How do you like to go up in a swing,
Up in the air so blue?
Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing
Ever a child can do . . .

“What do we do now?” Gail croaked.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I have another plan.”

“What is it?” she mumbled, her speech slurred.

“Very good plan, honey.”

“It’ll work?”

“It’s working already.”

She coughed. “I’m cold,” she said slowly. The battery-powered lantern was beginning to dim, or perhaps it was my eyes. She said, “Hold me so no one can take me away.”

I cradled her. She must have been hearing her own hallucinatory singsong as well, because her lips whispered, almost airlessly, “Where’s the music coming from?”

“Don’t worry,” I reassured her.

“I’m scared.”

“No, no, it’s just little notes on paper,” I soothed. “Dots on paper.”

“Dad.”

“I won’t leave, you, Linney.” I held her tighter. “I won’t leave you.”

She went limp in my arms.

And then there was simply no air in the truck. Not that our lungs were straining to find it, but rather it simply wasn’t there. I felt the vacuum reach down my throat and grab my heart and hold it still.

I tried to tell Linney I loved her, but I couldn’t make a sound. If I’d had an epitaph ready to pronounce, I wouldn’t have been able to speak it as I died.

Chapter 56

56

Allegro con Fuoco

The explosion momentarily lifted the front of the trailer off the ground.

The good thing that happened was that instantly there was a hole gouged in the front of the truck. This let in a wave of air and was a big enough aperture for us to fit through.

The bad thing was that a wall of intense fire covered the entire aperture. And just as I felt the oxygen touch my lungs, the fire started sucking it all back.

Gunther was revived enough to start crawling to the hole. “Wait!” I cried.

He didn’t waste his time talking to me. He clearly thought he stood a chance of jumping through the flames. Perhaps he did. I didn’t blame him for wanting to escape, but he’d forgotten that many trucks have two fuel tanks, and if one goes, the second usually blows shortly thereafter.

As he reached the waterfall of black and crimson fire that poured past the newly made mouth of our metal prison, there was a second explosion, much bigger than the first, and Gunther found himself in Valhalla on the day that it was immolated. He turned toward me, his body now a seven-foot-high torch. He was tall at last. Every part of him was burning except his brain, and I believed he could see us. Was he trying to salute? He began to twist and curl into himself the way a sheet of paper does when thrown upon a hearth.