I listened for the thunder and my toes curled in anticipation of the shaking.
I saw Lindsay elbowing through the crowd, her face white, and now Krom saw her as well, sending a nod her way, and then he raised the bullhorn and said, “Race officials, disarm your shooters.”
Stobie, the team armorer, moved to obey. Jimbo, the nearest shooter, moved to hand Stobie his rifle.
Now Lindsay and Krom were in a huddle. Abruptly, she knocked the bullhorn from his hand.
I gasped.
Stobie’s hand froze on the rifle butt.
Krom bellowed “disarm the shooters” and bent to pick up the bullhorn.
Lindsay shouted “wait.”
Stobie, at an impasse, shook his rump.
I wanted to scream at him stop kidding around, this is an evacuation, but Stobie would likely be shaking his rump in the midst of an ashfall in the hopes of cheering everyone up.
And then his kidding stopped.
Time stopped for me, then. Deep inside I’m yelling wait and no one hears. Not my brother, who decides to take back his rifle, and not Stobie, who is holding onto it in vacillation. Not Walter, who is moving for Lindsay. Not Lindsay, who is turning to look in surprise at Mike Kittleman.
Mike’s sprinting onto the range.
Mike hasn’t been on a biathlon range for years, ever since Georgia kicked him off the team. I’m wondering what Mike’s doing out there now.
Jimbo keeps reaching for his rifle and Stobie keeps vacillating, until the hurtling blur that is Mike slams full-body into Stobie and the two of them stumble. They don’t fall, because Jimbo gets into it, grabbing for Mike. Mike whips around and gut-punches Jimbo and my brother goes sprawling.
People are running. Lindsay is almost to Mike when Walter catches her. I see Eric coming, very cool, kicking out of his skis, and I scream hurry.
Mike grabs Stobie and they dance round and round in a bear hug. Mike in his fireman’s gear is bulked-up as Stobie.
And now I understand what Mike’s doing — Krom’s bidding. Trying to disarm the shooter.
The Mammoth cops are moving in. They’re shouting. They all know these guys.
Before the cops can reach the dancers Stobie throws off Mike. Except Mike’s got hold of the rifle like a man on a cliff edge holds fast to a tree.
Stobie and Mike are both in possession of my brother’s rifle when it goes off.
And then time jumps and neither of them wants the rifle — it’s dropped, abandoned — and Mike stands alone looking down in horror at Stobie’s rag doll form, the doll’s head reddening the snow.
I no longer screamed. I moved to help, only I hadn’t moved, I was paralyzed.
It was Krom who took over then, Krom who’d come prepared for disaster. His cops herded people away from Stobie and his paramedics swarmed. His ambulance crew broke for the parking lot and rushed back with a gurney and medical kits. His fire crew hit the sirens. His paramedics bundled Stobie onto the gurney and hustled through the stupefied crowd. His Guardsmen recovered the rifle and moved to disarm the shaken biathletes on the range. Krom kept it all moving at a brisk clip.
I was moving now, toward my brother.
But Lindsay was already there with her arms around Jimbo, and Walter was already speaking to Mike, who stood with his hands tucked into his armpits.
They all seemed to be a very long distance from me, and I seemed to be wading through chest-high snow. I kept moving, and my eye caught on Krom, who was closer, and I was moving so slow I had an eternity to watch Krom.
Krom was now head-to-head with Len Carow. Carow appeared to argue with Krom. Krom passed a hand across the back of his neck and shook his head. Carow looked away, his glasses mirroring the sun, and his attention settled on Lindsay. Krom too broke away. His elbow cocked and released in a vicious backhand tennis stroke and the bullhorn cartwheeled across the snow. He headed for the parking lot, where a small army lounged against the trucks, and he returned with a heavy Guard escort.
“This is an evacuation,” he bellowed — no reassurance, no bullhorn and none needed because a silence had taken the Lake Mary basin—“and you will all move in an orderly manner under the direction of the National Guard toward the parking lot.”
And then he was coming my way and I looked at him, stricken, and he shot me a hard look and said in passing, “It’s a drill, Cassie.”
I stood dumb. It’s a drill.
The crowd was moving fixedly toward the parking lot.
The taste of bile was in my mouth. Relief tastes like poison.
I took off after Krom. “You can’t continue.”
He kept walking. “Why not?”
“Stobie’s why not.”
“Unfortunate as hell.” The sure-of-itself voice. “But it’s a better drill now.”
In the evacuated parking lot, only three cars remained — my Subaru, Jimbo’s Fiat, and Walter’s Explorer, in which he had ferried Lindsay to the race. It was unclear if Krom meant to leave us behind or if it was an oversight, but Walter, Lindsay, Jimbo, and I stood listening to the fading sirens.
Finally, Walter stirred. He said, “Here’s what we’re going to do. Lindsay, you’ll take Jimbo home in his car and fix the both of you something to eat. Cassie and I are going to remain to take a few soil samples. We’ll keep the cell phone on and you’ll call us if you get any news from the hospital — if we need to come. Otherwise, we’ll meet you at the house within three hours.”
And do what? I wondered. Make hot cider?
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
I was going up the stairwell from the parking garage to the hospital when I ran into Mike Kittleman, on his way down. The stairwell was lit like a sunrise with sodium bulbs and the concrete steps had a wet-dog smell.
Mike sidestepped to go around me.
“Hang on,” I said.
His face was sickly in the yellowish light.
I said, “It was an accident. People know that.”
“Yeah, right.”
We stared at each other. The fundamental and unchangeable connection between us was enmity. I thought, Mike wouldn’t take my hand if he were drowning. He wouldn’t offer me his. If I were drowning alongside his cat, he’d save the cat and then think twice about me. It came back — as it always does with Mike and me — to the gondola station, loading mountain bikes. He was fifteen and I was fourteen, and he always bossed me around and I always took it. I could feel the heat of that summer day when Eric dropped by, when the gondola stalled. Smell the hot oil odor of the machinery Mike was fruitlessly trying to fix. Hear myself telling Mike to stop before he broke something. I could see myself sashaying over to Eric like a cat with her tail in the air, telling Mike, you better let Eric fix it. And Mike leapt, face grimed with oil and red with heat, and he got me by the hair and put a screwdriver to my neck, screaming shut up, shut up, shut up until Eric took him down. In the aftermath, it became Eric’s and my problem.
I regarded Mike, now, and the man on the stairs called up the same image the kid had called up: that of a guy with a need to make the world like him better than it did. With a temper to reciprocate.
I said, “Everybody saw it was an accident.” Everybody didn’t see it that way, really. Plenty of people blamed Mike, although officially it was indeed declared an accident and no charges were being filed. Plenty of people, actually, blamed Krom for letting things get out of hand. A few people were even muttering about asking the Council to replace Krom. A few people were saying a surprise drill was just what we needed to keep us on our toes. Nobody seemed to notice that Krom had turned Lake Mary into a battleground, and that Lindsay had come out the loser.