Rick Mofina - Six Seconds

“Maggie Conlin,” she said.

“Mom?”

“Logan! Is that you!?”

“I miss you, Mom.” Static filled the silence. “Mom, Dad said he misses you, too.”

“Oh, Logan, I love you! I love Daddy! He’s just confused.”

“Mom, I want to come home, I-” Their connection buzzed.

“Where you are? I’m coming as fast as I can! Honey, just tell me!”

The call went dead.

The shower stopped.

Logan switched off the phone, placed it back in Samara’s purse, his entire body tingling.

He’d talked to Mom!

He’d have to figure out a way to try again later, he thought as he brushed his teeth, washed up, then put on his suit. His dad had already knotted the tie for him. Combing his hair at the mirror, Logan wished his dad would wake up.

The suit was comfortable. It looked pretty cool.

“Oh, you look so handsome,” Samara said when Logan stepped into the living room, where she’d been working on her computer. “Come, quickly.” She stood and grabbed her camera. She looked pretty. Almost like a model in her new suit. “Here. Let me take some pictures to share with my friends.” She stood him before a plain wall, studied the camera settings and took several frames. “Everyone will be so proud. Don’t move. Wait a few seconds.”

They waited.

“Nice,” she said. “Now some of us together.” Pleased, Samara then fixed the camera to a tripod, set it, then joined Logan. Not only did she look nice, she smelled good, too. Like flowers, Logan thought, as the camera flashed and automatically fired off several more frames of them together.

She checked them on her laptop, waiting a moment. “Good.”

Samara set to work downloading the pictures into her computer.

“What about Dad?”

“What about him? He’s still sleeping.” Samara was typing rapidly on her keyboard. Her attention was on her computer work.

“Don’t we need pictures with him, too?”

“Sorry.” She glanced at the live TV coverage of the visit, then back to her computer as if she were rushed. “Sorry. No, we’ll take more with him at the school with the pope.”

Logan went to her, to see what was so important on the computer. She didn’t mind him looking over her shoulder. Samara was checking her copy of the official program for the pope’s visit-it looked like a minuteby-minute breakdown. He noticed she’d run a cable from the TV to her laptop, so some coverage was playing live on her screen. Then he saw pictures of Samara under a palm tree in Iraq with her son and husband. Then he saw the photos she just took of himself in his new suit, and her.

“What’s all this? What’re you doing?”

Samara’s eyes widened and she smiled.

“Logan, we’re taking part in the honor of a lifetime. I want to share it on the Web with my friends around the world. Almost done.”

Samara entered codes and commands.

A small timer emerged and started counting down.

“All right. Done.”

Samara left her computer on with all of her programs running, picture, timers, live news coverage.

“Let’s go-we have to get over to the community hall for our briefing and checks before they take us to the school.”

She got another camera from her bag.

“Is that a new one?” Logan asked.

“Yes, a very special one I want to use at the school.” Samara lowered herself to Logan and smiled. “Who could ever have imagined this? Very soon, we are going to be meeting one of the most powerful people on earth. You and I will have a place in history, Logan. Soon everyone in the world will see our faces and speak our names.”

“They’ll say our names? But why?”

“Because we’ll be part of history.”

Highway 200, eastbound for Cold Butte, Montana

Rick Mofina

Six Seconds

“Did the number come up? Call back,” Graham said.

Maggie checked. No number. She hit the call-back feature, got a busy signal. Graham passed her his notebook with the DMV info for Burt Russell, pointing. “Try this number.”

The line rang, then an automated response. The number was not in service. Maggie tried the school. That line was busy.

“Damn, damn, damn!” she said.

The rental’s engine roared as Graham wheeled hard into the right shoulder. The line of jammed cars, vans, RVs, charter buses, pickups blurred by them as he raced for nearly a mile before a siren sounded.

A Montana Highway Patrol car appeared in his rearview mirror, light bar flashing. In the distance behind it, Graham saw a white sedan following the police car. Traffic cops hated queue jumpers and the lemming effect they inspired.

At a junction just ahead, several Montana Highway Patrol cars had established a choke point where patrol men were diverting some traffic to secondary roads. One spoke into his shoulder mike, stepped in Graham’s path and leveled a finger at him.

Graham stopped.

Three patrolmen, including the one in pursuit, un strapped their holsters as they approached, ordering Graham and Maggie to put their hands on the dash. Far behind, the white sedan slipped unnoticed back into the traffic line.

Graham cooperated as they studied his badge and Maggie’s California license.

Moe Holman, the most senior patrolman and a chronic gum-chewer who’d worked the border at Coutts and Sweetgrass, recognized Graham from years gone by. He’d handle it, he told the others and waved Graham out, taking him aside.

“Hi, Moe.”

The men shook hands.

“Key ripes, Daniel, what the hell’re you doing? Your passenger’s a long way from home and you’ve got no authority to drive like a sinner. The pope’s not going to save you from my ticket.”

Graham explained that he and Maggie just needed to get to an address in Cold Butte to check on her boy; it was a pressing domestic matter related to Graham’s multiple death case, and that Graham had alerted the FBI in Billings.

Gum-snapping, Holman nodded between traffic calls on his radio. The last thing his crew needed now was more work. The pope deal had them stretched. He let Graham go ahead with a warning, radioed his okay to troopers down the line.

“Drive safely, Daniel. Got a lot of folks filled with the spirit today.”

Traffic moved faster as Graham and Maggie left the junction, continuing east for Lone Tree along the two-lane highway that sliced across Montana’s midway point.

Maggie fought tears as she tried to reconnect with Logan and the school. Her fingers shook each time she pressed the numbers. Phone service was sporadic, strained by the heavy call volume related to the visit.

No luck.

She kept trying.

Graham made good time swinging into the oncom ing lane, passing when it was clear. At a rare, sweeping curve, he fell into line among several slow-moving rigs when a car blazed by them at high speed.

A white sedan.

“That idiot’s going way too fast.” Graham shook his head. “We’re almost there.”

He handed Maggie detailed maps for Cold Butte and began discussing a plan. She touched one finger on the school, one on Crystal Creek Road then jumped in her seat as the rig ahead blasted its air horn.

“Oh, God!”

In an instant the rig’s brake lights glowed, its trailer veered to the shoulder, stones peppered the car; the truck bucked, something emerged at terrifying speed through smoking rubber.

Something bearing down directly on Graham and Maggie!

Maggie covered her face for the impact as Graham’s training took over; he tapped the brake, swerved to the shoulder. A blinding force whipped by within inches of hitting them and the rig behind them.

Graham glimpsed the white car, a missile in his rearview mirror. It launched cleanly off the highway, airborne for some thirty feet before smashing into the grassy plain, rolling end over end, swallowed by a dust cloud that spat fragmenting metal and glass before emitting a thud then a fireball, and a black column that billowed skyward.