The Fireman: A Novel Part 25

THE MOST UNIQUE CHARACTERISTIC OF THE FUNGUS IS THE WAY IT BONDS WITH THE MIND. DOCTOR SOLZHENITSYN IN NOVOSIBIRSK HAS SHOWN THE SPORE IS DENDRITIC IN NATURE AND COMPATIBLE WITH THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE BRAIN. OXYTOCIN TELLS DRACO INCENDIA TRYCHOPHYTON IT HAS FOUND A SAFE ENVIRONMENT. THE FUNGUS, IN TURN, STIMULATES FLOCK BEHAVIOR TO PRESERVE ITS OWN WELL-BEING, THE SAME GROUP-THINK THAT MAKES A CROWD OF SPARROWS TURN ON A DIME. THE 'SCALE IS SO OVERPOWERING, IT CAN TEMPORARILY ERASE EVEN FUNDAMENTAL NOTIONS OF PERSONAL IDENt.i.tY. OTHER PEOPLE'S IDEAS SEEM LIKE YOUR OWN, OTHER'S PEOPLE'S NEEDS SEEM MORE IMPORTANT THAN YOURS, ETC. WE REALLY ARE LIVING IN THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE, IT'S JUST THE ZOMBIES ARE US.

ALL THIS MAKES SENSE, GIVEN THE NATURE OF OYXTOCIN, WHICH BRINGS COMFORT TO THOSE WHO PARTIc.i.p.aTE IN TRIBAL BEHAVIOR. I'M NOT PART OF THIS STUPID CHRISTING TRIBE WHICH IS WHY I'M SMOKING ALL THE TIME AND GETTING NO CHEMICAL BENEFIT FROM THEIR IDIOTIC DAILY SINGALONGS. IT ALSO EXPLAINS WHY EVERYONE WAS SO EAGER TO TURN IN THEIR CELL PHONES (YES, f.u.c.kFACE TOOK ALL OF THEM, NOT JUST MINE). THE 'SCALE HAS THEM ALL ADDICTED TO SOCIAL APPROVAL.

I WOULD LOVE TO KNOW WHY THE FIREMAN CAN STEER THE 'SCALE INSTEAD OF BEING STEERED BY IT. NO ONE IS MORE ALOOF THAN HIM. I WOULD KILL TO KNOW HOW HE CAN SET FIRE TO PARTS OF HIMSELF AND NOT BE HURT.

I'M NOT THE ONLY ONE WHO WANTS TO KNOW WHAT HE KNOWS, EITHER. I WAS DOWN ON THE BEACH THREE DAYS AGO AND HEARD THEM OVER ON THEIR ISLAND, YELLING AT EACH OTHER. WHATEVER HE KNOWS, HE WON'T TELL SARAH STOREY, AND BOY OH BOY IS SHE p.i.s.sED.

IF SHE TEARS HIM A NEW a.s.sHOLE, IT'S TOUGH s.h.i.t FOR MR. ROOKWOOD. THIS INFIRMARY IS ALL OUT OF a.s.sHOLE PATCHES. AND EVERYTHING ELSE.

4.

She swatted her thigh with the notebook and looked out the window. Goosedown flakes of snow floated about, couldn't decide if they wanted to fall or rise. Camp was a snow globe and some G.o.d-child had given it a shake.

Harper had been awake for fifteen minutes and still wasn't sure if it was morning or afternoon. The light was diffuse and gray, as if the whole world were hidden under a bedsheet. She sat on the edge of Father Storey's cot. Every once in a while he would draw a sudden, startled-sounding breath, as if he had just read something terrible in the newspaper. The obituary of a friend, maybe. His own obituary.

One thing that had been true in the summer of Harold Cross was even more true now. The infirmary was out of a.s.shole patches and everything else. She had disinfected Father Storey's trepanation with a splash of port and had treated John Rookwood's mauled arm with a weak dose of good intentions. She wasn't sure good intentions always paved the road to h.e.l.l, but they for sure weren't the highest standard of medical care.

She stood on the chair and reached up to put Harold's notebook behind the ceiling panel. Some little movement or gesture at the edge of her vision caught her attention. She looked around and discovered she and Father Storey had company that morning.

Nick was in the cot closest to the door, sheets pulled to his chest. His hair was a pretty black tousle. He gazed at her as if he had forgotten how to blink. He must've crept in while she was asleep and quietly settled into the first empty bed.

She pushed the notebook up out of sight, deciding to act as if this were a perfectly normal thing to do. When the ceiling tile was back in place she climbed down off the chair and stood at the foot of Nick's cot. Harper moved her hands carefully, using what he had taught her so far to ask why he was here.

He reached for the notepad and pen he carried with him everywhere he went, and wrote: My stomach hurts. Allie walked me over. She had to come to the infirmery anyway because she's stashioned here today. Harper sat beside him on the cot, took his notepad, and wrote: Have you been vomiting? Diarrhea?

He shook his head. She suspected anxiety for Father Storey, not food poisoning.

What do you mean, Allie is stationed here? Harper wrote and pa.s.sed him his pad and pen.

She's in the other room, Nick scrawled.

Harper raised her shoulders in an exaggerated shrug, hands out, palms turned up: Why?

Allie's here for protecshun. Aunt Carol wants to make shure granddad is safe. What did you just stick in the ceiling? Before she could formulate a reply, he added, I promise if you tell me I won't SAY A WORD. She had to smile at that. Of course he wouldn't.

Just some notes I'm keeping, she said, which was true, even if it was leaving out a detail or two.

Notes on what?

If you don't ask about that, she wrote, I won't ask if you really have a stomachache.

He smacked the heel of his hand into his forehead, a gesture he must've picked up from television. She didn't judge. Harper sometimes felt she spent half her life playing Julie Andrews in the movie version of her life. The problem with role models is they teach you roles.

Harper used her finger-spelling to say S-L-E-E-P.

He nodded and said, "You too, right?" Speaking in silence, hands moving precisely through the air, as if he were adjusting the gears of an invisible machine.

"I go," she said with her own, less fluent hands. "Be soon back."

"Be careful," said Nick's hands.

Allie was in the waiting room, curled on the couch. Not asleep, not reading-just lying there with the knuckles of one hand pressed to her lips. She blinked and glanced up. For a moment her eyes were unfocused and she seemed to look upon Harper without recognition.

"Nick says you've been stationed here."

"Looks like. You've got Ben and Aunt Carol thinking someone in camp might be out to kill Granddad. I think that's nuts-everyone knows it was that guy the Mazz-but I don't call the shots."

"And Ben does?"

"He's just doing what Aunt Carol wants. And she wants Granddad safe. You can't blame her. Someone did try to kill him. Aunt Carol wants you to stay here from now on, too. So there's always medical staff on hand, in case he has a seizure or whatever."

"Am I going to start eating here, too?"

Harper was joking, but Allie said, "Yeah. She was really upset when she heard you wandered off yesterday to get something to snack on and left him all alone. His heart could've stopped. Or someone could've walked in and put a pillow over his face."

"I can't stay here. Not full-time. As a matter of fact, I have to step out right now. John's pretty banged up. I want to head over to his island and get a compression bandage and a brace on him."

Harper was not carrying either item but was counting on Allie not to notice, and she didn't.

"Can't," Allie said. "Even if you were allowed to leave the infirmary, it's the middle of the day. No one goes out during the day."

"What do you mean, even if I was allowed? Is that from Carol? Who put her in charge?"

"We did."

"Who?"

"All of us. We voted. You weren't there. You were sleeping. We gathered in the church and we sang for Father Storey. We sang to everyone we've ever lost to show us what to do. I swear I could hear them singing with us. There were only a hundred and forty people in church, but it was like a thousand people singing all at once." Allie's bare arms pebbled with goose b.u.mps at the memory of it. She hugged herself. "It felt like being rescued . . . from every bad feeling you ever had. I think it was just what we needed. Afterward, we settled down, and held hands, and talked. We talked about the things we were still glad for. We said thanks. Like you do before a meal. And we made plans. That was when we voted to give Ben final authority on all security matters. And we voted to make Aunt Carol head of the chapel services and daily planning, which is what Father Storey used to do. At first she didn't want to. She said she couldn't take on any more work. She said she needed to look after her dad. So we took another vote and everyone voted for Carol all over again. So then she said we were making a mistake. She said she wasn't strong like her father. That he was better than her in every way. Kinder and more thoughtful and patient. But we took a third vote and she won that one, too, unanimously. It was funny. It was so funny. Even Carol laughed. She was kind of crying-laughing."

Harper thought of something in Harold's diary-THE FUNGUS STIMULATES FLOCK BEHAVIOR TO PRESERVE ITS OWN WELL-BEING, THE SAME GROUP-THINK THAT MAKES A CROWD OF SPARROWS TURN ON A DIME-but she didn't like where that thought led her and pushed it aside.

Allie said, "I don't think I ought to let you go. The last time I was on duty in the infirmary and didn't do my job, a kid got killed." She gave Harper a crooked smile that had no real happiness in it.

"What are you going to do to me if I walk out? You going to tackle a pregnant woman?"

"No," Allie said. "I'd probably just shoot you in the leg or something."

She was smirking when she said it and Harper almost laughed. Then she saw the Winchester leaning in one corner of the room.

"Why in G.o.d's name do you have a gun?" she cried.

"Mr. Patchett decided the Lookouts on guard should have rifles," Allie said. "He said we should've pa.s.sed out the guns a long time ago. If a Cremation Crew turns up, a little bit of shooting would-"

"-would get a lot more people killed, is what it would do. None of you ought to be carrying rifles. Allie, some of the Lookouts are all of fourteen years old." Harper did not mention that Allie herself was not yet seventeen. The idea of the kids stalking around in the snow with loaded guns agitated her, made her want to give Ben Patchett a hard poke in his soft gut.

"It's only the older kids," Allie said, but for the first time she sounded defensive.

"I'm going," Harper said.

"No. Don't. Please? Let's wait until dark and we can talk to Carol. Going out in the daytime is pretty much the most important rule in camp. It'll be dark soon."

"In this snow it might as well be dark already."

"We pulled the boards up. You'd leave tracks."

"Not for long. It's snowing now. My tracks will fill in. Allie. Would you let anyone tell you that you couldn't go?"

She had her there.

Allie stared into a blue dimness silted with a billion diamond flecks of flying snow. The muscles at the corners of her jaw bunched up.

"s.h.i.t," she said, at last. "This is so stupid. I shouldn't."

"Thank you," Harper said.

"You need to be back in two hours or less. If you're not back in two hours, I'm going to feed you to the wolves."

"If I'm not back in two hours, you ought to get Don Lewiston anyway, just to check on Father Storey's condition, see how he's doing."

Allie glared at Harper. "You have no idea how f.u.c.ked this is. All us Lookouts met after chapel. Ben Patchett said too many people have been putting themselves ahead of the well-being of camp, doing what they like. He said we need to make some examples out of people who can't follow our rules. We all voted. We agreed. We made a pact."

"Mr. Patchett can worry about the well-being of the camp," Harper said. "I need to worry about the well-being of my patients. If he finds out, you tell him you tried to make me stay and you couldn't stop me. But he's not going to find out, because I'll be back before you know it."

"Go if you're going to go, then. Before I change my mind."

Harper had her hand on the latch when Allie spoke again.

"I'm glad he likes you," Allie said. "John is the loneliest person I know."

She glanced back, but Allie wasn't looking at her anymore. She was flopped on her side, curling up on the couch once more.

Harper thought the gentle blessings of children were often as unprovoked, unexpected, and uncalled for as their cruelties. Camp Wyndham that winter was neither Hogwarts nor the island in Lord of the Flies, after all, but a place of wandering, damaged orphans, kids who were willing to forgo eating lunch so there was enough food for others.

"I'll be back soon," Harper said, and when she said it, she believed it.

But she did not return until long, long after dark fell, and by then everything in camp had changed again.

5.

The trees were ghosts of themselves in a smokeworld of low clouds and falling snow. The dying afternoon smelled like pinecones burned in an ashtray.

Harper meant every word of what she had promised Allie: that she was going to paddle over to the Fireman's island, check his condition, and come back. She had left out the part about needing to go home first because the infirmary cupboard was all but bare and she was going to have to hunt through her personal supplies for the things John needed. If Allie knew about that, she might've knocked her down and sat on her chest to keep her from going.

She thought she might have a good poke around while she was home. See what else she could find that might be of use in Camp Wyndham. Shampoos and books and socks.

But when she got there she discovered there wasn't as much to poke around in as she expected. She stopped at the edge of the woods, looking at what was left of her house with a feeling of shock so intense, it approached awe.

The side of the house facing the street had collapsed in on itself, the entire face swept away. Some great force had dragged the living room couch out into the yard and tossed it all the way to the edge of the driveway. Snow had mounded up on it, but Harper could still see the armrests. She guessed there was some more junk scattered across the lawn, but they were just lumps under the snow now. It looked like her house had been brushed by a tornado.

She caught her breath and thought back to the night she left. She remembered a rending crack, so loud it shook the ground. Jakob had climbed into his Freightliner and sideswiped the snowplow through the front of the house, dropped the roof in on what remained of their life together.

Papers hung impaled from bare tree branches, scattered all along the edge of the woods. Harper pulled one down: a page from Desolation's Plough. She read the first words-despair is no more than a synonym for consciousness, and demolition much the same as art-and let the fretful breeze tug the sheet out of her hand. It flapped away in the wind.

Harper was so dazed, she almost forgot her plan and drifted out of the woods into the yard, leaving footprints all the way. But a car shushed past on the road, making a sound like an admonition to be silent, and reminded her to take care. She worked her way around the house to the south side of the ruin, where trees crowded close to the wall. A single red spruce hung a wet and glistening limb over the snow, reaching out to almost touch the vinyl siding.

In a doctor's office of the mind, Nurse Willowes-dressed in crisp medical whites-addressed Miss Willowes, six months pregnant, sitting on the exam-room table in a paper gown. Oh, yes, Miss Willowes, I hope you will continue at the gym. It's important to stay healthy and active for as long as you can do so comfortably!

Harper wrapped both hands around the branch, which was about four feet off the ground, inhaled deeply, and swung. She pendulumed across two yards of snow and reached down with her feet, and her toes found purchase in the icy gravel that bordered the house. She felt herself sliding back, was in danger of letting go and falling onto the frozen ground. She pedaled her feet at the loose rock, lunged, and let go of the branch. Harper fell against the wall, the rubbery lump of her belly bouncing gently off the siding. A little extra cushioning, it turned out, came in handy.

She followed the narrow strip of gravel under the eaves around to the back of the house. The door into the bas.e.m.e.nt was locked, but she did the combination jiggle-kick-shoulder-thump Jakob had taught her and it opened up. She stepped into cold, stale air and pulled the door shut behind her.

When they first moved in they had remodeled the bas.e.m.e.nt into an "entertaining area," complete with bar and pool table, but it had never really stopped feeling like a cellar. Cheap nubby carpet over cement floor. An odor of copper pipes and cobwebs.

The collapse of the house above had led to much more radical redecorating. The fridge had dropped through the ceiling from the kitchen and toppled over onto its side. The door hung open to show the condiments and salad dressings still nestled on the shelves. Wires dangled from the hole overhead.

The pool table remained curiously undamaged in the center of the room. Harper had never learned how to play. Jakob, on the other hand, could not only run the table, but could balance a pool stick on a single finger and a plate on the end of the cue, another of his circus tricks. In retrospect, Harper supposed it did not pay to be too impressed with a man just because he could ride a unicycle.

The camping supplies-tent, portable gas stove, oil lamp-were in the bank of cupboards against the back wall, and the first aid kit was packed in there with them. They had always liked backpacking. That was one thing she could look back on with fondness: they had both been crazy for s.e.x in the woods.

She had badly twisted an ankle when they were hiking in Montana, and Jakob had cheerfully carried her piggyback the last mile to the Granite Park Chalet. She had bought the first aid kit as soon as they got home, to be prepared for the next time one of them banged themselves up on a hike, but there was no next time, and after a few more years there was no more hiking.

The kit was better stocked than she remembered. It contained a stack of compression bandages alongside ice packs and burn cream. But the real prize was shoved in next to the first aid supplies, and was the thing she had wanted most, her central reason for returning: a black elastic elbow brace, left over from two years before. Jakob had wiped out, playing her in racquetball, and sprained his arm. They hadn't ever played after that. Jakob claimed the elbow still sometimes gave him a twinge and said he didn't want to risk straining it again, but she had sometimes imagined he quit racquetball for far less understandable reasons. She had been shutting him out at the time he smashed his elbow into the wall. It wasn't so much that he hated losing. It was just that he hated losing to her. In their relationship, he was the coordinated one, and Harper was comically, adorably clumsy. He took it personally when she stepped out of character.

She rooted around in the other cupboards and found a long box of Gauloises, shoved back on a high shelf, the cellophane peeled off and a few packs missing. Jakob had announced, a year before-a million years before-that he had quit smoking cold turkey and felt sorry for people who didn't have the willpower to do the same. For once she was glad he was full of s.h.i.t. As in any guerrilla economy, there was no underestimating the value of cigarettes these days. People had been wrong to h.o.a.rd gold for the collapse of civilization. They would've been better served to stock up on Camels.

She went around behind the bar to see what they had for booze. Facing the counter, at her back, was a smoked-gla.s.s door that opened into an empty hole where they had planned to put a stereo someday. Hadn't got around to it. Jakob had insisted on a Bang & Olufsen system that cost almost ten thousand dollars and any plan to save for it had remained strictly hypothetical.

She crouched for a look in the liquor cabinet and found a bottle of thirty-year-old Balvenie that would taste like smoke and fill a person with angel's breath. There was also a bottle of cheap, banana-flavored rum that would be just fine if you wanted to get sick. Harper wondered what John Rookwood might tell her about Dragonscale after a Balvenie on the rocks or three.

She was still hunched down behind the bar when someone wiggle-kick-shoulder-thumped the bas.e.m.e.nt door.

"Grayson!" cried a hoa.r.s.e, wheezing, loud, somehow familiar voice, and Harper choked on a cry. Didn't reply, didn't move. Hunched there frozen, waiting for whoever it was to tell her what to do.