We Are Here (49 page)

David lost the strength in his legs and crashed down to his knees.

“No!” Dawn shouted. “David—
get up
.”

But … why would he? Would it be worth it? Yes, he was going to be a father, probably. So what? He’d screw that up too, carrying on the genetic line. A bad father and a bad writer, a thief and a cheat. Was it worth slogging through the next forty years to prove the fact? If a character was destined to mess up every plotline you tried to put him in, why not let him go, cut him out?

“Do it then,” he mumbled, looking up to see Maj standing over him. “Have my life, if you want.”

Dawn tried to get to David but couldn’t get past the end of the car. There was something in her way, or someone,
more
than one—she could feel their unpleasant pressure forcing against her like a field of anxiety and temptation, though she couldn’t see anyone but Maj. She tried to shout out, to call for help—surely there would be
someone
in the houses on the street who would hear—but blank despair strangled the noise in her throat.

Then, thank God, she heard someone else shouting.

She pulled her eyes from the sight of David on his knees in the gutter next to the car (her car,
their
car, the car she’d already pictured with two little carseats in the back, and years from now, the sound of singing and are-we-there-yet and I-Spy games) and saw two people running down the road.

At least … for a moment she thought it was two, but then it was only one—a woman, skinny and tall.

Kristina knew right away what Maj had in mind.

“Maj,
no
,” she shouted. Maj was pulling in long, deep breaths and punching them back out again. Each time this happened it seemed like the hairs on his head were more visible. “You think Lizzie can’t see you?”

“Don’t try to—”

“Oh, shut up,” she snapped. “Lizzie’s dead. That doesn’t mean she’s gone. And she
loved
you.”

“She didn’t love me,” he said. “She loved Catherine. Which is how it should—”

“Catherine was her friend and that never goes away. But Lizzie loved
you
. She told me so.”

“Listen to her, Maj,” Flaxon said.

Kristina saw a great flatness in Maj’s eyes that said he knew he should care about what was being said but didn’t understand it. “It doesn’t matter. She’s gone.”

“Don’t do it, Maj,” another voice said, urgently. A squat man in a strange suit was hurrying toward them—the man Kristina had seen in SoHo with Reinhart the first time she went for a walk with Lizzie.

Flaxon snarled at him. “Fuck off, Golzen.”

“No, listen to him,” Kristina said. “He’s trying to stop—”

“It’ll just be some trick,” Flaxon said. “This is the asshole who told me I wasn’t real and got me into a whole load of shit that I only escaped because Lizzie showed me another way. Him and his putridass brothers and sister are groomer slime.”

“Brothers?” Kristina said.

Flaxon pointed at the three tall, thin people looming over the man who was on his knees in the gutter. “They’ve all got the same real person—a world-class sicko called Simon Jedburgh, who’s been locked in a psych ward twenty years for … what was it? Oh yeah—dismembering his entire fucking family.”

“I’ve made mistakes,” Golzen said. “I’m trying to put them right.”

“I don’t believe you,” Flaxon spat. “There’s no promised land either, FYI. That’s more bullshit, probably the crazy crap your psycho friend is screaming in his padded cell.”

Golzen turned from her and focused on Maj. “Don’t harm your friend,” he said. “No good will come of it.”

“Reinhart’s one of us,” Maj said.

Golzen stared at him. “
What
?”

“He killed his friend. Look what it did for
him
.”

Golzen looked like he was putting ten things together at once. “That’s what he’s been planning,” he said quietly. “That’s what he meant by ‘Perfect’ all along. Evolving to another state. Getting us to kill our real people, to become more like him.”

“Suits me,” Maj said. “Bring it on.”

But Flaxon threw herself at him and started ranting in his face, and then all of them were shouting at once.

Dawn meanwhile kept trying to get through to David, to get his eyes to refocus on her. “Please, David,” she said. “Please get up. These things aren’t real. They can’t do this to you.”

The woman called Kristina turned her head. “What the hell is that?”

Dawn realized she could smell something, and heard a crackling sound. “Is that from the church?”

The others turned to look. “Who’s in there?” Kristina screamed at Maj. “
Who’s in there
?”

“The priest and Reinhart,” Maj said. “Some old woman. And … your man.”

Kristina grabbed David by the scruff of the neck. She hauled him to his feet, shoving him toward Dawn. “Get him out of here,” she said, and then sprinted up the street toward the church.

After a beat, Maj and the others followed.

Some people are always going to look after themselves—first, foremost, and always. The cop was one of them. He latched on to what Lydia and I had realized—that the priest had set fire to the building, for
the love of Christ
—and that my attention was drawn. He threw himself into me, clattering us into a pile of overturned chairs. He wasn’t in Reinhart’s league, but he was desperate and focused on one task—getting his gun back.

I got tangled in a mess of broken wood and was finding it impossible to strike back. After ten seconds I started to be afraid that he was going to win. He got his hands around my wrist and began smacking it against anything he could find, sticking terrier-like to the task despite me kicking and kneeing him as hard as I could. Then there was a crunching blow that took us both on the shoulders and smacked us down onto the ground.

“Jesus,” Lydia said.

I crawled away to see her holding the remains of the chair she’d brought down on us. “Men are all the same,” she muttered. “Get us
out
of here, you assholes. Then you can beat each other to death for all I care.”

The cop had taken more of the impact and was still on hands and knees, trying to raise his head. Smoke was billowing in through the door at the end. Jeffers sat on the chair facing the congregation. He looked composed.

“Jeffers,” I said. “What have you done?”

He smiled with the maddening peacefulness of someone who is so far out the other side of present circumstances that he finds it hard to understand what you’re saying.

I pulled out my phone, but the screen was blank and cracked, and I knew there’d be a phone-shaped bruise on my ribs where Reinhart’s shoe had connected with it before I pulled the gun on him. I pressed buttons and nothing happened.

“Call 911,” I shouted to the cop, who was getting back to his feet.

“Left it in the car,” he muttered.

I ran to the main door and yanked at the handle. It was locked. I knew that. I’d stood and watched Jeffers do it but had been too caught up in Reinhart’s disappearance and keeping the gun on the cop that I hadn’t processed the implications.

I looked up at the big glass windows, knowing I’d noticed the first time I’d been in the room that they were covered with wire. I jumped onto the table with the scattered remains of Billy’s last meal, and tried to see if the wire could be gotten off. Maybe—if you had a few hours and a selection of tools. Some very thorough person had bedded it into the sides of the window frames. There were no other windows in the church because there were buildings on both sides. The roof was thirty feet above my head.

I got down and went back to the front door. I kicked it. Banged my shoulder against it. I realized the cop was heading toward me again and rounded on him.

“Fuck with me and I’ll shoot you,” I said. “We don’t have time for this.”

“I know,” he said—and threw his own shoulder against the door. Nothing happened. He did it again.

I left him to it and headed back to where Jeffers was sitting. “Is there any way out through the basement?”

“There’s no way out of anywhere.”

“Listen to me,” I said. “I understand that you’re in pain of various kinds and have things you feel you need to do. You’ve got three other people in here with you, though. You don’t get to make that call.”

“A bad cop, a crazy lady, and a man trying to find his path,” the priest said.

“Is that supposed to be me, or you?”

“Oh, both, don’t you think?”

The cop had given up on battering the door. “Look, you fucking whacko—”

“If Reinhart’s a ghost,” I said, holding my hand out to keep the cop back, “then how is this going to help?”

“He’s not a ghost. I thought we covered that. He’s the reason these souls are trapped in the city.”

I could hear the crackling of wood and old paper from below. Smoke was pouring out of the basement door. “At least shut that,” I yelled at the cop.

Meanwhile Lyds had come closer. She seemed the calmest person in the room. “But why us?” she asked.

“I had to move quickly,” the priest said. “The battle always turns on a moment of decisive action. History shows this. Any one of you could decide to help him. It’s better this way.”

“Reinhart’s just one of these … people,” I said. “Somehow he’s found a way of getting to the other side of the Bloom and surviving, that’s all. How do you know he didn’t put the idea for this into your head? How do you know he can’t just flip himself out of here, leaving us to burn to death?”

“He can’t.”

“How do you know?”

“He’s right,” the cop said. “Reinhart can’t do that. He can hide himself in plain sight, but he can’t magic himself through walls. He’s too solid.”

I hesitated, trying to stop myself from doing the wrong thing. When there’s a fire, you want to run. Senses shriek with how crucial it is that you get yourself away as fast as possible. I knew there was no point just running around the room. I knew also that Jeffers wouldn’t help us even if he could.

So I grabbed a chair and went back to the street end of the room for one last try.

I gathered all my strength and smashed the chair into the bottom of the lowest window. The chair shattered into pieces that rained all around me. The window didn’t even crack. Not just covered with wire, it turned out, but reinforced. It wouldn’t break until the temperature in here got high enough to override the pressure treatment, by which time we’d be a charred memory.

I pulled out the gun and pointed it at the door. I emptied it into the frame and around the handle. Afterward the door looked like shit, but neither tugging or kicking made anything move.

I became aware that Lydia was standing right next to me. She looked scared but also brave.

“Come on,” she said, holding out her hand. “I’ll go with you.”

“Go where?”

“Where the key is.”

Jeffers got to his feet. “Turn your face from her,” he commanded, his voice low and hard. “She lies. He is inside her now.”

“You should do it,” the cop said to me. “She’s right. That’s where the key is. That’s the only chance.”

“So why don’t
you
go down there?” Lydia said. “You’re the cop, right?”

He went back to banging on the front door. He started shouting, too, to make it look more like he was doing something of substance rather than turning away from the only road that went anywhere but death.

Lydia took my hand, and I let her lead me toward the far end of the room. Jeffers got there first. He positioned himself in front of the doorway.

“Every second you screw around just makes it more likely that people are going to die,” I said. “I know very little about your God and his value system, but I don’t see how that’s ever going to be a good thing.”

“You will not pass,” he said.

I grabbed his head and threw him aside. I pulled open the door to the basement. “You’ve done enough,” I told Lydia, and put her gently to one side.

Then I went through the door.

Kristina had her phone out and was on with 911.

“Fire at a church on 16th,” she said, struggling to keep her voice calm and intelligible. “There are people inside. Please be fast.” The woman on the other end kept trying to getting her to stay on the line, but once Kris knew she’d communicated the information and the urgency she hung up and ran with Flaxon to the church.

The smell was strong and smoke was curling out of ventilation gaps in the brickwork down near the floor inside the gates.

“
Shit
,” Flaxon wailed. “What are we going to do?”

Maj vaulted straight over the gate. He ran up the stairs to the door on the right, then came back and over to the other side. “Locked,” he said.

Kris ran back into the street, listening for the sound of sirens and hoping to see a truck—but saw nothing other than the couple that had been at the car down the street, hurrying toward her. With early-evening traffic there was no knowing how long it would take for help to arrive. Could be five minutes. Could be twenty.

Could be long enough for everyone to die.

The guy called David seemed to have gotten himself together now, a little. “What’s happening?”

“The church is on fire,” Kris said, feeling dreamlike. “And my boyfriend is inside.”

There was a muted crash as a shadow came and went against the lowest of the colored panes of glass on the upper floor. John throwing something against it, Kristina guessed, and though it made her feel sick to realize that whatever he’d tried had failed, at least he was still trying things.

“Can you get inside?” she shouted to Flaxon, who was hopping from foot to foot, desperate to do something.

“No,” she said. “We climb well. But we can’t just go through walls.”

Smoke was billowing out of the lower grills; then heat from below starting to build and build. Then there was the sound of eight shots. It sounded like they were coming from close to the right doorway.

Dawn screamed. Kris listened and heard something being struck near the same position. And a shout of frustration that she
knew
was John.

“Has somebody been shot?”

“I don’t think so,” she said, but she wasn’t sure and she could feel herself panicking.