“It’s smoke,” Hayes said. “Jesus Christ, it looks like all of Lynn is on fire.”
“What the hell?” said the captain. “What the hell is going on?”
The boat veered closer to the bays of the city. They could hear screaming from far, far away. A whine like some insect, buzzing madly. Then a low-throated burst, and the column of smoke lit up.
“What the hell was that?” said Hayes.
“They’ve started,” Samantha said softly.
“What?”
“They’ve started. Don’t you see? They’ve started. The union men, with the guns. They’ve got them now and they’re using them.”
Bells rang somewhere and went unanswered. People rushed back and forth along the dock front, shouting to one another. Someone cackled somewhere and there was the sound of glass breaking and more screaming.
Hayes pulled out his gun as they came close to land. “Here,” he said, thrusting it toward her. “Take this. Get to Garvey. Just tell him what happened. Tell him what’s going on.” Hayes put one foot on the bow of the boat and waited for the captain to pull it in.
“What are you going to do?” asked Samantha.
“I’ve no idea,” he said. Then when he was near enough Hayes leaped down to the dock. He slipped and fell, recovered himself, and sprinted off toward the fire.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
It seemed as though in Hayes’s absence the city had become a different place. Some streets had no lights and were filled with complete darkness. Homes were being emptied and small crowds filed down alleys and lanes, though none seemed sure of where they were going. And on some darkened streets one could look far down the block and see distant building faces lit with the hellish glow of merry flames.
He managed to stop one young woman and force some sort of story out of her. “They took hostages,” she panted.
“Hostages? Who?”
“The union men. They stormed the Southeastern Office of McNaughton, tried to take hostages. Political hostages, they said. But things went wrong. The guns they had, they did something crazy. Hit a gas main.”
“Oh, God.”
“Everything’s on fire. You got to get out, mister. Got to get the hell out of this town before it all burns down.” Then she turned and fled and was gone.
Closer to the Southeastern the flow of the crowd was almost overpowering. Women clutching children or dragging them along. Men bowling one another over as they fought to escape the oncoming flames. As he crossed the Lynn Canal Hayes began to see fire trucks among the throngs of people, clanking, yellow contraptions piled with rubber tubing. They pulled up at the street sides and turned their nozzles toward the burning buildings and poured great gouts of sewer water through the windows. They seemed forced to work the fire at the edges, though; toward the Southeastern the inferno was immense, whole buildings crumbling under its onslaught, and in those places they could not venture close to the flames.
There was a noise from the burning end of the street like a thousand steam whistles ringing at once. One of the firemen screamed, “Get down!” and the entire crowd dropped to the cement, except for Hayes. He watched as one of the building faces lit up as if an entire spotlight were focusing on one square foot of the building’s facade. Then a white-hot spark flew from an alley across the street to strike the glowing spot and the building erupted like it had been hit with an artillery shell.
Hayes was blown backward off his feet and tumbled to the pavement. His ears rang and the street scene grew hazy and stuttered. He wondered what had happened before remembering that he was stunned. He took a deep breath, remembered what he had done under the same circumstances during his old life and the appropriate reaction, and wriggled his fingers and toes until the world became still again.
He rolled onto his belly and saw a man running out of the alley across from the building that had exploded, carrying something long and thin in his hands, like a short pike with a scooped blade at its end. One of the firemen screamed something and several policemen fought to their knees and began wildly firing at him. The man screamed, the shoulder of his overalls suddenly dotted with red, and he pointed the thin pike at them. There was the piercing whistling sound again and the end of the pike glittered white. The policemen fell to the ground. From the end of the pike a small spark the size of a thumb came shooting out, arcing over them and the street behind them, far up into the air where it burst like a firework, shrapnel spinning down to the city below. The man stopped and tried to rerig the device but was hampered by his dead arm. The police began firing again and there was a wet burst from the edge of the man’s neck and he sank to the ground and lay there. The police kept firing at him. His calf burst. Then his side, yet still they fired.
“What the hell sort of guns did they give them?” Hayes heard himself asking.
The damaged building caved in on itself. Hayes could see the shivering light of small fires dancing in its husk. The building next to it fell as well and more fire spilled down the street. One of the firemen shouted something and waved his hand and the crews began reeling in their lines to withdraw down the street. This neighborhood was lost, they called. The most they could do was contain it.
Hayes tried to stand. He watched the screaming faces rush before him. Watched as the fire licked adjacent roofs or crept down into bushes and small lawns. He saw there was something moving in one of the homes, ambling back and forth and covered in flames. It fell from sight and he did not see it again.
He realized he felt something in the back of his head. Something cold and intense like a drill being pushed into his brainpan. Sensations washed over him, lurid terror and wild fear, eating into him and seizing up his heart.
“Oh, God,” he murmured to himself. “Not now. Please. Not now.”
But there was no stopping it. The attack was coming. He fell to his hands and knees and waited for it to pass.
Yet it did not pass. It grew and it grew, swallowing him and pulling him down and drowning him. Soft blue lights began flashing at the edges of his sight, just as when he’d seen that strange vision in the trolley tunnel. He took a deep breath and wondered if vomiting would clear it, but as he did he realized that the pain was lessening, but the sensations were not going away. He could still feel the people around him, yet it did not pain him at all.
He opened his eyes and stood and looked out at them and, astonished, held them clearly in his mind. Sensations flooded through him, the echoes of many thoughts and desperate hopes and wild fears, but they did not pain him or wound him as they always had. It was so clear, so focused. It was as though he had been blind, but now for the first time he could see the world clearly and without pain, and he looked out on what surrounded him.
A chorus. A wailing chorus of fear and terror, and his soul was the reed that caught their scream and sang out, loud and high and clear, begging for someone to listen.
He looked at the building behind him and knew immediately someone was inside. In the lower back room, hiding in the bathroom. More than one person, probably.
Several nearby firemen began to load up to head out, and Hayes ran to one and grabbed him and shouted, “There’s someone in that building!”
The fireman looked at Hayes, then at the building. “What? No, we evacuated that an hour ago!”
“You’re wrong! There’s someone in the back!”
“In the back? How the hell do you know? Get your goddamn hand off me.”
“I’m telling you there’s a mother and daughter there!”
The fireman shoved him back and brandished a leather-gloved fist. “Get the hell off me or I swear to God…”
Hayes steeled himself and reached out to him, desperately listening to the growing echoes from within the man. It had never come so fast before, and so easily, and soon he heard…
“Janey says you need to listen,” he said suddenly.
