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 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.