Where Angel Fears to Tread

Chapter 10

What Was Left

With sunglasses atop his head, Cobra knelt in what used to be a busy kitchen and extracted a shattered floor tile. It crumbled in his hand. He brushed away the dust and rose, scanning the charred remains of the pastoral house. The dust was thin on the hill, and the cloud was less stringent on the nearly noonday sunlight. The stove that had been boiling over the first time he entered the home had detonated during the fire, embedding bits of burner in a nearby seared teak support beam. He scratched the wood's surface, and charcoal stuck under his fingernail. While he picked at the grime, the topmost whitewashed step creaked as one of the other agents navigated the mess and joined him.

"There's nothing here, sir. No bodies, no remains, nothing. All burnt to a crisp."

Cobra hammered a heavy fist against the support beam. It groaned but did not snap. "Tell me, son. Does anything look strange to you about this place?"

"Umm…no, looks like a regular fire to me."

"Exactly. A fire." He began pacing around the remnants of the first floor. "Think back to the town. Every building, every vehicle, every…person…they were all turned to that gray dust, right?"

"Yessir."

"But this house…this house burned. For a while. It was not obliterated like the rest." He stopped in front of what was formerly a television set. The fingers of heat radiating from the flames had twisted the components of the box into a melted avant-garde sculpture. "Why is that?"

"Well, sir, this house is pretty far back from the town. Up on a hill, out of the way. Whatever destroyed the town may have missed this house. But maybe those weapons or explosives could've ignited it. Some kind of flashpoint induction."

"That's possible…but then why," Cobra started as he stormed to the front of the house and, through the remnants of the doorway, gestured wildly to the tree line, "aren't these trees burned as well?" Full and thick foliage, covered in gray dust, adopted a small sway in a weak breeze.

"I…I don't know, sir."

He turned back to the young man, whose head drooped. On their walk up the hill, Cobra had learned that his two companions, Chuck and Ted, were emergency responders by trade. They had received minimal training on the job concerning fires, but Chuck had mentioned his proclivity for cable channel crime shows about arsonists. Though by no means an expert, Chuck expressed that he wanted to help in any way he could, and so had applied his pop knowledge to the ruins of the house.

"Hmph…that's fine, Chuck. I don't know either. But something is definitely off about all of this."

"Agreed, sir. It's pretty fishy. Y'think we should get a real fire investigation team up here, to take a look?"

Cobra had wandered back over to the sloping pile of rubble as Chuck talked. His sunglasses had retaken their position on his face. Through shaded eyes, he peered over the half of the living room still attached to the hill, and saw bits of the house stubbornly refusing to be washed out to sea. Determined…like its occupants. "No, I don't believe that'll help anything. Plus, they're busy below." Not my operation, he had to remind himself.

"Okay, sir, then I—hey, Ted's wavin' at us. I think he found something!"

The black rubber glove over by the tree line beckoned for the two in the house. As they descended down the whitewashed stairs, which painfully creaked with each step, Cobra mulled over the state of the house, nagged by terrifically inconclusive evidence. What happened here? What am I missing?

The agony of ignorance had tortured him on a twelve-hour flight back to the island. Langley's private jet, now crammed to the gills with equipment needed for the recovery effort, had sliced through clear blue sky. Cobra had stared out the rounded window, watching verdant landmasses roll into the sparkling ocean. The only clouds he had seen had arisen from Kaua`i as the plane had descended. Those questions— What happened here? What am I missing? — had haunted him as he had scoured the remains of the town, and as he had clambered up the hill to reach what was left of the house. He continued agonizing in ignorance as the duo reached Ted, who was excitedly pointing at a spot on the ground.

"Check it out!" Ted shouted in his tenor. Cobra knelt down and unsheathed his eyes. With his sunglasses wrapped up in one hand, Cobra's other hand ran a finger along the edges of a mark. The fire had singed the grass around it, and a dusting of ash partially hid it. Yet Cobra could not hold back a tiny gasp as he looked down at the print of a small sandal shoe firmly pressed into the soft earth.

"Isn't that great!" Ted was nearly jumping. "First sign of life we've found yet!"

"Yeah, sure. But...how can we know how old it is?" Chuck posited. "Could've been here before the attack."

"Look," Cobra murmured as leaned in. "Bits of the ash are pressed into it."

Chuck screwed up his eyes. "And that means…."

"Means that someone walked here after the ash had fallen." Cobra straightened and stared into the jungle. Behind him, his two companions filled the air with their warbling about the possibility of survivors. A light wind had kicked up from the shoreline and was tossing ash between the leaves and fronds bobbing in the breeze. A few wayward gray specks splashed against the darkened lenses in Cobra's hand while he wracked his brain to plot out where a survivor could have gone.

"That seems like a stretch…sir."

Concentration was broken. After brushing off the ash, eyes disappeared as Cobra placed the sunglasses back onto the bridge of his nose. Though the orbs were not visible, he could still send a menacing glare through the lenses. Chuck and Ted leaned back, a bit of panic twitching in their faces, as Cobra stared them down. "A stretch?"

"Well…" Chuck surrendered quickly. Cobra grunted and, from the tree line, gave the house's exterior another look. The half that had slid down the cliff face was a jumbled mess, and charred beams of lumber jutted out like the tree trunks of the jungle behind it. Still, even in such chaos, Cobra sensed the indescribable warmth of the home, and saw in his mind the young girl playing with her little blue friend while her older sister scrambled to keep a pot from boiling over on the stove. Determined to make it work. He sighed as more ash fell onto his darkened lenses.

"What do we do now?" squawked Chuck. Cobra turned to watch the hazmat suits bumble around in utter confusion. He huffed and reached into the tree line, smacking a pile of dust from its lush perch. It fiercely retaliated against Cobra's black suit jacket, but the new smudges did little to stop the energy surging through the agent.

"What're ya doin'!" shouted Ted as the miasma passed by his plastic hood.

Cobra stared into the jungle. What happened here? What am I missing? The agony of ignorance had tortured him as he had picked through the remains of the house on the hill. Now, with the wind shifting, the question in his mind changed — altered by a small sandal shoe print and the promise, however vague and ethereal, of an end to ignorance. What have I found? He kicked away a broken frond, which crunched with a sickly sound as he passed the tree line. "Finding them."

Two hazmat suits scrambled after the man dressed in black tearing through the jungle brush.

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