Blood Red by Jason Bovberg Read Free Book Online Page B

lawn
or walking out to the street for his mail. She’s waved to him from
her dad’s car, and earlier in her life, from her bicycle.
    He steps closer, his gaze directed toward the
girl. “Is that Sarah?”
    “Please, she’s…hurt,” Rachel manages, her
voice still catching involuntarily. “Can you help?”
    “What’s the matter with her?”
    “I don’t know, she’s…” Rachel is unsure how
to finish that sentence.
    “Sarah?” the man says, leaning closer.
“Sarah, honey?”
    Rachel loosens her grasp on the child, and
the man can see her face.
    “Good heavens.” There’s gaspy emotion in his
voice. He has to steady himself on Rachel’s shoulder.
    “It’s that light!” Rachel shrieks, and the
man removes his hand, recoiling. “That fucking red ... radioactive
… whatever it is!” She swallows heavily, calming herself. “You know
her, then?”
    There’s a moment while he studies Rachel’s
face gravely; perhaps he’s understanding that whatever has happened
this morning is far more serious than he imagined. As it already
has for Rachel, the nightmare has become real for him. His troubled
expression falls further, the weight of a traumatized world on his
narrow shoulders. This man looks very frail indeed.
    “I live down there,” he says finally,
gesturing with one shaking hand a couple doors west.
    “I know.”
    “Yes.” He smiles in brief recognition. “My
name is Alan.”
    “Rachel.”
    “I know her parents, just as neighbors.” His
voice is low. “The Fergusons, I believe.” A pause, then his lip
trembles. “What’s happening here, Rachel? Do you have any
idea?”
    Rachel can plainly hear his fear. “No.” Eyes
blurred, she looks at him pleadingly. “I don’t know.” Then a queasy
laugh escapes her throat. “I was hoping you might!”
    His movements are jerky. He places an awkward
hand on her shoulder, this time to comfort her, and she welcomes
the gesture. She wants more than anything to embrace this stranger.
He straightens up, and begins looking from the girl to the street
to the horizon, taking in the lingering columns of smoke in the
distance. When his gaze returns, his watery eyes have filled with
uncertainty.
    “Have you been inside?” he asks her.
    She shakes her head, rocking on the grass
with the girl, who is moaning softly now and responding to Rachel’s
presence.
    “Try to keep her calm, Rachel,” he says
slowly. “I’ll be right back.”
    Alan faces the girl’s house. He gives it a
long, weary look, then makes his way to the porch and enters the
home.
    Rachel hears nothing of his investigation
inside, just rocks gently with this broken little girl on this
suburban patch of green. The child is suffering in the clutches of
shock, perhaps madness, and her stunted hands beat softly against
Rachel’s chest even as she succumbs to the insistent embrace. Tears
stream out of the girl’s eyes, down her twisted and patchy face.
Her breathing is labored, choked.
    She needs to go to the hospital, but Rachel
wonders what she’ll find there. Barren, silent hallways and
hundreds of red-tinted near-corpses? It’s still the place she has
to go now. Right now.
    She glances behind her at the front door,
which hangs open, a silent maw.
    “Come on …”
    She looks through the haze of smoke into the
sky, cringing in anticipation of what she’ll see. Sure enough, the
twisting contrails of the airliner are still visible, diffused now
into an ephemeral gray spiderweb streaking down toward the earth.
She brings her gaze down and studies the other sources of smoke
along the horizon. The Old Town fire is gigantic in her vision, a
great mass of undulating darkness, but there are five other major
sources of smoke in the distance. Three of them are to the south,
as far as Loveland or Longmont. The other two are northeast of her.
She knows there are small airports in both directions, homes to
small private aircraft of all kinds. She shakes her head, fearing
the worst.
    And then there