The ax flew from his hands. It arced out into the darkness and smashed through the windshield of one of the lumber trucks.
With a certain eerie grace, Dawson pirouetted just once and toppled into Paul.
The Combat Magnum tumbled in the path of the ax.
Grappling with each other, clinging to each other, they fell off the terrace roof.
The belfry held very little light in the midst of that primeval Storm, but it was bright enough for Klinger to see that the only person there was the Annendale girl.
Impossible.
She was sitting on the platform, her back to the half-wall. And she seemed to be regarding him with dread.
What the hell?
There should have been two of them. The nine-foot-square belfry wasn’t large enough for a game of hide-and-seek. ‘What he Saw must be true. But there should have been two of them.
The night was rocked with thunder, and razor-tined forks of
white lightning stabbed the earth. Wind boomed through the open tower.
He stood over the child.
Looking up at him, her voice wavering, she said, “Please… please.. . don’t.. . shoot me.”
“Where is the other one?” Klinger asked. “Where did she go?”
A voice behind him said, “Hey, mister.”
They had heard him coming up the stairs. They were ready and waiting for him.
But how had they done it?
Sick, trembling, aware that it was too late for him to save himself, he nevertheless turned to meet the danger.
There was no one behind him. The storm conveniently provided another short burst of incandescent light, confirming that he saw what he thought he saw: he and the child were alone on the platform.
“Hey, mister.”
He looked up.
A black form, like a monstrous bat, was suspended above him. The woman. Jenny Edison. He could not see her face, but he had no doubt about who she was. She had heard him coming up the stairs when he thought he was being so clever. She had climbed atop the bell and had braced herself in the steel bell supports, against the ceiling, at the highest point of the arch, six feet overhead, like a goddamned bat.
It’s twenty-seven years since I was in Korea, he thought. I’m too old for commando raids. Too old .
He couldn’t see the gun she held, but he knew he was looking into the barrel of it.
Behind him the Annendale girl scrambled out of the line of fire.
It happened so fast, too fast.
“Good riddance, you bastard,” the Edison woman said.
He never heard the shot.
Dawson landed on his back in the middle of the inclined ramp. Trapped in the other man’s clumsy but effective embrace,
Paul fell on top of him, driving the breath from both of them. After a long shudder, the conveyor belt adjusted to their
weight. It swiftly carried them headfirst toward the open mouth of the scrap furnace.
Gasping, limp, Paul managed to raise his head from Dawson’s heaving chest. He saw a circle of yellow and orange and red flames flickering satanically thirty yards ahead.
Twenty-five yards
Winded, with a bullet wound in one shoulder, having cracked his head against the ramp when he fell, Dawson was not immediately in a fighting mood. He sucked air, choked on the fiercely heavy rain, and blew water from his nostrils.
The belt clattered and thumped upward.
Twenty yards…
Paul tried to roll off that highway of death.
With his good hand Dawson held Paul by the shirt.
Fifteen yards .
“Let go . . . you . . . bastard.” Paul twisted, squirmed, hadn’t the strength to free himself.
Dawson’s fingers were like claws.
Ten yards .
Tapping his last reserves of energy, the dregs from the barrel, Paul pulled back his fist and punched Dawson in the face.
Dawson let go of him.
Five yards .
Whimpering, already feeling the furnace heat, he threw himself to the right, off the ramp.
How far to the ground?
He fell with surprisingly little pain into a bed of weeds and mud beside the mill pond.
When he looked up he saw Dawson-delirious, unaware of the danger until it was too late for him-dropping headfirst into that crackling, spitting, roiling, hellish pit of fire.