lobby, seeming to arrive much faster on the way back. Darger picked up speed again, reaching the door ahead of Luck and pushing it aside for him. Through the first set of doors, Luck braced his shoulder blades to back his way out of the second set, moving carefully to ensure he didn’t bash the frail head into any steel bits.
Just as they eased over the threshold, the woman spoke.
“I’ll have the pudding,” she said, her eyes still closed. “But not the tapioca. The tapioca looks like boogers.”
Chapter 60
As soon as they were past the outer door, the fire’s hiss returned. Breathing. Crackling. Sizzling. Everywhere.
Luck’s toe caught on a seam in the sidewalk, causing him to lose his footing and stumble a little. Darger reached out to steady him, but he righted himself and got moving again.
Sensory overload hit then — so many noises and movements compared to inside. The heat. The smoke. The fire’s glow thrashing in the distance. The police lights twirled, and the crowd chattered. Cars and people moved everywhere. Elbows, tires, shoulders, facial twitches. One of the buses let out a sibilant swoosh. And wavering over all of it, that evil red flicker.
Darger blinked a few times to try to take it all in and make some sense of it, overwhelmed as though she couldn’t hold it all inside at once without something bursting.
Right away she noticed a change in the crowd. It had thinned to almost nothing while they were inside. Perhaps a dozen or so civilians still milled on the front walk, waiting to be taken away. That was good.
Many of the police vehicles were moving now as well. Falling back. Retreating. A policeman nearby shut a van door, and then tapped on the hood to signal that another load was clear to move out. The van jerked to life, careening off toward the mouth of the parking lot, brake lights flaring once before it tore out onto the road.
Luck and Darger shuffled toward the remnants of the crowd. They moved to the last few policemen still directing the foot traffic.
“Got one here,” Luck said, making his voice hard to be heard above the din. “She’s unconscious. Mostly, anyway. In and out a little.”
Uniformed officers swooped in, surrounded them, helped load the floppy bird lady into a van, plucking her from Luck’s hands. Darger watched as a female officer secured the woman in the backseat of the van, snaking the seatbelt over her shoulder and down past her hip. And then it was done. She was loaded. The van door was sliding shut, the vehicle veering away.
The policeman who they’d spoken to earlier came near, gesturing a hand at that last smattering of people, and then at the last bus idling in the looped drive.
“This is it. We got the order to clear out,” he said. “We load these folks up, and we’re gone.”
Darger knew what Luck was going to say before he spoke.
“There were two patients and a nurse still inside when you told us the place had been cleared,” Luck said, his tone harsh. “We need to make sure no one else gets left behind.”
The cop ignored Luck’s anger. His tone was level and calm.
“Look, buddy, I ain’t been inside. I only do what they tell me. And right now, they’re telling me we’re done here.” He shrugged. “I suggest you come along with us. We’ve got word that the fire’s getting out of hand up the road. Might not be a clear way out much longer.”
Luck was already shaking his head. And he was right, she knew. There could still be someone inside. She’d only checked half the rooms before she found the bird lady. Maybe less than half. And Luck surely hadn’t searched all the rooms on his side before she’d called out to him for help.
Luck dipped his head to the side and their eyes met.
“One more sweep?” Darger said.
Luck gave a firm nod.
They turned back to the large front doors, and in they went again.
Chapter 61
Back inside, Darger and Luck didn’t need to talk. They veered in opposite directions just past the lobby.
It’d take several minutes to clear the rest of the hospital, even if they both sprinted all the way through. Darger tried to prep herself to stay patient, stay vigilant. Assertive. Decisive. Do the job, and then get out. No more. No less.
Luck’s footfalls trailed away, seeming lighter and faster than before, and once they’d faded out, she was on her own again, back in the quiet of the empty hospital. A little chill crept up her spine.
More doorways flitted past. The beds inside coming up empty, empty, empty. That was good. In her heart, she suspected the place had been cleared — but she had to be sure, had to see it with her own two eyes before she could move on.
Still, Darger didn’t feel nearly the same dread she’d felt on the first pass. Damn near everyone was already out, and after this, they’d be certain. This notion lifted the caul of anxiety from her head, cleared her thoughts, strengthened her resolve.
She felt so good in fact, that she picked up her jog into something approaching a sprint seemingly without suffering consequences for it. It felt like she could run forever. Weightless. Free. Endorphins, she figured. She throttled her speed down a touch. Better to stay patient.
At the end of the hall, she turned to double back, feet squeaking a little on the tile floor as she changed directions. Now she worked the opposite side of the hall.
More empty beds. The feeling only grew that this place was empty, that they’d done it.
She called out.
“Anyone there?”
Her voice echoed down the hall, the copies of her words fluttering in the space a while and then going quieter, seeming to fly away from her.
No response. Only the quiet.
Then she heard Luck call out as well in the distance.
“Hello?”
Nothing.
And the sound of her footsteps faded then. Her consciousness sucked up into her head so she heard only the beat of her heart, steady and firm like a kick drum plodding through a break in a song.
Another left took her along the route she’d run the first time through, moved her toward the back of the building at top speed.
The back corridor was wider than the rest, almost cavernous. Some of the lights were off back here as well, and the space seemed eerie in the half light.
Darger called out a few times. Had to be sure.
“Hello? Is anyone here?”
The echoes seemed louder in this hallway. Denser. Flying away on heavier wings.
She tried again, louder this time.
“Anyone here?”
Her voice broke up a little this time, a rasp coming out with the yell.
No response. The echoes faded to slushy whispers. When they faded to quiet, the hair on the back of her neck stood up.
Darger slowed. Something wasn’t right here. She could feel it, could sense it, even if she couldn’t see it yet.
Then it came to her. Movement at the end of the hall. She couldn’t make it out in the shadows, but something stirred there. Something dark and quick.
She crept closer. Still not sure what she was seeing. She almost wanted to draw her weapon, but that would be silly. Wouldn’t it?
After a few more steps, she knew what it was. She smelled it before she saw it.
The charcoal stench hit her. Smoke.
The black t
wirling along the back wall at last came clear to her.
The hospital was on fire.
Chapter 62
They hesitated just outside the door. Darger stopping first and Luck joining her. They stood. Stared. Took in the vision of the parking lot as it looked now.
Empty. The lot sat empty. A few cars still waited, penned in their little yellow lines, scattered here and there, abandoned by their owners, left to fend with the flames on their own. But no life stirred here. The crowd had been loaded up, the cops and paramedics and firemen all having retreated, the whole lot of them racing for safety even now.
The sky had grown darker as well. Blacker. But it wasn’t dusk giving way to full night. Not yet. It was too early for that. It was the smoke that was causing this artificial twilight. The clouds of black stretched over the sky like layers of ebon gauze, filling the heavens with its murk. At this rate, she wouldn’t be able to tell when night did fall. The smoke would blot out the moon and suffocate the stars.
Nothing moved save for the fire all around. The orange glow still thrashed, flailed, shook trees, devoured plant life, created heat distortion that made everything shimmer, a blur roiling in all directions. The fire’s endless exhale once more provided the only sound — the sizzle that stretched its white noise out to eternity.
The heat had swelled from warm to hot to stifling. Darger could feel her body going damp just standing there, doing nothing more than breathing and looking.
She took off first. Ran through the empty lot, Luck close behind her, and she couldn’t help but feel a strange exhilaration come over her. Her feet clapped against the asphalt, the heat reaching out to adhere her shirt to the small of her back via a thin film of sweat, then wetting her hair to her scalp seconds later. Something extraordinary was happening here. Awful, yes, but extraordinary nevertheless. In this moment, the lot seemed the only thing that was real, concrete, material. The rest of the world, the rest of the universe, was merely an idea.
Her mind still recorded everything — every image, every thought, every clipped exchange of conversation, every feeling inside and out. Stowed them all away to be examined later.
They broke into the open expanse of the lot, the place beyond the looped drive, and for just a second Darger thought the Lexus was gone. Vanished somehow. Emptiness occupying the place it had been.
But then she saw the rear end of it sticking out from behind an SUV. She changed her trajectory to close on it. Just a few steps more.
Weaving around a pair of small Ford sedans, they veered at last toward Luck’s Lexus. Drawing up on it. In what felt like one swift movement, she opened her door, slid into the seat, and sealed herself inside. Luck already had the key in the ignition. Neither one needed to tell the other to hurry.
He put the car in gear and ripped out of the parking spot. A sharp turn pulled Darger into the door, the tires screeching a little, but then they leveled out.
In the side mirror, Darger watched the black smoke curl up from the rear of the building now. Wispy but turning thicker before her eyes. It’d go up fast, she thought. Thank God they’d gotten everyone out.
Their speed only climbed as they swung out of the lot and onto the road. Luck lifted himself off the seat a little to jam the accelerator even harder, put his body weight into it. Time to see how fast this gussied-up Toyota could go.
They drove into the open place in the flames. The thin sliver of road amidst the walls of orange, everything smeared and indistinct as though the air itself had been greased somehow, glass smudged with something cloudy that moved and glittered a little.
She couldn’t even smell the smoke anymore. It had wormed its way into her mouth and nose, settled into her skin and hair and clothes as if it were a part of her now.
The trees flicking by looked like stop motion animation — a child’s flip book going too fast. Bleary. Pulsing. Almost indistinct. Just flashes of something solid yet among the flames. Long, tall shapes. Cylinders of dark crawling with fire.
Darger gripped the handhold on the door until her fingers hurt. Knuckles quivering. She gritted her teeth and stared into the flames.
Wild feelings clawed at her insides. Primal fear that reached all the way to her core. This was wrong. Madness.
The night was on fire, and they were driving into it.
A downed branch seemed to materialize from nowhere in the smoke just ahead, blocking their lane. Darger braced herself for impact, and then her stomach flopped and squished as Luck swerved.
She caught a passing glimpse as the car zigged and zagged around the obstacle. It was a massive limb, still glowing orange like an ember at the bottom of a campfire, its color brightening and darkening with the shifting winds.
A creeping nausea settled into Darger’s gut. This was going to be a hell ride, she thought, wiping a line of sweat from her upper lip.
The Lexus again picked up speed when they straightened out, started shaking — the floor, the dash, the seats, all rattling, vibrating — the movement growing more intense along with their acceleration. The seat convulsed beneath Darger, the ride growing rough, the whole car shuddering like it was about to come apart.
And then the car seemed to top out at last, reaching the edge of its limits and smoothing out, the final plateau, the rattling and shaking no longer strengthening, dying back, the car itself going no faster.
Darger thanked the universe that the asphalt couldn’t burn, because it would if it could. The fire ran right up to the edges of the road now, threatening them, grass and bushes all aglow, flaming tree branches hanging up above.
She gazed into it, no longer able to differentiate the bits of foliage, lost in the orange and the haze. The woods seemed to be one burning mass, a writhing creature surrendered to the flame.
The night itself burned. Decayed. Offered itself up for sacrifice.
Luck gasped next to her, a little hiss escaping his lips.
Before she could turn to look at him, the whole world shifted, jerked at her, rocked her forward in her seat, momentum tugging, tugging.
The squeal of the tires told her that Luck had slammed on the brakes. Inertia kicked in, thrusting them forward.
The Lexus fought against the forward momentum, fishtailing like mad, laying thick strips of rubber down on the asphalt from the sound of it.
Darger braced both hands on the dash to keep her upper body from jerking forward any further.
Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Luck fighting to keep control of the car. Elbows out wide to get a little extra torque as though he were strangling the steering wheel, his whole body jerking one way and then the other.
At last the car angled into a diagonal skid and held steady there, skidding, slowing. Finally coming to rest. Everything around them seemed utterly motionless after all that thrashing about.
Finally, in the stillness, Darger turned to look at Luck, finding his mouth agape, lip quivering. He blinked a couple times.
“No,” he muttered under his breath. One tiny syllable. Nothing more.
She followed his gaze to the road ahead. Gasped herself when she saw it.
The fire overwhelmed the wooden structure before her, saturated it, engulfed it entirely.
The words entered her head as if from some outside source, shattered the shocked silence there:
The bridge is on fire.
Chapter 63
Klootey waits in the parking garage until he spots other members of the task force returning from the evacuation. He’s the first one back, naturally, but he doesn’t want it to look that way. So he waits.
When he sees them filing in like bees returning to the hive, he climbs out of his squad car and merges with the group as if he’s been with them all along. Follows the buzzing swarm into headquarters and takes a seat in the conference room.
A woman he vaguely recognizes from another district moves into the chair directly behind him. She’s got a phone pressed to her ear and is loudly arguing with one of the van drivers about whether or no
t he’s supposed to shuttle his evacuees to White Memorial or Keck Medical Center.
“No,” she says in a grating voice, “you’re Van 3. I have it right here. You’re on the list for White Memorial.”
Klootey’s leg pumps under the table. Calf pistoning away in fast motion. He needs to appear calm, needs to appear normal or however close to that he can achieve. A certain amount of nerves here would seem natural enough, he knows, and that’s good. But unbridled glee? Maniacal laughter? Jumping up on the fucking table to do a touchdown dance? Well, his esteemed colleagues might notice something like that.
He keeps his eyes on the shining tabletop, the reflection of the fluorescent lights there. Better to avoid eye contact, avoid conversation. He didn’t want to trip up, lapse into some weird behavior someone might notice. No chances. To fuck this up after coming so far would be tragic. Truly tragic.
Better to retreat into his mind. Pull his focus away from this room, these people. Stay safe in his shell.
So he pictures the fire. Remembers pieces of it. That slope of burning woods stretching up from the back of the hospital flares once more in his imagination. Burning bright and hot. The heat he could feel coming off that even 100 or 150 yards away was incredible. Palpable. It touched his cheeks, his top lip, the backs of his hands. Much more than he anticipated.
He knows fire. Lives for it. But a fire this big is beyond his experience. Overwhelming. He struggles to wrap his head around the realities, the logistics, the sheer size and force of the thing.
Even now it grows. His creation grows. Swallows acre after acre. Pursues a path of annihilation. Takes no prisoners. Knows only total destruction. Means to spend itself destroying as much as it can. Here and now.
He pictures the trapped people. Scared. Crying. Helpless as newborn kittens.
He pictures the flames taking a bus. Orange fury wrapping around the hulk of steel. Devouring it.
Violet Darger (Book 6): Night On Fire Page 26