Woods, but this side now broke free of the forest. The trees massed at the far end of the field were no match for the red animal. They seemed for a moment to grow blacker as the light behind them was turned up - yellow to orange, orange to glare-red. Then they simply swept into flame. It happened in an instant. For a moment Lester could see their tops, and then they were gone, too. It was like the act of some fabulous prestidigitator, the sort of magician Hilly Brown had once wanted to be with all his heart and soul.
The fire-line was before him, eight feet high and eating trees as Lester Moran stood mesmerized, mouth gaping, before it. Flames began to run down the slope of the field. Now the smoke began to rafter around him, thicker, choking. He began to cough.
Get out! For Christ's sake, get out!
Yes. Now he would; now he could. He had seen it and it was every bit as spectacular as he had expected it would be. But it was a beast. And what a right-thinking man did when confronted with a beast was run. Run just as fast and far as he could. All living things did it. All living things
Lester backed halfway to his car and then stopped.
All living things.
Yes. All living things ran before a forest fire. The old patterns were suspended. The coyote ran beside the rabbit. But there were no rabbits and no coyotes coming down that field; there were no birds in the gunmetal-colored sky.
No one here but him.
No birds or animals running from the fire meant there were none in the woods.
The overturned F.D. car, the blood everywhere.
The pumper wrecked in the woods. The bloody arm.
What's going on here? his mind screamed.
He didn't know ... but he knew he was putting on those fabled boogie shoes. He pulled the door open - and then looked back one final time.
What he saw rising out of that great pillar of smoke jerked a scream from him. He drew in smoke, coughed on it, screamed again.
Something - some huge something - was rising out of the smoke like the greatest whale in creation slowly breaching.
Smoke-hazed sunlight gleamed mellowly on its side - and still it came up, came up, came up, and there was no sound except for the awkward thunder-crunch strides of the fire.
Up ... and up ... and up ...
His neck craned to follow its slow, impossible progress, and so he never saw the small, queer thing which came out of the smoke and trundled smartly down the road toward him. It was a red wagon. It had belonged to little Billy Fannin at the beginning of the summer. In the center of the wagon was a platform. On the platform was a Bensohn brush-trimmer - little more than a power blade at the end of a long pole. The blade was controlled by a pistol-grip control. A sales tag reading CUT UP A STORM WITH YOUR BENSOHN! still fluttered from the top of the pole. It was on a moving gimbal, and looked a bit like the jutting prow of an absurd ship.
Lester was cringing against his car and staring up into the sky when the gadget's EEG-sensor - which had begun life as a digital meat probe - triggered the brush-trimmer's electronic starter (a modification the Bensohn designers had never considered). The blade shrieked into life, the small gas motor howling like a hurt cat.
Lester turned and saw something like a fishing pole with teeth coming at him. He cried out and ducked toward the rear of his car.
What's going on here? his mind screamed. What's going on, what's going on, what's going on, what's
The brush-trimmer swung on its gimbal, seeking Lester, following his brain-waves, which it sensed as neat little pulses, not much different than radar blips. The brush-trimmer was not very bright (its brain came from a programmable toy called The Terrible Tracker Tank), but it was bright enough to stay homed in on the low electrical output of Lester Moran's own brain. His battery, one might say.
'Get out!' Lester screamed as Billy Fannin's wagon trundled toward him. 'Get away! Get awaaaay!'
Instead, the wagon seemed to leap at him. Lester Moran, his heart hammering wildly in his chest, zigged. The brush-trimmer zigged with him. Lester Moran tried to zag - and then a huge, slowly moving shadow fell over him, and he looked up in spite of himself ... he just couldn't help