“YES,” he shouted hoarsely, desperately. The shepherd barked violently at this outburst.
Lee-Anne was still gone. Kain shook her again. Harder. Nothing. She was still bleeding a thin river.
“GET HER OUTTA THERE, KAIN—”
Kain could smell the gas now.
Al Hembruff took a small step back and stiffened when the shepherd growled. He paused, took another step—another—and almost stumbled into the woman. Old Clara stood as still as a stone, her gaze locked on what her old mind was telling her was surely not her loving pet. Big Al called her name, but might as well have called for God; neither would have answered. The dog replied by daring a step forward and back, snapping at the air, its growl growing ever more vicious.
The farmer had nearly reached the flatbed. He stopped again, his eyes fixed on the animal. Then, in one desperate move, he darted for the cab. The door was open, blocking his path, and when he tried to go around, the shepherd bolted for him. He had a good lead, but Kain could see the old man wasn’t so spry. The beast would have him.
Big Al dove for the seat, his legs dangling there like meat on a hook. Kain could barely see the man’s boots beyond the lower rim of the door, but he had a full view of the dog. The shepherd had moved like lightning, had struck like it. It sank its fangs into Al Hembruff’s leg, and the man let out a scream. The dog dragged him back, its teeth buried in the man’s flesh. Big Al was still face down in the cab, but his free leg, kicking wildly, managed a strong blow to the dog’s jaw. The animal released him and slipped back, but then it was up again, its paws on the truck’s step, its jaws snapping. Big Al managed to right himself onto his back, still kicking in a panic. The dog backed off and dug in for another attack. This time Big Al wouldn’t be so lucky, Kain thought; the big beast would be up in the cab, gnawing at the man’s throat.
Clara Brayfield had snapped out of her trance and had started to shout. Strained though it was, her voice had been just enough to draw the dog’s attention for a fleeting moment. Big Al seized his chance and managed to reach behind the seat; fumbling desperately and finding it, he drew a tire iron free. The dog hunkered down and then leapt with fangs bared, and the man managed to get the tool up, perpendicular to its jaws. The shepherd clamped down on it and tried to pull it free. Big Al held on with both hands, and when the dog let go and went for his balls, he brought the bar down hard on its head. The animal yelped and slid back, its powerful paws unable to catch hold. It slipped from the cab, and then Big Al was up, scrambling in the seat. He kicked at the dog when it came for him again, and this time he landed a solid boot to its jaw. He came down hard with the tire iron and cracked the dog’s skull, giving rise to a sharp pop that was quite unpleasant. The animal staggered and swayed, then finally tipped like a statue. It tried to right itself, fighting the death it knew was coming, and then its fat red tongue wriggled from its jaws as it died.
Clara Brayfield turned from the carnage, trembling. She threw her hands up over her face. Tears bled through her fingers. Al Hembruff emerged from the cab, limping and bloody. He called out to her. She didn’t respond, and he called again. Nothing. He got moving. His eyes were swollen globes. He still had the tire iron clenched in his hand as he made his way down into the ditch, like a man unknowingly holds onto the knife he has just killed his wife with.
Kain was moving too, the slick stench of gasoline thickening around him. He slung an arm around the girl and dragged her across the seat. The fuel caught fire beneath them with a sudden unfathomable whooooomp that seemed to echo inside his brain, and before he realized what had happened, the vehicle grew engulfed in flames. Black smoke choked him; it filled the cab. He looked out the rear window, and through a tenuous opening in the blackness caught Al Hembruff stumbling backward, arms flailing. His shirtsleeve was in flames, yet incredibly, he still clutched that precious tire iron. The big man hit the ground hard and rolled to put it out, and by the time he managed to rise to all fours behind a wall of blazing brushfire that kept him at bay, he was screaming for his granddaughter at the top of his lungs.
Kain swung the passenger door wide and slid out into the blaze. Fiery fingers clawed at him, singeing the skin on his hands. The heat enveloped him, like walls of stone crushing him from all sides. He reached for the girl and drew her forward, her head listing, and then, in one swift motion, he moved down and slipped her over his shoulder. He started to turn, but something impeded him. He shot a glance right and saw what held them. The girl’s sleeve had caught on the door release, her left arm hanging there dead—as they were going to be—and with a yawning grunt, he yanked on it as hard as he could. Only a second desperate effort ripped her free.
He cringed at a sharp stab in his right leg. His jeans had caught fire—so had his hair. Almost instantly he whipped his head back, hoping to snuff out the flames. This seemed to do the trick. Thicker and blacker smoke rushed into the cab, and he drew a quick breath. He shut his eyes tight and felt a hot black cloud rolling over his skin like thick paint. He held that precious air in his lungs for a brief moment, and when he opened his eyes, he turned in a wild rush, not really knowing where he was headed, not knowing how long God had given him to get there, and so he simply stumbled forward, staggering along the steep slope of the ditch. He drove onward as fast as his uncertain legs would take them, and by the instant he tumbled headfirst into the dead grass some thirty feet away, the girl still unconscious, the old man still screaming and the old woman still in shock, Lynn Bishop’s pickup exploded.
~ 23
It was deafening. Numbing. A great heat suffocated all that breathed; fire and smoke would consume what remained. There was an enduring moment where the drifter neither heard nor felt, save the rapid thrum of his heart. It was as if he had Turned, and the world had melted into nothingness. But then time began to race forward again, unyielding and unforgiving as it always was, and he found himself lying there amid the burning debris, some of it still flying about, some of it still crashing down on top of him and all around him. He cried out, the pain in his leg grilling him, and he rolled to put out the flames. He clawed madly at his jeans, drawing up his pants leg, the denim tattered and scorched. His flesh was singed. He shifted onto his side and hell rippled through him. Whatever had struck him in the square of his lower back was sharp and searing, and he could not comprehend that that terrifying sound he was hearing now really was the screech from his own agony.
Only now did the world begin to come back to him. Somewhere above, as far removed as the stars, were teasing tastes of blue sky and brilliant white clouds. The sun hovered like a dull eye, eclipsed by a rolling mass of smoky alien forms. Shape and color began to form in his mind, of things he knew—of things he did not wish to. The air reeked of gasoline and smoke. Shattered glass and scorched steel lay everywhere. Death could not be far.
He looked up, dismayed. His spent lungs ached. He could barely breathe, could hardly see. He tried to rise, but coiled at that burning in his flesh.
The girl lay still. He crawled beside her and saw she was breathing. Incredibly, the shrapnel had spared her, not by much, but it had. Shards of glass littered the area around her head, and a few large pieces, sharp and deadly, rested at her side. He tried to revive her, and she responded. Her eyes were fallen and fearful, but moving, by God, squinting into the blinding sun, as it emerged momentarily from the blackness before being swallowed. Her gaze fell away, and she rolled her head to the side.
“Come on, Lee.” He waved some lingering smoke away from her face as best he could. “Come on, girl.”
Her eyes flittered open.
“… Kain—”
She tried to rise and faltered, and he helped her sit up. She looked a fright. The bleeding had ebbed to a dribble, and the blood on her face looked like rust-colored paint. In the next breath, she came undone.
The sight of the fire held her captive in terror. It sent her into a taut ball, her hands curling into small fists against her face. Her knuckles had turned chalky white. Trembling
, she slipped into his arms, fell into them, really, and it was impossible to know if she was still breathing.
Kain threw a look over his shoulder. Lynn Bishop’s pickup was a fiery carcass. One of the wheels had been blown off and was now a smoldering rubber donut. The brushfire had spread to the field above the ditch, but had run its course, the dead grass contained by a broad extent of lifeless, unturned farmland. Already the fire was dying.
The girl dared a glance up at him. She hovered there a moment, uncertain, then braved a look back at the burning vehicle. Again he saw the utter terror in her eyes. She started to rise, and he held her back.
“Stay,” he told her. She fought him. “No, Lee … NO.”
He struggled to hold her, to stop her from making what was certainly a terrible mistake. She was trembling utterly, tears bleeding down her rusty cheeks. She fought him once more, weakly, and then she gave up. Finally, she nodded.
Slowly, Kain rose, the burning in his back nearly toppling him. He reached round and felt something sharp there; felt blood. He began to wade through the carnage, moving up onto the road. Scorched remnants of what were once part of a greater whole lay splayed across the roof of the station wagon. The old woman was nowhere in sight, but her dogs were hunkered in the back of the car. One poked its head up, saw the killing field, saw him, and drew its head back down. Its siblings appeared none the worse for wear and seemed more than content to leave him well enough alone. The dead shepherd lay in a heap beside the flatbed, its crushed skull soaked in pooling blood. The driver’s side door was still open, but now it favored a gaping hole where some projectile had struck it. Surely, Al Hembruff had not survived. In another ten paces he would discover the man’s lifeless body, twisted and torn by the same scorched metal that had struck him.
His gaze fixed on the blazing wreckage, he moved in agony, that sharp stab stabbing just a little deeper with every step. Coming round to the far side, he stopped cold and felt a shiver race along his spine. His eyes widened and began to shift wildly through the debris.
“Here.” A smallish cry, and the very same came a second time. It was the old woman, and Kain followed that pathetic beacon until he found her—found them—on the driver’s side of the station wagon. Curled up with a bared, bony shoulder against the car, Clara Brayfield’s dirtied white hair dangled limply in front of utter dismay. She favored her left wrist, caressing it with her hand. Her simple dress was torn; one of her shoes was missing. Labored gasps escaped her, a harrowing sound one might associate with coming death from one so old, but from what Kain could tell she seemed all in one piece. He went to her and knelt beside her, and she brushed him off with all the authority of a woman who has made a life of surviving.
“Go,” she told him. “Take care of Allan.”
Just beyond her, huddled against the driver’s door, the farmer sat eerily still. Blood seeped from his leg wound. His face was cold and white, and he had one stiff hand to his chest. He still had that precious tire iron clutched in the other like some kind of deadly security blanket. His eyes were lids.
Kain endured the agony in his back and shifted on his haunches past the woman. “Al,” he muttered, the name coming, but only just. He felt something thick growing in his throat. “Al. I’m here.”
There was no reply. And then there was.
“Lee? Where’s Lee?”
Al Hembruff’s eyes fluttered, then narrowed to slits.
“She’s all right. She’s all right.”
The man tightened and Kain felt it.
“You’re bleeding. We need to get you to a doctor.”
“Pills—”
“Where?”
“P-pocket.” The man’s right hand struggled for them at his breast pocket.
Kain dug for the nitro pills. “Al—how many?”
“Just one,” came the hurried reply, and he turned to discover its source. Haggard and spent, Lee-Anne faltered as she knelt beside her grandfather. She was neither alert nor composed, and when she threw an anxious glance over her shoulder towards the wreckage, she stiffened. The scene was more billowing smoke than fire now, yet the dying flames still gripped her.
He startled her with a hand to her shoulder, but instead of recoiling as he feared, she welcomed the gesture. She was clearly frightened, but despite his warning to stay where she was, he was truly thankful to see her. Somehow, for some greater purpose than he could ever have imagined, the grace of God had spared her. Had spared all of them.
“Just one, Kain.”
He nodded to her, and she offered a feeble smile that wavered. His hands trembled as he opened the pill tin. He drew a single pill from the lot, nearly dropped it, and then fingered it into the man’s mouth. The big fellow swallowed, in a perfect reflex reaction of sensing a pill on his tongue.
Al Hembruff’s eyes rolled listlessly in their sockets. But then, mercifully, they steadied. His breathing relaxed, and his grip on the tire iron expired. He stirred as he looked up, eyes searching, and offered a wiggly smile for his granddaughter when they found her. The girl fell into him all at once as she hugged him, and wouldn’t let go.
Kain grimaced as he slipped back onto the road, that hot knife in his back driving all the way in. The old woman sought him out with uncertain eyes, and simply thanked him with barely a breath. Steeling himself against the pain, he moved onto his side and lay perfectly still as he watched the girl and her grandfather. Tears were streaming down her bloodied face, but at least the bleeding had stopped.
Now, he thought, his mind swimming, if only time had.
~ 24
They parked the flatbed at the Bishop farmhouse, and at Kain’s suggestion took a walk along the trail, its twists and turns their guide. The prairie sky was clear to the east, but dark gray clouds had gathered, forging a troubling alliance in the west.
“I’m sorry about my mother,” Lynn said, breaking the unbearable silence that had held them apart for a solid mile. Like two strangers at a wake, neither had seemed to know what to say.
Kain acknowledged her with barely a nod. It was all he could muster. In the last two hours—Jesus, had it only been that long?—Georgia Hembruff had glared at him time and again, as if he were some pesky gnat. He had wanted to face up to the good woman, spill his soul to her, but had found the mountain too high. With Lynn, it too seemed an utter impossibility.
“It wasn’t your fault, Kain … Dad said so. And Lee, she said—”
“No,” he said, stopping short. “No. I’m sorry. This is wrong. It’s all wrong.”
He could barely face her. All he could think of was running, so far and so fast that all of this would seem like a bad dream.
“What are you talking about? I don’t understand. I talked with that officer. What’s his name … Burridge?”
“Berridge,” he said, and the name tasted sour. The cop hadn’t taken to him, not at all. The man had smelled drifter, and with nothing more than a look, had, just as Georgia had, blamed him for what had happened. Truth hurts.
“Berridge. Yes. He said—”
“I know what he said.”
“So do I. He said if it hadn’t been for you, this would have been a lot worse. Dad said it, too. In my eyes, you’re a hero.”
“I’m no hero, Lynn.”
She tried to look him in the eye, but he avoided her.
“Is there something you’re not telling me?”
“… Your father … I know he means well.”
And Big Al had meant well; his only want to protect his little girl. She had been a wreck.
“Out with it.”
Out with it. Were it that easy.
“The accident,” he said. “It didn’t happen the way he said it did.”
Lynn folded her arms. “Really.”
“I wasn’t driving,” Kain said. “Lee was.”
“Lee? What?”
“I know. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have let her.”
“Was this your idea?”
He didn’t have to answer. She
knew.
“I bet she pestered you into it, didn’t she? Oh, that girl. No wonder she didn’t want to talk about it.”
“It wasn’t her fault, Lynn. If I hadn’t let her drive, none of this would have happened.”
She fell expressionless as she considered his words.
“She wanted to tell you. She was afraid.”
“I can’t believe my father didn’t tell me. He lied.”
“I wouldn’t be too hard on him.”
“Hmph.”
“Believe me, he had plenty to say to me in the hospital. He wasn’t too pleased with me … let’s keep it at that. He’s a good man. I have a lot of respect for him. But I broke a trust, Lynn. With him, with you. With Lee. He wasn’t hiding the truth from you. Don’t you see? He wanted me to come clean.”
“Were you going to tell me? Was anyone? My God—” She uttered a kind of anxious half laugh that bordered on hysterical. “You even lied to the police.”
“I did. I admit that. It was wrong.”
“I can’t believe my father lied! No wonder Berridge kept looking at you like that. I don’t think he believed you. Either of you.”
Their stories hadn’t quite jived. Waiting for the ambulance, Big Al had whispered to Kain, Don’t you dare tell the cops Lee was driving, that’s a canna worms we don’t need to open. Kain had seen the seriousness in the man’s eyes and did not argue the point. The big man told the cop that all he saw was Kain carrying his granddaughter on his back, and nothing more. This earned an obligatory nod from the seasoned Trooper, but the drifter’s story had been slightly different. Kain explained how he pushed the girl out the passenger side, climbed out behind her, grabbed her from the ground and dragged her to safety. Dragging versus carrying. You say potato, I say pototo … but enough to raise some Trooper eyebrows. The cop had regarded him with that oh-so-familiar look of disdain, and then, after glancing not too subtly at the long hair, carefully put away his notepad and pen and said, “You know, sir, I think I got a handle on this thing. In all that excitement, what with the explosion and all … maybe the old fella just can’t remember straight.”
Velvet Rain - A Dark Thriller Page 18