Fire

by Alan Rodgers

  “Hello? Miss Leigh Doyle? This is Paul Green, the President of the United States. I need to speak to you.”

  That’d woke her up, real fast. “What? Who?” Why me? What would the President want with me? “How can I help you, Mr. President?”

  Mind you, now: Leigh Doyle had sworn that she was going to start reading the newspaper headlines. At least for the duration of the crisis. Avoiding them had got her into trouble that was above and beyond what she wanted to live with. All the same she hadn’t seen a newspaper since she’d got into the country; there had been no time for that last night.

  She had no way of knowing that the President she was talking to had died — died forever — more than a week before.

  She had no way of knowing that a ghost had called her on the phone.

  “There is a mission, Miss Doyle, that I need you to undertake for me. A peculiar mission, but a vital one nonetheless. And it is a mission that only you can accomplish.”

  Leigh caught sight of herself in the mirror, looked away. Rubbed the sleep from her eyes.

  “I don’t understand, Mr. President. What kind of a mission? And why me?” What was she saying? This was the President she was talking to. She recognized his voice. A body couldn’t go around saying no to her own President. Just couldn’t. “I mean, of course I’ll do whatever you need me to do, but. . . .”

  “Good,” he said. “I knew I could count on you, Leigh.” How could he know a thing like that, Leigh wondered. It seemed like an impertinent question, and anyway there wasn’t time to ask it, because the President barely even paused before he said, “I need you to take a plane to Denver, Colorado. The earliest flight you can find. A nonstop, if you can find one. When you land go directly to the rent-a-car desk, get yourself a car, and drive out to Cheyenne County, Kansas.” Then he’d started giving her the directions. When he’d finished, the phone had gone dead almost immediately.

  A busy man, our President, Leigh had thought, and she’d showered and she’d dressed and gone down for breakfast.

  Where there’d been a copy of the International Herald Tribune waiting at her table. And right there, on page one, was the story about the Memorial Service in Washington.

  The Memorial Service for President Paul Green — the very man she’d talked to, not twenty minutes before.

  She’d scanned the story quickly, followed the jump to the middle of the paper, where back story told her that Green had died the week before in an airplane wreck, that the fire that followed had been so intense that no one had been able to produce a body for the funeral.

  By the time she finished the story, Leigh had pretty well decided that she was going out of her mind. There were other bizarre stories, too — stories of dead people rising up out of their coffins. The kind of stories she’d have picked up on immediately for the Interlocutor. Stories that she’d never have expected to find in a paper like the International Herald Tribune. They were filled with so many specifics, so many infinitesimal facts, and so little hyperbole that it seemed as though they had to be true. For a moment Leigh almost thought that the phone call from the dead President must have had something to do with those stories — but then she read through it all again, and noticed that there was one thing that all the reports of resurrection had in common: a cadaver. And it was pretty plain, rereading the story of the President’s death, that the accident that had killed him had left behind no corpse.

  She paid her check with a credit card, got up and left the hotel coffee shop. Most of her meal still lay uneaten on her plate.

  She walked deliberately to the hotel lobby, where the desk clerk stood patiently waiting for the end of his shift.

  The telephone switchboard was directly behind him.

  “I had a phone call this morning,” she said, “didn’t I? At about seven a.m. It would have been long distance. From overseas.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “You are in room. . . ?”

  “It’s —” she fished through her purse, found her key “— 239.”

  He glanced at the switchboard. “No, madam. You’ve had no calls. The morning has been very quiet, and I would have remembered connecting an overseas call.” He coughed. “There were twenty minutes this morning — yes, around seven — when the phone in 239 was off hook. No call was made. I thought perhaps you had jostled the receiver in your sleep. I was about to send the bellman up to let you know when you set it back into its cradle.”

  Leigh could feel how the skin of her face was flush with embarrassment. “That isn’t possible. How would you know if I just picked up the phone?”

  “Our switchboard, madam. A small red light goes on when you lift your phone. When you make you connection the color of the light becomes green.”

  I didn’t imagine that call. I know I didn’t.

  “Perhaps . . . it’s possible you were dreaming. Could you have lifted the handset in you sleep? I have seen it happen before. Our guests dream vividly at times.”

  He thinks I’m out of my mind. And the embarrassment that colored Leigh’s cheeks turned to anger. It wasn’t any dream. She knew when she was dreaming, damn it. She said “No,” and she turned and walked away angrily before the clerk could say another word.

  Leigh had gone back to her room, and there she’d sat staring nervously at the wall for most of twenty minutes. How could a dream give directions that detailed? There they were, on the hotel-supplied telephone note pad, where she’d scribbled them as the President spoke.

  Was she going out of her mind?

  Finally she’d decided that it didn’t matter. If the President of the United States needed her badly enough to telephone her from the far side of eternity, then it must be that he needed her for something important. And if she was crazy she was crazy, and there was nothing to be done about it, and what did it hurt to spend the last few days of her vacation in the West? It hurt nothing at all, of course.

  And Leigh had packed her bags, checked out of the hotel, and got a cab to the airport. By noon she’d been on an airplane flying over the Atlantic.

  ³ ³ ³

  Chapter Forty-Two

  CHEYENNE COUNTY, KANSAS

  That was where they were now: deep in Kansas. Almost to the far edge of it, if Ron’s guess was right; he’d seen so many miles and miles of flat, dry, monotonous farmland roll by that he was certain the state couldn’t possibly go much longer. Maybe that was wishful thinking. Ron was pretty sure it wasn’t; Luke Munsen had a feverish look in his eye — eager, desperate, and fearful — and Ron suspected it meant that whatever it was that guided him was becoming . . . immanent.

  Whatever that meant.

  Off to the right now, in the distance, was the Lake of Fire Luke had been mumbling about since they’d set off. A pretty spectacular sight. All the same, he avoided looking at it; he wasn’t sure, but he thought he remembered hearing that radiation was dangerous to the eyes. Ron decided he’d be happier once they were clear of it.

  The noise from the left rear tire was getting even worse. Ron leaned forward, tapped Luke’s shoulder. “Say, Luke,” he said, “don’t you think you ought to slow down a little, maybe? That tire isn’t going to hold out much longer.”

  And exactly at that moment, exactly on cue and before Luke could respond, the tire blew. Spectacularly, exploding like a shotgun all at once as its overheated, overpressed air burst out and tatters of decayed rubber flew out in every direction, and the force of it and the fact that there was nothing but the rim to support the axle sent them veering off to the right. Luke, to his credit, was braced for it; he managed to keep the steering wheel more-or-less under control.

  Until the stress got to the point where it was too much for the three remaining tires, and two more of them blew out from under the car all but simultaneously. After that it didn’t matter whether Luke had the steering wheel under control or not; there was nothing left to steer, and the car was skidding
on its frame across the packed dry clay that was the road’s surface.

  A moment later it was over, and they’d managed to come to a halt without the car turning over. How they got that lucky Ron was never sure.

  And Luke, in the front seat, was cursing a blue streak.

  “Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn.” He punctuated each damn with his fist on the steering wheel. Ron winced for him, to watch it.

  “Hey,” Andy said, “that was fun. You want to do it again?” Beside him, the dog had regained his footing on the front seat-back; his mouth was wide open and panting.

  Christine turned back and looked at the boy; shook her head and frowned. Ron saw her mouth Not now. Which, all things considered, seemed to Ron to be pretty good advice.

  Luke threw his door open, got out to take a look at the car. Which was pointless, of course; they didn’t have one spare, let alone three. Even if they’d had them it likely wouldn’t have solved the problem — Ron was pretty sure the car’s suspension would be shot after the way it’d dug into the clay.

  “Look at that, hey, Tom-dog? Right over there. Out in the middle of Nowhere, Kansas, and we managed to have a wreck in front of the only cemetery for a million miles in any direction. Just like home, huh?”

  Luke was out in front of the Dodge, now, cursing a blue streak. Ron glanced over at the boy, a little uneasy that Luke was talking like that in front of him. If Andy was hearing it, Ron couldn’t see any sign of it. Well, he thought, likely the boy’d heard worse in school. Still, Luke shouldn’t talk like that in front of a child — it set a bad example. Whatever it was that had lodged so inside him, Ron decided, had to be fierce. It wasn’t like Luke to be so ill-considered.

  Luke came back around the side of the car, looked inside long and slow, almost as though he were surveying them one at a time. “There isn’t time for this,” he said. “There’s no time at all.” He looked at Christine, frowned. Bit his lip. “Can you wait here? Watch the creature, and the boy?” He nodded toward the creature. “We can’t just leave him here alone. He’s too important. Somehow. Don’t ask me how.” Sighed. He looked ashamed of himself, Ron thought; the realization made him sad.

  Ron could see Christine in the rear-view mirror, looking worried. She smiled anyway, and she said, “If that’s what you need, I’ll do it.”

  And Luke nodded, and thanked her. Looked at Ron and nodded again. “Come on, then,” he said, and Ron realized that Luke wanted him to get out of the car and hike off into the distance with him, and found himself a little annoyed because it wasn’t a thing he’d volunteered for, or even been asked to do. Didn’t even know what it was they were going to do when they got wherever they were going. He had a commitment that had brought him here, it was true, but that commitment was to the creature, not to some inscrutable vision festering between Luke Munsen’s ears.

  Which, in the end, was probably more or less the same thing. Luke and the creature were both drawn by the same force — near as Ron could tell, at least. If Luke needed him, it was likely an important thing. And if the man was rude about how he asked for what he needed, it still wasn’t worth arguing with him about it.

  Ron shook his head, opened the door beside him, got out of the car and stood. Luke was already half a dozen yards down the road, heading toward the setting sun, into God-knew-what. Ron followed, but he didn’t hurry to catch up.

  ³ ³ ³

  Chapter Forty-Three

  COPE, COLORADO

  When Leigh Doyle realized that she’d gone twenty miles in the wrong direction, she’d pulled the car over onto the shoulder of the road, opened the glove compartment, and taken a good look at the map that the rent-a-car company had given her. Fished through her purse until she found the directions she’d jotted down after her conversation with President Green. Compared them with the map.

  She was on a state road that would, in another five miles, take her to US Highway 36. Which ran east and west. In one direction toward Denver; in the other toward Kansas . . . and the first Kansas town it ran through was St. Francis. Ha! The President’s directions would take her, penultimately, right through St. Francis. There wasn’t any need to backtrack. All she had to do was make a right on 36, and she’d be set.

  She closed the glove box, left the map sitting on the passenger seat. Put the car in gear and started off again, feeling like she’d made a real triumph over the cussedness of the world.

  Everything went just fine, too, until she got to Cope, Colorado, and found that the bridge over the dry Arikaree River had collapsed the night before.

  ³ ³ ³

  When she got to the place where Highway 36 fell away into the empty bed of the Arikaree, Leigh Doyle got out of the rent-a-car. Breathed in the warm-dry East Colorado air that was so alien to her Westchester County lungs. And let the breath sift out in a sigh that wasn’t so much exasperation as it was weariness. Jet lag mixed with the unsettling suspicion that she’d lost her mind. Suspicion, hell — just now it seemed pretty damned likely that she’d taken leave of her senses. And that was Leigh’s own estimation; she was afraid to guess what anyone else would think of her if they knew she’d flown half-way around the world at the request of a man who no longer existed.

  She walked past the barricades, up to the edge of the broken bridge. And saw that the river was dry; and not very deep. Twenty minutes and she’d be able to climb down the near bank, cross the sandy-powdery bed, and scramble up the bank opposite. Even in her high-heeled shoes.

  There was no way the car was going to get across. Sure, she could get it down there — and maybe it’d even be intact when she reached the river bed. Even if it was, there wasn’t any way it was going to get back up again. Not in either direction.

  The only thing to do was head back, all the way back to the interstate. Damn. Leigh didn’t care at all for retracing her steps. She went back to the car, ducked in, took out her map. . . .

  Well.

  Maybe it was possible.

  Possible not to have to go all the way back; there was another way around the bridge. It meant going back along the road that had taken her to 36, and turning left at the road she’d jogged by on the way up here. Taking that road for a mile or two until she got to state road 59 — which would let her out onto US 36 again, not ten yards away from the far side of the bridge.

  Well, why not?

  And Leigh started off. Positive and satisfied and feeling triumphant again. She was going to get where she was going, and she was going to use her own good sense to get there, and to hell with the broken down bridge and the dry river and being out in the middle of a nowhere that she’d never seen before.

  And she kept feeling that way, long after she missed the turn at SR 59 without even noticing. In fact, it didn’t even occur to Leigh that she’d got herself into a mess until five miles after the pavement on the road she traveled had given out.

  Dirt roads didn’t bother her; in their way they were prosaic. What stopped Leigh and her car dead in their tracks was when the road gave out completely, and suddenly she was driving through a fallow field thick with grass so tall it blocked her windshield.

  ³ ³ ³

  IN TRANSIT BY AIR OVER THE WESTERN ROCKIES

  For Bill Wallace, the flight home from Korea wasn’t as lonely as the flight out had been.

  Lonely or otherwise, though, it was every bit as unpleasant.

  First there was the dead policeman, alive and unalive and lurking in the background haunting them, like some ghost made out of flesh and blood. And then the boy: innocent and plainspoken; charming. After a few hours his charm and his innocence became things that grated on Bill. If anyone had asked him why that was, Bill couldn’t have answered the question. Maybe the boy was annoyingly syrupy. And maybe the problem was that Bill was in a bad mood. Which he was.

  He was in a wicked mood, in fact. And that mood didn’t have a thing to do with the boy or the undead c
op or being stuck for most of a day inside a transport plane.

  What it did have to do with was the Oriental woman. Her, and Bill himself.

  Bill wasn’t sure what he was supposed to feel about that woman. Besides attracted to her, that was — being attracted to a woman who looked like that was something that came as natural to Bill as breathing did. He’d been attracted to her from the very first moment he’d seen her, in fact, back when she was still as vacant and stunned-looking as the dead policeman. That wasn’t the trouble: the trouble was the dream he’d had.

  The dream they’d both had.

  About how he loved her, and how he’d always loved her, and how she was the one true lover of his soul.

  The one true lover of his soul.

  Even the words were scary, because they weren’t his words — Bill wouldn’t ever use words like that. Not on his own. “The one true lover of his soul” — ? Phooey. Crap. BS. What kind of man went around thinking words like that? Bill was pretty sure that he didn’t ever want to find out. What was Bill supposed to do, feeling like that about a woman he didn’t hardly even know? And she didn’t look any more comfortable about the situation than Bill felt. Bill would walk by her on his way to get a cup of coffee, say, or going to the can. And he’d pass that beautiful woman who was his and who wasn’t, and he’d want to lean over and kiss her real gentle on her forehead, just like he always did. Only he never had, and probably never would, and each time he only barely managed to stop himself before he made a fool of himself.

  Confusing. Just like it was confusing when half the time she looked like she wanted him to hold her, and half the time she looked like she was going to haul off and slug him if he tried it. The whole situation made Bill feel like he wanted to crawl out of his skin and hide some place. Not that there was anyplace inside a transport plane that a body could hide, with or without his skin.