by Ray Garton
* * * *
Rudd was halfway down the hallway when a tall young man with curly, shaggy dark hair stepped out of an open doorway. He wore a white surgical mask. His eyebrows popped up.
Rudd raised the gun, but the instant he fired, the young man ducked back into the doorway.
Knowing he didn’t have much time, Rudd hurried forward down the narrow hall. Arms outstretched, elbows locked, right hand resting in his left palm, he turned sharply to the right and entered the room.
The young man spun away from an open closet with a sawed-off shotgun and took two steps toward him.
All at once:
Rudd squeezed off a shot. The young man’s left shoulder exploded in a spray of red, spinning him around and turning the shotgun toward Rudd.
Rudd fired again, and a red hole appeared in the young man’s pale blue T-shirt, just below his chest.
At the moment that the young man fired the shotgun, Rudd got one more shot off. Rudd’s shot took off half the young man’s head. The shotgun nearly cut Rudd in half and he was thrown backward into the hall.
When Andy fell back, he landed on a structure of glass tubes and bottles
There was a great ripping explosion.
A gout of flames and debris burst upward from the trailer.
The flames rose up and flared in the wind, and reached the dry, sweeping branches of the trees overhead.
* * * *
“You want to think a minute, Anna,” Reznick said as he picked up his drink. He took a couple swallows, them smacked his lips. “Your little girl isn’t so little after all. She was hungry for it. And keep something in mind. I know something about you. Actually, I know a couple things.”
“A couple things, huh,” she whispered, glaring at him.
“First of all, I know you brutally murdered a man, and I could ruin you with a phone call. I’m pretty well covered, it would be your word against mine. Also, maybe it’s about time somebody told your little girl what Mommy does at night. That she takes her clothes off for lonely, horny, drunken men. That maybe she does more than just take her – ”
“How do you – how dare you – “
Reznick took another drink.
Anna attacked him with the knife.
He dropped the drink and raised an arm. The glass shattered on the floor and vodka splashed over his feet.
The knife sliced through the flesh of his forearm.
He grabbed her right wrist with his left hand, then with his right hand, he tried to pry the knife from her fingers.
She swung her knee up and slammed it into his crotch.
He doubled over with a grunt and she stabbed him in the neck.
That was when the explosion occurred, but Reznick was in too much pain to notice, and Anna’s ears were ringing too loudly.
* * * *
Kendra sat on the back edge of the trunk of Mommy’s car, sniffling, with tears trickling down her cheeks.
Dexter and Conan were taking turns chasing each other back and forth along the edge of the road, yapping at each other, nipping at each other’s tails.
Kendra felt horrible inside, like she was collapsing. She did not even notice the harsh smell that sometimes passed her by on the rushing, whipping wind. Branches creaked overhead as they swayed in the strong wind. Her long hair flew all around her head.
She was horrified that Mommy had seen her naked with Marc. Now she knew what was going on between them, which was supposed to be just their secret. Kendra wondered what she would do to her – what would her punishment be?
Why had she come home so early? She wasn’t supposed to get off work until two!
Kendra was on the verge of a sob when she was momentarily deafened by a loud explosion that lit up the night a bright orange on the other side of the road, through the trees that grew between the two narrow lanes.
She lifted her head and her eyes widened, then narrowed, as she watched a trailer – the trailer in unit seventeen – explode in flames that rose up to the trees. The trailer became momentarily airborne, then crashed to the ground with a terrible clamber.
Kendra’s breath was sucked from her lungs for a moment.
The flames rose up along with debris.
The flames licked at the whipping branches and caught almost immediately.
Kendra shot to her feet and called the dogs to her. They hurried to her, and she picked them up, holding one in each arm.
Flames crawled like great orange spiders through the branches overhead, spreading a fiery web.
“Oh, no,” Kendra said, her voice high and shrill. “Oh, no, oh, Jesus, please, no.”
* * * *
Somehow, Anna twisted her wrist around and stabbed the blade into Reznick’s wrist. He blurted, “Ah!” and let go of her as blood began to flow.
With her lips peeled back over her teeth, she came forward, thrusting the knife at him. She got his left arm, his right arm again. Then his chest.
Reznick backed up against the refrigerator.
He slapped her face once, a backhanded swipe, hard.
Anna stumbled backward a couple steps.
He moved forward and reached for her wrist again.
Anna slashed the knife and caught the palm of his right hand. The blade sliced diagonally from the web of flesh between his thumb and forefinger, across his palm, and down to the heel of his hand. It was a deep cut, and blood came from it in a sheet that ran from his palm down his wrist and over his arm.
“You fucking men,” she growled. “You all want the same fucking thing. All of you. You’re useless. Useless.”
She darted forward and thrust with the knife. She got the inner elbow of his left arm.
She thrust again and again.
Reznick could not seem to stop her, so he tried to stop the knife. He grabbed for the blade with his bare hands. He got it once with his left hand, but she pulled it out – the blade sang on his skin as it moved along, slicing it open deep. Blood bubbled up and dribbled down to the floor in spatters.
He grabbed it with his right hand and tried to twist it out of her hand, grinding his teeth until they crunched in his head.
She threw herself forward, putting her full weight behind the knife while the blade was in his right hand, and he could not hold it.
The blade entered him just below his sternum and slammed him back against the refrigerator. It entered him all the way to the wooden handle.
Mouth open, he slowly bowed his head and looked at the knife sticking out of him.
“Mommy!” Kendra screamed outside, screamed at the top of her lungs. “Mommy! The sky’s on fire! Mommy, come quick! The sky’s on fire!”
Reznick’s back slid down the refrigerator and he landed on his ass with his legs splayed out before him, the knife sticking out of his middle.
* * * *
“Oh, my God!” Anna said when she got outside.
Hell had been unleashed overhead. The wind blowing through the trees had turned into flames. Burning branches were starting to fall as the flames roiled and whirled through the trees above. It spread rapidly in all directions, blown by the wind, until it covered the entire trailer park in a fiery sheet.
Anna hurried back to the trailer door. She went halfway up the steps, pulled the screen open, pushed the door open, and grabbed her purse off the floor. She reached into the purse for her keys as she went around the car.
“Kendra, get in the car!” she cried.
Holding the dogs, Kendra hurried to the passenger side of the car and got in.
Anna started the car and backed out of the carport.
It was like the end of the world. Fire rained down from the sky.
Other people were running for the trailer park’s entrance on foot, and some were getting in their cars to drive out.
As Anna neared the exit, driving the wrong way on the right side of the road, she saw a police car with its lights flashing parked just outside the trailer park.
A BMW came out right behind her.
“What’s happening, Mommy, what’s happening?” Kendra said.
“I don’t know, sweetheart, but we’re gonna be okay.”
“What about Marc? Where’s Marc?”
“Marc’s on his own.”
* * * *
Reznick crawled on hands and knees to the door, the steak knife still jutting from his middle.
He heard screaming outside, a lot of cars.
He grabbed the doorknob and pulled himself to his feet.
Blood dribbled from his cut arms and hands and neck. It ran down his belly under his T-shirt and gathered at the waistband of his shorts. He made a grunting sound again and again as he pushed the screen door open and went out on the porch. He stumbled down the steps.
The night was a shimmering orange outside. Reznick wondered if he was hallucinating. As he stumbled along the carport toward the road, he saw that it was raining fire, and he was certain he was dying and having some kind of near-death religious experience.
He staggered out into the road and looked up.
The sky was in flames. They danced and swirled and swelled overhead. They rained down on the ground.
People were running and screaming, and cars were rushing out of the trailer park.
Reznick waved at a passing car and cried out for it to stop, to help him. It drove by. Another came along and he tried to step out in front of it to get it to stop. The car simply swerved around him.
There was an explosion to Reznick’s right, another to his left, and a rush of flame shot into the air from each one.
Reznick fell forward on the broken pavement and landed flat, driving the knife deeper into him.
He cried out, then retched. He coughed and sputtered and spat up blood. He pushed himself up on his arms.
Fire hit the pavement all around him and sparks spattered in all directions from it.
He coughed up more blood as he tried to crawl forward.
Something landed on his back. It quickly burned through his shirt. Reznick screamed in pain and rolled over to get it off his back. He rolled on the pavement, trying to stop the burning.
A pickup truck sped by and swerved at the last second to avoid him, but not quite enough. It rolled over his legs, and Reznick screamed again.
He saw the branch coming. It was a large branch, roiling with flames, big as he was. It grew larger and larger as it fell toward him.
It was followed by a whole tree.
Reznick did not feel them fall on him. One second he was screaming at the falling branch, and the next, he was unconscious, on fire, bleeding to death, broken in the road.
He did not live much longer.
Twenty-Seven
Nine people died in the fire. Propane tanks and water heaters exploded. Trailers went up in flames.
An entire flaming oak tree fell on the trailer in unit five, and the trailer burned to a crushed black skeleton.
The Snodgrass’s barn-red house quickly burned to the ground with Hank and Muriel Snodgrass in it.
A shelter was set up in the meeting hall in Anderson River Park.
Anna and Kendra sat at a table drinking ice water. The building was crowded and noisy and hot. Dexter and Conan were on the bench beside Kendra lying side by side.
Kendra’s face screwed up and she started to cry. “I’m so sorry, Mommy. I feel like this is all my fault ‘cause I was so bad, Mommy, I’m so sorry.”
Anna put an arm around her, stroked her back. “Don’t worry about it, sweetheart. We got a lot to forget, that’s all.”
Kendra turned to her, tears coursing down her cheeks. “What happened to Marc?”
“Don’t worry about Marc. Marc is one of the things we’re gonna forget. We’re gonna forget all about Marc, and Steven, and all that stuff, you hear me?”
Kendra flinched, stared at her mommy a moment, then nodded.
“We’re gonna forget all about ‘em,” Mommy said. “We might have to stay with Aunt Rose for a little while, but we’ll get back on our feet, and we’ll start over. We’ll start over clean. That’s what we’ll do.”
“But what about Marc? I didn’t see him when we – “
Anna turned to her with her lips pulled back, clenched teeth bared. “I said you’re to forget about Marc. I don’t want you to mention his name ever again, you understand me? Ever.”
“O-okay, Mommy.”
Anna relaxed a little, took a collecting breath. Then: “You’re to stay away from boys. And men. You understand me?”
“Yes, Mommy.”
“They’re all alike, and they’re all bad. All of them. They all want one thing, and that’s all they want. You’re to forget all about them, you understand me, Kendra?”
“Yes, Mommy, I – “
”You understand me?”
Kendra’s eyes widened a little. “Yes, Mommy. I understand.”
“Good. Now. We’re going to think new thoughts. And we’re going to start over again.”
Even at ten-forty-six at night, the wind was still hot as it whistled around the corners of the building, wailing like some pathetic creature, hungry, lost, and desperate.
Ray Garton
***
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