Firestarter(113)

They cleared the deadfall easily but now the smell of smoke was sharper, clearer-there was a popping sound from behind them and it was only when a spark spiraled down and briefly stung her flesh like a nettle before going out that she realized she was naked. Naked and

(but the woods are burning)

free, unfettered, loose-she and Necromancer, running for the light.

"Faster," she whispered. "Faster, oh please."

Somehow the big black gelding produced even more speed. The wind in Charlie's ears was rushing thunder. She did not have to.breathe; air was scooped into her throat through her half-open mouth. Sun shone through these old trees in dusty bars like old copper.

And up ahead was the light-the end of the forest, open land, where she and Necromancer would run forever. The fire was behind them, the hateful smell of smoke, the feel of fear. The sun was ahead, and she would ride Necromancer all the way to the sea, where she would perhaps find her father and the two of them would live by pulling in nets full of shining, slippery fish.

"Faster!" she cried triumphantly. "Oh, Necromancer, go faster, go faster, go-"

And that was when the silhouette stepped into the widening funnel of light where the woods ended, blocking the light in its own shape, blocking the way out. At first, as always in this dream, she thought it was her father, was sure it was her father, and her joy became almost hurtful... before suddenly transforming into utter terror.

She just had time to register the fact that the man was too big, too tall-and yet somehow familiar, dreadfully familiar, even in silhouette-before Necromancer reared, screaming.

Can horses scream? I didn't know they could scream-

Struggling to stay on, her thighs slipping as his hooves pawed at the air, and he wasn't screaming, he was whinnying, but it was a scream and there were other screaming whinnies somewhere behind her, oh dear God, she thought, horses back there, horses back there and the woods are burning-

Up ahead, blocking the light, that silhouette, that dreadful shape. Now it began to come toward her; she had fallen onto the path and Necromancer touched her bare stomach gently with his muzzle.

"Don't you hurt my horse!" she screamed at the advancing silhouette, the dream-father who was not her father. "Don't you hurt the horses. Oh, please don't hurt the horses!"

But the figure came on and it was drawing a gun and that was when she awoke, sometimes with a scream, sometimes only in a shuddery cold sweat, knowing that she had dreamed badly but unable to remember anything save the mad, exhilarating plunge down the wooded trail and the smell of fire... these things, and an almost sick feeling of betrayal...

And in the stable that day, she would touch Necromancer or perhaps put the side of her face against his warm shoulder and feel a dread for which she had no name.

ENDGAME

1

It was a bigger room.

Until last week, in fact, it had been the Shop's non-denominational chapel. The speed with which things were picking up could have been symbolized by the speed and ease with which Cap had rammed through Hockstetter's requests. A new chapel-not an odd spare room but a real chapel-was to be built at the eastern end of the grounds. Meanwhile, the remainder of the tests on Charlie McGee would be held here.

The fake wood paneling and the pews had been ripped out. Both flooring and walls had been insulated with asbestos batting that looked like steel wool and then covered over with heavy-guage tempered sheet steel. The area that had been the altar and the nave had been partitioned off: Hockstetter's monitoring instruments and a computer terminal had been installed. All of this had been done in a single week; work had begun just four days before Herman Pynchot ended his life in such grisly fashion.

Now, at two in the afternoon on an early October day, a cinderblock wall stood in the middle of the long room. To the left of it was a huge, low tank of water. Into this tank, which was six feet deep, had been dumped more than two thousand pounds of ice. In front of it stood Charlie McGee, looking small and neat in a blue denim jumper and red and black striped rugby socks. Blond pigtails tied off with small black velvet bows hung down to her shoulder blades.

"All right, Charlie," Hockstetter's voice said over the intercom. Like everything else, the intercom had been hastily installed, and its reproduction was tinny and poor. "We're ready when you are."

The cameras filmed it all in living color. In these films, the small girl's head dips slightly, and for a few seconds nothing happens at all. Inset at the left of the film frame is a digital temperature readout. All at once it begins to move upward, from seventy to eighty to ninety. After that the figures jump up so rapidly that they are just a shifting reddish blur; the electronic temperature probe has been placed in the center of the cinderblock wall.

Now the film switches to slow motion; it is the only way that the entire action can be caught. To the men who watched it through the observation room's leaded-glass viewing ports, it happened with the speed of a gunshot.

In extreme slow motion, the cinderblock wall begins to smoke; small particles of mortar and concrete begin to jump lazily upward like popping corn. Then the mortar holding the blocks together can be observed to be running, like warm molasses. Then the bricks begin to crumble, from the center outward. Showers of particles, then clouds of them, blow back as the blocks explode with the heat. Now the digital heat sensor implanted in the center of this wall freezes at a reading of over seven thousand degrees. It freezes not because the temperature has stopped climbing but because the sensor itself has been destroyed.