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  After receiving another barely audible radio message, Officer G. briskly stepped in and saved them any more fuss. Nicole knew he’d been watching them closely and could sense their tiredness. She wondered whether he’d picked up on the strange aspect of the rescue, but regardless, he reminded Mr. Allerton that the girls had been through a great deal and that he’d personally ensure they’d get each other’s contact information.

  “Nicole, your mom has arrived. I’ll take you to her now,” he said. He helped Amy down, and the girls took either of his arms and let him walk them across to Nicole’s mom’s awaiting car.

  Nicole had time to reflect as they left the triage area, Amy moving more unsteadily than she was. Nicole just couldn’t get her head around what had happened — and what was all that about being chased by people with torches? Perhaps she had inhaled enough smoke to start seeing things that weren’t there.

  She began to become more aware of a pattering noise. She couldn’t quite make it out at first. After a few moments, the trio emerged out of the shadows of the vans and makeshift tents, and Nicole realized it was applause.

  The emergency workers, lined up around their trucks and vehicles, had begun to show their appreciation, smiling in admiration as Nicole and Amy walked by. Their applause built until it was even louder than the blades of the helicopter hovering above.

  Though she was too tired and overwrought to cry, Nicole felt a huge bursting feeling inside her as the staggering reality of the past hour hit her.

  In the distance, she could see her mom standing by her car, and at that moment, she decided, at last, that she could be a child again. Her mom greeted her and Amy with a warm hug, and soon they were both safe in the back of the car, joining the queue of other vehicles pulling out of the campgrounds.

  As she watched through the window at the cars cruising through the gates, Nicole spotted one of the officers waving them out. Officer G. turned and caught her eye. He held her gaze, and then raised his hand to his cap and gave her a salute.

  Within a second, as if she had imagined it, he’d looked away, and his image faded into the darkness. Nicole’s mom stepped on the gas, and the girls were powered out and away from the campgrounds. It would be an understatement to say that it was quite the unexpected end to their trip. Nicole was left with many questions that would linger for a long while yet.

  Stifle That Belch

  Ben Owens threw down his school bag on his unmade bed and opened his laptop.

  It may be a new school year at Oak Wood, but it was back to the same routine for Ben: continue to avoid being noticed, school bus, home, let yourself in because mom won’t be home until eight, check the cat’s food, ignore the instructions for dinner, grab a bag of chips and a soda, head up to your bedroom.

  At some point, after some Internet time and maybe an hour on Dragonsblade, homework would happen.

  His older sister would be at cheerleading practice and then, no doubt, hanging out with her thousands of friends until late, so Ben would have the house to himself for the next few hours. Sometimes he wished he could play a sport, which accounted for much of his sister’s social life. Even his mom had used the new school year as an opportunity to encourage him to join some sports at school. Ben had considered it for all of twenty seconds and then given her his now-commonplace sullen response and a shrug. Deep down, he was frustrated that the rest of his family’s gift for team games had completely eluded him.

  He couldn’t wait to learn how to drive, to get some freedom. A car would prove a welcome break from the school bus, which he had outgrown a few years back. He foresaw endless fights with his sister over car sharing, but only another year and she’d be at college. Ben allowed himself a moment of relief at that particular thought.

  He typed in his password, and AmesAndNix.com flashed up on the screen. He sighed; his sister must have sneaked in and set it as his home page again. For a cheerleader, she was pretty smart. She also teased him relentlessly about his apparent crush on Nicole, which, naturally, he always vehemently denied.

  Although there were no new videos on the website, Ben’s attention was drawn to the number 205 farther down the page. It reminded him of that saying about how no publicity is bad publicity. Or was it, “All publicity is good publicity”? “No such thing as bad publicity”?

  Whatever. AmesAndNix.com’s following had seriously increased, and there were already dozens of unanswered posts. The wildfire headlines had drawn more people to their website, although Ben wasn’t certain whether that was a good thing.

  He scanned down the Web page and saw that one of the posts linked to a news item titled “Lake Fairfax Wildfire.” Taking a mouthful of soda, Ben clicked on it out of mild curiosity.

  The website of WBN, a local news station, loaded, and it showed a list of several new reports related to the Lake Fairfax wildfire. The most recent link, titled “Strange Animal Deaths,” took Ben to a broadcast streamed earlier in the day from Lake Fairfax, just a few miles from Ben’s house.

  Ben took out his notebook and pressed Play.

  A shot of the charred and flattened path of the wildfire came up first, against a wider backdrop of Lake Fairfax. The view then panned across to a young, well-dressed reporter with a glossy mane of dark hair. Her name was Lynn Meyers, and judging by her dress and heels, she had quite possibly never visited campgrounds before.

  “We’re here live at Lake Fairfax in Reston, a suburb of Washington, D.C., which was the site of a raging wildfire this weekend.” Lynn starts walking and the camera follows her. In the background, police officers — some in plain clothes— and scientists in masks scurry about. A burly old cop sips heavily from a coffee cup and appears have a very short conversation with an FBI agent, ending it by walking away.

  “As you can see behind me, the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI are conducting a thorough investigation into the circumstances around the Lake Fairfax wildfire after it was revealed that Senator Campbell Jennings and his family were spending the weekend here at the time of the blaze. Although the White House has not released further comment, WBN understands that federal investigators are pursuing several leads and have not ruled out the possibility that it was an act of terrorism.”

  Ben paused the video and sat back, astonished. Terrorism? Reston was certainly close enough to D.C. to be considered a target, and yet he thought that was a moronic theory. He munched a handful of chips on that thought. The high-ranking senator and his family could be a legitimate target. Senator Jennings was head of some major Senate committee, maybe House Ways and Means? Foreign Relations? It was hard not to like the senator’s son, Drake, as he was actually kind of modest despite his family’s power and wealth. Drake was careful never to name-drop his influential father, but the crew he ran with was usually happy to do that for him. Ben clicked on Play again.

  Lynn continued walking into the charred part of the forest. “Investigators say it could take up to a week to determine the cause of the blaze, and then comes the painstaking process of sifting through the debris …” Ben was beginning to zone out of the usual news reporter spiel and wondered what this had to do with animal deaths. Just as he was about to close the video and click over to his Facebook page, Lynn pressed her finger up to her earpiece. She was receiving some new information, and her calm, professional manner was wavering.

  Facebook could wait.

  “Hold on. I’m just receiving … OK. Thanks. We’ve found something extraordinary to show you.”

  Ben chugged his soda, so enthralled that he had to stifle a belch.

  The camera following Lynn jumped around now as it tailed the running reporter. The blurry view veered jaggedly from tree green to sky blue to earth brown and back again, until it came to a standstill and the camera fell on a breathless yet immaculate Lynn.

  Behind her, an amazed crewmember was staring at the ground below, recording something on his smartphone, and Lynn was still holding her earpiece, receiving new directions. She turned to the camera, suddenly energ
ized by this new development.

  “We have found something unexpected at the site of the Lake Fairfax wildfire.”

  The camera panned down to show an animal carcass.

  Ben gave a snort. A dead animal from a wildfire? Is that it?

  “… Our producer has just captured photos of this and six other animal carcasses farther up the campgrounds here.”

  The view cut to shaky smartphone images showing the charred remains of animals of various sizes: a deer, a raccoon, a squirrel and a few other animals that were difficult to identify.

  Ben enlarged the video screen on his laptop.

  “My producer is just verifying …” Another pause, this time full of excitement and suspense. “And yes, we can confirm. My producer has just mapped the coordinates of his photos, and the GPS positioning of the carcasses form an exact line. We can now go to our news chopper in the skies of Reston above Lake Fairfax to see if we can get an aerial view of this strange animal formation.”

  The video cut to a hovering view, buzzing with the sound of helicopter blades. The pilot points down toward the ground at Lake Fairfax and shouts inaudibly over the noise of the blades for the audience’s attention. The camera zooms in.

  Sure enough, down below, in a blackened and burnt patch of forest razed to the ground by the fire, several animal carcasses of various shapes and sizes could be seen arranged in a neat line and at equidistant lengths, stretching across the campgrounds through the forest and out to the clearing.

  Several investigators and men in suits could now be seen converging on the television crew to see what they were seeing, and it was obvious they were very interested in what the crew had discovered.

  Moments later, the investigators gave the hand signal to cut off the newscast, and Lynn complied by wrapping up her coverage.

  When the clip was over, Ben took a few more notes and went downstairs to stock up on more soda and chips.

  God, I love government coverups. What has them so spooked?

  It’s the Feds

  Floodlights, shining as glaringly bright as a

  sports stadium, lit the scorched earth of the woods surrounding Lake Fairfax. Despite the dark blue backdrop of evening and the new moon, it was still a working day for the twenty or so FBI investigators as they sifted for clues in the burnt ground within the cordoned-off area.

  Officer Gillespie sipped his cocoa and leaned against his car, waiting. He’d received word from Division that two more FBI investigators had arrived at the scene expecting to talk to him, and they sure seemed to be taking their time. It would be another night babysitting the federal agents, he thought. He could see them from here, kneeling down, prodding at the animal carcasses and in close conversation.

  These ones were special agents, though Gillespie wasn’t sure what marked them as “special,” as in his experience, most FBI agents seemed to regard themselves as special. There were exceptions, naturally, like with every rule out there, and despite his years of service dealing with the bad and the worse, the officer was always willing to be proved wrong.

  The connection to Senator Jennings had brought the agents there faster and with more intensity than Gillespie had expected, but to his knowledge, nothing odd had cropped up yet. Sure, the arrangement of animal carcasses in a neat little line was a bit weird, but who knew what could’ve caused that? There was a fire, after all. And the obvious cause may just be the correct one. There was very little in the world that surprised Gillespie anymore, bad or good.

  The taller of the two agents, an amiable, fair-haired man named Agent Carter, approached Gillespie. His stern-looking, balding and bearded partner was apparently more interested in sniffing at the dead squirrel on the ground.

  “Officer.” Carter handed Gillespie his business card and they shook hands.

  J. B. Carter

  FBI Special Agent

  P.R.E.S.S. Division

  Carter squared himself in front of the officer and prepared to take notes. “What do you make of all this?”

  Gillespie knew this question was coming. “Was hoping your people’d be able to tell me that.”

  Carter chuckled. “Agent Bishop and I were remarking on the formation over there.”

  “Uh-huh. Sure is odd. But like I told your colleagues, it could be anything.”

  “Well, we’re thinking a little more precisely than that. There have been some poisonings in Maryland by a known terrorist group that likes to leave a mark where they’ve been. These animals look a lot like it.”

  “Terrorist poisonings, huh? Same kind of animal?”

  Carter paused and regarded the old cop with a good deal of respect; the investigators in Maryland hadn’t just assumed the animals had been burned to death either.

  “Larger, mainly.”

  “Livestock?”

  “Some. Not all food sources, if that’s what you’re thinking. You were first on the scene here, right?”

  Gillespie nodded and finished his cocoa, crushing up the cup.

  “Anyone strike you as suspicious? Someone who maybe stood out?”

  Gillespie thought about it. “Not in that kinda way. We had some fearful people, some brave people, kids and animals. Just the usual kind of folks using the camping grounds.”

  Carter nodded and flipped pages in his notepad to reveal a list of questions.

  “Can you provide us with a list of people involved in the fire?”

  “Sure, we can get that from the triage unit and the campground registry. Nobody should’ve been in the park after dark unless they were camping.”

  Agent Carter glanced over at his partner, who was over by the burnt remains of the pine trees.

  Agent Bishop took another snapshot of a dead squirrel and then scrolled through the pictures he’d accumulated, first of the Lake Fairfax animals, and then others from Maryland — a deer, a fox, a groundhog. All carcasses. All neatly arranged in a line.

  Odd.

  Bishop tucked his smartphone in his pocket and glanced across at the Federal Evidence Response team. Bishop’s group was regarded with some suspicion around the rank and file, and there was always a sense that they were muscling in on others’ territory. One of these days, somebody would actually welcome them across the yellow incident tape. Part of him wanted to linger around a little longer to really put the scare on his fellow fed colleagues, but he and his partner had to be in Maryland again by sunrise. He introduced himself to Officer Gillespie and handed him his card.

  H. Bishop

  FBI Special Agent

  P.R.E.S.S. Division

  Gillespie flipped the card around as he examined the backside for anything else of interest. “So what is this P.R.E.S.S. Divison about anyways?”

  “We’re with the Paranormal Research, Enforcement, and Survellience Service. It’s a branch of the FBI’s special investigative group.” Bishop rapidly stated in an irritated tone of jumbled words.

  The officer lifted his hat slightly to scratch his temple. “Paranormal? Isn’t that for Aliens and stuff?”

  “Paranormal is for anything out of the ordinary.” Bishop said matter-of-factly then pointed to the phone number on the card. “We can be reached at that number 24/7. Anything new — or something that simply strikes you as strange — give us a call.”

  “Uh-huh…and…Not them?” Gillespie signaled to the Federal Team now clearing up.

  “Us first.”

  With a wry smile, Bishop gestured to his partner for them to leave.

  As they returned to their Suburban, parked just outside of the eerie glow of the floodlights, Bishop registered the hastily concealed relief that now rippled across the faces of the remaining FBI team. Lake Fairfax had too many cooks in the kitchen.

  Carter was looking as perplexed as he felt, and Bishop wondered what a day would be like when a question led to an answer — not to more questions.

  IamA Real-Life Hero, AMA

  A close-up of pink fuzziness and freckles with two pairs of blinking eyes is pushed aside by a ho
rse’s nose, and then Nicole, Amy and Bob jump back from their extreme close-up.

  “Hey, y’all! Welcome to our first ever AMA Session!” Amy offers a mini-salute, and so does Bob.

  “Hi! – that’s Ask Me Anything in case you didn’t know.” Nicole gives a little wave.

  They’re sitting side by side on two big, bright, polka-dot beanbag chairs. Behind them, Amy’s hurriedly tidied and loudly painted bedroom, filled with posters and books, with an old-fashioned French dressing table overrun with nail polish, cosmetics packages, makeup brushes and jewelry.

  “So, we’ve been getting loads of posts from you guys asking about our Lake Fairfax experience.” Nicole waves a pile of printouts.

  “First off, it was, like, awesome.” Amy leans forward so that her hair half obscures Nicole’s face. “I mean, we didn’t know if we were going to live or what. The noise was … it was like this low rumble, all the time, and then suddenly there’d be this crackling and BOOM!” Amy throws her arms wide open. “The fire would take down a tree! We couldn’t see, the smoke was, like … It was like something clutching at my throat. And then there was Elise.” She holds her hand up to her chest, clearly moved by the recollection.

  Nicole leans forward — now unobscured by Amy’s hair — and turns to the printouts.

  “OK! So, our first question asks: ‘Ames and Nix, were you scared?’”

  Amy looks shocked. “Well, yeah! I mean, we woke up in the middle of the night to a smoke-filled tent. We couldn’t see anything. Outside it was dark, and the smoke — it totally choked us. We had to wet these scarves so we could breathe. Everyone basically ran past us!”

  “Which is understandable given that most people we saw were afraid,” interrupts Nicole. “You don’t know how you’re going to react until you’re in the moment. Next?”