A shot kicked up dirt.
We spun toward it.
Kate had crawled beneath the trees. Wavering to her feet, she held the pistol that I'd dropped. Doing her best to keep it steady, she looked as if, throughout her ordeal, a small part of her mind had remained lucid enough to fantasize about getting even. Normally, at close range, there wasn't any trick to using the gun. Even though she knew nothing about pistols, all she had to do was look down the barrel and pull the trigger.
But she was drugged, and she'd already missed once, and now she mustered her concentration, her eyes dark above her hollow cheeks. The twin vision of her nightmare-two Peteys, two Brads-must have threatened the little sanity she had left.
"Help me," Petey said. "I came here to save you. Shoot him."
She hesitated, then turned the gun toward me.
"Please, Kate, don't," I said.
I watched her finger tighten on the trigger.
"Shoot him," Petey said.
"I love you, Kate."
"I'm your husband. Do what I tell you," Petey said.
She turned toward Petey and shot him in the face.
She took a step closer, pulled the trigger, and this time missed. So she stumbled closer, until she was on top of him. At point-blank range, she shot him in the chest. The next bullet burst his throat. She didn't aim at those parts. They just happened to be where the barrel wavered. She shot and kept shooting, too close not to hit him somewhere, his shoulder, his knees, his groin, riddling his body, until all fifteen bullets in the magazine had been expended and the slide on top of the pistol stayed back.
Tears rolled down her face.
I managed to stand.
But as I approached her, wanting to hold her, she staggered back in fright. She raised the pistol again and pulled the trigger repeatedly. Nothing happened. The gun was empty. But if there'd been any rounds left, she'd have killed me.
I tried to make a reassuring gesture. "It's okay. You're safe now. I'm not going to hurt you."
But the dark frenzy in her eyes told me that she didn't believe me.
"I won't touch you," I said. "But please let me help you. Please." I felt heat behind me. I heard a crackling roar and looked over my shoulder at the fire. "We have to get out of here."
I took another step forward. In response, she backed away toward the tree across the stream.
"Jason?" I asked. "Where's Jason? My God, was he shot?"
As I stared frantically under the tree toward where I'd last seen Jason, Kate scrambled under it, trying to get away from me. I lurched after her, rising on the other side. Fearful that I'd see Jason's body blown apart from Petey's last shotgun blast, I breathed out in relief when I found him standing next to the stream.
He threw a rock.
It struck my chest, but I was far beyond pain. All I wanted was to get him out of there.
"It's okay, Jason. You've got nothing to be afraid of now."
I took a step toward him. Covered with blood, singed by the fire, I must have looked indistinguishable from Petey.
He scrambled up the bank and into the forest.
Off balance from my injuries, I struggled after him. Heat and smoke almost succeeded in pushing me back as I stumbled through the underbrush.
I saw bright flickers within the smoke. The heat intensified. A tree exploded into flames. A wall of fire reached bushes.
"Jason!" Smoke clogged my throat. I bent over, coughing, forced myself to straighten, and veered past more trees.
The wind cleared the smoke for an instant. Ahead, Jason was blocked by the approaching fire. He turned, desperate to run from it, then stopped when he saw me. I must have been more threatening than another wall of fire. He dodged to my left and raced toward an opening in the blaze. As I leapt, the wind hurled flames toward him. I knocked him down an instant before a fiery gust flashed above our sprawled bodies. With the remaining strength in my wounded arm, I dragged him back from the flames. He kicked and hit me. Then Kate was hitting me. "Let him go!" she screamed.
The three of us tumbled down the bank and landed in the water. They kept hitting and kicking, but I didn't resist. Their punches weakened. Finally, they collapsed, staring at me, their gaunt chests rising and falling.
"I love you," I said.
They stared.
Something slowly changed focus in their eyes, as if they dimly remembered a time when those words had been familiar.
"Stay here. There's something I have to do," I managed to say.
As the fire approached the top of the bank, I splashed water over me. Then I ducked under the tree that spanned the stream. I came to where Petey lay. His body was almost totally covered with blood from the number of times he'd been shot.
But that wasn't good enough. He'd come back once. I needed to be absolutely certain that he was dead, that he could never come back again, not even in my nightmares.
I grabbed his feet, but my injured arms had stiffened too much, causing too much pain for me to drag him up the bank. I tried as hard as I could but was about to give up, when Kate's hands came into view. I looked at her, startled, but she didn't say a word, just helped me tug Petey up the slope.
We threw him toward the fire. His corpse burst into flames. Only then did we stumble back down to the stream. At the bottom, Kate fell, but she wouldn't let me touch her to help her get up. Keeping a wary distance from me, she and Jason ran.
Epilogue
The three of us were in a hospital for quite a while. The police and the district attorney questioned me, demanding to know why I hadn't let the authorities go after Petey. I did my best to tell them that events had overtaken me. How could I explain that I was afraid the police would have gotten Kate and Jason killed instead of saving them? Despite my repeated denials, they insisted that my motive had been rage, that I'd been determined to get even with Petey. So I had to appear before a grand jury, and the way my attorney explained it to me, I could have been charged with what amounted to taking the law into my own hands. But I doubt there was a person on the jury who, after looking at my broken arm in a sling and the burns on my face, didn't think that I'd gone through enough. Certainly Kate and Jason had gone through plenty. Their eyes had the haunted expression of war refugees.
It took three weeks before we were allowed to leave. I paid someone to drive the Volvo back to Denver while Kate, Jason, and I flew home from Columbus. Our friends welcomed us back. They phoned. They visited. They had a party for us. We thanked them.
But the truth was, we were too traumatized to be sociable. Smiles and small talk were difficult to manage, and as for "large talk," when we were asked details about what had happened, we weren't ready to discuss it yet. After a while, the newness of our return wore off. The phone calls, visits, and invitations declined. Finally, we were left to ourselves.
Jason remained so silent that the parents of his friends didn't feel comfortable having him around their children. For her part, Kate got nervous whenever she had to leave the house. She finally gave up trying to do so. The only good thing was, as soon as I shaved my beard, as soon as the drugs wore off and Kate and Jason distinguished me from Petey, they no longer considered me a threat, although I'm always careful to let them see when I'm going to touch them.
I've tried to be honest with myself. I've done my best to understand what happened, hoping to adjust to it. But sometimes I wonder if it's possible to adjust to what Petey… Lester… did to us. Odd how I struggled so hard to deny that Petey was Lester and now I accept that the two were the same. My brother died a long time ago. Because of me.
Sometimes when Kate and Jason aren't aware of it, I study them, trying to decide if they're getting better. Without being obvious, I try to see beyond their eyes. I look in the mirror and try to see beyond my own. Do we carry darkness in us?
Payne came over the other day, a welcome visitor.