The smoke coming off the buildings was black, meaning that the fire was still raging. But Cain wasn’t a firefighter, he had no experience with burning buildings and how to deal with them. The worst part was the realization that if the firetrucks didn’t work just like all the other vehicles he saw, then there would be no way to effectively combat the spread of the fire. And that was probably what led to half the town being engulfed.

Cain and Joe remained at a standstill, unsure of what to do. But screams in the distance were all the invitation Cain needed. He could run towards whoever needed help, but doubted that Joe was in any shape to do so himself, even if he had recovered from his concussion by now.

“Joe, I’ll go and see where those screams came from, you try and help anyone you can find,” Cain offered his rudimentary plan to Joe. He got a nod in response.

Not wasting any more time, Cain began to run down the interstate, taking a right on the first street he saw towards the direction of the fire. The Southern portion of the town seemed untouched, it was the Northeast part that the huge plumes of smoke were coming from. Cain saw a few frightened looking people in the nearby buildings, but he didn’t stop to talk to them.

Within half a minute, he spotted where the current wall of flame was, and it was quickly approaching a gas station. There were over a dozen people running away from the fire, but on second glance, the fire was the least immediate of their troubles. Cain’s old friends the wolves had made their reemergence.

He slid a wrench into his hand and threw it at a wolf pursuing an older woman. It flew true, and hit it on its flank. With a growl it turned its attention towards Cain, now a target with more priority. Cain grabbed another wrench from his pocket, prepared to deal with the wolf. Not wanting to play games, he met the wolf’s initial leaping pounce with his arm, intending to block its jaw with his hardened skin. It sort of worked. The wolf bit down on his forearm, but instead of being unable to find purchase, its teeth fractionally broke through his skin. Wincing in pain, Cain brought his arm down to the ground, slamming the wolf on its back, which let go of his arm in a whimper of pain. Cain stomped on its head with his boot until it stopped moving.

A small trickle of blood wound down his arm and dripped onto the asphalt below him, but Cain didn’t have the time to think about it besides deciding not to rely on his tough body as much as he would have liked to.

Another wolf came running down the street away from the fire, but instead of pursuing one of the townsfolk, it ran straight for Cain. This one didn’t look completely like a wolf however, having small horny stubs growing out of its forehead. Before he could inspect it further, the wolf jumped, and Cain pivoted on one leg to the side. Unlike dodging a normal wolf however, this horned wolf didn’t just accept the evasion and land on the ground, it twisted its neck and dug one of its horns into Cain’s side.

The horn drew a line across Cain’s belly and his clothes before the wolf landed behind him. Not giving it a chance to attack again, Cain twisted and brought his wrench down in an overhead blow, but the wolf blocked it with one of its horns. There was a brief staredown between the two opponents before the wolf leapt forward again, jaws open. This time Cain didn’t try to dodge, but instead jerked his knee upwards, catching the wolf below its jaw and sending it sprawling off to the side. He finished it off with his wrench quickly after.

“Since when did...wolves have...horns,” Cain said aloud between gasps for air. The roaring of the flames steadily moved in closer towards the gas station, and Cain couldn’t think of a way to stop the spread. The only thing he could do was make sure as many people were able to escape as possible.

“Somebody help me! Anybody!” A man in a robe yelled from the street to the side of the gas station. Cain started to walk towards the man without hesitation, face twisted in a scowl from the pain. He didn’t know why, but the cut from the horn hurt more than the bite one of the wolves took out of his calf earlier in the night. Cain made it over to the man in a few seconds, but he wasn’t sure he could help with his problem. A woman was lying on the ground, bleeding from a hole in her side, and it wasn’t stopping.

“Please, sir, you have to-you have to help me, please, just-please,” the man pleaded with Cain, grabbing onto his jacket with tearful eyes. The woman was probably his wife, but Cain didn’t know how to treat wounds like that, it was far worse than whatever he had recently suffered. It would be more accurate to say that she had been mauled and torn into by a wolf, a large hole oozing blood visible through the torn matching robe. There was no saving her unless an ambulance happened to show up at that moment.

No sirens could be heard, no comforting sound of police or firemen containing the situation, just a man sobbing over the body of his dying wife, the distant screams of fleeing townsfolk, and the roar of the approaching flames. They had reached the gas station by this point and began to lick the building, tasting its walls and ceiling before swallowing them whole.

Cain didn’t have the heart to tear the man away from his wife, confirming his suspicion when he noticed the ring on his left hand. He was in the middle of the street, and so would probably be safe from the fire for a short while. Maybe.

He didn’t see anyone else running from the fire, or any other animals chasing people down, so there wasn’t anything he could immediately run towards to distract himself from his pain and the grief of the man next to him.

“Cain!” Someone shouted from the way he came. Joe was walking towards him at a quick pace with the same older woman he saved from the first wolf.

“Joe? What is it? You shouldn’t be here, it’s not safe!” Cain shouted back.

“I know, but Deborah here has something you should hear.”

The fire had already consumed half of the gas station, but seemed to be slowing down in its spread, so Cain thought he could spare a few moments to talk. Joe and Deborah, a short-haired woman dressed in what looked like pajamas, walked quickly over to where he was.

“Thank you for saving me young man, I don’t know what would have happened if you hadn’t got here this quickly,” the woman thanked Cain. With a grim look, he glanced at the nearby man still sobbing over the body of his wife.

“It already has happened ma’am. But Joe said you had something to share?” Cain queried. The woman looked pained seeing the man suffer on the street, but continued.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

“Yes I do. Why I was in bed not five minutes ago when the fire and screaming started. I barely managed to get out of my house before the whole shebacle was up in flames. I have never seen a fire spread so fast, and now...I have never seen one spread so slow.”

At the last part of her explanation, Cain turned around and was unable to put the sight he saw into any reasonable explanation. The fire had completely enveloped half of the gas station by now but then had just...stopped. He could still see it spreading deeper into the town, but it seemed as if it hit some sort of invisible wall blocking the flames from proceeding further.

“Well I’ll be, don’t suppose you've ever seen like this before, have you son?” Joe asked Cain. He just shook his head, an awestruck look on his face.

“Me and Deborah here will take care of him,” Joe said, changing topic and nodding his head towards the distraught man. “I suppose you have your own places to be right now, isn’t that right son?”

The tone of Joe’s voice snapped Cain out of his reverie and allowed him to focus once more. Strange flames and strange wolves wouldn’t stop him from helping people still in danger from either source.

“Thanks Joe,” Cain said, before he took off towards the direction the fire was still spreading in. He ran past the man on the street and headed North as the road curved out that way and then West once it met an intersection. He didn’t have time to look at or memorize all of the street names of the town, other things were a priority. Such as making sure that the crowd of people streaming from the approaching heat wouldn’t be followed.

Now Cain wasn’t a particularly superstitious or supernaturally-inclined person, but the upcoming sight wasn’t something he was prepared to see. An old man was jogging away from the fire, screaming obscenities. And the fire was chasing him. Not in a straight shot, but it was leaping across houses and mailboxes and picket fences to catch up to the old man, and although Cain didn’t understand what was going on, he had a fair idea of where to start.

“Goddamned piece of shit hullabaloo fire, I hope you wither and die like the cold piece of shit you are, you- you- gah!” The old man was shouting over his back as he moved down the road.

“Excuse me, sir!” Cain tried to shout over the stream of curses as he intercepted the old man.

“Oh the police! Finally! Where have you been? Why are your clothes so ripped up? I have been chased by that fire back there for too long, how come you didn’t get here sooner?” The man instantly began questioning Cain in a stern voice, as if chastising a child.

“I’m sorry sir, but I’m not with the police. I just need to-”

“Not police? Well then what are you standing around here for, go get them before I burn myself trying to run away from that there fire. I reckon it’s those Turner boys, always getting into trouble, and always causing it too,” The man said rapidly, not giving Cain a chance to interject.

“Sir, I just need to know how the fire started, and why it’s chasing you,” Cain tried, hoping for a more directed response.

“The fire? A fireman then? Well I was woken up a couple hours ago by a bad case of nausea, thought I was going to vomit. Went out to my porch to get some fresh air, clear my head, and before I knew it I had taken a nap! Out in the cold, can you believe it! I felt young again doing something that crazy, but the ol’ pain in the joints don’t stop just because you want them to, ha ha ha!”

“The fire, sir?” Cain pressed, not correcting the old man about being a fireman, and having constantly been moving down the street with the man as they talked. The fire was catching up, but hopefully Cain would get answers before then.

“Ah yes, of course. Well after I woke up I went inside to warm my bones up, but the heater wasn’t working! Or the power! I’ll have words with them once this fiasco is over, you’ll be sure of that. Well, ahem, after I realized that, I tried starting a fire in my fireplace, but none of my matches were working. Until one of them eventually did. But that fire ain’t natural, it’s been growing and chasing me ever since. Where are the other firemen, why haven’t you gotten those fancy red trucks of yours down here to help?”

“Sir, was there anything you did specifically to make the fire start?” Cain asked, ignoring the other man’s incessant questions.

“Something specific? Well sure, I started yelling at the fire to start, and just like that it started. But then it started bouncing around, I was sure it was some new fancy technology doing it. Those Turner kids, always using their gadgets to cause a ruckus in town.” The old man began muttering about past grievances against his lawn, but Cain interrupted one more time, hoping the nonsensical idea that popped in his head would be enough.

“One last thing sir, would you be kind enough to ask the fire to stop?” It was a leap, but leaps had helped Cain so far, and he didn’t think his streak of luck would stop now.

“Ask it to- now what kind of fireman are you?” The old man asked angrily, pressing a finger against Cain’s chest. He must have felt how difficult it was to push his skin with all of his Arc, and the older man paled just slightly. Snorting and turning towards the fire which had grown uncomfortably close, he shook his fist at it and said, “damn fire, give it a rest already, won’t ya!”

And just like that, the fire stopped moving forwards as if it had a mind of its own. Before their very eyes, any flames still present on any buildings began petering out, disappearing without a trace. The only reminder of their previous presence was the smoke still wafting out of the recently burning buildings, and the ashes of those that had burned too long.

“Well I’ll be damned, that was a fine trick you did there, although I will be pressing charges,” the old man said to Cain, and began marching away.

Cain never got his name, but he doubted that was the last he would see of the eccentric man. There was something with rural Montana and slightly unhinged older men, but Cain didn’t think it was a problem, much better than the stuffiness of people in the big cities. He was making his way back to the gas station when he saw Joe heading towards him, and they met in the middle of the street.

“You have a knack for solving problems son,” Joe complimented Cain. “You ever consider being a plumber?”

“No Joe, I haven’t,” Cain responded, and they both laughed.

“Where did Deborah go?”

“She and the others whose houses got burned down all headed to the church on the West side of town. We heading there too?”

“Yeah, we should go and I can explain what happened.” Cain was still vigilant, keeping an eye out for any opportunistic animals in the area, but it seemed like there were only a couple chasing people by the gas station. He didn’t see any other mauled corpses of humans or beasts on the street as they walked towards the church.

“Speaking of, what happened with the fire?” Joe asked curiously.

“Some old man started it, and some old man put it out. Don’t ask me how, because I don’t know either,” Cain answered, and stopped any future questions.

Joe adopted a contemplative look on his face, and the two made the rest of the walk to the church in silence. They were heading down what was a main street of the town, Earle, following the others who were heading the same way. A couple shot strange looks at him for his tattered and bloody clothes, but Cain ignored them. There was a large crowd already gathered around the church by the time they arrived, and by the looks of things a shouting match had started. And to no surprise, the antagonist looked to be the same old man from earlier.