River Mourn

by Bill Hopkins

Chapter 30

  Sunday Morning, continued

  In the closet, Rosswell whispered, "You can't trust anyone. Has a single person told us the truth about anything?"

  "No and shut up." Ollie pressed his ear against the door of the closet. Rosswell did the same.

  Rosswell didn't recognize the voices that he'd heard shouting and screaming. Then there had been a couple of gunshots. Or maybe cars backfiring. A thump or two, maybe signifying that a body had hit the floor. Next the sound of a couple of cars or trucks starting and leaving. It was several minutes after Rosswell heard the front door slam that he voiced his observation about trust, only to be shushed by his research assistant.

  No sounds reached Rosswell's ear after several more minutes of listening. "They're gone."

  "Who are they?"

  "I didn't recognize any voices."

  His pistol at the ready, Rosswell tried to open the door. Locked. The foot with the broken toe was useless. The foot that had been trapped in the spittoon hurt, but not as much as the other one. A few kicks proved useless.

  Ollie said, "Let me do that."

  "No. I can do this." Rosswell kicked the door several more times with the spittoon foot. He should've let Ollie do the kicking. It didn't seem the pain would ever subside. On the next kick, the feeble lock gave way. Rosswell stepped into the hallway, which, after a thorough inspection, proved empty. "No one in the hallway." He eased open the front door, slipping out, leading with his gun. No reaction. With the rising of the sun came an increasing wind. "The sun's coming up."

  Ollie hovered close behind Rosswell. "It does that every morning."

  "Up to this point."

  Standing on the porch of Jill's house, Rosswell swept his gaze across the yard and the highway beyond. "I don't see any bodies littering the place." Without thinking, he jumped to the ground. The pain dropped him to his knees. With a resolute moan, he stood. Ollie merely watched, shaking his head. Now both of Rosswell's feet hurt worse than they had before. He hobbled to the driveway. "I don't see any cars, either. Where did everybody go?"

  The wind's intensity grew. Leaves and bits of litter swirled on the ground, then blew upward, circling, forming dust devils full of grit and debris.

  Rosswell coughed and sneezed. "I don't trust Jill. It seems mighty convenient that someone showed up at her front door after she rescued both of us."

  "I'd say it was more of a capture than a rescue." Ollie shined his flashlight around in the yard, the dawn light not yet being much help. "There are two, maybe three, different sets of tire tracks." He knelt on the ground, swiping his finger through a red puddle of something, then sniffing it. "Someone's vehicle is leaking transmission fluid."

  "They won't be going far."

  Ollie stood and followed the dripping trail out to the highway. "They went south, toward town. Or maybe to Nathaniel's."

  Rosswell perched on the shoulder of the highway. "Let's take a brief intermission."

  "Let's all go to the lobby to get ourselves a treat," Ollie said, mimicking the tune from the advertisement that movie theaters and drive-ins played in the olden days.

  "Why aren't we dead?"

  Ollie didn't hesitate. "Because we are still alive."

  "And why is that?"

  "Death cuts down your options."

  Rosswell ground his teeth. "Pay attention. Why aren't we dead?"

  "Is this catechism class? Or a philosophy roundtable?"

  "Did luck befriend us? Think about it." Rosswell tapped the side of his head. "Nathaniel could've killed us a couple of times. He may even be waiting in the woods over there with a high-powered rifle ready to nail our empty heads when it gets light enough."

  "He kidnapped Tina and he's wanting a huge ransom from you."

  "I could pay a small ransom but not a huge one. You know I don't have that kind of money. You've seen my bank account."

  "Judge Carew, are you accusing me of hacking your bank to look at your assets?"

  "That's an argument for another day. Now, let me think."

  Rosswell discerned patches of the river through the trees on the other side of the highway, the whitecaps on the water growing larger and more frequent. Big white birds-some kind of gull-chased a barge, gorging on the fish churned up in its wake. The angry squawking birds mirrored his mood. Jill, patently unaware of the need to water her lawn, had let her parched yard morph into a dry plot of decay. Even the tree leaves, rustling in a barely perceptible breeze, displayed their stress by curling and turning yellow. Millions of gallons of water flowed daily past a land dying of thirst.

  "You smell that?" Rosswell smelled smoke. "Some damned farmer got the bright idea to burn his fields today. People are so stupid sometimes."

  Ollie licked a finger and stuck it in the air. "Wind's not too bad. Blowing from the south."

  "Why don't they plow under the leftovers from last year's crop instead of burning a field? It would do more to help the soil."

  "Farmer Rosswell, let's get the hell out of here and head back to town."

  "Amen."

  When they topped a rise, Rosswell beheld the blaze, its color a sickening white near the ground where the fire burned hottest. The flames above the white area turned yellow, then, the higher the flames raged, orange and red. Above the red, where combustion no longer occurred, the unburned fuel produced smoke.

  Rosswell sniffed the air. "The smoke's getting thick."

  "Hope you can see to drive."

  "Hope I can find the truck."

  The smoke increased to the density of a heavy fog. Rosswell and Ollie hoofed it north toward where Rosswell hoped the truck was parked. Disorientation set in. He was lost in the smoke.

  The fire beast increased in strength from every bit of grass and brush it devoured, then grew ever hotter. The heated air drew in more and more of the surrounding cooler air, creating a draft. The updraft ballooned, sucking air in, mushrooming the fire. The sound reminded Rosswell of the growl of a tornado at the height of its fury.

  A deer, her tail raised in alarm, vaulted from a ditch, surprising Rosswell and Ollie when they weaved by her. She squealed a cry of distress, sounding a lot like Ollie. Three fawns also jumped up from the ditch and hovered around the doe. The fawns bumped the doe, as if urging her on, signaling her to move out of the path of the fire. The four deer locked a stare on Ollie and Rosswell, then galloped toward the men.

  "Man the battle stations!" Ollie swiveled his head around in all directions, no doubt looking for the best way to escape. "We're being run over by deer!"

  Rosswell drew his gun with the thought of firing into the air to scare the deer away from them, or, if necessary, shooting them in the head to stop their progress. But it was too late. The animals buffeted the men, knocking them to the ground. All four of the deer ran onto the highway. They stopped, befuddled by a smoke that rivaled the thickest fog ever seen in the river bottoms.

  Rosswell, on his belly in a prone shooter's position, aimed at the deer. "I'm killing them before they hurt somebody."

  "Yep. The smoke is screwing up their sense of smell. They're dangerous."

  Rosswell lost his chance at a clear shot when the critters instantly bolted into a smoke bank. "Fracking deer."

  A wind gust cleared the smoke from the highway. A car traveling south slammed on its brakes, skidding sideways in the highway, away from the deer.

  The doe snorted and she and the three fawns wheeled around, galloping on again toward Rosswell and Ollie, still lying on the ground.

  Rosswell aimed at the deer again. He couldn't shoot. The deer were helpless animals caught in the smoke the same as he and Ollie. "The smoke's screwing up my aim. Head for lower ground. Momma's back with her kiddies and she doesn't look happy." Why should the deer pay with their lives when they hadn't started the fire?

  Ollie scurried into the ditch, Rosswell behind him. Both men hunkered down, folding their arms over their heads. The noise of the fire ramped up to the sound of a train hulking down the tracks at full speed.
Rosswell began coughing as the smoke and flames sucked up the available oxygen around them.

  Ollie said, "Have the critters gone?"

  Rosswell's vision blurred as the hot mist closed in around them. "Let's get out of here right now. Head for the highway." Through the smoke, though, he spotted flames. Lots of fire. On every side.

  A crash resounded from the highway. Rosswell knew what had happened. Some fool decided to drive through the smoke even though visibility was zero. That fool had hit the car that had earlier swerved to miss the deer. Another crash resounded. Another fool.

  There's no end to fools.

  "Get out of that car," Rosswell heard one voice say. The noise of the fire couldn't match the screams of road rage. Another voice said, "Can't you drive, you idiot!" A third voice said, "There's gasoline leaking and it's all over the road. Get the hell away."

  The fireball that erupted didn't light up the sky because the smoke was too thick. But it did manage to make a flash bright enough for Rosswell to see the highway.

  "Now, Ollie. Quick. Make for the truck."

  "Where's the truck?"

  "North of us."

  "Damn." Ollie circled twice in the smoke. "I forgot my Boy Scout compass."