“Please!” the young woman shouted. “Hurry! Miranda!”
On the second attempt, Morgan got a better grip and hefted Miranda high. Elke caught her hand. They hoisted her up and over the edge.
Elke reached down again, farther this time, Miranda holding her from falling. Morgan stretched but fell short of her grasp. She wouldn’t be able to take his weight anyway.
“Get the hell out of here,” he shouted. Both women were choking from smoke. Flames raced through the rafters just over their heads. Debris was falling, some of it past them into the tank, where it sizzled and popped. The heat inside the tank was almost unbearable. “Get out,” he shouted again. “Miranda! Go!”
He sank down against the corpse.
“Morgan, grab!”
He looked up. Miranda’s slacks were dangling through the smoke.
He stood up, stood on the corpse, balanced, shouted, lunged, grasped the blood- and wine-soaked cotton, snagged his fingers into the fabric until his nails seemed to pull out of his flesh. The two women pulled with everything they had. Suddenly, he felt a hand on his wrist. He could not relinquish his grip on the slacks. Two hands on his wrists, drawing him over the edge.
The three of them tumbled their way down the steel steps and raced out the open back door, Miranda running in spite of the bullet wound on her leg, Morgan choking on smoke. The young blond was laughing hysterically at the unexpected achievement of being alive. They fell together in a huddle on the ground. Morgan and Miranda picked up the laughter and they all were laughing, lying on the ground, with billows of smoke drifting overhead.
Then, in a break in the smoke, they heard a turbulent roar separate from the fire and looked up to see a plane immediately above them. It banked, circled, and came back low, swooping so close they could feel the wind off the prop. Bullets riddled the earth all around them, none finding its lethal mark. Then the plane flew up, and waggling its wings, soared over the escarpment into the setting sun, and they were alone with the dull roar of the fire as the smoke in the stilled light of evening spiralled high into the air.
5
Mr. Savage
“We nearly drowned. We nearly suffocated in wine fumes. We nearly burned to death. We’ve been riddled with bullets. Miranda, your leg has been riddled with bullets. We’ve nearly been decapitated with a propeller. What’s next?” Morgan looked cynical, smug, and wretchedly dirty.
They stood by the open trunk of the car. Miranda was being helped into the slacks she had bought for Elke after having water from a plastic bottle slopped over her wound, which was just a graze but quite bloody, and then having alcohol and a bandage applied from a first aid kit. The two women changed into the extra T-shirts. Morgan took off his shirt and tossed it in the dirt, retrieving an old police windbreaker from the depths of the trunk.
He slid into the passenger seat to call for help. Undoubtedly neighbours would have already phoned 911 and volunteer firefighters would be on their way. He wanted to make sure the police came as well. He wanted to make sure Spivak knew what was happening; he felt the need to be grounded in a world he knew.
Miranda opened the driver’s side and turned with her injured leg stretched away to lower herself onto the seat. Elke had a grip on her shoulders. Just before contact with the seat, Morgan lunged, reaching out and twisting in the air so that he lifted against her with one of her buttocks in each of his palms. She squealed indignantly as she reeled away into Elke’s arms and the two women staggered backwards.
“Morgan, you fool! Have you lost it?”
“Stay back,” he yelled.
“Damn, that was undignified, Morgan!”
“Back off,” he declared vehemently as he strode around the car. “Over there.” He pointed to a picnic table a couple of car-lengths away. Both women were frightened by his weird behaviour. “Over here,” he repeated, walking to the table himself and flipping it onto its side.
When all three were behind the table, he picked up a brick-sized boulder and heaved it towards the car, swinging underarm. It fell short. He picked up another, the same size. Stepping out well in front of the table, he put all his weight into the throw, and while the boulder was still in the air he dove back over the table. There was a split second pause, then the boulder hit the driver’s seat and there was a teeth-jarring explosion as the car lifted into the air and disintegrated, descending in a rain of fiery debris.
“That’s it,” said Morgan as the raging din subsided. “That’s enough for one day. You guys okay?” Neither woman said anything as all three rose to their feet and surveyed the damage. Morgan was still in wine-stained pants and Elke in a wine-stained skirt. Miranda’s clothes looked a bit dusty but clean, in stark contrast to her face and arms, which, like the exposed flesh of the other two, were smeared with wine residue, filth from the fire, and particles of exploded stuffing from the car seats.
“No wonder they flew off unconcerned about whether they shot us,” said Miranda.
“Yeah,” said Morgan. “They didn’t leave much to chance.”
“Morgan …”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t say ‘what’s next?’”
They could hear a siren off in the distance, coming from somewhere down near Lake Ontario. They turned and walked toward the house. Morgan needed a phone, Miranda wanted to sit somewhere comfortable and wait for medical assistance, Elke was anxious to clean up. They were sure the house was abandoned. People don’t fire off machine guns and torch sheds or explode police cars and then go back to the dinner table.
They were astonished, then, when as they reached the garden gate that opened onto a lawn in front of the house, the main door slowly began to swing open. All three dropped to the ground, rolling to the side for cover behind shrubs, which of course would not stop bullets but might obscure the shooter’s view. They waited. The door seemed to groan on its hinges, although it was a massive slab of glass framed in cedar. There were no shots. The cicadas in the meadowlands between the lawn and the vineyard trilled loudly in anticipation of nightfall. Flames from the fires behind them had subsided, but the car remnants and the crumpled shed smouldered, and columns of smoke rose straight upwards and pooled in clouds overhead.
There was a sudden blast and the burning shed exploded in a renewed swirl of smoke and flames.
A creaky voice called over their heads. “Hello…?”
Morgan glanced across at Miranda under her shrub, massaging her thigh above the wound. She nodded.
“Hello…?” he called.
“Is that you, Mr. Savage?” The timbre of an old lady’s voice, ancient but strong, shaped the words in the air, but still no one appeared in the doorway.
Morgan stood up behind his small cover of greenery, head and shoulders exposed. “No ma’am, it’s us.”
“Well, who’s us,” said the old woman, stepping into the light so she was framed by the door opening. She was diminutive, stooped, but with her head tilted erect. “Who is it?”
“You don’t have a gun, do you?” said Morgan.
“Yes, I do,” came the answer, then a pause. “It’s upstairs. Do you need it? It’s only a shotgun to scare away birds.”
Morgan stepped out onto the walkway.
“You stay there, now,” said the old woman. “I’m not to have visitors.”
“Well, could you step down here, ma’am, a little closer. We’re the police.”
“You look like filthy rag-tag brigands,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” said Morgan, “but we’ve had a bit of trouble.”
“And