We Are Here (50 page)

Maj turned to David. “Tell me,” he said.

“Tell you what?”

“What to do.”

David had no idea what he meant. Maj leaned forward and tapped his finger in the middle of David’s forehead. “
Focus
. What do you do now? What do
we
do?”

“I don’t
know
.”

“So
make it up
, David. You know the question.”

“What question?”

“The only one that ever mattered to you.
What happens next
?”

David looked up at the church, thinking furiously. The doors were locked and too tough to break. The windows on the second story were too high and reinforced and someone had just tried to break through them from the inside and failed. Obviously there was an air route into a basement where the smoke was coming from, but they didn’t have the tools to break through, and anyway
that was where the fire was
. “I don’t know,” he said. “I can’t …”

Then he stopped, let himself out of the gate and stepped out onto the sidewalk, looking back at the church. He felt something coming at him, opening the door in the back of his mind.

“What?” Maj came after him, followed by Flaxon. “What have you seen?”

“It’s the only thing I can think of.”

Flaxon saw where he was looking. “The roof.”

Kristina looked up at the shallow-pitched roof, and then downward, tracing a route down the wall. Ornamental bricks stuck out at irregular intervals.
Maybe
you could climb that way, if you scrambled up the head-height columns either side of the doorway and then onto the roof above it. Maybe. And maybe you’d fall and die.

“It’s all I’ve got,” David said. “I’m sorry.”

Maj ran back into the courtyard. Flaxon followed, looking dubious. Smoke from the basement was curling up the front of the building now. Kris heard more shouting from inside. Maj reached for the column on the left side of the door and pulled himself up, then used both hands to haul himself up onto the roof.

“But we won’t be able to break through the roof when we get there,” Flaxon said as she scaled the other column, bracing her toes on the outcrop at the bottom and pulling herself up onto the little roof, moving more quickly and with greater surety than Maj. “Even you don’t have the fingerskills for that, do you?”

Maj shook his head. “There’s nothing else to try. We have to get up there and then see what we can do.”

“I can do it,” David said.

“No, David,” Dawn said firmly.

David turned to Kris. “Keep her back,” he said. “She’s pregnant.”

He reached for the column by the side of the doorway and started pulling himself up.

“No!” Dawn screamed. She started to run up the stairs, but Kristina held her arms tight. “Don’t!”

“Come back and I’ll go,” Kris said, but David had already hauled himself up onto the roof above the doorway and was reaching for the brickwork above.

Maj climbed quickly, but Flaxon was faster. She moved up the upper face of the church like a lizard, hands and feet reaching out for the bricks that poked out. She was up and over onto the roof while Maj was still ten feet down and David had barely made it halfway.

Dawn shook Kristina off. “But then what?” she shouted.

The same thing had just occurred to Kristina. It was all very well getting up there and maybe even breaking through the roof, but unless there happened to be a thirty-foot ladder in the church all this would achieve was a bird’s-eye view of people being burned alive.

She knew also that John wouldn’t be waiting for the fates to step in on his behalf. He’d be trying to break down the walls of the reality he found himself in, kicking toward some better place on the other side, even if that place didn’t exist, and even if running toward it might bring the end upon him quicker than it might otherwise have done.

“Please, John,” she prayed, silently, but as deep and loud as she could. “I love you. Please don’t do something brave.”

David nearly fell, twice. The bricks were cold and wet and he’d realized before he was halfway to the roof that this was an insane thing to try and he just wasn’t strong enough for it. He knew also that he wasn’t strong enough to spend the rest of his life aware that he’d stood on the sidewalk and done nothing, however. He already had too much guilt and regret socked away.

He reached up with hand after hand and scrabbled for enough purchase under his fingers to feel he stood a chance. He was terrified. His insides were twisted so tightly that he could barely breathe. But when he felt he’d gotten enough traction with his fingertips he pushed carefully up with his right leg, straightening it, until his head was poking up over the roof.

Maj and Flaxon were standing halfway down, as if being up here was the most natural thing in the world.

Somehow this made David realize it was only the
idea
of standing on a roof that was frightening. Apart from the knowledge of what will happen to you if you fall, it’s no different from being on a slope a couple of feet off the ground. The idea felt precarious in his mind, but it was enough to get him moving again.

He brought his left arm over and reached as far as he could, pushing up with the other leg at the same time … until he could start to haul himself up onto the tiles.

Maj was stamping at the roof, but nothing was happening. As David pulled himself up far enough that the balance of his weight was over the roof, he realized that wasn’t going to change. He could barely feel the vibration of the other man’s foot striking the tiles, even though he was doing it time after time with all his force.

Which meant it was down to David. He hauled himself up using his left hand to grab on to the capstone at the peak of the gable. The pitch of the roof was thankfully shallow, designed to make the space inside seem as big and impressive as possible.

He pulled himself along the tiles toward Maj and Flaxon, using his other hand to scoot himself across the wet tiles. They were slippery and a few were missing. The second time he came across a hole he lowered his head and looked into the gap beyond.

“Need more than that,” Maj said, shouting against the wind. David saw that he was right. Beyond the hole was a narrow space, then beams and tight-fitting planks of wood.

Making sure he had a good hold on the capstone, he used his other hand to bang against the boards. They were very solid. Levering off tiles wasn’t going to be enough.

“
Now
what?” the girl asked. She’d come over and was squatted down beside him, looking into the hole.

“What about the other end?” Maj said. “Maybe there’s a window on the other side of the church.”

“So what? We’re not going to be able to get to it—and even if we can, it’s obviously too high for whoever’s in there to get to, or they’d have tried it already.”

Maj looked down at David. “This was a crap idea,” he said, not unkindly.

Then his foot slipped on a broken tile, and he started to fall.

From below all they saw was a shadow standing at the apex of the roof, right at the end. The sound of flames in the basement was now clearly audible, and the smoke coming out had turned black and choking. There had been no more noises from inside the building itself.

Dawn heard sirens and turned to look up the street. She missed the moment where Maj lost his footing, slipped, and started to topple over the edge of the roof.

She also missed seeing David’s hand lash out.

The other side of the door was a space barely big enough to turn around in, a narrow set of stairs leading down on the left. Within seconds of starting down it was almost impossible to see anything through the smoke.

I didn’t want to go down there.

I didn’t see any choice.

I held my arm up against my nose and mouth, trying not to breathe deeply despite my lungs’ panicky insistence that they needed more air. I felt out with my foot, taking one step at a time. I’d seen the priest throw the key. Surely it couldn’t have gone far.

Each time I went down a step I carefully swept my other foot across it, listening for the sound of something small and metal moving against wood.

There was a split-second breeze or change of wind direction and for a moment I could see a little more of where I was—a staircase with a second landing leading down, and below that, reflections of fire on a wall. I thought that I glimpsed something down there, small and dark on the bigger step, and that it
might
be a key.

It was enough to keep me going. But for how long and how far? Could I keep going if it got hotter and if I couldn’t see anything?

I had a heavy urge to give up and turn around. It felt as if there was a voice in my head, pleading with me to stop, to turn around—not a bad voice, I didn’t think it was Reinhart; it felt like someone who had only love for me and wanted me out of harm’s way and for me not to do something dumb.

But if I
didn’t
do this, what then?

I made it down to the landing and dropped to a crouch, feeling around on the wooden floor with my hand, trying to stay calm. I couldn’t find anything, though I was sure this was the right step. Then my fingers caught on something and by leaning right over and squinting through the smoke I realized it was just a knot in the old wood. That’s all I’d seen.

I coughed so hard I went dizzy, caught in a chain of retching spasms that threatened to knock me off balance.

I had to keep going. If Jeffers had thrown the key straight down from the door above, it would have hit the wall over my head and bounced down the next landing. After that it couldn’t have gone far. It had to be within twenty feet of where I was. In the growing heat and blackness, that was a long way, but if it meant the difference between living and dying it was close enough.

I lowered myself to a sitting position and started to shuffle down the final set of stairs one at a time.

I heard something ahead. Something new, that is. The crackle of flames from the corner was ever-present. The smoke around me was shot with light from the burning. Some other sound was growing. I got down to the lower level.

Then I saw it. I saw the key.

It was only ten feet away. I dropped onto my hands and knees and felt my way through smoke that had redoubled in thickness. There were splinters in the wood under my hand, but I kept sweeping it back and forth, side to side, reaching out as far ahead of me as I could, until finally they banged into something.

It was hot, the key—the air had heated up to the point where grabbing hold of it made me wince, and then cough again.

I was reaching out too far. The wrenching cough cost me my balance and I tipped onto my face and shoulder, falling to lie halfway around the corner.

My face immediately felt like someone had turned a blowtorch on it. My eyes clamped against the heat, shocked into closure. I was paralyzed, body going into seizure, unable to move in any direction at all.

Above the roar of flames the new noise was getting louder and louder. I’d never heard anything like it in my life before.

Holding my hand out as a block, I cracked open my eyes. All I could see was flame and smoke, alternately black and searing bright, and maybe that’s what caused patterns to spark across my brain, as if my eyes were trying to make sense of the insensible.

I felt Reinhart coming toward the corner from the other side. He was at ease. He was glad I’d come. He was happy there was fire. It held no fear for him. He knew it’s what you need to transform.

Between us there was the smoke and it was full of people now. It seemed like the flames were highlighting things that lay and sat along this stretch of corridor, scrunched into fetal balls or standing with their faces against the walls. There was a figure with a grotesquely large head and a woman dressed like a dolly, her hair in braids. There were children, or things shaped like them. There was a lion with golden eyes.

The sound … I don’t know what it was. I will never know. I couldn’t tell whether it was the noise of beings dying, or being born, of horror or a fierce and mindless kind of joy, of a huge dark door being slammed shut forever, or a white one being opened as fifty souls woke from dusty sleep together and moved their fading limbs.

It was horrible. It was beautiful. It held my attention a moment too long.

When I coughed again it didn’t feel like all of it came back out. Certainly not enough. My chest locked, full of smoke and heat and unable to expel.

My mind filled with a face, nothing to do with anything down here. It was the face of my remaining son, Tyler, as I’d last seen him, and I realized with terrible sadness that I had abandoned him like some imaginary boy, presenting my back as I walked out of his life. I’d turned my back on him in pain, and to keep myself sane, but he wasn’t to understand that. All he knew was that he’d been forgotten and left behind.

The shapes in the smoke still moved. I couldn’t get up. My cheek was flat against the boards and I could feel the heat rising from them and hear the sound of whatever beings lined the corridor ahead.

I could also feel Reinhart getting closer to where I lay sprawled, my mind fluttering, splitting into black and white and heat. It did not feel like a single person coming toward me, but I couldn’t tell whether that was because of all the others around the corridor or if Reinhart’s power and concentration came from a gathering of the people he’d caused to die, lost souls corralled into one vessel and bent now to a single will. Each one of us contains multitudes, after all: who we are and who we’ve been, and perhaps also who we love or kill.

He squatted down in front of me. His clothes were on fire. He put a finger under my chin and lifted my head.

“I got plans,” he said. “I don’t need you running around my head like some big black dog without a home. You … can just die. It’s my gift to you.”

He looked up, as if hearing something. He smiled and stood back up and backed away into the flames and smoke until he became part of them.

I knew that getting the key wasn’t enough.

I had to get him, too.

I tried to push myself up. Nothing happened. Once again I heard that other voice, the one deep in my mind, telling me not to do anything rash, not to be a hero. I realized it was Kristina.