The Burning Man Read Free Page B

to get involved in Randall’s domestic mess. There was a second shot and Randall fell backward through the door and onto the porch, clutching his right thigh and making a noise like an angry donkey. Tony figured the guy’s bitch of a wife must have plugged him, and couldn’t blame her, to be honest.
    Stepping into the house, he was astounded to discover that the shooter was a little girl.
    Tony had always been uncomfortable around kids. It was like they could see right through his flash and charm, and knew that there was something off about him. Something rotten. So he avoided them whenever possible.
    He’d dealt with armed attackers more times than he could count, and was known in the department as a guy who always stayed cool under pressure. But he’d never faced off against a child with a gun.
    “Okay, kid,” he said, keeping his voice calm and even. “Why don’t you just put the gun down.”
    The girl was breathing fast and shallow, her pale blond hair crackling with static. Her eyes were wide, with too much white around the thin green irises and dilated pupils.
    “Come on, sweetheart,” he said, holstering his gun and taking a cautious step closer. “Now, why don’t you be a good girl and...”
    He reached out and grabbed the girl’s fragile little wrist, tilting the gun in her hand so it pointed up toward the ceiling.
    Suddenly it felt like he had grabbed a live wire, or stuck his hand into a microwave oven. Some kind of strange blistering heat seared through Tony’s fingers and up into his arm, causing the skin to bubble and blacken. He wanted to let go but it was as if his fingers had been fused to her wrist.
    And in a sudden awful flash, the house was gone. The whole neighborhood was gone and he and the little girl were standing in the middle of what appeared to be a massive junkyard, with wrecked cars and washing machines and twisted metal scrap. Only all of the cars looked foreign and strangely designed, and the brand names on the various broken-down appliances were unfamiliar.
    For a moment he forgot the pain. Then, before Tony could get a handle on this bizarre turn of events, he felt the intrusion of an unwanted presence inside his brain. The girl was in his thoughts . He could feel a weird resonant echo humming through his neurons, as if she was using them to play cat’s cradle. Like the two of them were twisting together, and synching up on a molecular level.
    Then, just like that, the connection was severed, and the two of them were back inside Randall’s house again.
    A fountain of sparks rained down from the light fixture above their heads. Light bulbs popped like corn and the dirty carpet burst into flame, releasing choking, toxic smoke.
    Tony’s right sleeve was on fire, too, and whatever plans he may have had for dealing with the little girl were forgotten in that instant as he spun away from her in a blind panic, shielding his face from the flames with his left hand.
    As he twisted his burning right arm, Tony’s uniform sleeve disintegrated into glowing ash and the fingers he’d clenched around the little girl’s wrist snapped and shattered like burnt breadsticks. The heavy gun in her hand thumped to the carpet and she just stood there, wide green eyes staring.
    Tony tore out into the front yard and dove to the sandy ground, rolling to smother the flames. But the feeling of burning deep inside his flesh could not be quenched. He felt as if his arm had been filled with napalm maggots that were steadily chewing their way up into his torso and head.
    He grayed out for an unknown length of time, woozy and dull with shock, but still able to hear shouting and sirens around him. Then there were hands on his body, lifting him. He tried to fight them, but there were too many. That’s when he realized he was on a stretcher, about to be put into an ambulance.
    “Officer Orsini?” a voice was saying. “Stay with us, okay? We’re gonna get you to the hospital.”
    A paramedic, a woman.