The Fireman: A Novel Part 20

She hadn't thought about going back until now-ridiculous but true-and didn't know how to reply. He was right, of course. She could no more get out of the pipe by crawling in reverse then she could by turning to smoke and vanis.h.i.+ng; in fact, turning to smoke was a far more likely possibility.

If she went forward, though, even a foot, she imagined the bearish man s.n.a.t.c.hing a handful of her hair, his smile going away and his eyes going dead. He and his friend could do whatever they wanted to her; she wasn't going to scream, bring down the law on them, give up the location of her friends. The Fireman had said they wanted to get away, not get caught, and that was true. But it was also true that they were convicts and she was a pregnant woman who couldn't call for help. It was entirely possible, she saw now, for them to have their cake and rape and murder it, too.

She was stuck again, maybe worse than she had been when she was halfway through the pipe. She could not see a way back and she didn't dare go forward. Why don't you sing him something from one of your favorite musicals? she thought, and almost laughed.

But as it happened there was nothing to figure out; it was a problem that never required solving. The big man was distracted by something up on the causeway. His eyes-reflecting the firelight-were bewildered and gla.s.sy with fright.

"Haaaaa-" he sighed. "Holy . . . holy . . ."

She a.s.sumed he was trying to say Holy s.h.i.+t, but he never got out anything more than that first word. And later it occurred to her that maybe he had said exactly what he meant: that what was happening up on the road was a kind of holy manifestation, as unlikely as a burning bush or a night sky full of angels, twinkling over Bethlehem.

Although holy wasn't the word that came to her mind when she saw what was happening up on the road.

Infernal was more like it.

11.

The light dimmed. It was as if a great black curtain had been dropped between the water and the bonfires up in the parking lot.

The prisoner's eyes widened by degrees.

"What?" she asked.

He didn't reply, only gave his head a short, distracted shake. He put a hand on his knee and pushed, rising to his full height with some effort. She could see his legs were hurting. He stepped to her left, out of sight. She heard him whispering to someone, a low groan of pain, and the scuffle of shoes on rock. Then nothing.

No: not nothing. From a distance, she heard yells, startled cries.

It was as if all light were being swallowed, were being drowned. She could not for the life of her imagine what could smother the night that way.

She darted her head out of the pipe for a look, meaning to scuttle straight back if she saw the man in orange. But there was no one waiting for her. To her left was another sloped, six-foot-high wall of irregular granite blocks. A wide, concrete-lined culvert was set into it, sunk beneath the parking lot above. There was room for perhaps two men to crouch out of sight, under the concrete soffit, but rusted bars blocked the way into the darkened pa.s.sage beyond. That was where they had hidden . . . jammed into that cramped s.p.a.ce, huddled together for warmth against the wrought-iron bars.

Harper craned her neck to see up onto the causeway, but she was still most of the way in the pipe and from that angle couldn't make out much. What she could see was smoke: a bubbling black cloud, pouring into the sky, spreading across the road and the parking lot.

She slid forward on her knees, freed herself from the pipe, stood up, and gazed dumbly at the top of the embankment.

The devil stood in that immense cloud: a devil that towered two stories high, a broad-shouldered demon with a vast rack of horns. He was a flickering apparition of flame, buried deep in that boiling thunderhead of smoke. In one hand he held a hammer and he raised an arm as thick as a telephone pole and brought it down on a burning red anvil. Steel clanged-she heard it quite distinctly. Sparks flew from somewhere in the black cloud. The devil's tail-a slender, twelve-foot whip braided from fire-lashed behind him.

The black cloud was so immense, Harper could no longer see the police station or the parking lot or the bonfires. The smoke spread over the causeway, an impenetrable bank of toxic fog.

Men screamed, hollered, ran about on the other side of the smoke.

The devil brought the hammer down again and again, each time with another ringing clang! He tossed his burning head back, his eyes two red, delighted coals. In profile, it was impossible not to recognize him as the Fireman.

The devil finished his work, set aside his hammer, and lifted his new-forged instrument: a lance of fire, a pitchfork fas.h.i.+oned from pure flame, as long as his own body.

Someone on the other side of the smoke wailed. Harper had never heard a voice raised in such despair. It was the cry of a man afraid for his own soul.

Several ideas occurred to her in rapid succession, a string of firecrackers rattling off.

First: It was a shadow show. She didn't know how he was doing it, but she was sure that what she was seeing was no different than a little boy s.h.i.+ning a flashlight at his hand and conjuring the shadow of an elephant on his bedroom wall.

Second: If she was going to go, she had to go now. This couldn't possibly last.

Third: John needed to go himself. To end his performance and slip away. He had made more than enough smoke and chaos to allow the prisoners to limp across the causeway unseen.

Fourth and last: Maybe he didn't care if he got away or not. Maybe he had never cared. Maybe the possibility of his own capture and death was not a concern but an enticement.

Harper climbed the slope on all fours, digging her fingers into the mossy gaps between stone blocks.

She struggled to her feet and stood up in that dense black cloud of smoke. She knew not to inhale, but her throat and nostrils began to burn anyway. It was a little better if she sank low, but only a little.

Harper advanced into the cloud. She could see the asphalt directly beneath her feet, but no more. The smoke was too dense to see any farther than that.

From the far side of the smoke bank, she heard a new noise-a chorus of organized, authoritative shouts-the sound of several men calling to one another as they worked in unison.

The blast of water hit the smoke bank, aimed at the devil's burning chest. Satan flickered, lifted his arms to protect his face, and for a moment the pitchfork quivered and took on the shape of an enormous halligan bar.

The Fireman shouted somewhere in the smoke, a surprised yell. Steel banged and clattered.

Satan staggered, wheeled about, and dropped his flickering pitchfork. He closed his wings around his body, hiding within, shrank into himself, and vanished.

The men holding the fire hose continued blasting water into the cloud. Spray rained past Harper. It hissed in the hot smoke, and the cloud changed in color and texture, going from polluted and black to humid and pale, not so much smoke as steam.

She knew what had happened. They got him, that was what. The battering ram of water had knocked the Fireman right off his feet.

Without thinking, Harper ran deeper into the smoke, plunging toward where she thought she had heard his voice.

More yells, closer now. Some of them were moving into the cloud, coming toward her. No-coming toward the Fireman.

Her foot caught on something, a metal bar that clanged across the blacktop, and she stumbled, steadied herself. The halligan. Something moved nearby in the mist. Someone retched.

The Fireman rose unsteadily up onto all fours. His helmet had been blown off and his hair was drenched. His shoulders. .h.i.tched. He gagged and vomited water.

"John?" she asked.

He lifted his head. His eyes were bewildered, unhappy.

"The f.u.c.k are you doing here?" he asked.

He rose to his knees, swaying, and opened his mouth to say something more. Before he could, a shape reared up in the clouds to his left, drawing his attention.

A thing-a bug-faced monstrosity-lurched out of the smoke. Its slick, glistening eyes were bright in the drifting mist, and it had a bulbous, grotesque mouth. Otherwise it resembled a man dressed in a fireman's turnout jacket and knee-high boots. It put one of those black boots between the Fireman's shoulder blades and shoved, and John was slammed down onto his face.

"You f.u.c.k," said the monstrosity-a fireman, a real fireman, in a gas mask. The Gasmask Man said, "You G.o.dd.a.m.n f.u.c.k, I got you now."

John started to rise onto all fours. The Gasmask Man c.o.c.ked back one boot and drove it into his ribs, knocked his hands and knees out from under him.

"f.u.c.k you, you little f.u.c.k," the Gasmask Man said. "You f.u.c.king f.u.c.k . . . guys! Guys, I got him! I got the f.u.c.king f.u.c.k!"

He booted the Fireman again, in the side this time, half turning him over.

Harper saw quite clearly that in moments John would be overrun, kicked to death by the Gasmask Man and his pals.

She bent and grabbed the halligan- -and screamed in surprise and pain and dropped it. She looked at her hand in shock. Blisters were already forming on her reddened palm. The halligan was hot, nearly as hot as the business end of a branding iron.

Her cry caught the Gasmask Man's attention. He fixed her with his blind, terrible stare and pointed one gloved hand.

"You! Get the f.u.c.k on the f.u.c.king ground! t.i.ts down, hands behind your f.u.c.king head! Do it, do it right the f.u.c.k-"

John rose with an angry shout, got his arms around the Gasmask Man's waist, and tried to throw him down. All he was able to do was back the guy up a few steps before the Gasmask Man-six inches taller and a hundred pounds heavier than John Rookwood-started shoving him the other way.

They grappled, turning in circles. The Gasmask Man closed his hands on John's right arm and twisted. A joint made a sickening, oddly wet pop. John went down on one knee and the Gasmask Man brought his knee up under his chin, snapped his head back. John toppled onto his back. The Gasmask Man stepped forward and put his boot on the Englishman's chest and stomped. Bones cracked.

Harper slipped off her coat, wrapped it around her burnt right hand, and scooped up the halligan bar again. Even through a fistful of fabric she could feel its heat, could smell it liquefying the nylon.

Harper lifted the halligan. The Gasmask Man turned, took his foot off John's chest, and came at her, arms spread. She slashed the halligan and the bar caught him across the helmet with a steely thw.a.n.g! He took one more step and folded, diving face-first into the ground. His helmet sailed off, slicing Frisbee-like through the mist. It clattered to the blacktop, a grotesque dent creasing one side.

The sight of that dent sickened her. She felt bile rising in her chest, tasted it in the back of her throat. The sight of that dent was somehow worse than seeing a smashed-in head.

She didn't know what had made her do it. She had wanted to scare him away with the halligan, not crush his head in. She dropped the halligan in revulsion. It fell into the great dirty puddle spreading across the blacktop and hissed.

More yells. She saw another fireman sprint through the drifting white cloud of smoke and vapor off to her left. He raced past without seeing them.

The Fireman-her Fireman-had her by the elbow. His other arm, the right, hung at a strange angle at his side and he was half bent over, grimacing, a runner trying to catch his breath.

"You all right?" he asked.

She stared at him as if he were speaking in a foreign language. "John! I-I hit him with your halligan."

"Ooh, you did, too! Sounded like someone playing a steel drum." He grinned with admiration.

Someone yelled from what seemed only a few feet away. He glanced back over his shoulder, and when he looked at her again, the smile was almost gone. He gripped her shoulder.

"Come along," he said. "We have to go. Help me get his coat."

When she wouldn't go any closer to the dead body he let go of her and waded into the smoke. He bent with some effort-through her shock, she registered his face tightening with pain-and picked up the dented helmet. When he looked back at her, she still hadn't moved.

"His coat, Willowes!" he called to her. "Quickly now."

She shook her head. She couldn't. She couldn't even look at him. She had killed a man, smashed his brains in, and it was all she could do not to cry, not to fall on her knees.

"Never mind," he said, and for the first time he seemed impatient with her, even angry. He removed his own coat-it took a great deal of care for him to slip it gently off his dangling right arm-and when he got to her, he hung it over her shoulders. Beneath he wore a black s.h.i.+rt made of some kind of elastic material and bright yellow suspenders.

He went to put the dented helmet on her own head and she flinched, backed away. He followed her gaze to the body slumped on the ground and finally seemed to understand.

"Oh, for heaven's sake," he said. "You didn't kill him. Look-"

He stuck his boot behind the Gasmask Man's ear and gave a gentle nudge. The Gasmask Man made a small, unhappy shriek.

"There's no blood on it and no brains either, so put it on and help me," he said, and this time she allowed him to set the helmet on her head. He stepped back and looked at her and grinned again. "Well! Aren't you the perfect little firewoman!"

And then his legs gave out.

12.

She caught him before he could fall to his knees and got her hands around his waist. He sagged against her. He hummed a disconcertingly sunny tune, as they went around in a drunken circle.

"What is that?"

"The Hooters! And we danced!" He almost sang. "A lost treasure from a better time, the days of acid-washed jeans and fun hair. Do you like eighties music, Nurse Willowes?"

"Can we discuss the oldies another time?"

"What? What? The oldies? I've already had a man kicking in my ribs, and now you pull out my heart."

"Hey!" someone yelled at them, coming through the smoke. Harper looked past John and saw another Gasmask Man heading toward them, even bigger than the last. "You okay?"

Harper realized that in the s.h.i.+fting clouds, he believed they were firemen, too.

"He got away! The guy! The f.u.c.king f.u.c.k who made the smoke!" John shouted, and his voice carried no trace of an accent at all. "He clobbered us and went that way!" John pointed past her, through the streaming vapor.

"This f.u.c.king guy . . . this f.u.c.king guy again," said the second Gasmask Man.

"We've got a f.u.c.king man down!" John cried, pointing back at the first Gasmask Man, sprawled on the ground. "f.u.c.king f.u.c.k f.u.c.k!" Harper wanted to elbow him in the side, but his ribs couldn't take it.

"Go on, get the f.u.c.k out of here," said the second Gasmask Man. "Both of you. Get clear of the f.u.c.king smoke. I got him."

She had to help John walk, her arm around his waist, his over her shoulders. They limped a few steps away and then the second Gasmask Man yelled at their backs.

"Hey! Wait!"

She forced herself to glance back, eyes lowered.