So Cold the River (2010) (47 page)

His house was gone. Any sense that it had been a house was gone, at least. The foundation and portions of two of the walls
lingered but the rest was scattered in chunks across his yard and the field beyond. Pieces of his roof littered the yard.
His couch was some eighty feet from the foundation, upside down, rain drumming down onto it. The old aerial antenna, no longer
functional but never removed, was lodged in the upper branches of a tree in the backyard. The rest of the tree was adorned
with pink bits of insulation. Amidst the litter of debris across the yard he saw flashes of bright, stark white. Pieces of
the porch railing he’d painted.

He sat there in the middle of the road and stared at it. Couldn’t find a thought, really, couldn’t do anything but look. This
place shouldn’t matter—he’d already known he could never return to it—but still, it had been home. It had been his home.

The sirens finally broke him out of it. They were wailing behind him, to the south, coming this way. Somebody coming to see
if anyone needed rescuing.

He punched the accelerator and the truck fishtailed on the wet pavement and then found purchase and sped on. He swerved around
one downed limb in the road and drove right over the top of another and on toward the gulf. He gave the house one last look
in the rearview. It was the only thing out there, the only physical structure in most of a mile in any direction, and it had
been destroyed. In the distance, the Amish farm looked solid, everything still standing. Something like that, it seemed almost
personal. Seemed like the damn storm had been
hunting
him.

“Well, guess what?” he said aloud. “I wasn’t home. And tell you something else? I
am
the storm.”

There you go, boy. There you go
.

The voice floated out of the air beside him and Josiah looked to the right and saw Campbell Bradford in the passenger seat,
just as he had been at the timber camp. Campbell gave a tight-lipped smile and tipped his hat. His suit looked soaked, clinging
to his shoulders as if he’d just climbed out of a swimming pool.

That ain’t home,
he said.
That place ain’t even close to home for you, Josiah, never was. You deserved better, boy, deserved a piece of what I’d carved
out for you. I was building a kingdom down here, and you’re my rightful heir. It was taken right from your hands. Time to
take it back. They’ll come to know your name, boy. They’ll know it.

“The work will be done,” Josiah told him. “You can count on that.”

I know it. I’m stronger than ever now, boy, and it’s thanks to you. Stronger than I’ve been in a long time, at least. And
that’s all I needed—was for you to listen, and let me get my strength back. It’s coming now, son. Yes, sir, it is.

“I should have started with the hotel,” Josiah said.

No. We’ll go back for it, but we have to start with Shaw. You see that, don’t you? He’s the one who brought me back, then
thought he could control me, hold power over me. With water, can you believe it? With water. It’s time he sees who’s won.
Ain’t a force in this valley like me, and he’ll know it. He’ll be the one to tell the others.

Another limb was across the road, this one big enough to do some serious damage, and Josiah saw it out of the corner of his
eye at the last possible instant and whipped the wheel sideways. The truck skidded away, branches raking at it, bending the
sideview mirror back and pounding dents and scratches into the paint, but it stayed upright. By the time Josiah had it straightened
out, Campbell was gone again. He took a deep breath, exhaled, and saw a cloud of cold fog in front of his mouth. That made
him smile. Campbell wasn’t gone. Hadn’t been gone in a long time, in fact, was with Josiah constantly now.

He was suddenly glad that his house had been destroyed and that he’d happened across it. Hell, he hadn’t
happened
across it—Campbell had guided him there, and the message he intended to send was clear: there wasn’t anything of Josiah Bradford
left now. Not the old Josiah, the one these people knew. What remained of him belonged to Campbell now, and that was as it
should be. The Josiah that had been known in this valley would vanish completely by the day’s end, vanish as swiftly as the
cloud that had leveled his house, and with a similar trail left behind.

The R. L. Drake fired up without hesitation. The power in the house was still on, so it didn’t need to go to the backup generator,
and seconds after Anne found the desk, she had the microphone to her lips. Most of the bands she dealt with were weather-spotter
frequencies, but like any quality ham radio operator, she had the local emergency bands programmed as well. These days, some
of the communications were encrypted, but there was still access for distress calls. She explained her situation to the dispatcher
in as calm a tone as she could manage. Her nerves were rattled and her body felt unsteady but she held it all in check and
spoke slowly and clearly. This was what she’d been training for all her life—a real emergency. She’d always known she could
keep her poise during one, and while she’d imagined it would be during a tornado and not a kidnapping, her preparation didn’t
fail her now.

The dispatcher was a woman who sounded at first harried, no doubt from fielding constant storm-related calls, then astonished.

“Ma’am, I need to understand this situation: Are you alone in the house now?”

Anne had specified that at the start. She took a deep breath and willed herself to find patience in the face of panic.

“That is correct.”

“But you were held hostage for several hours this morning by a man with a gun—”

“Not just some man. His name is Josiah Bradford. He’s a local. Works down at the West Baden hotel, I believe.”

“Yes, and your understanding is that he now has
another
woman in his control and that he has left your house with her and the weapon, correct?”

Anne felt a surge of frustration building, wanted to slap her hands down on the desk and shout,
Of course he still has the weapon, now would you please stop asking me to repeat myself and
do
something about it!
But poise counted in a situation like this, calm counted, and that woman who was with Josiah right now needed Anne’s help.

“That is all correct,” she said, speaking carefully. “The woman with him is named Claire Shaw. She’s from Chicago. Her husband
came down here to make a movie and somehow he crossed Josiah. And I would say that time is of the essence. He has a gun, and
if he is to be believed, then he is driving a truck full of dynamite. You need to find that truck.”

“There’s already a bulletin out for that truck. Went up yesterday. A state police detective requested it. I’m going to get
in touch with him now.”

“All right,” Anne said, wondering what Josiah had already done to earn this attention. “He’s in the truck now, and so is she.
He was taking her somewhere. I don’t know where, but it’s near his home. I could tell it was someplace near his home.”

“Okay,” the dispatcher said, “but right now I’ve got to find someone to come get you out of that basement. Things are out
of control… we’ve got a tornado that hit Orleans, another that went through Paoli not five minutes later, and every one of
my units was headed to assist. I’ll find one to send back for you.”

“No, don’t send one of them for me. Please don’t. I’m fine. But send one of them to
find that truck.
”

“Of course, that’s the priority. Be advised there’s a bit of chaos right now, though. Got parts of highways closed and all
sorts of major storm damage. There’s a fire—”

“I know it’s chaos out there,” Anne said. “But I’m telling you that he could make the storm look gentle before this is done.”

The wind was freshening again as Josiah neared the gulf, and here there were so many trees down that the road was nearly impassable.
If he’d given the slightest damn about his truck he would have stopped, but at this point the Ranger meant about as much to
him as the heap that had once been his house, so he plowed ahead, driving over limbs and fence posts and one snarl of barbed
wire wrapped around a stump. All of it deposited in the middle of the road, left behind by a
cloud,
of all damn things. It was hard to believe.

Up ahead the old white chapel was still standing and seemed little worse for wear; the storm must have passed just south of
it. He saw the blinking lights of a rescue truck out across the fields, a volunteer fire department outfit, but they had pulled
into one of the farm driveways and were paying him no mind. The gravel track into the gulf was empty, and he drove onto it
and through the brush and saw two vehicles parked at the end of the lane: Danny’s Olds and a black Porsche Cayenne that was
sitting upside down. The roof was caved in and glass lay all around it. Pointing skyward were four flat tires. That got Josiah
laughing as he stopped the truck and got out to see Danny emerge from the bushes behind the cars, his ruddy, freckled face
drained of color, his red hair dripping wet.

“You see it?” he said, walking toward Josiah. “You see it? Oh,
shit,
I never seen anything like it. Damn it all, I never even imagined seeing anything like that.”

Josiah nodded at the upended Porsche. “Guess you didn’t need to worry ’bout them tires.”

Danny stared back at him blankly.

“How’d you miss it?” Josiah asked.

“Drove
away,
is how I missed it. I was waiting down here like
you said, and then I heard the noise. I mean to tell you it really
does
sound like a train, just the way you always hear folks say it does. I heard that noise and I saw the sky going black as oil
and I said, I got to get away
fast
. So I drove out of here and had hardly hit the road before I saw it. Big old funnel cloud, all white at first, then turning
black. And I just hit the gas on this old car like I never have before in my life. Was up at the church when the tornado came
in, and I pulled behind the building and set to prayin’. I’ll tell you, I was prayin’ and cryin’ like a little kid, and I
think it was that church that saved me because that thing passed by not a hundred yards from me, but I was safe and—”

“Where are
they?
” Josiah said.

“Huh?”

“The ones I’m here for, damn it! Where are they?”

Danny blinked, then wiped at his face, leaving a streak of dirt behind.

“I don’t know. They were in the woods. Right there, where it blew through, Josiah. Far as I know, they’re somewhere out
there
now.” He waved his arm off to the east, in the direction the storm had gone.

“You think they’re dead?” Josiah said, and he felt a cold, seething rage nestle into his belly. That storm better not have
taken them. He’d come here to settle up, not to collect bodies.

“I have no idea, Josiah. I just want to get out of here. I’m done, all right? I’m—”

“Shut up,” Josiah said. “I got a piece of work left to do, and ain’t nothing or nobody
done
until that work’s been completed. You don’t understand the weight of this task, Danny, you don’t understand the heft of it
at all. Ain’t a thing
done
yet.”

“Josiah—”

“Stop using that name.”

“What?”

“You call me Campbell now. Understand? Call me Campbell.”

Danny said, “I think you’re crazy.”

He was staring Josiah in the face, and when he said it, he meant it.

“I don’t know what the hell you’re thinking anymore,” Danny said. “Don’t even seem like yourself, and now you’re calling yourself
Campbell…. It’s like you’re possessed.”

“What I am,” Josiah said, “is focused.”

He turned away from Danny and walked back to the truck, reached inside the cab and withdrew the shotgun. Then he stood beside
the bed and tore the tarps loose and exposed Eric Shaw’s wife.

“Josiah! What in… oh,
hell.
You are crazy! You’ve lost your ever-lovin’—”

“I’m going to ask one more time for you to keep silent,” Josiah said, and Danny’s eyes registered for the first time that
the gun in Josiah’s hand was pointed at him.