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hand litterateur, pull the trigger." He took one step toward Montag.
Montag only said, "We never burned right..."
"Hand it over, Guy," said Beatty with a fixed smile.
And then he was a shrieking blaze, a jumping, sprawling, gibbering mannikin, no
longer human or known, all writhing flame on the lawn as Montag shot one
continuous pulse of liquid fire on him. There was a hiss like a great mouthful of spittle
banging a redhot stove, a bubbling and frothing as if salt had been poured over a
monstrous black snail to cause a terrible liquefaction and a boiling over of yellow
foam. Montag shut his eyes, shouted, shouted, and fought to get his hands at his
ears to clamp and to cut away the sound. Beatty flopped over and over and over, and
at last twisted in on himself like a charred wax doll and lay silent.
The other two firemen did not move.
Montag kept his sickness down long enough to aim the flame-thrower. "Turn around!"
They turned, their faces like blanched meat, streaming sweat; he beat their heads,
knocking off their helmets and bringing them down on themselves. They fell and lay
without moving.
The blowing of a single autumn leaf.
He turned and the Mechanical Hound was there.
It was half across the lawn, coming from the shadows, moving with such drifting ease
that it was like a single solid cloud of black-grey smoke blown at him in silence.
It made a single last leap into the air, coming down at Montag from a good three feet
over his head, its spidered legs reaching, the procaine needle snapping out its single
angry tooth. Montag caught it with a bloom of fire, a single wondrous blossom that
curled in petals of yellow and blue and orange about the metal dog, clad it in a new
covering as it slammed into Montag and threw him ten feet back against the bole of a
tree, taking the flame-gun with him. He felt it scrabble and seize his leg and stab the
needle in for a moment before the fire snapped the Hound up in the air, burst its
metal bones at the joints, and blew out its interior in the single flushing of red colour
like a skyrocket fastened to the street. Montag lay watching the dead-alive thing
fiddle the air and die. Even now it seemed to want to get back at him and finish the
injection which was now working through the flesh of his leg. He felt all of the mingled
relief and horror at having pulled back only in time to have just his knee slammed by
the fender of a car hurtling by at ninety miles an hour. He was afraid to
get up, afraid he might not be able to gain his feet at all, with an anaesthetized leg. A
numbness in a numbness hollowed into a numbness....
And now...?
The street empty, the house burnt like an ancient bit of stage-scenery, the other
homes dark, the Hound here, Beatty there, the three other firemen another place,
and the Salamander . . . ? He gazed at the immense engine. That would have to go,
too.
Well, he thought, let's see how badly off you are. On your feet now. Easy, easy . . .
there.
He stood and he had only one leg. The other was like a chunk of burnt pine-log he
was carrying along as a penance for some obscure sin. When he put his weight on it,
a shower of silver needles gushed up the length of the calf and went off in the knee.
He wept. Come on! Come on, you, you can't stay here!
A few house-lights were going on again down the street, whether from the incidents
just passed, or because of the abnormal silence following the fight, Montag did not
know. He hobbled around the ruins, seizing at his bad leg when it lagged, talking and
whimpering and shouting directions at it and cursing it and pleading with it to work for
him now when it was vital. He heard a number of people crying out in the darkness
and shouting. He reached the back yard and the alley. Beatty, he thought, you're not
a problem now. You always said, don't face a problem, bum it. Well, now I've done
both. Good-bye, Captain.
And he stumbled along the alley in the dark.
A shotgun blast went off in his leg every time he put it down and he thought, you're a
fool, a damn fool, an awful fool, an idiot, an awful idiot, a damn idiot, and a fool, a
damn fool; look at the mess and where's the mop, look at the mess, and what do you
do? Pride, damn it, and temper, and you've junked it all, at the very start you vomit
on everyone and on yourself. But everything at once, but everything one on top of
another; Beatty, the women, Mildred, Clarisse, everything. No excuse, though, no
excuse. A fool, a damn fool, go give yourself up!
No, we'll save what we can, we'll do what there is left to do. If we have to burn, let's
take a few more with us. Here!
He remembered the books and turned back. Just on the off chance.
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