Maybe, he thought.
Kenner looked at the road ahead, a pale strip under dark skies. He did not think about whether his friends were alive or not. Perhaps all three were dead. But if Kenner did not stop the storm, there would be hundreds dead. Children, families. Paper plates in the mud, while the searchers dug out the bodies.
Somehow he had to stop it.
He drove forward, into the storm.
MCKINLEY
MONDAY, OCTOBER 11
11:29 A. M.
"Mommy! Mommy! Brad hit me! Mommy! Make him stop!"
"All right, kids..."
"Bradley? How many times do I have to tell you? Leave your sister alone!"
Standing to one side of McKinley Park, Trooper Miguel Rodriguez of the Arizona Highway Patrol stood by his car and watched the picnic in progress. It was now eleven-thirty in the morning, and the kids were getting hungry. They were starting to fight. All around the park, barbecues were going, the smoke rising into an ever-darkening sky. Some of the parents looked upward with concern, but nobody was leaving the park. And the rain hadn't started here, even though they had heard the crack of lightning and the rumble of thunder a few miles to the north.
Rodriguez glanced at the bullhorn resting on the seat of his car. For the last half hour, he had waited impatiently for the radio call from Agent Kenner, telling him to clear the park.
But the call hadn't yet come.
And Agent Kenner had given him explicit instructions. Do not clear McKinley Park before he was given the word.
Trooper Rodriguez didn't understand why it was necessary to wait, but Kenner had been insistent. He said it was a matter of national security. Rodriguez didn't understand that either. How was a damn picnic in a park a matter of national security?
But he knew an order when he heard one. So Rodriguez waited, impatient and uneasy, and watched the sky. Even when he heard the weather service announce a flash flood advisory for the eastern counties from Kayenta to Two Guns and Camp Payson--an area that included McKinley--Rodriguez still waited.
He could not know that the radio call he was waiting for would never come.
AURORAVILLE
MONDAY, OCTOBER 11
11:40 A. M.
In retrospect, what saved Peter Evans was the slight tingling he had felt, holding the radio in his sweating palm. In the minutes before, Evans had realized that something was causing the lightning to follow them wherever they went. He didn't know any science, but assumed it must be something metallic or electronic. Talking to Kenner, he had felt the faint electric tingle from the handset--and on an impulse he had flung it across the room. It landed against a large iron viselike contraption that looked like a bear trap.
The lightning crashed down a moment later, glaring white and roaring, and Evans threw himself flat, across Sarah's dead body. Lying there, dizzy with fear, his ears ringing from the blast, he thought for a moment that he felt some movement from her body beneath him.
He got up quickly and began to cough. The room was full of smoke. The opposite wall was on fire, the flames still small, but already licking up the wall. He looked back at Sarah, blue and cold. There was no question in his mind that she was dead. He must have imagined her movement, but--
He pinched her nose and began to give her mouth-to-mouth. Her lips were cold. It frightened him. He was sure she was dead. He saw hot embers and ash floating in the smoky air. He would have to leave before the entire building came down around him. He was losing his count, blowing into her lungs.
There was no point anyway. He heard the flames crackling around him. He looked up and saw that the ceiling timbers were starting to burn.
He felt panic. He jumped to his feet, ran to the door, and threw it open and went outside.
He was stunned to feel hard rain coming down--pelting him, soaking him instantly. It shocked him to his senses. He looked back and saw Sarah lying on the floor. He couldn't leave her.
He ran back, grabbed both her arms, and dragged her out of the house. Her inert body was surprisingly heavy. Her head sagged back, eyes closed, her mouth hanging open. She was dead, all right.
Out in the rain once more, he dropped her in the yellow grass, got down on his knees, and gave her more mouth-to-mouth. He was not sure how long he kept up his steady rhythm. One minute, two minutes. Maybe five. It was clearly pointless, but he continued long past any reason, because in a strange way the rhythm relieved his own sense of panic, it gave him something to concentrate on. He was out there in the middle of a pelting downpour with a ghost town in flames around him anyway, and--
Sarah retched. Her body rose up suddenly, and he released her in astonishment. She had a spasm of dry heaves, and then fell into a fit of coughing.
"Sarah..."
She groaned. She rolled over. He grabbed her in his arms, and held her. She was breathing. But her eyes fluttered wildly. She didn't seem to be conscious.
"Sarah, come on..."