He had waved, but the strangers had not waved back. Instead, the man seated in the bed had pointed at a tree between them.
The tree had exploded.
There had been the sound of thunder, a blinding flash, a wave of hot air, and the tree had disappeared. It hadn't been blown out of the ground or knocked off its trunk. It hadn't fallen into the woods or across the path. It had just . . .
disintegrated
. Needles and splinters and dirt had shot straight up, then rained down. The branches closest to the destroyed tree had ignited, burning like a thousand tiny torches.
Roland had fallen back into the brush, then staggered to his feet. The man's finger had swung slowly toward Roland. Roland had run around the car, hopped in, and reversed off the trail. He had turned the Subie toward town and punched the accelerator. The station wagon had coughed and sputtered, and he'd slapped his palm against the steering wheel and cursed himself for not giving it the tune-up it had wheezed for since summer.
Now it was moving pretty good, bouncing over rocks and ruts, but it was no match for the newer, bigger truck on its tail. Every now and again he'd catch a glimpse of the two heads bobbing furiously over the cab's roof. They would duck under branches hanging over the trail, and Roland thought the trees must have batted them a few good times. Still, they appeared to be laughing.When he squinted for a better look, he almost went off the road.
Finally he came out of the heavy woods and onto the dirt road that became Shatu' T'ine Way a quarter mile up: town, people, Constable Fuller. No way his pursuers would follow him there, not into the heart of Fiddler Falls. Small as it may be, witnesses were witnesses.
Weaving from side to side, too many thoughts crowding his driving etiquette, he saw the truck plow out of the trees and grow larger in the mirror.
“Not here!” he yelled out loud. “Not in town!”
He flew past the B&B, where he'd seen the truck earlier. Approaching the town's main street, he braked.The car's rear tires tried to slide out from under him. He gave it more gas, bumping up onto Provincial Street's blacktop. The avenue was barren. Most of the town was only now waking up.The autumn sun was still burning off the gray haze of morning twilight.
“Be there, be there,” he said, speeding past the community center on his left.
His pursuers swung into view behind him. As he crossed Fife Street, he swerved to the left curb. The RCMP substation was dark. The CLOSED sign Tom used to inform folks he was out and about leaned against the big front window.Tom made it a point to tell everyone that he, as constable, never really closed; they simply needed to find him somewhere else.
Home,
he thought.
I'll go to his
â
He saw Old Man Nelson sweep a plume of dust out of the general store's front door across the street. He cranked the wheel and shot to the opposite curb, but the old man had stepped back inside.
Roland grabbed for the door handle, flicking his eyes to the mirror as he did.
The truck had stopped at the intersection.
The man in the cab was pointing at him.
Everything happened at once, but for Roland, it seemed to take a lifetime. Metal ripped and tore. Glass shattered. Roland burst into flames. It wasn't that part of him caught fire and quickly spread. No, he was instantly engulfed. His arm spasmed. His fingers caught on the handle, and the door opened. He rolled out and stood, thinking what he needed to do . . . thinking . . .
His hair singed away, his flesh blistered, his blood boiled.
He was blinded by agonizing pain . . . then by the physical destruction of his eyes. He stumbled, may have fallen; he did not know. Every nerveâhead to toe, skin to marrowâcried out for relief.
A thought, an image occurred to him. He was
frying
. He tried to scream.
He flailed his arms . . . or thought he did.
Heâ
Tom Fuller sat at the
kitchen table, a plate of pancakes and link sausages half gone in front of him. He was listening to Dillon complain about an older boy, a sixth grader who'd been taking kids' snacks and threatening to pound anyone who told.
“Aren't you afraid of getting pounded?” Laura asked, turning from the counter with a fresh pitcher of orange juice.
The question in Tom's mind was
Who is this punk?
Leave it to Laura to explore their son's thought process instead.
Dillon shrugged. “What's he gonna do? My mom's the teacher and my dad's the law.”
Tom laughed. “Is that what I am?”
Dillon grinned and nodded enthusiastically. At nine, and with the encouragement of a stack of video Westerns he had received for his birthday, he was just realizing how cool it was for his dad to be the town's only cop.
“So what are
you
going to do about it?” Laura asked, eliciting a perplexed expression from Dillon: wasn't telling his parents
doing
something?
Tom stopped the arc of his fork traveling toward his mouth so he could give Dillon a smile and a wink.The kid was cute without resorting to puppy-dog expressions. In puppy mode he could soften the stoniest heart. Sometimes Tom felt sorry for him. Tom and Laura shared a love of knowledge and learning; wanting their child to also appreciate erudition, they tended to turn their conversations into teaching opportunities. Couple that with an outdoorsy lifestyle in a region where the weather battled the terrain to see which would wear a man down the most, and you'd end up possessing both brains
and
brawn. At least that was the idea. Indeed, Dillon was philosophical beyond his years but still very much a young boy. Tom didn't want him growing up too fast.
Tom said, “You could always kick him in theâ”
From outside, a
boom!
âas loud as an exclamation point, as brief as a periodârattled the windows. Dogs began barking.
Dillon's face instantly reflected shock-worry-fear. Laura mirrored his expression and looked more like her son than ever.The OJ sloshed against the clear pitcher, settling from the shake she had involuntarily given it.
“Whatâ” she started.
“Stay here,”Tom said. He dropped the fork and pushed back from the table. He grabbed his gun belt from a hook and yanked open the rear door.
“Dad?”
“Don't worry,” Tom said, forcing a smile. “I'm sure it's nothing.
Just . . . just stay in the house.” His eyes locked with Laura's. “Don't head to school until you hear from me.”
She nodded.
He pulled the door shut, jogged around the house, and saw black, billowy smoke snaking into the sky from the center of town. Strapping on the gun belt, he ran up Camsel Drive. A door opened. Lars and Barb Jergins, owners of the Elder Elk Diner, stepped onto the porch. Their eyes rose up to the smoke as their mouths dropped.
Tom raised a hand. “Lars! Barb!” he called.
“What happened,Tom?” Lars asked.
“Don't know. Stay here. I'll come tell you when I find out.”
They went back inside.
Tom rounded the corner onto Provincial Street. This was Fiddler Falls's main thoroughfare, though it consisted of only four short blocks of businesses, including an Elks Lodge, a combination town hall and community center, and Dr. Jeffrey's big Victorian housecum- office. At the street's southern terminus was Dirty Woman Park, a half-moon swatch of grass, trees, playground equipment, and redwood picnic tables and benches.
Tourists chuckled at the name until they learned its literal meaning. Despite living right on the river, Becca Nahanni was said never to have bathed. Never. Her stench and a patina of grime that covered her skin, caking in her wrinkles, had supported the rumor.When she had died in her nineties, she willed her small shack to the town. It had been so odorous and foul, the town had razed it and created the park in her honor.
Beyond Dirty Woman lay the Fond du Lac River, half a mile wide where the town touched its banks. In the other direction, due north, Provincial Street passed, among other businesses, a restaurant, a boardinghouse, St. Bartholomew's Church, and finally a small school that serviced forty-three students, K through 12. Just beyond the school, the community's only paved street crumbled into dirt. Before long it devolved into grassy ruts, marking the passage of hunters, fishermen, and other souls brave enough to venture into Canada's northern backcountry. It was the town's widest street, one lane north, one lane south, with room at both curbs to parallel park. Townies rarely bothered to drive, since a mile walk connected any two points in Fiddler Falls.
Tom saw that Provincial was occupied now. A block and a half from where he stood, directly in front of Kelsie's General Store, a car sat twisted and burning. It looked like the newscast images he'd seen of car bombings. A few peopleâlikely everyone in the vicinity at that hour of the morningâhad come out of the stores and businesses to watch from the sidewalks. Others were closer, in the street.
Hurrying forward, he yelled to the people standing around it. “Back away!”
The asphalt around the rear of the car appeared to be burning with a low blue flame. He guessed that meant the gas tank had already ruptured, but he didn't want another explosion to prove him wrong and take out the closest spectators in the process.
The first scent he recognized was ozone, a powerful sterilant that destroys bacteria, viruses, and odors. Lightning strikes and fastflowing water create the chemical, which accounts for the fresh smell after thunderstorms and around waterfalls. In a drug enforcement course, Tom had learned that affluent pot users were known to use ozone generators to eliminate the smell of the drug. Ozone always reminded him of freshly laundered sheets.
As Tom inhaled, the ozone gave way to the pungent odor of gasoline, burning rubber, and a putrid reek he could not identify. It stung his nostrils, drawing tears from his eyes.
He coughed and yelled, “Step back!”
No one did. He realized that those nearest the car were not townies but the group of six young people who'd arrived by floatplane the previous day. They'd picked up the bright-mustard Hummer, which had been sitting at the service station since the week before. According to Lenny Hargrove, the station's owner, the driver had been from a transportation service and had hitched a ride on an outfitter's plane back to Saskatoon.The Hummer's appearance had caused a flurry of speculation about who was coming. The group had moved into the B&B on Shatu' T'ine Way.
Tom spotted the Hummer just beyond the wreckage. One of the visitors stood at the curb opposite Kelsie's, in front of the used-book and curio store. Maybe twenty, he was sloppily dressed in a Rolling Stones T-shirt that skimmed over a fat belly and hung straight down. Pudgy, sweatpants-clad legs appeared from under the stomach's overhang. Wisps of hair clung to his cheeks and chin in patches. A baseball cap was turned backward on his head. He lifted a professional video camera up to his eye and pointed it at the burning car. Another manâbald, black, youngânudged the cameraman, spoke to him.The camera panned to take in Tom's approach.
A teenage girl clung to the arm of a man in his late twenties. Flawless skin, freckles, and short-cropped brown hair could have conspired to make her seem more youthful than she was. Still, he didn't like the idea of a girl so young paired with such an older man. It was an observation he would not have made had the contrast between adult and child not been so acute.While the man appeared smug and insouciant, the girl bounced excitedly. She bore a broad, open-mouthed smile, which she reined in by biting her lower lip when she saw Tom appraising her.
A glance around revealed smiles on all of the visitors' faces. Except one: a young boy with ruddy cheeks not yet ready for a razor stood away from the rest. Frowning, he fidgeted from one foot to the other and went from clasping his hands to crossing his arms and back again.
“What happened?”Tom asked, eyeing the car. Instead of the outward rending of metal he had expected, the roof had been crushed in by something circular, as though a peg-legged giant had nailed it as he strode past. The four corners had buckled upward. The wheels and tiresâthe two in Tom's view were rupturedâcanted out, as if they'd experienced an unbearable weight before rising with the fenders. The vehicle rested on its undercarriage. Every window had shattered onto the street. Thousands of tiny squares of safety glass sparkled with reflected fire like diamonds. Flames filled the roof's concavity, reminding Tom of the cauldron that held the torch fires during the Olympic Games.
“This looks like Roland's Subaru,” he said to no one in particular. Roland was a local hunting guide and trapper. His all-wheel-drive station wagon boasted more dings, bangs, and chips than a space shuttle after reentry. He peered into the passenger compartment, through the slits that once were side-window openings. Flames owned that space as fire did a crematorium's furnace. Heat radiated out with more intensity than seemed right to Tom; he wondered if an accelerant had doused the interior. Bending at the waist, he sidestepped around to improve his view.
“Was anyoneâ” he started. The next word jammed in his throat. On the street behind the wreckage, the charred remains of . . . of what appeared to be a smoldering human body. It looked like tightly packed ash over burnt wood, positioned to somewhat approximate the shape of a man. One arm jutted up out of the cinders, as though in a final grasp for salvation. Its fingers were gone.
Tom backed away. The evidence of violent death sent his hand automatically to his holster. He unclipped the retaining strap but did not withdraw the weapon.
“Musta been lightning, Sheriff.”
He turned his head. The cradle robber was watching him. His twisted half smile seemed calculated to either intimidate or provoke. The man wore gray denim pants, tight on his legs and hips, flaring a bit where they covered the tops of gray-and-black boots. The boots were square-toed and made of some scaly reptile hide. A black T-shirt clung to his torso, accentuating his physique: sinewy muscles, no fat. He wore an expensive down vest, black and unzipped. It was insufficient protection from the fall climes in northern Canada. A twisting chain of black gems hung around his neck, and another necklace made, it seemed, of old rotting teeth. A big watch clung to his wrist like a pet beetle. Resting against the watch and rising three inches up his arm was an assortment of bracelets, some metal, some thread, braided and knotted. More bracelets adorned his other wrist, stopping before they reached a colorful Oriental dragon tattooed on the underside of his forearm. His hair, the brownish color of spruce bark, appeared coifed into an intentionally messy tangle. A faint golden shadow hued his cheeks, chin, and upper lip.To Tom, he could have been one of those grunge models he'd seen in magazine ads: fashionable, edgy, not quite groomed to perfection.