“Not you, though.” Leo still held the handkerchief to his face. “Why did you stay?”

“This is my home,” said Winthrop.

“Can’t be healthy,” said Leo. “Emphysema, lung cancer-”

“I was born here,” said Winthrop. “That so hard for you to understand?”

“You’re sure Malcolm Crews found the church?” said Rakkim. “It wasn’t just a tall tale?”

Winthrop’s thick fingers clenched the counter. “My daddy helped build that church, mister. I was baptized in that church. The front doorknob was special made. Silver, to keep out the devil, and with a raised Jesus on the cross for extra protection. Malcolm Crews stumbled back that day, no safety gear at all, face blistered, tongue swollen so big he could hardly talk, and he had a brand of that crucifix burned into the palm of his right hand from where he threw open the door.” He looked at Leo. “The church doesn’t burn, it’s under God’s own protection, but that silver doorknob, it gets hotter than blazes.”

“Mr. Winthrop…I’d like your help in finding the church,” said Rakkim. “You know where the church is. You must know how to get there.”

“I know where the church was, but everything’s different now. You can’t just stroll out there. On the best day, with the wind just right, you’ll still be blind five minutes in and there’s nobody to come get you when you lose your way.”

“I’ll make it easy for you,” said Rakkim. “You want the man who murdered your cousin and his family to die for his crimes, then help me find the church, and I’ll do the rest. You want me to pay for getting them killed, then send me into the smoke with bad directions. Either way, you win.”

“Vengeance is mine, says the Lord,” said Winthrop. “According to the Good Book anyway.”

“The Good Book also says the Lord works in mysterious ways, so you just sit back and let me do what I intend to, Mr. Winthrop. Think of me as one of those mysterious ways the Lord was talking about.”

Winthrop chewed on the idea. “I lied before,” he said finally. “Bill was a good judge of character. Too good. That…that’s what we fought over. I was a lesser man in those days. He was right about me then, I imagine he was right about you being worthy of his friendship too. If you’re bound and determined to find the church…I’ll do what I can.”

An hour later, Rakkim was lost in clouds of billowing black smoke, his respirator kept clogging, and twice he had broken through a thin crust of soil, flames boiling up around him. The radio connection with Winthrop failed within five minutes, just as Winthrop said it would. Even wearing two-inch asbestos boot protectors, his feet ached from the heat. He kept walking, one hand reaching forward, one hand out to the side-blindman’s bluff, seeking the house of the Lord.

The ground was uneven, vegetation blackened, crumbling to dust under his steps. A few gnarled trees remained, leaves gone, but no insects, no birds, no animal life. Just Rakkim, sweating, his clothes soaked. The smoke thinned out slightly along the ground, but the air there was even more toxic, coal gas seeping from the earth. He had no idea how Malcolm Crews had survived, let alone found the church and returned. Touched by the hand of God or the devil himself, that’s what Winthrop had said. Maybe that’s what it takes.

Rakkim banged out the filter of the respirator, coughing, eyes and nose burning. He stumbled, fell to one knee and cut himself on something…a broken bottle. Orange Nehi. Knee bleeding now, he walked on. Hot wind on his face, flames in the distance, the smoke rippling in the greasy light. The wind howled, shrieking as fire erupted from the earth, a pillar of flame, fire spreading. He stepped back. Stepped around, patting at the eddies of smoke. Taking the long way around.

This way…The voice leeched out of the darkness, and he thought of coal gas spurting from fissures in the rock. This way…

Rakkim stumbled on, head throbbing as he followed the voice. It was coal gas. Or wind caught in the vortex of the flames. Maybe he was light-headed from carbon monoxide or something worse. There was always something worse. He followed the voice anyway. Stumbling, he lurched forward, stepped through a human rib cage. Another step and he crunched through a skull, the bone blackened from the heat, held marginally together by the eroded respirator around its jawbone. Rakkim cried out, disgusted, as the human dust blew around him, and the voice howled in the smoke, laughing now. He hurried on, his breath like fire in his lungs.

This way…

He lost track of time and distance. The map that Winthrop had drawn so carefully for him, the map that he had committed to memory…it was gone now. What had happened to his sense of direction? The pride of the Fedayeen…cover his eyes, his ears, block his nose, suspend him in a warm, saltwater bath so that all sensation is gone. No matter. The Fedayeen will always be able to point to true north. Not today.

A wall of flame rose up before him, higher and higher, twenty…thirty feet tall. Sweat poured down his face as he backed away. The flames undulated, stretching out before him, the smoke itself held back by the heat.

This way…

That way led to death, he was certain. That way led straight into the flames.

I told you, THIS way…

The flames danced in the wind, bobbing along. He felt the rock baking underfoot, thought of the old stories of eggs frying on sidewalks in August, eggs over easy with a side of Rakkim. He staggered back as the flames shot even higher, then flickered, a whole section of the firewall extinguished for a moment before starting to rise again.

Rakkim smiled.

Yes…

He backed off from the heat as much as possible, stayed in the smoke…waiting. After a few more minutes, the wall of fire shot straight up, even higher than before, then just as abruptly died. Rakkim raced toward the guttering fire, leaped over the rocks and into the smoke as the flames rose higher again. Wisps of smoke clung to him as he stood upright. The fire stirred the smoke as he walked forward. Squinting now. The church…he could see the church through the ebbing smoke.

A nice little church, that’s what Winthrop said, and considering the decades spent in the middle of a burning coal field, it was still pretty nice. Paint peeling, windows cracked, the steeple singed, but intact. Everything else for miles around had burned up, but this little church remained. Rakkim walked closer, felt the heat on his back, but his face seemed cooler. He looked around for some natural explanation, a ridge of wind that kept the flames at bay, a cave bathing the chapel in cool, subterranean air…but there was nothing. Just the church.

The wooden steps creaked as he walked toward the door. One of them was broken but he stepped past it. The silver doorknob gleamed in the dim light. Just like Winthrop described it, Christ on the cross embossed on the center. He reached out a hand, felt the heat an inch away. Hesitated. Then grasped the knob, screamed as he opened the door.

He eased inside, groaning, clutching his hand. The door closed quietly behind him, all by itself. No voice in his head now, and though the voice had led him here, he was relieved at the silence. The cool silence. No sound here…except the rustle of running water.

Water? He looked around. A small stone fountain lay to the right of the pulpit, water bubbling up and filling the basin, the overflow running down a channel into the floor. He plunged his aching hand into the basin, sighed as the icy water numbed it. He stared at his submerged palm. The crucifix from the doorknob was clearly marked on his skin. No blistering. A clear brand. Definitely a conversation starter when he got back to the republic.

He laughed as he leaned against the basin, exhausted. Finally removed his hand from the water. It still throbbed, but the pain had subsided. He took out the handkerchief that Winthrop had given him, wet it in the basin, and wiped the grit and ash off his face, scrubbed himself clean. Then he splashed cold water on his face, cupped his hands, and drank until he was ready to burst. He rested against the basin for a moment, reveling in the sensation…the calm. He was tired. He had barely slept since he and Leo had left Seattle, just snatched a few hours here and there, always skimming the surface of sleep, alert to strange sounds, but here… there was peace in this church. Clean air too; the only whiff of smoke came from his own hair and clothes.