Blue Tears

by Ninie Hammon

  “You could get it down?” María might as well have said, “You can leap tall buildings in a single bound.” She made it sound like it was a feat of derring-do unparalleled in human experience.

  Which, of course, means Jessie has to do it.

  “Sure, I can climb it. Piece of cake.”

  She’d climbed the tree to get María’s doll out of the branches.

  The next words were María’s, too. Somehow, she’d known that day that Jessie had locked up, had frozen there on the tree limb, too scared to move.

  Wheeze. “Don’t look down!”

  As Bailey stood in the burning restaurant, smoke filling up the corners, the fire coming at her from every direction, she did as María had directed all those years ago. She didn’t look down. She lifted her eyes slowly up, instead.

  Looked at the Grinch.

  And said softly under her breath.

  “Sure, I can climb it. Piece of cake.”

  If that blasted buzzer T.J. couldn’t manage to turn off was a smoke alarm, that would explain the river of flaming liquid that was now about two feet from his nose and coming his way.

  He reflexively jerked back from it. Bad move. Seriously bad move. Jerking was not a motion that was readily received by an injured body, and clearly his was. He’d been in a wreck maybe, or hit by mortar fire. Something like that.

  Whatever it was had set something on fire and flames was comin’. He didn’t jerk this time, just tried to move away, the only motion he wanted now was away from the fire coming at him. Easy, solid, non-jerky motion.

  But as soon as he raised his head off the floor …

  All the marbles he had carefully arranged in some semblance of order in his skull flew off in all directions. The room spun around him. He felt his face settle back gently — how could it settle gently on cold tile? — and T.J. Hamilton left the building.

  The fire was as relentless as a flood when the river’d left its banks. Made it to his shoe. Caught the shoelace on fire on its way to the sole. The stink of burning rubber rose in a black pall, while the rest of the fire began to find purchase in clothing. The cuff of his corduroy pants. The sleeve of the white jacket he’d stolen off the hook.

  Fire was comin’ to eat him up.

  Bailey kicked off the ridiculous heels, the stilettos she’d been foolish enough to believe she could use as weapons to kill Mikhailov. She still had a gun zipped up tight in the clutch purse on a strap around her neck, though. It would have to do, even if she had to beat him to death with it.

  She unhooked the ruffles on the dress that extended from the knee to the floor. Looking around, she spotted a steak knife on a nearby table, grabbed it and used it to make a slit in the center of the bottom of her dress. Dropping the knife, she ripped the fabric of the dress upward all the way to the waist, revealing the tights she’d worn … because it was cold.

  Then she studied the fifty-foot-tall Grinch. The only place on it that resembled the one and only tree she’d ever climbed was his left leg. With his foot resting on the Christmas present, his leg from the knee to the body was like that limb that stuck out on the bottom of the oak tree. To get to that leg, she’d have to climb up on top of the gigantic box wrapped in shiny green paper with a red bow the size of a chest freezer.

  Amid the flames all around, she found what servers called a “two-top” table. It was small enough that she could shove it up next to the giant Christmas present where the Grinch’s left foot rested.

  She climbed up on the table, then climbed from the table to the box. The leg from knee to body, like the oak tree limb, was too high above her to reach. She had no Adirondack chair to use as a ladder this time, so she grabbed hold of the green fur above the elf slipper and used it to pull herself up the leg. Handfuls of the fur were easy to grasp. She dug her toes into the fur beneath her to shove her body upward.

  Once she got to the knee, she crawled out on top of the thigh, stood and walked down it to the body. The Grinch was wearing a red velvet Santa coat so there was no green fur to grab on his body. The coat was loose, though, baggy. Maybe she could grab a handful of fabric and pull herself upward … but there was nowhere her bare toes could get purchase on the velvet.

  The front of the coat had a strip of white fur running up the middle. She could climb that, just had to get around to the front of the creature. The black belt of the Santa suit that encircled the creature’s bulbous belly was a piece of molded plastic about four inches wide. She could climb up onto it, the way you’d climb onto the top of a board fence, then balance on the top of it and inch around the body. Like moving from one window to another on a three-story building with your feet on a four-inch ledge.

  Well, a building didn’t have a loose coat to hold onto. There was that.

  Bailey climbed to the top of the belt and carefully got to her feet on top of it. Holding onto handfuls of the baggy velvet coat in a white-fisted grip, she began inching along it around to the front of the creature.

  She glanced at the floor, twenty-five feet below.

  Bad move.

  Don’t look down!

  A wave of vertigo swept over her and she was dizzy, the world spun, she felt her grip loosening, her weight shifting.

  And then Bailey was falling.

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  The light was … weird. It was flickering, different colors. The restaurant’s overhead lights had gone out, but the lights in the aquariums that lined the walls had not. The glow from them was like sunlight filtering down to the bottom of the ocean from the surface. It sparkled and shimmered, twinkled in the shiny chrome of table and chair legs.

  Only the ocean was on fire. The twinkling water was red and orange, too, writhing and gyrating, casting grotesque shadows on the floor and filling the air with the gray haze of smoke.

  The flames that had killed Bailey were stalking María now, moving in like jackals around a wounded antelope. From all sides, closing in. Tablecloths were going up in balls of yellow flame — made of cotton, not linen. Linen took longer to ignite and was easy to put out. Cotton smelled like burning paper, burned like paper, too.

  She knew that because … one of her many part-time jobs when she was going to college was at a daycare center. There were all kinds of fire codes for the place, and as she sat one afternoon rocking a cranky child to sleep for a nap, she read the required warning posters on the walls. Fire drills, fire prevention, meeting points, how to put out a fire. There’d been a chart listing, in order of most flammable down, various fabrics — what not to allow for curtains or seat cushions in a facility with small children.

  Her head was spinning — what had been in the drugs they’d given her? Whatever it was, it made her dizzy.

  She concentrated on picturing the chart to clear her head.

  Her dress was satin topped with acres of taffeta — both made of silk and some other synthetic stuff. Silk burned slowly and curled away from the flame, smelled like burned hair or charred meat.

  An instant image flashed in her mind’s eye — the black dress on fire. With her in the dress, there would be burned hair and charred meat.

  Dear God, she didn’t want to burn to death. Don’t catch the dress on fire, please no!

  The heat from the nearing flames was intense. She struggled in vain to free her hands, but they were secure. The guards had wound the zip ties through the spindles on the back of the chair, so there was no getting rid of the chair!

  Her feet weren’t bound, but without hands, she couldn’t stand up because her legs were tangled in yards of black satin.

  Did Mikhailov actually plan that part? So he could stand up there on the observation deck and watch her burn?

  She couldn’t rise. Might have been too dizzy to stand up if she’d been able to get to her feet. But she could scoot, and she scooted as best she could away from the flames, back toward the wall. When she reached it, she’d be trapped, fire coming and nowhere left to run.

  Bailey landed on her side on the Grinch’s furry th
igh where she’d been standing, a drop of five or six feet, with a solid thump that knocked the wind out of her. Her momentum sent her rolling toward the edge of the leg, for another drop to the giant Christmas present or all the way to the floor.

  Squeezing her eyes tight shut to quell her dizziness, she grabbed handfuls of green fur and held on, stopped rolling and lay face-down in the green fur of the Grinch’s leg panting and crying in terror and rage.

  She got to her knees, her breath hitching in and out, sobbing.

  Don’t look down! María’s wheezing voice spoke from her memory.

  María. Mikhailov had killed Bailey’s little sister.

  Crying turned off so abruptly she was momentarily strangled, coughing in the growing smoke.

  Getting to her feet, she crossed to the belt and climbed back up to the top. When she got to her feet this time, she listened to María’s voice in her head, a continuous loop … don’t look down … don’t look down.

  She didn’t.

  When she came to the strip of white fur up the front of the coat, she grabbed a handful of the fur and then dug her big toe firmly into it, tested to be sure it would hold her before she shifted her weight onto it. Up one step, test again. Wash, rinse, repeat.

  Hand over hand she climbed up to the fur trim on the velvet coat around the neck, and then grabbed handfuls of the green fur on the creature’s head to continue upward until she could dig her toes into the top of the fur trim on the coat neck. Balancing on the ridge of fur, she edged along it to his shoulder, stepped out onto it, then leaned back against the Grinch’s furry head, panting, more from fear than exertion.

  At least forty feet off the ground now … but she didn’t look down.

  Both the Grinch’s hands were reaching up to the railing of the observation deck, removing the string of lights. She would have to climb up the right arm, clad in the velvet of the Santa jacket. The angle would get steeper and steeper the closer she got to the hand.

  She studied the Santa hat. It appeared to be part of the head, not just sitting on it. Grabbing the white ball at the end of the hat for balance, she crossed the shoulder to the right arm.

  Because she couldn’t get a grip on the coat-clad arm, she’d have to shinny up it like climbing a flagpole, which she had never done, by the way.

  Wrapping her legs around it, she grabbed hold of the velvet fabric of the too-big coat and used her knees to shove her body upward. The white fur lining the coat cuff was the objective. When she reached it, she grabbed handfuls of the green fur on the hand above and pulled up until she was standing on the coat sleeve trim.

  The Grinch’s skinny fingers wrapped around the string of lights he was stealing off the railing of the observation deck. The fingers were furry … and fragile. The thick fur made them look more substantial than they were. She’d planned to crawl across the fingers to the railing, but they’d never hold her weight.

  Up higher into the smoke that was at last beginning to fill the atrium and back up into the burning restaurant, her eyes watered and breathing deep resulted in a spasm of coughing. She had last seen Mikhailov standing with his heels of his palms to his temples. Shaking his head from side to side, he reminded Bailey of a video she’d seen of a bull suffering from mad cow disease.

  Now, Mikhailov was nowhere to be seen. She’d find him … as soon as she got to the observation deck to start looking. Desperation put steel in her spine, and before she had time to consider what she was doing and chicken out, she crouched on the hand and launched herself across the space between it and the observation deck railing, pushing off as hard as she could. The railing caught her in the belly and she grabbed hold, hoisting the rest of her body over it to plop ungracefully on the floor.

  Scrambling to her feet, she unzipped her purse and took out the pistol she’d put there as a prop for Mikhailov’s flunkies to find and think she was unarmed. With only that gun, she actually was mostly unarmed. It was a .22, after all, and would likely take more than one bullet —

  Fine, then! She’d shoot him six times.

  Or five, however many rounds were in the thing. She’d just keep shooting until he was dead. She gripped the gun firmly and headed off into the swirling smoke — totally unaware of the chain reaction of destruction she had left behind her.

  The Grinch was a creature designed as a comic, not as a live being. The proportions were all wrong — a huge head and a big bulbous body atop ridiculously spindly legs.

  When Bailey pushed off to jump to the railing, the motion shoved the whole figure backwards abruptly, throwing it off balance. Since its left foot was resting atop the Christmas present, all the weight of the figure shifted to the other leg — one skinny appendage ending in an elf shoe on the floor.

  The leg instantly buckled and the whole figure came tumbling down in a collapse of green fur and red velvet, crashing on top of tables and chairs, landing on the floor behind the bag of stolen Christmas presents where the incendiary device had been set off.

  It lay there, stretched out along the floor between the flaming sack of presents and the spot where María lay tied to a chair in the corner, cringing away from the coming flames.

  Chapter Sixty

  Climbing up the stairs, against the flow of terrified humanity racing down, Brice stepped out into the Nautilus Casino on the second floor and found himself in a strange world of swirling shadows and smoke. The lights were out, but there was a red glow from the first-floor restaurant, and a weird shimmering luminescence from the lighted aquariums that lined the walls.

  The air was thick with smoke — not unbreathable yet, but getting there fast. People were running, women were screaming, trying to get out, not sure where “out” was, following the lighted EXIT signs that glowed as red beacons in the gloom. Roulette tables were overturned, one-armed bandits lay on their sides, chips worth thousands of dollars lay scattered on the floor.

  Mikhailov was up here somewhere. Brice was certain that the Russian was responsible for all the carnage. It had been his little show. To what end and for what purpose, Brice didn’t know, couldn’t fit all the pieces of the puzzle together. But he was convinced Mikhailov had brought María with him to West Virginia to use in some way against Bailey.

  Find Mikhailov and he would find María.

  Brice had come out onto the observation platform from the south side. When he got to the railing, looking down into the burning restaurant was like looking into a barbecue grill. The overhead pearl lights were out and smoke rose from a dozen fires. Though the floor, walls and furniture wouldn’t burn, the tablecloths, seat cushions, centerpieces, Christmas trees and decorations would. Flames were chewing greedily into those and lighting little streams on the marble floor of burning alcohol …

  Brice literally stopped breathing.

  He swept his gaze in what seemed like horrified slow motion across the width of the restaurant. Directly across from him, on the north side of the restaurant, was the bar.

  The bar that had thousands of bottles of alcohol.

  The bar that probably had barrels of booze stored under the floor.

  Brice had read about the Heaven Hill Distillery fire in Bardstown, Kentucky, the rivers of burning bourbon that flowed down the hillsides, the warehouses full of whisky aging in white oak barrels exploding like small nukes.

  This fire hadn’t gotten to the bar yet, but when it did …

  The explosion might be powerful enough to blow the whole floating casino out of the water.

  Not there.

  There.

  That was how Mikhailov appeared out of the swirling smoke about twenty feet away from where Bailey stood.

  Smoke stung her eyes. Her throat was raw from coughing.

  How long had she been wandering around the smoke-filled observation decks, searching for him?

  Knowing she must get out of the inferno or she would die.

  Knowing she would rather die than leave him here alive.

  In the strange flickering light from the fire below
, the shimmer of the aquariums and the fog of smoke swirling around him, Mikhailov was an apparition, the Ghost of Christmas Past. Gray suit, red tie, white hair, black eyepatch.

  She found herself smiling.

  He had shot Aaron. Now, she would shoot him.

  She leveled the gun at him.

  And suddenly, there was silence.

  The chainsaw buzz of the fire alarm and the insistent voice of the not-person giving directions “… lighted signs to the nearest—” abruptly cut off.

  There was a stutter of additional noise, then nothing. No, not nothing. Without the blatting alarm assaulting her hearing, Bailey became aware of the sounds of fire — the crackling and popping, the indistinct cry of frightened people, all painted on the canvas of flames that sounded like the fluttering wings of ten thousand birds.

  When Bailey cried out in rage and loathing at Mikhailov, her voice rang out crisp and clear above the muted fire song.

  “This is for Aaron!”

  Mikhailov hadn’t seen her but he heard her shout. His head snapped up.

  She pulled the trigger.

  Bang!

  Mikhailov staggered backward from the force of the bullet striking him, but didn’t go down.

  The pistol was, after all, only a .22. It might take two or three shots from it to kill him.

  Then Mikhailov vanished again in the smoke.

  Bailey ran toward the spot where Mikhailov had been standing, but he was gone. There was blood on the floor there, a small puddle of it. A trail of blood drops led away into the smoke. She followed the trail.