Burning Bright

by Nick Petrie

  Blaaaaaaaat blat blaaaaaaaaat.

  The wandering gravel road was not designed for two vehicles to pass at speed. Definitely not when one of them was a giant semi-tractor. Reaching for his seat belt with his right hand, Peter remembered the time in Oregon he had driven in reverse for twenty minutes to find a spot wide enough for a fully loaded logging truck to get past.

  Fifty feet.

  The Subaru was halfway onto the shoulder, a weedy slope that dropped unpredictably toward the rocky riverbed. The truck’s front grille was enormous, taller than the car. Peter could see giant bugs crushed on the glass of the headlamps.

  Blaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat.

  Peter’s hand found the buckle, pulled it down and across, and snapped it into the latch as the car left the road. He planted his feet hard and threw out his left arm to keep June’s head from banging into the steering wheel. The front passenger wheel dipped. He reached for the dashboard with his right hand, locked on tight.

  Gravity changed.

  The landscape whirled around, the sky beneath them, weeds overhead. Then sky above and dirt below. Now clouds beneath and rocks above. Crap floated through the air as the car rolled, energy bars and water bottles and lemonade packets everywhere. Peter banged around in his seat like a toy shaken by an angry toddler, banged in the chest and legs and back over and over for what seemed like forever, until the car finally came to rest.

  Peter looked out his window. The glass had disappeared completely.

  The sky was up and the ground was down. They were on the dry section of the riverbed.

  He looked over at June. “Are you okay? June. June!”

  She looked back at him, blinking. “Oh, man,” she said sadly. “I really loved this car.”

  “Are you hurt? Is anything broken? Look at me. Look at me!” All the while taking an inventory of his own injuries, the aching shoulders, the pain in his ribs that hurt when he breathed in, the left leg on fire.

  She had a bruised lip that would get nice and fat, and a bloody elbow, maybe from all the glass in her lap. No compound fractures that he could see. Her window was mostly gone, but the windshield was intact.

  The hunters. The black Tahoe.

  He tried to open the door, but it was stuck. He looked for the bow, couldn’t find it. He looked down at June’s feet and saw a black short-barreled revolver on the floor. “What the hell?”

  He forgot he was belted in when he bent over to get it, and his ribs howled in protest. He gasped and straightened enough to unbelt himself, then bent again. His cheek brushed against her thigh as he reached for the gun, pressed against fine blond hairs and warm tanned skin. Her legs smelled like sunshine and lotion and he wanted to fall asleep right there. His hands were shaking with the aftermath of the crash and it took him a few fumbling seconds to come back up with the gun.

  “Hey,” she said, “I always wondered where that went.”

  She was dazed but oddly lucid. Peter figured she was in shock.

  “My dad gave it to me. I was fourteen. Kind of a weird birthday present if you ask me. My mom kept telling me to get rid of it, but then I couldn’t find it. That was years ago. I haven’t cleaned out this car in forever.”

  It was a Colt .38, the walnut grips worn but solid, the finish starting to go, maybe an old police model long out of service. It looked clean enough except for the gum wrappers and dust from where she’d lost it under the seat. He found the cylinder release and flipped it open. Five beautiful brass rounds, nothing under the hammer, a lovely circle of daylight through the barrel. He’d been a little worried he’d find a crayon jammed in there. He snapped the cylinder shut with a flick of his wrist.

  “Stay here a minute,” he said. He’d check her more fully when he came back. “Don’t go anywhere. Okay?” Without waiting for an answer, he stood on the seat to climb painfully out through the sunroof.

  The Tahoe lay on its side like a beached whale about thirty yards away.

  8

  He climbed down to the dry riverbed, hurting all over but more or less functional. His forehead felt warm and wet. He put his hand up, felt the slickness of blood, and wiped it away, reminding himself that head wounds always bleed like crazy.

  He knew too much about damage to human bodies.

  He also knew that he would succeed at this next task only if he was the first to act.

  The Tahoe’s partially crushed roof was facing Peter, blocking his view of the inside. He was expecting someone to pop up with a rifle any second.

  Between the two vehicles, one of the hunters lay on the rocks like a thrown doll, all wrong angles. A black man. Was this the man who’d shot at them, or the driver? He saw no weapon. The man’s eyes were open, his neck bent strangely, and the side of his head had a softball-sized dent that Peter figured would match up nicely with the profile of some nearby rock. Blood had only just begun to seep from the wound before the man’s heart had stopped pumping.

  One down. Three to go.

  He limped on toward the ruined truck, left leg strangely sore down by his ankle, the .38 in his left hand. Tall trees to each side, the clouds dark with threatening rain.

  The Tahoe was bashed and bent like a soda can some kid had kicked down the block. It had obviously rolled a few times, too. He approached it from the back, where anyone inside would be least likely to see him. The glass was tinted and opaque from hundreds of tiny fractures and he couldn’t see inside.

  There was no sound other than the ticking of the cooling metal, the uneven scuff of his boots, and the sound of his own breathing.

  Fuck it. He limped behind the undercarriage, through the chemical stink of leaking fluids and the ruptured fuel tank. Peter wasn’t worried about gas. He knew it only exploded in the movies. If it caught fire, he’d have some notice. He was worried about his leg, and the men he could neither see nor hear. He wanted them all to be dead so he wouldn’t have to kill them. He wanted at least one to be alive so he could ask some questions.

  On its side, the Tahoe was too tall for him to see through the broken-out windows. He didn’t want to climb it, not with this leg, although he would if that was his best option. He stepped back for a better view, and that’s when he saw the arm. It stuck out from under the truck like it had grown from the ground, the flannel shirt and big black wristwatch as clean and unmarked as an REI mannequin.

  If the arm’s owner was still alive, he wouldn’t be for long.

  That was two.

  Peter limped forward, feeling more confident. His leg wasn’t getting worse, and he thought he’d worked out what had happened. When the Tahoe had rolled, it had thrown the front passenger clear and crushed the driver. Probably weren’t wearing seat belts.

  He rounded the accordioned front end. The windshield was an irregular mat of cracks and holes, pushed in by the accident to lie loose against the pale pillows of the deflating air bags.

  Now he heard a low moaning.

  He needed to get in there. He needed to know who was left, and what they knew. But he didn’t like the idea of going in headfirst to face someone who’d been trying to kill him just a few minutes before. Especially not a group of pros, like these. He glanced around for a long stick.

  “Hey, buddy, y’all okay?” It was the driver of the logging truck, working his way down the riverbank. “Lemme help you out. That was one helluva accident.”

  He wore blue Dickies work pants and a plain white T-shirt with red suspenders that bowed around his hard round belly. His hair was a gray fringe around a new Crimson Tide cap, his round red face creased with worry.

  “Stay up there,” Peter called to him. “Don’t come any closer.”

  “No way, buddy,” the truck driver said, stumping over the rocks. He had arms like Popeye. “I was a EMT for ten years. I seen more wrecks than you seen cars.”

  The moaning got louder.

  “These
guys tried to kill us,” said Peter. “They’re armed.”

  “Well, hell,” the truck driver said, patting what Peter now realized was a holster at his belt. “I’m armed, too. What are they, dopers?”

  Just what we need, thought Peter. A good Samaritan with a gun.

  A string of mumbled curses came from the Tahoe. A grunt, a cry of pain.

  “Shit, you can’t just stand there, somebody’s hurt,” said the truck driver. He walked to the undercarriage and saw the arm. “Sweet mother of God,” he said, his face turned pale. But it only spurred him on. He swarmed up the steaming chassis like a circus performer. “I’m coming,” he called out. “Hold on, buddy, we gonna get you outta there and all fixed up. You want to be healthy when you meet the judge.”

  He was kneeling on the passenger-side door, looking down through the window, when Peter heard the gunshots. Takatak, takatak. The truck driver’s body jerked and his knees slipped and the weight of his legs pulled him to the ground.

  Peter limped quickly to where the engine would provide the most cover and fired the .38 through the windshield opening five times, the gun bucking in his hand until it was empty. Then he limped back to where the truck driver lay on the rocks, his white T-shirt now bright red in growing patches.

  “The Lord is mah shepherd,” he said. “The Lord is mah shepherd.” His voice sounded wet. His shirt was saturated with blood. He coughed once, and was gone.

  “I’m sorry,” Peter said quietly, closed the man’s eyes with his hand, then unsnapped the holster on the man’s belt.

  The pistol was a big Colt Python .357 Magnum with a six-inch barrel. Not exactly a concealed carry weapon, but perfect for shooting buffalo or small elephants. Still, it was clean and, more important, loaded, with one behind the hammer. So he had six rounds.

  Peter limped around to the back of the truck, trying to be quiet. It wouldn’t be easy for the man inside to reorient a long gun in that enclosed space, especially with the seats. He hoped his shots from the front had hit the fucker.

  He kicked in the back door’s shattered glass, stuck the barrel of his pistol through the hole, and fired quickly into the back seat, four shots in a decent grouping. If he’d had a grenade, he’d have used that.

  Then he climbed through the window.

  Two men lay in a rumpled heap in the back seat, one with an arrow through his chest. Both were spotted with gore from multiple gunshot wounds, and the smell of blood and spent powder was thick in the enclosed space. The man with the arrow didn’t seem to be breathing. The other man clutched a Heckler & Koch assault rifle with a grimace on his face, lying halfway into the front seat. It looked like he’d anticipated Peter’s maneuver and had turned to face the rear, but Peter had fired first. He reached up and tore the rifle from the man’s hands.

  “Why?” said Peter. “Why did you do this?”

  The man’s lips worked for a moment as if his mouth were dry. He took a breath and a soft sucking noise came from his chest, at least one lung punctured. When he spoke, it was just a whisper. “Killed me,” he said.

  “No,” Peter lied, “the ambulance is coming. You’re going to be fine. But you have to tell me. Who sent you? Why?”

  The man shook his head, and his grimace turned to a look of surprise. “Killed,” he said. “Me.” His voice the sound of dry leaves in an autumn wind, carried softly away. “Me,” he said again.

  Then he died.

  The white static rose up hard and Peter scrambled out of that tumbled tomb, the broken glass sharp under his palms and his knees, from the dense cloying stink of blood and death into the clean, resinous pine-scented air.

  He struggled to his feet on the dry riverbed. He put his face up to the gray sky and felt the first drops of rain. He saw a big gray bird up in the lowest layer of clouds, circling.

  He sucked in one breath, then another, and yet another.

  9

  JUNE

  June sat in the car and watched as Peter walked to the body of the man who lay on the dirt. He stood looking down at the corpse for a long moment, then stooped to slide a phone from the dead man’s shirt pocket. He had to get down on one knee and roll the body to extract the wallet from his pants.

  Man, she hoped he wasn’t just robbing the dead.

  When the car left the road, she’d felt an immense rush of gratitude at the pressure of his arm against her chest, holding her body in the seat as the world rolled and rolled around her, the strength and safety of him beside her in that tumbling universe. He’d saved her life.

  But that thing with the bow? The look on his face as he climbed out the sunroof, that pure distilled joy like riding the zip-line express, only he was singing a goddamn Waylon Jennings song and firing fucking arrows at that huge SUV while the bad guys tried to kill them with all their guns?

  He’d saved her life, but she was afraid he might be crazy.

  He’d helped her in the tree, protected her in the crash, and checked on her afterward, each time taking pains to make sure she was okay. But he’d also climbed out of her ruined car with utter calm and walked to the wrecked SUV with her dad’s gun in his hand and fired through the windows like he was shooting tin ducks at a carnival.

  Only they weren’t tin ducks. They were people, and he’d killed them.

  Maybe he was right to kill them, she thought. Hadn’t they tried to kill her, on the road? They’d shot that truck driver who was just trying to help. Those weren’t stun guns, not anymore.

  She was glad Peter was there. He made her feel safe and protected. He was funny and capable and he seemed to get her in a way that nobody else ever really had.

  But he’d killed them.

  He was a war veteran. Maybe damaged by that in some way, she didn’t know, and it didn’t feel fair to even think it. But there it was.

  She wanted him to come back.

  She wanted him to help her.

  She also wanted him to walk away so she could stay in her ruined car, her whole ruined life, and let herself shudder and cry until she was empty.

  She didn’t trust her judgment in men. Her therapist had said it was because women often found themselves with men like their fathers. June’s dad hadn’t exactly set the standard for datable guys. She’d had some bad experiences.

  Stevie the tattooed barista with the fine art degree wanted to move in with her and quit his job so he’d have more time to paint his tiny incomprehensible landscapes. The worst thing was that she actually considered it. Paul the app developer wanted her to marry him and quit her job and go to church every day and squeeze out babies for the rest of her life. She’d actually considered that, too, because it turned out that grown-up life in the modern age was so much more complicated than anyone had let on.

  Robert the investment banker was the scariest of them. He had a great job and wore good suits and drank good wine. He was smart and polite until he suddenly got very weird, popping Viagra and wanting to tie her up. He became increasingly insistent until one night he got really rough and she had visions of being handcuffed naked to a radiator for the rest of a short miserable life. So she’d kicked him in the balls, scooped up her clothes, snapped a picture of his naked body with her phone for insurance, then climbed out the window.

  Even Bryce. An assistant professor, a biologist. She’d loved the trees, but she’d ended up writing his grant proposals and doing his goddamn laundry, all while he fucked that thick-legged slut Cindy from the English department.

  What was the matter with her? She’d had enough therapy to know it was all about her crazy overprotective dad. So she swore off relationships, limiting herself to hookups with cute stoner ski instructors and kind-eyed backpacker bums who would never begin to qualify as long-term material.

  So this Peter guy. She didn’t know. She could tell he liked her, and he hadn’t yet tried to tell her what to do. She liked him, goddamn it. But that was the biggest
strike against him. That and the fact that he’d killed at least one man before her eyes. And she was still actively considering him for dating potential? There was something seriously wrong with her.

  Clearly she needed more therapy.

  She watched as he limped back to the wrecked SUV and stood staring at it for a minute, as if the dead men might climb out through the shattered openings, or it might somehow right itself on its own. She watched his chest rise and fall like he was breathing hard. What was he thinking? She thought she should get away from him. She should get away from anyone who could do the things she’d seen him do in the last thirty minutes.

  Then he bent and crawled back into the wreck.

  She found herself shuddering for a long moment and had to grab the wheel hard with both hands to force herself to stop.

  Get a grip, girl. Get moving now or you might never leave the car.

  Her door was jammed shut. She gathered her legs under her and stood on the seat. Her upper arm was bloody, her lip on fire, her whole body sore as if she’d done three hours of kickboxing then thrown herself off a cliff. The climb through the sunroof was hard. She slid down the windshield on her ass, then scrambled off the hood to put the car between her and Peter. He was still inside that SUV, doing God knows what.

  But she couldn’t bring herself to walk away.

  Finally he emerged with an armload of things he’d taken from the truck, and laid them out on the rocks. He walked around the back side of the SUV with a hatchet and a couple of big water bottles and did something noisy. A thin greasy smoke began to spiral up into the clouds despite the light rain that had begun to fall. He emerged with the water bottles, shook two of them into the Suburban until they were empty, then tossed them in, too. With a lighter, he ignited a long strip of cloth stuffed into a third smaller bottle and lobbed it through the hole where the windshield used to be. He followed it with what looked like the old gun her dad had given her, and maybe the phones he’d taken from the bodies.