China Lake

by Meg Gardiner

  ‘‘Different paragraph.’’

  ‘‘Connected by a colon. Same sentence.’’

  ‘‘My Bible has a semicolon.’’

  ‘‘Not my King James—’’

  ‘‘Isaiah, it’s poetry!’’

  ‘‘You ain’t never had a kid and never will. Anybody’s the woman, it’s Tabitha.’’

  Chenille’s face heated. ‘‘That scrawny thing? You see the two wings of the great eagle on her, given so that she might fly from the serpent into the wilderness? Wings’d bust them dainty shoulder blades. I swear, Isaiah, you’re as bad as Pete.’’ She glared at Tabitha. ‘‘What is it about you? You’re a thankless crybaby, and men still drag their tongues on the ground over you. Brian had you bear his child, and Pete couldn’t walk straight with you in the room. And now Ice—’’

  Paxton said, ‘‘Chenille, we’re done with this. Trot yourself out to the garage and punch in the code!’’

  She turned to him. ‘‘Did I hit a sore spot, Mr. Man?’’

  Brian flexed, drawing down, looking for his moment. Tabitha, crying behind me, murmured something. I cocked my head, heard her whisper, ‘‘Chenille told him where to get the gun.’’ I glanced at her. Her face looked as if it were collapsing. ‘‘She asked me where Brian kept his sidearm. And I told her.’’ She looked desperate to make me understand. ‘‘She has to be the one who told Holt where Brian kept his gun.’’

  I held her gaze for a moment, then looked at Chenille. I said, ‘‘You got Holt to kill your husband.’’

  Paxton’s face furrowed. I went with it.

  ‘‘She says Pete couldn’t face his destiny. She means he didn’t want her to take control of the Remnant, so she had him killed.’’

  He looked at her.

  I said, ‘‘Ask her!’’

  Paxton’s face was an anvil. ‘‘That so? I’m figuring— did Pastor Pete prophesy a thousand two hundred and three score days? Did you cut it short?’’

  I said, ‘‘What did he do, Chenille, taunt you once too often about your past?’’

  She spoke to Paxton. ‘‘What did you expect me to do? He stabbed me in the back. Threatened to expel me from the church. Me!’’

  And that would have ruined all her plans. It would have cut her off from her power base and the weapons she had accumulated.

  She looked at Paxton with total exasperation. ‘‘Pete went blind,’’ she said, ‘‘and you know it. Fame and fear put his eyes out. All he could see was his picture on TV, and the germs he thought was all around him. He turned into a cripple; he couldn’t never have led the Remnant against the beast.’’

  Paxton said, ‘‘You shouldn’t have cut his time short. It’s unscriptural.’’

  ‘‘He brought it on himself. It could have been a gentle destiny. He could have gone out doing what he loved, fighting germs. It just took a lick from the dog on his face where he cut himself shaving.’’ She put her hands on her hips. ‘‘But rabies was sloooow. What a dud bioweapon. Curt Smollek ain’t the biggest bean in the brain field, Isaiah. I blame you for convincing me he could run the program.’’

  Paxton said, ‘‘You ain’t laying this on me.’’

  ‘‘Well, Pete figured it out, what was wrong. In China Lake, when he couldn’t swallow, couldn’t feel his arms. He panicked. Ran into town to tell Brian; he would of gave the whole thing away. We would of all got arrested, us and Holt. I had to take the active hand.’’

  Paxton said, ‘‘You should have told me. I could of done it without the government getting on us.’’

  My God, was there nothing I could accuse her of that would get Paxton to take the shotgun off us?

  Chenille said, ‘‘Then how would I have got Luke?’’

  He said, ‘‘How come this is all about you and what you want?’’

  ‘‘Like it’s about you? Tell me where in scripture it talks about angels warring in heaven to save a pecker-wood in a cowboy hat. They battle for the woman and her man child.’’

  Paxton shook his head. ‘‘You ain’t his mother.’’

  It hit Brian and Tabitha simultaneously. Chenille hadn’t wanted Luke kidnapped just for ransom, but for keeps. Brian inched back, and Tabitha drew Luke against her.

  Chenille said, ‘‘Tabitha was just the womb. He’s Brian’s seed, and I’ve had that too. Don’t get stuck on details. Look to the message.’’

  Tabitha was staring at Brian, blinking hard, thunderstruck. I felt a slow, melting sensation, the sinking feeling you get when something you fear is confirmed.

  Chenille looked at Tabitha. ‘‘You don’t deserve this child. You know he ain’t really yours. That’s why you abandoned him.’’ She started for them, hand out. ‘‘Now give him here.’’

  Brian smacked her hand down and shoved her away.

  She rounded on him. Her face was like a furnace. She cried, ‘‘Shoot him!’’

  Brian sprang. He lunged for the gun, trying to knock it aside, knowing that the spread from a twelve-gauge would hit all of us. Got his hand on the barrel.

  Paxton fired.

  The clamor was deafening. Brian spun, blown sideways by the blast, and hit the floor in a heap. I screamed. Tabitha grabbed Luke and curled into a ball, shielding him. I dropped to Brian’s side. The shot hadn’t hit him full-on, but blood was surging from his side near his hip, a red, rhythmic flow. Then Tabitha was there, shoving her hands against the wound, trying to stanch the bleeding. Under her arm, Luke shook and sobbed. Brian’s eyes were unfocused, his mouth wide.

  Chenille grabbed the collar of Tabitha’s shirt and flung her backward. Luke tumbled with her, away from Brian. Chenille pointed at me, shouted to Paxton, ‘‘Her next!’’

  Paxton raised the shotgun. I saw his face, the polished barrel, and the gaping darkness inside the muzzle—an aperture, the wall between worlds that he intended to open with a roar.

  I said, ‘‘Christ, have mercy—’’

  The house shuddered, shook; a new bellow erupted. The walls flexed. A back window shattered, glass spraying onto the floor. From outside came a rapid-fire pop-pop-pop, like a string of firecrackers going off. The bomb in the garage had exploded.

  Through the cabin door I saw the corner of the garage. Orange fire cracked and leaped from it, smoke boiling, wood blackening, shrieking under the wind, boxes of ammunition firing off.

  ‘‘Jesse!’’ I spun and crawled toward the door. ‘‘Oh, God!’’

  Chenille’s pointing finger followed me. ‘‘Shoot her. Shoot her!’’

  I threw a glance over my shoulder and saw Paxton tracking me with the shotgun, lining up the shot. No chance, none at all. He had me, straight to hell.

  Then the front window exploded. So did Paxton’s throat, disappearing in a pink mist. He jerked and fell to the floor.

  For a moment I couldn’t think, couldn’t feel, couldn’t understand. Luke was screaming. Tabitha was sobbing. Paxton was on his back with a hole gaping in his neck, dead. I looked toward the big front window, where the glass was still chiming down from the frame.

  Sprawled outside on the wooden porch, pistol gripped in both hands, sat Jesse.

  He looked at me, eyes blue-hot, and said, ‘‘Get the shotgun.’’

  The twelve-gauge lay beneath Paxton. Stumbling to my feet, I grabbed the barrel, heated and blood-slick, and pulled it out from under him. Heard Jesse cough. Black smoke was wheeling over him. He was breathing hard, pale with pain.

  He took in my look. ‘‘You didn’t think I’d leave all those weapons just lying there.’’ Then he lowered the pistol and slumped sideways against the porch rail.

  I turned to Brian. He was breathing raggedly. Blood was spreading beneath him into a thick, smooth pool, his heart emptying his life onto the wooden floor. His eyes stared skyward, toward the void. His hand clutched Tabitha’s arm.

  Luke yelled, ‘‘Mommy!’’

  I looked up. Chenille had him by the arm, dragging him toward a back room. Before I could react she slammed the door. We heard a lock turn
.

  Tabitha jumped up and ran to the door, shook the knob, kicked the wood. I said, ‘‘Move back,’’ and rammed the butt of the shotgun against the knob. It bent but didn’t break.

  She beat on the door. ‘‘Chenille. No!’’

  We could hear Luke wailing in the bedroom. Outside came the popcorn chatter of ammunition firing, a grenade’s baritone echo, unmanned guerrilla combat going full-tilt in the garage. And below that, the staccato crackle of flame. The fire had blown out into the live oaks. Embers showered outside the windows, the leaves reflected red, and smoke billowed, starting to infiltrate the cabin. The house was bound to go up, and soon.

  Tabitha’s eyes were wild. ‘‘She’s going to burn them both to death.’’

  Pushing her back, I swung the shotgun up and fired at the doorknob. It exploded in splintering wood. The gun rammed against my shoulder. Tabitha kicked the door open.

  The heat hit us like a wall. Flames were eating one side of the room, and smoke was crawling along the ceiling. Tabitha screamed, ‘‘No!’’ But the room was empty, the window open. Luke’s distant voice rode above the growl of the fire, frightened and defiant.

  I said, ‘‘She took him out the back.’’

  Tabitha said, ‘‘The truck.’’

  We ran for the front door. I pumped the slide on the shotgun but no shells ejected. The weapon was empty. I dropped it, ran past Brian, outside past Jesse, picked up Marc’s Beretta from the dirt.

  Chenille was not at the pickup. Tabitha said, ‘‘Where’d they go?’’ The wind was pounding us, the flames gathering strength, great ribbons of fire consuming the trees and streaking along the roof of the house.

  Then we heard a high-pitched sound, maybe a voice, from beyond the cabin. We looked at each other and ran toward it. We rounded the house and saw Chenille dragging Luke down a trail into the chaparral.

  Tabitha said, ‘‘You get Brian,’’ and turned to go after Luke. Grabbing her arm, I put the gun in her hand. She closed it in her fist, wet with Brian’s blood, and bolted into the brush.

  The cabin was ablaze. Fire was spurting out the windows, smoke roiling through the roof. The trees and overgrown brush around it were immolating in a ruby dance, writhing inside flames that keeled under the wind. That wind was blowing downhill, in the direction that Chenille had run with Luke.

  I ran to the cabin door. The heat was shocking. The noise was terrifying. Even more stunning, Jesse was inside, dragging himself across the floor, trying to reach Brian.

  I yelled, ‘‘No, I’ll get him!’’

  Thick smoke descended toward the floor, acrid, choking. Crouching down, I hurried toward Brian. Paxton’s corpse stared impassively at the flames. Car keys were protruding from his jeans pocket. Chenille couldn’t have taken the pickup if she’d wanted.

  Brian was barely conscious. He didn’t react when I grabbed him by the armpits and started dragging him toward the door, painting the floor with his blood. He felt, already, like deadweight, and I pulled harder, straining, thinking, No, not here, no way, I won’t let him cross that border. I got him through the door, felt cooler air on my back, grunted, kept backing up, stumbling off the porch, into the dirt, breathing again. I saw Jesse off to my left, pulling with his arms, clearing the porch. His head was hanging low, his face streaked with soot. Just then the cabin’s roof caved in. Flame ballooned through the door and front window. Feeling the strain in my legs, I hauled Brian along the ground toward the Jeep.

  His head lolled to one side, eyes rolling, trying to focus on me. Just beyond the cabin a blazing eucalyptus tree exploded. At the sound, his eyes widened.

  ‘‘Ev—’’

  ‘‘We’re getting you out of here.’’ I could barely speak for the effort of dragging him. He weighed about one seventy-five and most of it felt like meat. My eyes were tearing from the smoke. Reaching the Jeep, I opened the passenger door. ‘‘Brian. You have to get in the car.’’

  He didn’t seem to hear.

  ‘‘Brian!’’ I couldn’t lift him in singlehandedly, no way. ‘‘You have to do this; you have to help me.’’

  His head swung. Halfheartedly, he swiped a hand toward the car.

  I put my face in front of his. ‘‘On your feet, Commander! Get up! Now!’’

  He blinked and focused, some part of him coming back. He grabbed my arms and struggled to stand. The moment he bent forward the pain hit him like a detonation.

  I said, ‘‘Come on!’’

  He was beyond sound, working to get his legs underneath him and push up. He had no balance, no control, but he did have enough willpower to get off the ground, enough that I could lever him the rest of the way. He fell toward the car, through the door, onto the seat. I took his hand, pressed it against his side, and buckled the seat belt over it to keep pressure on the wound. Slamming the door, I ran back to help Jesse.

  He was halfway across the ground between the cabin and the Jeep, pulling himself onward with diminishing strength. Above him the trees crackled, flames roaring through them in sheets, burning fifty feet up, fanned by the wind. I saw no sign of Tabitha returning.

  I slung his arm around my shoulder. ‘‘Come on.’’

  I got him up and we started hobbling toward the car. He looked back, saw that the fire was through the gate and gone, out of control. The mountainside was tinder and the wind was setting the flames free to eat, and eat, and eat. I pulled him toward the Jeep, taking his weight.

  He said, ‘‘I dropped the gun on the porch; it’s toast.’’

  ‘‘Forget it.’’

  He looked at me. ‘‘I killed Paxton.’’

  ‘‘Yes, you did.’’

  He said, ‘‘Is Brian dead?’’

  ‘‘No. But we have to hurry.’’

  And the fear grabbed me, deep down, balls to bone, as they say. Brian was bleeding to death and Luke was on the mountain with a maniac. I couldn’t help them both. I couldn’t bear to leave either one. I didn’t know what to do.

  Tears blurred my vision. ‘‘Come on—we have to get out of here. . . .’’

  He was leaning against me, his face close to my ear. ‘‘Give me the car keys.’’

  ‘‘What?’’

  ‘‘Give me the keys,’’ he said, stronger. ‘‘I’ll get Brian to the hospital. You go after Luke.’’

  The wind was whipping his hair across his face, half obscuring his eyes, but I knew he meant it. It tore my heart to speak the plain facts. ‘‘Jesse, you can’t. It’s not your car; it doesn’t have hand controls.’’

  ‘‘I know. The keys, Evan.’’

  Jesse Blackburn, patron saint of the unpredictable, strikes again. With the heat and flames billowing up, he intended to do it.

  I said, ‘‘How do you plan to drive? You can’t work the pedals.’’

  ‘‘We don’t have time to argue. Open the goddamn door.’’

  I did. He lurched against the driver’s seat and I helped him pull himself in.

  He held out a hand. ‘‘Keys.’’

  I gave them to him, and he fired up the engine. He looked over at Brian. My brother was slumped against the car door, breathing like a fish on the dock.

  Jesse said, ‘‘Get me a stick. Something big.’’

  I found him an oak branch about three feet long. When I handed it to him, he said, ‘‘We’re going to make it. Go find Luke.’’

  Then he jammed the branch down on the gas pedal, shoved the car into low gear, and lurched away. I watched him go, heart hammering.

  Alone in the heat and the roar, I turned and plunged down the ravine.

  29

  I crashed down the trail, punching my way through tinder-dry brush that scratched and pulled on my shirt like skeletal hands. Smoke barreled overhead. Flames towered behind me in the wind.

  In 1990, just up the road, an arsonist had stepped out into a windy afternoon, stared down the mountains at brush so dry and overgrown it might as well have been gasoline, and lit a single match. He ignited the Painted Cave Fire. The win
d sent the flames downhill like a blowtorch, advancing a mile every five minutes. Five hundred homes burned. People evacuated, whole neighborhoods throwing the kids and pets and wedding photos into their cars and hauling for the beach, or fleeing on foot. Not all of them made it.

  With a single match. And Chenille had primed the pyre with a garageful of explosives.

  I ran, smoke stinging my eyes and lungs, through thick brush now glowing red under the lurid sky. I didn’t see anybody ahead, couldn’t hear Luke anymore in the hiss of the wind. Then I saw a child’s shoe lying on the narrow trail, Luke’s shoe. I kept going, saw Tabitha ahead, fighting her way through the chaparral. She was panting, nearly staggering with exhaustion, but not conceding anything.

  When I caught up, she pointed down the trail. ‘‘I saw them. She must be heading for a road down there.’’

  ‘‘Come on.’’ I pulled her along, knowing that roads were scarce up here. It was miles down the mountain. Miles. I looked back over my shoulder. To my shock and horror, the flames had spread into a phalanx wider than a football field. The fire was probably three hundred meters behind us, but it was gathering strength and starting to roll down the hill.

  I said, ‘‘Run. We can catch them.’’

  She looked anguished. But she ran, wheezing, sweating, arms grabbing at the air. I thought about how little she had eaten during this ordeal, which worried and impressed me.

  Then she said, ‘‘There they are!’’

  Below us on the trail, Luke’s bright blue shirt flashed through the bushes. Chenille’s camouflage gear was barely visible. I sprinted, closing on them, glad that Chenille outweighed me, because I was faster and more agile than she was. Luke’s shirt streaked in and out of the brush, slowed, and jinked onto a new heading, up the far side of the ravine.

  Closer. Uphill now, my legs and lungs screaming. Luke saw me and cried out. Chenille half turned. Her face contorted, and then I was on her, tackling her with everything I had, crashing into her midsection.

  I barely budged her. She grunted, kept her grip on Luke’s arm, and punched me in the shoulder. It hurt, but the pain turned to rage and I planted my feet, grabbed her around the thighs, and lifted, toppling her off balance. We fell to the trail. Punches rained on my back.