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The church was on fire. They’d been able to see the smoke from down the road and the flames from the top of the hill. If they’d been paying attention, they would’ve been able to see the smoke from back at the Dairy Queen. But they hadn’t been paying attention. And, as Johnny saw the smoke and flames now, he wondered if they would’ve ever even considered the fire could’ve been coming from the church anyhow. It seemed that somehow they always assumed the worst possible situation couldn’t happen to them when fate was constantly proving otherwise.
Dally drove down the hill to where a group of children being watched over by three adults – two woman and a heavyset man. There was a school bus parked at the side of the road by the church.
As they drew closer, Ponyboy jumped out of the back of the car and ran towards the group of people. Johnny stayed in the car, but stood in the front seat, trying to see what Ponyboy was doing. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched as Dally gestured for Ponyboy to come back as he said in low, dangerous tone, “Get back here, man.”
One of the women watching over the children was saying something, but Johnny was just far enough away that he couldn’t hear. The heavyset man said something back to her. She shook her head and looked around frantically. Then he understood: some of the children were missing. His eyes drifted over to the flaming church, his stomach filling with dread, and that was when he heard it.
The faint high-pitched screaming, coming from inside the church.
Ponyboy must’ve heard it at the same time he did because he ran for the church, going around the side as he tried to find a way in. For one moment, Johnny watched him go, then, deciding something, pushed open Dally’s door and sprinted after him, Dally’s shouts following him the whole way. He paused halfway to grab a large boulder on the ground and when he found Ponyboy he threw the boulder through the boards nailed across one of the windows. It didn’t break through as many as he’d hoped it would, but they made quick work of the rest of the boards, pulling them off one by one until there was enough room to climb through the window into the flaming hell beyond.
Johnny took a breath and he immediately began to cough as smoke filled his lungs. Tears formed in his eyes as the smoke burned them. The heat of the fire around him was intense, heat like nothing he’d ever felt before in his life.
Ponyboy was coughing too, but somehow he managed to choke out, “Is that guy coming?”
“Nah,” Johnny replied, struggling to smile as he coughed, “too fat.”
They began to move through the church, searching the main room and then heading towards the back rooms in an attempt to find the source of the screaming. As they walked around and Johnny began to sweat, a feeling he’d never felt before in his life began to rise up in him. It was a freeing feeling. It made him want to fly. It made him feel like he could fly. Like he could jump and the wind or simply the air around him would lift him off his feet.
It wasn’t until they turned a corner to find four or five little kids huddled in a corner by one of the boarded up windows that he realized what the feeling was: euphoria. He was inside a burning church and he wasn’t afraid. He was euphoric. It was ridiculous. It made no sense. If Dally knew, he’d be yelling at him. The thought alone made him want to laugh and he would have if he hadn’t been coughing from all the smoke instead.
Miraculously, the boards covering the window next to the children began to disappear. Dally’s face took their place and Johnny rushed over to the children, picking up the nearest one and handing them through the window to Dally, shouting at him over the flames, “Here Dally take this kid, take ‘em, man.” Dally did as he was told for once in his life and set the children down next to him. He turned to Ponyboy and said, “Ponyboy take ‘em, give ‘em to Dally.”
And it was then, as he was grabbing another one of the children, that he realized why he felt the way he did: for the first time in his life he was doing something useful, something important, something that would help someone else.
For the first time in his sixteen years of life Johnny Cade didn’t feel worthless and he couldn’t stop himself from grinning at Ponyboy as he handed him the next child, even as he coughed out smoke, even as Dally shouted at them, “Get the kids and get out!” It was like the fog when he’d killed the Soc except better. So much better. It made everything clearer, sharper, and all the bad feelings, all of the things that held him back, more dull.
It took a shockingly short amount of time to pass the children through the window and once all of them were through, Johnny turned around, trying to see through the thick black smoke filling the room to make sure they hadn’t missed anyone. He heard Ponyboy and Dally calling to him from the window. He coughed harder, puffs of smoke coming out of his mouth because of the amount there was in his lungs. He couldn’t breathe without coughing more. He tried waving his hand in front of his face to clear the smoke, but in a burning building he might as well have been waving his finger.
A horrible creaking groan sounded from above him and he heard Dally shout from somewhere to his right, “Johnny, c’mon, are you crazy?!”
Several beams fell from the ceiling as Johnny threw himself up against the side of the church to avoid them. The roof was caving in.
It was time to leave.
The kids were safe.
Dally had just pulled Ponyboy through the window.
The euphoria was gone.
It was time to go.
He turned and saw a patch of blue sky directly in front of him. The window. His salvation.
He took two steps towards it when he heard the creaking groan again and this time one of the beams hit him on the back hard, the force knocking him to the ground hard enough that he blacked out, but not before he felt pain blossom, for one brief moment, in the small of his back and then just as quickly disappear.
When Johnny opened his eyes, the first thing he felt was agony and the first thing he saw was fire. Vaguely, he realized that his hands were burning, but that wasn’t the only point of pain on his body. His chest and shoulders were on fire too. But that was all he felt. Oddly, he couldn’t feel anything below the small of his back and when he tried to push himself to his feet...he couldn’t. He could hear a far off screaming, the worst noise he’d ever heard in his life, hellish and eerie, and he felt strangely sick when he realized it was coming out of his own mouth.
Distantly, he felt a pressure he hadn’t known was there coming off his back, just above the small of it. He heard a voice and when he turned his head to the side, he saw Dally. The arm of his jacket was on fire and he was grimacing and Johnny tried to point it out, but the agony in his hands and shoulders was too much.
Dally vanished from his line of vision for a moment and when he returned, he grabbed the collar of his jacket and shook him. He was shouting something, but Johnny couldn’t hear him. His eyelids fluttered. He heard the horrible creaking groan one more time and felt Dally and somehow his body as well move very quickly before he was pulled into blessed blackness.