I left him alone with her while I searched the building for supplies we could use. The Fangs had, either in their haste to leave the place or out of sheer wastefulness, left a nearly full can of gasoline behind. I thanked God for small mercies and poured it sparingly in a line from the kitchen, around the pews in the sanctuary, and down the steps to where Cyrus knelt beside the bed, his hand covering the dead girl’s stiff fingers.

“Is it done?” he asked, lifting his tear-stained face to look at me.

I had to clear my throat before I could speak. “Yes. Well, except I’m going to disconnect the gas line to the stove in the kitchen and let nature take its course. You should move the van. Get it clear.”

“And what about you? How are you going to get clear?” He looked back to the girl and took a deep breath. “I don’t want you to die over this.”

“I thought you wanted to kill me,” I said, trying to inject some humor into my voice. It fell horridly flat.

“Oh, I do. At least, I’m mad enough to kill you.” His voice lowered to almost a whisper. “But I don’t want you to die.”

As bizarre as his logic sounded, I understood him. I’d stood over his bed once, wondering if I could kill him while he slept, so angry I probably could have done it. But I wouldn’t have truly wanted him dead. “I’ll be fine. But we have to hurry, before the gas evaporates.”

Leaning over the girl, he gently kissed her bloodless lips and stroked her hair. Then, with a sudden violence that startled me, he reached down and tore a strip of material from her skirt. Closing the scrap in his fist, he lifted it to his nose and inhaled, pain creasing his forehead above his closed eyes. Then, just as quickly as he’d seemed to lose control again, he tucked the cloth into his pocket and turned away from the bed. “Let’s go.”

Arson is a bit more difficult than I expected. The stove was way too heavy to move on my own, so, after I lit a phone book on one of the burners, I held it away and turned all the dials to Light and blew out the pilot. As I hurried through the vestibule, I dropped the burning phone book on the gas trail. For a moment I worried that it wouldn’t catch, and I stood, frozen in horror, as it appeared the flame would go out. Then, with a whoosh of oxygen being sucked away, flames blossomed to consume what was left of the white pages, traveling slowly down the path of saturated carpet. I turned and ran out the doors, across the cracked lot to where Cyrus waited beside the van on the other side of the road.