Fireworks

by James A. Moore

  Burt Ditweiller was a lost cause. He was fast asleep and snoring loud enough to wake the dead. That was okay; Herb Cambridge had taken his place at the poker table and was winning everybody's earnings.

  Pete looked at his own cards and decided the time had come to fold. He'd lost enough money for one night, and he was a man who knew when to cut his losses.

  "That's it for me, boys. I'm gonna go crash." Pete stood and drank down the last drops of his fancy Yankee beer. The guest room was just through the doors on the right, past the two pool tables Brightman had set up for when he wanted to have the boys over.

  Judd looked away from his cards and nodded, Joe might have nodded, but if he did Pete couldn't tell the difference from what the fool's head had been doing for the last ten minutes. Herb Cambridge lowered his cards, looking very serious and just a little pale. Tonight had been a first for him. "You think they found the body yet, Pete?"

  "If they didn't, I don't guess they're tryin' very hard. We left it where it could be found."

  "I don't want to know any more about whatever you assholes are talkin' about." Judd's voice rumbled from his chest, a full two octaves lower than it normally was. "I'm here to play some goddamn poker, not to hear what you dumb fucks did to anyone. You understand me?" Judd had not been involved in the killing. Despite his size and the violence he'd done in his youth, he did not believe in hurting anyone. He sure as hell didn't condone murder.

  "Not a problem, buddy. We didn't do shit and you ain't heard a damn thing." Pete's voice was calm. He knew Judd would never tell anyone what he'd heard. Judd knew all about most of what the group did. He knew where every body was buried. He just never spoke of the matters and expected not to hear about them. Never failed, soon as one of the boys started drinking, Judd heard about everything anyway. He always said the same thing, and after that everyone shut the hell up. Judd was too damn mean to be a pacifist for long and he really did his best to remain neutral where his friends' illegal hobbies were concerned. By Judd's philosophy, what he didn't know couldn't come back to haunt anyone. The boys all respected that.

  "That's damn right. I don't know shit. Keep it that way."

  "You got it, Judd." Pete smiled and nodded again before going off to the bed that called to him with a siren's song. He was tired, and he needed his rest. Tomorrow the boys had a few more things to set right, and Pete intended to be rested when the slaughter began anew.

  4

  Major Steve Hawthorne sat down on one of the collapsible chairs in the command tent and listened. He listened to Mark Anderson's silence, and he waited for the explosion.

  There would be an explosion; of that he was certain. Mark was a good commander, certainly one of the best, but he was only human. Steve knew how much the operation pained his friend, and knew that sooner or later Mark would go a little crazy, would vent steam just to keep his sanity. Hawthorne looked over to where his helmet and clipboard rested, contemplating again how best to escape before Anderson blew his top.

  They were cowardly thoughts, but he couldn't avoid them. Just as he understood that he really had no choice but to wait for the tirade and endure it. It came with the territory.

  "I can't believe these assholes." Anderson's voice was tightly controlled, a bare whisper. The remaining fuse for his temper began to burn.

  "How's that, Mark?" Innocence in his voice, like he didn't know what was coming. He could taste his stomach acids in the back of his throat.

  "I've done everything I could to avoid having to hurt anyone. Anyone. And these backwater little redneck bastards kill one of my men." Anderson's voice was a little louder now, and his teeth were clenched behind bared lips.

  "It almost had to happen, Mark. We were warned by Calloway that there would likely be heavy resistance."

  "I expected resistance, Steve. Not cold-blooded murder." Mark ran his hand across his silvery burr-cut. His eyes stared out into nowhere, and the color in his face slowly started darkening. "I didn't expect them to cut a man apart. That's where I made my first mistake."

  "So the question is, what are we gonna do about it?"

  Mark looked at him like he'd look at a pile of feces on the ground. Steve decided it was a good time to keep his mouth shut. "Increase the curfew limitations. No one found walking the streets after sunset gets to play anymore. Only Osborn and his men get to move around at night. Anyone else is dead. I don't care if it's an old lady walking her poodle. Shoot to kill, ask questions later. No excuses this time. I know they've been going shopping after curfew. No more. Close down the stores, and if they don't want to close, chain the doors on them."

  Steve grabbed his clipboard, immediately scratching down notes to himself. Anderson continued, "I want a list of known troublemakers from Osborn. I want it ASAP." Anderson walked away from the desk, his hands moving constantly and his whole body wound tight. "This shit stops now. No more friendly behavior to the locals, and no more bending over backwards to make them feel comfy. They want to kill my men? Fine. I can return the favor."

  "Anything else, Colonel?"

  "Yeah. One more thing. Get some sleep. I'm not taking out my anger on you today, Steve. I don't have the time to get angry."

  Steve smiled and nodded, reaching for his helmet. Sometimes life was good.

  5

  Daylight came into Collier with a heavy, warm sigh. The air was too thick and already the temperature had passed the eighty-degree mark. The only people unaffected by the intense heat were the children, who, through the miracle of childhood, always seemed capable of ignoring blistering heat and intense cold alike in the pursuit of a good time.

  On Bud Markle's farm, even his champion pit bulls were lazy and panting. The most any of them would manage when he called to them was a wag of the tail and apologetic eyes that said "Sorry, Bud, but it's too damned hot and I'm having trouble with mustering enthusiasm. Perhaps you could try me later?" Bud himself was stewing in his own sweat, and doing his best to ignore that he needed to take a shower, if only so he'd stop offending his own senses.

  Bud sat at the top of his porch stairs, staring out at the road beyond his front yard. There were a lot of soldiers in their spiffy black uniforms over on the other side of the road, where Jesse Miller's boy now did his best to keep up with growing peaches. None of the soldiers had so much as looked over towards Bud and that suited him just fine.

  Bud figured the men in those black uniforms were probably nice enough folk, but they were nice folk with too many weapons and a license to kill. That, and he just plain resented being told what he could or could not do by anybody. Hadn't liked being told what to do when he was a young 'un, and he hated it now.

  The soldiers were also bad for business. It was damned hard to make extra money selling a little weed or powder to the kids in town when they couldn't leave their houses late at night and sneak over. Hell, most of the folk in town probably needed repairs on their cars by now, but they weren't likely to come out to Bud's garage to get them, not since that damned Texaco up and sprouted a garage last year. He scratched at his belly, contemplating how best to handle the problem. Bud didn't sell a lot of the stuff, and never to anyone who wasn't of age, but the extra income sure came in handy at the end of the month.

  Bud did not look at himself as a bad person. He'd never killed anyone, never robbed a bank, never even had his way with a woman who was unwilling, though he'd considered it a few times. He didn't steal, nor did he beg. He just found creative ways to make ends meet. Supply and demand: that was the ticket to Bud's success. He supplied what others wanted, and he demanded his fair price. Pure ambition for a comfortable life sometimes led Bud to sell things that were not exactly legal, but only to people old enough to know better.

  Truth be told, Bud's belief in the capitalistic dream was the only thing stopping him from reporting that he'd seen the people responsible for the dead soldier they were still going on about on the other side of the street. He reached down into the oversized box of Milk-Bones dog biscuits at his feet and dr
ew one forth for his pit bulls to see. They failed to gather any serious enthusiasm for the treats. It was just too damned hot for them to manage an appetite. When he called for Caesar by name, the dog sighed and finally struggled to stand up and walk over to his master. Bud smiled and rubbed the dog behind the ears. "Maybe I better get your pool set up, huh ol' boy? Give y'all somethin' to cool off with." Bud looked at the cheap plastic wading pool, leaning against the side of his house, and decided he'd go ahead and fill it. The dogs needed a break from the heat, what with the fur coats God had stuck on their bodies.

  Bud heaved himself away from his perch and waddled over to the wading pool with its interior of dancing cherubic mermaids and smiling starfish, knocking it to the ground more than actually setting it in place. It took him a few minutes to locate the pliers he used for turning the exterior spigot for water-the metallic wheel which should have been there had long since broken into fragments and Bud never seemed to get around to replacing it-but he soon had the pool half-filled with tepid water and a small army of dogs barking enthusiastically as he sprayed them with the stream.

  For a moment he drowned out the sound of the dogs, his mind and eyes focusing on the group of soldiers who were still giving Walter Miller and his family a world of grief. He thought about the townsfolk he had seen creeping through the woods behind his own place and the commotion the dogs set up when they came too close. Awful lot of angry people in town and not a gun for any of them to defend themselves with.

  Bud contemplated the firearms he had buried under the floorboards in his kitchen. They just might be the answer to all of his problems, financially speaking. Lucas Brightman had money to burn, and it was his boys were out doing the killing last night. He contemplated the potential returns on his five-year-old investment-he'd grabbed up all the firearms he could at a few pawnshops when he heard about the possible new legislation against firearm sales a few years back. Maybe he'd finally get beyond breaking even. That would be nice.

  His decision to speak with Brightman made, Bud went back to hosing down the dogs. After a shift in the wind made him catch a whiff of his own body, he decided he'd go ahead and take a shower himself. Enough was enough; he just plain should have worn deodorant.

  6

  Artie Carlson lay in his bed and tried to block out the sounds of Emily's screams. Emily O'Rourke was in the next bed, and even through the sounds of oxygen hissing into her tent and the heart monitor beeping and pinging, he could hear her labored breaths. Despite the drugs the doctors kept pumping into her, the poor woman could not remain unconscious for long. Despite the drugs in his own system, her screams whenever she came awake kept him from the solace of sleep.

  Emily O'Rourke was the wife of Pastor O'Rourke, and a good friend of Artie's mother. That did not stop him from growing to dread the idea that she might awaken. The screams she made were almost entirely inhuman. Raw wails of agony ripped from her mouth, past the tubes they'd forced into her to help her breathe. He had actually heard one of the men in the white suits say to another that there was no physical way she should have been able to scream. But she managed just the same.

  Artie'd had a crush on Emily when he was a teenager and she was in her mid-thirties. Despite the age difference, he'd still felt the thrill of first love-or at least that's what he'd always assumed it was, until he met his future wife-every time he'd seen her smile. He'd never told her, or anyone else for that matter. She was a married woman, and he wasn't stupid enough to think she could have feelings for him. At least not when he was away from his fantasies. Emily was always so energetic, and filled with enough smiles to make the worst of days brighten up. When he and Carla had split up-his fault, he was a jealous man and a mean drunk-he'd thought of Emily often, wondering if Pastor William O'Rourke had any idea how lucky he was. Only recently had he realized that somewhere along the way she'd gone and grown old on him when he wasn't looking. Her bright eyes weren't quite as lovely a shade of blue, and her strawberry blond hair had lost its luster to a wave of gray and silver that hadn't been there only a few years earlier. Liver spots crept across her hands and, worst of all, the smile lines around her eyes had magically transformed into crow's feet.

  Dreams weren't supposed to grow old. Maybe that was what drove him to drinking like a fool; too many aging dreams left unfulfilled.

  Emily's daughter, Karen, was almost exactly like her mother in appearance, but she wasn't quite as quick with a smile. Not since that asshole Peter Donovan had married her and made the 'love taps' Artie used to give Carla look like playful rough-housing. The difference was that Artie knew he'd made mistakes. He'd have bet the use of his legs that good ol' Pete never figured out he was to blame. Having that thought brought a short chuckle from his mouth. After all, he had already lost the use of his legs, at least temporarily. Even through the painkillers they fed him every four hours he could feel the angry flashes of pain from burnt nerve-endings.

  He could still remember Pete talking about how he'd had to "put Karen in her place again," almost every time the bastard showed himself at Toby's Bar and Grill. He could also remember seeing Karen walking with a limp on a few occasions. Despite the fact that Artie did not believe in interfering in another person's business, he was glad he'd called the cops on Pete. It was worth the shit-kicking he'd received when Pete got out of jail, just to know that he'd done something for Emily. She'd even come over and thanked him, told him he'd probably saved Karen's life that night, because Karen was in bad shape.

  About two months later, Karen and Pete had split up. Just around the same time, Pete had decided to beat Artie's ass into the ground again. Would have done it too, if Buck Landers hadn't come along and run interference. That had been a scary sight; even through the blood welling in one eye, he'd seen Buck make his move. He had seen Pete pull a knife on Buck and then he'd seen good ol' Pete kiss the asphalt. Buck whupped Donavan's ass in under a minute, which made a total of two fights Pete had ever lost. Artie was about the only person on the planet who'd seen both of those fights. He considered that a badge of honor.

  From behind the tent, Emily O'Rourke screamed in pain and Artie watched her silhouette lift off the bed in an arch of agony. He closed his eyes and tried not to think of his secret love for Emily. He tried not to match the burnt wreck in the next bed with the woman he'd worshipped from afar for as long as he could recall. He failed.

  His legs were healing just fine, and Artie was glad of that. Maybe soon he'd be able to leave this nightmare behind him. A good bottle of his old pal, Jack Daniel's, and he'd be able to forget just about anything he wanted. He shifted his weight as Emily screamed again. Most of the blisters on his legs were drained now, and there was an awful lot of pain involved in moving.

  Deep in the back of his mind, Artie contemplated murder. The thought of Emily had helped Artie keep himself from going over the edge on any number of occasions. Despite the fact that the love was unrequited, he still felt he owed her more than he could ever repay. Might be that some night soon, when the doctors were done making their rounds and everyone was asleep again, he'd have to visit Emily and help ease her pain in the only way that would ever really work.

  But for now he listened and, in the darkness, he wept for the love he'd never truly known and the pain she was enduring.

  BOOK TWO

  KAREN'S STORY

  CHAPTER 5

  1

  Karen awoke to the mixed smells of frying bacon and maple syrup. Her stomach reminded her that she was hungry. On the bed beside her, despite her numerous orders to stay off the furniture, Roughie was still lying flat. The Mastiff-and-German-Shepherd-mixed dog opened one eye and looked Karen in the face. His tail wagged three times and he went back to sleep.

  Maurice and Joan Dansky had proved to be one of the few bright points in her life since the space ship crashed in Oldman. Both were excellent cooks and both insisted on doing all of the housework in exchange for her letting the two of them stay with her. While the gesture was completely unnecessary-she'd ha
ve made the offer anyway, it was the way she'd been raised-Karen wasn't about to complain about their cooking talents.

  Somewhere in town, her other two unexpected guests were running around and staying out of house as much as possible. Dutch Armbruster was not happy about being stuck in Collier, and neither was his girlfriend. Considering that Dutch was in his forties, and Becka was-if Dutch could be believed-all of nineteen, Karen wasn't overly surprised that they wanted to get on their way. If Karen was right about Becka's real age, Dutch was probably a bit afraid of her father coming down to find him and shove a shotgun where the sun don't shine before pulling the trigger. Karen was willing to bet money the girl wasn't a day over sixteen, and likely a bit younger. She had them sleeping in separate rooms, a move that neither of them seemed to like, under the pretense that she wouldn't have unmarried lovers committing sins under her roof. It was only a pretense, but she was a minister's daughter and they needed a place to stay. The mismatched lovers agreed to her terms. She was still contemplating calling on Chief Osborn and having him look into the matter of the girl's age, but the police were already busy enough.