“Oh. God!” Elizabeth said. She’d found the firefighters.
The four men lay crumpled in the street behind the pumper. All were dead, apparently killed instantly when the building exploded. The flames must have rolled over them before they had a chance to pull back. Two of them still had their gloved hands around the heavy brass nozzle of the fire hose.
There was a strong uplift of hot air. The flames were being sucked skyward in ferocious wind gusts created by the fires. The velocity was peaking. Burning embers dipped and swirled over their heads.
“We’ve got to find shelter,” Atkins shouted. “It’s going to overrun us.”
NEAR KENTUCKY LAKE
JANUARY 13
9:12 P.M.
“YOU FEEL OKAY?” LAUREN ASKED.
“I guess so,” her grandson said. They’d just finished dinner—canned stew heated on a butane camping stove. Lauren was worried about Bobby’s appetite. He hadn’t been eating.
His forehead was cool to the touch. No sign of fever. But the boy wasn’t himself.
They’d arrived at their secluded home a few miles from Kentucky Lake to find out they’d been incredibly lucky. Except for broken windows and some cracks in the foundation, the house appeared structurally sound. Fresh water was a problem, but they still had about twenty gallons left in their water heater. They had plenty of wood for the fireplace and a good supply of canned goods. They were better off than she’d expected. A lot better off than many others who lived at the lake year-round. Many of the homes, especially those made of brick, had been shaken to pieces.
“How long do you think we’ll keep having these aftershocks?” Bobby asked. That’s what was bothering him. Lauren knew the kid was strung out. Every time the ground trembled, she saw him grip a chair or table.
She didn’t know what to tell him, how to make him feel better. She was doing the best she could, but it was hard. She hated the continual aftershocks. Even more, she hated how much they frightened her.
The two of them slept in sleeping bags near the wood-burning stove in the family room. Before they went to bed, she made sure her husband’s .410 shotgun was close by. She also had the loaded .357 Magnum.
She remembered Vera Goode and his wife. That scared her a lot more than the repeated tremors. The people who’d shot the Goodes were probably still in the area. Her guess was they were locals who knew the couple sold guns and ammunition.
Lauren had tried to conceal her feelings from her grandson, but she almost couldn’t handle knowing cold- blooded killers were on the loose with no one to hunt them down. She felt vulnerable and alone, and it terrified her.
She turned on a portable radio. Trying to conserve her supply of batteries, she listened only sparingly, just before they went to bed.
The local station had been knocked off the air, but late at night she could pick up the big stations in Chicago and Philadelphia. The national news focused entirely on the earthquake. It had been felt in thirty-nine states—every one east of the Rockies except Maine. The hardest hit were Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri, Arkansas, Ohio, Illinois, and parts of Mississippi and Alabama.
The president had declared the entire Mississippi Valley a disaster area. The latest newscast said he was soon expected to tour the damage zone.
A civil defense station broadcasting from Louisville warned people to stay home. There were reports throughout the quake zone of widespread lawlessness. In Memphis, St. Louis, and Little Rock—three of the most heavily damaged cities—law and order had completely broken down. Police were overwhelmed. With so much physical damage to streets, bridges, and overpasses, it was virtually impossible to patrol in a car, or even on foot. In all three cities. National Guard troops had fired on looters, who sometimes fired back.
The reports left Lauren numb. If it was bad in the city, it was even worse out here in the country. When Bobby was asleep, she got a bottle of bourbon from a kitchen cupboard and filled half a glass. The warmth of the whiskey helped steady her nerves, if only temporarily. She let herself cry softly, then went into the cold back bedroom for a real cry so she wouldn’t wake her grandson.
God, how she missed her husband. Missed him to death. And her parents. Not knowing what had happened to them back in Heath was unbearable. She wondered if they were still alive, whether they’d escaped that cloud of poison gas. She’d heard nothing.
Unable to sleep, Lauren was still awake at two in the morning when she heard footsteps outside, the sound of gravel crunching on the driveway.
She got the shotgun and pistol and crawled to a window. Outlined in the moonlight, two men were approaching the house. They both had rifles.
“Bobby, wake up.” She gently nudged her grandson awake. “Get down to the basement.”
They’d already gone over this. If there was trouble, he was to get to the basement and hide beneath an old desk.
Lauren hugged the boy tightly. “I love you so much,” she said. “You stay down there until you hear from me.”
Bobby obeyed instantly and crawled for the doorway to the basement stairs.
Lauren waited in the family room, where she could see both the front and rear doors. Whoever was out there had to know the house was occupied. They would have smelled the wood smoke. The house was a quarter mile off the blacktop and hidden by trees. Not easy to find.
Hell, they probably know who I am, Lauren thought. That’s why they’re here. A single woman living alone with her grandson. The lady who owned the boat dock. An easy target.
Peeking out the window again, Lauren saw that the men had split up. One had moved around to the back.
Suddenly, she flinched. Someone was knocking hard at the front door.
“Let’s make this easy,” a loud voice said. “Either you open up, or we set fire to the place. You got a minute to make up your mind.”
Lauren’s heart pounded. She moved to a window and tried to see who was out there.
“We’ll burn it to the ground with you in there,” the man said. “Open the damn door.”
Moving in a crouch, Lauren went down the steps to the basement.
“Bobby, stay here,” she said. The boy was under the desk and hadn’t budged.
Lauren opened a trap door to a crawl space that ran under the family room and pulled herself up on the cold ground. The man out front shouted something, which she couldn’t understand. Clutching the shotgun, she moved forward on her hands and knees until she was at the end of the crawl space. A car door opened. She saw one of the men looking in the Impala. He was on the far side of the house.
Lauren slipped out of the crawl space and ran across the backyard to a row of blue spruce trees that offered good cover. Staying close to the trees, she worked her way around to the front of the house, trying not to make a sound, trying not to breathe.
Two of them were out there. Not one. Counting the man at the car, that meant three in all.
“Last chance,” one of them shouted.
Even before she knew what she was doing, Lauren had left the trees. Walking quietly, quickly, she approached the men from behind. She wanted to get closer. So close she couldn’t miss with the .410.
She silently counted off the paces. One… two… three… four.
She raised the shotgun to her shoulder. It was already pumped.
“Matt, behind you!”
The man who’d been checking out the car had come around the side of the house and seen her.
Lauren took two quick steps and fired from about twenty yards. She pulled the trigger twice, the shots booming in the cold, brittle air. One of the men staggered and clutched his side, but his friend grabbed him around the waist. They kept going, lurching into the woods. The other man also disappeared into the trees.
“You come back here, I’ll kill you,” Lauren screamed. She didn’t want to go after them alone.
