Jake pushed himself up, bracing his feet, one on the shelf, one on the floor. He was off-balance, but he stood upright, and he was alive. This knowledge pushed rejuvenated power into his limbs. Jake spun around and connected with a side kick to Rick’s mid-section. He staggered back and off the bookshelf. And landed on the floor. The pool of fire took to his pants the way a drowning man takes to an oasis. Flames shot up his legs, caught on the fabric of his shirt.
Rick screamed. Then he screeched. He attempted a lunge for higher ground, but his legs buckled. He tumbled forward on his hands. Rick’s agonized eyes looked up at Jake. His arms, now also on fire—raised too in supplication or pain—either way, Jake did not reach down to help him.
“You mother…” Rick’s curse was cut off by the sound of creaking wood. Both men looked up as pieces hurtled down on them. Jake jumped from the bookcase just as a massive wedge of plaster broke off. The collision of plaster with shelf fractured the thing in a dozen pieces that acted like bullets. Rick screamed again.
The knob was hot as hell, but Jake twisted it and wrenched open the door. The added oxygen infused new life into the fire as Jake leaped outside.
“Jake, don’t just leave me here!”
Jake staggered as far as he could from the house, then dropped face-down on the grass. Nothing ever smelled so good. And nothing ever tasted as good as that fresh air! He wheezed his lungs full, trying to block out the hideous screams of Rick Rasner. Did the man think he was crazy? Wouldn’t only a crazy person go back to save the person who’d tried to murder him?
As soon as the air hit the lining of his lungs, the burning renewed. And the choking began—his lungs clearing out the alien substances. His eyes burned. His skin—he was afraid to know about his skin. Or his stomach. He’d lost a lot of blood, he didn’t need to be told. He lay there, spent, concentrating on breathing in and out. God, it hurt. Overhead, flames danced out the picture window and tickled the siding on the house. He choked, coughing so hard, blood dribbled onto the grass. He collected a modicum of energy and pulled himself into a kneeling position. Obviously, he needed to find a hospital.
A movement near his face brought his head up fast. No, it wasn’t possible Rick had escaped the flames. Shoes—white Nikes. What had Rick been wearing? Shit, he hadn’t looked at the madman’s shoes. Jake tried to lift his head higher, but the pain was spreading as fast as the fire through the house. Jake arched his neck and saw black slacks. They looked new. A slight twist to his torso brought the person into better view. The kid from the institution. She leaned against a tree, gazing at him with hate in her eyes and a gun in her hand. His gun. He was right, she did steal it. Damn.
A crash came from somewhere inside the house and she turned from him long enough to look at it. Black smoke oozed through the walls.
“Y-you killed him?” The voice that must’ve belonged to the girl. He hurt too much to look up at her so he let his head sag low. Wouldn’t do any good to ask her for help. The expression on her face said she’d rather see him dead.
He coughed several times, coughing up still more blood. Surprising that he had any left. “Yeah, I did,” he wheezed, “No thanks to you.”
Clara brought her hands together and pointed the gun at Jake’s head. Her eyes narrowed and though his eyes burned like they were on fire, he thought he saw her lip tremble.
“What are you gonna do?”
Clara looked away from him a moment and stared at the gun. Then she took a step forward and her hands tightened around the revolver. “You deserve to die. So I’m going to kill you!”
He gave her his fiercest, most intimidating glare. “Kid, I’ve stared down the barrel of a gun more times than you can imagine. And guess what? I’m still here. But right now, I sure as hell can’t stop you. Are you sure you can pull that trigger and kill a defenseless man?”
Clara remained still, frozen in place. What would she do?
Cough, choke, gasp. How could oxygen feel so good and so bad at the same time? He felt himself swaying, he needed to get off his knees and get to the street. Maybe a car would go by. But why hadn’t anyone called the fire department? Surely someone saw…
Clara’s facial expression and posture changed. Her shoulders relaxed. A wide smile spread across her face. The change confused Jake. Then he noticed she no longer focused on him, but at something behind him. Damn, Rasner had escaped after all.
Jake damned himself. His dulled instincts had betrayed him yet again. He realized this even before he felt the barrel of a gun pressed against the back of his head.
“Why don’t you ask me that question?” The voice didn’t belong to Rick Rasner. It was undeniably female. He coughed several more times, and finally found the strength to peer up. Jennifer Duke stared down at him. Seeing him looking at her, she cocked back the hammer of her gun. “Do I have it in me to kill a defenseless man, particularly you?”
Jake remained calm. Think man! Two guns on him, one from about twelve feet away and one against his head. He was less concerned about the girl, whose attention focused on the roof of the house.
“Jake Scarberry,” Jen said with a deadly smirk. “My father never did like you.”
A cluster of thoughts ran through his mind. First off, where were the soldiers who were supposed to be his back-up? Back-up yes, but there was no doubt—they weren’t about to rush into a burning building to save his sorry ass. He then remembered the shots he heard while inside. With the warm barrel of Jen’s pistol against his head, he deduced what happened.
This time, he was on his own.
Jen took a step back, easing the gun from his head. He was about to be executed, Jen prepared to shoot. The teenager remained distracted by the inferno.
Jake gathered his limbs, begging them to act in unison. He leaped to his feet, whirled around, and wrapped both his hands around Jen’s gun hand. He achieved what he had hoped for, he caught her by surprise.
“Clara, shoot him!” Jen shouted, trying to wrestle free.
Jake and Jen struggled. In his weakened condition, she was a valid adversary. Back and forth, twisting and turning. Clara ran two steps in their direction and aimed the gun.
“Shoot him!”
Jake yanked down hard and heard a satisfying crack as Jen’s arm snapped. The gun went off.
Clara screamed and collapsed in a heap. Jake rammed his elbow into Jen’s face. She gave a gurgle of pain and fell also. Jake braced his feet and aimed the gun.
Her eyes widened.
Jake aimed the gun with one hand, the other he pressed against his abdomen. “It’s over, stand down.” he said.
Jen glowered up at him. She raised a hand, he was sure she was about to surrender, when a weak voice called from the house. “Jake Scarberry!”
“Shit.”
Rick Rasner stood in the cellar doorway. From the neck down, he looked like a fireball. All Jake could see was his face. And he seemed completely oblivious to his condition. “I’m…not…dying…unless I…take…you…with me.”
Overhead, a window exploded outward.
“Rick, look out!” Jen screamed.
Jake fired three bullets into Rick Rasner’s chest the same time an arrow of glass shot down at Rick’s head. Still the man remained on his feet.
“No!” Jen shrieked as Rick staggered backward and fell through the doorway, into the burning house.
And then the place exploded.
Chapter Forty-Three
Through sheer force of will, Jake brought himself to his feet. He moved slowly, but was glad he could even move at all. He knelt in front of Clara’s prone form. She had her eyes closed and clutched her right shoulder. Blood seeped between her fingers, staining what looked like an expensive shirt. The gun lay in her fingers. Jake scooped her up. Standing took a gargantuan effort but wasn’t that what this whole day had turned out to be?
With a quick peek over his shoulder, Jake saw Jen sprinting across the yard. She leaped over the hedge border. She didn’t look back.
A
massive crack brought his attention back to this property. The big oak was aflame, its branches a bonfire of color. Another crack from the tree and the trunk split like an overripe melon. Jake staggered forward as half the tree slammed to the ground with a deafening thud. Flying branches sent lethal arrows in all directions.
Jake lurched his way to the same bushes Jen had escaped over. Although the fire had spread there, it seemed his only hope of flight as the entire front of the property was lined with gawkers. Sirens screamed in their direction. He didn’t have much time. He dropped Clara over the bushes. She landed with a thump on the neighbor’s grass. His debilitated condition prevented any thought of jumping over the four-foot high barrier, so he parted some branches and drove his body through. His exhausted legs tangled in the mass of trunks and he went down hard on his right leg and arm. He lay there, waiting for some air to return to his lungs. Hot. Something was hot on his back. Shit, what was left of his shirt had rekindled in the burning leaves. Jake wrenched it off and tossed it away.
He pushed his drained body to its knees. There was another explosion from the house. The ground rumbled as the four walls imploded. Balls of red, yellow, and orange kissed the morning sky. Absurdly, Jake expected the seemingly immortal Rick Rasner to rise out of the ruins.
It didn’t happen.
Clara lay on the ground immobile, but conscious. Her light brown skin was mottled with ash and soot. Her eyes slitted open, watching the inferno next door. Suddenly, she moved. Her arm rose up, the gun raised in a trembling grip. “K-kill you. Kill you or k-kill me.”
“Sorry kid…”
With the last bit of strength he could muster, Jake made a fist and slammed it across her jaw. Her eyes closed. Her arm dropped, flaccid, to the grass and the gun slid out of her hand.
“…but you don’t get out of it that easily.” Jake felt genuine pity for her. To be so malleable and so easily led. It was the boon of teenagers all over the world. “You’re going to have to live with all of this.”
Jake reached into his back jeans pocket and pulled out a small silver cell phone. He tapped a button and listened for ringing. With his other hand, Jake grabbed the gun and slid it under his belt. Blood saturated the front of his jeans. The stuff crusted on his skin. He’d always hated the sight of blood, especially his own.
“This is Scarberry, mission accomplished,” Jake said into the phone. “Rasner is dead. I have the kid. She’s gonna need an ambulance.”
Jake glanced down at the mess on his front-side. Grass and dirt caked the gash. Blood still ran from the wound. No wonder, after all he’d been through. Dizziness overtook him. His eyesight blurred. “Maybe I’m going to need an ambulance, too.”
The phone fell from his bloody and burned fingers. He couldn’t remain upright for one moment longer. His spine crumpled and he dropped beside Clara.
****
Jake woke up in ICU. As he gazed at the too-white surroundings, listening to the routine sounds out in the hallway, he wondered what day it was. He remembered nothing after making that phone call to Straker. Was the girl all right? Her wound hadn’t looked fatal. Hell, he’d lived through three shoulder shots himself.
Straker must’ve sent a team to the scene. They would have posed as FBI and shoved local investigators out so they could sift through all the ashes and debris without competition. Regardless of what they found, they would present a plausible explanation to the police, fire department, and media for the cause of such a tremendous fire. Jake couldn’t wait to find out the explanation himself.
He groped for the remote button and listened to the bed’s motor whir him into a sitting position. No pain. He smiled thinking of the drugs they must be pumping through that tiny clear tube in his arm.
A newspaper lay within reach on the bedside table. The front page referred to the “Massacre at the Brookhill Children’s Psychiatric Residence.” According to the article, an institutionalized veteran, committed a few years ago by Doctor Harold T. Obenchain, escaped custody and made his way to Brookhill, Pennsylvania. He abducted Doctor Obenchain and led him to the psychiatric children’s residence by gunpoint. The escaped mental patient’s teenaged son was admitted to the residence months prior for undisclosed reasons. The man’s name was withheld from the press, but his intent was not. He wanted his son back in his custody.
Once inside the building, the man went on a shooting spree in an attempt to liberate his son from the facility. He ended up killing Obenchain, along with various employees of the Brookhill Children’s Residence. His attempt to escape with his son was stopped at the gate where he was shot dead by the local police force, thus ending the threat. They brought the boy back inside the residence where he received intense psychiatric counseling to deal with the traumatic experience.
Jake tossed the newspaper to the foot of the bed. He was impressed by the story. Parts of the truth had been used to cover the lie. All the names were held back from the media—a very difficult thing to do. The story fit, no one would ever be the wiser.
Jake knew he would be summoned soon. He’d have to meet with Straker and go through a full debriefing on a mission whose truth would never be known or talked about again. He had a strong hunch that it would prove to be the most tedious part of the entire event. He hated talking to General Straker.
Epilogue
It had been three months since the house on Milton Drive was destroyed in the worst fire the small Long Island town had ever experienced. All the local papers covered the story, as did many national papers as well. Rumors and guesses on how the fire started spread throughout the town. The official explanation was an electrical fire caused by a malfunction in the circuit breakers. The fire spread due to the house’s occupants being on vacation.
The fire department encouraged the residents of Milton Drive to take seminars on electrical safety to prevent such a horrible accident from occurring again.
After receiving treatment for her shoulder wound, FBI officials questioned Clara Blue for an entire day. This included interrogators and psychiatrists sent in by General Straker. Her answers, for the most part, were incoherent. By evening, Clara had shut down and refused to speak. They returned her to the Brookhill Children’s Psychiatric Residence, now under new management with an almost completely new staff. The only employee to remain was Janet Murphy, who had taken a few weeks to recover from her heart attack. She counted down the time until retirement.
Since returning, Clara spent much of her time under sedation and in seclusion.
Jake Scarberry was forced back into the witness protection program. He worked in Denver, Colorado as a bouncer in a pub, where he could satiate his taste for action on occasion. At least he no longer found himself dealing with “kids.”
Rick Rasner was officially declared dead, despite the fact his body was never found. His corpse was assumed to have been burned beyond recognition inside the house. The FBI sifted through the wreckage for three long weeks before officially closing the case. All findings were sent to General Straker and marked Strictly Confidential.
Derrick was assigned to solitary confinement in an undisclosed military containment facility. He now awaits a trial that may never happen. General Straker himself gave Derrick a standing offer—freedom under close supervision in exchange for information and his expertise put to work for his country. Thus far, Derrick has refused the offer.
After a month in a vegetative state, Katherine Miller’s fight for life finally ended. Her heart stopped. There were three attendees at her funeral—her sister and two members of the Brookhill Residence’s Board of Directors, who attended as a courtesy.
The people of Brookhill wrote protests and petitions against the children’s psychiatric facility. They declared its presence a risk to the security and safety of the small town. Sheriff Morgan led the protests.
The new facility director, a former prison warden for many years, made a solemn promise to the people of the town. His promise involved an increase in security so no one would ever break out, or
into, the facility again. “The town will remain safe and the children within the facility will remain contained as they receive the help they need,” he stated at a town meeting his first day on the job.
He hired a new therapist, a slender young lady with black hair and thick glasses, who had relocated to Brookhill from New Orleans. Due to the recent tragedies her former state endured, the psychiatric facility she worked in had closed. Because of this, all her work records were lost and her resume could not be confirmed. The director hired her anyway because he liked the confident way she presented herself during the initial interview.
The new therapist formed a relationship with Clara Blue. She became the only adult within the residence Clara showed a willingness to converse with, but only during her private sessions. The young patient has a renewed confidence she will not be a patient in the Brookhill Residence for very long.
The whereabouts of Jennifer Duke remain unknown.
A word about the author...
Mark Rosendorf is not mentally unbalanced or violently psychotic, despite what his writing may suggest. The characters he writes for, however, were created based on his wild “if only I could do that” imagination.
Mark holds a master’s degree from Long Island University’s Human Development and Leadership program. He is a licensed guidance counselor for the special education district of the New York City Department of Education.
In 2011, Mark authored the science fiction novel, “Status Quo.” He is also featured in such anthologies as “Killer Recipes” and “Cat in a Dreamspell.”
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