The Fireman: A Novel Part 48

Ahead, Harper saw the ma.s.sive, rude stones and that rough granite bench that she had thought looked like a place of sacrifice-a place where a white queen would slaughter a holy lion. The rest of the camp waited there.

As they came into the outer ring of the circle, Harper's right leg gave completely and she went down on her knees. Gillian leaned over her, as if to whisper some encouragement.

"I don't care if you are pregnant," she said. "I hope you die here." She squeezed Harper's nose, shutting her nostrils. "Far as I'm concerned, you and the baby can both die."

For one terrible moment Harper had no air. Her head was as empty as her lungs. Gillian could kill her as easily as she could flip a light switch. Then Jamie had Harper by the back of the neck again, hoisted her to her feet and shoved her on, smacked her across the a.s.s to get her moving, and Harper could breathe again.

"Giddy-up!" Jamie shouted, and some men cheered.

Harper looked back and saw Michael walking between Ben and Carol. Michael had the Fireman over his shoulder, carrying him the way he might've carried a sack of oats. The Fireman had always seemed an adult and Michael had always seemed a child, but now Harper could see the redheaded boy was bigger than John, broader through the shoulders. It looked like there was something-burlap sacking, perhaps-pulled over the Fireman's head.

Harper was marched to one of those tall, crooked stone plinths. A boy-the kid Harper thought of as Bowie-came forward carrying a yellow mop handle, and Harper wondered if she was about to take a clubbing. No. The Neighbors sisters yanked Harper's arms straight back. The mop handle went across the far side of the stone column, and the girls used more of the duct tape to bind her wrists to it. When they were done, she was trapped, with her back to the jagged stone and her arms wrenched behind her.

Chuck Cargill and some other boys stood the Fireman up against one of the standing stones ten feet away. They pulled his arms back and used the tape to bind his wrists to a shovel braced against the far side of the rock. As soon as they let go, his legs gave out-he wasn't conscious-and he sat down, his feet splayed apart and his chin resting against his chest.

The camp stood back from them, s.p.a.ced along the outer ring of the stone circle, staring in. In the shifting orange light of the flames, their faces were unfamiliar to her, pale smudges, eyes gleaming dark with fear. Harper looked for someone she knew and her gaze found eleven-year-old Emily Waterman. Harper tried to smile at her with her eyes and Emily cringed as if from the stare of a madwoman.

There was commotion at the back of the crowd, at the bottom of the wide steps leading up to the open doors of the chapel. Harper heard shouts, saw people shoving. Two boys drove Renee Gilmonton ahead of them with rifle b.u.t.ts, striking her in the small of the back and the shoulders. They weren't clobbering her. It wasn't a beating. They were moving her along that way, thudding her now and then to remind her they were there. Harper thought she walked with great dignity, her hands bound behind her back with hairy twine, the sort you might use to tie up a package in brown kraft paper. She was bleeding from a cut along her brow, blinking at the blood that dripped into her left eye, but otherwise her face was calm, her chin raised a little.

Allie was right behind her and she was shouting, her voice hoa.r.s.e, shaking. "Get the f.u.c.k off me! Get your f.u.c.king hands off me!"

Her arms were tied behind her back, too, and Jamie Close had her by the elbow. Harper hadn't been aware of Jamie leaving her side, but there she was, herding Allie along. Jamie had plenty of help: there was a boy on either side of Allie, gripping her shoulders, and two more boys crowding in from behind. Blood dripped from Allie's mouth. Her teeth were red. She wore flannel pajama bottoms and a Boston Red Sox hoodie and her feet were bare and dirty.

"Get on your knees," Jamie said as they reached the edge of the circle. "And close your f.u.c.kin' trap."

"We have a right to speak in our own defense," Renee Gilmonton said, and a rifle b.u.t.t shot out and clubbed her in the back of her left leg. Her legs folded and she dropped hard to her knees.

"You have a right to shut up!" a woman screamed. "You have a right to shut your lying mouth!"

Harper hadn't seen Ben and Michael going off together, but she spotted them now, coming out of the cafeteria. They had Gilbert Cline and the Mazz with them.

Gil's expression was the disinterested look of a seasoned poker player who might be holding a full house or might have a handful of nothing-you just couldn't tell. The Mazz, however, was in a state of high ebullience. Although he was dressed in a denim coat over a stained Bad Company T-shirt, he was practically skipping as he came toward them, walking with the brisk confidence of a man in a tailored suit, on his way to his six-figure job in a Manhattan high-rise.

Gillian helped Carol up onto the stone bench located directly between Harper and the Fireman. Carol stood swaying, her eyes dazed and her face streaked with tears. She did not raise her hands for attention. She didn't need to. The low, fevered murmuring, a mix of urgent whispers and soft sobbing, fell away. In a moment it was so quiet the only sound was the hiss and sputter of the torches.

"My father is dead," Carol said, and a sobbing groan of dismay rose from the crowd of nearly 170. Carol spoke not a word until the silence returned, then continued: "The Fireman tried to kill him three months ago and failed. He tried again tonight and succeeded. He or the nurse injected an air bubble into his bloodstream and induced a fatal heart attack."

"That is a complete fabrication," Renee said, her voice clear and carrying.

One of the boys behind her struck her between the shoulder blades with his rifle b.u.t.t and Renee fell forward onto her face.

"Leave her alone!" Allie screamed.

Jamie hunched down next to Allie and said, "You open that mouth one more time and I'll slice your tongue out and nail it up on the doors of the church." Jamie had a knife in one hand-an ordinary steak knife, it looked like, with a serrated edge-and she held it close to Allie's cheek, turning it so it flashed in the firelight.

Allie cast a wild, furious, frightened look up at her aunt. Carol stared back with eyes that did not seem to recognize her.

"Child," she said, "you may speak when you are called upon and not before. Do as I say or I cannot protect you."

Harper was sure Allie would scream, would say something nasty, and Jamie really would cut her. Instead Allie stared at her aunt in bewilderment-as if she had been slapped-and then burst into tears, her shoulders racked with the force of her sobs.

Carol looked out upon the worshippers, turning her gaze from face to face. The air was damp and cool and smelled of salt. The moon was two-thirds full. The boy in the church tower-the eye in the steeple sees all the people-had his elbows on the railing and was bent forward to watch what was happening below.

Carol said, "I believe the Fireman also killed my sister, Sarah. I think she discovered he meant to murder my father, and he killed her before she could warn us. I can't prove it, but that is what I believe."

"You can't prove any of this!" Renee cried out from the ground. She was still in the dirt, in a humiliating position, with her a.s.s in the air and her hands bound behind the small of her back. She had a sc.r.a.pe on her chin where she had come down hard on the mud. "Not one word!"

Carol turned an icy, grieving look upon her. "I can. I can prove the most important parts. I can prove you and the nurse and the Fireman conspired to kill me and Ben Patchett and hoped to set yourselves above everyone else, make this place into a prison camp. I can prove we were next."

She had it so backward, Harper felt light-headed and close to hysterical laughter. Not that she could've laughed.

"They took a vote!" Carol shouted. She held up a sheet of ruled yellow paper torn from a legal-sized notebook. "A fixed vote, maybe, but a vote nonetheless. Over twenty people in this camp voted for Nurse Willowes and the Fireman to do as they liked. Kill who they liked, hurt who they liked, lock up who they liked." She lowered her voice, and then, softly, said, "My niece was among those who voted."

A shuddering sound of misery went through the ma.s.s of people crowded around the edges of Memorial Park.

"It's not true," Allie screamed.

Jamie clamped her hand on Allie's jaw, pulled her head back hard, held her knife to the side of Allie's face, and looked up at Carol, waiting to be told what to do. Harper could see an artery thudding in Allie's pale throat.

"I forgive you," Carol said to her niece. "I don't know what lies they told you about me, to turn you against me, but I forgive you entirely. I owe that much to your mother. You're all I have left of her, you know. You and Nick. Maybe they made you think I had to die. I hope someday you'll understand that I am ready to die for you, Allie. Any day."

"How about today, you manipulative s.h.i.thead?" Allie said. She said it in a whisper, but it carried throughout the park.

Jamie whickered the knife across Allie's lips, cutting through both of them. Allie shouted and fell forward. She could not stanch the bleeding with her hands bound behind her and she writhed and kicked, smearing blood and dirt across her face.

Carol did not cry out in horror or protest. Instead she stared at her niece for a long, tragic moment, then turned her anguished gaze away, swept it across the crowd. The silence in the park was a fearful, apprehensive thing.

"You see what they did to her?" Carol said. "The Fireman and the nurse? How they twisted her? Turned her against us? Of course Allie is the Fireman's lover, too. Has been for months."

Allie shook her head and groaned, a sound of anger and frustration and denial, but did not speak, perhaps could not, her mouth slashed like it was.

"I think that's why John Rookwood decided to kill my father. Why he stalked him in the woods and crushed his head in. My father found out the Fireman was making a wh.o.r.e of a sixteen-year-old girl and meant to expose him. To drive him from this camp. But the Fireman moved first and struck him down with that weapon of his. You have all seen him with it. The halligan. He never even cleaned it off. You can still see my father's blood and hair on it. Michael, show them."

Michael stepped around the convicts, carrying the long rusted bar of black iron. He carried it past Harper toward the crowd and for a moment Harper had a good look at it. It was slightly dented where, months before, she had struck the Gasmask Man in the smoke. Now, though, there was what looked like old gummy blood smeared across the bar, and strands of hair that glinted gold and silver in the torchlight.

Michael held the bar up, showing it to the onlookers. Norma Heald reached out with a fat, white, shaking hand and touched it, almost reverently, then looked at her fingertips.

"Blood!" she screamed. "Father Storey's blood is still on it!"

Harper looked away in disgust. She wondered when Michael had crept to the boathouse to get the halligan out of the fire truck and prepare it. She hoped Father Storey had already been dead before he smeared the old man's blood on the rusting iron, pulled the old man's hair from his battered head.

When she turned her gaze from Michael, though, she saw a thing that made her breath catch for a moment. The Fireman's foot flopped to the left, then back to the right. Whether anyone else noticed, she couldn't say. The burlap sack fluttered before his mouth, as if he had sighed.

"You all know how strong my father is. How he fought to come back to us, to recover his poor-his poor-" For a moment Carol was so overwrought with emotion she could not speak.

"He never left us!" a man yelled. "He was always with us in the Bright!"

Carol stiffened, as if stabilized by an invisible hand. "Yes. That's right. He was always with us there and he always will be. I take comfort in that. We can all take comfort in that. We live forever in the Bright. Our voices are never stilled there." She wiped the knuckle of her thumb under one eye. "I know, too, that Nurse Willowes was sure she had destroyed his brain in the course of performing surgery on his broken skull, and that he would never recover, and so there was no reason to see to his death. Keeping him alive was in fact the best way to hide her true intentions toward myself and Ben and the rest of us. Her arrogance was her downfall, though! Soon he began to show signs of recovering anyway, drawing strength from our song, from the Bright. Then she tried to induce seizures by injecting him with insulin. But she only dared try it once or twice. My nephew was there, and I know she felt little Nick had come to spy on her and watch over my father."

She paused again, collecting herself. Her voice was low when she spoke once more, and many in the crowd leaned forward to hear her. "My dad. My dad was so strong. He fought his way back again and again. He began to wake. I think he willed himself to wake, against all odds. He knew the danger he was in. He found pen and paper and wrote a message." She flapped one hand up in the air, holding a folded sheet of white paper. Her shoulders shuddered. "It's his handwriting. I've known it since I was old enough to read my letters. It's shaky, but it's his. It says-" She looked upon it, blinking at tears. "It says, 'Dear Carol, I will be dead soon. I hope you find this and not the nurse. Protect yourself. Protect the children. Protect the camp. Protect them all from the Fireman. Remember that Jesus came not to bring peace but the sword. I love you.'"

She lowered the note, shut her eyes, swayed. When she opened them and looked up, Michael was waiting. She handed him the sheet of paper and once more he carried the evidence to the crowd, so they could pa.s.s it around, see for themselves.

"None of this proves anything," Renee shouted from where she sprawled in the mud. "There is no court anywhere in America that would accept any of this as evidence. Not your father's note, which could've been written under duress, not that halligan bar, which could've been tampered with." She turned her head, staring around at the crowd gathered at the edge of the stone ring. "There was no one planning to kill anyone. We talked about leaving! Not about murder. All Harper and John wanted to do was get a small group of us out of here and off to Martha Quinn's island . . . which is a real place. With a charged cell phone we could prove it to you. Their signal broadcasts on the Internet. No one here-not Carol, not anyone-can offer any firsthand evidence of any criminal intention that would stand up in a true court of law."

"I beg to differ," said the Mazz, from the edge of the circle.

When Renee spoke of Martha Quinn's island, there had been an almost immediate murmur of nervous surprise, a low thrum like an amplifier buzzing with feedback. But at this the many went silent again.

"Just a couple nights ago, we all met in a secret conference on the Fireman's island: myself, Gil here, Renee, Don Lewiston, Allie there, the Fireman, and the nurse," the Mazz called out. "Renee asked me if I'd be head of security around camp after the Fireman got rid of Ben Patchett and Carol. And the nurse, she promised me I could have my pick of the girls, anyone over the age of fourteen. All I had to do was keep people in line. What they didn't know was I had already tipped off Mr. Patchett something was up, and promised to work for the camp as a double agent, like. Renee and Allie thought they were so smart, sneaking us out of the meat locker for the meeting. They didn't know Mr. Patchett let them break us out. Ben Patchett, Chuck Cargill, and Michael Lindqvist set the whole thing up so I could collect intel."

"And Cline will confirm all that," Ben Patchett said, and thumped Cline in the back. "Won't you, Cline?"

Gilbert Cline turned his gray, calm eyes on Renee. Renee looked as if she had just caught a rifle b.u.t.t to the stomach. She looked like she wanted to be sick.

"I can confirm one thing," Gil said. "I can confirm the Mazz is a lying sack of s.h.i.t who will tell Patchett anything to get out of that meat locker. The rest of it is a c.r.a.p sandwich and I can't believe any of you are going to eat it."

Ben struck Gil in the back with the b.u.t.t of his pistol. It made a low knocking sound, like knuckles on wood. Gil dropped to one knee.

"No!" Renee said. "No, don't you hurt him!" Harper doubted if many heard her over the sound of the crowd, which was now making a muted roar of surprise and rage.

Ben stood behind Gil Cline, shaking his head and staring at Carol with a look of outrage.

"He was telling a different story in the bas.e.m.e.nt," Ben said. "He was! He told me he'd back the Mazz up to the hilt, as long as we'd give him the same deal we gave Mazzucch.e.l.li. He said-"

"I told you to leave him out of it," the Mazz said. "Why do you think I didn't bring him in from the start? I told you he wouldn't-"

"Enough!" Carol cried, and most of the chatter fell away. Most. Not all. The people of the congregation were restless now, shifting from foot to foot, whispering. "Anyone can see Cline is in love with Gilmonton and will tell any lie to protect her."

"Oh, no doubt!" shouted the Mazz. "They've been s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g for weeks! Her phony little book club was always just a cover story. Reading Watership Down, my a.s.s. That was their code word for what they were really up to, which was f.u.c.kin' like rabbits, every chance they-"

"Once a perjurer, always a perjurer," Gil said.

"Mr. Mazzucch.e.l.li is not our only witness!" Carol cried. "There is another! Ask the nurse herself! Ask her! Is it not true? Did she not watch as the Fireman injected my father with an air bubble and ended his life? Did she herself not drug my nephew, Nick, so they could commit their homicide in peace? Ask her! Is it true, Nurse Willowes? Yes or no?"

Harper lifted her head and looked around. A hundred and seventy faces watched, lit an infernal shade of orange by the torches. They watched in fear and rage. Emily Waterman looked stricken. Tears had cut through the lines of dirt on her cheeks. Jamie, on the other hand, seemed almost to quiver with purpose, still gripping Allie by the jaw. At last Harper found Michael, who stood behind the two convicts, just to the right of Ben Patchett. He had recovered his rifle and he held it at waist level, the barrel pointing in the general direction of Allie. He nodded, imperceptibly: Do it.

Harper moved her chin up and down. Yes. It was true.

A scream-a bellow of anguished rage-rose all around her, and the darkness itself seemed to quake. Harper had never heard such a sustained howl of noise. It was a chorus of a different sort, and for the first time, Harper saw some of them beginning to shine. Jamie's eyes shone like gold dollars flashing in the direct light of the noonday sun. Norma Heald's exposed arms crawled with Dragonscale, and the Dragonscale crawled with a livid red brightness.

"Unh," the Fireman said through the burlap sack. "What is that? What's wrong? What's happening?"

His heel sliding over the ground, trying to find purchase.

"He's waking up!" Emily Waterman shrieked, in a high, shrill voice. "He'll kill us! He'll burn us all!"

Once again, Norma Heald was the first to break from the crowd. She reared back and threw a rock, a small white pebble not much bigger than a golf ball. There was a sudden instant of silence, as if everyone drew a breath in the same moment. The rock hit the Fireman on the shoulder with a bony thwock!

A great and savage roar of satisfaction rose from the crowd.

Not one of them saw the door to the infirmary, three hundred feet away, open and slap shut, as Nick came staggering through it, half awake and half drugged.

Neither did the Lookout in the steeple spy the headlights of the bus, less than a mile away, flashing a frantic warning at the gates of Camp Wyndham. He was looking directly below, watching the action. Watching as the stones began to fly.

4.

A rock banged off the granite above the Fireman's head. He flinched from the sound. A rock struck his knee with a bony pop.

His left hand erupted into blue flame, melting duct tape, snapping the shovel handle.

A white stone the size of a paperweight struck the burlap bag over his head and his left hand abruptly went out in a poisonous cloud of black smoke. The Fireman's chin dropped against his chest. Rocks thudded off his shoulder, his stomach, the meat of one thigh, banged off the sheer face of the stone behind him.

No, Harper thought, no no no . . .

She shut her eyes and turned her mind inward and began to chant without words, sing without melody.

5.

The Zapruder film, the silent color reel that captured the a.s.sa.s.sination of President John F. Kennedy, lasts less than twenty-seven seconds, and yet entire books have been written in an attempt to adequately explore everything that can be seen happening in the frame. Time must be slowed to a crawl to make sense of any scene of true chaos-to show the flurry of human action and reaction going off like multiple strings of firecrackers, all at once. Every rewatching of the film reveals a new layer of nuance, a fresh set of impressions. Every review of the evidence uncovers a new set of overlapping narratives, suggesting not a single story-the shooting of a great man-but dozens of stories, all caught in frantic medias res.

Harper Willowes didn't have the convenience-not to mention the distance, or safety-of seeing what happened over the next eleven minutes on film. Nor could she rewatch that scene of slaughter later, to see what she might've missed. If such a thing had even been possible, she would've refused, couldn't have stood facing it again, facing all that was lost.

Yet she saw much, much more than anyone else, perhaps, because she didn't panic. It was a curious quirk of Harper's nature that she grew calmer in the moments when others were most inclined to sink into hysterics; that she was habitually at her most observant and clear-eyed in the very times when others could not bear to see what was happening at all. She would've made a fine battlefield nurse.

She opened her eyes as flame leapt from her hands and the duct tape about her wrists shriveled and melted with a filthy stink. Then her arms were free . . . free and crawling with yellow fire almost to her shoulders. There was no pain. Her arms felt blessedly cool, as if she had dipped them in the sea.

There was no need for torches anymore. The camp was all lit up. Harper faced a surging crowd of men and women with eyes that were bright and blind and shining. All of them were scrawled with glowing lines of Dragonscale, the spore casting a crimson light that shone right through sweaters and dresses. Some were outside barefoot and they walked in slippers of bronze.

Norma Heald, her eyes glowing like drops of cherry-colored neon, bent to grab another rock off the ground. Harper lunged and threw her right hand and a crescent of flame the size of a boomerang leapt through the darkness and struck the back of Norma's arm in a liquid spatter of fire. Norma shrieked, stumbled backward, and fell, taking down at least two people who stood behind her.

Harper heard screaming. She was conscious of motion at the edges of her vision, people running, shoving each other down. A rock whickered past her left ear and clattered off the standing stone to which she had been tied.