Dill glanced at his watch, mentally checking off details for the hundredth, thousandth, time.  Utilities cut.  Emergency vehicles on standby.  Windows boarded over, traffic rerouted.  Charges set.

     "Start the countdown," he said, and hit the timer.

     His foreman raised the bullhorn, and the crowd stirred, eager.  They began to chant, an eerie parody of the yearly Times Square rite.

     10... 9....

     Dill smiled grimly at the ritual.  Every demolition was the same.  People came in droves to watch the skyscraper, the shopping center, the apartment complex crumble, to celebrate the destruction and dance in the rain of dust. 

     7...6....

     Urban savages, ushering out one behemoth god of steel and concrete and welcoming the next with equal, desperate fervor.

     4...3....

     Tribes and turf blurred, became meaningless, when the buildings fell.

     1....

     God, but they disgusted him.

     0....

     Time slowed.  A charge detonated, a muffled blast like a child's cap gun.  Then another.  And another.  Then a quick succession, a string of firecrackers on the Fourth.

     The building trembled, refused to go down, resisting death with all the strength of rusted I-beams and cracked cement.  Then it shuddered visibly, surrendering to the will of the worshippers who had created it on whim and who destroyed it now the same way.  A groan of stressed steel like a futile plea, then thunder as it collapsed in upon itself, a last exhalation.  Then only dust.

     A great, wild cheer went up from the crowd, the emergency personnel, and Dill's own men.  His foreman whooped loudly in his ear and clapped him on the back.  Dill's smile became a fraction less grim.

     "Congratulations, Mr. Lord!"  Dill nodded absently at the praise, staring at the mountain of rubble that loomed out of the concrete haze like the last shovelful of earth topping a fresh grave.

     The bigger they are....

     "Phone call, Mr. Lord.  Kurt Maxwell."  Someone handed him a cellular phone.

     "What?" he demanded of the receiver, impatient now to leave this citywide wake and its morbid celebrants.

     "Dill?  I -- I don't know how to say this --."  The lawyer's voice was raw and broken, and Dill felt a sudden razor-cold premonition slice through his chest.

     "There's been an accident.  It's Rachel."

                            *

     He didn't remember driving to the hospital.  Suddenly he was just there, and Kurt was murmuring limp, wet phrases in his ear as they embraced.

     "...broadsided...teenager -- Tory Wilson...died at the scene...drugs...."

     "Mr. Lord?"  Dill turned to see a woman in white looking at them with practiced pity.

     He nodded wordlessly, unable to speak around the spiky lump in his throat.  The woman stepped forward and took his hands in her own.  They were cool and dry.

     "I'm sorry, Mr. Lord, but your wife died without regaining consciousness."  The barest hint of a pause.  "She was two months pregnant."

     She must have said other things, rote sympathies and assurances, but he'd stopped listening.

     Rachel.

     How could she possibly be gone?

     And...a baby?  His baby?

     They'd talked about a family, before his demolition business had taken off.  Then the calls had started, and he'd begun pedaling destruction nationwide; a fifth Horseman, fully licensed.  There'd just never been a good time.

     And now there was no time at all.

     Oh, Rachel.  Forgive me.

                            *

     The sun showered merry beams down on Rachel's headstone, glittering off the etched marble in bright rainbow arcs.

     Dill stood before the newly-seeded mound, his eyes caressing the lines of her epitaph.  Here lie Rachel Lord and child.  The flowing script hinted at the curves of her body, the flippant bounce of her hair.  The stone itself was the color of her eyes, a mottled, mysterious grey.  And the short verses from Proverbs distilled her very essence:  An excellent wife, who can find?  For her worth is far above jewels.

     Far above anything.

     He'd wanted to include the next verse:  The heart of her husband trusts in her.  But Kurt had claimed the words were unnecessary, even insulting.  Dill hadn't argued.  He'd let Kurt handle the inscription, the funeral arrangements, everything.  He couldn't do it himself.  He only knew how to break things, not how to put them back together.

     "I thought I'd find you here."

     Dill turned to see Kurt, dressed all in black, a dozen roses dripping like blood from his hand.

     He stepped past Dill and knelt to place the flowers on her grave. He whispered something sad and broken that the summer breeze snatched and carried away.

     "What have you found out about the Wilsons?" Dill asked, uncomfortable with the other man's grief.  As he was with his own.

     Kurt straightened, wiped at his eyes.

     "The boy stole their car.  They reported it to the police; it's on record.  According to state law, they can't be held liable for anything their son did, because he was in a stolen vehicle.

     "In short, there's nothing we can do."

     Dill stared at him, uncomprehending.  "But -- he killed Rachel!  And our baby!"  He gestured blindly to the headstone.  "I don't even know if it was a boy or a girl!  ‘And child.’  That's all I have left.  No ball games, or school plays, or high school graduation.  Just two words carved into a cold block of marble!"

     He was crying now, unable to stop the tears that scalded down his cheeks.  "That little bastard stole my life away from me, my future!  And you tell me you can't do anything?"

     Kurt placed a gloved hand on his shoulder.  "I know how much it hurts, Dillon.  I loved her, too.  Do you honestly think, if there were anything to be done, I wouldn't be doing it?  There's nothing.  Besides, the boy's dead.  There's no one to charge."

     Dill shrugged off the hand, the comforting tone.

     "Maybe there's nothing you can do."

     Kurt regarded him for a moment, an unreadable expression on his face.

     "Here," he said, pulling a plastic bag from his coat and thrusting it towards Dill.  "I've been meaning to give these to you.  They're Rachel's personal effects, from the hospital."

     Dill reached for the bag, and for a brief, awkward moment, they shared the remains of Rachel's life.  Then Kurt relinquished his hold and walked away without a backward glance.

                            *

     The sky had donned mourning colors by the time Dill returned home.  He unlocked the front door and stood, listening to the alien silence.  He still expected to hear her voice, or her favorite concertos wafting from the kitchen with the scents of gourmet cooking.

     The house was barren without her, desolate.  An abandoned morgue.

     Shaking the thought loose, Dill strode purposefully into the house, turning on every light he passed.

     He reached the kitchen and hesitated.  The room was unnaturally quiet; the light from the rest of the house did not penetrate its darkness.  He stared into black shadows, something cold prickling along his skull.

     He was scared to go in.  Because Rachel might be there.

     Or because she might not.

     He turned away, leaving the kitchen to its hoard of dark secrets. He stopped in the living room long enough to pour a scotch, thought better of it and grabbed the decanter, then made his way upstairs.  There, in the guest bedroom, he emptied Rachel's life onto the floor.

     Her appointment book landed noiselessly on the rug, followed by her watch and wedding band.  There was nothing else.  He picked up the leather-bound book and began leafing through its pages.

     He was surprised to discover she'd been taking an art class at the college.  He knew they hadn't been spending much time together, but he'd never realized just how few those precious hours had been.

     Until now, when it was too late.

     He skimmed through each day of her life, the events of her ordered little world outlined in neat block letters.  Then he turned to that last day, the page only partly covered with print, the rest ominously blank.

     She'd had an appointment with Kurt that morning.  Dill wondered why the lawyer hadn't mentioned it, and resolved to ask him when next they met.

     As he closed the book, a strip of folded paper fell out.  Opening it, he saw it contained instructions for a home pregnancy test, done in tiny pink and blue type.

     So she had known she was pregnant.  She'd probably been on her way to tell him, when....

     But why stop at Kurt's office?  To change the will?  That seemed a trifle premature.

     Shrugging, he put the book and paper aside, then took another drink.  It hardly mattered now.  She was dead.  So was their baby.

     And all because of some strung-out punk in a stolen car.  His parents' car.  Who weren't liable, even though they'd stupidly left the keys in the ignition, a blatant invitation.

     And there was nothing he could do about it.

     Correction. 

     Nothing legal.

     A slow smile spread across his face as he toyed with that thought.  Images swirled, coalesced in his mind.  By the time he'd finished the scotch, he'd formed a simple plan, one that would avenge Rachel's pointless death, and that of their child.

     But first, a stop at the office.

                            *

     The moon peeked over the horizon to watch as Dill coasted up outside the Wilsons' darkened home.

     As he had expected, their new car lounged ostentatiously in the driveway.  He suppressed a bitter laugh.  The fools.

     He grabbed a bundle from under the seat and left his truck, closing the door softly behind him.

     He crept towards the Wilsons' car, alert for any signs of movement within the house.  He needn't have worried; the Wilsons were dead to the world.  A figure of speech he intended to give new meaning.

     It was the work of mere moments to wire the dynamite and timer to the car's exposed underbelly.  Trying not to chuckle, he set the clock for 7:15.  The Wilsons, both teachers, would be on their way to work when they finally got to meet Rachel.  And his baby.

     After all, Lord Demolition was the best in the business.

                            *

     Dill watched the footage that night.  The car had exploded a block from school.  The news crews had arrived in time to capture the high, dancing flames and the crowd of savages who gathered to worship them.

     He understood them now, and their need for destruction and chaos. Only when they felt the heat of the furnace, tasted the breath of the bullet, smelled the rancid, oily river of other people's blood -- only then, as they courted Death with come-hither smiles, did they truly know they were alive.

     Amidst ruin, and torture, and dying, they worshipped life. 

     Yes, he understood.  He was one of them.

     The acceptance brought a knowing, exultant grin to his lips that would not fade, even days later, when the police came to arrest him.

                            *

     Dill had only one visitor before the trial.  Another lawyer had been assigned to his case, and he hadn't seen Kurt for months.

     "You should've known the dynamite would be traced."

     Dill didn't answer.  He watched the other man with wary, feral eyes.

     "Why did you do it?"

     "You have to ask?"  Dill's voice was rough from disuse, guttural. "I did it for Rachel, and for the baby.  Who never had a chance to live."

     Kurt stared at him.  "And that justifies it for you?" 

     Dill shrugged.  Grinned.  "I avenged my child."

     Kurt turned away.  At the door, he paused to look back at the thing sitting complacent in its cell.  It had once been a man, and a friend.  The husband of his dead lover.

     "Poor fool," he whispered sadly.  "Nobody said that child was yours."

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