‘Iss ant eee,’ he said — This can’t be. I knew exactly how he felt.
‘There’ll be help here in just a few minutes. Hang in there. I have to go.’
‘Go air?’
I didn’t answer. There wasn’t time. I stopped and took George Kennedy’s pulse. Slow but strong.
Beside him, Footman was deep in unconsciousness, but muttering thickly. Nowhere near dead. It takes a lot to kill a daddy. The jerky wind blew the smoke from the overturned car in my direction, and now I could smell cooking flesh as well as barbecued steak. My stomach clenched again.
I ran to the Chevy, dropped behind the wheel, and backed out of the driveway. I took one more look — at the blanket-covered body, at the three knocked-over men, at the trailer with the line of black bulletholes wavering down its side and its door standing open. John was up on his good elbow, the end of the belt still clamped in his teeth, looking at me with uncomprehending eyes.
Lightning flashed so brilliantly I tried to shield my eyes from it, although by the time my hand was up, the flash had gone and the day was as dark as late dusk.
‘Stay down, Ki,’ I said. ‘Just like you are.’
‘I can’t hear you,’ she said in a voice so hoarse and choked with tears that I could barely make out the words. ‘Ki’s takin a nap wif Stricken.’
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Good.’
I drove past the burning Ford and down to the foot of the hill, where I stopped at the rusty bullet-pocked stop-sign. I looked right and saw the pickup truck parked on the shoulder. BAMM
CONSTRUCTION on the side. Three men crowded together in the cab, watching me. The one by the passenger window was Buddy Jellison; I could tell him by his hat. Very slowly and deliberately, I raised my right hand and gave them the finger. None of them responded and their stony faces didn’t change, but the pickup began to roll slowly toward me.
I turned lift onto 68, heading for Sara Laughs under a black sky.
Two miles from where Lane Forty-two branches off the highway and winds west to the lake, there stood an old abandoned barn upon which one could still make out faded letters reading DONCASTER
DAIRY. As we approached it, the whole eastern side of the sky lit up in a purple-white blister. I cried out, and the Chevy’s horn honked — by itself, I’m almost positive. A thorn of lightning grew from the bottom of that light-blister and struck the barn. For a moment it was still completely there, glowing like something radioactive, and then it spewed itself in all directions. I have never seen anything even remotely like it outside of a movie theater. The thunderclap which followed was like a bombshell. Kyra screamed and slid onto the floor on the passenger side of the car with her hands clapped to her ears. She still clutched the little stuffed dog in one of them.
A minute later I topped Sugar Ridge. Lane Forty-two splits left from the highway at the bottom of the ridge’s north slope. From the top I could see a wide swath of TR-90 — woods and fields and barns and farms, even a darkling gleam from the lake. The sky was as black as coal dust, flashing
almost constantly with internal lightnings. The air had a clear ochre glow. Every breath I took tasted like the shavings in a tinderbox. The topography beyond the ridge stood out with a surreal clarity I cannot forget. That sense of mystery swarmed my heart and mind, that sense of the world as thin skin over unknowable bones and gulfs.
I glanced into the rearview mirror and saw that the pickup truck had been joined by two other cars, one with a V-plate that means the vehicle is registered to a combat veteran of the armed services. When I slowed down, they slowed down. When I sped up, they sped up. I doubted they would follow us any farther once I turned onto Lane Forty-two, however.
‘Ki? Are you okay?’
‘Sleepun,’ she said from the footwell.
‘Okay,’ I said, and started down the hill.
I could just see the red bicycle reflectors marking my turn onto Forty-two when it began to hail
— great big chunks of white ice that fell out of the sky, drummed on the roof like heavy fingers, and bounced off the hood. They began to heap in the gutter where my windshield wipers hid.
‘What’s happening?’ Kyra cried.
‘It’s just hail,’ I said. ‘It can’t hurt us.’ This was barely out of my mouth when a hailstone the size of a small lemon struck my side of the windshield and then bounced high into the air again, leaving a white II mark from which a number of short cracks radiated. Were John and George Kennedy lying helpless out in this? I turned my mind in that direction, but could sense nothing.
When I made the left onto Lane Forty-two, it was hailing almost too hard to see. The wheelruts were heaped with ice. The white faded out under the trees, though. I headed for that cover, flipping on my headlights as I went. They cut bright cones through the pelting hail.
As we went into the trees, that purple-white blister glowed again, and my rearview mirror went too bright to look at. There was a rending, crackling crash. Kyra screamed again. I looked around and saw a huge old spruce toppling slowly across the lane, its ragged stump on fire. It carried the electrical lines with it.
Blocked in, I thought. This end, probably the other end, too. We’re here. For better or for worse, we’re here.
The trees grew over Lane Forty-two in a canopy except for where the road passed beside Tidwell’s Meadow. The sound of the hail in the woods was an immense splintery rattle. Trees were splintering, of course; it was the most damaging hail ever to fall in that part of the world, and although it spent itself in fifteen minutes, that was long enough to ruin a season’s worth of crops.
Lightning flashed above us. I looked up and saw a large orange fireball being chased by a smaller one. They ran through the trees to our left, setting fire to some of the high branches. We came briefly into the clear at Tidwell’s Meadow, and as we did the hail changed to torrential rain. I could not have continued driving if we hadn’t run back into the woods almost immediately, and as it was the canopy provided just enough cover so I could creep along, hunched over the wheel and peering into the silver curtain falling through the fan of my headlights. Thunder boomed constantly, and now the wind began to rise, rushing through the trees like a contentious voice. Ahead of me, a leaf-heavy branch dropped into the road. I ran over it and listened to it thunk and scrape and roll against the Chevy’s undercarriage.
Please, nothing bigger, I thought . . . or maybe I was praying. Please let me get to the house.
Please let us get to the house.
By the time I reached the driveway the wind was howling a hurricane. The writhing trees and pelting rain made the entire world seem on the verge of wavering into insubstantial gruel. The
driveway’s slope had turned into a river, but I nosed the Chevy down it with no hesitation — we couldn’t stay out here; if a big tree fell on the car, we’d be crushed like bugs in a Dixie cup.
I knew better than to use the brakes — the car would have heeled sideways and perhaps have been swept right down the slope toward the lake, rolling over and over as it went. Instead I dropped the transmission into low range, toed two notches into the emergency brake, and let the engine pull us down with the rain sheeting against the windshield and turning the log bulk of the house into a phantom. Incredibly, some of the lights were still on, shining like bathysphere portholes in nine feet of water. The generator was working, then . . . at least for the time being.
Lightning threw a lance across the lake, green-blue fire illuminating a black well of water with its surface lashed into surging whitecaps. One of the hundred-year-old pines which had stood to the left of the railroad-tie steps now lay with half its length in the water. Somewhere behind us another tree went over with a vast crash. Kyra covered her ears.
‘It’s all right, honey,’ I said. ‘We’re here, we made it.’
I turned off the engine and killed the lights. Without them I could see little; almost all the day had gone out of the day. I tried to open my door and at first couldn’t. I pushed harder and it not only opened, it was ripped right out of my hand. I got out and in a brilliant stroke of lightning saw Kyra crawling across the seat toward me, her face white with panic, her eyes huge and brimming with terror. My door swung back and hit me in the ass hard enough to hurt. I ignored it, gathered Ki into my arms, and turned with her. Cold rain drenched us both in an instant. Except it really wasn’t like rain at all; it was like stepping under a waterfall.