Wildefire by Karsten Knight Read Free Book Online Page A

the dirt.
    She imagined him squirming as he watched the truck roll forward.
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    She thought about how fast the truck would need to be going in order to flatten that utterly handsome yet vile mouth of his.
    And she pushed.
    As she put her foot to the gas pedal in her mind, the truck accelerated from a crawl to a slow walk, and soon to a trot. The faculty lodge was coming up fast on the right-hand side, and she noticed that several of the quad-side bedroom windows were open to let in the cool night air.
    Sure, the truck’s motor wasn’t on, but in the silence of night, the crunching of the wheels against the gravel was more than enough to wake at least one professor . . . and that’s all it would take.
    Again Ash pictured Bobby lying in the middle of the gravel path, his eyes wide, wriggling helplessly like a beached whale.
    The truck picked up even more speed.
    Ash glanced over at Jackie and saw that she was having trouble keeping up at this point. “Get in,” Ash instructed her, nodding to the truck bed. Jackie nodded back, grabbed hold of the truck’s loading door, and vaulted up onto the bumper. She lost her balance and toppled into the rubber-lined bed, but her fist shot up over the back gate to indicate that she was okay.
    In need of just a little more fuel to keep the truck rolling, Ash imagined Bobby one last time.
    She visualized the wetness spreading across his crotch as he pissed himself in sheer terror, listened to 52

    the muffled screams leak out through the cloth gag in his mouth.
    But in her imagination the truck swerved right at the last possible moment, and Bobby’s high-pitched shrieking died to relieved, childish sobs.
    After all, Bobby Jones wasn’t even worth a new set of tires.
    In one vengeance-powered leap Ash sprung from the gravel road up over the loading door and landed in a squat in the middle of the truck bed. With their momentum and the slope of the hill leading down to the main entrance, the truck rattled past the faculty lodge and barreled on toward the main gate.
    Darren leaned out the truck window and pumped a victory fist in the air. “Jesus, Ash, have you been mix-ing steroids in your oatmeal? That was some Wonder Woman shit.”
    Ash bit her lip sheepishly. “I don’t know what got into me.”
    Jackie winked at her. “I know who didn’t get into you.”
    Ash extended her foot and playfully kicked Jackie in the knee.
    Back in the direction of the faculty lodge, Ash saw the front light come on, illuminating the previously uninterrupted darkness of the quad. “We’ve got company,” she shouted to Darren.
    He flashed a thumbs-up out the window and shouted,
    “Not for long!”
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    The truck’s engine sputtered to life, and Darren screamed “Yeehaw!” before slamming his foot down on the gas pedal. They rocketed through the two stone pillars that marked the entrance to Blackwood Academy.
    The silver pickup streaked off into the night, a fierce phantom of steel vanishing off into a dream of redwood trees and silent roads.
    The gravel crackled beneath the truck’s tires as they rolled to a halt in front of the Bent Horseshoe Saloon. True to the grimy bar’s name, a gnarled wooden horseshoe had been nailed over the entrance. Ash would never know whether they’d hung it askew on purpose, but it always looked one strong breeze away from dropping onto someone’s head.
    The saloon was just one of a few storefronts that made up the old mining town of Orick, a town that existed in the twenty-first century for its motels and bed-and-breakfasts, a waypoint for the summer’s stream of visitors to the national park. Thus, the clientele of the town’s only bar consisted of a curious mix of weary travelers and wiz-ened locals.
    Ash tried her best to act casual as she pushed through the flapping double doors to the saloon with practiced grace, Jackie and Darren in tow. The occupants of the saloon looked up from their beer and fishing conversa-tions to gawk at the newcomers. Ash