Its wings lashed at the air, and it was like someone had thrown open the hatch to a great furnace. A withering billow of chemical heat rolled down the road, and the Dodge Challenger shook in the gale. Harper was crawling around to the driver’s-side door.
The Phoenix launched itself at the white van. One wing stroked a hedge and the brush ignited, became a wall of flame. The Phoenix flew into the open side door of the van. Harper had a glimpse of the gunman behind the Browning shrieking and raising his arms in front of his face. The front doors were flung open. The driver and the passenger toppled into the street.
The massive bird of flame hit the van so hard it went up on two tires, tilting toward the driver’s side, threatening to overturn, before crashing back onto all four wheels. The interior boiled with fire, with threshing wings of flame. A bullet went off with a metallic spow! Then another. Then .50-caliber ammunition was exploding like kernels of popcorn, blam-blam-blamming inside the white van, flashing as the shells went off, bullets bonging off the roof, the walls, deforming the vehicle from the inside.
Harper hoisted herself behind the wheel of Ben’s Challenger, sat on broken glass. The keys were in the ignition. She stayed low, just peeking over the dash, while she started the car.
Up the road, the Freightliner turned in a slow circle, tires chewing up the snow and dirt in front of 10 Verdun.
Harper threw the cruiser into drive and stamped on the gas. She only went a short distance, though—less than five yards—before slamming one foot on the brake. The Challenger shrieked to a stop, close to where Jamie was crouched behind a telephone pole. Jamie broke and ran, crossed the open blacktop, and dived into the passenger seat. She was saying something, shouting something, but Harper didn’t hear and didn’t care.
Up the road, the Phoenix emerged from the side door of the van, stretching its head out on a comically long neck as if to scream triumphantly into the night. The van continued to shake and jump on its springs while the ammo popcorned inside the wreck. The windshield exploded. Someone was screaming.
Harper launched the Challenger up the street, swerving across half-melted rubble to pull alongside the shot-up police cruiser. Ben flung himself out, hobbled across the space between the two cars, and tumbled into the backseat facedown, his legs hanging out the door. The air reeked of burning tires.
The Freightliner roared and leapt up the street at the van and the Phoenix. The plow struck the side of the Econoline with a shattering clang and tossed it aside as if it were an empty shoebox. The van rolled, spraying blue sparks, the roof collapsing. The Freightliner charged after it, hitting it again, flipping it to the far side of the cross street, Sagamore Avenue. The Phoenix exploded from the gaping windshield and streaked into the sky—much diminished, Harper saw. Minutes earlier, it had been the size of a Learjet. Now it was smaller than a hang glider.
Her foot found the gas pedal. The Challenger jumped forward hard enough to shove her all the way back into her seat. Ben’s legs were still hanging out the rear door. He had wrapped seat belts around his hands to keep from being tossed out, was kicking his feet to try and pull himself farther into the car.
She looked out as they launched themselves past Nelson Heinrich on his back in the street, legs splintered and smashed, folded at improbable angles. The defibrillator sat on the dead man’s chest, the plastic black with scorch marks, a bullet hole the size of a fist in the center of it. At least she thought he was dead. It was only after they were well past him that Harper wondered if Nelson had turned his head to watch them go.
The Freightliner filled the road before them. Harper swerved toward the parking lot in front of the burned-out CVS. The Challenger jumped the curb. Harper felt herself lift weightlessly off the seat. The car hit the lot with a spray of sparks and Ben howled, still hanging on.
They slewed onto Sagamore Avenue and Harper gave it all the gas it would take. A bronze light lit their way from above. The Phoenix escorted them for a quarter of a mile, a brassy blaze that made headlights all but unnecessary—and then it soared out and ahead of them. For a few moments it was gliding this way and that in front of the car, a vast kite of bright fire. At last, with a final dip of its wings, it left them, rose in a sputtering rush into the night, and was gone, disappearing over trees to the east.
An especially hard piece of glass or steel was jabbing Harper in the butt, and she reached under her to get rid of it. It turned out to be the cell phone Mindy Skilling had used to call 911. Without really considering it, she pushed it into the pocket of her snow jacket.
No one saw.
6
Harper was unprepared to get back and find the infirmary full of people, lamps burning in every corner, and the air humid from the close press of bodies. She knew before anyone spoke to her, just from the way they looked at her, that they were in a panic, and she wondered how they already knew about the massacre on Verdun Avenue.
The waiting room was crammed with Lookouts: Michael Lindqvist, the Neighbors twins, Chuck Cargill, Bowie, a few others Harper didn’t know by name. Allie was there, too, and looked so afraid, so pale and distraught and starved, Harper couldn’t feel any anger toward her. Norma Heald sat in the corner, a quaking mound of white flesh in a flower-print dress.
What surprised Harper most was to find Carol there, bundled into a threadbare pink and yellow robe that was so old the colors had taken on an exhausted, thin hue. Those words—exhausted, thin—applied as much to Carol herself. Her skin was stretched tight over the skull beneath, her eyes burning dangerously hot in their sockets.
Harper had an arm around Ben’s waist, helping him stumble-skip along. His left cheek, his left forearm, his left hand, and his left buttock were cactused with glass needles. Jamie was right behind them, lugging the Styrofoam cooler full of plasma. They had spilled far more blood than they had brought home.
“What?” Harper asked. “Why are you all—”
“Seizure,” Carol said. “My father had a seizure. While you were out there and he was here alone. His heart stopped. He died.”
7
Later, Nick told Harper everything, using a combination of sign language and notes. He was there for the whole thing. He was holding Father Storey’s hand when the old man stopped breathing.
Nick had been in a nervous state when Harper left with Ben to hit the ambulance. Somehow he had worked out what was up and was sure someone was going to die. Michael Lindqvist had tried to settle him down. They had beans and tea and played Battleship. The second time Nick yawned, Michael said it was time for a nap, and even though Nick said he wasn’t tired, he was asleep in the cot next to his grandfather inside of five minutes.
He had a dream of light falling in the darkness, a torch dropping from a sky of midnight blue. The torch plummeted behind some hills and there was a red flash and the world began to shiver and rattle, as if some hidden scaffolding beneath the green grass were coming apart. Nick jumped awake, but the clattering sound continued.
Which was when he saw it: Father Storey’s head snapping from side to side and foam running from the corners of his mouth. Father Storey’s whole bed jittered and shook. Nick ran into the waiting room, where Michael was on watch, flipping through a Ranger Rick that was older than Nick himself. He dragged Michael off the couch and propelled him into the ward, hauled him along to Father Storey’s bedside. Michael froze at the foot of the cot, rigid with shock.
Nick ran around his cot to his little satchel of clothes and books and dug out the most valuable item in all the world that night: his slide whistle. He shoved up a window and began to blow.