Дэвид Балдаччи - The Fallen

The smoke was so heavy now he could barely see Jamison. The windows were far too small to crawl through, but he used a chair to smash one open anyway, leaned his head out, and gulped in some fresh air.

He pulled his gun and shot out the front door lock. He tried the door. It still wouldn’t budge.

“Alex, get on my back.”

“What?” gasped Jamison.

“Piggyback. Now!”

She jumped onto his back and locked her legs around his waist.

“Keep your head down,” he bellowed.

He backed up, got a running start, and smashed right into the door.

It buckled and partially gave way. He put his shoulder down, set his legs into a squat and erupted forward again. The door came off its hinges and fell into the yard.

The next moment Decker was stumbling to their Yukon with Jamison still clinging to his back.

Decker looked behind him. The flames had reached the front door — or where the door had been. That was about the midpoint of the trailer.

That meant they had maybe a few seconds.

Breathing heavily now, he carried Jamison behind the SUV. Then he dropped to his knees, and Jamison hopped off him.

“Get under the truck, Alex, now!” he gasped.

He helped push her under the Yukon until just her feet were exposed. Decker was too big to fit under the vehicle. He covered her feet with his body.

The next instant, the flames reached the propane tank.

The resulting explosion lifted the trailer entirely off its cinderblock foundation, pieces of it flying in all directions. Objects came down and hit the big Yukon, which had been buffeted by the concussive force of the detonation. Decker heard the windshield crack. Something punched into the vehicle’s roof.

Jamison screamed.

Decker could not seem to catch his breath. His chest was tightening. It felt like a huge weight dead center of his broad chest.

Shit! Am I having a heart attack? Now?

The next instant something dropped from the sky and struck him in the head.

Everything went black for Amos Decker.

It was a new color.

Yellow.

Blue meant death in his synesthetic brain.

So what the hell did yellow mean?

Heaven?

Am I dead?

He couldn’t seem to open his eyes, so maybe he was.

Yet the fact that his eyes weren’t open and he could still see the color yellow meant that he was viewing it in his head. Was that evidence of conscious thought and thus life?

Or was it his afterlife ?

He felt something. A poke, a prod. It seemed distant and distinct from him.

His ears hurt. But he could sense something there too.

He was vaguely aware of a loud sound. Like a cannon going off.

He could feel nothing else about himself. Just the sound. And the color yellow.

And the poke and the prod.

The sensation in his ears continued. Growing in intensity.

Something hit his face. Lightly, then harder.

He tried to open his eyes, but the only thing he seemed able to manage was to scrunch up his forehead.

The next blow on his face did the trick.

With a monumental effort, he managed to blink.

At first all he saw was darkness.

Then he glimpsed something in the middle of that darkness. It was hairy and close to him; he could smell its breath.

Then his eyes closed again. He seemed to sink into the ground.

He remembered now. They had been out in the woods.

The trailer.

The trailer had exploded.

Then Decker stopped thinking. His chest stopped rising.

He had a moment’s sensation of the hairy creature’s breaths coming closer.

An animal. An animal come to feast on him.

He dropped into unconsciousness. He dropped into something maybe more than that.

Right before everything went black again he felt his mouth being prodded open. And then something hit him right below his chest.

Black.

He had no idea how much time had passed.

He felt himself jerk up and then fall to the side. He vomited and lay there moaning for a few seconds.

He felt something on his arm and pushed it away violently. Then Decker got to his knees and tried to scramble away.

He thought of the hairy creature. The pokes and prods. The breath. The blow to his chest. He was scared. Terrified. Was it a bear?

“Amos!”

At the sound of her voice Decker stopped scrambling, turned, and dropped to his butt, panting.

Jamison was on her haunches a few feet away. She looked dirty and disheveled, but unhurt. Yet there was such a look of terror in her features that Decker could only gape.

“A-Alex, are you okay?”

She rose on unsteady feet. “Me? You... stopped breathing. I had to perform CPR.”

Decker touched his lips and then his sternum.

CPR?

That had been Jamison breathing and pounding life back into him.

“That was you? I just saw... hair. I thought it was an animal. A big, hairy animal.”

Jamison frowned and pushed her thick hair out of her face. “Well, that’s the first time I’ve been equated with a big, hairy animal.” Her features softened. “Are you feeling okay now?”

Decker took a deep breath and rubbed the back of his head. When he took his hand away, it was bloody. “I felt something hit me back there. I guess it did some damage.”

“Oh no,” exclaimed Jamison. She took out her phone, engaged the flashlight feature, and examined the back of his head. “It’s cut, a deep gash. You need medical attention.”

She pulled some tissues from her bag and pressed them against the wound. “Here, hold that there.”

Decker did so. “I thought I’d had a heart attack, but I don’t think that’s possible. I’d be out for the count.”

He slowly rose to his feet and looked around. The trailer was gone. Their Yukon was heavily damaged.

“You saved my life,” he said.

“Well, you certainly saved mine.” She pointed at where the trailer had been. “That would have been our crematorium.”

He nodded and took a series of long, deep breaths. “It must have been all that smoke in my lungs. And then running.”

“With me on your back. And then your head wound. It must have been debris from the explosion that hit you. I wish you could have fit under the car.”

“Even when I was thinner I really never could have fit under even an SUV.”

“We need to call an ambulance.”

“We need to call somebody if we want to get back to town.” He looked at the two front tires of the Yukon. They were flat and the wheels were pushed in. “And the fire department needs to come out here and douse those flames before the forest catches on fire.”

Jamison pulled out her phone and called Green, succinctly explaining to him what had happened. The detective promised a response ASAP.

She put the phone away and looked back at the trailer. “Somebody really wanted us dead.”

“That’s actually a good thing.”

“What do you mean?” she said, looking horrified by his words.

“It means we’re making somebody nervous. Which means we’re heading in the right direction. Which is a good thing.”

“It wouldn’t be so good if we were dead!” snapped Jamison.

“Do you have the graph paper?”

“What?”

The graph paper from the house?”

“My God, Decker, we were nearly killed. And you apparently did die. And all you can think about is the case?”

When he didn’t say anything, she sighed, pulled out the graph paper from the evidence pouch in her bag, and handed it to him.

With the tissues stuck to his head, Decker laid the paper on the ground and used the flashlight feature on his cell phone to go over it. He held the light an inch from the paper and still had to squint to make things out.