Chuck Logan - Absolute Zero

The flare might do the trick by itself. But the wood was really cold and the gas tank far away from the flame. He didn’t have the time to wait and find out. So he rolled over, pawed the safety latch, and set the gun to fire.

Squirming now, he came around with the shotgun still cradled in one elbow and jammed his blunt fingers into the trigger guard.

All his life he’d lectured people about not riding around with loaded guns in their cars. And because he was basically a lizard right now, his memory was faulty. Had he jacked a round in the chamber in J.T.’s Quonset hut? Because if he didn’t, there was no way, with these hands, he could work the slide and load one now.

Broker aimed the muzzle at the gas tank and poked at the trigger.

The gun kicked back and out of his elbow. But a streak of flame shot from the barrel and tore into the under side of the Jeep. For a split second the muzzle flash illuminated the piled logs and brush. A gasoline mist curtsied with the flare’s chemistry. Then the gas tank erupted.

The explosion filled the woods with fire, rolled Broker over, popped his eardrums, and blistered his face.

He came up grinning.

Now that’s how you build a fire, Jack.

But it was way too toasty, so he scrambled away from the blaze that now reached up twenty feet into the air, snapping and sparking through overhead birch branches.

He was in agony, of course, smashed between freezing and roasting. He might lose fingers and toes. But he was back in the game. He thanked the lizard, proceeded up his brain stem, and tried to marshal conscious thought.

Earl. Somehow followed them.

If Earl did this then Amy and Jolene were in danger.

And Hank.

These thoughts, though dire, grabbed no traction on his shivering. More immediately he struggled to stand and tried to stamp circulation back into his feet. He managed one pirouette in front of the bonfire and toppled over. The blood in his hands and feet had turned to broken glass and needles.

Getting up, he noticed the reflection of the flames glitter beyond the trees. Lake ice.

And then Broker saw more lights appear across the lake. Squares of electric lights popping on. Windows.

Stamping, falling, getting up, he hugged himself and tried to flex blood back into his stinging fingers. Using his teeth, he managed to pull on woolen mittens from his pack. After working up the courage to explore the gash on his scalp, he pulled off a mitten and touched his fingers to his face. Nothing. Feeling ended at his wrists. He licked at the numbness next to his mouth and tasted blood Popsicles. Burnt steak from the flare.

His concern for Amy, Jolene, and Hank was still relative and dreamy, far removed from the local question of his own survival.

Then, a pair of lights beyond the trees caught his attention. They moved with purpose, slowly getting larger. A vehicle. But was it attracted by the fire?

Broker stamped and staggered and fell down and got up and waited as the headlights poked and lurched through the woods and materialized in the form of a Ford pickup. He hobbled to it as the driver got out and peered at him. They recognized each other.

It was Billie’s neighbor, Annie Lunder, which meant that Earl hadn’t hauled him very far from the lodge. In her late sixties, swaddled in wool and fleece, Annie had not changed one bit and was still edgy and mean as a doubled-bladed axe. She and his Uncle Billie had fallen out of love and hated each other since the Korean War-something about a property-line dispute and Billie marrying her sister, Aunt Marcy, now departed.

Annie winced, seeing his torn face in the firelight. “Philip Broker, you feral child; I swear you were raised by wolves. Look at you out here in tennis shoes in this weather. And playing with matches. What the hell are you trying to do? Burn down my woods?”

“Phone,” Broker croaked. “Life and death.”

“What’s that?” she squinted, cupping one gloved hand to the side of her hat.

“Nine one one. Billie’s lodge.”

She had grabbed Hank’s legs and hauled him unceremoniously off the daybed, through the kitchen, and bumping down the hall into the bedroom. She positioned him with a pillow at his back, tilted against a closet door so he could clearly see her go to Amy on the bed.

“Okay, get a good look. Now you can be happy because we’re all going to die when they get back.” Jolene yanked the IV from Amy’s hand. Christ, his eyes were rolling again. She didn’t even know if he saw it.

Then, not even rolling. Shut. He now lay on the floor truly looking like a corpse. A few feet above him, Amy nodded on the bed, her breathing shallow and labored. A single tendril of blood marked her left wrist where the IV had been inserted. The plastic stent now dangled along her shoulder.

Jolene stood at bay, between them.

She held the scotch bottle in one hand and a shotgun she’d found in the bedroom closet in the other. Except the goddamn gun wasn’t loaded because she couldn’t find any goddamn shells for it. And the room was a shambles from her desperate search.

Fucking gun safety for you.

And looking for those shells may have been a fatal diversion, because she’d neglected to get her cell phone from the living room, and there was no phone in the bedroom and now they were in the house. She’d heard the glass break at the backdoor and heard the shuffle of their footsteps and their voices. Then she saw the doorknob twist. And the voices moved on, into the main room where they’d discover she had moved Hank.

Then they would be back.

Okay, she had to do it.

She raised the bottle, took a drink, and the whiskey surged in her throat, teared in her eyes, and caused her to cough. She set the bottle down on the floor and studied the door which was secured only by an old-fashioned hand slip lock. She picked up a straight-backed chair from next to the dresser and stockaded it at an angle, the backrest wedged under the knob. That would stop Earl for maybe half a second.

There was the window. Nothing but thermal glass and storms. She didn’t see them trying to break in through the window on a night like this.

“Okay, now what?” she said to Hank’s prone form. He’d apparently passed out from fatigue, so he wasn’t even there to witness her one big moment.

“Just like a fucking man, build me all up and then-pfsst-go limp on me.”

He’d never explained how there were no rules for this hero stuff; you kind of made it up as you went along. Being scared shitless was the main thrill so far.

She appreciated the irony; how she had quit drinking to change her life. Now she was drinking to get the courage to really change it.

No, she was drinking because Earl would understand the behavior under stress. And when she drank she always went to him for help. God, if only there was a phone in here.

Get. . them. . fight .

“Okay, baby,” she said under her breath. “I’m working on it.”

It meant she’d have to open the door enough to show the gun and let Earl smell her breath. Oh, Christ. It all came down to that. Here we go. Bottom of the ninth, two outs and two strikes, and one pitch to decide the World Series.

She reached for the Johnny Walker and took another slug, a big one that flooded her with warmth. And the footsteps were coming back down the hall, no longer cautious shuffling, striding. Angry.

A fist pounded the door.

Earl.

All her adult life she’d had to anticipate and avoid Earl’s anger. She had never manipulated it. Now it was the only way out of this mess.

“Jolene, goddammit, I know you’re in there.”

Earl. Real mad but, judging by his voice, trying to control it.

Good.

She put down the bottle and wracked the slide on the shotgun like they do in the movies because it sounds cool except, Earl always said, if you’re in the shit it’s kind of dumb not to have one in the chamber already and telegraph your position.