by Jonas Saul
Neither man replied. They were probably already running around to the back to try to get in.
More than fifty people still waited to exit through the rear access door.
Father Adams’ voice boomed from the loudspeakers as he talked about the life of his beloved brother.
The cell phone said 3:59 p.m.
She raised the gun in her hand and fired. The remaining people ducked and looked back at her.
“Get out!” she yelled as she started toward them. “Get out now! Or I will kill you all!” She used the backs of the pews to support her weight. “Get out!” She yelled louder and raised the gun to fire into the ceiling. Father Adams’ voice droned on.
Her stomach twisted and she suddenly had the urge to throw up. Her hand missed the back of a pew and she fell, hitting the church’s floor, pain shooting through her abdomen. She clenched her teeth and scrunched her eyes closed.
“Shit, that hurt.”
A tickling on the nape of her neck and a whisper in her ear from Vivian reminded her that if she didn’t get up and keep moving, something was about to happen that would hurt a whole lot more.
Sometimes, there are more important things than a cracked ribcage and a broken foot.
She rolled to her knees, screamed as her ribs were on fire, grabbed the side of a pew and forced herself to her feet, her head spinning at the pain.
Father Adams’ voice continued as if the entire church was full of listeners held rapt at the life of a religious man. She used his obnoxious voice to motivate her to move to the next pew. Then the next.
After three, she checked the time.
4:00 p.m.
Any second, the entire church would explode. She wouldn’t make it. Going in, she knew there wasn’t a good chance of her walking out of this, but there was no other choice. Fortunate enough to be the one privy to the inside information, she was the only one who could get the building evacuated in time. That meant staying with the ship as it went down.
But maybe the bombs were on a different clock. Maybe their timers were a minute or two slower than the cell phone’s.
Five more pews and she’d be at the front of the church. The people at the back door were filing out. Three, two, one, and then Hirst turned around to look at her. Their eyes met. She waved him off.
“Lock the door,” she shouted over Father Adams’ voice. “Get everyone as far away from the building as possible.”
Hirst nodded.
“Oh, and Hirst. Thanks.”
The door slammed shut. She was alone with Adams’ voice booming through the loud speakers. She had done it. She had emptied the church. Now it was time for the last act.
Her energy waning and the crutch back near the front of the church, Sarah hopped on her right leg as she crossed the open space heading to the large crucifix by the baptismal font.
Something clicked behind her.
She didn’t look back. Three hops left.
Another click.
Two hops.
When the first bomb exploded, the interior pressure was contained for the briefest of moments, then it expanded into an intense shock wave. One second, Sarah was hopping on a leg she wasn’t sure would hold her up, and the next second she was airborne as the concussion hit her from behind.
Without knowing how, she understood the devices were exploding one after another. Even as her short flight ended and she smacked down, the second one blew and then the third.
A rolling wall of flames followed the shock waves of each incendiary device.
She closed her eyes as her eyebrows and lashes singed off. The bombs continued to explode throughout the centuries old church, silencing Father Adams’ metallic voice.
It also silenced everything else for Sarah Roberts.
Chapter 36
Parkman, with Aaron following close behind, had gotten around back and was running for the door as Detective Hirst walked away from it.
“Hirst!” Parkman yelled. “Where’s Sarah? Did she come out this way?”
Hirst shook his head in the negative.
“We have to get in there,” Parkman said, frantic with the thought that Sarah would die.
Hirst stepped in his way. “Parkman, if she wanted out, she had her chance.”
“No. She. Didn’t.” Parkman fought to get past Hirst.
Aaron ran around them. Hirst lunged out, but he was too slow and missed.
A loud explosion ruptured the air. The ground shook under their feet. Then Parkman scrambled toward the door.
Another explosion followed the first. Then another. The windows in the back of the church blew out, raining stained glass down on Aaron and Parkman.
Feeling every bit the coward, Parkman turned and ran from the church as more explosions rocked its foundation. Aaron stayed on his heels.
The church soon dissolved to four walls and rubble with charred skeletal remains. The buildings across the street in the front and back had all their windows blown out, too.
Parkman got knocked to the ground with the last couple of explosions, igniting the pain from the bullet wound. With all the walking around, running and now smashing into the ground, he was sure he had reopened the stitches. But it was nothing to what Sarah was going through. She was still inside the church.
“Sarah!” Aaron shouted beside him. “Sarah!”
Tears streaked down his face as he attempted to approach the church but was pushed back by the intensity of the heat.
Parkman lay flat out on the cement, his head raised to watch as the flames engulfed what was once a magnificent church.
There was no getting out of that building alive. All four walls took a hit as the man behind the destruction had planned carefully, placing his explosives strategically. If Sarah was still in that building, it would be virtually impossible for her to still be alive.
Parkman blinked up at the L.A. sky. As the fire trucks arrived, he cried.
It was his fault they were here in the first place. If he hadn’t agreed to bring Sarah, none of this would’ve happened. What was he thinking? She had a broken foot. She almost died on the fifth floor of that parking garage. She could’ve been run over by Father Adams’ brother when Officer Vicky Chard got hit by that white van. And what about the pimp who pulled a gun on her? Sarah dodged death like Wonder Woman dodged bullets. But now she went one too far.
He wiped at his eyes.
One too far.
“I’m so sorry, Sarah.”
“Don’t say that!” Aaron yelled. “She’ll make it. She has to. It’s Sarah we’re talking about here.”
A huge bang was followed by a loud crashing sound and a corresponding ground-shaking boom.
What the fuck was that?
Hirst stepped close to Aaron. “I’m sorry, guys. No one is walking out of that church alive.”
Parkman lifted his head to see what made the terrible noise. The roof of the church had collapsed. Flames raced toward the sky from all over the church, the stone walls already blackening at the top. Flames rushed out the broken windows in the back as if eager to breathe fresh air.
A long stream of water from a fire truck soared above the ruined remains and landed in a misty spray as it came in contact with the flames. Another stream followed the first. Then another.
Too late. Too damn late.
Parkman wept at the loss of Sarah Roberts.
Aaron fell to his knees beside Parkman. After a moment, grief overtook him and he pressed his forehead against the ground and cried, whispering ‘No’ over and over.
Parkman wondered if he would burn in Hell for bringing Sarah to L.A. How would God look at him when he died one day after sacrificing his star player down here? She was the one girl that could save and help people.
“I’m so sorry, Sarah. Please forgive me.”
He rolled onto his side and cried violently for the loss of his friend, his confidante.
He was still there when fire trucks came up the back road to work on the flames from this side.
His stitches had ripped open. But that didn’t matter. Nothing mattered now. Nothing mattered anymore.
He looked back at what was left of the church.
Sarah Roberts was dead.
Chapter 37
On her last hop, her leg exhausted, she was still too far away. When the first explosion hit her from behind, it knocked her off her foot. She landed in the center of the baptismal font. The circular marble fountain was over eight feet in diameter. The explosion gave her the extra boost needed, as her final hop would’ve fallen short.
A burning heat covered her body the instant she was airborne, then cooled just as instantly when submerged in the water of the font. She dropped to the bottom of the water, and secured her hands to the sides to remain as low as possible.
Explosion after explosion rippled above her. Flames roared over the font like an angry orange cloud, held back by the cover of water in its attempt to touch her. But her time in the baptismal font was coming to an end.
More explosions sounded throughout the church. It was falling apart, leaving her exposed. Another explosion blew chunks of rock and stone over the font, small pieces landing in the water.
She needed to breathe. Her lungs were starving, but the air above the font had blackened, the only light coming from the intense flames already consuming the church.
The marble cracked beside her head. Water began to gush out of the ruined font. In seconds, her legs, which had floated higher than her upper body, were exposed to the heat-charged air.
She dropped to her knees, kept her head low, and as the water emptied, she cupped her hands over her nose and breathed in three times rapidly. Then she dove over the side hoping she wouldn’t knock herself unconscious with the pain in her ribs.
She landed hard, rolled onto a burning piece of wood and rolled off it just as fast. Her yelp brought an influx of raw, blackened air into her lungs. She coughed and hacked, her eyes blurring, her rib cage causing a fire of its own.
As her lungs struggled to cope with limited oxygen, her wet clothes and hair offered a shield from the flames and heat. She had a minute, maybe less, before her smoking clothes would lose their moisture, then catch fire.
Sarah got onto her hands and knees, kept her head low and crawled as fast as she could toward the side of the building. A deafening crash obliterated her hearing momentarily. She looked over her shoulder long enough to see a part of the wooden roof had collapsed, destroying what was left of the baptismal font she had just vacated.
After another coughing bout, she pushed on, her head getting foggy.
Vivian, where are you when I need you most?
Her arms gave way and she dropped to her elbows. Another crash behind her shook the floor. The thought of a thousand-pound chunk of stone wall or a large piece of the wooden roof crushing her like a watermelon forced her to push on using her elbows instead of hands, her nose skimming the ground in search of any remaining oxygen.
The wet clothes had become lighter, now only a thin dampness against her skin. It was like the sun was crashing into the Earth and her crawling away was as pointless as an ant rushing along the sidewalk before a large shoe came down.
The last breath she inhaled tasted like dead air, soot, and thick dust, offering no oxygen for the muscles she needed to use. She coughed hard in an attempt to clear her lungs, then cupped her hands over her mouth and nose to breathe as her eyes watered with the effort.
More crashing behind her. Something else smashed down. One quick look over her shoulder offered a glimpse of the blue sky through the towering flames.
Directly above her was a stone outcropping where the second floor stone balcony started.
The coughing and hacking caused her vision to dim. Collapsing now meant death. The fire behind her crept closer as all the wooden pews roared in flames. Other things fell and smashed to the floor. The crazy sound of police sirens and fire trucks reached her deep inside the church.
She pushed on once more, her clothes no longer wet, clinging to her as if she wore them to a sauna. Her arms weakened and gave way, her chin connected with the stone floor. But now her head had dipped lower than her body. She faltered, her consciousness wavered, threatening to succumb to the elements around her.
Why is my neck craned downward? Is there a hole in the floor?
Her oxygen-starved mind lost focus. One of Vivian’s foreign thoughts entered her consciousness, crisp and clear.
Stairs.
The stairs to the crypt.
The fire raged closer. Something banged somewhere in the church. More sirens reached her.
As Sarah coughed, pain wracked her chest, waking her enough to open her eyes again. She blinked rapidly to see through the black smoke. An opening, dark and cool lay before her. The darkness of the church’s crypt beckoned her.
With the last bit of energy, she pushed with her foot as she pulled on the edge of the stairs. Then she did it again. She wondered if a lung could collapse under these conditions.
By the third stair, her body weight and momentum eased her down headfirst. She slid along the fieldstone steps as if she were a sled made of jelly. The air was cleaner. It was sweet, cool and tasted delicious. The heat dissipated instantly at the bottom of the steps, the cool air gently touching her heat-ravaged skin.
At the bottom, she rolled onto her back and coughed to clear her lungs, but it didn’t work. It felt like a layer of black soot coated them on the inside.
Debris from above followed her down a few steps. She had to get deeper. A corner somewhere, an alcove.
The crypt’s roof was made of stone. It left her with the impression that it was excavated before the church was built and the designers fortified the crypt to withstand earthquakes.
She couldn’t crawl anymore, and the pain in her chest was too intense to keep using her arms. The coughing had aggravated the cracked rib and her skin ached all over her body from the heat above.
Slightly more alert with the cooler, cleaner air of the crypt, Sarah tucked her arms to her side and rolled. She rolled in the darkness, waiting for a wall or an abutment of some kind to cease her spinning.
There must’ve been a downward slope in the crypt because she was suddenly rolling a lot faster than she expected. She coughed, shouted at the pain, instinctively curled into a ball and slammed against a stone wall, her broken foot hitting the wall first.
The pain from her wounds raised a fire on the inside. It was the last cough, the last scream, that gagged her. She hacked, thinking she would vomit as her throat constricted, choking on her gag reflex.
Then, fortunately, she passed out and the pain was no more.
Temporarily.
Chapter 38
Parkman was helped back to an ambulance where paramedics tried to get him inside the vehicle.
“But sir, we need to redress that wound.”
“Do it out here,” Parkman said. “I can’t have the church out of my sight. I’m not going to any hospital.”
The paramedics stepped away and conferred out of earshot as Aaron walked over, his face a mask of dirt. Tears had cleared paths down his cheeks. The fire raged behind him, the stone walls blackened.
“You okay?” Aaron asked.
“Not really.”
“What’s up with these two?” Aaron gestured at the paramedics. “It looked like they were arguing with you.”
“They want to redress my wound.”
“Sounds like a good idea. What’s the issue?”
Parkman met Aaron’s eyes. “The redressing won’t take place here and I am not going to the local hospital. I won’t leave this area until the flames are out and we’ve either found her body or discovered her alive.”
Aaron’s eyes watered. “Parkman, there’s a reality we may have to face here, but I don’t give up easy.”
“Neither do I.”
“When she locked that door and we ran around to the
back, she didn’t come out. According to Hirst, she was still by the pews in the center of the church, firing her weapon into the ceiling yelling about how everyone else had to get out. There was no way she made it. The roof caved in within minutes from the first explosion.” He wiped at more tears. “We have to face the fact that she sacrificed herself for us and all those people.”