He was a dark figure standing by her bedside. Rex stood next to him, whining a little.
“What is it?” she asked, automatically looking to the window, but there was no glow of fire, her ever-present fear, especially now, in this drought. The farmhouse had been built in 1912, after the original one burned down, but the barn was even older.
“Fire,” said Luke. “You have to take your granddaughter and get away from the farm.”
“What?” She pushed the sheet off and climbed out of bed, despite the fact that she wore only her cotton nightgown. At sixty-three, after bearing six children and losing two husbands, one to a horse’s hooves and one to influenza, not to mention struggling to keep herself and Allie afloat, she had outgrown any idea of modesty. Luke stepped back, giving her room to go to the window. Rex followed her, and leaned against her when she stopped. The Lab was getting on in years, too.
Even the linoleum beneath her feet felt hot and sticky. After a moment, she turned back to her tenant.
“Have you been drinking?” She wouldn’t have thought it of him, but a lot of the men who came back from the front had taken to drink. Not that she blamed them. Buchenwald and Dachau… who could live with the things these young men had seen?
Luke Corrigan had been lucky, in a way. A piece of shrapnel had injured him, sending him home months before the war’s end, and leaving him with an ugly pink scar peeking through his short brown hair, just above his left temple. But at least he had his life, and all his limbs.
“No, ma’am,” said Luke calmly. “I saw it from the window in the loft. You need to take Allie and Rex, and head for Souris. You need to get across the river.”
“I’m not leaving,” said Harriet, running her hands through her white hair. She automatically began twisting it into the thick braid she customarily wore.
“Ma’am,” said Luke, and she could hear the frustration in his voice, “it’s bad. Jamison’s pig farm was taken by the fire. You need to get the little girl and warn everyone on your way into Souris.”
She finally got tired of squinting in the darkness and turned on her bedside lamp. For a fleeting moment, she wondered what her neighbors would say if they could see her in her nightgown, in her bedroom, alone with a man. A young, good-looking one, at that.
Her lips twitched. The women would be jealous, she figured.
Then she got her first good look at her young tenant and the twitching stopped. There was a grim look on his face. He was completely serious.
“Luke, how do you know?”
His nostrils flared and his nose wrinkled, like Rex’s when he was sniffing something particularly odious.
“Ma’am…” he hesitated, then took a step toward her. It was a measure of her trust in the young man that she allowed him to take her by the elbow and lead her firmly out of her bedroom, past Allie’s room, and down the hall to the far bedroom, the one where the window faced south. The moment he opened the door, she saw the glow past the corner of the barn and her breath caught in her throat.
Despite her instincts urging her to go, go now, she stumbled to the window and looked. Fire burned from one end of the horizon to the other. She didn’t see how Jamison’s farm could have survived.
“Oh, damnation,” she said, then whirled and ran out. Rex barked sharply and ran after her.
* * *
He’d lost his sense of smell in Antwerp, when a piece of exploding shell glanced his skull and laid him out for three weeks. It took him a while to figure out what was wrong, and even longer to get over the grief of it. Every time one of his buddies exclaimed over how good a woman smelled, or someone covered their nose against a foul odor, fresh loss slammed into him.
He tried to hide it from the docs, but they found out and told the army. He was sent back to Toronto on a disability pension and had to watch the end of the war from the newspaper headlines.
A few months later he caught the fever that was going around. He was so sick with it that he was hospitalized for a few days. When he finally regained consciousness he realized that he had also regained his sense of smell.
After the initial rush of joy, he began to realize that he could smell things now that he’d never smelled before. He left the hospital as soon as he could, because he couldn’t bear the stink of death that hung over it.
He couldn’t stay in the city. The smells… There were so many of them. Layers of them, some good but most overpoweringly bad. Garbage day was almost his undoing.
Then he heard about some research on smell taking place in Winnipeg. He packed his tattered army rucksack and hopped a freight train, sharing an empty car with three other returned soldiers, one missing an eye and a hand.
The Winnipeg doc seemed to think it was wonderful until Luke explained the reality of the situation. That was when the doc came up with the nose filter. Luke didn’t know what it was made of, but it sat in a soft rubber cup that fit over his nose and strapped to the back of his head. It looked like a pared down gas mask and made him look like he had a muzzle, but it allowed air to flow through while filtering out most of the smells.
It helped. That, and moving into the countryside.
He picked a home where he would live away from regular folk, especially womenfolk. Especially young womenfolk. He could tell when it was their time of the month and when they were fertile. It was unnerving.
Missus MacNeil was well past those years and little Allie wasn’t yet there. It made for a more comfortable living arrangement. He paid Missus MacNeil a small rent for the loft above the barn, and she fed him. In return, he kept her old Chevy JC Master pickup running and did a few odd jobs around the place. She no longer farmed but leased the fields out to neighboring farmers.
Now, as he drove his Harley-Davidson scouting bike down the bumpy dirt road, heading for the Jensen place, Harriet’s nearest neighbors, he wondered if it wasn’t time to move on again. Missus MacNeil had looked at him strangely when she realized he was right about the fire. A few times lately she had commented on his excellent sense of smell. It was bad enough being a freak. He didn’t need the whole world knowing he was one.
Even through the filter, the odor of burning prairie was overwhelming. Above the stink of the burning grasslands and scorched earth, he could smell, faintly, the burned pork stench of Jamison’s pigs.
He wanted to gag, but didn’t dare open his mouth against the wind buffeting him. The goggles protected his eyes and a leather helmet protected his ears but nothing protected his mouth.
The dust of his passage caught up to him as he turned onto the Jensen road. The farmhouse was only two hundred yards away, dark with sleep. A Plymouth was parked against the side of the house, either painted grey or grey with dust. A barn stood beyond, empty by the smell of it. He took a deep breath and caught the unmistakable smell of cattle. They were probably in a paddock behind the house. Jensen was lucky. Most farmers in the area had sold off their stock when it became clear they wouldn’t be able to feed them.
He’d hoped the sound of his engine would wake someone up, but no lights went on. He braked hard by the porch steps and kicked his stand on before swinging his leg over and running up the steps. He banged on the door, yelling “Jensen!” before trying the handle.
The door swung open. Luke stood on the braided rag rug in the entrance, yelling for Jensen. A light went on upstairs and a moment later a figure stood at the top of the stairs, dark and threatening, a shotgun in hand.
“Who’s there?” growled Jensen. “What the hell do you—”
“Fire!” said Luke, cutting through the man’s anger. “Get your family out, man! You have to get over the river. Head for Souris.”
Even as Luke spoke, Jensen ran down the steps, shirtless and barefooted, wearing only a pair of dungarees half done up. He still held the shotgun, but it was pointed toward the floor. He pushed past Luke and stepped out onto the porch.
“Dear?” came a woman’s voice from upstairs.
Jensen swore, then rushed back inside.
“Marie!” he called. “Get the kids up! Fire’s coming!” He headed back outside only to stop and turn toward the stairs. “Grab only what you can carry,” he called up to the woman who had come to stand at the top of the stairs. She had a shawl wrapped around her narrow shoulders, and her pale, thin nightgown only went down to her calves. “We have to get out now!”
* * *
Last one, Luke promised himself. He had tied a kerchief over his filter and behind his head so that it covered his mouth. He was now bathed in sweat, but at least he could breathe through his mouth without fear of swallowing a bug or worse, debris from the fire floating on the wind that ran from the fire. It was still a half-mile away, as near as he could tell, but already the heat of it beat against him.
From the main road he could see a truck parked in front of the house. These folks might not know about the fire, although that was hard to believe. Its roar overwhelmed every other sound, even the sound of the Harley.
There were no lights in the house, but that didn’t mean anything. The fire had eaten through the power lines some time back.
He turned down the road and headed for the house. He had driven past it often. It was painted white, like most other homes in the area, but now it glowed eerily in the night, caught halfway between the pale moonlight and the ruddy light of the fire creeping nearer.
He came to a stop next to the pickup and got off, his legs wobbly from the beating his body was taking on the motorbike. A horse whinnied nearby, and his concern grew. No farmer would leave his horses trapped in a barn with a fire coming. These folks clearly didn’t know about the fire.
A faint smell wormed its way through his filter, something familiar and unpleasant, but he didn’t have time to investigate. Shaking his head, he ran up the unpainted wooden steps and banged on the door. He got one knock in before the unlatched door opened.
He took a step back even as the smell registered. He had smelled this before, too often, on the battlefield.
Blood. And shit.
Dear Christ Almighty. What had happened in this house?
Breathing shallowly through his mouth, he stepped forward and gingerly crossed the threshold. It was dark and quiet in the house, under the ever-present grumble of the advancing fire. He thought he could hear a clock ticking from the room to his right.
He should call out, but battle instincts took over. He crept along the wall until he reached the doorway. In the gloom, he made out a chesterfield and a pair of stuffed chairs, a table by the window, a fireplace. Nothing else.
Moving silently, he found a formal dining room, a kitchen and off the kitchen, a laundry room where the sharp smell of bleach caused him to quickly close the door.
At last he stood at the foot of the stairs, looking up. He’d known the slaughterhouse smell came from the bedrooms, but he still had to check the downstairs first. The fire slowly gained on him, and still he hesitated, reluctant. He knew he would find something he had hoped to leave behind on the battlefield.
He could leave. Could pretend he had turned back before reaching the farmhouse. Let the fire take this house and cleanse it from its nightmare.
Even as he thought it, he climbed the first step.
Then the next.
At the top of the stairs, he headed away from the smell to check the two far bedrooms first. They were unused, the bedspread neatly tucked over the pillows. Whoever used to sleep there hadn’t been around in a while.
Then he turned toward the other end of the hallway. There were two bedrooms there, too, although he already knew that one would be empty. But not the other.
He didn’t pause. Didn’t dare, or he would turn around and leave. He followed the smell that now filled his nose and his mouth, filter be damned, to the far bedroom on the south side of the house, facing front. The door was half open and the room beyond flickered ruddily.
Luke pushed open the door gently; it moved without sound. He glanced over his shoulder nervously, but there was no one behind him. Finally he stepped into the room, and into something wet.
Between the moon and the glow of the fire, he saw an old man, his bare chest and one arm covered in blood from the wide gash at his neck, lying tangled in a pale sheet, eyes open, as if he had been struggling to get up when the attack occurred.
He found the wife on the other side of the bed, crumpled on the hardwood floor. She had been stabbed three times. Her hands were still up; he could see deep slashes across her palms. He knew it was futile, but he crouched by her side and felt her neck for a pulse. He was unsurprised to find none. He had seen death often enough to recognize it.
He stood up and looked around. The closet door was open, the clothes shoved to one side. Hat boxes and protective cloth bags had fallen from the shelf, along with loose papers. The drawers to the bureau had been pulled open and some socks and women’s underpants had tumbled out. A small box that looked like it might have contained jewellery stood open on top of the bureau.
He stood for a moment, looking around, fixing the scene in his memory. Had the looter been surprised to find them still here? Or hadn’t he cared?
Luke closed his eyes. After witnessing so much death and dying, he was surprised at how the death of these two filled him with frustrated rage.
Finally he shook himself. He couldn’t do anything for these folks. They were dead; if he didn’t get a move on, he would die here, too.
Before leaving, he pulled the kerchief off his nose, pulling the filter down with it. The air in the bedroom felt blessedly cool on his sweaty face. He breathed in the stink of death. There was blood. And shit and piss. And below it the old skin smell of the old man and the faint talcum powder and coffee smell of the old woman.
And beyond that, a stink of bitter, nervous sweat, overlaid by beer and pickled eggs.
* * *
Harriet rattled the old Chevy to a stop in front of the house and slid out of the driver’s seat onto the hard-packed earth of the drive. The skirt of her cotton dress billowed around her legs as she moved around the truck. To the south, the horizon was a wall of orange and red and yellow. It was still at least half a mile away, she judged, but she could smell the smoke now, a little. And the wind had picked up.
She was being foolish to return to the farm, but she couldn’t bear the thought of letting the fire get the quilt her mother had made for Harriet and John’s wedding, or the needlepoint sampler her daughter had made when she was Allie’s age. She had to rescue the baby book Charlotte had made for Allie, and the rest of the photo albums.
She had left Allie and Rex with the Fredericksons, who were heading into Souris, for their son’s place. The river was wide— it would stop the fire. Jacob Frederickson had argued that she should come with them, but Sheila had looked at Harriet with understanding, and told her to hurry and be careful.
She ran to the front room, not bothering to turn on lights. She knew where everything was. Halfway there, she veered off toward the washing room and grabbed the wooden-slat laundry basket. She dumped the clean clothes awaiting ironing on the narrow counter next to the wringer washer then ran back into the front room, her leather shoes slapping against the worn linoleum.
The sampler hung above the ancient claw-footed horsehair chesterfield. She unhooked it from the wall and dropped it with a clunk into the basket, then grabbed the doilies resting on the back of the chesterfield and on its arms. Grandma Myrtle had made them.
The wedding photos — hers and John’s, and later hers and Michael’s — were packed away in the cedar chest at the foot of her bed. She ran up the stairs, her shoes thumping on the runner.
It was the middle of the night and already sweat ran down her back. The July heat had been brutal this year and they had all heard the stories of the prairie fires sweeping through communities to the south of them. She could hear the fire now, a dull roar filling the world with threat.
Swallowing, she turned away and hurried.
Five minutes later, the laundry basket was full and she struggled with it
s unwieldy bulk toward the front door. Breathing hard, she was just setting the basket down in order to open the door when she heard the kitchen door open. She was about to call out when something made her close her mouth and take a step back.
Who would be coming into her house at a time like this? In the middle of the night? It wasn’t Luke— she would have heard his motorcycle, even over the fire.
A few tendrils of hair had escaped her loose braid and now clung to her damp face and neck. She pushed them away from her eyes.
She could slip out the front door and into the truck, and be heading down the road before whoever was in her kitchen realized she was here.
But that would mean abandoning her home, the home she had lived in all her life. She could — and would — abandon the house to a grass fire. But she was damned if she was going to abandon it to a looter.
* * *
Luke followed the stink of scared horse past the barn and across the road to a field filled with stunted, brittle ears of corn. Even when the wind shifted, snatching the scent away from him, he was able to follow the dark passage of horse and rider through the trampled corn.
He had expected the bastard to head for the next farmhouse, but he seemed to be cutting across the fields to avoid the homes along the road. Maybe the fire had spooked him.
The corn gleamed palely in the moonlight while the ever-advancing fire cast its glow against the few clouds scuttling before the wind.
The fire looked no closer but he found himself gunning the engine to riskier speeds. Between the dusty goggles and the night, he could barely see the horse’s path through the field. One hole in the ground, and he would go flying.
He didn’t know whose field this was, but he spared the farmer a little sympathy. The corn rustled thirstily at his passage. If the fire didn’t take it, the drought would.
He was glad of the leather jacket, despite the heat. Even through the leather, he could feel the sting of the stalks whipping against his arms and shoulders as he raced recklessly between the rows.
Superhero Universe: Tesseracts Nineteen Page 7
