The Fireman: A Novel Part 36

The street brightened as if the sun had, impossibly, jumped into the sky. A rushing gold light flared and lit the road with a perfect noontime clarity. Or almost perfect. That unseen sun was moving, swooping straight up the lane. A hot summer gale rocked the cars, blasting them with the smell of the Fourth of July: a perfume of cherry bombs, campfires, hot tarmac. Then it was gone and the darkness dropped back over Verdun Avenue.

The Marlboro Man chuckled nervously. "You wanna tell me the f.u.c.k that was? Someone shoot a flare gun at us?"

The light began to build again: a bronze burning glow that made the spotlight shining from the van as unnecessary as a penlight at high noon in July. Harper rose to one knee and twisted her head to look over the roof of the Challenger . . . just in time to see a teardrop of flame, the size of a private jet, plunging out of the night above.

5.

In the first instant of seeing it, the light was so intense, Harper was half blinded and could not make out any features of what was falling upon them. It was simply a blaze of red glare, plunging toward the stretch of road between the WKLL van and the Dodge Challenger.

It was thirty feet above the road and still dropping when the bolt of flame opened wings to reveal the blazing, monstrous bird within. The heat deformed the air around it-Harper saw it through a blur of tears. At the sight, she was struck through with wonder, with terror. The people who had witnessed the mushroom cloud rising from Hiroshima could've felt no less. It was twenty-four feet across from burning wing tip to burning wing tip. Its open beak was large enough to swallow a child. Feathers of blue and green flame, yards long, rippled from its tail. It made no sound at all, aside from a rushing roar that reminded Harper of a train pa.s.sing through a subway tunnel.

Time snagged in place. The bird hovered less than a dozen feet above the road. The blacktop beneath it began to smoke and stink. Every window on the street reflected the bonfire light of the Phoenix.

Then it was moving-and so was Harper.

Its wings lashed at the air, and it was like someone had thrown open the hatch to a great furnace. A withering billow of chemical heat rolled down the road, and the Dodge Challenger shook in the gale. Harper was crawling around to the driver's-side door.

The Phoenix launched itself at the white van. One wing stroked a hedge and the brush ignited, became a wall of flame. The Phoenix flew into the open side door of the van. Harper had a glimpse of the gunman behind the Browning shrieking and raising his arms in front of his face. The front doors were flung open. The driver and the pa.s.senger toppled into the street.

The ma.s.sive bird of flame hit the van so hard it went up on two tires, tilting toward the driver's side, threatening to overturn, before crashing back onto all four wheels. The interior boiled with fire, with threshing wings of flame. A bullet went off with a metallic spow! Then another. Then .50-caliber ammunition was exploding like kernels of popcorn, blam-blam-blamming inside the white van, flashing as the sh.e.l.ls went off, bullets bonging off the roof, the walls, deforming the vehicle from the inside.

Harper hoisted herself behind the wheel of Ben's Challenger, sat on broken gla.s.s. The keys were in the ignition. She stayed low, just peeking over the dash, while she started the car.

Up the road, the Freightliner turned in a slow circle, tires chewing up the snow and dirt in front of 10 Verdun.

Harper threw the cruiser into drive and stamped on the gas. She only went a short distance, though-less than five yards-before slamming one foot on the brake. The Challenger shrieked to a stop, close to where Jamie was crouched behind a telephone pole. Jamie broke and ran, crossed the open blacktop, and dived into the pa.s.senger seat. She was saying something, shouting something, but Harper didn't hear and didn't care.

Up the road, the Phoenix emerged from the side door of the van, stretching its head out on a comically long neck as if to scream triumphantly into the night. The van continued to shake and jump on its springs while the ammo popcorned inside the wreck. The windshield exploded. Someone was screaming.

Harper launched the Challenger up the street, swerving across half-melted rubble to pull alongside the shot-up police cruiser. Ben flung himself out, hobbled across the s.p.a.ce between the two cars, and tumbled into the backseat facedown, his legs hanging out the door. The air reeked of burning tires.

The Freightliner roared and leapt up the street at the van and the Phoenix. The plow struck the side of the Econoline with a shattering clang and tossed it aside as if it were an empty s...o...b..x. The van rolled, spraying blue sparks, the roof collapsing. The Freightliner charged after it, hitting it again, flipping it to the far side of the cross street, Sagamore Avenue. The Phoenix exploded from the gaping windshield and streaked into the sky-much diminished, Harper saw. Minutes earlier, it had been the size of a Learjet. Now it was smaller than a hang glider.

Her foot found the gas pedal. The Challenger jumped forward hard enough to shove her all the way back into her seat. Ben's legs were still hanging out the rear door. He had wrapped seat belts around his hands to keep from being tossed out, was kicking his feet to try and pull himself farther into the car.

She looked out as they launched themselves past Nelson Heinrich on his back in the street, legs splintered and smashed, folded at improbable angles. The defibrillator sat on the dead man's chest, the plastic black with scorch marks, a bullet hole the size of a fist in the center of it. At least she thought he was dead. It was only after they were well past him that Harper wondered if Nelson had turned his head to watch them go.

The Freightliner filled the road before them. Harper swerved toward the parking lot in front of the burned-out CVS. The Challenger jumped the curb. Harper felt herself lift weightlessly off the seat. The car hit the lot with a spray of sparks and Ben howled, still hanging on.

They slewed onto Sagamore Avenue and Harper gave it all the gas it would take. A bronze light lit their way from above. The Phoenix escorted them for a quarter of a mile, a bra.s.sy blaze that made headlights all but unnecessary-and then it soared out and ahead of them. For a few moments it was gliding this way and that in front of the car, a vast kite of bright fire. At last, with a final dip of its wings, it left them, rose in a sputtering rush into the night, and was gone, disappearing over trees to the east.

An especially hard piece of gla.s.s or steel was jabbing Harper in the b.u.t.t, and she reached under her to get rid of it. It turned out to be the cell phone Mindy Skilling had used to call 911. Without really considering it, she pushed it into the pocket of her snow jacket.

No one saw.

6.

Harper was unprepared to get back and find the infirmary full of people, lamps burning in every corner, and the air humid from the close press of bodies. She knew before anyone spoke to her, just from the way they looked at her, that they were in a panic, and she wondered how they already knew about the ma.s.sacre on Verdun Avenue.

The waiting room was crammed with Lookouts: Michael Lindqvist, the Neighbors twins, Chuck Cargill, Bowie, a few others Harper didn't know by name. Allie was there, too, and looked so afraid, so pale and distraught and starved, Harper couldn't feel any anger toward her. Norma Heald sat in the corner, a quaking mound of white flesh in a flower-print dress.

What surprised Harper most was to find Carol there, bundled into a threadbare pink and yellow robe that was so old the colors had taken on an exhausted, thin hue. Those words-exhausted, thin-applied as much to Carol herself. Her skin was stretched tight over the skull beneath, her eyes burning dangerously hot in their sockets.

Harper had an arm around Ben's waist, helping him stumble-skip along. His left cheek, his left forearm, his left hand, and his left b.u.t.tock were cactused with gla.s.s needles. Jamie was right behind them, lugging the Styrofoam cooler full of plasma. They had spilled far more blood than they had brought home.

"What?" Harper asked. "Why are you all-"

"Seizure," Carol said. "My father had a seizure. While you were out there and he was here alone. His heart stopped. He died."

7.

Later, Nick told Harper everything, using a combination of sign language and notes. He was there for the whole thing. He was holding Father Storey's hand when the old man stopped breathing.

Nick had been in a nervous state when Harper left with Ben to hit the ambulance. Somehow he had worked out what was up and was sure someone was going to die. Michael Lindqvist had tried to settle him down. They had beans and tea and played Battleship. The second time Nick yawned, Michael said it was time for a nap, and even though Nick said he wasn't tired, he was asleep in the cot next to his grandfather inside of five minutes.

He had a dream of light falling in the darkness, a torch dropping from a sky of midnight blue. The torch plummeted behind some hills and there was a red flash and the world began to shiver and rattle, as if some hidden scaffolding beneath the green gra.s.s were coming apart. Nick jumped awake, but the clattering sound continued.

Which was when he saw it: Father Storey's head snapping from side to side and foam running from the corners of his mouth. Father Storey's whole bed jittered and shook. Nick ran into the waiting room, where Michael was on watch, flipping through a Ranger Rick that was older than Nick himself. He dragged Michael off the couch and propelled him into the ward, hauled him along to Father Storey's bedside. Michael froze at the foot of the cot, rigid with shock.

Nick ran around his cot to his little satchel of clothes and books and dug out the most valuable item in all the world that night: his slide whistle. He shoved up a window and began to blow.

It was not the Fireman who answered the call, but Allie, and half a dozen Lookouts. By the time they got there, Father Storey had gone still. His chest had ceased its labored rise and fall. His eyelids had a gray, sickly pallor. Nick held his cold, gaunt hand, the skin loose on the bones, while Michael wept with the savagery of a small, bereft child.

Allie brushed past them both. She used a finger to scoop the foam and vomit out of Father Storey's mouth, put her lips over his, and exhaled into his lungs. She braided her fingers together and began to thrust against the center of his chest. She had learned CPR two summers before, when she was a counselor-in-training at Camp Wyndham, had received her instruction and certification from John Rookwood. So: in some ways the Fireman had answered the whistle after all.

She was at it for close to five minutes, a long, desperate, silent, timeless time, driving her hands down onto his chest and breathing into his mouth in front of a steadily growing audience. But it wasn't until Carol arrived-until she shoved through the curtain and screamed, "Dad!"-that Father Storey coughed, gagged, and with a weary sigh, began to breathe on his own again.

Aunt Carol called him back from the dead, Nick wrote Harper.

Your sister called him back, Harper scribbled in reply, but she had the unpleasant notion that most people would think the same as Nick and would credit Carol with a kind of miracle. After all, she already drove back death by leading them in song every day. Was this really so different? Once again she had confronted death, armed only with her voice, and once again the doomed had been saved.

Harper spent an hour at Father Storey's side, removing the feeding tube she had run down his nostril, getting him on a clean drip, changing his diaper and the pillowcase, which was stained with an acrid-smelling mix of vomit and blood. His pulse was strong but erratic, speeding along for a few beats, slowing, then staggering back into a hurry. His whiskery face was gray, almost colorless, and his eyelids were open on slits to show the whites of his eyes.

A stroke, she thought. He was stroking out, a little at a time. Whatever she had hoped or believed up until then, she thought now it was very unlikely the good old man would ever open his eyes or give her a smile again.

She dug up tweezers, sterile thread, a needle, bandages, and iodine, and went looking for Ben Patchett. By then it was early morning, the light watery and dismal, which perfectly mirrored how she felt.

She found Ben with Carol in the waiting room. He sat with one cheek of his a.s.s on the edge of the coffee table, keeping his weight off the other cheek. He had been methodically picking the largest pieces of gla.s.s out of his face and arm and making a pile of them: a glistening heap of bright shards and shiny red needles.

Most of the rest had left, though Michael and Allie remained. They sat on the couch, holding hands. Michael had stopped crying, but there were white lines etched on his cheeks, tracing the path of his tears. Jamie leaned against the door. The side of her face was swollen in a ripe red bruise.

Carol said, "He's dying."

"He's stable. He's getting fluids. I think he's fine for now. You're tired, Carol. You should go home. Try and rest. Your father needs you to be strong."

"Yes. I will be. I intend exactly that. To be strong." Carol fixed Harper with a fevered, unblinking stare. "Here is a thought for you. If my father had died, someone in this camp-maybe a few someones-would be glad. Whoever bashed in his head is praying for him to die. You want sickness? There are people in this place who wish my father dead with all their hearts. Who probably wish me dead. I don't know why. I can't make sense of it. I only want us all to be safe . . . safe and good to each other. But there are some who want my father gone, who want me gone, who want to tear us apart and turn us against each other. That's sickness, Nurse Willowes, and nothing you brought back from the ambulance can cure it. It can't be cured. It can only be cut out."

Harper thought Carol sounded overtired and overwrought and didn't think this was worth replying to. She shifted her gaze to Allie. Harper wanted to thank her for saving Father Storey's life, but when she opened her mouth, she remembered how Allie had stood there and watched while the other girls kicked snow on her and cut off her hair. The words died before they made it to her lips.

Instead, she spoke to Ben. "Come into the ward and get those pants off. I want to clean your wounds."

Before Ben could rise to his feet, Carol spoke again. "You walked away from my father once and you were almost captured. You walked away a second time and my father had a fit and almost died. He did die. And was called back. You aren't walking away again. You will stay here in the infirmary until he recovers."

"Carol," Harper said, struggling with all her heart for tenderness, "I can't promise you he will recover. I don't want to deceive you about his chances."

"I don't want to deceive you about yours, either," Carol said. "You may think letting him die will make room for you and the Fireman-"

"What?" Harper asked.

"-but when my father's time in this camp is over, so is yours, Ms. Willowes. If he dies, you're done here. I want you to understand the stakes. You said yourself it is time for me to be strong. I agree. I need to be strong enough to hold people to account, and that is what I mean to do."

The Dragonscale scrawled on Harper's chest p.r.i.c.kled painfully, heating up against her sweater.

"I will do everything I can," Harper said, struggling to keep her voice even. "I love your father. So does John. He doesn't have any interest in taking over or running the show. Neither do I! Carol, I just want a safe place to see this baby into the world. That's it. I'm not looking to undermine anyone or anything. But you need to understand-if he does die-despite my best efforts-"

"If that happens you go," Carol said. There was, suddenly, a new calm in her voice. She was sitting straighter, her pose almost regal. "And so I trust you will not let it happen."

Harper's breath was fast and short. For the second time in one night, she felt like she was pinned down, trapped by lethal fire. "I can't promise I can keep him alive, Carol. No one could promise that. He's been grievously injured, and his age makes a full recovery . . . very unlikely." She paused, then said, "You don't mean what you're saying. Sending me away would put the whole camp at risk. What if I was picked up by the sort of people who tried to kill us tonight? They'd force me to tell everything I know-that's what Ben says."

"Not if your baby was here with us," Carol said. "You'd keep quiet then, no matter what they did to you. Of course I wouldn't send you away until after you gave birth, no matter what happens to my father. And of course I wouldn't punish the infant by sending him away with you. That's no way to treat a child. No. If my father dies, you go, but the baby will stay here with us to ensure your silence. I'd look after him myself."

8.

Harper drew the black thread through Ben's cheek. He shut his eyes, s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g his face up in pain. She gave the line a sharp yank to make him look at her.

"Did you hear her?" Harper whispered. Her heart was still whacking away in her chest. "Ben. Did you hear the crazy coming out of her?"

Ben sat on her cot. They were in the ward, away from the others, no one else in immediate earshot except Father Storey and Nick, and neither of them was listening.

Outside the windows, ranks of icicles dripped bright water in the milky glow of the sun. Ben drew a thin, whistling breath.

"Nurse? Do you think you could please leave my face on my skull? I'm kind of attached to it."

She hissed: "I can't promise anyone I can keep Father Storey alive. I can't promise to save him. I want to know what you're going to do if he dies. Are you going to be the one who pulls my baby out of my arms?"

"No! No. I wouldn't take your kid from you, Harper," he whispered back. "But I'm sure there are plenty of people who would, if Carol told them it had to be done. Jamie Close. Norma Heald."

"And you'd just stand by and let it happen?"

A shadow moved across the curtain between the ward and the waiting room. Carol? Allie?

Ben took a deep breath and when he spoke again, his voice was raised so he could be heard in the next room, and probably halfway to the cafeteria. "Almost everyone in this camp has been taken from someone. Almost everyone is an orphan in some way. Your baby would fit right in. I wouldn't like to see it happen, but there's a lot of things I've had to live with that I didn't like. I'm sure I could manage one more. What I won't do is bargain in secret with you, or be part of a whispering campaign against Mother Carol. People who are whispering aren't in harmony with the rest of the camp, and the only way we'll survive is if we all speak with one-"

"Oh, give it a f.u.c.king rest," Harper told him and poked him in the face with the needle to give him a st.i.tch he didn't really need.

9.

It was close to a week before she turned on the phone.

For all that time she kept it on her in the pocket of her sweats. Several times a day she would put her hand on it, to rea.s.sure herself it was still there. It comforted her to move her thumb along its gla.s.sy face and smooth steel curves.

She didn't dare attempt to use it. For those first days after they returned from the raid, she was uncomfortably aware of being under watch. There was always a Lookout in the waiting room-supposedly to protect Father Storey-and her guards had a habit of yanking the curtain aside at random moments and sticking a head into the ward on one pretense or another. Harper didn't even have the courage to try and hide it in the ceiling with Harold's notebook. She felt there was too great a chance of someone walking in on her while she was standing on the chair, reaching to move a drop ceiling panel.

Harper settled on a date to risk making a call. Her father's birthday was the nineteenth. He would be sixty-one, if he was alive. Only her self-restraint didn't hold out until then.

She woke early on the morning of the seventeenth with contractions, sharp enough to make her gasp. Her insides were raw dough in the hands of a burly baker who was tediously, methodically, brutally intent on kneading every centimeter of tissue. It was a sensation not unlike being overcome with the cramps of diarrhea, and a sweat p.r.i.c.kled on her face while she waited it out.

The nurse inside her identified this rhythmic clenching-up as Braxton-Hicks contractions, just a little practice for the oncoming main event. The mother-to-be entertained sickening notions of premature birth. She was at twenty-eight weeks. Such a thing was not impossible, especially for a woman who had been exposed to all manner of stress, gunfights, and slaughter. The idea that she might be going into labor-that the baby might be coming right this instant-made her feel as if she were in an elevator that had begun to fall, the cables giving way.