Scorcher

Chapter 34

The door to the basement stairs was hanging open. Carver hurled himself through it and half fell down the steep wooden steps. His knuckles hit the banister and his cane bounced and racketed down the stairs ahead of him.

Dewitt had a revolver and was firing at him, blue eyes not startled but wide and cold and calm; for some reason Carver couldn’t hear the shots. Then something snapped past the side of his head. He saw the banister miraculously splinter beside him. His own arm and hand, holding the Colt automatic, were extended, acting of their own volition. He was returning fire, feeling the solid kick of the gun and watching his arm jerk upward and settle back with each squeeze of the trigger.

Something exploded behind Carver’s right ear. He thought he’d been shot, but he fell to the side and saw a grim-faced McGregor crouched on the steps above him, gun drawn and blasting away at Emmett and Dewitt-McGregor, who must have been keeping tabs on Carver personally in the absence of Gibbons. Like the goddamned O.K. Corral, Carver thought inanely. He glimpsed more dark, tumultuous figures behind McGregor. On the stairs. Above them, in the kitchen outside the basement door. Everything seemed to be moving unnaturally fast but with vivid clarity. Someone was screaming; a man’s voice. Not in pain, but to fill the lungs and heart with something other than fear.

The basement lights blinked out, but the firing continued. Glass shattered. Carver felt McGregor shove past him. He bumped the stairwell wall hard, feeling a shock tingle up from his elbow. The heavy report of a riot gun sounded from farther up the stairs. Pellets roared past startlingly close; Carver thought he felt one pluck at his sleeve, like someone trying to get his attention.

“Jesus!” McGregor screamed. “Cut that out!”

There was a whump! of flame at the far basement wall. Another burst-this time a large fireball. One of the bullets had sparked something flammable. The naphtha compound.

In the eerie orange glow, Carver saw Emmett scampering toward a corner, on fire, slapping at his clothes, moving with the agility of a teen-ager. Even his hair was burning. What was happening couldn’t be real; special effects like in a movie, right? Had to be! Dewitt was crawling toward the stairs, shouting something Carver couldn’t understand. Real-it was real!

Finally McGregor’s voice pierced the semidarkness and the acrid stench of smoke. “Out! Everybody fuckin’ out!”

Carver let himself bounce down the stairs, beneath the lowering pall of dark smoke, and grabbed Dewitt’s arm. With his free hand he slammed a fist into Dewitt, who merely whined and coughed and went limp. No fight left. Nothing. There was a clamor of footfalls on the stairs. McGregor suddenly had Dewitt’s other arm. Without speaking, he and Carver dragged Dewitt toward the steps. The flames were crackling now and the smoke was soup thick. Emmett was no longer visible.

Carver somehow found his cane in the flickering glare. He clutched Dewitt’s shirt in his right hand, and with his left he extended the cane and hooked it over the back edge of a wooden step and pulled while he propelled himself upward with his good leg. McGregor had a hand under Dewitt’s armpit and was working frantically to get out of the basement. Carver was remotely aware of sirens screaming outside, some of them deafening, some growling to silence nearby so that other shrill, singsong cries could cut through the night.

He was ahead of Dewitt now, pulling desperately, ripping Dewitt’s shirt, tearing his own fingernails. McGregor was snarling up at him like a mindless rabid animal, pushing both Dewitt and Carver forward. Carver felt Dewitt’s body mash his good leg against a step, bruising bone just below the knee. Then the leg was free, digging for leverage. Right now the sharp pain was a reminder of life, a spur to action.

The black smoke rolled thicker and started up the stairs behind them, as if suddenly it had taken on malevolence and purpose and sensed a dark victory.

Then they were on the smooth, hard linoleum. Carver was surprised to find that the kitchen floor was warm.

Legs and feet surrounded them. Scuffed shoes, shiny shoes. Someone grabbed Carver beneath the arms and lifted, shoved and bullied him toward the gaping back door. Carver resisted, though he didn’t understand why. There were multicolored lights outside, flashing, revolving, casting dancing, strangely hued shadows from another dimension, another life where nothing had depth or weight or solid meaning. But it was the real world out there-not here in the burning house.

Carver sucked in smoke, retched and spat. The whole house must be blazing to create so much smoke. There was a thick, sweet stench in the haze that he recognized. Nausea almost doubled him over. He started to retch again, then controlled it and refused to breathe, holding what little air he’d retained in his straining lungs. He didn’t want to pull in any more smoke, any more of Uncle Emmett burning. His chest heaved and his heart smashed in on itself, slower but more powerfully with each beat. He absolutely refused to breathe; he was finished breathing, forever! A voice, far away, called, “Dad, Dad, Dad, Daddy, Daddy!” He was aware of his mouth involuntarily gaping wider and wider, like the house’s back door to the night outside. He heard a high, rasping shriek, a harsh intake of air-Carver fighting for oxygen and life.

And suddenly he was in the clear night, slumped against the rough bark of a thick tree and breathing. Eating the air as if it were spun sugar at a carnival. Sweet, sweet breathing.

Stronger now than he’d ever been, he shoved away from the tree.

He was standing in a whirling, dizzying world that had gained substance and reality. Standing straight and tall again without his cane.

No, he was falling. .

Oh God, how far?