by Jen Blood
And then, I spotted a familiar face.
Three aisles away, George was crawling beside a little girl. I got to my feet, staying low, and ran to him. The left side of his face was burned, but not as badly as I might have expected. And he was alive.
“Danny says there’s a way out behind the stage,” he rasped. The little girl in his arms was silent, her eyes wide with shock.
“Where is he?” I shouted.
“I don’t know,” George said. He looked frail and terrifyingly mortal. I nodded to the girl.
“Get her out,” I said. “I’ll find Danny.”
I watched him for only a second before I turned back.
I found Biggie with two little boys clinging for dear life to a burning chair, trying to get away from him. When he turned to look at me, it was clear why they were terrified. His face and body were black. Charred.
“Diggs! Help me.” His voice wasn’t even human. “They won’t go. I can’t get ’em to let go.”
There was a madness to his eyes, borne of failure and pain and imminent death.
“It’s all right,” I said. “I’ve got them.”
Biggie let them go. He smiled at me—another image I’ll never escape. “It’s gotta mean somethin’, ain’t it?” he asked me. “A lifetime screwin’ up at every turn...” He lay down, just out of the aisle. “Save them boys, huh, Diggs? Don’t let me down.”
“I won’t.” When he made no move to go, I hesitated. “Come on, Biggie—it’s not much farther. Get up, and we’ll get you out of here.”
He just laughed. “I ain’t goin’ nowhere. It’s all done. Now, you get the hell out of here with them kids. Save somebody for me.” The boys were screaming in terror now; there wasn’t a choice. Not really. As I was leaving him, Biggie looked at me once more with that mad light shining in his eyes. “Pain, boy,” he said. “It’s all a distraction. Ain’t nothin’ to me.”
He didn’t get up again.
I urged the boys forward, making sure they stayed on their hands and knees. When we reached the bottom of the aisle, I prodded them to keep going onto the stage. Which was on fire, so not an entirely easy sell on my part. One of the boys began to cry. I picked him up and took the other by the hand. The stage curtains were ablaze, but I could see movement behind them. People. When the stage door out back was in sight—open, a clear black night shining through—I gave the boys a little push.
“Go on!” I said. “You’ll be safe there. Somebody will get you.”
They ran.
I remained there for a second on hands and knees, thinking of Solomon, and took a steady, burning breath.
I turned around and went back.
12:15 a.m. - Solomon
“We can’t send anyone into that,” a fireman told me. We were surrounded by emergency personnel and at least forty survivors with varying degrees of burns and injuries. George was among them, as well as more than a dozen kids.
Danny and Casey weren’t. Neither was Diggs.
The building was engulfed in flames—they rose high into the sky, the smoke so thick it was all but impossible to breathe. I thought of Payson Isle and my father; of Mitch Cameron and Isaac Payson and Reverend Barnel.
But mostly, I thought of Diggs.
“Danny’s still in there?” Rick asked. George was on a gurney with an oxygen mask over his mouth and nose. He nodded, eyes haunted. He pulled the mask away from his face.
“Diggs is looking for ’em,” he rasped. My heart stuttered.
“He’s still alive, then?” I asked.
George nodded again. I turned back to the fireman.
“There are still survivors in there,” I insisted.
“It’s too unstable. I’m sorry, ma’am, but they did a hell of a job wiring this thing. They must’ve misjudged something because they missed that one exit, but this thing won’t stay up for long. The whole building could come down anytime.”
“And what the hell are we supposed to do in the meantime—let them burn?”
He looked genuinely tortured. I didn’t care. He shook his head. “I’ll talk to my men; see what we can do. In the meantime, you might wanna say a prayer.”
12:25 a.m. - Danny
They did everything right: got themselves untied, found cover, stayed low.
It didn’t matter, though, because Danny hadn’t expected the pillar beside them to come down. It nailed him in the shoulder, sending him sprawling with pain like he’d never felt before. When he got up, Casey was underneath it, and she wasn’t moving.
He tried hauling it up; tried pulling Casey out. She still didn’t move, blood on her forehead and flames coming closer and screams from everybody around them filling his ears.
“C’mon, damn you,” he hollered—or rasped, more like, tears streaming down his face. He couldn’t tell if he was crying or it was just the smoke. He sat down beside Casey, trying to get out of the way of the stampeding people. He picked her hand up and set it on his lap, pushing the hair back from her face.
His lungs burned, screaming for clean air. He closed his eyes and leaned his back against the wall, waiting for the end. And then, a hand closed around his wrist.
Casey came to life, coughing. Gasping. He jumped up. The pillar was over her left leg, crushing it so Danny could barely stand to look. But she was alive—that was what mattered.
It took her only a second before she figured out what happened. She went white.
“You’ve gotta go,” she said.
He shook his head. There was no doubt about it now: his tears definitely weren’t just from the smoke. “I’m not leavin’ you here.”
“You’re not gonna sit here and die with me,” she said, like he was an idiot for even thinking it. Her voice was so calm. “Danny—you gotta go. You’re gonna get your butt out of here, and you’re gonna look after Willa and Dougie.”
“I’m not leaving you alone,” he insisted. The flames were all around them—he could smell bodies burning, the screams getting worse, people panicked and running in every direction. A man caught fire two rows down and Danny turned away, sick.
Casey reached out and put her hand on his cheek. “You got too much to do to die today, you hear me? Now you go. Leave me be. I don’t feel nothin’ anyway right now—it’ll all be over and I’ll be okay.” She curled her hand a little around his neck, pulling him closer. He kissed her.
“Now get outta here,” she whispered.
Danny hesitated.
He shook his head, got up, and attacked the pillar again. Teeth clenched, he hauled on the thing with all his might.
It budged half an inch, no more.
He tried again, thinking of his daddy. He’d be able to do this. If it was somebody Wyatt Durham loved under this pillar, he’d move heaven and earth to get ’em out.
He put his shoulder into it, grunting with the strain.
Suddenly, it felt lighter. Moved further. Danny opened his eyes and Diggs was beside him. They moved the pillar together, just enough so Danny could slide Casey out.
“I’ve got her,” Diggs said. “Now you go on ahead. I’m right behind you.” He started to argue, but Diggs wasn’t having any of it. “Go, dammit!”
Danny turned and ran down the aisle toward the stage exit, keeping low to the ground the whole while.
The fire was worse on the stage—everything burning, the flames loud like some monster, something alive and hungry. The curtains had fallen, still burning on the ground, and flames licked at the ceiling and along the walls. He watched a woman and three kids make it through the door. Then, there was a massive screech, like the building itself was dying, and a beam came crashing down, sparks flying. The top of the door gave way.
Their only way out was gone.
12:30 a.m. - Diggs
The good news—if there was any at all—was that Casey had passed out, which meant she wasn’t in pain. At least I was fairly sure she had passed out; the alternative being that I was killing myself carrying a dead girl to safety. I started down t
he aisle toward the exit, focused only on putting one foot in front of the other and trying to breathe the poisonous air choking into my lungs.
George was out. Danny was out. Solomon would be waiting.
I just had to get through the damn door.
It was a good plan, in theory—until Danny re-appeared a foot in front of me, his face burned and his clothes scorched.
“The exit’s gone,” he said. His voice was raw from the smoke. “But I know another way.”
I didn’t ask questions. Instead, I followed in silence as the kid led us up the aisle, into the belly of the building.
1:15 a.m.- Solomon
I watched another ambulance tear away, while firefighters tried to control the blaze and the building continued to cave in on itself. The exit everyone had been coming from had long since vanished. Rick sat beside me, silent. More than forty-five minutes had passed since the last survivor had emerged from the wreckage.
I felt a hand on my shoulder. “Erin,” Jack said. His voice was soft. I set my jaw, my eyes dry.
“He’s alive,” I said.
“They’re trying to evacuate. They’re worried about toxins.”
“I’m not leaving.” My lungs ached from the smoke; my eyes burned. Rick got up when Juarez told him to, and I sensed more than saw the two of them walking away.
I thought of Payson Church again, trying to push past the memories I had to whatever lay beneath: my father on his knees, Isaac Payson standing above him. This is an act of revolution, I remembered Isaac saying. We are reinventing the word of God. My father, head bowed. And then, later, the two of them arguing outside—I could see myself, suddenly, watching them from the safety of the bushes. This was supposed to be our Utopia, my father said. But you’re doing everything we swore we would never do.
Mitch Cameron was behind this. His people—whoever they were—were at the root of this fire, and the death of Barnel and his followers. J. Enterprises. Max Richards had been part of it. My father had been part of it.
How many people had they killed, for reasons I couldn’t begin to comprehend?
My chest tightened until there was no room left for air. The last of the ambulances pulled away. Juarez and Blaze stood on the sidelines, talking strategy.
Diggs didn’t come out.
Finally, at 1:30, Jack came over again.
“Come on,” he said. He put his arm around my shoulder. I didn’t move.
“Wait.”
I could barely get the word out. He stopped, caught by my tone. My pulse picked up. I tried to say something—anything—but I couldn’t make another sound.
A figure appeared, a phoenix in tattered clothes, coming up over the hillside half a mile from the still-burning auditorium. I stood.
A second figured followed, this one carrying someone in his arms. The last remaining paramedics sprang into action. Emergency vehicles turned around and headed back. Another twenty people appeared on the hillside, silhouetted against the night sky, broken and limping and, miraculously, alive.
I ran to meet them.
1:30 a.m. - Diggs
My legs gave out when I realized we were safe. Casey wasn’t moving, but I could feel her heartbeat and at some point she’d roused enough to wrap her arms around my neck. I fell to my knees, just barely managing to keep from dropping her. My lungs were screaming—it was a kind of pain like I’d never experienced before, like I was breathing rusty razorblades. Danny turned and saw me fall. One of the other survivors in our group took my arm and helped me up. Sirens flashed. Ambulances and cruisers raced toward us. Someone took Casey from me.
I fell again.
This time, I stayed down. The ground was cool on my chest, my cheek, my legs. I closed my eyes.
I don’t know how long I lay there before I felt a hand at the back of my shoulder, cool and familiar. Solomon rolled me over, and I stared at a smoke-filled sky and fiery green eyes.
“You’re okay,” she said. She sat down on the ground beside me and stroked my forehead.
“That depends on your definition of okay,” I rasped.
“You’re alive.”
I nodded. Or attempted to. “Then, yeah. I’m okay.”
She leaned down and kissed me, barely touching her lips to mine. I reached up and settled my hand at the soft slope of her neck, holding her there before she could get away.
“Don’t go,” I whispered.
She half-laughed, half-sobbed, brushing tears away. “I won’t,” she whispered back, her lips at my ear. “I’ll stay as long as you will.”
I smiled. I was still breathing razorblades, but it didn’t seem as bad, somehow. “Then you’re gonna be stuck with me for a while, kid,” I said. I closed my eyes again. Somewhere beneath the ash and the smoke, I could smell Solomon’s honeysuckle shampoo. I clung to that, letting it wash over me like a healing rain, until the night receded and sleep took me.
Chapter Thirty-One - Solomon
“So, no sign of Jenny Burkett?” Diggs asked. Again. He’d been asking that a lot, actually.
His voice still sounded like sandpaper, but it was better than it had been. He was better than he had been. Despite everything that had happened, against all odds, etc. Doctors around Paducah General had taken to calling him Miracle Man—which he, of course, hated. But given the fact that he’d survived snake attacks, brawls, a kidnapping, and two bombings with minimal damage, Miracle Man seemed pretty apt. There were burns, of course, but compared with the dozens of others either dead or permanently disfigured, a few second-degree burns were nothing.
Juarez shifted in his seat in Diggs’ hospital room, looking at Agent Blaze, George, and me before he returned his attention to Diggs. “We’ve been looking—sorry. There’s no sign of her. She may have died in the fire.”
“She didn’t,” Diggs said. “What about death toll? Do you have any numbers yet?”
“It was only three days ago,” Blaze said. “It’ll take some time. There’s a lot to sift through.”
“There were eighty-six survivors, though,” Juarez pointed out. “Many of whom never would have made it without your help.”
“Have you found out anymore about Glenda Clifton?” he asked, deftly changing the subject. So far, Diggs hadn’t been keen to talk about his heroics, characteristically uninterested in taking any credit.
“Not yet,” I told him. “Glenda was Marty Reynolds’ wife,” I explained to Blaze and Juarez. Diggs had asked about her before, and after comparing notes we had made the connection. “She was the one Marty supposedly murdered. According to records at the residential home, Barnel admitted her to the psych ward in 2002. She was diagnosed with schizo-effective disorder, and she’d been staying there ever since.”
“So, who killed her husband?” Juarez asked. “And why?”
George cleared his throat. He had burns on the left side of his face that would never fully heal, but—like so many—he’d made it out. At the question, he and Diggs shared an odd look before George looked away.
“I think I can answer that one,” the old man said. “Jesup told me during our little session together—when the cameras weren’t rollin’, of course—that Glenda called him one night, back in ’02. Hysterical, screamin’ about demons… He took her out of the house, ’cause she said she was afraid of her husband. Brought her out to live at the camp. Then, one night he gets another call from her. She was back at the house.”
“And she’d killed her husband,” I said.
George nodded.
“But what about the cross?” I asked. “Dressing Marty up in a new suit? All the weird ritual crap that was repeated on Wyatt?”
“I think that was all him,” George said. “Including turnin’ the cross upside down…” He studied his hands for a minute, looking unmistakably guilty.
Diggs had already told me the source of that guilt: George and Jesup Barnel had killed Billy Thomas together back in 1963. Barnel himself had removed the cross and stapled it back to Billy’s chest, upside down. The fact
that George had been there when all of this started, however, was weighing heavily on the old man. After much debate, I’d ultimately agreed with Diggs: we wouldn’t tell the cops what we knew. George would live out the rest of his years a free man. I still wasn’t completely sure it was the right thing to do, but I also knew I didn’t have it in me to turn the old man in now.
I caught another look that passed between George and Diggs before he continued. “Jesup told me he believed Glenda when she said she saw the devil in her husband—that it was his duty to step in once he got there and found the man dead. So, he turned the cross so there’d be no mistakin’ Marty Reynolds for a righteous man, dressed him up nice, and delivered him someplace where people would find him.”
I went over the rest of the details in my head, trying to fill in the gaps. I knew Barnel had killed Wyatt because of his involvement with Sally Woodruff’s abortion clinic, because Wyatt had said as much in the “confession” Barnel made him record before his death. It still didn’t make a lot of sense to me, though.
“Why take Wyatt early?” I asked. “Why kill him before anyone else, more humanely than anyone else, and leave him on the side of the road in a nice suit instead of blowing him up with the rest of you?”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” Diggs said. “The only thing I can think is maybe he stumbled on something while he was out at the Burkett farm. Maybe Jenny said something, or…I don’t know. Something. Barnel was obviously drugged to the gills when I talked to him. If Jenny suggested Wyatt needed to be taken out early because the devil was in him, Barnel wouldn’t have argued with her.”
“Okay, I’ll buy that,” I agreed. “It still doesn’t explain why they dosed him with ketamine, dressed him up, and left him for us to find, when they just slit Roger’s throat and left him chained in the attic.”
