Who by Fire Read Online Free Page B

western sky. The plant ripped and snorted all that day and the next.
    Around midnight on the third night, the rotten egg smell began coming into the house, thick and continuous. Everyone in the family had headaches, sore throats, were sick to their stomachs. Billy said he could feel something swelling inside him. He kept talking about it until he threw up. Wiping his face, he said, “It broke,” which made everyone laugh. He was right too about the sensation the gascaused. It was different than normal nausea. Just like Billy said, it was like something swelling slowly inside you.
    The following afternoon, the girls came home on the school bus and said they’d felt better the moment they left, had felt good all day at school. Tom, Ella, and Billy had been sick all day. This proved it wasn’t the flu.
    When Tom stared at Sulphur City, he boiled with frustration. The plant never looked any different, just buildings and towers, and the flare and steam rising in the blue cold air. You wanted to see some putrid yellow or purple smoke, or an explosion, something you could point at and say, “There it is. There’s the bastard that’s making me sick.”
    In the late afternoon of the fifth day, black smoke billowed from the ground on the plant’s nearest edge. Whatever was in that smoke entered their throats like a rasp. Billy started coughing and could not stop.
    In the night, the boy woke crying. Ella got up from beside Tom and ran up the stairs. She shrieked and then Billy did too. When Tom got there, Ella was sitting on the edge of the bed, holding their son and rocking him. In the light from the bed lamp, one shoulder of the boy’s pyjamas was wet and black, and so were the pillowcase and sheet. Ella had the corners of a handkerchief wound into his nose.
    “I lost all my blood,” Billy whimpered to his father.
    “It’s almost stopped,” his mother said. “I told you your body makes blood, remember? It’s making blood right now to replace what you lost.”
    Tom had been told by the plant to call if anything serious happened. Ella was still busy with Billy, so he went down and cranked the hated phone himself. He was surprised the operator came on right away. He had never made a call at night and thought he’d have to wait. When she rang the plant, someone young answered.
    “This is Tom Ryder. I’m at the farm east of you. What the hell’s going on?” Tom thought he was sounding too calm, too reasonable. “It stinks like hell down here. My son’s bled from his nose all over his bed.”
    Sounding harried, the young fellow said he was sorry. He said he wasn’t the right person to talk to. Then the phone was taken from his hand.
    “Alf Dietz. How can I help you?”
    An older, rougher voice. Ill humoured too. Tom said his piece again.
    “Yeah, well, we got problems galore. Too much sulphur. It’s overloading our incinerator. But that shouldn’t cause a problem for you. It should be going over top of you.”
    “The hell it is. It’s in my house.”
    “Must be the waste oil pit, then. We set a fire to kill the H 2 S . Look, Mr. Ryder, if it gets worse, call me again. I’ll check on you in the morning. All right?”
    Tom didn’t know what else to say. It was bad now. What would worse look like?
    “These plants are complicated,” Dietz continued. “Take a new piece of farm machinery and multiply that by ten thousand. It’s going to take a while to get this place running right.”
    “How long?”
    “I don’t know.”
    Ella had put clean sheets on the boy’s bed but, since Billy was still upset, she brought him down and let him lie down between them. He was soon asleep. Then Tom remembered. “Ah shit.”
    “What is it?”
    “I didn’t check on Kees.”
    “Well, you had better.”
    As he crossed the yard, Tom could see by the plant’s flare that the chimney on the hired man’s shack was smoking. He banged onthe door. Kees did not open up, so Tom turned the knob and pushed inside.
    First thing he