Arlo nodded weakly, and placed the shotgun on the table. “They came in, man, like they wanted to rob me, you know? They—”
“Save it,” he snapped.
The smell of blood he spotted in trails along the floor.
Kay Pollard threw up on Arlo’s shirt.
“She’s drunk and scared,” Arlo said to Casey’s startled look. He didn’t move; he just shifted her head to his shoulder.
“Bobby, honey, you want to bring me a wet cloth here?”
Tessa and Mel rushed in, Todd right behind them. Casey warned them about the blood, warned them to step easy. Then his own stomach lurched and he made his way outside, to the frightened voices that skidded to frightened whispers when they saw him.
“Nobody’s hurt,” was all he would say.
“I called them!” Cora yelled from the diner entrance. “The cops! They’re on their way!”
He heard the distant scream of brakes.
“You didn’t do anything.” Petyr Balanov stepped out of the crowd. His hand didn’t move, but he pointed just the same.
“You just stood there, Reverend. You didn’t do a thing.”
Casey had no chance to answer.
They all turned at the sound of the crash, at the same time sharp and muffled. He took a step toward the Crest, another when the night began to glow.
Reed said, “The curve,” just as Casey began to run. He yelled at the boy to get Todd and the others to the fire station, yelled at Moss to fetch the ambulance.
Only a few people followed.
Until the fireball spread from a webbing of black smoke.
Spread, and rose, and died. .
Casey broke into a sprint interrupted when Micah’s pickup pulled alongside, pacing him. He scrambled into the passenger seat, and others piled into the bed, shouting orders, thumping the roof, yelling when the truck took the slope at speed.
Lord, Casey thought, hand on the door handle; please, Lord.
* * * *
The accident was easy to find.
Tiny spits of fire burned on the blacktop where gasoline had been sprayed; a pile of leaves on the shoulder burned acrid and white; the car itself was side-on to a tree, flames hissing inside, and through the shattered windows.
A man lay on the ground, face up, arms rigid at his sides.
Reed and the others grabbed fire extinguishers from the pickup, and from the old square fire truck that rolled up just as Micah braked.
Casey recoiled from the heat of the burning car, from the stench of charred flesh.
Bracing himself, breathing shallow, he knelt beside the fallen man and recognized him—the stocky one with the gun, skin black and flaking, clothes fluttering to ashes when a breeze coasted by.
The spray of fire-retardant, the hiss of water.
One eye opened.
Casey swallowed and leaned down.
“Father?”
“I’m here,” he said, hoarse and nearly choking. “An ambulance is coming. You’ll be—”
“He’s gone,” Astante whispered. “Be careful, man, he’s gone.”
And moaned so loudly Casey automatically placed a light, comforting hand on his chest. “Hush. Hush.”
The eye closed.
“Miracle there ain’t no real fire,” he heard Micah say. “Why ain’t these trees burning?”
“Nobody in the car,” someone yelled. He thought it was Doc Farber. “Spread out, find him. He’s gotta be hurt.”
“Mel!” he called. “Mel, I need help here!”
Farber was beside him instantly, black bag in one hand. He winced at the sight, but that didn’t stop him.
“Lord,” Casey said. “Please, Lord.”
Farber sagged back onto his heels. “Too late, Case. Damn. Too late.”
Casey whispered a prayer and touched the dead man’s cheek. No matter who he was, he didn’t have to die like this; no matter what he had done, he didn’t need this.
Voices around him faded as the fire was extinguished; sounds faded as onlookers decided whether to stick around for the cops, or go home; a handful of men, William Bowes their leader, loudly trying to organize a search party, the cops would be too late, anybody got a gun, just in case? Anybody but the doc know some first aid? Just in case?
Still Casey prayed, touching the cheek, the forehead, ignoring the bits of slick flesh that stuck to his fingers until the fingers moved, and the char flaked away.
He looked up then, and saw them watching, expectant.
He didn’t understand.
Within the circle of her husband’s arm, Enid said quietly, urgently, “Bring him back, Father. You can do it. Bring him back.”
* * * *
The dead man sighed, and opened his eyes.
* * * *
5
1
C
ardino Escobar saw the demon, and it was made of fire.
He lay on the roadside, his face half buried in a small pile of brittle leaves that smelled of gasoline and heat. All he could hear was the liquid sound of his breathing, and a distant crackling, a muted grumbling. As he pushed swaying to his hands and knees, dazed and feeling nothing, the demon stepped out of the burning car, arms at its sides, a black figure caged in shimmering gold, with flickering pools of flame at its feet.
It was beautiful.
Everything was beautiful. So painfully beautiful that tears filled his eyes and he could barely see until the tears dried. He inhaled sharply. Something wondrous had happened to his vision. Everything had a stunning clarity to it, a vividness, that reminded him of stained glass and razors.
Then the demon turned its head toward him and opened its mouth, its head quivering violently, its hands raised to grab at the fire.
He saw the flames flow inward between those thick black-and-gold lips, saw the eyes widen, saw the demon shudder and turn and fall onto its back.
He wanted to scream.
Instead, he staggered to his feet, and fled into the woods. The fire died quickly, cutting off most of his light, the moon only giving him dark and pale shadows. Still, he was able to move swiftly, pausing only long enough to make sure he wasn’t dripping blood onto the ground. There was something not quite right with his left arm, and his right leg moved awkwardly at the hip. There was pain somewhere, he sensed it, but at the moment he could feel little more than a dull stabbing. The need to get away, however, was too strong, too urgent, for him to take stock. He had to find a place, a den, where he could rest, hide, find out what was really wrong with him before he was caught.
He was mildly surprised he was still alive.
They had charged into what he had first thought was an empty bar. Then Arlo had slid out of the shadows, shotgun in hand, and there was fire and noise and someone screaming.
A giant.
The next thing he remembered he was behind the wheel, Miguel slumped and groaning in the passenger seat, a hand clamped over his side, unable to stanch the bleeding through his shredded shirt and jacket, ignoring the bleeding from the tiny holes in his cheeks. His own hands had been slick on the wheel, and when the curve leapt into the headlights, his fingers slid instead of gripping; before he could react, there was fire and noise.
And someone screaming.
The demon.
He saw the demon.
He heard shouts and a racing engine, looked over his shoulder and saw nothing.
With luck they would think he had gone on down the hillside, as far away from this damned place as he could get. He headed west instead, slowing a little, shifting northward to avoid the houses on the first street, keeping to the trees, wondering if he would last. He fell twice and waited for the cry that discovered him; he clamped his teeth onto his lower lip when the pain began to worm out of the shock.
A second street, too many lights, and a third and fourth that looked as if every man and woman in town were standing in their yards. Some had guns; almost all had flashlights. None thought to look at street’s end, in the woodland.
&n
bsp; Dizziness finally forced him to lean heavily against a trunk, and although he couldn’t see it very well, he could smell the blood on his clothes, could feel it begin to squeeze through the fingers that gripped his forearm. He held his breath and stripped off his jacket, wrapping it snugly around his arm. It wasn’t perfect, but it would do, for now.
A great shout startled him, what seemed like a hundred voices raised as one, and more engines.
He didn’t have to be there—they had found Miguel, and now they knew he was gone.
He took a step away from the tree, shivering uncontrollably, and the earth dropped abruptly away beneath his feet. He tumbled down a steep slope, and rolled, and didn’t stop until he flailed into a large bush that scratched at his eyes and cheeks. When he moaned at the fire that wanted to consume him as it had consumed the demon, his eyes closed tightly; when he suddenly rolled onto his chest and vomited, his skin felt as if it had begun to split along, in visible seams; when he rolled onto his back and stared at the night and no one found him, he allowed himself a tentative smile.
Not yet, old man, he thought, using the branches to brace him to his feet; not yet, you old fart.
He embraced another tree with his left arm and blinked fiercely against the sudden urge to sleep. Right here. Right now.
The den; he needed that den.
Through the trees, through the dark at the end of the block, he saw a car race past the intersection, heading toward the river. They must have called the cops by now, and search parties were probably already being formed. They had to be. He swallowed hard. These people were hunters; they knew how to use guns, and they knew these woods.
He had to—
He leaned his head against the tree, and he grunted.
He had been staring at the street without realizing how many of the small houses and cabins were dark. Permanently dark.
Breathing was difficult, and everything was too sharp now, sight and sound, scent and sense; simply looking around made his head ache. Nevertheless, a humorless grin came and went as he pushed away from the tree’s support, keeping his wrapped arm pressed tightly to his waist.
On the right side of the block were three such buildings.
Ten minutes later, he was in the first one, crawling on hands and knees across the kitchen floor, not to avoid being seen, but because his legs wouldn’t hold him anymore. There was no second floor, but there was a long couch in the front room, the drapes over the large front window already tightly drawn.
The smell of dust and absence.
Dry heat.
He crawled onto the cushions, groaning as he settled, and appreciated the irony that, of all people, he had the old fart to thank for this. Maybe later, when he had a chance to see how badly he was hurt, he would return to the bar and thank him properly.
Right now, all he could do was pray that when he woke up, he wouldn’t be dead or captured.
* * * *
2
The stench: burning gasoline, burning rubber.
The cry of fear.
“No,” Casey whispered.
In the forest, the cry of something too long without food, too long without water.
The stench: charred metal, charred flesh.
“Please, Lord ... please, no.”
* * * *
3
Something changed.
Lupé frowned, unsure what was happening, not at all sure she was fully awake. Not at all sure, in fact, she had really been awake, or anything like it, since the night she had left the trailer and the mountains. It wasn’t hard to feel that way— Time and the world didn’t exist inside this car. Soft music, the occasional murmur of someone half dozing, and a deep and quiet, sort of electric feeling that once in a while raised gooseflesh on her arms.
She watched the countryside slide by, she watched clouds form and disperse, she watched moonrise and sunset, and she might as well have been watching a television screen.
If it hadn’t been for the bodies, she could well believe she was still inside that damn trailer, waiting for the man she still wanted to kill.
She had started out of a doze when she heard Susan grunt as if in surprise and felt the car slow down abruptly. As she rubbed her eyes, it drifted sharply toward the shoulder, leaving the Pennsylvania interstate at a T-intersection with a narrow, two-lane road. She frowned again. This was a departure, and it didn’t feel right. She saw Stan turn his head in question, then glance into the back; he was afraid.
The car braked on a black gravel shoulder, nose pointing south. The headlights flared past a gas station on the right, boarded up and sagging, its pumps gone, nothing left but stains on the cracked concrete island.
Stan said, “Susan?” and all Susan did was look at him, and he cringed.
Lupé stiffened.
Beside her, in the far corner, a stirring but nothing more.
Susan shoved her door open and got out without saying a word. She ignored the handful of trucks and cars sweeping eastward not fifty feet away, kicking up dust and grit; she hesitated when she reached the hood, then crossed the road into the dark.
“What?” Stan asked, sounding close to panic.
They had never stopped before, not like this.
Lupé poked him between the shoulders, got out herself, and waited for him near the rear fender.
A hazy moon and dull stars, but there was enough light to see the high dead-grass hills that rose above the interstate on its north side. Between them, a broad river ran north to south, deep in its own wooded valley, its water dark, nothing moving on the surface. Not far from where they stood, the river passed under a high bridge and took a sharp bend to the east, sparks of moonlight marking its surface. At the nearest bend she could see what looked like factories or warehouses on the banks illuminated by sickly orange light. Maybe some houses, too; she couldn’t really tell.
The far shoulder was broad and pocked with tufts of weeds. As far as she could see, the drop to the river was steep, and Susan stood at the edge, unmoving.
Stan walked a few paces north and squinted at the intersection signs. “Harrisburg?” he said when he came back.
She didn’t know. She didn’t care. She had never been to the East, hadn’t ever wanted to, and Harrisburg or not, she had a strong feeling Susan hadn’t planned to stop here.
Except for the deserted gas station, there was nothing to burn.
There was no one to kill.
I don’t like this, she thought; man, I don’t like this.
A chilly breeze rose out of the valley. She rubbed her arms briskly, and smiled when Stan offered to fetch her his coat. She hadn’t really checked him out before. Until now he was just another one of the guys along for the ride. But even after being rousted the way they had been, he didn’t look half bad. Not as round as she had first thought, his sandy hair a little on the wild side, a little shorter than she. It was the eyes that got her. Even as he squinted into the dark, trying to figure out what Susan was doing, she couldn’t help thinking they were too large for his face.
“You think something’s wrong?” He hunched his shoulders a little, looking at her sideways. Then he grinned, and she knew why. Everything had been wrong with this whole business right from the start. But Susan had made it all seem natural. Exactly the way things ought to be. No need, no desire, for any explanations. “Maybe we should talk to her.”
“I don’t think so.” She looked around again, at the hills, the river. “You ever been here?”
“Nope. Lots of places. Not here.”- He hummed softly to himself. “Nope, not here.”
Susan hadn’t moved. She stared at the horizon.
The breeze wasn’t chilly anymore, and it carried enough dust to make Lupé sneeze.
“Cars.”
She didn’t get it.
Stan pointed south past the gas station, the hills far beyond barely visible, black against black. “You got roads, right? I been on roads. Lots of roads. All over lots of roads. Roads have cars.” He pointed at the inters
ection. “Cars come from down there to up here.” He shrugged. “How come there aren’t any cars?”
“It’s got to be after midnight, amigo. Where would they go this late?”
“I been up late, I been up early.” He hummed a little. “Always cars sometime, you know? Always cars sometime.” He lifted a hand, let it fall. “You called me that amigo thing again. You Mexican or something?”
Symphony - [Millennium Quartet 01] Page 17