The Fireman (55 page)

And still the fire truck pushed the Chevy along, shoving it through the dirt to the very front of the church. The fire engine lurched to a stop with a gasp of its air brakes. A chubby little woman with gray in her cornrows dropped from the passenger seat and hustled around to the chrome step on the back bumper.

Renée climbed to the top of the fire truck and lifted the wooden ladder, turned it on its swivel to face the side of the church. The ends of the ladder banged against the exterior wall. Then Renée stood there, looking to the left and right, as if she had dropped something, an earring perhaps, and was trying to spot it. She bent and opened a compartment on the roof of the truck, looked in at a collection of fire axes and steel poles. She shook her head in frustration.

“It’s right at your feet!” the Fireman hollered at her. He seemed to know what she was looking for instinctively. He cupped one hand around his mouth and repeated:
“AT YOUR FEET
.
”

She squinted up at him, peering into the wafting smoke, and swiped sweat off her cheeks with the back of one arm. She looked down again, between her feet, then nodded and dropped to her knees. There was a rusty iron crank set in a circular depression in the roof. She began, effortfully, to turn it. The wooden ladder vibrated, trembled, and began to bump up the side of the church toward the tower.

In the circle of standing stones, the guy Harper knew as Marty craned his neck to see what was going on past the overturned Chevy. A bullet spanged off the stone bench, right in front of his legs, and he screamed and reeled back and got his feet tangled and fell.

“Damn it,” Allie said. She was standing all the way up, the butt of Jamie’s rifle resting against her shoulder. She worked the lever and an empty shell casing made a bright leap into the night.

Harper was looking at Allie, not down at the fire truck and the overturned Chevy, so she didn’t see a bald man in a blue denim shirt drop out of the Silverado’s passenger seat. But she spotted him right away when she glanced back. There was an embroidered American flag on the back of the shirt, the brightest thing in the gloom. He was bleeding from the scalp and staggering a little. He was broad-shouldered and barrel-chested, built like an aging running back who was keeping active in the gym to slow the slide into middle age. He had a gun, a black pistol.

The fire ladder thudded, bumped, and got caught under the eaves, halfway up to them.

The guy with the gun—Harper felt sure it was the Marlboro Man; with that American flag on the back of his shirt, he had to be—began to creep forward toward the driver’s side of the fire engine.

“Renée!” Harper screamed. “Renée, watch out! He’s coming!” Stabbing a finger and pointing.

Renée Gilmonton stood on the roof of the truck, holding the ladder in both hands, adjusting it somehow, trying to shift it around so it could get up past the eaves. When she had it the way she wanted it, she stepped back and squinted toward the steeple.

“Watch out! Gun!” Harper screamed.

“Guy with a gun! Guy with a gun!” the Fireman yelled.

Renée pointed to her ear and shook her head. She dropped to one knee and began to work the crank again. The ladder whacked against the edge of the roof, rising once more toward the steeple, climbing into the sky a few inches at a time.

The Marlboro Man had crawled all the way around to the cab of the fire engine and crouched beneath the driver’s-side door.

Harper rose, thinking,
I will throw fire and strike him down
and save my friends
. She began to sing inside once more, singing without words. The Dragonscale scrawled on her palm brightened steadily like an electrical coil heating up. But her hand was thrumming and sore and wouldn’t light up, and while she was waiting for that first rush of flame, the Marlboro Man stood, planted his foot on the running board, stuck his gun through the window, and fired.

Renée stiffened, lifted her head, looked toward the front of the truck, and then dropped flat on her stomach, spreading out across the roof of the fire engine.

The ladder remained twelve feet out of reach.

Allie’s rifle cracked. There were six men with guns in that circle of stones and she was keeping them there, hiding behind rocks. She cursed and loaded a fresh shell.

The Marlboro Man flattened himself against the side of the fire truck and vanished from sight. Harper couldn’t see him from her angle. Neither could Renée. But he was down there—working his way along the side of the truck and into a position where he could rise up and shoot Renée Gilmonton.

Harper realized that Nick was standing next to her, staring below with a sleepy, dazed expression. She reached for his shoulder and turned him so his face was pressed to her breast, much as she had done almost a year ago to a boy named Raymond Bly, who wanted to look out a window and see what was happening in the school playground. She didn’t want Nick to see what happened next—although she herself could not look away.

Renée held herself flat and very still on the roof of the fire truck. Her right arm was the only thing moving—she was feeling around with one hand. Her fingers found the edge of the compartment she had opened up when she was looking for a way to raise the ladder. She reached inside and grasped the handle of a fire ax.

The Marlboro Man came up like Jack out of his box, his mouth stretched wide in a humorless animal grin, pointing the gun over the roof. Renée brought the ax down on his wrist and he fell back screaming. He left his hand behind on the roof, still squeezed tightly around his pistol. Renée batted it with the blade of the ax, knocking it away from her. The Marlboro Man’s right hand skidded over the edge of the roof and out of sight.

The Marlboro Man howled, his voice a low, deep cry of fury and hurt that seemed to echo up from the bottom of a well.

Renée sat on her knees, on the edge of the roof. She turned her head and looked toward the cab. Renée shouted something, but Harper was too far away to hear exactly what she said. Once she thought she heard Renée calling for Gil. Renée sat there for what seemed a long time, although in fact it was only a matter of seconds. Then she turned herself about and began to work the crank once more. Turning it with a kind of dull exhaustion now.

The Marlboro Man screamed and screamed again.

The Freightliner produced a kind of grinding cough and began to back up. Another shudder ran through the entire church as the plow pulled loose from the hole it had made, and debris came spilling out into the soccer field.

The big truck backed fifty yards from the chapel, then slammed to a stop. Jamie had put a spiderweb fracture in the windshield on the driver’s side, and Harper had a sudden thought: Jamie had managed to hurt Jakob, had taken something out of him. Had maybe even come close to killing him.

Allie dropped the rifle and sank to a crouch.

“I’m out,” she yelled. “No more bullets.”

The handles of the fire ladder bumped into sight as it made its slow, hitching way up to the railing. The Fireman stood—rocking a little on his heels—reached over the side, and steadied it.

“Go. Down. Now. You first,” the Fireman said, nodding at Harper.

“Nick—” she said.

“Allie will have to take him on her back.”

“I’ve got him,” Allie said, crawling around the catwalk to Nick.

On the other side of the church, the Freightliner began to move, rumbling toward the base of the bell tower.

Harper didn’t like heights, and the thought of putting her leg over the side made her feel dizzy. But she was already straddling the railing, reaching with one bare foot for the first rung.

She glanced over her shoulder, searching for the ladder, and saw the fire engine forty feet below, looking small enough to pick up with one hand, and for a moment it seemed to her the entire bell tower was nodding like a flower, about to dump her. She clenched her hands on the stone railing and shut her eyes.

“You can do this, Harper,” the Fireman said, and kissed her cheek.

She nodded. She wanted to say something cute and daring, but she couldn’t swallow, let alone speak.

Harper swung her other leg over the side.

She moved her right foot down to the second rung, let go of the stone railing, grabbed wildly, got her hands on the ladder. The whole thing wobbled unsteadily beneath her.

On the far side of the building, she heard the distinct sound of the Freightliner chunking into a new gear as it sped up.

She had descended not more than five rungs when the Fireman helped Allie over the side, Nick clinging to her back. Allie scrambled after Harper, wearing Nick as lightly as she might’ve worn a backpack for school.

The Fireman put a leg over the railing, planted one boot on the top rung. His other foot found the second rung. He reached down and put one hand on the ladder itself, stood there clinging to the very, very top of it.

The Freightliner hit the north side of the chapel doing nearly fifty miles an hour. It turned at the last instant, swiping away the entire front corner of the church, throwing enough wood and stone and glass to fill a dump truck.

The steeple lurched, steadied for a moment—and caved in. One moment it was there. The next it wasn’t. It dropped in on itself, the stone railing, the balusters, the bell tower roof, the beams, the wooden catwalk. It collapsed with a wrenching boom that Harper felt in her chest, like a throb in the blood. All at once the top of the fire ladder swung in empty air. John Rookwood hung suspended at the pinnacle. A black gush of smoke spun up from the ruin, obscuring him in a whirl of spark-filled darkness.

A blast of cold wind that smelled of the sea carried some of that smoke away a moment later, and the Fireman was gone.

Harper opened her mouth to scream, but then her gaze found him, already ten rungs down from the top and making his way hand over hand toward the earth below. The ladder shook and bounced in the open air. Allie was moving so quickly she was almost stepping on Harper’s hands.

Harper made her effortful way toward the engine below. Lower down, the ladder still had some roof to lean against. The southern half of the church remained intact. Harper didn’t know she had reached the roof of the truck until she felt metal under her bare feet. She stepped off the ladder on shaking legs and looked around for Renée. She wasn’t on top of the engine anymore, had climbed down at some point.

Now Harper felt shivery and weak, cold even in her bones. The shuddering was moving from her legs to the rest of her body. Her first thought was that she was going into shock. Then it occurred to her it might be something else entirely. John had said casting flame used up calories and oxygen and afterward you were dazed and ill and could easily get into trouble if you didn’t find a place to rest.

She went unsteadily to the rear of the truck, where there was an old short ladder of rusted iron. She climbed down it to the bumper and stepped off, and her legs collapsed on her without warning. She sat ungracefully in the wet grass. Sparks and smoke whirled slowly above her, like a carousel coming to a halt.

She forced the feeling of weakness back and used the bumper to stand.

“Oh, you cunt! My hand! My HAND!”

Harper came around the side of the fire engine, moving toward the screaming. The Marlboro Man was on his back in the grass, arching his spine and digging his heels into the mud. He looked like he was trying to push his way across the dirt on his back. He held his right wrist with his left hand. There was no right hand. There was only a broken bit of pink bone sticking out, where the hand belonged.

Harper stepped over him to get to Renée, who was leaning in the open driver’s-side door. When Harper got there, Renée was cradling Gilbert Cline in her arms. Blood still leaked from the bullet wound in his neck, but without much enthusiasm. There was blood all over the front seat.

Harper noticed—almost absently—a severed hand, still clutching a gun, set carefully in on the dash. Renée had thoughtfully picked it up and put it where the Marlboro Man couldn’t go after it in an attempt to get his Glock back.

“We were almost to the end of
Watership Down,
” Renée said. “Gil said he never thought he could like a story about talking animals so much. I said life was strange, I never expected to fall in love with a man who stole cars.” She was not weeping and spoke with great clarity. “He hot-wired the truck. We couldn’t find the keys. While he was doing it, he told me he was just more proof that most criminals went right back to what they knew best as soon as they got out. He said he was sorry to be adding to the recidivism rate. It took me a moment to realize he was joking. He was very dry. He didn’t even
smile
at his own jokes, let alone laugh at them. Didn’t give you any clues he was being funny. Oh, Harper, I don’t want to try and live without him. I feel like I spent my whole life unable to taste food. Then Gil came to camp and suddenly everything had flavor. Everything was delicious. And then that awful man shot him and Gil is dead and I’ll have to go back to not being able to taste things again. I don’t know if I can do that.”

Harper wished there was something to say. Maybe there was, and she was just too wobbly and light-headed to think what. Instead she put her arm around Renée and clumsily kissed her ear. Renée closed her eyes and lowered her head and wept in a very quiet, private way.

The Marlboro Man shrieked.

Harper turned and saw Allie standing over him. Allie had her brother in her arms again. She had paused, Harper thought, to kick the Marlboro Man in the ribs.

“Oh, you fuckin’ bitch, you’re gonna burn, and I’m gonna jack off on your charred fuckin’ tits,” the Marlboro Man said.

“You want to jack off,” Allie said, “you’re going to have to learn how to do it with your left hand, stumpy.”

“I don’t think he should live,” Renée said, wiping her face. “Not when so many other people are dead. It doesn’t seem fair.”

“Do you want me to kill him?” the Fireman said. Harper hadn’t realized he was on the ground, standing behind her. He was swaying himself, and looked as bad—maybe worse—than she felt. Sweat crawled on his wasted, white face. His eyes, though, were as dark as crow feathers, and perfectly serene.