Capt. Beatty asks Montag if he's surprised that they're at his house given the way that he burned himself by reading poetry to Mildred and her friends. He looks toward Clarisse's dark, empty house as all the other houses on the block come alive with light as people look out to watch the show. Beatty realizes that he's looking toward Clarisse's house and pinpoints her as the catalyst for Montag's betrayal. He asks Montag what good that nutcase Clarisse ever did with all her talk of dandelions and butterflies. As Montag stands in his yard in disbelief, Mildred runs from the house with a packed suitcase. She doesn't look at him or respond when he calls to her, and he knows that she was the one who called in the report about the books. Beatty stands with his lighter ignited and explains to Montag that the world's attraction to fire is that "Its real beauty is that it destroys responsibility and consequences." Part 3, Og. 115 Capt. Beatty makes Montag burn the books and the house himself. As Montag destroys all his possessions with fire, Faber's voice in the Seashell radio urges him to run away. As much as Montag wants to escape the awful destruction of his house and his contraband books, he knows that if he tries to run, the Mechanical Hound is programmed to find him and kill him.
When Montag has burned the house, Beatty approaches him to arrest him for his crimes against society. He hits Montag and the seashell radio falls from Montag's ear. Beatty hears Faber's voice calling Montag. He tells Montag that he will find the accomplice and destroy him as well. But reflexively Montag aims the flame shooter with which he was forced to destroy his own home only moments before at Capt. Beatty. Beatty doesn't believe that Montag has the guts to use it, and so he taunts the fireman with Shakespeare, and Montag engulfs the Capt. in his beloved fire. The other two firemen are afraid, and Montag hits them with the flame thrower and knocks them out.
The Hound comes out of nowhere and leaps at Montag. Before the fireman can completely burn the mechanical beast, the Hound touches him with the needle. Although Montag's leg is numbed by the partial injection, he knows that he must escape. He gathers the few books hidden in the bushes that he didn't burn and runs off into the night. On his seashell radio, he can hear that there is a manhunt for him and he knows he has to reach Faber before the other mechanical hounds hunt him down.
Through dark alleys he makes his way to Faber's house with only one encounter with other people. As he's walking, the feeling slowly and painfully returning to his leg, a car full of reckless teenagers comes screaming toward him. He falls just before it hits him, and the car swerves away. Shaken, he makes it to Faber's house where he learns that the search for him is being televised, and a new Hound has been brought in to track him. Knowing that the hound will come to Faber's if his scent isn't washed away, he tells Faber to turn on the sprinklers and hose down his lawn and the outside of the house as inconspicuously as possible. He borrows the stinkiest clothes Faber can give him to try to taint his scent, and he leaves his friend hoping that the old man won't be hurt because of his link to Montag. As the fireman runs, he learns that the country has declared war. While the city looks for Montag, fighter jets race overhead.
Montag leaves Faber's home to head for the river, and the old man leaves to catch a bus to a new city. Knowing that the Hound can't be too far behind or too easily lost, Montag gets into the river to wash away his trail. He escapes the Hound in the river and the darkness of night. As he floats in the river, he realizes that he must never burn anything again because "The sun burnt every day. It burnt Time. The world rushed in a circle and turned on its axis and time was busy burning the years and the people anyway, without any help from him. So if he burnt things with the firemen and the sun burnt Time, that meant that everything burnt!" Part 3, pg. 141.
When Montag comes out of the water, he wanders through the woods outside the city hoping that there is no way that the Hound can track him this far down the river. In the distance he sees a small fire and creeps closer. After cautiously approaching, the men around the fire surprisingly call him over to join them. They know who he is because they have a small, portable television and they've been expecting him for a while now. As they watch the televised chase, an innocent man is planted by the government to be Montag. As they watch, the Hound kills the man so that the people watching on their wall televisions will feel that justice has been served and the traitor has been destroyed.
Montag is welcomed to the group by Granger, the ringleader of the band of vagrant men who were once all professors of one field or another. Between them, the men have memorized some of the great texts of the world for the explicit purpose of sharing and recreating these texts when society is ready to return to literature. Montag is happy to be able to contribute bits of the Books of Ecclesiastes and Revelations from the Bible, and they welcome his addition. He immediately becomes one of the group and they accept him without reservation.
Morning comes, and the group decides to head away from the city to ensure Montag's escape. As they walk down the rusty and unused railroad tracks, a bomb drops that levels the city behind them. They turn to look at the devastation that remains of their city. In the destruction and desolation, they see a chance to rebuild their society. The war has given them a chance to start over again, so Granger, Montag, and the other men, turn back toward the city to help where they can.
