I’ve got to get out of here, he thinks, but now the thought is more distant, the panic of being locked in defused by the chaos of what’s happening all around him.
Then he notices the cloister of fallen bodies near the small podium. Poole and Andrew on the ground, being beaten, kicked.
If Poole dies . . .
He can’t think it. Won’t think it.
“NOOO!” he bellows, and begins to run away from the doors, from freedom, and toward the front of the chapel. Toward Poole. “Out of my way, ya cunts!” he yells at anyone standing between him and Poole—whether they be a child pleading for help or a child rushing at him with a damned kitchen knife. He sees one boy has stuck rusted nails between the fingers of his fist, is running from child to child, punching at kids. He turns to Johnson and punches into his belly. The pain is instant and searing.
Tyson, he thinks absently. That’s young Tyson. He’s the one with the singing voice, who loves to sing the hymns. And now that fucker has gutted me.
Johnson grabs Tyson by the throat and, without hesitation, drives the opposite fist into the boy’s face. There’s a gratifying crack beneath his knuckles. The boy goes limp and Johnson lets him go. He slumps to the floor, his handful of nails scattering like dropped change. Johnson steps over the body and continues forward.
As he nears the first child attacking the priests, he grabs the back of a shirt and whips the boy backward and out of the scrum, causing the others to look up at him, faces sweaty and gleeful. There’s a screeching to his right and he turns in time to see Frankie—the potbellied Italian who always seems to be laughing about something—leap at him from one of the benches. His thin arms wrap around Johnson’s neck, his fingers clenching handfuls of long hair as he bares snarling teeth and bites into his cheek.
Johnson screams in pain, grips the boy hard by the shoulders and yanks him away. He sees blood and flesh stuck to Frankie’s mouth. Thinking of his own face, what the insane child has done to it, Johnson goes mad with rage and horror, his reason flung from his conscious mind like a wind-blown leaf. Without thought of consequence, he grips the boy at the waist and swings him down like a club, slamming the child’s head against the corner of the nearest bench. Frankie’s neck snaps so dramatically that his head dangles from his shoulders like a broken toy. Johnson grunts and drops the corpse, turns back to the fray.
36
THE WHOLE ROOM HAS SIMPLY . . . ERUPTED.
I have hardly a moment to register the outburst when a bony, but iron-strong, arm wraps around my neck from behind.
All around me is screaming and crying, loud fists banging on the doors, which must have been somehow locked, or blockaded. But all of my sensory focus is now solely on the taut forearm crushed against my throat. A mouth is speaking near my ear, puffing hot breath against my neck as it speaks in a language I don’t understand. The words nothing but constant, harsh whispers that sound to me like gibberish, or madness.
I can’t breathe, and the pain of my throat being squeezed shut is too much to bear.
Suddenly, the arm on my neck loosens, then disappears. I spin around, expecting to see the face of my attacker, but find myself staring at Byron’s back, his arm driving repeatedly into the shrieking face of another boy trapped beneath him.
“Byron!”
He looks up at me, and I can see that he’s terrified beyond reason.
“Let him go!” I have to yell for him to hear me because now everyone is yelling. There are horrible shrieks of pain, cries for help, for mercy. Of rage.
When I take in the entirety of the chapel it seems to be nothing but writhing bodies, fire, and blood. “What’s wrong with all of you!” I scream.
“Peter!”
I turn toward the voice and see David fighting his way toward me. He holds Thomas in his arms. Poor little Thomas, only six years old. He clutches David around the neck with such ferocity that it makes me think again of my own attacker. I look back over the edge of the bench, expecting to see a body, but whoever it was is gone. I want to ask Byron but he’s already running to help David, now kicking at an older boy—Terrence, I think—who swings wildly at him with a stout iron carpenter’s hammer. Byron leaps at the boy and takes him to the ground, and I run to David.
“What is this? What’s happening?” I say, but he only looks at me, shakes his head.
His eyes dart to something behind me.
“Look out!”
I spin in time to see Jonah’s snarling face. He’s swinging a wooden mallet.
I raise my arms to block the blow, but feel it punch my temple.
Thomas is shrieking in David’s arms.
The sound of his cries is the last thing I hear.
*
Johnson lifts Poole, gives Andrew a glance to make sure he’s not dead. Having witnessed Johnson’s strength and ferocity, the boys attacking Andrew and Poole have scattered like rats.
Flames rage around them.
“Father! Are you all right?”
Poole nods, his face white as a sheet, his lip bloodied. “Get me out of here.”
Andrew stands, looks at Johnson with wild eyes. “Go! I’ve got to save who I can!”
Johnson begins to fight his way back up the aisle. The room is so filled with smoke that it’s difficult to see anything clearly. Bodies run haphazardly through thick haze, shadows writhe in a heavy mist. It’s impossible to see faces, to know who is attacking who.
Just need to get out of here . . .
He reaches the doors, where a group of kids are now clamoring, banging on the doors, screaming for escape.
“Stay close, Father!” Johnson screams, then starts driving through the throng, lifting bodies and tossing them aside. He has no time for discernment or delicacy, he must get those doors open. Reaching the front, he leans Poole against one of the walls.
This time, he takes a few steps back, gets a short run going and lowers his shoulder as his bulk smashes into the heavy wood.
They hold, but he hears something crack on the opposite side. He can almost visualize a shovel or hoe （or both） jammed through the door handles, their wooden shafts already splintered. He once again takes two steps back, then throws himself with abandon, directly at the seam between the two doors—the weak spot—where the added tension of the doors wanting to pull apart will aid his cause.
This time there’s an audible CRACK.
The doors fly open.
Johnson stumbles through and into the foyer, the fresh cold air a balm for his scorched throat and lungs. Behind him, Poole shuffles through, and with him a mass exodus of sprinting, screaming, terrified children. Johnson knows he should be stopping them, separating those who were revolting—who were killing—from those who were victims. But he’s too tired, too confused, too overwhelmed.
“Father . . .” he says, hoping Poole can guide him, tell him what to do next.
But Poole has his arms raised above his head, face lifted toward the foyer’s ceiling. Toward, Johnson supposes, God Himself. Poole prays loudly, the words flowing like water through a broken dam, crazed as a manic street preacher, as children stream past on either side.
What the hell are you praying for, old man? Johnson wonders.
But cannot even begin to imagine.
37
I WAKE ON A COLD STONE FLOOR.
There’s a sharp pain in my skull and a dull throb in my brain, pressing against the backs of my eyes, blurring my vision. I turn my head slowly and see Father Andrew kneeling nearby, focused on something other than me.