A/N: Hope everyone's having a good Thanksgiving weekend.


CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE


Throwing Shadows


As the minutes ticked and the miles passed, the hulk of anxiety cramping the SUV cabin molted, transmogrified, turned into despair. Sarah could hear it panting, or hear herself panting.

They were in Nowhere, a rural section of road, with few cars and fewer houses.

Morgan leaned from the back seat toward the front. He held out his phone so that Sarah could see the map. "We're almost there, Sarah. Two miles, then we leave the main road. Google Maps doesn't even show a road that takes us to the destination."

Sarah nodded grimly. "How far from the road is it?"

Morgan sat back, twiddled his phone screen. "Maybe a mile." Sarah dropped her eyes from the rearview to the horizon ahead of her.

Her heart plummeted. In the distance, billowing up above the green treetops, was a hell-black column of smoke. Sarah gasped, and Ellie leaned forward. Morgan leaned to the side window.

"Shit," Ellie said eloquently. "Shit."

It was the last word anyone spoke until they reached the spot on the main road that seemed closest to their destination. Sarah slowed the SUV, peering off to the side of the road.

"There!" Morgan shouted. "That opening between the trees!"

Sarah saw it. Although the ground was hard and dry, tire tracks led from the road up into the hills. She cut the wheel, aimed the SUV through the opening. They could no longer see the smoke; they were too deep in the trees.

Ellie was leaning against the dash, trying to see above the trees. "Goddamn you, Chuck. If you're dead, I am going to kick your ass."

Sarah tried not to hear, tried only to see, to drive. She tried to still her thoughts. She felt like an echo chamber into which someone had screamed.

Ahead of her, she could see the continuing tire tracks. She followed them as if she were tracing them.

In the back, Morgan had turned. He produced an automatic rifle, loaded it, then put it across his lap. He loaded a pistol and handed it forward to Ellie. She took it without hesitation. She picked up her beaten leather bag; it had been between her feet on the floorboard.

Sarah slowed the SUV. The tracks turned into a clump of trees. An SUV that matched the one Sarah was driving and a dark sedan were parked in the heavy shade. "That's Chuck's car, and Jack's!" Morgan cried.

They parked beside the cars and got out quickly. Morgan stared at his phone screen for a minute. "Not far now. A quarter of a mile or so, but uphill. Steep uphill. That must be why they got out of the cars."

They started the climb. Soon, they were all gasping. The climb was even steeper than they expected, and they had started at an unsustainable pace. They slowed for a second to catch their breath.

Morgan put his phone in his pocket. "We're close, but I can't hear anything, can you?"

Sarah and Ellie both shook their heads. Morgan went on. "We're still in the Diamond Mountains. Near a spot called The Crossroads."

Sarah gave Morgan a look as they started climbing again. He grimaced. "No joke. You know, Chuck didn't know where this place was, but he guessed they'd found an abandoned mine or something, and converted it. He suspected that wherever it was, they came in and out by air, by helicopter."

Just as Morgan finished speaking, small arms fire erupted in the distance. It was hard to tell how far, but the three of them began to run.

They emerged from the trees into a large clearing. Across it was the entrance to an old mine. Thick, heavy wooden beams, grayly and vastly weathered, structured the opening. Black smoke trailed up and out of the mine, smoke from the charcoal mouth of a dying dragon.

Off to one side, on the ground, sat a silent helicopter.

The sound of weapons fire had ceased.

Other than the ragged breathing of the three, stillness reigned. The name forced itself from Sarah, an expression of sudden hopelessness: "Chuck!"

No answer. Still, there was only the stillness.

And then a figure emerged from the smoke, obscured by it at first as if the smoke were loath to let the figure escape, as if the smoke were trying to clutch at the figure. As the smoke cleared, the figure neared, Sarah knew who it was: it was Jack. He was carrying someone — Chuck — in a fireman's carry.

"Dad! Chuck!" Sarah ran forward, forgetting all caution.

Jack stumbled and fell, first to his knees. He managed to roll Chuck off his shoulder before he fell the rest of the way, facefirst into the dust.

Sarah ran to them, kneeling between them. Jack pushed himself over, saw his daughter. "Sarah!" he hoarsely whispered. "I tried to stop him." Jack's eyes closed and his bloody body went limp.

Ellie arrived. She knelt on the other side of Jack, started tending to him.

Sarah heard Morgan behind them all. "I'll cover you. See to them!"

Sarah scrambled to Chuck. His shirt was bloody, his face. Sarah leaned close to his face, his precious face. As she did, she felt herself stretched thin across eternity. And then she felt his breath on her face, faint. "Chuck!"

She checked him quickly. His forehead had been grazed by a bullet, the graze opening the red scar on his temple. Much of the blood was coming from that head wound, it was still running copiously from it, but the head wound did not appear serious. He was grazed in several other places and wounded in the shoulder.

She pulled his shirt open. The bullet had passed through his shoulder, exited. Blood flowed down his back.

"Jack's been shot, Sarah. A stomach wound. We need to get him to a hospital. I can stabilize him enough to get him down the hill, I hope. Chuck?" Ellie stared at Sarah.

"Hit in the shoulder, bullet passed through. Grazed in several places. Lots of places."

As Sarah finished speaking, Chuck began to moan. He opened his eyes and spoke a single word. "Beatrice?"

"Chuck?" Sarah leaned over him, kissed his bloody lips. "Chuck?"

His eyes fluttered but remained closed.

He kept making the sound. And then Sarah realized that Morgan was making it too. but Morgan wasn't moaning. He was humming.

Sarah glanced up at Morgan. He was grinning, even as he kept the rifle trained on the mine's smoky entrance. Sarah listened. She was un-pop-cultured — but she knew the tune.

She started humming along, trying to dredge up the words; they were on the tip of her tongue.

Morgan started singing softly.

She can kill with a smile
She can wound with her eyes
She can ruin your faith with her casual lies
And she only reveals what she wants you to see
She hides like a child…

Morgan stopped but Chuck kept humming.

And then Chuck sang, so softly Sarah was sure only she could hear.

...And the most she will do is throw shadows at you
But she's always a woman to me.

His eyes opened and she knew he knew her. "Sarah!"

She put her arms around him and her head on his chest. "Chuck!"

"Sarah, Ellie, get down!" Morgan yelled; Sarah felt his hand push her from behind.

Sarah scrambled in the dust, covering Chuck's body with her own.

She looked toward the mouth of the mine. Another figure emerged, this one more quickly, although limping; the smoke from the mine was almost gone. The figure had a pistol in each hand.

Sarah pushed herself up onto her knees. "Casey?"


A/N: One chapter to go.


Since some of you read my Big Swamp (now no longer posted) but may not be on the FB CFF site (I mentioned this, there), I wanted to let you know that the novel, rewritten and de-Chucked, has been accepted for publication. If you read it or commented on it, many thanks.