Cold Fire

"I'm still hungry," Jim said when he finished.

"Let's see if you can keep that down first.”

"I'm fine. It was only sunstroke, dehydration.”

"Sunstroke can kill, son. You need more rest.”

When the priest relented a while later and brought him more ice cream Jim spoke through half clenched teeth and frozen lips: "Why are some people killers? Not cops, I mean. Not soldiers. Not those who kill in self defense. The other kind, the murderers. Why do they kill?" Settling into a straight-backed rocker near the bed, the priest regarded him with one raised eyebrow. "That's a peculiar question.”

"Is it? Maybe. Do you have an answer?" "The simple one is-because there's evil in them.”

They sat in mutual silence for a minute or so. Jim ate ice cream, and the rocky priest rocked in his chair. Another twilight crept across the sky beyond the windows.

Finally Jim said, "Murder, accidents, disease, old age. Why did God make us mortal in the first place? Why do we have to die?" "Death's not the end. Or at least that's what I believe. Death is only our means of passage, only the train that conveys us to our reward.”

"Heaven, you mean.”

The priest hesitated. "Or the other.”

Jim slept for a couple of hours. When he woke, he saw the priest standing at the foot of the bed, watching him intently.

"You were talking in your sleep.”

Jim sat up in bed. "Was I? What'd I say?" " There is an enemy.'" "That's all I said?" "Then you said, It's coming. It'll kill us all.'" A shiver of dread passed through Jim, not because the words had any power of themselves, and not because he understood them, but because he sensed that on a subconscious level he knew all too well what he had meant.

He said, "A dream, I guess. A bad dream. That's all.”

But shortly past three o'clock in the morning, during that second night in the rectory, he thrashed awake, sat straight up in bed, and heard the words escaping him again, "It'll kill us all." The room was lightless.

He fumbled for the lamp, switched it on.

He was alone.

He looked at the windows. Darkness beyond.

He had the bizarre but unshakable feeling that something hideous and merciless had been hovering near, something infinitely more savage and strange than anyone in recorded history had ever seen, dreamed, or imagined. Trembling, he got out of bed. He was wearing an ill-fitting pair of the priest's pajamas. For a moment he just stood there, not sure what to do.

Then he switched off the light and, barefoot, went to one window, then the other. He was on the second floor. The night was silent, deep, and peaceful. If something had been out there, it was gone now.

The following morning, he dressed in his own clothes, which Father Geary had laundered for him. He spent most of the day in the living room, in a big easy chair, his feet propped on a hassock, reading magazines and dozing, while the priest tended to parish business.

Jim's sunburnt and wind-abraded face was stiffening. Like a mask.

That evening, they prepared dinner together. At the kitchen sink, Father Geary cleaned lettuce, celery, and tomatoes for a salad. Jim set the table opened a bottle of cheap Chianti to let it breathe, then sliced canned mushrooms into a pot of spaghetti sauce on the stove.

They worked in a comfortable mutual silence, and Jim wondered about the curious relationship that had evolved between them. There had been a dreamlike quality to the past couple of days, as if he had not merely found refuge in a small desert town but in a place of peace outside the real world a town in the Twilight Zone. The priest had stopped asking questions In fact, it now seemed to Jim that Father Geary had never been half probing or insistent as the circumstances warranted. And he suspected that the priest's Christian hospitality did not usually extend to the sheltering of injured and suspicious strangers. Why he should receive special consideration at Geary's hands was a mystery to him, but he was grateful for it.

When he had sliced half the mushrooms in the can, he suddenly s "Life line.”

Father Geary turned from the sink, a stalk of celery in hand.

"Pardon me?" A chill swept through Jim, and he almost dropped the knife into the sauce. He put it on the counter.

"Jim?" Shivering, he turned to the priest and said, "I've got to get to an airport.”

"An airport?" "Right away, Father.”

The priest's plump face dimpled with perplexing, wrinkling his tanned forehead far past his long-vanished hairline. "But there's no airport here.”

"How far to the nearest one?" Jim asked urgently.

"Well. two hours by car. All the way to Las Vegas.”

"You've got to drive me there.”

"What? Now?" "Right now," Jim said.

"But" "I have to get to Boston.”

"But you've been ill" "I'm better now.”

"Your face-" "It hurts, and it looks like hell, but it's not fatal. Father, I have to get to Boston.”

"Why?" He hesitated, then decided on a degree of revelation. "If I don't get to Boston, someone there is going to be killed. Someone who shouldn't die.”

"Who? Who's going to die?" Jim licked his peeling lips. "I don't know.”