Naked Prey

Thanks.”
    Lucas slammed the phone back on the hook and ran barefoot in his underwear to the door and out, down two, and began pounding on Del’s door. “Get up. Del. Get up.”
    Without waiting for an answer he ran back to his room, left the door open, and began pulling on his jeans. He’d been outside for no more than ten seconds and he was cold—God only knew what the temperature was. He waspulling on his shirt when Del stumbled into the room, pulling on jeans, still wearing his pajama top.
    “West house is burning down. Fire trucks on the way,” Lucas blurted. Del disappeared. Lucas pulled on his socks and shoes, and in the distance, through the open door, could hear the siren that called in the volunteer fire department, and the roar of the truck heading out.
    Shoes on, Lucas got his wallet and keys and coat and gloves and headed out to the truck, climbed inside, saw Del running toward him, popped the passenger-side door lock, and Del was inside and Lucas took off.
    Del was carrying his shirt and coat and boots and dressed as they headed toward the highway. “Not a coincidence,” he grunted.
    “We been out with that kid all over the place, it’s like we were dragging bait. I didn’t even think about it,” Lucas said. They were probably two or three miles behind the fire truck when they got to Highway 36, but once past the last house going out of town, Lucas dropped the pedal to the floor and left it there. Two minutes out, he pushed the button that lit his information screen, which said that it was fourteen degrees below zero. Another minute out, they could see a glow to the north, burning faintly above the closer red lights of the fire truck. “Jesus Christ, that can’t be it,” Del said. “We’re too far away.”
    “Gotta be it,” Lucas said, “Unless the report was wrong.”
    They were closing quickly on the first-responder fire truck, but didn’t catch it until they were just outside of Broderick. By then, they knew the reports had been right: the fire was north of Broderick and huge, and there was nothing else out there.
    Lucas, worried that some of the town residents might be in the highway, in the dark, looking at the fire, let the trucklead them through town. When the truck pulled into the house, Lucas swung past it and turned in at West Ditch Road.
    Even from there, on the opposite side of the ditch, the heat was ferocious. “If there’s anybody in there, they’re gone,” Del said. One of the firemen had jumped off the truck, slid down the bank of the ditch and began hacking at the ice on the bottom with an oversized ax. As he did that, another man was uncoiling a hose, and when he had enough of it, he rolled it down the bank, and the ax-man dragged it to the hole he’d cut and shoved it under the ice.
    A minute later, a thin stream of water was splashing onto the house, but it was obvious that it was doing no good at all—it was like pissing into a welding torch. The fire was eating everything. More lights now, police cars and two more fire trucks.
    Then:
    “Lucas.”
    The voice was high and shrill but somehow weak, and might almost have been the scream of a failing joist in the fire. But Lucas knew it wasn’t, and he ran down the gravel track, in the direction of the sound, and shouted, “Letty? Letty?”
    “Over here. Here.” He could see the pale half-oval of her face across the ditch, half of her face lit by the fire. “I’m hurt bad.”
    “Hang on,” Lucas shouted. Del yelled, “Not that way,” as Lucas went straight down the wall of the ditch, sliding, crawled halfway up the other side, slid back, tried again, slid back, and finally ran thirty feet down the ditch to where some tumbleweeds were still rooted in the side, and clambered out of it. Del had run around the end of it, and was coming toward him. “Letty?” He’d lost track of her.
    “I’m hurt bad, and I think Mom’s . . . Mom’s in there.Somebody came and shot her.” She began sobbing and Lucas came up, and he bent to pick her up and she shrank away and said, “My hand is hurt bad, and my side hurts, I think I’m shot, and my ankle might be broke . . . ”
    “Aw, Jesus.” Del was there, and Lucas pulled off his coat and said, “We’re making a sling, just . . . aw, fuck it. Del . . . ” Lucas pulled his coat back on and said, “I’m gonna pick her up. Which side hurts, honey? Which side?”
    H E PICKED HER up, cradling her, and Del asked, “Where’re your keys?” and