Douglas Preston - White Fire

Pausing to listen, she heard a muffled whine and a scratching sound. It came from the grand living room — a room that had been shut up and which she’d been strictly forbidden to enter. She went to the closed set of pocket doors. “Jack?”

Another whine and bark, accompanied by more scratching.

She felt her heart pounding. Something was very, very wrong.

She placed her hand on the doors, found them unlocked, and slowly pulled them apart. Immediately, Jack rushed out from the darkness beyond, crouching and whining and licking her, tail clamped between his legs.

“Who put you in here, Jack?”

She looked about the dark room. It seemed quiet, empty — and then she saw a dark outline of a figure on the sofa.

“Hey!” she cried in surprise.

Jack cowered behind her, whining.

The figure moved a little, very slowly.

“Who are you and what are you doing here?” Corrie demanded. This was stupid. She should get out, now.

“Oh,” came a thick voice out of the blackness. “It’s you.”

“Stacy?”

No answer.

“Good God, are you all right?”

“Fine, no problem,” came the slurred voice again.

Corrie turned on the lights. And there was Stacy, slumped on the sofa, a fifth of Jim Beam half empty in front of her. She was still bundled up in her winter clothes — scarf, hat, and all. A small puddle of water lay at her feet, and watery tracks led to the sofa.

“Oh, no. Stacy!”

Stacy waved her arm, before letting it fall to the sofa. “Sorry.”

“What have you been doing? Were you outside?”

“Out for a walk. Looking for that mother who shot up your car.”

“But I told you not to do that. You could have frozen to death out there!” Corrie noticed that Stacy was packing, a .45 holstered to her hip. Jesus, she would have to get that gun away.

“Don’t worry about me.”

“I do worry about you. I’m totally worried about you!”

“Come on, siddown, have a drink. Relax.”

Corrie sat but ignored the offer of a drink. “Stacy, what’s going on?”

At this Stacy hung her head. “I dunno. Nothing. My life sucks.”

Corrie took her hand. No wonder the dog had been freaked out. “I’m sorry. I feel the same way myself sometimes. You want to talk about it?”

“My military career — shot. No family. No friends. Nothing. There’s nothing in my life but a box of old bones to haul back to Kentucky. And for what purpose? What a fucked-up idea that was.”

“But your military career. You’re a captain. All those medals and citations — you can do anything…”

“My life’s fucked. I was discharged.”

“You mean…you didn’t resign?”

Stacy shook her head. “Medical discharge.”

“Wounded?”

“PTSD.”

A silence. “Oh, Jesus. I’m sorry, I really am.”

There was a long pause. Then Stacy spoke again. “You have no idea. I get these rages — no reason. Screaming like a fucking maniac. Or hyperventilation: total panic attack. Christ, it’s awful. And there’s no warning. I feel so down sometimes, I can’t get out of bed, sleep fourteen hours a day. And then I start doing this shit — drinking. Can’t get a job. The medical discharge…they see that on a job application, it’s like, oh, we can’t hire her, she’s fucking mental. They’ve all got yellow ribbons on their cars, but when it comes to hiring a vet with posttraumatic stress disorder? Outta here, bitch.”

She reached out to take up the bottle. Corrie intercepted her and gently grasped it at the same time. “Don’t you think you’ve had enough?”

Stacy jerked the bottle out of her hand, went to take a swig, and then, all of a sudden, threw it across the room, shattering it against the far wall. “Fuck, yeah. Enough.”

“Let me help you get to bed.” She took Stacy’s arm. Stacy rose unsteadily to her feet while Corrie supported her. God, she stank of bourbon. Corrie felt so sorry for her. She wondered if she could slip the .45 out of its holster unnoticed, but decided that might not be a good idea, might set Stacy off. Just get her into bed and then deal with the gun.

“They catch the fuck shot your car?” Stacy slurred.

“No. They think it might have been a poacher.”

“Poacher, my ass.” She stumbled and Corrie helped right her. “Couldn’t find the bastard’s tracks. Too much fresh snow.”

“Let’s not worry about that now.”

“I am worrying!” She clapped her hand to the sidearm and yanked it out, waving it about. “I’m gonna smoke that fucker!”

“You know you shouldn’t handle a firearm when you’ve been drinking,” Corrie said quietly and firmly, controlling her disquiet.

“Yeah. Right. Sorry.” Stacy ejected the magazine, which she fumbled and dropped to the floor, scattering bullets. “You’d better take it.”

She held it out, butt-first, and Corrie took it.

“Careful, there’s still one in the chamber. Lemme eject it for you.”

“I’ll do it.” Corrie racked the round out of the chamber, letting it fall to the floor.

“Hey. You know what you’re doing, girl!”

“I’d better, since I’m studying law enforcement.”

“Fuck, yeah, you’re gonna make a good cop someday. You will. I like you, Corrie.”

“Thanks.” She helped Stacy along the hallway toward their rooms. Corrie could hear more choppers overhead, and, through a window, a spotlight from one of them trained on the ground, moving this way and that. Something was happening.

She finally got Stacy tucked under the covers, putting a plastic wastebasket next to the bed in case she puked. Stacy fell asleep instantly.

Corrie went back to the living room and started cleaning up, Jack trailing her. Stacy’s drunkenness had freaked out the poor dog. It had freaked her out, as well. As she was straightening up she heard yet another chopper flying overhead. She went to the plate-glass windows and peered into the darkness. She could just see, over the ridge in the direction of town, an intense yellow glow.

Just when things couldn’t possibly get worse, they did, thought Chief Morris as he looked at the two wrecked cars blocking Highway 82 and the furious, desperate traffic jam piling up behind. The medevac chopper was just lifting off, rotor wash blowing snow everywhere, as if there weren’t enough of it in the air already, carrying away the two victims to the advanced trauma unit at Grand Junction, where at least one of them, shot through the head, was probably going to die. What really infuriated the chief was that no one had been hurt in the accident; instead, it had generated a road-rage incident in which the driver of a BMW X5 had pulled a gun and shot the two occupants of the Geländewagen that had rear-ended him. He could hear the perp now, handcuffed in the back of his cruiser while waiting for the snowcat to arrive, yelling at the top of his lungs about “self-defense” and “standing my ground.” So if the victim died — and most people with a .38 round through the skull did — that would mean nine murders in little more than a week. All in a town that hadn’t seen a murder in years.

What a nightmare — with no end in sight.

Four days before Christmas, and the snow was now falling heavily, with a prediction of twenty-four to thirty inches over the next three days, with accompanying high winds toward the tail end of the storm. Highway 82—the only way out of town — was gridlocked because of the accident; the snowplows couldn’t operate; the blizzard was quickly getting ahead of them; and in an hour or less the road would have to be closed and all these people sitting furiously in their cars, yelling and honking and screeching like maniacs, would have to be rescued.