The Fireman: A Novel Part 44

If Harper listened very intently, she could hear the coals whistling softly in the furnace.

"So she turned to Nick," she said.

"Yes," he replied, in a listless tone. "Nick told me later that she very quickly learned to light candles with her fingertips, which was how I started. He said he thought if she could do that much, it meant it would be okay to teach her more. But he also said the first time she lit a candle she yelped like it burned, although she told him she only cried out because she was startled. Later he noticed she would always keep a gla.s.s of cold water on hand, and after lighting candles would grip it tightly, as if her fingertips were sore. Sometimes she even dipped her fingers into it. All this was done without my knowledge. They practiced at night, out in the cottage, when I was off with Allie, rescuing the sick and polishing my personal legend.

"Sarah wanted to learn how to push her consciousness into puppets of flame, as I did with the Phoenix and Nick did with his flocks of flaming sparrows. Nick thought that was like skipping basic addition and going right to fractions. He wanted her to try making her hand into a torch first, or practice throwing b.a.l.l.s of flame. But she teased and kidded and gamed him into it. Nick never had a chance. So he explained the general principles, just the basic ideas. He didn't think she'd really-he a.s.sumed she was just curious-and-"

He fell silent again, staring at the furnace, its orange glow shifting over his features like a gentle touch.

"I was just back from one of my expeditions with Allie. We had returned to camp with a few refugees . . . poor Nelson Heinrich among them, I believe. I was already on my way out to the island when I saw the smoke, coming from the cottage. It was all over long before anyone in camp realized what was happening.

"I paddled to the dock at the southern end of the island-the dock that isn't there anymore. As I pulled myself onto the planks, the roof of the cottage fell in. I flung myself in through the back door and a moment later the chimney collapsed on the dock behind me, crushed most of it into the water. The whole first floor had old, exposed beams. One of them had dropped onto Nick. He was unconscious, but I could see him breathing. Heat billowed, distorting the air. Everything was smoke and sparks. I saw him-and I saw her. What was left of her. Bones and ash and-and-" He swallowed, shook his head, pushed the memory aside. "I am sure if Nick weren't there I would've dropped. I was hysterical. In shock. But he was there and I needed to get him out. I tried to lift the beam, but I couldn't. It had to weigh near on four hundred pounds. I strained against it, not budging it, screaming at G.o.d, screaming at Sarah, just screaming.

"Then she was there with me. On the other side of the beam, beside her son." The Fireman spoke now in a hush, staring into the furnace with what was either awe or dread. "I shuddered to see her. In the middle of all that blazing heat, I shuddered like someone in a freezing rain. She was so lovely. She was the most lovely thing. She was walking flame, as blue as a blowtorch, her hair flowing ribbons of red and gold fire. She made a hatchet out of thin air-a hatchet of fire, you understand-and swept it through one end of the beam. Snapped it in two in one stroke. That hatchet was so hot it would've sliced through the beam even if it had been an iron girder. I tossed the big piece of lumber off Nick and got the h.e.l.l out of there with him. I only looked back once, at the door. She was still standing there, watching me go with him. She knew me. I could see recognition in her features. Her face was beautiful and-sad. Confused. I knew she was self-aware. She had been a woman one moment. In the next she was an elemental of fire."

"The house fell in on itself. The fire burned low. I never left the island. I sat in the dunes and watched. People came to me to offer food or comfort. I paid them no mind. Allie sat with me for hours. The sun rose up hot and dry and baked the island beneath it and I didn't move. The house was still burning when the sun set again, although by then it was mostly smoldering coals. I dozed off for a while. When I woke she was standing in what remained of the ruin, a ghost of pale golden flame. She vanished again almost as soon as I saw her, but by then I knew for sure. What remained of her consciousness was threaded in the coals, spread across a billion microscopic particles of Dragonscale that wouldn't and couldn't be destroyed. She was ash and flame. I have been on the island ever since and I have never let that first fire burn out. It's still going, in the furnace. She's still there. She's still with me. I believe her consciousness is held in place by the energy produced by the fire and will only break apart if the flames die for good.

"And I suppose that's all of it. Few people in camp have any idea what Nick can do. He doesn't cast flame anymore. You can understand why. He holds himself responsible for the death of his mother. Can you imagine being nine years old and having that thought in your head? He doesn't know she's still with us, and I haven't dared show him. I'm scared of what it would do to him. What if he thinks she's suffering and it's his fault?" He shifted about uncomfortably and his gaze drifted from the furnace to the door. He stiffened. "My G.o.d. You've been here for hours. You have to get back to the infirmary before sunrise. You've already stayed too long."

"A minute more," she told him. "Michael promised he could cover for me all night if he had to."

He rolled halfway over to look into her face. "You have to take care of yourself, Harper. There's a boy who loves you very much. You're the one thing that keeps him going." It took her a moment to realize he was talking about Nick, not himself. "He's still got all that guilt on him. He's trapped under it, as badly as he was ever trapped under the beam."

"Look who's talking," she said.

For a moment he couldn't meet her gaze. "You see why I don't want you doing anything ever again like what you did with the arrow. I've already lost one woman I care about. You don't get to burn yourself up like her, Nurse Willowes. I can't lose you, too."

She held him a moment longer, then kissed his whiskery cheek, and climbed from the bed. She arranged his sheets over him, tucked him in. Harper stood above him, looking down into his lean, tired face.

She said, "What happened to Sarah Storey isn't your fault, you know. Or Nick's. Neither of you has any right to blame yourself for her death. Harold Cross could've explained why. I love you, John Rookwood"-she had never said this to him before, but she said it now, firmly and calmly, and continued without giving him a chance to reply-"but you are not a doctor and you do not understand the nature of this infection. Sarah Storey didn't die because Nick taught her badly. She didn't die because she lacks a Y chromosome. Or because she was missing some necessary mutation. Or any other random reason you can think of. In between his horrible poetry and stomach-turning misogyny, Harold filled a notebook with solid research. The spore only penetrates the human brain very slowly. It takes about six weeks to reach Broca's region, the area that processes communication. Even in the deaf. You said she had only been infected for-what? Two weeks? Three? She rushed it. That simple."

He gazed at her in bewilderment. "You can't know that. Not for sure."

"But I do, John. You have every right to grieve, but I'm afraid your guilt is undeserved. So are your fears about my safety. I've been covered in Dragonscale for almost nine months. It's in every cell of my body. There is nothing you know how to do that I can't learn. You should've talked to Harold."

The Fireman let out a long sighing breath and all at once seemed smaller, hollowed out.

"I-I didn't have much to do with Harold in the last weeks before the poor boy died. He was grotesque to Allie and I was out here on the island in mourning. I hardly saw him. Actively avoided him, in fact."

"What are you talking about? You're the one who snuck him out of the infirmary. He said so in his journal."

The Fireman shot her a surprised, wondering look. "Either you're mistaken or he was keeping a diary of daydreams. In which case I'm not sure we ought to place much confidence in his medical information, either. I didn't help him slip out of the infirmary. Not once. You can't imagine what an odious little troll he was."

Harper gazed at him blankly, feeling wrong-footed and mixed up. She had looked through the diary plenty of times and was sure Harold had said John Rookwood had been his one ally in the last days.

"Enough of this," he said and nodded at the door. "You have to go. Keep your head down and hurry right back to the infirmary. We'll figure it out later. There'll be another night for this."

But there never was.

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 sprawled 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 a dose 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 embarra.s.sment, 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 pa.s.s 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 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 bra.s.s 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 he say 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 discrimination 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?"

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," Father Storey 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 gra.s.s to avoid stepping on him. She had not yet reached the bus, which was farther 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, heartrending 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-

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-shh-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, eh?"

"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.