Dies the Fire (4 page)

“
Lady Mother-of-All!”
Juniper whispered, her finger tracing a pentagram in the air before her.

The fire was getting worse, the light ruddy on her face. She knew she ought to be running out there and trying to help, but the sight paralyzed her. It didn't seem
real
, but it was; a jumbo jet had plowed right into the center of this little university town in the middle of the Willamette Valley.

“Looks like it came down on the other side of Central Park,” he said, holding out a hand for the glasses.

“Sweet Goddess, it looks like it came down around Monroe and Fourth!” she replied, drawing a map in her head. They looked at each other, appalled: that was right in the middle of downtown.

I hope the Squirrel and the Peacock didn't get hit,
she found herself thinking, absurdly—both nightspots booked a lot of live music. Then she shook her head angrily.

“There must be hundreds hurt,” she said.
Hundreds
dead
, more like
, her mind insisted on telling her. She swallowed, and added silently to herself:
Horned Lord of Death and Resurrection, guide the dying to the Summerlands. Merciful Lady, preserver of life, keep the living safe. So mote it be!

Aloud she went on: “And where are the emergency people?”

“Trying to get their ambulances and fire trucks to work,” Dennis said; there was a grim tone to his voice she'd seldom heard before. “Check your watch.”

Juniper blinked, but did as he asked, pulling it out of her vest pocket where it waited at the end of a polished chain of fine gold links. She was wearing a sort of pseudo-Irish-cum-Highlander costume—billowy-sleeved peasant shirt and lace cravat and fawn-colored waistcoat with a long tartan skirt below and buckled shoes—what she thought of privately as her Gael-girl outfit. The watch was an old one, from her mother's father; she clicked the cover open.

“Working fine,” Dennis said, as she tilted it to catch the firelight. “But mine ain't. It's digital.”

He turned and switched to Sign.
How about yours, Eilir?

It's an electric,
she signed.
Quartz. It's stopped.

“And stopped at just the same time as that one on the wall over there,” he said, signing as he spoke. “Six fifteen.”

“What's
happening
?” Juniper said, signing it and then running her hands through her long fox-red hair.

“Damned if I know,” Dennis said. “Only one thing I could think of.”

At her look, he swallowed and went on: “Well, an EMP could take out all the electrical stuff, or most of it, I think—but that would take a fusion bomb going off.”

Juniper gave an appalled hiss. Who could be nuking Oregon, of all places? Last time she looked the world had been profoundly at peace, at least as far as big countries with missiles went.

“But I don't think that's it. That white flash, I don't think it was really light—it didn't
come
from anywhere, you know? Suzie at the bar, she was looking out at the street, and I was halfway into the kitchen, and we both saw pretty much the same thing.”

That's right,
Eilir signed.
It wasn't a flash, really. Everything just went white and my head hurt, and I was over by that workbench with my back to the window.

“Well, what was it, then?” her mother said.

“I don't have fucking clue one about what it
was,
” Dennis said. “But I've got this horrible feeling about what whatever-it-was
did.
”

He swallowed and hesitated. “I think it turned the juice off. The electricity. Nothing electrical is working. That for starters.”

Dennis shuddered; she'd never seen an adult do that before, but she sympathized right now. A beefy arm waved out the window.

“Think about it. No cars—spark plugs and batteries. No lights, no computers,
nothing
. And that means no water pressure in the mains pretty soon, and no sewers, and—”

“Mother-of-
All,
” Juniper blurted. “The whole town could burn down! And those poor people on the 747—”

She imagined what it must have been like at thirty thousand feet, and then her mind recoiled from it back to the here and now.

And Rudy was flying out of Eugene tonight,
she thought, appalled.
If the same thing happened there—

“We have to do something,” she said, pushing aside the thought, and led them clattering down the stairs again.

“People!”
she said over the crowd's murmur, and waved her hands. “People, there's a plane crashed right downtown, and a fire burning out of control. And it looks like all the emergency services are out. They're going to need all the help they can get. Let's get what we can scrape up and go!”

Most of them followed her, Dennis swearing quietly, a bucket in one hand and a fire ax over the other shoulder; Juniper snatched up a kerosene lantern. Eilir carried the restaurant's first-aid kit in both arms, and others had snatched up towels and stacks of cloth napkins and bottles of booze for disinfectants.

She needed the lantern less and less as they got closer to the crash site. Buildings were burning across a swath of the town's riverside quarter, ending—she hadn't gotten her wish, and the fire covered the Squirrel's site. Heat beat at them, and towers of sparks were pouring upward from the old Victorians and warehouses.

If the plane was out of Portland, it would have been carrying a
lot
of fuel. . . .

The streets were clogged with people moving westward away from the fire, many of them hurt, and they were blocked with stopped autos and trucks and buses too. Ruddy firelight beat at her face, with heat and the sour-harsh smell of things not meant to burn.

“
OK,” she said, looking at the . . .
refugees,
she thought.
Refugees, right here in America!

First aid could make the difference between life and death, stopping bleeding and stabilizing people until real doctors or at least paramedics got there.

“We're not going to do any good trying to stop
that
fire by hitting it with wet blankets. Let's help the injured.”

She looked around. There was a clear stretch of sidewalk in front of a hardware store where a delivery truck had rammed into the next building down; its body slanted people out into the road like a wedge.

“We'll set up here. Dennis, see if there's any bedding anywhere around here, and a pharmacy—and anyplace selling bottled water.”

He lumbered off, followed by some of his customers. The others started shouting and waving to attract attention, and then guiding the injured towards her. Juniper's stomach clenched as she saw them: this was
serious,
there were bleeding slashes from shattered glass, and people whose clothes were still smoldering. Her head turned desperately, as if help could be found. . . .

Nobody's going to benefit if you start crying,
she thought sternly, and traced the pentacle in the air again—the Summoning form this time, all she had time for.
Brigid, Goddess of Healing, help me now!

“You,” she said aloud; a young man had pushed a bicycle along as they came. “You ride over to the hospital, and tell them what we're doing. Get help if they can spare it. Hurry!”

He did, dashing off. The first-aid kit was empty within minutes; Dennis came back, with a file of helpers carrying mattresses, sheets, blankets, and cardboard boxes full of Ozonenal, painkillers and whatever else looked useful from the plunder of a fair-sized dispensary; a pharmacist in an old-fashioned white coat came with him.

“Let's get to work,” Juniper said, giving Dennis a quick hug.

The best part of an hour later, she paused and looked up in the midst of ripping up volunteered shirts for bandages. The fireman approaching was incredibly reassuring in his rubbers and boots and helmet, an ax in his hand; half a dozen others were following him, two carrying someone else on a stretcher.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, pausing; the others filed on past him.

Juniper bristled a little and waved at the injured people lying in rows on the sidewalk. “Trying to help!” she snapped. “What are you doing, mister?”

“Fuck-all,” he said, but nodded approval; his face was running with sweat and soot; he was a middle-aged man with a jowly face and a thick body.

“What's wrong?”

“Our trucks won't work, our portable pumps won't work, and the pressure is off in the mains! Died down to a trickle while we manhandled a hose down here and got it hitched. The pumping stations that lift from the Taylor treatment plant on the river are down and the reservoirs've all drained. We can't even blow fire lanes—our
dynamite
won't explode! So now what we're doing is making sure everyone's out of the way of a fire we can't stop. Lady, this area's going to fry, and soon.”

Juniper looked up at the flames; they were nearer now, frighteningly so—she'd lost track in the endless work.

“We've got to get these people out of here!” she said. “A lot of them can't walk any farther.”

“Yeah,” the fireman said. “We'll have to carry them out—the hospital's got an emergency aid station set up on the campus. We're using runners and people on bicycles to coordinate. Hey, Tony!”

A policeman stood not far away, writing on a pad; he handed it to a boy standing astride a bike, and the teenager sped off, weaving between cars and clots of people.

“Ed?” the policeman said; he looked as tired and desperate as the firefighter.

“We've got to move these injured over to the aid station.”

The policeman nodded twice, once to the fireman and once to her, touching a hand to his cap. Then he turned and started shouting for volunteers; dozens came forward. The walking wounded started off westward into the darkened streets, most of them with a helper on either side.

“These mattresses will do for stretchers,” Dennis said; he'd gotten them out of nearby houses and inns. “Or better still, cut off the top covers and the handles and use them that way. Hey—you, you, you—four men to a mattress. Walk careful, walk in step!”

The firefighters helped organize, then carried off the last of the worst-wounded themselves. Juniper took a long shuddering breath through a mouth dry as mummy dust. Dennis handed her a plastic bottle with a little water left in it, and she forced herself not to gulp it all down. Instead she took a single mouthful and handed it on to Eilir; the girl looked haunted, but she was steady save for a quiver in the hands now and then.

Goddess, she's a good kid,
Juniper thought, and hugged her.

It was about time to get out themselves; the fires were burning westward despite a wind off the Coast Range—and thank the Goddess for that, because if it had been blowing from the east half the city would be gone by now, instead of just a quarter.

Shouts came from across the street, and a sound of shattering glass. The musician looked up sharply. Half a dozen young men—teens or early twenties—had thrown a trash container through a storefront window; they were scooping jewelry out of the trays within, reaching through the coarse mesh of the metal screen inside the glass.

The policeman cursed with savage weariness and drew his pistol; Juniper's stomach clenched, but they
had
to have order or things would be even worse than they were.

I hope he doesn't have to shoot anyone,
she thought.

Most of the looters scattered, laughing as they ran, but one of them threw something at the approaching policeman. Juniper could see the looter clearly, down to the acne scars and bristle-cut black hair and the glint of narrow blue eyes. He wore baggy black sweats and ankle-high trainers, and a broad belt that glittered—made from chain mesh. Gold hoops dangled from both ears.

“Clear out, goddamnit!” the cop shouted hoarsely, and raised the pistol to fire in the air. “I'm not kidding!”

Juniper blinked in surprise. A woman living alone with her daughter on the road was well advised to keep a pistol, and she'd taken a course to learn how to use it safely. Misfires were rare.

The policeman evidently thought it was odd too. He jacked the slide of the automatic back, ejecting the useless round, and fired into the air once more.

He worked the slide to eject the spent cartridge and tried a third time—and now he was aiming at the thin-faced youth, who was beginning to smile. Two of his fellow looters hadn't fled either. They all looked at each other, and their smiles grew into grins.

One of them pulled a pistol of his own from behind his back, and pointed it at the lawman; it was a snub-nosed revolver, light and cheap. He pulled the trigger.

He shrugged, tossed the gun aside, and pulled a tire iron from his belt instead. The youth with the chain belt unhooked it and swung it from his left hand. Something else came into his right, and he made a quick figure-eight motion of the wrist.

Metal clattered on metal and a blade shone in the firelight. She recognized the type, a Balisong folding gravity knife—if you hung around Society types like Chuck Barstow, you overheard endless talk about everything from broadswords to fighting knives, like it or not.

The banger wasn't a sporting historical reenactor like the Society knights. He walked forward, stepping light on the balls of his feet, rolling the knife over his knuckles and back into his palm with casual ease. The other man flanking him was a hulking giant with a bandana around his head; he picked up a baseball bat from the sidewalk and smacked the head into his left palm. The full-sized Louisville Slugger looked like a kid's toy in his hand.