Editing Fahrenheit 451 (section)

==="Burning Bright"===
Beatty orders Montag to destroy his house with a [[flamethrower]], rather than the more powerful "salamander" that is usually used by the fire team, and tells him that his wife and her friends reported him. Montag watches as Mildred walks out of the house, too traumatized about losing her parlor wall 'family' to even acknowledge her husband's existence or the situation going on around her, and catches a taxi. Montag complies, destroying the home piece by piece, but Beatty discovers his earpiece and plans to hunt down Faber. Montag threatens Beatty with the flamethrower and, after Beatty taunts him, Montag burns Beatty alive. As Montag tries to escape the scene, the Mechanical Hound attacks him, managing to inject his leg with an anesthetic. He destroys the Hound with the flamethrower and limps away. While escaping, Montag concludes that Beatty wanted to die a long time ago, having goaded him and provided him with a weapon.

Montag runs towards Faber's house. En route, he crosses a road as a car attempts to run him over, but he manages to evade the vehicle, almost suffering the same fate as Clarisse and losing his knee. Faber urges him to make his way to the countryside and contact a group of exiled [[Bibliophiles|book-lovers]] who live there. Faber plans to leave on a bus heading to [[St. Louis, Missouri|St. Louis]], [[Missouri]], where he and Montag can rendezvous later. Meanwhile, another Mechanical Hound is released to track down and kill Montag, with news helicopters following it to create a public spectacle. After wiping his scent from around the house in hopes of thwarting the Hound, Montag leaves. He escapes the manhunt by wading into a river and floating downstream, where he meets the book-lovers. They predicted Montag's arrival while watching the TV.

The drifters are all former intellectuals. They have each memorized books should the day arrive that society comes to an end, with the survivors learning to embrace the literature of the past. Wanting to contribute to the group, Montag finds that he partially memorized the [[Ecclesiastes|Book of Ecclesiastes]], discovering that the group has a special way of unlocking photographic memory. While discussing about their learnings, Montag and the group watch helplessly as bombers fly overhead and annihilate the city with nuclear weapons: the war has begun and ended in the same night. While Faber would have left on the early bus, everyone else (possibly including Mildred) is killed. Injured and dirtied, Montag and the group manage to survive the [[Shock wave|shockwave]].

When the war is over, the exiles return to the city to rebuild society.