Free Rise Again by Ben Tripp Page B

Amy’s thing. When it got too crazy in human world, she retreated into sacred animal world where nothing could get between her and her fuzzy little charges. Danny, who used to enjoy hunting deer before she went overseas to hunt men, found this self-indulgence unspeakably irritating.
    “Then open the van,” Danny clipped.
    Amy shook her head no like a child.
    Danny tried one more time: “They’ll get hungry later and come back.”
    Amy stared at Danny. This was too much to ask. But someone on the Main Street side of the Junque Shoppe chose this exact moment to smash into another vehicle: Plastic crumpled and horns blared, then hysterical voices rose up over the rooftops.
    “Amy,” Danny said, “something is happening. Something big. I don’t know what it is, but I can’t handle it alone.”
    Danny didn’t normally admit any obstacle was too big for her to handle. Amy started to protest, but there wasn’t any meaning in it. She opened and closed her mouth. A chorus of horns blared over the rooftops. I can’t handle it .
    “You owe me,” Amy said.
    She opened the rear doors of the van, and all the animals inside stood where they were, watching her. So far, so good. Danny told Amy which radio frequencies to call in on, and how to identify the Forest Peak transmitter so other police units would know she was the real thing. She wondered how much she should tell Amy, how much would be overwhelming, or would sound plain crazy. What about this Eisenmann Plan? Was that why there were so many people coming up the hill? Or was this mass hysteria, animals scrambling to high ground before a flood?
    Danny’s thoughts were tumbling too fast for her to catch them and put them in order. She found she was concluding her instructions to Amy, but couldn’t remember the last ten things she’d said.
    “So listen,” Danny continued, winding down, “keep out of Main Street. Stay inside the station until I come back. Door locked. I wish I could tell you more—”
    Amy held up her hand.
    “Nobody knows anything. I heard something from some woman who thought I was a doctor. She told me her sister called and people were dying. Dying, okay? Then a bunch of people were asking me what to do. Which is why I’m back here with the goats, because I have no idea. I told them I was a podiatrist. What about the Mountain Rescue or something?”
    Danny realized she was squeezing Amy’s arm. She relaxed her grip and patted the arm instead, in the least reassuring way possible. But she tried.
    “They don’t exist anymore, remember? Budget cuts. See if you can raise the highway patrol or Fire and Rescue to send us a chopper. We might need an airlift. There was an ambulance on its way at least an hour ago, but there’s no way it can get here. And…and keep your head down. That’s all I can tell you.”
    “And you?”
    “I’ll be okay,” Danny said, and felt like more was required. “I got a fancy police hat.”
    With that, Danny started back down the alley. She considered covering the distance to the roadblock on foot, but her thigh was stiffening up. So she slung herself up into the Explorer behind the Sheriff’s Station and turned it down the alley toward Pine Street, from which the logging road extended. Thank God it wasn’t on the tourist maps or that would be clogged with cars, too.
    It was now three in the afternoon, but it felt like ten days later as Danny reached the roadblock manned by her deputies. They were scared nearly witless; there were now at least two hundred people shouting at them from across the hoods of the foremost cars in both directions and some hot-bloods were racing their engines as if to charge. Beyond this locus of the standstill, the traffic stretched out of sight, uphill and down. A cloud of exhaust fumes was boiling up out of the legion of vehicles.
    Danny couldn’t hear the distant screams in the woods anymore, but she didn’t know if it was because they were drowned out by the revving motors and