Wild Card Run

When we hurried up the steps from the control room of the tower, dragging along a sleepy, protesting David, the air had a bitter sting to it. The wind shredded a dark cloud of smoke past us. A line of flame roared between us and the monorail line, whipped along by the wind.

“Fireblood and thorns!” I froze, staring in dismay as the flames billowed and exploded through tinder-dry wheat, sparks flying and scattering more fires in the hot wind.

Jason stood stiffly, his face blank, stunned. “Aaron. He must be mad.”

David broke free of us and scrambled onto the rollcart. “Holy crap! It’s headed for Tower One! What’s wrong with the emergency sprinklers?”

“Jason! You just tested them. Aaron must have done something.”

Jason jumped up onto the cart beside David. “Wind’s taking it back around us! It’s moving fast! We’ll be surrounded if we don’t make a run for it. Hurry, Ruth! I think we can get out around Tower Three and still make the railcar when it stops.” He jumped back down and grabbed my arm, dragging me up into the cart. He swung the stick and headed for the gap, racing a line of advancing flames.

“Jason, wait! Look, over there!” I stood, clutching the back of the seat as the wind tore my hat off and whirled it away. “Look!” Behind us, through the licking flames and smoke, I caught a glimpse of a dark figure moving through the wheat.

Jason jerked the cart to a halt and peered through the haze of smoke.

“There! It’s Aaron!” David coughed and scrambled up onto the rails of the cart bed. He craned and pointed.

The wind whipped and flattened the flames, and I could see him again. He was in Field Two, between us and the house, hurrying toward us through the wind-tossed wheat with an oil can in one hand and a torch in the other, thrusting the burning torch into the wheat in wild jabs, trying to complete the circle that would trap us. I could almost see his eyes burning with the flames of his righteous revenge. But he hadn’t looked around him. The gale had carried sparks around him, encircling him and cutting off his own escape to the house.

“Jason, he must be out of his mind! If he’s turned off the sprinkler system, it’ll get to the house soon! We’ve got to go back to the tower and get hoses! We can still save him and try to stop it!”

Jason searched my eyes. “Ruth, you don’t owe him anything. This is your chance. You and David take the cart to the monorail, get away while you can. I’ll get the hoses and break a path through to the house. We’ll stop it. You go now.” He jumped down and ran for the tower.

“Jason, wait!” David yelled after him. “Jeez, that guy can run!” He scrambled into the driver’s seat. “Maybe I can fix the sprinklers, Ruth!”

“Good thinking! Come on, get this thing turned around! They’ll need our help.”

Jason had already lugged up two of the heavy coils of hose from the control room by the time we parked the cart back in the tower clearing. The fire was a roaring monster now, throwing out claws in the wind, breathing out its acrid breath. The wheat field was a rumbling orange mass, twisting and belching up thick clouds of smoke and sparks. Overhead, one touched a sail, and a ragged hole melted into the mylar.

“Jason! We’ve got to keep it back from the tower. If we lose the sails, we’ll lose water pressure for the hoses.”

“Ruth, go! Get away! Please!” He yanked the hoses loose and connected them.

“No! We’ve got to help! Can we get to Aaron?”

“I think so.” He paused to give me a despairing look, then jerked the hose end over to clamp it into the tower water outlet. “All right. Get more hoses. And take off that skirt!”

David and I were running for the control room before he’d finished. David was already opening panels and flicking switches before I’d torn off my dress. I jerked on coveralls and grabbed a heavy coil of hose, staggering up the steps with it. Jason passed me going down, then bounded up behind me carrying two more.

“Here, you take the first line and start on the left. I’ll hook these up and come in behind you. We’ll break through to Aaron, and then I’m sending you back to the house to get Sam and Helen. If David can’t get the sprinklers on, we’ll send Helen to the village and—damn! I put the other rollcarts down!”

“We’ll send David on this one. Ooof!” The hose bucked and nearly knocked me over as Jason turned on the pressure. I adjusted the spray and gripped harder, moving slowly forward. “Okay!”

I fanned the water back and forth as I advanced against the flames, but the wind fought me all the way. My face was burning and soaked with sweat. The blaze was frightening now, a menacing roar beneath the snapping lick of the flames. Jason came up behind me and passed ahead and to the right, the water pluming and spraying in the wind as he slowly pushed back the flames. But it was racing ahead of us, toward the house. I didn’t know if Aaron was there, or if he’d already been consumed. Once I thought I heard a cry over the roaring, but it had no more meaning than the snap of the fire and the screaming wind.

I was moving through a dream, a fevered nightmare of twisting demon shapes of smoke and leaping flame. In the center of the blaze, a huge eye seemed to take shape, watching me, its iris a writhing mass of crimson and gold flames. Watching me and waiting.

“Ruth!”

My head snapped away from the nightmare blaze, and I saw Jason had broken through into a patch of unburned wheat. I worked my way toward him, widening the wedge of soggy, burned stubble as the fire roared away to the side.

“Aaron! Aaron, this way, man!” Jason was shouting, spraying his hose to the left.

It was too late. The circle of fire had nearly closed. A dark figure turned, silhouetted against that roaring orange mass, bent over, coughing. He ran toward us. But a finger of flame reached out for him past the range of Jason’s hose, and fiery stalks showered down over him.

I couldn’t hear him scream above the raging fire. He was writhing, running, twisting, a human shape of agony in flame. Jason and I leaped forward into the burning pincers and doused the flames, dragging him back as the blaze closed in after us. I didn’t dare look at him until we were back on the soaked, burned swath of bare stubble. Roaring surrounded us.

“Aaron! Sacred Founder . . .” I swallowed down a surge of nausea. “Aaron, why did you do it?”

He stirred and moaned. One eye cracked open in the blistered, blackened ruin of his face. I glanced down at his body and shuddered. It was charred, a glimpse of oozing flesh and bone showing near his ribs, and I knew it was hopeless. I was surprised he wasn’t dead already. I tried to ease him against the ground, and he bit off a short, shrill scream.

Jason touched my shoulder. “Ruth, it’s too late. We’ve got to get through and fight it from the other side.”

But I couldn’t move. Aaron’s one eye was fixed on me, pinning me there as I held his shoulders. His mouth was only a gash in the puffed and raw flesh, but he whispered something.

I leaned closer. “Aaron . . .”

A clawlike hand gripped me, and the mouth writhed. “Guardians told me . . . scourge the sin. Founder’s wrath.. like fire.” He wheezed, gripped harder with a surprising strength. “Burn your sin, whore.” His eye blazed into mine, all of his pain fused into hate. “Burn you from the Plan, like Isaac.. before you.. corrupt it, too.” The eye closed, then opened again. “I stopped you.. both.” He wheezed, ended on a whisper, “They’re coming . . . for you, Jezrial.” The last word faded into the wind, and his eye went blank and glassy.

I sat holding what was left of him, the taste of ashes in my mouth. So he really had killed Isaac. The flames licked around me in their demon dance. All these years, so much fear and hate. He had even carried it into death with him.

“Ruth, we have to leave him! Fire’s closing in again! Wind’ll scatter his ashes for us. Come on, now! We’ve got to get out!”

He dragged me back, and I numbly pulled my hose along. The blaze was closing in on the tower, and it was too late to fight it from this side. “David!” Jason ran into the control room and emerged with David in tow. He disconnected the hoses and started flinging them into the back of the rollcart.

“Ruth, I can’t figure out what’s wrong with the sprinkler system! Everything looks fine, there’s nothing shorted, no alarms. But it won’t come on!” David’s face was smudged with ash. tears streaked through it.

“Don’t worry, David, we’ll get to Tower One and maybe you can work it out there. Come on, jump in!” I scrambled up as Jason threw the cart into high speed and we jounced forward over the burned-off swath into the smoke and sparks.

“But where’s Aaron?”

I looked away at the leaping flames. “He didn’t make it, David.”

“Oh.”

The roar of the blaze filled our silence as we bucked over the lumpy, burned field, through the narrow corridor between fires. The wind whipped choking clouds of smoke past us, swirling fingers of flame to grab at our backs. The red, glowing eye of the demon taunted me, its voice hissing through the fire, whispering, “The anger of the Founder shall be as a flame upon the land.” That eye, watching and waiting.