The Fireman (48 page)

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins
Publishers

....................................

17

Harper returned in darkness, the air curiously warm and aromatic with the smell of pines and rich black loam. When she ducked into the infirmary, there was a thin line of milk-colored light drawing a pale gleam along the far eastern edge of the Atlantic. She found Michael stretched on the couch in the waiting room with a
Ranger Rick
spread across his chest and his eyes closed. When she shut the door he stirred, stretched, rubbed at his soft boy’s face.

“Any trouble?” Harper asked him.

“Bad,” he said, and lifted the
Ranger Rick
. “I’m stuck halfway through the word find, which is pretty pathetic when you think this is for kids.” He showed her a big, sleepy, innocent smile and said, “Way I heard it, the prisoners got back fine, and no one the wiser. I guess Chuck Cargill was pretty huffy about spending an hour shut into the meat locker. He told ’em he’d take scalps if any of them said anything about it to Ben Patchett and got him in trouble.”

“One of these nights, Michael, I’d like to set up a transfusion, and run some of your blood into me. I could use some of your courage.”

“I’m just glad you got a couple hours with your guy. If anyone in this camp deserves one night of TLC, it’s you.”

Harper wanted to tell him that the Fireman wasn’t exactly her guy, but found when she tried to reply that her throat was choked up and there was an uncomfortable burning in her face that had nothing to do with Dragonscale. A different sort of boy might’ve laughed at her embarrassment, but Michael only politely redirected his gaze to his word find. “My two sisters would’ve finished this thing hours ago, and they weren’t either of ’em even ten years old. I guess I’ll get it tomorrow. I arranged with Ben to watch the infirmary all week. In case you needed more time to work things out with Mr. Rookwood, or to pass messages to the others, or whatnot.”

“I could kiss you on the mouth, Michael.”

Michael turned scarlet, all the way back to his ears, and Harper laughed.

She thought she would find Nick asleep when she came in, and she did . . . but he wasn’t in his bed, or in hers. He was stretched out alongside his grandfather. Nick’s arm was across Tom Storey’s chest, his pudgy hand resting over Tom’s heart. That chest rose, caught in place for an unnerving length of time, and then sank, in a slow, weary cycle that made Harper think of a rusting oil derrick that is about ready to grind to a halt.

A pale slash of dawn fell across Nick’s cheek, bringing out the pink, healthy warmth in his impossibly flawless complexion. It touched some curls of his tousled black hair and turned their tips to brass and copper. She could not help herself. When she came around the side of the bed to check Father Storey’s IV, she reached out and lightly mussed Nick’s hair, delighting in the boy-silk of it.

He slowly opened his eyes and yawned enormously.

“Sorry,” she said, with her hands. “Back to sleep.”

He ignored her and replied in sign: “He was awake again.”

“How long?”

“Just a few minutes. He said my name. With his mouth, not with sign language, but I could tell.”

“Did you talk about anything else?”

Nick’s face clouded over. “He asked where my mom was. He didn’t remember that part—that she died. I couldn’t tell him. I said I didn’t know where she was.” He turned his face away, stared out the window into the blood glow of morning light.

The Dragonscale could rework the biology of a person’s lungs so he could breathe even in suffocating smoke. But it couldn’t do anything about your shame, couldn’t make you breathe any easier when you had a four-hundred-pound beam of guilt across your chest. She wanted to tell him that he didn’t get anyone killed. That blaming himself for what happened to his mother was as silly as blaming gravity when someone stepped out of a window and fell ten stories. Nor was there any sense in blaming his mother—when Sarah Storey stepped out the window she had honestly believed with all her heart she could fly. Death by plague was, after all, not a punishment for moral failings. Men and women were firewood, and in a time of contagion the righteous and the wicked were fed to the blaze in turn, without any discernment between them.

“Some will come back to him,” Harper said to Nick.

“And some of it won’t?”

“Some won’t.”

“Like who tried to kill him?”

“Give time,” she told him. “With time, he may remember big lot”

Nick frowned, then said, “He told me he wants to talk to you. He said he just needs a little more sleep.”

Harper grinned. ”Did he say how much more?”

“Just till tonight.”

“Is that what he said?” Harper asked.

Nick nodded solemnly.

“Okay,” Harper said. “But try no be disappointed if he no wake tonight. This will be long slow get well time.”

“He’ll be ready,” Nick said. “What about you?”

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....................................

18

In an unexpected turn of events, Father Storey—completely recovered and wearing an immaculate surplice—told Harper to go unto the old school bus, at the gates of Camp Wyndham, and keep a watch on the road. He even used the word “unto,” like someone quoting verse from the Bible. He issued this command from a throne of bleak white rock, at the center of the Memorial Circle, while his flock emerged from the vast red doors of the chapel behind him. The people of Camp Wyndham were in gay spirits, laughing and chattering animatedly, while some of the children sang “Burning Down The House” in their high piping voices. Harper was troubled to observe some of the adults lugging big red cans of gasoline.

“What’s going on?”

“It was foretold we should have a cookout,” he informed her. “For we expect friends to come upon us tonight, bearing happy tidings. I say unto you, arise and go along the road and keep your watch. We will prepare the cookfire, and roast s’mores in the name of the Bright.” He winked at her. “Don’t take too long and I’ll save you one.”

She wanted to ask who had done all the foretelling, but time skipped before she could find out, and then she was walking along the road, beneath a dark and starless sky. In the distance, she could hear the congregation roaring the Talking Heads, bellowing about the sweet release of burning it all down. She hurried. She didn’t want to miss s’mores. She wondered who had brought them chocolate and marshmallows. Probably the same person who had been foretelling things.

She was in such a hurry, she almost stumbled over the man in the road. She took a wild lurch into high wet grass to avoid stepping on him. She had not yet reached the bus, which was further down the hill.

Nelson Heinrich lifted his head and looked up at her. She knew it was Nelson by his ugly Christmas sweater, even though half his face had been flayed off, to show the red bunching muscles beneath. His foggy, good-humored eyes peered out from that glistening crimson mask. He looked almost exactly like the anatomical bust that had once been on the counter in the infirmary.

“I told you I’d get here!” Nelson said. “I hope there are enough s’mores for everyone! I brought friends!”

The Freightliner rumbled at the bottom of the hill, filthy smoke coming unstrung from the exhaust pipe behind the cab.

Nelson pulled himself another half a foot, arm over arm. His guts—long ropes of intestine—dragged in the dirt behind him. “
Come on, guys!
” He shouted. “
I told you I could show you where to find them! Let’s go get something sweet! A spoonful of sugar for everyone!
”

Harper fled. She didn’t flee as well as she used to. At eight months pregnant, she ran with all the agility and grace of a woman carrying a large stuffed chair.

But she was still faster than Nelson, and the Freightliner wasn’t moving just yet, and she crested the hill ahead of both of them and came into the light of the great fire. An enormous bonfire blazed, a mountain of coals as big as a cottage, great tongues of flame lapping at the overcast night. Instead of stars, the night was filled with whirling constellations of dying sparks. Harper opened her mouth to scream but there was no one to hear, no one standing around the fire with marshmallows on sticks, no knots of adults drinking cider, no children chasing one another and singing. They had not gathered to enjoy the fire; they
were
the fire. It was a great sagging hill of black corpses, flames squirting through the eye sockets of charred skulls, the heat whistling through baked rib cages. The fire made a quite cheerful sound, knots popping, bodies seething. Nick sat on the very top of the bonfire. She could tell it was Nick, because even though he was a cooked and withered corpse, he was staring back at her with his burning eyes, gesturing frantically with his hands:
behind you behind you
behind you
.

She whirled just as Jakob pulled the air horn of the Freightliner in a shrill, heart-rending blast. The truck idled, headlights off, twenty feet away, her ex-husband no more than a dark figure behind the steering wheel.

“Here I am, darlin’!” he shouted. “You and me, babe! How ’bout it?”

And there was a great crash as he threw the big orange truck into gear and the headlights snapped on, so much light, so much–

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HarperCollins
Publishers

....................................

19

–light shining into her face. She blinked and sat up, one hand lifted to shield her eyes from the glare. Bile stewed in her throat.

She peered past the beam of the flashlight. Nick stood behind it, his eyes wide in his small, handsome face, his hair a delightful mess. He lifted one finger to his mouth—
sh
—and then pointed to Father Storey.

Whose eyes were open and who was smiling at her, showing her his old, soft, kindly, Dumbledore smile. His gaze was perfectly clear and alert.

Harper sat up and turned to face him, hanging her legs off the side of her cot. A candle guttered in a shallow dish at his bedside.

In a quiet, fragile voice, Father Storey said, “From time to time my friend John Rookwood has teased me by saying the study of theology is as pointless as a hole in the head. I understand from Nick you saved my life with a quarter-inch drill bit through the back of my skull. I think that puts me one up on John. We’ll have to let him know.” His eyes glittered. “He also liked to tell me that religious people are closed-minded. Who has the open mind now, ay?”

“Do you remember who I am, Father?” she said to him.

“I do! The nurse. I’m quite confident we were friends, although I’m afraid I’m having trouble recalling your name just now. You cut your hair, and I think that’s throwing me off. Is it . . . Juliet Andrews? No. That’s . . . that’s wrong.”

“Harper,” she said.

“Ah!” he said. “Yes! Harper . . .” He frowned. “Harper Gallows?”

“Close! Willowes.” She touched his wrist, took his pulse. It was strong, steady, slow. “How’s your head?”

“Not as bad as my left foot,” he said.

“What’s wrong with your left foot?”

“It feels ant bit.”

She went to the end of his cot and looked at the foot. In between the big toe and the second toe was an infected lump, where it did indeed look like he might’ve been bitten by a spider. There were other, older red marks where he had been bitten other times, and all of it was encircled by a yellowing bruise.

“Mhm,” she said. “
Something
got you. Sorry about that. I was probably preoccupied with looking after that hole in your coconut. You suffered a serious subdural hematoma. You nearly died.”

“How long have I been out?” he asked.

“A little over two months. You’ve been in and out of consciousness the last few days. After your head injury, there were . . . serious complications. You suffered at least two seizures, several weeks apart. At one time I doubted you’d recover.”

“Strokes?”

She sat on the edge of his bed. In sign language, she asked Nick to get her “heart-ear-listen-to-him thing” and he went to the counter to find her stethoscope.

“Are you talking to my grandson in sign language?” Father Storey asked.

“Nick is a good teacher.”

He smiled at that. Then his brow furrowed in thought. “If I had a stroke, how come my speech isn’t slurred?”

“That doesn’t always happen. Likewise, partial paralysis. But you have feeling in both hands, your feet? Your face isn’t numb?”

He stroked his beard, pinched his nose. “No.”

“That’s good,” she said in a slow voice, thinking it over. Seeing in her mind the swollen red spider bite between his toes, then dismissing it.

Nick brought her the stethoscope. She listened to Father Storey’s heart (strong) and lungs (clear). She tested his vision, asking him to follow the head of a Q-tip with his gaze, moving it in toward his nose and then out.

“Will I slip back into coma?” he asked.

“I don’t think so.”

“Where did the IV come from?” he asked, looking over at it.

“That’s a long story. A lot has changed in the last few months.”

His eyes brightened with excitement. “Is there a cure? For the ’scale?”

“No,” she said.

“No. Of course not. Or we wouldn’t still be hiding at Camp Wyndham and you wouldn’t be treating me in the infirmary.” He studied her face and his smile became something sad and worried. “Carol? What has she done?”

“Let’s keep the focus on you for now. Would you like to try a sip of water?”

“I would. I would also like to have my question answered. I believe I could manage both at the same time.”

She did not ask Nick to get the water, but went and poured some herself. Wanted the time to think. When she came back to the bed, she held the cup and waited while Father Storey struggled to get his head off the pillow to take a sip. When he was done he slumped back and smacked his lips.

“I think it would be best for Carol to speak to you herself,” Harper said. “She’ll be relieved to know you’re awake. She’s been—at her wit’s end without you. Although she’s had the support of Ben Patchett and his team of Lookouts, and that’s meant a lot. They’ve kept things going, anyway.” She thought that was a politic way to put it.

Father Storey wasn’t smiling anymore. His complexion was pale and sickly and he was starting to sweat. “No, I better see John first, Ms. Willowes. Before my daughter is notified I’m awake. Can you bring him to me? There are matters that won’t wait.” He paused and then his gaze met hers. “What was done with the person who attacked me?”

“We don’t
know
who attacked you. Some think it was one of the prisoners, a man named Mark Mazzuchelli. But he insists that you split up in the woods and when he left you, you were fine. I raised the possibility you might’ve been assaulted by the camp’s thief, who wanted to shut you up before you could—”

“Expose them over a few cans of Spam?” Father Storey asked. “Anyway, what do I know about the thief?”

“You told me you knew who it was.”

“Did I? I don’t . . . I don’t
think
I did. Although I suppose I might’ve and forgot. My memory of the night I was thumped in the head is a bit spotty.” He pursed his lips and his brow furrowed, and then he shook his head. “No. I don’t think I ever figured out who the thief was.”

“You told me in the canoe that someone would have to leave camp. Do you remember that conversation?” Harper asked. “The night we rowed to South Mill Pond together?”

“Not really,” Father Storey said. “But I’m sure I wasn’t talking about the thief.”

“Who do you think we were talking about, then?” Harper asked.

“I imagine we were discussing my daughter,” Father Storey said, as if it should be obvious. “Carol. She called a Cremation Crew on Harold Cross. She set him up—arranged the whole thing, so when Ben Patchett shot the poor boy, it would look like he
had
to, to protect the camp and keep Harold from giving information to our enemies.”