Back of Beyond (25 page)

“So what changed your mind?” Tristan asked. There was an edge to his voice.

19

The ignition of the lighter
fluid had been instant, less than a second after Cody heard the match strike. There was a
whump
that sucked most of the air out of the room and his lungs, which left him gasping. Bitter smoke lit hellishly with the orange and blue tongues of flame. His eyes filled with water and his lungs screamed from smoke he inhaled rather than air and he thought he knew how Hank Winters and the others must have felt if they were conscious in their last moments.

Outside the door, he heard footfalls thumping down the hallway so quickly he knew he’d never be able to catch who did it.

The flame seemed to burn away his sense of time as well. He had no idea if it was seconds or minutes before he scrambled out of the bed and stood naked. Since it was pushed against the wall, the only way he could get out was toward the fire. It had likely been a few seconds since the
whump
; he felt sluggish and cloudy-headed and blind due to the thick smoke. He felt around his feet for the saddlebags because he needed to save them. As he reached toward one of them it ignited, the fire eating up the nylon exterior as if starving for it. He managed to snatch the other one off the floor before it went up, too, and he backed around the foot of the bed into the bathroom. He stood trembling, his back against the sink, gasping, looking through the doorframe at the violent orange glow in the bedroom. He squatted to his haunches and he was able to get below the roiling bank of black smoke. He sucked in the superheated air and was thankful his lungs didn’t explode. The fire had consumed the rug near the door and was curling the flooring. It spread to the sheets and comforter of his bed. He gathered his discarded clothes in his arms.

Then he remembered why the smoke detector didn’t trigger an alarm or activate the sprinkler system, and thought,
Shit!

He reached behind him into the bank of smoke for the sink. When he found it he turned on both taps, then stood and jammed down the stopper with the heel of his hand so the sink filled. While the fire in the bedroom was snapping angrily, he grabbed two towels off the rack and plunged them into the water to soak it up.

His riding boots were within reach in the bedroom near the bed and he found them and pulled them on. The soles were hot. He shoved his arms into a hotel bathrobe that was hanging from a hook behind the door and cinched the tie. Then he dropped down toward the floor again to get a gulp of air. Retrieving the wet towels from the sink, he wrapped one around his head and the other around his hands and ran toward the door using the bag out in front to help block the heat. As he bolted through the flames he felt the hairs on his legs and forearms burn down to the skin and the soles of his boots melt into gel. He could smell the awful acrid smell of his own burning hair.

Cody prayed that whomever had set the fire hadn’t blocked the door so he couldn’t get out, then remembered it was unlikely since the door opened in. In the time it took him to run from the bathroom across the bedroom the heavy water in the towels heated up.

He hit the door hard with the saddlebag out in front of him to cushion the impact. He couldn’t see through the smoke but he reached around the bag for the handle. When he turned it the deadbolt rescinded and he threw himself out into the hallway. The rush of fresh air flowed into the room and fed the fire and the heat from it on his back and neck was instant and intense. Particularly, he felt it on his buttocks.

The hallway was empty except for the round bland face of a disoriented woman who’d just opened her door to peek out. Her eyes fixed above him at the roll of dark brown and yellow smoke that was advancing across the ceiling.

“Get out,” he said to her, “there’s a fire.”

“My things!” she said, her eyes welling with tears.

“Buy new ones,” he said, grasping her hand and pulling her out her door. “Is there anyone in there with you?”

“Sam!” she cried, and turned and tried to wrench her hand free.

Cody shouldered her aside and thumped into the room. Sam, who, like her, was in his midseventies, was sitting up in bed in a pair of boxers and a threadbare wife-beater, rubbing his face.

“Who are you?” Sam asked.

Cody didn’t take the time to answer, but jerked Sam to his feet and pushed him toward the door.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said, herding Sam and Mrs. Sam out ahead of him like stubborn steers. As they went down the hallway he slammed his fist on every door and wished he knew which ones were occupied and which ones were empty, but at each one he yelled, “Get the hell out now! The place is on fire!”

The three of them descended the stairs and were suddenly joined by guests from the other wing and Cody realized that the ringing in his head was from the fire alarms. The alarms bleated and emergency lights flashed in staccato everywhere. Overhead sprinklers suddenly hissed to life making flower-shaped showers that streamed down the walls and pattered on the carpets. The guests covered their heads against the water, and one woman said she was going back for her umbrella but her husband put a quick stop to
that.

Cody was impressed by the lack of shouting or panic as barely clothed people of all ages streamed across the lobby. There were several sharp shouted curses, but most delivered by him.

As the people were herded toward the massive front doors, the hotel staff shouted and gestured for them to keep moving. From outside, sirens were whooping and Cody thought,
Man, that was fast.
Too fast. And he guessed whoever had lit up his room had called it in so there would be only one fatality.

In the river of guests headed toward the doors, under the interior lights that strobed in rhythm with the honking fire alarms, he searched for anyone who looked out of place. He didn’t remember kicking or seeing an empty can of lighter fluid in the hallway, so he searched the throng for anyone who might be holding a can or trying to hide one or someone fully clothed booking it toward a side exit. He saw no one that made
his
alarm bells go off.

He was outside in the instant chill before he thought to check out the hotel staff and emergency responders to see if one of them might be the guy who did it. There was already a fire truck in front of the hotel with firefighters pouring off it, and another coming down the drive.

When he turned to go back inside, a firefighter in heavy gear blocked his path and shooed him away. He dumped his pile of clothing and the remaining saddlebag.

“Let me back in,” Cody shouted at him, “I can help get people out.”

The firefighter, who had a wispy blond mustache and pale blue eyes under his helmet, said, “Now why would you want to do that? Now turn back around and go with the others. You’re blocking the door.”

“Let me by,” Cody said.

The firefighter shook his head. “Get back, sir. We’ve got this under control.”

Cody thought about guests who might have slept through the alarms who were now unable or unwilling to get out, and he thought of the burning bag of gear in his room.

“Let me in,” he said, trying to squeeze by the fireman in the doorway. “Look, I’m a cop. I can help in there.”

“Get with the others, now,” the fireman barked, inadvertently whacking Cody on his injured ear. The blow stunned him, froze him, the pain sharp and furious. His eyes teared again.

“Sorry,” the fireman said, “but I mean it. Get back with the others.”

The door filled with two other firefighters and a staggering night manager. Cody assumed they’d entered through the rear entrance, meaning there was another truck back there. The firemen were quizzing the manager: “Is that everyone? We need a count. We need to know if anyone’s still inside.”

The manager said, “I think so, I think so…”

“You better be right,” one of the firemen said.

The man who’d hit Cody gestured toward him, telling his colleagues, “This guy is a problem. He says he wants back in.”

Cody backed off.

He’d fought against his instinct to badge the guy and demand his way back in, but he remembered it had been taken away. And now that he was outside, he knew why his butt had felt the heat so much when he reached back and found the basketball-sized burned hole in his robe. He melded into the crowd, sidling around them so they wouldn’t look at his singed butt, and the more he thought about it the more he realized he was glad he hadn’t had access to his badge. He retrieved his clothing and the saddlebag and melded into the night.

20

“The water levels,” Jed said
quickly in response to Tristan’s question. “I’ve been noticing every stream we’ve crossed is quite a bit higher than normal, almost like May or early June flows. The lake is higher than I’ve ever seen it this time of year as well. So if the water is high where we’re at, it’ll be a hell of a lot higher lower down in the Thorofare valley.”

Rachel Mina said, “Have you ever taken this new route before, Jed?”

Jed shook his head. “No, ma’am. We’ll be seeing and riding through country very few people have ever seen, including me. But according to my topo maps, the elevation rise isn’t much more severe than what we were going to do anyway, so I’m not worried about
that.
What I can’t guarantee is that we won’t have to stop from time to time and scout out ahead, which is something we haven’t had to do today. We’ll want to avoid black timber that may have trees down in it our horses can’t navigate through. And I’ll want to ride ahead from time to time to make sure we don’t get into a situation where we get rim-rocked.”

“Rim-rocked?” she asked.

“It means riding or climbing up into rocks and boulders but not being able to get back down,” he said.

“Great,” D’Amato said.

“But there’s an upside,” Jed said. “We may discover some thermal activity and see vistas and wildlife we’d never experience any other way. There are over ten thousand thermal features up here in this park, and who knows what we might find in the kind of virgin territory I’m talking about.”

“I’m from Brooklyn,” D’Amato said. “I do not know of this virgin territory.”

Which got a laugh out of Donna Glode, if no one else.

“The other thing,” Jed said, “is we’re likely to get to our next camp even earlier than the normal route, since we’re kind of cutting the corner. We might even discover a shortcut.

“Of course,” he said, “we don’t have to try this new route at all. We can stay on our trail and give it our best shot despite the mud and the potential of washouts. I just want you all to know there is an option available.”

He stopped talking. Jed knew one sure way of killing a sale was to oversell it. He wanted the group to come to their own consensus without him appearing to force it.

No one, it seemed, wanted to speak first.

Then Russell said, “We’d be like the Lewis and Clark Expedition. We’d be going through a part of Yellowstone Park practically no one has ever been through. That appeals to me, at least. I like being an explorer.”

D’Amato cracked in a bad pirate voice,
“Beware, there be monsters.”

Knox said, “‘Back of back of beyond,’ we’ll call it. I like the sound of that.”

“Me too,” Donna Glode said. “Bring on the adventure!” She rubbed her hands together in what Jed thought was an overplay designed to show the Wall Streeters—D’Amato in particular—she was with them.

Walt said, “Is there still good fishing this new route?”

Jed said, “It looks like it, anyway. Those creeks I mentioned earlier, Phlox and Chipmunk, plus Badger Creek. One thing for sure, they haven’t been fished much. So you and Justin might be in for a rare treat—native cutthroat trout that’ve never seen an artificial fly.”

Walt nodded and smiled. “I like that idea,” he said.

“I think I’m in,” Sullivan said. “I think my girls would like the idea of seeing country no one has seen for a long time. I know I would. Go big or go home, I say.”

Jed noticed that Rachel Mina shot Sullivan an approving look.

Tristan stood up, and turned away from Jed to address the group. “I feel it’s my obligation to bring something up,” he said, the back of his shoulder to Jed. “What Jed is suggesting is kind of radical. We don’t have radios or cell phones. The only thing the Park Service knows about us—or our families at home—is where we’re
supposed
to be from day to day. So if we don’t show up at the end they know where to look. If we deviate from the trail and get lost or ‘rim-rocked,’ no one will know where to find us.”

Tristan said, “I’ve had a lot of success in my life by determining where I want to get to and staying the course. It’s when my partners convinced me to deviate from the plan that I failed. What Jed is suggesting here is trading in a sure thing—even though it might be unpleasant for a while—for a flier filled with unknown variables. I’d rather stay the course. It’s what I—and all of you—paid for.”

Even Jed conceded to himself Tristan was persuasive.

“Oh for Christ’s sake, Tristan,” Donna said, “didn’t you just hear him? You are
such
a tight-ass. This isn’t a product launch. I thought the purpose of this trip was for us to experience high adventure. Isn’t that what you said?”

Tristan didn’t answer her, but even in the firelight Jed could tell his face flushed red. She had embarrassed him, cut his feet out from under him. And his argument. Jed felt the momentum shift back.

“I’m in,” Knox said. “The worst that could happen is I never make it back to the firm to be at my desk when I get laid off.”

“Damn right,” Russell said. “Me, too.”

D’Amato covered his face with his hands as if horrified, then squeaked, “Me, three.”

Jed looked around. All in favor, one opposed, one not heard from.

“Mr. Wilson?” he asked, expecting it to go five–two.

Wilson said nothing, but his glare was intense.

Jed tried to read Wilson’s eyes, and what he saw was genuine surprise. As if
he’d
had his feet cut out from him, too. Finally, because all the attention had turned toward him, Wilson said, “That’s fine. I’ll go with the majority.”