Solomon Creed: The only thriller you need to read this year

‘Yeah, I heard it.’

‘You heard it in the office?’

‘Yessir. Felt it too.’

Rollins was a mile or so further away than he had been. Some explosion. ‘Can you see it yet?’ Morgan listened to dead air and pictured Rollins leaning back in his chair to catch a view out of the narrow window of the dispatch room.

‘Yeah, I got it.’

‘Well, it’s coming your way so you better get busy. Call the airfield, get the tanker in the air. We need to step on this thing before it gets out of hand.’

‘I’m on it, Chief.’

Morgan clicked off the comms and leaned forward. The top of the smokestack was several hundred feet high and still rising. He was closer now, close enough that he could see something burning at the centre of the fire each time he crested a rise in the road. He was so fixated on it, wanting to see it and confirm what he already knew it must be, that he didn’t notice the figure running down the middle of the road until he was almost upon him.

His reaction was all instinct and panic. He threw the wheel hard right and braced himself for a thump that didn’t come, then jerked the wheel left again. The rear wheels caught the soft dirt of the verge and he started to slide. He stamped on the brakes to stop the wheels then back on the gas to give him some traction. He was in a full sideways skid now, wheels spinning and throwing grit into the air. He hit the brakes again and clung to the wheel, steering into the slide until he slammed into a bush or something that stopped the truck dead and made him bang his head against the window.

He sat perfectly still for a moment, hands on the wheel, heart pounding in his chest, so loud he could hear it above the roar of the burning desert and the patter of grit on the windshield. The first fire truck roared past, throwing more grit over him and a crackle of static flooded the car. ‘Chief? You there, Chief?’

He took a breath, pressed the comms button. ‘Yeah, Rollins, I’m here.’

‘How’s it lookin’?’

The second fire truck thundered by and he followed its path towards the wall of flame, the burning plane twisted at its centre. ‘Like the end of the world,’ he murmured.

He glanced back to the road and was half-surprised to see the running man still there, rising from the ground where he had thrown himself. He looked strange, extraordinary, his hair as white as his skin.

Morgan had heard all the stories about how this road was built on the old wagon trail and was supposed to be haunted. People had seen plenty of things out here, especially at night when the cold hit the ground like a hammer, releasing wisps of vapour that drifted through the headlights and imaginations of people who had heard the same stories he had. He’d had reports of everything from ghost horses to wagons floating a foot above the ground. But he had never seen anything himself until now.

‘Chief? You still there, Chief?’

Morgan snapped to attention, his eyes fixed on the stranger. ‘Yeah, I’m here. What’s the word on those tankers?’

‘You got the unit from the airfield on its way and two more possibles inbound from Tucson. They’re dragging their asses a little, but I’m working on it. If they get the go-ahead they should be with you in twenty.’

Morgan nodded but said nothing. In twenty minutes the fire would have doubled in size, tripled even. More sirens wailed closer, everything the town had to send but not nearly enough.

‘Call everyone you can,’ he said. ‘We’re going to need roadblocks on all routes in and out of town. I don’t want anybody riding out into this mess, and we’re going to need to set firebreaks too. Anyone with a truck and a shovel they can swing needs to report for duty at the city-limit billboard if they want this town to still be here by sundown.’

He disconnected and fumbled in his pocket for his phone. He found a contact and opened a new message. His fingers shook as he typed: ‘Clear out now. Funeral finished early. Find anything?’

He sent the message and looked back at the stranger. He was gazing up at the fire with an odd expression on his face. Morgan held up his phone, snapped a photo and studied it. The man seemed to glow in the midst of all the grit. It reminded him of the pictures he’d seen in the books and on the websites devoted to the town’s ghosts. Only those all seemed fake to him. There was nothing fake about this. He was there, large as life, staring back at the crashed plane with pale grey eyes the colour of stone. Staring into the fire.

The phone beeped in his hand. A reply: ‘Nothing. Leaving now.’

Goddammit. Nothing was going right today. Not a damned thing.

He grabbed his hat and opened the door to the roar of fire and the heat of the desert just as the pale man turned and started to run.

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I stare into the heart of the fire and feel as if it’s staring back at me. But that can’t be right. I know that. The air swirls and wails and roars around me like the world is in pain.

The first fire truck stops at the edge of the blaze and people run out, pulling hose from its belly like they are drawing innards from some beast in sacrifice to a burning god. They seem so tiny and the fire so big. The wind stirs the flames and the fire roars forward, up the road, towards the men, towards me. Fear flares inside me and I turn to run and almost collide with a woman wearing a dark blue uniform, walking up the road behind me.

‘Are you OK, sir?’ she says, her eyes soft with concern. I want to hold her and have her hold me but my fear of the fire is too great and so is my desire to get away from it. I duck past her and keep on running, straight into a man wearing the same uniform. He grabs my arm and I try to pull free but I cannot. He is too strong and this surprises me, as if I am not used to being weak.

‘I need to get away,’ I say in my soft, unfamiliar voice, and glance back over my shoulder at the flames being blown closer by the wind.

‘You’re safe now, sir,’ he says with a professional calm that only makes me more anxious. How can he know I am safe, how can he possibly know?

I look back and past him towards the town and the sign, but there is a parked ambulance blocking my view and this makes me anxious too.

‘I need to get away from it,’ I say, pulling my arm away, trying to make him understand. ‘I think the fire is here because of me.’

He nods as if he understands, but I see his other hand reaching out to grab me and I seize it and pull hard, sweeping his feet from beneath him with my leg at the same time and twisting away so he falls to the ground. The movement is as natural as breathing and as smooth as a well-practised dance step. My muscles still have memory it seems. I look down into his shocked face. ‘Sorry, Lawrence,’ I say, using the name on his badge, then I turn to run – back to the town and away from the fire. I manage one step before his hand grabs my leg, his strong fingers closing round my ankle like a manacle.

I stumble, regain my balance, turn back and raise my foot. I don’t want to kick him but I will, I will kick him right in his face if that’s what it takes to make him let go. The thought of the solid heel of my foot crashing into his nose, splitting his skin and spilling blood, brings a sensation like warm air rushing through me. It’s a nice feeling, and it disturbs me as much as my earlier familiarity with the smell of death. I try to focus on something else, try to smother my instinct and stop my foot from lashing out, and in this pause something big and solid hits me hard, ripping my leg from the man’s grip.

I hit the ground and a flash of white explodes inside my skull as my head bangs against the road. Rage erupts in me. I fight to wriggle free from whoever tackled me. Hot breath blows on my cheek and I smell sour coffee and the beginnings of tooth decay. I twist my head round and see the face of the policeman who nearly ran me down. ‘Take it easy,’ he says, pinning me down with his weight, ‘they’re only trying to help you here.’

But they’re not. If they wanted to help, they’d let me go.

In a detached part of my mind I know that I could use my teeth to tear at his cheek or his nose, attack him with such ferocity he would want to be free of me more than I do from him. I am simultaneously fascinated, appalled and excited by this notion, this realization that I have the power to free myself but that something is holding me back, something inside me.

More hands grab me and press me hard to the ground. I feel a sting in my arm like a large insect has bitten me. The female medic is crouching beside me now, her attention fixed on the syringe sticking into my arm.

‘Unfair fight,’ I try to say, but am already slurring by the time I get to the last word.

The world starts turning to liquid and I feel myself going limp. A hand cradles my head and gently lowers it to the ground. I try to fight it, willing my eyes to stay open. I can see the distant town, framed by the road and sky. I want to tell them all to hurry, that the fire is coming and they need to get away, but my mouth no longer works. My vision starts to tunnel, black around the edges, a diminishing circle of light in the centre, as if I am falling backwards down a deep well. I can see the sign now past the edge of the ambulance, the words on it visible too. I read them in the clarifying air, the last thing I see before my eyes close and the world goes dark:

WELCOME TO THE CITY OF

REDEMPTION

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Mulcahy leaned against the Jeep and stared out at the jagged lines of wings beyond the chain-link fence. From where he stood he could see a Vietnam-era B-52 with upwards of thirty mission decals on its fuselage, a World War II bomber of some sort, a heavy transporter plane that resembled a whale, and a squadron of sharp-nosed, lethal-looking jet fighters with various paint jobs from various countries, including a MiG with a Soviet star on the side and two smaller ones beneath the cockpit windows denoting combat kills.

Beyond the parade of military planes a runway arrowed away into the heart of the caldera, snakes of heat twisting in the air above it. There were some buzzards to the north, circling above something dead or dying in the desert; other than that there was nothing, not even a cloud, though he had heard thunder a while back. A spot of rain would be nice. God knows they needed it.

He checked his watch.

Late.

Sweat was starting to prick and tickle in his hair and on his back beneath his shirt as the trapped heat of the day got hold of him. The silver Grand Cherokee he was leaning against had black tinted windows, cool leather seats and a kick-ass air-conditioner circulating chilled air at a steady sixty-five degrees. He could hear the unit whirring under the idling engine. Even so, he preferred to stand outside in the desert heat than remain in the car with the two morons he was having to baby-sit, listening to their inane conversation.

– Hey, man, how many Nazis you think that bird wasted?