Behind the Ruins (Stories of the Fall) (21 page)

The
leader turned, staring open-mouthed up the street. He started to say something,
and a second wave of smaller explosions, rolling in an arrhythmic stagger,
kicked more flame and debris into the air. This went on for what felt to Ronald
like a long time, but was probably no more than twenty or thirty seconds.
People were staggering into the street half-naked to see what was happening.

The
leader of the three guards set off toward the fire at a run, trailed by his
companion. They picked up Earl as they passed. Within a minute a few other men
staggered after them, some carrying shovels and buckets.

The
concrete silos glowed a pulsing orange now, lit by the flames growing at their
feet.

“I
guess they managed to get that blockhouse lit,” Harmon said as he rose and
dusted himself off. “We’d better hurry and get out of here.” He paused and
spit. “Bit my damn tongue when he pulled me off my horse.”

The
two trotted out of town on foot, leading their nervous horses. Their mounts
flinched and shied, their eyes flashing over white in the dark. They turned off
the road, stopping for a minute in a cluster of acacia until the horses calmed
and they could mount them.

“Do
we still try for the house on the hill?” Ronald asked.

“I
guess so. It should be easy now. I imagine every guard in the place is down at
the fire,” Harmon said.

Ronald
nodded and turned his horse. They rode in a big half-circle, coming up on the
second blockhouse from the dark fields surrounding Mattawa, the horses’ legs
whispering in the tall grass. The pair scanned the hill’s skyline, backlit by
the smoke and glare of the fires beyond. The squat shape of the building was
clear against the dirty orange glow, but no figures moved around it, and no
lights showed.

“We
should leave the horses here and go up on foot,” Harmon whispered. “You have
that bottle of gas?”

“Yeah.”

The
two dismounted and started up the hill, their feet crunching through the weeds,
their eyes fixed on the building. The rear windows were high up, small and
covered with iron grids, and Harmon sucked air through his teeth in
exasperation and gestured to the left. Ronald followed as he led the way around
to the building’s shorter side, which was equally uninviting. They paused in
the wedge of shadow at the corner. Beyond, the ground was lit with a diffuse
orange light.

Harmon
squatted, his knees popping, and edged an eye around the corner while Ronald
stood, clutching two glass mason jars and feeling their contents gurgle as he
shifted his weight from foot to foot.

“Do
you see anything?” Ronald hissed. Harmon sat as still as a stone.

“No.
Well, yes, a big fire. That blockhouse is burning like a torch. Must be a
hundred people working on putting it out before it gets to the mill, but I
don’t see anything moving up here.”

He
leaned back into the shadows and stood.

“Give
me one of the jars,” he said. Ronald did. “Just walk like you’re supposed to be
here. I don’t think there’s much chance anyone will look this direction, or
that they could see us from down there - it’s probably three hundred yards and
they should all be glare-blind. Anyway, we need to try the door, because I
don’t see any other way in.”

Ronald
swallowed and felt his throat click almost painfully. He exhaled a held breath.
“Okay, let’s go.”

Harmon
leading, the two walked around the corner into the ochre light, not hurrying. The
glare was strong enough to cast their distorted shadows on the cinderblock
wall. Ronald glanced down at the fire, and could make out a crowd scurrying
around the blazing building, though the ground between was lost in glare and
shadows. Twenty paces along stood the building’s only door, a rusty steel one
with a few flecks of green paint still clinging to its upper surface. Harmon
tried the handle and cursed under his breath.

“It’s
locked,” he whispered. “Back around the corner.”

A
shadow rose up the door between their own, and Ronald started to turn, then
froze.

“You
two shitkickers? No whores up here,” said a familiar voice. “You two can turn
around real slow.”

Ronald
felt faint. He felt a sudden strong urge to just curl up and close his eyes and
hope everything would be better when he woke up. Harmon hissed through his
teeth. Ronald looked at him and saw his shadowed right hand move as he turned
slowly to his left, drawing his knife from its sheath at his belt.

Oh
shit, they got us, what are you doing?
The young man thought as
he turned. He was painfully conscious of the pistol tucked into his jeans under
his jacket.

“What
the hell is that? Drop the jar,” the leader said. Harmon complied, and it hit
the ground with a gurgling thump. He put his hands behind his head in the same
movement, facing the three backlit figures a dozen yards away with his knife
now behind his neck.

Ronald
turned on numb legs and dropped the second jar. It rolled a few feet before
catching on some weeds. The gasoline and naptha inside it had been expensive
when they’d traded for it in Potter’s Creek. A trivial corner of his mind
regretted wasting it.

“You
get your hands up, too,” the voice said. Ronald raised them to shoulder height.

“Earl,
see what they’ve got.”

Earl
handed his rifle to the guardsman who had spoken, who cradled it in the crook
of his arm. His other hand held a pistol, level and steady on Harmon. The third
guard stood to one side holding a rifle or shotgun shouldered and ready.

We’re
going to die
, Ronald thought. He wondered why he didn’t
feel anything but numb.

Earl
moved to Harmon and began to pat him down. Harmon stood still for it for a few
seconds, then the pair went down in a flailing tangle of arms and legs, Earl
screamed shrilly as Harmon did something to him with the knife.

The
pair rolled over and there was a sharp crackling noise. Harmon howled and
Ronald could smell the sour tang of gas on the air as he dropped his hand for
his pistol.

Earl
kicked free, rolling away from Harmon, as Ronald drew, thumbing the pistol’s
safety off and crouching. He shot without aiming, twice, and the silhouette
with the long gun staggered and fell. Ronald heard a bullet from the leader’s
gun cut the air next to his ear. The man was firing rapidly, stumbling backward,
and further bullets went wide. Ronald shot him in the chest and he fell over.
He turned to help Harmon, who was yelling and kicking at Earl, knocking him
sprawling before he could rise. It took Ronald a moment to grasp what he was
shouting.

“He’s
got a vest on! He’s got a vest on!”

Who
gives a shit what he’s wearing?
Ronald thought. His
stomach lurched as the meaning finally sank through.

He
turned back toward the fire in time to see the lead guard roll over and rise to
his knees, bringing up his pistol in a two-handed grip. Ronald aimed for the
black oval of his face above the too-bulky torso. Both men fired and Ronald
fell backward, while the guardsman remained on his knees, his pistol sagging to
the ground. Harmon cursed, trying to rise from the pool of blood and gasoline
he was lying in. Earl coughed wetly, with Harmon’s knife in one of his lungs
and most of his intestines trying to slither free, and gripped the little
snub-nosed revolver he carried in his coat pocket. He rolled back, grappled with
Harmon and pulled him down. Harmon felt something hard jab into his back, and
felt more than heard the shot that shattered his spine. The muzzle flash
ignited the gas that soaked his clothing, and he began to burn.

“No,”
Harmon muttered, unable to move. He could smell the stink of burning wool. He
tried to raise himself on his hands but could not get free. Earl had passed out
lying across him and was beginning to burn as well. The pain was unbelievable.
The light of his burning clothes glinted on the oiled blue of the little
pistol, fallen from Earl’s hand, and Harmon strained to reach it, scrabbling at
the earth and pulling himself forward an inch at a time as bone crackled in his
back and the stink of burning pork joined that of wool.

He
realized he was moaning, but that was a distant noise - something his body was
doing while his mind was otherwise occupied. He felt a brief, clear moment of
triumph as his fingers closed on the butt of the pistol. The fire had spread
into the surrounding weeds now, and by its light he saw Ronald stagger upright,
his left sleeve soaked with blood, his eyes wide and white and unfocused.
Beyond him knelt the corpse of the guardsman in the bulletproof vest, seeming
to stare with one surprised brown eye and one that was a pit of pulpy red and
black. Behind him at the bottom of the slope the townspeople and garrison
fought the fire, unaware of the little drama on the hillside.

He
wanted to tell the boy not to worry, and to get away, but his hand was in a
hurry and tucked the pistol under his chin as his hair ignited. He wished he
could say goodbye to his parents. He hoped Ronald would make it out all right.
He wondered if any of it made any difference, and then he pulled the trigger.

“What
do you suppose they had in there?” Mal asked, looking back at the dim orange
glow on the horizon. He and Grey were riding slowly, heading east and north,
back to camp.

“No
idea, but when that gas went down the chimney it got exciting in a hurry,
didn’t it?” Grey asked.

“I
hope we didn’t burn down the mill,” Mal said, still gazing back over a shoulder
as his horse picked its way along behind Grey’s. “I think there’s a second glow
over where the hill was. I guess the boys managed to get in there okay.”

Grey
nodded, not looking back. “I don’t know that we needed to poke Creedy again,
not with the army moving on him, but it never hurts to keep your opponent
guessing.”

Mal
nodded, and they rode in silence for a while. One fair-sized meteor rumbled on
a long slant across the stars, shattering into a series of smaller streaks of
fire and covering half the arc of sky before dying out. Both men watched it.

“Big
one,” Grey said.

“Yeah,
don’t see many of them anymore like that,” Mal agreed. He shifted in his
saddle, his leather jacket creaking. “So what’s our play, now?”

Grey
scratched in his beard before replying.

“Creedy
has to move, or the CDF is going to get him. We know where he wants to end up,
so we can guess his route. We need to try for him along that route.”

“Will
you send someone ahead to let the people in the Okanagan know?” Mal asked.
“Just in case we can’t stop a small army from riding through us?”

“I
guess I better. We’ve been lucky so far, but I hate to depend on luck.”

Mal
nodded in the dark. “Luck, she’s a bitch.”

Creedy
had strapped Sam across the foot of the enormous brass bed that consumed much
of his private quarters’ floor. He admired the strained posture of her limbs,
tied to the posts, and the trembling curve of her back as she fought to shift
her weight. The top bar of the foot rail cut into her waist and it pleased him
to hear her gasp each time he thrust into her, the motion grinding on her
bruised flesh.

He
was, he admitted to himself, bored. Even the sex didn’t hold his attention the
way it should. His mind wandered, pondering the upcoming move, less than two
weeks away. He shifted his stance in the inverted V of her spread legs, seeking
a better angle to bring more force to bear. Sam choked out a curse as his
thrusts began again, but he scarcely heard.

“It’s
time for a change, isn’t it, Sam?” He asked, conversationally, digging his
nails into her buttocks, trying to see if he could draw blood. His nails were
too short, it seemed. All they did was leave white bloodless arcs pressed into
her skin.

“Time
to find new pastures, new pastimes, new horizons to explore.” With each ‘new’
he thrust as hard as he could, rattling the bedframe and forcing gasps from
Sam, who kept her face buried against the comforter. She heard his grunt and
felt him shiver as he came. He pulled out immediately afterward, and the cool
air of the room chilled her wet thighs. She concentrated on breathing and tried
not to think.

She
heard him rattling objects on his dresser; heard the swish as he found a belt
and swung it experimentally. She set her teeth and tried to retreat into red,
bloody plans for the future.

A
knock at the door interrupted her thoughts.

“Come,”
Creedy called. She heard the door creak open behind her. Being left exposed was
somehow worse than what preceded it.

“I’m
going to kill you,” she whispered into the coverlet. “I promise.”

“Fish
just got back, Mr. Creedy.” She recognized Gregor’s voice. “He says that Jones
wasn’t responsible for the attack on the Shell after all. It was a third party.
Someone called Simmons. Some locals saw him in Potter’s Creek, and he may be
one of the people from the rumors out of Vantage. They didn’t see the exchange
where Jones took possession of the goods, but they think a few guards may
have.”