Harper launched a curved blade of blue fire into the darkness. It whizzed, dropping gobbets of blazing light as it flew, and hooked unnaturally just beyond the roof of the chapel, dropped out of sight onto the Silverado Intimidator below. Men shouted as the hood of the truck was blown off in a spout of light.
Bullets spanged and pinged into the bell, hit the railing, flew through the air with an angry whine like lead wasps, and Harper dropped again, her flaming hand fluffing out in a billow of smoke.
One of those bullets struck the rope that held the bell in position, cutting through all but a few strands. The giant bell spun, making a low humming sound. The last few braids of line holding it up popped and broke musically, like guitar strings. The bell fell through the open hole. A moment later it hit the floor of the church below with a resounding BONG that shuddered upon the air, visibly shook the smoke around them, and made Harper’s eardrums throb.
Nick lifted his head and looked around with muddled eyes. The bell was so loud, Harper thought, it had woken the deaf.
“Oh Christ, what the fuck now—” Jamie shouted, looking north and then scuttling past the Fireman and around to that side of the tower.
Jakob.
The Freightliner had turned to face the broad north side of the church. With a grinding roar it came thundering forward, plow lowered, toward the side of the chapel.
Jamie stood with the rifle socked into her shoulder. She fired. A white spark dinged off one corner of the cab of the truck. She levered back the bolt and the empty cartridge jumped into the air, a bright glitter of brass. She slammed in a fresh bullet and fired again. A blue crack leapt through the windshield. The truck jigged a little to the left, and Harper thought, Got him, but then the Freightliner shifted into a higher gear and lunged the last fifty feet and the snow-wing plow buried itself into the side of the chapel.
Harper was thrown into the stone baluster. It felt as if some vast invisible hand had reached down and adjusted the entire building, prying it free from its foundation to shift it a few feet back to the south. The rear north corner of the chapel collapsed with a groan and crash of falling slate and smashed wood. A great burning heap of it dropped on the front of the Freightliner, the plow disappearing into curdled smoke and pulverized debris. The jolt rocked the tower. Jamie had been stepping back to open the bolt of her .22 and was thrown onto her heels. Her ass hit the low metal railing over the open hole. She dropped the rifle and grabbed—at air.
“Jamie!” Allie screamed—screaming for the girl who had slashed open her face—but she was beneath Nick and couldn’t even stand up, and anyway there was no time.
A moment later, the bell donged softly below when Jamie struck it.
The Fireman looked around in a daze, blood dripping from his face. Harper pushed his hair back from his eyes and then gently, carefully, put her arms around him. It was time to stop fighting, she felt. It was time to just hold each other, the four of them, their fucked-up little family. Five of them, counting the baby. They would cling together and there would be love and closeness at the end. They would have that at least until Jakob backed up and hit the chapel again, closer to the tower this time, and dropped them all into the flames.
The bell below was still echoing. It ding-ding-dinged with a small, piercing, golden sound, a noise like a much smaller bell. The Fireman lifted his head and peered out into the smoke, down along the south side of the chapel.
The fire truck—with Gilbert Cline behind the wheel, one hand out the window to ring the brass bell—launched itself through the boiling smoke to the south of the church and hit the Chevy Silverado head-on. The old fire truck with the number 5 on the grille weighed almost three tons. It flattened the front end of the Intimidator like a bootheel coming down on a beer can. The Chevy’s engine block came right back through the dash and cut the driver in two. The pickup lifted off the ground, front wheels spinning in the air for a moment, before it turned over on the gunmen in the flatbed.
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, 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.