11

Eddie’s is in flames, a funeral pyre burning against the dark, turbulent maelstrom of the night, and though the rain is still beating down and pockmarking the mud, it’s not doing much to put out the blaze.

My first thought is that Gracie has finally had enough, that the Reverend’s death is the catalyst she’s been waiting for, the escape she’s longed for all these years. I imagine her chasing everybody out, leaving the Reverend’s body and Brody where they are, dousing the place from top to bottom with kerosene or spirits, then standing in the doorway, flaming rag in her hand. I see the light burning away the shadows on her grim face, making her seem young and innocent again. Then she tosses the rag, and the fire races across the floor and up the walls, a raging thing, but pure, and cleansing.

But as I watch the lithe silhouette of my son racing toward the inferno, I remember what I thought when I stood in there looking down at Hill’s body, waiting for him to suddenly resurrect himself. Cold dread grips my heart. Is this the surprise we expected from him? Did he burst into flame moments after Kyle and me left the bar? I picture his almost headless corpse erupting into bright searing flame, claiming the lives of those standing nearest him first before they’re even aware what’s happening, then spreading out and cooking the rest as they try to escape.

And then I think of Cobb.

I pull the truck to a halt in the parking lot. Flames rise up, licking the sky; the rain falls down. Glass shatters in the heat and I have to shield my face. Not before my eyebrows are singed away.

Kyle is not alone, and his company is not a decapitated burning thing. I make my way over, all but blinded by the light from the fire. It isn’t until I’m right there next to Kyle that I see it’s Cadaver who’s with him. His eyes are narrowed against the glare, but still there’s an odd look on his hollow face, almost like reverence.

“Cadaver, what happened?”

Kyle looks like a ghost, his eyes filled with fire. “He says Cobb did it. Just after we left, he went crazy and torched the place.”

Cadaver nods, but adds nothing. I notice his little microphone is absent, which explains his silence. Just like Brody must have thought when the old man hunkered down next to him, Cadaver looks like death. More so now than ever before, the orange-red light only adding deeper shadow beneath the sharp outcroppings of his cheekbones.

“Where is everyone?” I ask, afraid of the answer, because I’ve surveyed the area more than once on my way up here and I’m surveying it now again, and I don’t see anybody here but us, and that feels to me like a brand new nightmare fresh from the devil’s womb, waiting to be christened by the ignorant.

Kyle looks at me, and the flames shimmer in his eyes. “Gone,” he tells me. “Cadaver says they’re all gone. All but Brody.”

“And where’s he?”

Cadaver nods in the direction of the burning building, off into the shadows the fire is weaving to the side of it. I don’t see Brody, but I trust that he’s there.

“Jesus.” I put my hands to my face to block out a reality that seems to be getting darker by the second.

There’s a story here, I suppose. Cadaver must have seen it all from his place by the window, before he hotfooted it the hell out of the burning tavern. He might whisper to me of Wintry’s bravery, how he tried to carry as many people as he could out of the place before one of the big timber beams came down and cracked his head open like an egg, dropping him and suffocating beneath his weight those he’d carried in his arms, his beloved Flo among them. He might tell me the details of Cobb’s descent into madness, how one minute he was a sobbing wreck, the next a raving lunatic, whooping and hollering and raging, spinning like a top with spirits flying from the open bottles in his hands. Then a match, the smell of sulfur, and a small flame ready to birth an all-consuming fire. He might say that Gracie fought Cobb to the end, maybe cold-cocked him with one of those bottles, or gutted him with the sharp end of a broken mop handle before the smoke took them both, laid them down for the fire to burn them in their sleep.

Good for Gracie.

Cadaver might tell me these things, but I don’t want to hear that choked whisper from his cracked lips. My imagination is louder anyway.

“Is there a chance anyone else survived?” Kyle asks the old man, who shrugs and looks at me.

Like Wintry, there’s more truth in his eyes than could ever roll off his tongue. But I’m stubborn, and what pitiful little sleep I have these days will be robbed from me tonight if I don’t see for myself. There are no screams from Eddie’s, no sound of anyone begging to be saved, but then we’ve all been damned for longer than we care to admit, and we’ve never cried for salvation.

I start moving toward the bar.

Kyle’s hand falls firmly on my shoulder.

I start to turn, and the roof caves in. It sounds like a tree falling, a splintering crash that sends a plume of dirty smoke up before fresh fire rushes in to fill the hole, fed by the air that has tried to escape.

“Sonofabitch,” someone cries out from the dark, and finally I see a shape rolling around in the shadows, batting at sparks that are trying to ignite his clothes. If the kid’s able to roll, then could be his injuries are no more. We’ll have to wait and see.

Crackling, spitting flames, but still no screams. On some level I know I should be thankful for that, and for the fact that this atrocity was not the Good Reverend’s work, but I’m not. Not just now. Kyle is weeping, and as his hand slips from my shoulder, Cadaver’s hand finds his before it occurs to me to comfort him.

“This shouldn’t have happened,” I say, without knowing whether or not I’m even saying it aloud, or who I think I’m saying it to if I am. “They didn’t deserve this.”

Another dumb, obvious statement in a night loaded with them.

“We should call someone.” Kyle walks away and sits down, his back to the rickety wooden fence that separates the parking lot from the grassy slope down to the road. I start after him, rehearsing words of comfort that sound wooden, and useless, like pretty much everything I’ve ever said to that kid. He wants his mother back and he won’t get it; he wants his father dead, and he can’t get that either. If early life experience scars you for the rest of it, then Kyle’s nightmare hasn’t even started yet. He raises a hand as I draw near. It’s as good as a signpost saying ROAD CLOSED, and all I can do is stand there feeling helpless, which is exactly what I do until I hear a sound I never thought I’d hear again.

The sound of pennies being counted.

***

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