C. Box - Free Fire

He turned and ran across the street, hoping she wouldn’t follow.On the other sidewalk, he wiped at his eyes with his sleeve, stunned. Marge glared at him, as if contemplating whether or not to give chase.

“Don’t ever threaten my dogs!” she hollered.

Then she jammed the useless receiver back on the cradle, lumbered into her pickup, which sagged as she climbed in, and drove down the street, leaving a cloud of acrid blue smoke.

Before reaching up and touching the lump forming beneath his scalp, McCann put the gun back in his pocket so no one would see it. He hoped she wasn’t headed for the sheriff’s department.

On the wall of the supermarket, the telephone box rang.

He closed his eyes, leaned back against the front of a motel that was closed for the season, and slowly sank until he was sittingon the concrete.

The street was empty and Clay McCann listened to his future,for the time being, go unanswered.

He was still sitting on the sidewalk, eyes closed, his new headache pounding between the walls of his skull like a jungle drum, when Butch Toomer, the ex-sheriff, kicked him on the sole of his shoe. “You all right?”

McCann opened one eye and looked up. “Not really.”

“You can’t just sit there on the sidewalk.”

“I know.”

Toomer squatted so they could talk eye-to-eye. McCann could smell smoke, liquor, and cologne emanating from the collarof the ex-sheriff’s heavy Carhartt jacket. Toomer had dark, deep-set eyes. His mouth was hidden under a drooping gun-fighter’s mustache.

“You owe me some money, Clay, and I sure could use it.”

McCann nodded weakly. Now this, he thought.

“Tactics and firearms training don’t come cheap. And it looks like it paid off for you pretty damned well. Four thousand dollars, that’s what we agreed to back in June, remember?”

“Was it that much?” McCann said, knowing it was. He had never even contemplated, at the time, that money would be a problem. He did a quick calculation. Unless he sold his home or office or suddenly got a big retainer or the money he was owed came through, well, he was shit out of luck.

Then he thought of the business cards in his pocket. And his so-called business partners who had hung him out to dry. They could use some shaking up.

He said, “How would you like to turn that four thousand into more?”

Toomer coughed, looked both ways down the street. “Say again?”

McCann repeated it.

“Let’s talk,” Toomer said.

The iowan’s name was darren rudloff, he told Joe and Demming over the roar of helicopter rotors, and he was from Washington, Iowa, which he pronounced “ Warsh -ington.” He’d lost his job at a feed store, his girlfriend took up with his best bud, and his landlord insisted on payment in full of back rent. He felt trapped, so he figured what the hell and headed west armed to the teeth to live out his fantasy: to be an outlaw, to live off the land. He liked Robinson Lake. There had been dozens of hikers on the trail over the summer, but he’d avoided them. None were brazen or stupid enough to walk right into his camp, as Joe and Demming had done. When asked about the murders or the murder scene, he said he knew nothing other than what he’d read before he came out. All this he told Joe and Demming while the IV drips pumped glucose and drugs into his wrists to deaden the pain and keep him alive, while EMTs scrambled around his gurneyreplacing strips of Joe’s shirt with fresh bandages until they could land in Idaho Falls and get him into surgery.

Joe found himself feeling sorry for Rudloff, despite what had happened. Rudloff seemed less than dangerous now. In fact, he seemed confused, childlike, and a little wistful. Joe had a soft spot for men who desired the simplicity of the frontier that no longer existed, because he’d once had those yearnings himself. And, like Rudloff, he’d thought that Yellowstone was the place to seek them out. They’d both been wrong.

Demming confessed to Rudloff that she’d lied to him about Congress passing a law.

“I figured that out,” Rudloff said through bandages on his face that muffled his voice. “That’s the only good thing about today, I reckon. We don’t need no more laws. I’ll head back up there when I’m patched up.”

“I’d advise against it,” Demming said.

“You gonna press charges?”

“Maybe.”

“Where you gonna have the trial?” Rudloff chided.

Demming had no answer to that, and she ignored him for the rest of the trip.

Joe asked the helicopter pilot to take them back to the Bechlerstation to get his vehicle after they’d admitted Rudloff. The pilot agreed.

They landed on the only clear, flat surface at the Bechler ranger station-the horse pasture-at dusk. Joe and Demming thanked the pilot and scrambled out. Joe was happy to be out of the air and back on the ground. Stevens was there to meet them and handed Demming a message.

In the Yukon, Demming unfolded the piece of paper. “I need to call the Pagoda,” she said. “Ashby wants a full report on what happened.”

“Do we need to get back to Mammoth, then?” Joe asked, contemplating the five-hour drive.

Demming seemed lost in thought. He wondered if the shock of what happened at the camp had been held at bay in her mind and was just now releasing. He’d seen that kind of delayed reactionto violence before, and had experienced it himself.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I guess so. That was a new one for me, I must say. I don’t think I’ve ever been so scared as when I was looking into the muzzle of that rifle. His eyes-Jesus. They looked crazy and scared at the same time, which is never a good combination. And I feel ashamed that my first reaction when he got shot was pure joy-followed by nausea.”

"I understand.”

"I hate to feel so happy to see a man shot-up.”

“He’ll be okay,” Joe said.

“I know. But to see that kind of violence up close like that. . I don’t think I’m cut out for it.”

“You were magnificent,” Joe said. “You saved our lives when you told Rudloff about that law because it delayed him long enough for Nate to aim. You nearly had me believing it. That was quick thinking.”

“If only it were true,” she said. “Joe, do you think there are many more like him? I mean, more crazy survivalists in the Zone of Death?”

“Probably.”

“Whoever saved us, is he one of them?”

Joe smiled. “Nate? Yes, he is. But he’s been that way since I met him. He doesn’t live in Yellowstone, though. He lives in Saddlestring, where I come from. He once told me he values what he considers justice over the rule of the law.”

“That scares me.”

Joe nodded. “Me too. Luckily, he’s on our side.”

Rather than drive all the way to Mammoth in the dark, they decided to go halfway, to the Old Faithful area instead, into the heart of the park. Since the next item on Joe’s list was to question employees about the Gopher State Five, the diversionworked out. Demming used her radio to notify her husband that she wouldn’t be home and said she’d call him when they got to Old Faithful.

“That probably won’t go over very well,” she said, as much to herself as to Joe.

“I understand,” he said.

“I told him last night you were a nice guy, a family man.”

He flushed. “I said the same about you to Marybeth.”

“Now is the time for an uncomfortable silence,” she said.

He agreed, silently.

They backtracked north and entered the park proper through the gate at West Yellowstone, following the Madison River. The absence of any kind of streetlights made the moon and stars seem brighter and made Joe concentrate on driving, since bison or elk could appear on the road at any time. Demminghad been trying to nap but couldn’t get comfortable. She gave up trying with a sigh.