The barrel of the big gun still dripped fire. The prisoner who had stumbled out of the ruined police station burned his hands as he opened it up on the church belfry. Yet the M60 continued to rock furiously as Tom Duggan stole along the snowy hedge fronting his home. The con was yelling between each burst of fire, ripping into the steeple, and Tom Duggan could see bright sparks flying off the bell.
The bulldozer rammed the church, opening up the mouth of the entrance. Its headlights illuminated the stained-glass windows like a jack-o’-lantern.
Rounds resumed from the belfry, picking at the snow around the pickup and punching holes in the bumper. But the con would not stop. He kept yelling and firing the hot M60.
Tom Duggan pulled the revolver from his belt. He crossed his front walk, going the wide way around the pickup, approaching the gun from behind.
Diesel smoke and drywall dust, the sound of debris breaking off the wall.
Dr. Rosen was listening to the convict below as a sudden volley of automatic fire ripped through the floor planks.
Spit holes pitted the wood all around him, dropping him to his side. He was not hit, but he landed hard on his bad arm and the groan upon impact was automatic and forceful.
He was given away. He froze where he was there on the choir floor, but the damage was done.
Near his head was the bloodstain from his first fall. One of the rounds had splintered the stain, dead center. That was what gave him the desperate idea.
He rolled forward so that his injured arm lay across the hole. The splinters were jagged and biting and Dr. Rosen’s groan authentic. Fresh blood ran down through the floor.
Coe sat with his eyes closed and his back to the wood stanchion as rounds rang off the big bell. He held the rifle ready and rushed a count of five before opening his eyes and turning and firing twice in the direction of the police station.
Answering fire was loud and quick, rounds sparking off the copper bell, but Coe had already spun back into a tight crouch.
He was no match for the M60 gunner making frenzied music off the bell. He had a much better chance at getting the gazebo sniper below. That angle was safer and more favorable. Coe poked the rifle sight over the edge and fired down at the dark rotunda roof.
A distant rumbling began to make itself felt under his feet. First he thought it was the bulldozer rolling through the church. Then he saw lights moving over the jagged horizon of the Green Mountains.
Helicopters were crossing into town. The army was moving in.
Another discordant volley off the bell, Coe curled up tight. The gazebo had gone quiet and he wondered if he had hit someone. He peered over the edge of the belfry platform.
He could just make out the convict beyond the cover of the roof. The man was crouched and there was something balanced on his shoulder, long-barreled, pointed at Coe.
Coe saw the smoke as the Stinger left its launcher. There was no time for any other reaction. He jerked backward and the rifle slipped from his hands.
Dr. Rosen’s heart raced as the intruder climbed the stairs to the choir balcony. He lay still but his hands and feet were trembling and he was certain that with one look the convict would know that he was not dead. What he concentrated on was patience and the young life of the boy upstairs.
A rumbling in the distance, growing, obscuring the creaking of the con’s boots on the old stairs. Dr. Rosen had to rely on his instincts. The gun was heavy in his offhand.
His muscles were tense with the urge to spring, but he waited, waited, until he could wait no more.
He opened his eyes and brought the gun up and saw the convict on the top step, standing in a drab green parka and wet denim jeans, looking up at the open trapdoor. As Coe came diving headfirst out of the belfry, Dr. Rosen emptied his gun into the convict’s legs and chest and the convict fell back. Coe crashed to the floor next to Dr. Rosen as a windy, whistling noise filled the air, splitting slate and wood, ripping apart the church steeple overhead.
Tom Duggan yelled at the con to stop, but the man’s ears were bleeding and the noise of the gun obliterated all human voice. So Tom Duggan shot him once from behind. The bullet struck the convict in the shoulder, and DeYoung stiffened and turned fast. He brought the steaming gun around with him.
He never stopped firing. Rounds ripped into the ground, stitching the snow toward Tom Duggan. He lunged forward to the grill of the pickup and the hot rounds thumped behind him, the M60 barrel unable to get below the front cab. Tom Duggan was readying his revolver as fire from the belfry plunked the body of the pickup, driving him back. He ducked to the other headlight and came up shooting.
His gunshots struck DeYoung in both arms and square in the throat, driving him back from the machine gun, knocking him out of the pickup.
The gun tipped skyward of its own accord — silent now, though Tom Duggan’s ears screamed as though it were still firing. He saw lights moving across the dark night sky and knew they were helicopters in the distance.
He climbed up into the scorched bed of the pickup. He got behind the M60, but was too late in turning to the gazebo. The Stinger lit out and pierced the belfry, smashing the steeple and lopping off the high white cross before going off corkscrewing into the night.
Tom Duggan opened up the gun. He shuddered as round after round discharged, first felling the missile-firing con, then all but obliterating the old gazebo. He turned the spray on the blazing town hall, wasting bullets into the hungry fire, then wheeled hard and ripped into each building along Post Road, from the library all the way to the wounded police station behind him. He stopped then, looking over his shoulder at his beloved funeral parlor, his home. The lawn was all torn up, bullet holes in the clapboard siding, the front door hanging open. Tom Duggan turned the gun, gripping it hard as he tore into the white walls, popping the lead-glass windows and shredding the generations-old sign.
Chapter 34
The M60 noise grew distant, and Inkman’s pace slowed as his breathing suffered, the freezing air choking his lungs. He tumbled over the short right-field fence and picked himself up and slogged through the knee-high snow toward the farm. The openness of the land pulled at him. The nearest hiding place was a silo at the top of the rise, but from there it looked terribly far away.
Over his shoulder, Inkman’s own footprints pursued him like a shadowy version of himself. This phantom trail failed to symbolize guilt for Inkman, standing instead as just another example of his ongoing bad luck. Misfortune had dogged him for years, always conspiring to keep him from achieving his goals.
Way beyond the tall, bare trees, the sky over the center of town glowed ruddy, and Inkman was glad.
A dark figure crossed the pitcher’s mound of the baseball field. The form was moving across the snow with quick deliberateness — and Inkman turned and ran as fast as his desperation would take him.
He expected a bullet in the back at every step. There was a tree farm before the silo, neat rows of fat spruces shaking wildly in his vision. They were neither many nor tall, but they were his only potential cover.
The flak vest weighed heavy on his shoulders as the snow sucked at his feet. Every time he looked back, Clock was gaining.
He would not make it to the trees. Clock was closing too fast. Inkman could see the breath swirling around his pursuer’s shadowed face.
So Inkman took to favoring his right leg, giving up before the trees. It was a Christmas tree farm, bushy spruces in rows of ascending height — and Inkman stopped just yards away, doubled over as Clock came up fast behind him.