For a long empty moment, nothing. Then: the smallest and most timid voice.
Let us begin, shall we?
MICAH COULD HEAR THE SCREAMS over the roar of the forest fire. They boiled out of the black rock. They were followed by silence and then—most chillingly—by a prolonged laugh.
“Did you hear that?” Ellen asked.
Micah nodded.
“The Reverend?”
“I suppose.”
They spent the night at the mouth of the cleft as the forest burned. The wind was gusting and the trees dry; Micah wouldn’t be surprised to hear that half the state had gone up. The heat intensified. They were forced to retreat into the cleft. It was much cooler inside the rock. Micah had a sense that even if the fire was raging right outside, it was always cool and wet inside this particular rock. He closed his eye, his eyelid lit by the mellow orange of the distant inferno. He hoped Minerva had made it out with the children.
The fire swept north and west the next day. Ellen managed to sleep for a few hours while Micah kept watch. The burned trees continued to glow until a heavy rain bucketed down. Columns of steam rose from the blackened forest floor. When the downpour cleared, they walked the wet sand to the edge of the forest. The tusks of what had been fifty-foot pines jutted from the earth.
“Should we start walking?” Ellen wondered. “We shouldn’t get lost, at least.”
“The fire could still be burning underground. In the tree roots.”
“Well?”
They agreed to set off before evening. They had no water or food; their lips were cracked and white, the first stages of dehydration. Maybe the well at Little Heaven had survived the blaze. They could draw a few ashy mouthfuls.
They had just set off when the air filled with the thacka-thacka of chopper blades. A search helicopter crested the western horizon, bearing steadily toward them. Ellen waved her arms. The pilot swooped low overhead, buzzing their position.
“He must have seen us,” Ellen said.
Micah nodded. “He will bank around and land nearby.”
“You don’t seem all that happy.”
“I do not wish to talk to the authorities.”
He began to walk toward Little Heaven again.
“Micah?”
“You go with them,” he said.
She trotted over to him. “You’re not serious.” When he did not reply: “Micah, you could die. After all this—”
But she could see he was resolute. Mule-headed to the end, this man.
“Then I’ll come with you.”
He shook his head. “Go with them. I will be fine.”
“How will I know that?”
He took her hand. The gesture seemed to surprise both of them.
“You will know because I will come find you, Ellen.”
“You promise?” She held a hand up. “Don’t answer that.”
“I will not. But you know the answer.”
She nodded. “I’ll see you then, Micah.”
“Yes. You will.”
She watched him walk into the landscape. He did not melt into the trees, there being no living trees left. But the fabric of his trench coat liquefied into the blackness surrounding it, becoming one with the charred earth after a few hundred yards.
“You better get your ass back to me!” Ellen shouted.
Twenty minutes later, a helicopter cut down from the pristine sky. And by then Micah Shughrue was only a name.
PART SEVEN
THE IN-BETWEEN TIME
1966–1980
1
High-Alert Bulletin from the New Mexico State Forestry, October 21, 1966:
BLAZE RAGING ON HILLSIDES AND DENSELY WOODED ZONES IN BLACK MOUNTAIN WILDERNESS AREA ABUTTING LINCOLN NATIONAL FOREST… UNKNOWN CAUSE… THUNDERSTORMS PRECEDING. LIGHTNING STRIKE POSSIBLE. WINDS GUSTING TO HIGHS OF 70 MPH… CATASTROPHIC BLAZE POTENTIAL… ALL EMERGENCY FIRE PERSONNEL ARE TO REPORT TO…
Excerpt from US Department of Agriculture Report: “Black Lands Fire Summary,” published January 15, 1967:
The Black Lands fire was believed to have been started by a lightning strike in the Black Mountain Wilderness Area on the evening of October 21, 1966; suppression activities were initiated by US Forest Service firefighters based in Lincoln National Forest. The fire raged through that night and the day following, aided by high winds that lifted embers beyond the initial fire line, leading to a catastrophic blaze that claimed a total of 53,890 acres (36,922 on Lincoln National Forest, 4,355 on Mescalero Apache tribal land, 3,002 of New Mexico land, and the remainder on private land), plus 354 private dwellings and 43 larger structures.
Primary entities involved in responding to the fire were the US Forest Service, Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office, Lincoln County Office of Emergency Services, and the State of New Mexico (NM).
Somewhat strangely, the town on the southern edge of the Black Mountain range—a small village, Grinder’s Switch—was left unscathed. The fire burned down the eastern and southern flanks of the range, crossing a wide river running through the lowlands, but failed to reach Grinder’s Switch.
No emergency workers perished fighting the blaze. But several civilian casualties were later reported; the documented circumstances of those fatalities can be found in Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Reports G-55A and G-55B, and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Dossiers 0-99[A-G], which are available to authorized personnel upon approval.
News Item from the Clovis (NM) News Journal, October 23, 1966:
Tragedy appears to have struck an isolated religious compound located in the Black Mountain Wilderness Area.
The compound—dubbed Little Heaven by its overseer, the Reverend Amos Flesher, most recently of San Francisco—sat in the hills of the Black Mountain range. The compound was accessible via an access road or a secondary footpath that wound up through the hills.
Information remains spotty in the wake of the Black Lands fire, which emergency crews continue to battle in the southernmost reaches of the state. The compound burned in the fire, along with tens of thousands of neighboring acreage. Details emerging in the aftermath come from the remaining eyewitnesses—the children of Little Heaven, who appear to have been rescued by an unknown Good Samaritan or Samaritans.
The children arrived in the town of Grinder’s Switch yesterday, in the early-morning hours. They showed up in a specialized vehicle that had been used to transport goods and equipment to the compound. The unidentified driver left the vehicle at the Grinder’s Switch police station, where a single constable, William Jeffers, was on duty. The driver and any confederates were gone before Jeffers could confirm their identities.
According to Jeffers, the children were in a state of shock. He was unable to get much out of them about their ordeal.
“Only one of them had anything to say,” said Jeffers. “A girl, six or so, name as yet unconfirmed. She said they were all dead. The grown-ups. When I asked how, she said the Reverend killed them all. Every one.”
It is unclear if this witness’s story is factual or the product of shock. Nor is it yet known exactly how many people resided at Little Heaven.