Fire

by Alan Rodgers

  It was a time so good that it made Ron a little uneasy; a part of him expected something horrible to happen, afraid that his life needed to set itself in balance by bringing evil on him.

  That part of him was right, of course. Horrible things lay in wait for him, and for the creature. The fact that they waited for him had nothing at all to do with balance, but they waited for him nonetheless.

  They crested a high, round ridge, and down before them was the Ohio River. It had to be the Ohio; it wasn’t nearly wide enough to be the Mississippi, and it was much too substantial to be the Cumberland, let alone the Tradewater. Half a mile to the west was a bridge — the Shawneetown bridge, he thought by the look of it, though there was no way to be sure at this distance. He’d been over that bridge twice, years ago, and he felt that he ought to be able to recognize it without having to use a score card. The trouble with traveling by car was that you never really got a look at the things around you. Not the way he had on this trip. Walking, he was beginning to think, had a lot to recommend it.

  A week ago, it’d been years since he’d walked more than a mile at a time. And now he was ready to go out and preach to the converted. The world, he thought, puts a man in strange places sometimes.

  The dog had wandered away an hour or two before dawn. It wasn’t the first time he’d disappeared, but it was the longest so far. Well, Ron thought, Tom the dog would find them again when he was ready to. He had before; he would again.

  They walked down the slope and sideways toward the highway that led onto the bridge. It would be strange to walk on paved ground again. They hadn’t been avoiding highways — not exactly — but their route hadn’t paid a whole lot of attention to highways or to trails of any kind. A few times — almost by chance, it seemed to Ron, though the creature hadn’t made a point of explaining it — a few times their route had followed along the shoulder of a road for a mile or two, and those times they’d been in rural areas, where there was little traffic. Some traffic, even so; more than once they’d nearly been run over by motorists too wrapped up in gaping at the creature to pay attention to their steering wheels.

  There wasn’t any traffic to speak of right now. Once, when they were still three dozen yards from the highway, a semi truck roared by. If the driver saw them Ron didn’t have any clue of it.

  They were half-way across the bridge when trouble came for them.

  It came, again, in the form of a helicopter. This one was a military helicopter, armed with machine guns and rockets and God knew what else. And instead of wanting to watch them, it wanted to kill them.

  It flew up over the ridge on the far side of the river, and in the time it took to cough it had plunged down toward them, and then it was etching lines of bullets into the soft tarry pavement on the bridge’s surface.

  It turned in the air for just an instant before it started shooting, and as it did Ron saw the army insignia and serial number painted on its side. And just above those, drawn more crudely and in a slightly different shade of white, was the same insignia he’d seen painted on the helicopter that had videotaped them in that town in Tennessee.

  A cross. A circle. And a dove.

  Ron didn’t have any sense about these things; he just stood there, staring, eyes wide and mouth agape. If the gunner’s aim had been even a little better Ron Hawkins would have died a second time.

  The creature’s instincts were better; when the helicopter had passed them Ron saw him step out from behind a heavy iron girder. He pointed off into the distance behind Ron, where the helicopter was banking and turning around, and suddenly Ron was consumed by a powerful need to run that hadn’t come from his own heart.

  “Jesus,” he said.

  And they ran.

  Up ahead on the left, just beyond the far end of the bridge, were a pair of squat one-room concrete huts; they looked to Ron like maintenance huts for the bridge. Beyond those, away from the road, was thick broad-leaf forest.

  If they could get into that the helicopter wouldn’t be able to see them well enough for the gunners to take aim.

  There was a reasonable chance they wouldn’t live long enough to try hiding. Already the helicopter was close enough to fire at them.

  Closer, bullets exploding into the tar all around them —

  And Ron felt a bullet crease the fleshy part of his shoulder. It didn’t dig deep enough to break him, or even to throw him off his stride, but there was wet blood everywhere all over the right side of his shirt, and God it hurt hurt hurt. He didn’t let it stop him; he was afraid that if he did he’d only make a better target of himself. In front of him he could see three great crimson swatches of opened flesh nestled in the grey hair of the creature’s back.

  He ought to be dead, with wounds like that.

  The creature wasn’t dead. He wasn’t even slowing down, no more than Ron was — and Ron had a lot less reason.

  And Ron wanted to stop, even though he wasn’t letting himself. He wanted to curl up around the gouge in his shoulder and die.

  And that’s exactly what would happen if I did. Whoever it is in that helicopter would kill me. I’d die again forever this time. I know that. Know it know it know it —

  And felt another bullet shatter the low ribs on the left of his back. The impact of it threw him off his feet, sent him flying breast-first into the warm-soft-rough of the black tar pavement of the bridge. Rubbing, abrading open the skin of his face; his shirt spared his chest some of that, until it tore away and left him open. He would have died, then, lay there waiting for the gunship to finish turning him into wet meat — but that was the moment that the helicopter passed overhead, overshooting them, and there was no way they could swivel their guns around fast enough.

  The creature was above him, now, not running for his own life but lifting Ron onto his bloody shoulder, and Ron wanted to say No leave me here don’t worry about me let me die just take care of your own life, but the bullet had done something to his ribcage that made talking impossible. Or too painful to think about, anyway. And anyhow it sounded like something a dying cowboy would say to John Wayne in a bad western. Bad enough Ron had to be dying; he didn’t want to die sounding like an idiot.

  “I can run,” he said. Whispered, actually, and even as a whisper the words weren’t especially intelligible. “You don’t have to carry me.” It wasn’t true, of course. He didn’t even have the strength to move his head away from the bloody pit in the creature’s back that leaked sticky red out into his eyes. His pride wouldn’t let him resign himself to being a burden.

  The sound of the helicopter turning, coming back toward them again. The sound of machine guns —

  — Ron craned his neck, trying to see where they were, whether they had a chance of getting to the shack before the guns could kill them, and saw an antipersonnel rocket blow out of one of the helicopter’s cannons, and it came so close to them that its burning-warm sulfur breath stung his eyes. It didn’t hit them, though; it shot over and by them, exploding into the bridge’s surface thirty yards behind them.

  And they were off the bridge, only twenty feet from the concrete shack, and behind them the bridge swayed and began to shatter. Smoke and dust and flame from that rocket and the next obscured everything, and that was a blessing since the machine guns could hardly aim at targets they couldn’t see.

  Ron felt the creature reach the wall of the shack and slump against it with exhaustion. It was safe here — for a moment, two. Until the helicopter came back around it wouldn’t be able to shoot at them, so long as the wall shielded them. By then they could be inside, on the other side of the wall —

  Right.

  How long would it take before they landed the helicopter, got out, walked around, and shot them point blank?

  No time at all.

  They weren’t safe here, not by a long stretch. They had to get into the woods, where the green canopy of leaves could hide them. Ha
d to get there quickly.

  The creature knew that; already they were moving again, off into the woods. A steady pace; walking, not running. Running wasn’t necessary — it was only ten paces before they were under the cover of leaves . . .

  Ron came back to when the Beast set him down in a bed of dry leaves. Or maybe it wasn’t coming to. Maybe he’d never been unconscious. It was a close thing, and kind of vague. The wound in his back must have been even worse than he’d realized to leave him so dizzy with the loss of blood. He clenched his teeth, braced himself for pain as he tried to sit — and sat. The pain was less than he expected. He shook his head, lurched, stood. That hurt. But not unbearably.

  The creature was staring away from him. Ron turned to follow the direction of his gaze and saw that he was watching the concrete shack and the still-crumbling bridge behind it. There were more helicopters, now; Ron could see two of them out over the river. He heard another pass directly over head. There was no way to see that one; the green mat of leaves above them was too thick. The creature glanced at Ron, and Ron felt his anxiety wash over him. They had to go. Had to keep going. It wasn’t safe here, not safe enough to keep still.

  “Use words,” Ron said. “It gives me the creeps when you make me feel things like that.”

  It unsettles you either way.

  That was true enough. Hearing a voice inside his skull that wasn’t his own was a terrifying thing. And even more it left him feeling violated; no matter how he felt about the creature, no matter how special he was, hearing that voice made Ron want to push away from him.

  Still.

  It wasn’t sensible, trying to talk by parsing out images and sensations, not with people trying to kill them.

  “Use them anyway, would you? I’d like to be able to feel like I really felt the things I feel,” he said.

  The creature shrugged. We need to go. He nodded toward the river, where the helicopters were still moving toward them. They’ll be here soon. Soldiers? Out of the helicopters. On foot. Searching for us under the trees. You can walk? The last was half a question and half a statement, almost as though he knew that Ron was feeling better, but wasn’t sure Ron knew it.

  Ron nodded. He was feeling better. That was a strange thing, only a few minutes after a bullet had broken the thin bones in his ribcage. He reached around to probe the wound with his fingers . . . and felt the skin already grown over mottled flesh and broken bone. It ached fierce to touch, but all the same it was touchable. The wound was healing faster than any wound had right to heal.

  He looked at the creature. “It’s the same as when we died, isn’t it? Something remakes us when we’re hurt. And probably why we could walk hard for three days with barely any rest or food. Do you think?”

  The creature only shrugged again and started walking away, deeper into the wood. Ron followed him, confused.

  They hadn’t gone a hundred yards before Ron heard the sound of boots crushing through the leaves behind them. We should run, he thought. The creature wasn’t running, and Ron was sure that he’d heard the sound. It was too loud not to hear. Still walking, he turned his head back to see if he could spot them, and he did; they were at the edge of the forest, by the concrete shack, looking at the ground for sign of a trail. None of the men were in uniform, though they carried military ordnance. They all did wear black armbands that looked as though they might be marked, but at this distance he couldn’t see well enough to be sure. It didn’t look as though they’d spotted Ron or the creature yet — likely that was because it was too bright there at the edge to see far into the thick-dark woods — but soon enough they would, Ron thought.

  “We need to hurry,” Ron said, quietly as he could. “Hurry or hide.”

  The creature shook his head. No. It isn’t time. Soon enough it will be.

  “What do you mean? Time for what?”

  The creature didn’t answer; he kept walking, carefully, steadily up the long low rise away from the river.

  ³ ³ ³

  A hundred yards beyond the crest of the rise the forest fell away into corn fields. Before they stepped out into the light the creature hesitated for a good three minutes. He looked worried, Ron thought — more worried than Ron had ever seen him before.

  It isn’t certain here, he told Ron, finally. The way through the fields . . . is long. Three miles? They could kill us here. They may.

  Ron frowned. There was something that didn’t make sense — something. . . ? The bullets. The lab back in Tennessee. They’d both died once before, and nearly died again just a few moments ago. And now Ron felt — didn’t feel fine, or even well, exactly. Well enough to cope. And maybe better. What was to fear in dying?

  If we die they will take us. And the one who guides them, he knows — he will know? — he will make us dead forever.

  He watches time. He finds strange things.

  None of that made the first bit of sense to Ron. Watching time? Finding things? “Is that how they found us — in Tylerville, and then out here on the bridge?”

  No. The creature set his hand on his right thigh, and with his mind’s eye Ron suddenly was seeing inside the thigh’s flesh, deeper down into the hard round bone at its center. It was that grisly scene again, where Bonner was operating on the infant creature, searing, consuming pain because there was no anesthesia, and Bonner had the thigh wide open and he was drilling into the bone. Then the drilling stopped, and he reached over to the instrument table, picked up a tiny piece of intricately complex metal and plastic. Ron felt him drop it into the drilled hole, and begin to sew the flesh back together around it. . . .

  Ron shuddered, trying to shake off the memory of the creature’s pain. “A tracking device? A transmitter inside you?” The idea of it made Ron almost as queasy as the image of surgery.

  The creature nodded. I can feel it sometimes. The bone has grown closed around it, sealed it in.

  “It’s hopeless, then. No matter how we run, they’ll find us.”

  No. Not hopeless. But hard things wait, and cruel ones. We need to go. To hurry, now.

  The sound of another helicopter, somewhere south of them.

  And they started into the long corridors of green that seemed to lead off into the horizon, the creature leading at a dead run.

  Stay low. If we’re careful, they may not see us. The Beast hunched over and bore to the right, so that the high leaves on the cornstalks hid him. Well, not hid him. His shoulders were too wide to be shaded by even the longest leaves. Still, they made him less apparent from the air, Ron could tell. He stooped and tried to run the same way, without much success; he kept stumbling over the dirt that piled at the bases of the cornstalks, and over the stalks themselves.

  The sound of the helicopter’s engine shifted, and suddenly rushed toward them. The creature threw himself flat and lay still against the corn — so suddenly that Ron only barely managed to stop short of running over him. But he did stop, and as soon as he had he crouched down to hide.

  The helicopter paused when it was directly above them.

  Had it seen them? Would the men inside start shooting again? If they did there wasn’t much chance that Ron or the creature might survive it. Lying here in the dirt, they made easy targets. Or maybe they’d send men down for them on a rope. That would be a slower death. Ron was sure he’d end up murdered all the same.

  A voice, amplified electronically, came from above: “We know where you are. Surrender peacefully and we can all avoid further bloodshed.”

  Ron felt his heart sink down toward his gut. He didn’t want to die. He didn’t know why they were trying to get him and the creature to give themselves up, but he was sure that it didn’t mean that their intentions were any less malevolent.

  The creature was watching him — staring at him with tense, almost fearful eyes. Bluffing. They don’t see us. He glanced up at the helicopter. Don’t speak. Be very still.

&
nbsp; Ron was sweating, now. Nervous sweat, from tension. He didn’t know how much longer he could be absolutely still without going out of his mind.

  The helicopter wasn’t going anywhere.

  In front of him he saw the Beast beginning to ease away on his hands and knees. His shoulder passed so close to the cornstalks that Ron would have sworn they’d touched. If they did there was no sign of it in the plants. Was he supposed to follow? He didn’t think he could move that carefully, no matter how he tried. If he didn’t try he’d be left here, sitting alone under the guns —

  The creature turned his head ever so slowly, ever so gently, and looked Ron in the eye. No, he told Ron. Stay still. No matter what happens now, be still until I call you.

  And Ron closed his eyes and shivered with the tension of pent-up fear. His body wanted to run, or scream, or die, or something. Anything at all except keep still. He set himself, forced himself not to panic. And kept still, even when the sweat began to trickle down his forehead and into his still-closed eyes. Working its way between his eyelids, burning-stinging. He tried to blink it away, but that wasn’t much use; mostly it only spread the sweat around and drew it deeper into his eyes. What he needed to do was blot it away with the sleeve of his torn shirt. He didn’t think he dared to move that much. Not now. Not yet.

  There. It was gone — for now. He opened his eyes —

  The creature was gone.

  Ron felt very, very alone.

  He tried to find some sign of the Beast, ahead or off among the other rows. . . . Was that him, there? Yes, it was, running diagonally across the field thirty yards away, almost as though he was trying to get the attention of the people in the helicopter —