A Life of Death: Episodes 9 - 12 (14 page)

I took a deep breath, then dashed into the house, using my free hand to guide myself past the stairway and along the wall. I peeked around the corner into the living room. Smoke swirled higher in the large, three-story-high room, shrouding the beams above, but only obscuring the lower floor partially. Flames licked at the walls and the stairway steps, crackling and singeing the large, peaked house.

The television burst to life the moment I stepped in the room. “Alex,” said a two-dimensional image of Liz standing in a dark forest, one solitary lantern suspended from a wooden crook like at most state campsites. A picnic table even sat to her right. Knowing she and Shelley were one and the same now, I thought I could make out the faint freckles that had littered her nose and cheeks in high school, but it was probably my imagination. She’d changed a lot. She wore the same blue jeans and work boots from the visions, but instead of an Anubis head, her wavy hair dangled over the same burgundy sweater she’d worn earlier.

“I’m glad to see you made it in time. I never doubted your abilities, but I must say that the last dozen years have made me wonder if you still had it in you.”

There was a pause as shadows played across her face in the dim light of the lantern. It was as if she were waiting for me to say something. I opened my mouth, knowing she could be watching through a video camera or some such, but then she continued. “Jessie meant the world to me. I know you don’t believe it since you’re the almighty Alex Drummond, but you shot Jessie. What happened was your fault. You made him choose between our love and your friendship.”

The accusation was expected. Years of training told me as much, but my emotions still flared. “The hell I did! I—”

However, the television’s depiction of Liz interrupted me without acknowledgment. “Now, it’s your turn.” Rather than live communication, it occurred to me that this must be an activated recording.

The thought fled from my mind though as she snatched a large, white bottle of lighter fluid off the picnic table to her right and turned to reveal the shadowed entrance to a sizable shed built to match this house except for the shed’s flat roof that stood about fifteen feet high in the front. The door hung wide. Logs were stacked neatly from the floor to a good two feet over her head. The top was barely visible under the ledge of the doorway. With a casualness that evoked curiosity, but also dread, I watched as the camera zoomed in on her dousing the logs and rough-hewn shed walls. She then moved around the side, spraying in wide arcs. A gnarled hand reached out from behind the camera and took the lantern down, then followed. The camera bounced and jolted with each step, all the way around to the back, but remained focused on Liz.

Once the squeeze bottle wheezed, she glanced back at the camera with a malicious smile. “Now you get to choose. Who will you save?” She threw the bottle onto the roof. It thumped and clattered along what must have been a tin roof slanted toward the back, but it was above the focused view.

“Choice… what choice?” I demanded, then covered my mouth again as the growing clouds of smoke clogged my lungs. The room’s temperature was rising quickly, and beads of sweat flowed down my back and sides. The walls were engulfed in flames and their eager consumption of the building was growing to a roar. “Where the hell are you? You c-can’t be far.” I stifled another cough and wiped my watering eyes. I stepped closer to the television for a better look, struggling to see through the growing smoke.

Taking a matchbook from her jeans pocket, Liz struck all the match heads on a handheld sharpening stone. They flared to life, and she tossed the book of matches onto the glistening wall while she glared at the camera—at
me
. The camera zoomed out to reveal the back of the shed and lower edge of the silver roof. Atop it lay Paige: bound, gagged, and unmoving.

How long ago did she start this?
I took a quick step toward the door before I could contemplate an answer, but her final words pulled at me, forcing me to stop: “Who will you save?”
Jamie, where’s Jamie?

As though answering my silent question, she said with a mischievous smile, “And while your beloved burns, will you take the time to save your only son? You may not be able to see him now. It really depends on how long it took you to get here. Try searching in the rafters above—that is, if it’s not too late.”

“Jamie!” I called, but only heard a short chain of coughs echo above in reply. I called again, louder.

Through the roaring flames, a soft voice croaked, “Dad?”

My jaw clenched. I wasn’t sure if it was the smoke or the dilemma of my family, but hot tears coursed down my cheeks. The camera zoomed in further, intent on his face, and a four-inch tall mark appeared centered on Jamie’s forehead. His olive skin was like my own, but now it had been marred. Freshly burnt skin appeared blistered and singed in the shape of an ankh, the base of it enflamed between his eyebrows.
She branded his forehead!
A solitary tear escaped Jamie’s left eye, but my fifteen-year-old son held himself together and stood with eyes closed. As the camera zoomed out, I spotted his hands. While bound, his fingers were interlocked and clenched tight.

The television flicked back to Liz. The flames were quickly consuming the stack of logs and storage shed. “So you see, now it’s time for your choice. Who do you save, your beloved son or wife?” She quirked her head an inch to the side like a curious bird. “Choose quickly. However long it took you to find me means you have that much less time to save your loved one. If you truly have lost your edge, then you may lose them both. Wouldn’t that be a shame?” The tone she used to ask the final question didn’t seem to agree with her words. Then the picture went black.

“I’ll get you, you bitch,” I hissed. “Jamie?” I shouted to the rafters overhead.

“Dad, help Mom,” came his trembling voice. “She’s in trouble.”

“Dammit! I know that, but are you still up there?”

“Y-yeah,” he stuttered, “but I’ll be okay. Dying isn’t so bad.”

“Jamie! You have no idea what you’re talkin’ about. Stay right where you are—” Pulling off my hat, I tried to fan the flames away to try and make out his location, but it only made things worse. With a frustrated growl, I threw the damnable hat at the television. Flames consumed it as they ate away at the melting plastic and glass.

“Alex,” Martinez shouted from the entryway. “They’re on their way.”

I could barely make out his uniform jacket and tanned face. “Hec, you gotta help—”

“I know,” he said. “I saw. Get Jamie. I’ll take care of Paige. I promise” With that he jumped out the door, back the way he’d entered.

“I’m coming, son,” I said over the sound of burning flames. I stared at the walls along the stairway. The passage was an inferno of flames rising to the next floor. My heart pounded in my chest, pushing me to find a way up to the highest beam spanning the room’s peaked roof. Scanning the rustic wooden walls through the smoke, the gaps between rough-cut slats called to me like tree limbs begging to be climbed. “On my way, Jamie. Hang in there, buddy.”

Sections hadn’t caught fire yet, and I ran for the nearest, gauging the distance to the nearest support beam and the second floor balcony overlooking the large room. The rough planks tore at my fingers with each effort to pull myself up, but the sound of Jamie’s coughs growing nearer bolstered my confidence. I cursed as my overcoat caught my feet, causing me to slip. Shoving it away with a leg, I pulled myself up by the tips of my fingers. I hoisted a leg over the first two-by-four spanning the living room. Stripping my coat, I stepped onto the indoor balcony railing and peered over the smoke-filled room. The slim wood flexed beneath me, wobbling and threatening to pull loose from either end. Regaining my balance, I flung one end of the coat over the next wooden beam, grabbed the other end, and pulled myself up. I was now close enough to make out his shape through the billowing smoke, but it grew denser the higher I got. “Jamie, I’m almost there. Stay with me.”

He was only one level higher, less than fifteen feet away, but he was leaning forward precariously, a whip lashed around his throat. It was stretched taut from his neck to the rafter above. His bound arms flopped forward and down as he forced himself upright and let out a litany of choked wheezes and coughs worthy of any fifty-year smoker.

“That’s it, son. Keep your balance. I’ll be there in a min…” Through the roiling, gray and black smoke, flames danced along the rafter he stood upon. I flung my coat up, beating as much of the flames back as were within reach. Keeping the wall to my back, I flung the coat up once more and hoisted myself onto the charred wood. It creaked and something snapped, jolting me. I stopped, holding myself in place and waiting for my nightmares to come true. A glance below displayed a mysterious hell. The floor of the room wasn’t visible, only clouds of smoke with periodic flames lancing through them like forked tongues. Forcing myself to breath, I let out a ragged cough, but fortunately the wood was still intact. Rising, I made my way to Jamie, balancing in the boiling fog like a tightrope walker attempting to escape the clutches of hell. Breathing was difficult, so I held in as much as I could until I finally took hold of Jamie’s zip-up hoodie.

At my touch, his face turned, eyes still held shut. Thankfully he’d managed to remain upright and there were a few inches of slack in the whip—at least for the moment. His wrists were bound in front of him with a zip tie. I patted his shoulder, trying not to throw either of us off balance, but seeing a blistered burn crisscrossing his forehead, I ground my teeth and my jaw clenched shut. More tears had found their way from under his eyelids, leaving streaks in the ash coating his cheeks. How much he’d grown over the last year surprised me. He was almost my height, but remained somewhat gangly, like I’d been at his age. He opened his eyes and met my gaze with dark-brown orbs; they were amber like his mother’s, but much darker. They were heavy and stoic, but deep within he mourned for all he’d seen. There was no fear.
Yes, he’s got the gift, but at what price?
His stare held me in place, grounding me on the wooden beam with the weight of experience, something his fifteen years shouldn’t have granted. Again I silently cursed Liz Reider.

“Glad you made it,” he said with a scratchy voice. Then he gave me a half smirk and sniffled.

I couldn’t help but chuckle. “Anything for you, Jamie. You know that,” I said, unwinding the whip from around my son’s neck. The flexing leather pulled at his skin in places, leaving a collection of pinched marks circling his thin neck. He winced, but said nothing about it. “Are you okay?” I asked, knowing the question was stupid considering our predicament and his visible bruises, but I couldn’t help myself.

Jamie nodded. Glancing to the side, he gave a slight nod to the smoky room. “Yeah, but we gotta get Mom.”

“We will. Hector’s gone after her. First we’ve gotta get down. Can you hold onto this?”

He took one end of the jacket in his hand and wrapped it around his wrist once. “Yeah, but can you?” he rasped. I hoped, and not for the first time, that whatever she’d done to him would heal.

“How do you think I got up here?”

“Good, stay strong.” His voice was more firm this time, and I breathed a sigh of relief.
A small victory, but it’s somethin’.
Jamie lowered himself down and hung from the beam like a monkey, moving a foot toward the far end of the room. Then he whispered up, “Oh, and Dad, you might want to make it quick. This beam’s burnin’.”

I glanced at the far end where his eyes were focused just as the beam splintered beneath our weight. A portion of the far wall where the beam was attached folded inward, and that side of the ceiling collapsed. Shocked, we tumbled free. I pulled at the coat, determined not to let him go, but when the wooden support one level below slammed into my side, it knocked the breath from my lungs. The coat stretched taut, sliding a few inches through my sweaty grip. Wrapping the end around my wrist and squeezing it in both hands, I grimaced at the pain of what were certainly broken ribs, or more.

A voice echoed up through the flames that were now roasting my side and back. “Hey, Dad,” Jamie said with a strained grunt, “remind me to scratch this vacation off our (cough) bucket list.”

My eyes bulged, and I forced myself upright, trying to shift him closer to the last two-by-four. “How can you j-joke at a time like this?” I wheezed, feeling the strain of his weight slacken as he gained purchase.

“When better?” he asked, staring up at me with a smile and red-rimmed eyes.

I shook my head and lowered myself down, wincing at each jolting pain.

The house fire had spread to the carpet below, leaving only patches singed, but not yet engulfed. “Jump over here, old man. Last one out the door’s fixin’ dinner.” Before I could say a word, he leapt for a vacant spot, rolled like an acrobat, and turned to wait for me in the entryway. I followed, but with less majesty and flare—more like a hobbled retiree.

I took a deep, long breath of crisp mountain air as we finally stepped out of the burning house. After a few more breaths and an appraising look at my son, I added, “You know, how ’bout we eat out. I think your mother’ll deserve it.”

He smiled and nodded. “This way. You can see the smoke through the trees.”

Sure enough, he was right. Orange flickers played through the limbs in the distance, and a sudden urgency grasped hold of my heart. I took off toward it, only seconds behind Jamie, and ignored the pain each step sent through me.
My blessed Paige. You’d better be alright. You have to be.