Jeffery Deaver: Solitude Creek

Out came the boys. Guitars were plugged in. The seat behind the drum set occupied. Ditto the keyboard.

The lead singer tossed his mass of hair aside and lifted an outstretched palm to the audience. The group’s trademark gesture. ‘Are we ready to get down?’

Howling.

‘Well, are we?’

The guitar riffs started. Yes! The song was ‘Escape’. Michelle and her daughter began to clap, along with the hundreds of others in the small space. The heat had increased, the humidity, the embracing scent of bodies. Claustrophobia notched up a bit. Still, Michelle smiled and laughed.

The pounding beat continued, bass, drum and the flesh of palms.

But then Michelle stopped clapping. Frowning, she looked around, cocking her head. What was that? The club, like everywhere in California, was supposed to be non-smoking. But somebody, she was sure, had lit up. She definitely smelled smoke.

She looked around but saw no one with a cigarette in their mouth.

‘What?’ Trish called, seeing her mother’s troubled expression.

‘Nothing,’ the woman replied, and began clapping out the rhythm once again.

At the third word into the second song — it happened to be ‘love’ — Michelle Cooper knew something was wrong.

She smelled the smoke more strongly. And it wasn’t cigarette smoke. Smoke from burning wood or paper.

Or the old, dry walls or flooring of a very congested roadhouse.

‘Mom?’ Trish was frowning, looking around too. Her pert nose twitched. ‘Is that...’

‘I smell it too,’ Michelle whispered. She couldn’t see any fumes but the smell was unmistakable and growing stronger. ‘We’re leaving. Now.’ Michelle stood fast.

‘Hey, lady,’ a man called, catching the stool and righting it. ‘You okay?’ Then he frowned. ‘Jesus. Is that smoke?’

Others were looking around, smelling the same.

No one else in the venue, none of the two hundred or so others — employees or patrons or musicians — existed. Michelle Cooper was getting her daughter out of there. She steered Trish toward the nearest fire-exit door.

‘My purse,’ Trish said over the music. The Brighton bag, a present from Michelle, was hidden on the floor beneath the table — just to be safe. The girl broke away to retrieve the heart-embossed bag.

‘Forget it, let’s go!’ her mother commanded.

‘I’ll just be...’ the girl began and bent down.

‘Trish! No! Leave it.’

By now, a dozen people nearby, who’d seen Michelle’s abrupt rise and lurch toward the exit, had stopped paying attention to the music and were looking around. One by one they were also rising. Curious and troubled expressions on their faces. Smiles becoming frowns. Eyes narrowing. Something predatory, feral about the gazes.

Five or six oozed between Michelle and her daughter, who was still rummaging for the purse. Michelle stepped forward fast and went for the girl’s shoulder to pull her up. Hand gripped sweater. It stretched.

‘Mom!’ Trish pulled away.

It was then that a brilliant light came on, focused on the exit doors.

The music stopped abruptly. The lead singer called into the microphone, ‘Hey, uhm, guys, I don’t know... Look, don’t panic.’

‘Jesus, what’s—’ somebody beside Michelle shouted.

The screams began. Wails filled the venue, loud, nearly loud enough to shatter eardrums.

Michelle struggled to get to Trish but more patrons surged between them. The two were pushed in different directions.

An announcement on the PA: ‘ Ladies and gentlemen, there’s a fire. Evacuate! Evacuate now! Do not use the kitchen or stage exit — that’s where the fire is! Use the emergency doors. ’

Howling screams now.

Patrons rose and stools fell, drinks scattered. Two high-top tables tipped over and crashed to the floor. People began moving toward the exit doors — their glowing red signs were still obvious; the smell of smoke was strong but visibility was good.

‘Trish! Over here!’ Michelle screamed. Now two dozen people were between them. Why the hell had she gone back for the damn purse? ‘Let’s get out!’

Her daughter started toward her through the crowd. But the tide of people surging for the exit doors lifted Michelle off her feet and tugged her away, while Trish was enveloped in another group.

‘Honey!’

‘Mom!’

Michelle, being dragged toward the doors, used every muscle in her body to turn toward her daughter but she was helpless, crushed between two patrons: a heavy-set man in a T-shirt, which was already savagely torn, his skin red, bearing scratch marks from fingernails, and a woman, whose fake breasts pressed painfully into Michelle’s side.

‘Trish, Trish, Trish!’

She might have been mute. The patrons’ screams and wailing — from fear and from pain — were numbing. All she could see was the head of the man in front of her and the exit sign they surged toward. Michelle pounded her fists on shoulders, on arms, on necks, on faces, just as she, too, was pounded by other patrons.

‘I have to get my daughter! Go back, go back, go back!’

But there was no stopping the tide streaming for the exits. Michelle Cooper could breathe only an ounce or two of air at a time. And the pain — in her chest, her side, her gut. Terrible! Her arms were pinned, feet suspended above the floor.

The house lights were on, bright. Michelle turned slightly — not her doing — and saw the faces of the patrons near her: eyes coin-wide in panic, crimson streaks from mouths. Had people bitten their tongues out of fear? Or was the crush snapping ribs and piercing lungs? One man, in his forties, was unconscious, skin gray. Had he fainted? Or died of a heart attack? He was still upright, though, wedged into the moving crowd.

The smell of smoke was stronger now and it was hard to breathe — maybe the fire was sucking the oxygen from the room, though she could still see no flames. Perhaps the patrons, in their panic, were depleting the air. The pressure of bodies against her chest, too.

‘Trish! Honey!’ she called, but the words were whispers. No air in, no air out.

Where was her baby? Was someone helping her escape? Not likely. Nobody, not a single soul, seemed to be helping anyone else. This was an animal frenzy. Every person was out for himself. It was pure survival.

Please...

The group of patrons she was welded to stumbled over something.

Oh, God...

Glancing down, Michelle could just make out a slim young Latina in a red-and-black dress, lying on her side, her face registering pure terror and agony. Her right arm was broken, bent backward. Her other hand was reaching up, fingers gripping a man’s pants pocket.

Helpless. She couldn’t rise; no one paid the least attention to her even as she cried out with every shuffled foot that trampled her body.

Michelle was looking right into the woman’s eyes when a booted foot stepped onto her throat. The man tried to avoid it, crying, ‘No, move back, move back,’ to those around him. But, like everyone else, he had no control of his direction, his motion, his footfalls.

Under the pressure of the weight on her throat, the woman’s head twisted even farther sideways and she began to shake fiercely. By the time Michelle had moved on, the Latina’s eyes were glazed and her tongue protruded slightly from her bright red lips.

Michelle Cooper had just seen someone die.

More PA announcements. Michelle couldn’t hear them. Not that it mattered. She had absolutely no control over anything.

Trish, she prayed, stay on your feet. Don’t fall. Please...

As the mass surrounding her stumbled closer to the fire doors, the crowd began to shift to the right and soon Michelle could see the rest of the club.