"You know," Liz said, "when you put the ring in the nose, it's always best to leave a few yards of rope slack. Otherwise they think it's only jewelry."
"What?" Dale turned back into a broad grin. "I'm sorry, Liz, I was . . ." And she was confused, the heat of the corner bringing perspiration to her upper lip. She dabbed at it with her sleeve, emptied another glass and set it on the window sill behind her.
"Relax, Dale, will you?"
She grinned. "Funny, but people keep telling me that. I must look like a zombie."
"Not quite. Stand near the waiter with the bald spot and you'll find out how you look."
A surge of guests from the back room inadvertently pushed Liz closer. Dale shrank away, felt the wall at her back and stiffened. She didn't like the closeness. It was too much like being locked into a glass-walled closet. Quickly she cleared her throat.
"Liz, I'm sorry, but Vic never told me—is this party in honor of something or other?"
"Of course, but I forget what it is." She lifted a wrist to stare at a watch hidden among a display of diamonds. "But whatever it is, it's now time for the hunt. The highlight of this gala farce." She touched Dale's arm, smiled and hurried away to the living room, guests at her back, the music suddenly stopping in mid-chord. Dale followed, and cursed when she saw she would have to stand in the foyer. Pushing up on her toes, she saw Liz on an upholstered bench in front of a black-faced fireplace. She only heard half of what was said, but understood enough to know that the so-called highlight would be an old-fashioned scavenger hunt, the prize for which was a pewter mug Liz displayed with a flourish.
Oh, for God's sake, Dale thought. Who wants to play such a childish . . . and she stopped herself. If Vic was determined that she break out of the shell her dream had built around her, and if she was going to salvage a good time, why not be part of a scavenger hunt? Why should all the fun in the world be reserved for kids? A tug at her sleeve interrupted her thoughts, and Vic was at her side, a piece of green mimeo paper in one hand.
"Come on," he said, pulling her. She resisted and he glared at the ceiling, shook the paper under her nose and pulled again. "Will you come on, lady? I've got our list here, and if we don't get going, we're not going to win."
A battle for their coats, a race for the car, and they were speeding toward the toy store. Part of the list included tools and children's clothes, and Dale volunteered the thought that since size wasn't mentioned, dolls' clothes would do as well. Vic had kissed her. She beamed, and when the car pulled to the curb, they were in and out in less than five minutes. Laughing. Shouting. Not caring what the rest of the world thought as they constructed their fun.
Vic pulled away from the store before Dale had a chance to shut her door.
"Hey," she said, trying to catch her breath from laughing so loudly, "we're not the Capone mob, you know."
"More's the pity," he said. "What's next?"
She held the paper close to her face, trying to sort out what they had found from what they needed.
"Remember," he said, "we can't use our houses."
"I have many dirty thoughts about that," she said. "Now. We need yellow chalk and an apple. That's it."
"Great," he said, applying the brakes and skidding into a U-turn. 'We'll save the apple for last. I know where we can get the chalk."
"Hey, Vic," she said, sobering slightly. 'You're not going to break into the school, are you?"
"And who has a better right," he grunted as he took a corner too tightly and bounced over the curb.
She would have protested, but when she saw the expression of devilish delight made fiendish by the dashboard's glow, she resigned herself and glanced at the rear view mirror, half expecting Fred Borg's patrol car to be flashing its blue-and-red at them. There was a car, she noticed with a guilty start, but when Vic pulled into the small parking lot behind the high school building, it continued on without slowing. They drove, then, to the building's far corner, beyond the reach of street lights and passing cars.
"Now," he said, braking, "you stay here. I'll be back in a flash."
"Sure," she said, sliding behind the wheel as he left. "And don't break anything, will you? I'm going to have a hard enough time explaining the store's mess to Bella on Monday; I don't want to have to say a thing to the police."
"Don't be a spoilsport. Honk twice if there's trouble." And he was gone, heading for a basement window hidden behind three large garbage collection dumpsters. The car creaked as engine heat escaped, and in the distance she heard a siren trailing. A leaf scrabbled across the hood, and she pounded on the steering wheel excitedly, as though the gesture would make Vic move faster. With the window down she was getting cold, but she didn't want to turn on the blower to pull in residual warmth in case she needed to hear something. Instead she blew on her palms and rubbed her cheeks. A car passed, and she ducked onto the seat until its lights swept over and beyond her. The siren died.
"Come on, come on, come on!" she whispered. Leaning out the window, she looked up at the school. There was nothing, no betrayal of Vic's presence inside. Suppose the night watchman discovered him, she thought. Suppose he'd heard Vic coming in and the police were already there waiting to spring a trap. A minute, and she worried that he had taken a fall down the steel-edged steps, or stumbled over a chair and struck his head on a desk. She stared, squinting, and thought she spotted a shade rippling on the third floor. Sitting back, then, she sighed heavily, and the windshield fogged in front of her. It was ridiculous, two grown people sneaking around a place like Oxrun Station after chalk and apples and God knows what else. Whatever had made her think this would be fun? It certainly wasn't amusing waiting for the police to ride up beside her and demand to know what she was doing sitting in a darkened parking lot in the middle of the night with a pile of tools and toys in the back seat.
"Well, Officer, it's like this, see," and she laughed at the sound of her voice, wiped a hand over her face, and was ready to slip out to follow him when Vic suddenly appeared in front of the car, a small box clutched in his hand. Immediately she moved over to give him room, grabbed his arm when he was in and kissed him on the cheek.
"For that," he said, "I'd climb the building naked."
"Later," she said, bouncing on the seat. "Did you get it?"
He held out the box. "Dozens of pieces, all colors. Alice Franklin never leaves her room locked at night. Some kind of phobia. I didn't have time to check, but there has to be at least one piece of yellow in there."
"Fine," she said, tossing it into the back. "Now where are we going to get an apple?"
"No stores?"
"This late on a Saturday? We're not in the big bad city, you know, fella."
"All right, then," he said, pulling out to the street, "there's only one place left."
Vic parked a few yards in from the corner of High and the Mainland Road. Directly opposite was a series of fields decades untended, slowly reclaimed by relentless incursions of evergreen and oak. A straggling thorned hedge separated the fields from the highway, and with no facing homes, Oxrun was effectively hidden from the light passing traffic.
"Now wait a minute," Dale protested. "If you think I'm going to traipse across those fields to old man Armstrong's orchard just to get one lousy fresh apple—"
But Vic was already out and around, opening her door and tugging on her sleeve. She resisted, relented, and stood with him on the corner waiting for a chance to cross.
"Dumb," she muttered.
"But fun, lady. Come on and admit it, Dale! You haven't let loose like this in years, and you know it."
She looked at him carefully; and when he smiled, leaned over and kissed her cheek, touched a fingertip to her nose, she shivered and decided he wasn't so terribly bad after all, and neither was the game they were playing.
"Now!" he ordered suddenly and ran across the highway, slid down the ditch, and was halfway up the other side before Dale could catch up. A few minutes' fumbling and they darted through a narrow gap in the h
edge.
The field was broad, weeds knee- and waist-high that hid the furrows not yet pounded smooth by the years that had passed since they were last used. Solitary trees were ragged patches against the black, grasping it seemed for the stars just out of reach. Dale turned around and looked over the hedge to the village.
Vic took her shoulder, followed her gaze. "To think," he said, "that such a beautiful place is now filled with screaming maniacs like us, playing at hunting for treasure."
"Nice," she said, and allowed herself to be kissed while her hands stroked his arms. Then, with a shake and a playful slap to his head, she broke away. "March," she ordered. "Let's get this nonsense over with. I know just where I can put that pewter thing."
"Now wait just a minute," he said, following. "What about me? What do I get out of all this?"
"If you're a good boy," she called over her shoulder, "a nice cup of hot chocolate in the sanctity of my kitchen."
"Well, then," he said, and ran after her, laughing, then tripped and sprawled with a shower of curses into the dead weeds and grass.
It was impossible to move rapidly. Despite moon glow and stars, and the faint illumination of widely spaced highway lights, there were too many ground shadows camouflaging burrows and hollows that trapped their shoes and wrenched at their ankles. The orchard, some two hundred yards ahead, once belonging to the Armstrong family, was now wild and untended and had been that way since Dale and her parents had come here with the fresh bite of autumn to pick the fruit that remained. But the trees died one by one as vines strangled and seasons stared, and though new trees sometimes survived, the orchard had shrunk from its original hundreds to a lonely handful that seldom carried its apples to term. Dale thought of this as she stumbled over the rough ground. It was dry, and the fallen weeds broke like twigs beneath her, and the earth was concrete hard. She'd never make a decent Indian, she thought as she fell again and was hauled to her feet—I'd impale myself on my tomahawk.
Once in the cluster of trees, she leaned against a twisted thick bole and watched as Vic pulled a lighter out and began a search among the branches for their prize. Like a crazed butterfly, the flame darted and stopped, lowered, hastened toward and away from her. Every few seconds she was able to glimpse Vic's flushed face: an eye here, the mouth there. It was, finally, unnerving, and she pushed away from the tree and moved to stand by him.
"What's the matter, kid?" he said, handing her the lighter and grabbing at a low branch. Before she had time to answer, he had yanked himself up and leaves fell to her head and shoulders.
`What are you, Tarzan?" she called up.
"Confound it, woman," he said, puffing, "do you want that prize or not?"
She laughed and rested a hand against the trunk. When it was obvious the tiny lighter flame wouldn't do him much good, she held it at arm's length and looked around as best she could, seeing only a low mound in the center of the trees covered with dead leaves and branches and a few small stones. She puzzled at it for a moment, then turned her attention elsewhere, suddenly straightening. "Hey, Tarzan, can you see anything from up there?"
"Oh sure, I can see all the way to Denver. How am I supposed to be able to see anything, idiot. You've got the lighter."
"Oh. Sorry." She pulled her collar closer to her neck. If she had heard something—and she wouldn't have sworn that she did —it was probably some field mouse fleeing the noise they were making. A broken twig dropped on her head and she jumped, scolded herself and tried not to turn around again.
A snap. Two. One to her left, the other on her right.
"Vic?"
A third ahead of her, a fourth behind. Outside the grove, in the field.
"Vic, are you all right?"
A leaf brushed against her cheek and she slapped at it. The night's chill deepened and the lights from the highway seemed more like glowing globes of hazed ice. She wanted to flick on the lighter but was suddenly afraid to let her position be known.
Another leaf clung to her hair. When she grabbed it, it crumpled dryly and she fought to keep panic from making her choke.
Again: to the left, the right, behind, and in front.
Whispers.
"Vic, get down here now!"
She listened and heard with immense relief the scraping of leather against bark. A dark figure broke from the branches and landed lightly in front of her. A hand to her shoulder.
"Vic?"
"Who else? And why are we whispering?"
"Listen."
The distant grumbling of a truck.
"I—"
She put a hand to his mouth, felt his lips move then become still as the whispers grew louder and the footfalls came closer. His hand pressed down until she was forced into a crouch, wondering why he just didn't call out or pick up a stick and clobber whoever was stalking them.
A light flashed.
Explosive, and soaring.
A yellow-gold miniature sun that rose over the trees and gave birth to hell's shadows. She gasped, heard Vic swear under his breath. Another, and another until there were eight, perhaps more, of the gleaming things in the air over the trees.
"What . . . ?" Vic said, then yelled and yanked Dale off her feet and away from their tree. The flames were coming down, scattering in the grove. One landed precisely where they'd been standing, and she saw it was an arrow wrapped with cloth and set afire. Frowning, she moved toward it, scurried back when the others landed randomly and cracked. Three or four, she couldn't be sure, were instantly extinguished, but the rest had landed in brush or patches of dried grass. The flames caught quickly, moving away from the arrows like spreading brilliant water. Vic's hand tightened and she looked up, saw another group flurry into the air, flaming, sparking into stars before they dropped to the earth. Made immobile by shock and incomprehension, they stared as the fire torches landed and spread their flames to join those already down. Within moments they were surrounded by a low wall of fire that moved inward toward the center of the grove.
As if it were alive, she thought before something struck her on the back and dropped her to her knees. She cried out, heard Vic grunt and fall prone beside her. She leaned over, and there was an explosion at the back of her head. She fell, rolled over, and thought for a moment how nice it was that the ground was so warm, so comfortable after the cold night they'd gone into.
There was light now, weaving shadows across Vic's face, turning the trees overhead into writhing things that grasped for the light, caught it and became torches themselves. Smoke rose, stung, lay mist-like over the dead grass. She wanted to yield to the pain in her skull, to let the sleep come that nudged at her eyes. It would be nice. To sleep now. In front of the fire.
She closed her eyes, saw the cloud and the face and the water she walked.
She screamed.
Sat up and looked down at Vic. There was a black-red gleam of blood across his forehead. Quickly, she put a hand to his throat and felt the pulse, and began to gently slap his cheeks, rub the back of his neck while the flames grew as tall as she and moved closer still. She saw the mound, wondered if standing on it would give them some protection, knew she was delirious, and shook her head until the renewed pain cleared it.
She called out, demanding help, then pleading. Tears born of the smoke blinded her. She rubbed them away and choked when a breeze forced her to inhale the acrid fumes.
Wildly she reached above her and snatched a low branch to haul herself to her feet. Then she grabbed at Vic's shoulders and tried to pull him away. She grunted, couldn't move him, straightened, and spun on her heels in a tight, frantic circle. She realized there was no place to take him, that the fire had completely surrounded them, had climbed the trees and was already dropping brittle twigs like comets with sparks for tails. The breeze returned and for a blessed moment the air was clear, the flames held back. She took a deep breath, knelt again, and saw Vic's eyelids fluttering. She shouted in his ear, yanked at his coat until, dazed, he sat up and held his face in his hands. No time, she
thought desperately, and tugged at his arm until he looked up, his eyes widening, his mouth opened when understanding broke through. With Dale's help he struggled to his feet, shaking his head, wiping the blood clear with a swipe of his sleeve.
Dale watched him anxiously, choked, and knew the flames were not only moving nearer, they were robbing her of much-needed air.
She stopped crying.
There was peace. A calm wave that steadied her nerves. She was rather disappointed that her life didn't flash before her eyes as it had in so many of the books she had read, the films she had seen. Not that it was worth reviewing one more time, but it was after all the only one that she had.
A roaring—the fire an animal that had sensed its prey. Sparks landed on her face. She smelled burning wool and looked down to see the hem of her coat smoldering at her knees. She slapped at it, suddenly panicking again, then slid the garment off her shoulders and trampled it until Vic spun her around and pointed.
"Over there!" he shouted over the voice of the fire.
She squinted through the billowing smoke, saw a section where the flames had already burned themselves out. Between that free area and her, however, was a low line of fire moving inexorably toward them. She looked to Vic, then shouted when a tree toppled, raining sparks and burning twigs over their heads. Too dry, too fast, she thought as Vic stripped off his coat. No wonder it moves so quickly.
A siren. Two. It seemed like hundreds.
Vic wrapped her coat around her and covered her head. She struggled, suffocating from the heat and lack of air. Then there was cloth around her bare legs and she was lifted and cradled, Vic's face close to hers.
"A good thing you're not Bella," he shouted, and began running. She closed her eyes after one glimpse up to see a nightmare of twisted branches in flames. He stumbled and she screamed, pressed closer and grabbed at his shirt. His coat fell and her legs flared in a bath of licking agony.
Then, as suddenly as it had begun, it was over.
Vic lowered her to her feet, held her tightly. A patrol car was jouncing over the field, followed closely by several fire trucks and private cars. The heat on her face, the cold at her back. She shivered and watched the orchard fall in upon itself while fire-and policemen and not a few others scurried at the perimeter, beating out the isolated patches that had fired from sparks. An ambulance pulled up behind them and two attendants took their arms and led them, unprotesting, to sit on a stretcher they'd set by the rear doors. A breath of oxygen from an inhalator, and Dale shook them off. They persisted, however, and one knelt by her legs and spread a light, cooling balm over the knives that lanced her.
The Sound of Midnight - An Oxrun Station Novel Page 8
