Firestarter(137)

Charlie fell to her knees, feeling for her father, and the horses began to flash past, her on their way out, little more than dim, dreamlike shapes. Overhead, a flaming rafter fell in a shower of sparks and ignited the loose hay in one of the lower bays. In the short side of the L, a thirty-gallon drum of tractor gas went up with a dull, coughing roar.

Flying hooves passed within scant inches of Charlie's head as she crawled with her hands out like a blind thing. Then one of the fleeing horses struck her a glancing blow and she fell backward. One of her hands found a shoe.

"Daddy?" she whimpered. "Daddy?" He was dead. She was sure he was dead. Everything was dead; the world was flame; they had killed her mother and now they had killed her father.

Her sight was beginning to come back, but still everything was dim. Waves of heat pulsed over her. She felt her way up his leg, touched his belt, and then went lightly up his shirt until, her fingers reached a damp, sticky patch. It was spreading. There she paused in horror, and she was unable to make her fingers go on.

"Daddy," she whispered. "Charlie?" It was no more than a low, husky croak... but it was he. His hand found her face and tugged her weakly. "Come here. Get... get close."

She came to his side, and now his face swam out of the gray dazzle. The left side of it was pulled down in a grimace; his left eye was badly bloodshot, reminding her of that morning in Hastings Glen when they woke in that motel.

"Daddy, look at this mess," Charlie groaned, and began to cry.

"No time," he said. "Listen. Listen, Charlie!"

She bent over him, her tears wetting his face.

"This was coming, Charlie... Don't waste your tears on me. But-"

"No! No!"

"Charlie, shut up!" he said roughly. "They're going to want to kill you now. You understand? No... no more games. Gloves off." He pronounced it "glubs" from the corner of his cruelly twisted mouth. "Don't let them, Charlie. And don't let them cover it up. Don't let them say... just a fire..."

He had raised his head slightly and now lay back, panting. From outside, dim over the hungry crackle of the fire, came the faint and unimportant pop of guns... and once more the scream of horses.

"Daddy, don't talk... rest..."

"No. Time." Using his right arm, he was able to get partway up again to comfort her. Blood trickled from both corners of his mouth. "You have got to get away if you can, Charlie." She wiped the blood away from the hem of her jumper. From behind, the fire baked into her. "Get away if you can. If you have to kill the ones in your way, Charlie, do it. It's a war. Make them know they've been in a war." His voice was failing now. "You get away if you can, Charlie. Do it for me. Do you understand?"

She nodded...

Overhead, near the back, another rafter let go in a flaming Catherine wheel of orange-yellow sparks. Now the heat rushed out at them as if from an open furnace flue. Sparks lit on her skin and winked out like hungry, biting insects.

"Make it"-he coughed up thick blood and forced the words out-"make it so they can never do anything like this again. Burn it down, Charlie. Burn it all down."

"Daddy-"

"Go on, now. Before it all goes up."

"I can't leave you," she said in a shaking, helpless voice.

He smiled and pulled her even closer, as if to whisper in her ear. But instead he kissed her. "-love you, Ch-"he said, and died.

20

Don Jules had found himself in charge by default. He held on as long as he could after the fire started, convinced that the little girl would run out into their field of fire. When it didn't happen-and when the men in front of the stables began to catch their first glimpse of what had happened to the men behind it-he decided he could wait no longer, not if he wanted to hold them. He began to move forward, and the others came with him... but their faces were tight and set. They no longer looked like men on a turkey shoot.

Then shadows moved rapidly inside the double doors. She was coming out. Guns came up: two men fired before anything at all came out. Then-But it wasn't the girl; it was the horses, half a dozen of them, eight, ten, their coats flecked with foam, their eyes rolling and white-rimmed, mad with fear.

Jules's men, on hair trigger, opened fire. Even those who had held back, seeing that horses rather than humans were leaving the stable, seemed unable to hold back once their colleagues had begun firing. It was a slaughter. Two of the horses pitched forward to their knees, one of them whinnying miserably. Blood flew in the bright October air and slicked the grass.

"Stop!" Jules bawled. "Stop, dammit! Stop shooting the f**king horses!"

He might as well have been King Canute giving orders to the tide. The men-afraid of something they could not see, hyped by the alarm buzzer, the Bright Yellow alert, the fire that was now pluming thick black smoke at the sky, and the heavy kawhummm! of the exploding tractor-gas-finally had moving targets to shoot at... and they were shooting.

Two of the horses lay dead on the grass. Another lay half on and half off" the crushed-stone driveway, sides heaving rapidly. Three more, crazed with fear, veered to the left and made at the four or five men spread there. They gave way, still shooting, but one of the men tripped over his own feet and was trampled, screaming...

"Quit it!" Jules screamed. "Quit it! Cease-cease firing! Goddammit, cease firing, you ass**les!"