The Fireman: A Novel Part 16

JANUARY.

1.

She woke on the second day of January, not from a nightmare, but to a sensation of something s.h.i.+fting inside her, pus.h.i.+ng out against the muscles of her abdomen.

Harper lay awake in the darkness, eyes open wide, her hands spread across the taut gourd of her stomach.

A bony protrusion, about the size of a thumb knuckle, pressed up from within, rising against her right palm.

"Hey, you," she whispered.

2.

The night the locket went missing, Renee and Harper were listening to the Marlboro Man on a battery-powered radio.

"I don't understand how you can stand that man." Norma Heald was pa.s.sing by their cots and had paused to hear what they had on. "Every word is a drop of poison in your ears."

Renee said, "He's the closest thing to local news left."

"More importantly," Harper told her, "we're awful women and his awfulness excites us. The more awful, the better."

"Yes," Renee said. "That, too."

Harper was planting kisses on squares of parchment paper, trying out various shades of lipstick. After a kiss, she would wipe her mouth clean and try another. Renee had collected different lipsticks from everyone in the bas.e.m.e.nt.

When Harper made a pleasant lipstick print, she would hand it off to Renee, who would roll it around a cinnamon stick, or a fragrant piece of shriveled lemon peel, and tuck it into a little gla.s.s bottle and cork it up. These were emergency kisses. Harper was stocking the Portable Mother with them so that when her son needed a kiss, he would have plenty to choose from. The Portable Mother was no longer a book, but a package, a whole collection of potentially useful items, which had swelled to occupy Harper's entire carpetbag.

Nick was underfoot, playing Yahtzee against himself. Dice rattled and crashed inside the plastic cup. The bas.e.m.e.nt was crowded, loud with conversation, argument, laughter, creaking bedsprings, everyone trapped in close quarters while it snowed heavily outside.

On the radio, the Marlboro Man said, "You think a girl with Dragonscale can blow smoke rings with her vajayjay? Friend, I always wondered about that myself. Well, this weekend the Marlboro Man was on the loose in Portsmouth with the Seacoast Incinerators and had a chance to find out. I'll tell you all about it in a minute, but first, here's a story from Concord. Governor Ian Judd-Skiller said members of the National Guard were only defending themselves when they shot and killed eleven burners yesterday on the Canadian border. The mob charged the barricade with sticks-not white flags, as has been reported elsewhere-and the besieged soldiers opened fire to disperse . . ."

"He's a murderer," Norma said and sniffed. "That DJ you're listening to. He's killed people like us. And he boasts about it. Hemlock in your ears-that's what he is."

"Yes," Renee said. "He's very stupid, you know. That's another reason to listen. The more we know about him, the less likely he'll ever know anything about us. People call in with tips and this bozo airs them live. If anyone ever mentions Camp Wyndham or points him in our direction, we'll have a head start. And even if they don't call in, I've learned all kinds of things about the Cremation Crew he runs with, just by paying attention to his program. I've learned it's made up of eight men and women, and that two are former military and were able to supply some heavy ordnance. A fifty-caliber something? I gather that's a pretty big gun. I know they travel in two vehicles, a van and a big orange truck. I know they have a police scanner, and most of the time, local law enforcement is happy to-"

"Orange truck?" Harper asked. "You mean like a town truck?"

Across the room, Allie screamed, "No, NO!" and flipped her cot with an echoing bang.

Every head turned-except for Nick's, of course, since he had heard nothing.

Allie kicked over a battered suitcase, dumping filthy laundry on the floor.

"f.u.c.k!" she screamed. "f.u.c.k! f.u.c.k f.u.c.k f.u.c.k f.u.c.k f.u.c.k!"

Conversations petered out. Emily Waterman, barely eleven, a girl who had outlived her entire family and who had pretty feathers of Dragonscale on the backs of her freckled arms, climbed under her cot and covered her ears.

Renee was the first to move, her round, pleasant face remaining entirely calm. Harper was two steps behind her.

Renee slowed as she approached Allie, moving toward her in much the same way she might've attempted to get near a feral cat. Harper sank to her knees to look under Emily Waterman's bed.

"Emily? Everything is okay," Harper said, reaching out for her. In a whisper, she added, "Allie is being a fusspot."

But Emily shook her head and shrank from Harper's hand. Harper wished she had her Mary Poppins lunch box, with its individually wrapped candies and emergency radish.

"Allie," Renee said. "What's wrong?"

"It's gone, it's f.u.c.king gone-"

"What's gone? What did you lose?"

"I didn't lose anything. My locket was under my pillow and now it isn't because one of you b.i.t.c.hes took it." She glared around the bas.e.m.e.nt.

Emily made a thin squeal of terror and turned her face from Harper's outstretched hand. Harper considered trying to pull her out for a hug, decided that might be too alarming, and settled for reaching under to stroke her back.

Renee said, "Allie, I know you're upset, but you need to lower your voice-"

"I don't need to do s.h.i.+t."

"-because you're frightening the little ones. Why don't you ask Nick-"

"I asked him, don't you think I asked him when I started looking for it, fifteen minutes ago?"

A tendril of pale smoke trickled from under one pant leg of Emily Waterman's baggy overalls.

"Allie!" Harper said. "Stop it. You're giving Emily the smokes!"

"Please, Allie," Renee said, putting a hand on Allie's shoulder. "We've all been under so much pressure, you wouldn't be human if you didn't sometimes want to scream. But if you'll sit down with me-"

"Will you stop touching me?" Allie cried. She shrugged off Renee's hand. "You don't know anything about me. You aren't my mother. My mother burned to death. You are no one to me. You are not my mother and you are not my friend. You're a pain vulture who circles around and around, looking for someone to feed off. That's why you spend all your free time reading to the kids. You love their wounded little hearts. You feed off their loneliness just like a vampire. You love kids with no parents, because they need someone. It's easy to read them a story to make yourself feel special. But you aren't special. Stop feeding off us all."

A stunned silence fell upon the bas.e.m.e.nt.

Harper wanted to say something but had lost the trick of speech. She was not sure if she had been silenced by her horror-she had never imagined Allie, who was so daring, so clever, so beautiful, and so funny, could be so cruel-or by a crippling wave of dej vu. For when Allie insisted altruism was really selfishness, and kindness a form of manipulation, she sounded just like Jakob. She had all his savage powers of logic. It made a person feel naive and childish for imagining there could be any good in the world at all.

For herself, Renee had lifted an arm to protect her face, as if she expected to be struck. She studied Allie with a mute, wounded fascination.

The room was still waiting for her to reply-to defend herself-when Nick charged across the bas.e.m.e.nt, inserting himself between Allie and Renee. He held up his Yahtzee scorecard, turned over to the back, where he had written: TWO YAHTZEES IN A ROW!!.

Allie stared at this message with blank incomprehension. Then she took the sheet of paper from his hands, balled it up, and threw it in his face. It bounced off his forehead and onto the floor.

Nick staggered backward, as if he had been shoved. His shoulder thumped into Renee's breast. Harper did not think she had ever seen so much naked hurt in a face before.

He ran. Before anyone could catch him, he flew to the stairs. He hesitated at the bottom of the steps for one last look at his older sister, and for a moment he fixed her with a glare of contempt as fierce as anything Allie herself could produce. Like their elfin good looks, a gift for hate was, perhaps, something that ran in the family.

Harper called his name, called for him to wait. But of course Nick didn't-couldn't-hear her. Harper rose to go after him, but he had already dashed up the stairs, banged through the door at the top, and launched himself into the falling snow.

She turned a frustrated look upon Allie.

"What? What? You got something to say, Nurse n.o.body?" Allie asked her.

"Yes," Harper said, summoning up all the Julie Andrews she had in her heart. "A bad show, Allie. A very bad show. He also lost his mother, you know, and you are all he has left. For shame. After he threw two Yahtzees!"

Allie's response to this shocked Harper more than anything else. Her face crumpled and she began to sob. She sat down hard, with her back against the springs of her overturned bed.

At this sudden display of defeat, the Neighbors twins, Jamie Close, and all the other members of Allie's unofficial, unnamed sorority-that society of orphan girls with shaved heads-flocked to her side. Even Emily Waterman scuttled out from under her cot and ran over to throw her arms around Allie's neck. Girls took her hands and sat beside her, whispering soothingly and fussing over her. Gail Neighbors began to quietly pick up her things. One entering the room would've imagined Allie was the person who had just been bullied and humiliated, not Renee or Nick.

Harper returned to her cot, which was at a right angle to Renee's. Renee was already sitting on the edge of her mattress by then, looking as worn and disheartened as Harper felt.

"Should one of us go after Nick?" Renee asked.

"I don't think so. He won't go far in this snow. The Lookouts will yell if he so much as steps off the planks. One of them will bring him back eventually."

The Marlboro Man was still chattering, saying something about a woman who had smelled like a wet cat when she burned. He seemed offended that she had the bad grace to stink when she died. Talk radio was enough to make Harper think the end of the world wasn't so bad after all.

"I can't take anymore," Renee said, and Harper thought she was speaking of life in the camp, but she only meant the DJ. Renee reached out and, with an irritated flick, switched the radio to AM and began to skip through bands of static.

Harper said, "What are you doing? Why are people in this camp always listening to static? What are all of you listening for?"

"Martha Quinn," Renee said.

"Martha Quinn? Martha Quinn, who used to be on MTV a thousand years ago?"

"She's out there . . . somewhere."

"Lies," Norma Heald murmured. "All lies. That's a pipe dream."

Renee ignored her. "You know what the kids say."

"I have no idea what the kids say. What do they say?"

"She came back from the eighties to save mankind. Martha Quinn is our only hope."

3.

"I've never heard the broadcast myself, but supposedly she's transmitting from off the coast of Maine." Renee struggled into a bulky orange parka.

It was later. Women milled around the bottom of the bas.e.m.e.nt steps, picking coats and hats out of cardboard boxes, readying themselves for the three-hundred-foot march through the snow to the cafeteria and supper. Outside, the wind screamed.

"From a boat?"

"From an island. They've got a little town and their own research lab, backed by the federal government. What's left of the federal government, anyway. They're testing experimental treatments."

Jamie Close grinned, showing snaggled teeth, two incisors missing from the lower part of her mouth. "They've got a serum they give to you in eighteen shots. Like for rabies. It suppresses the Dragonscale, but they need to give it to you every day. Bend over, drop your pants, and bite on this stick, because you're getting it right in the a.s.s. I say no thank you to that. If I wanted someone poking painful things in my a.s.s every day, I've got an uncle I could look up."

Harper had a scarf over her mouth, wound around and around the lower part of her face, and she felt this gave her permission not to reply. She squeezed into the crowd of women making their way up the steps, out into the darkness and the shrieking gale.

"It's not as bad as that," murmured Gail Neighbors. At least Harper thought it was Gail Neighbors. It would've been difficult to tell the twins apart under any circ.u.mstances, but with a hat pulled to the girl's eyebrows and the puffy collar of her parka up around her ears, Harper could hardly see any of her face. "Apparently they're doing great things with medical marijuana. Everyone gets an allowance, seven joints a week. Government-bred weed, so it's really clean, really mellow."

"Also, the legal drinking age there is sixteen," said the one Harper thought was Gillian. They had both turned sixteen, Harper recalled, just after Thanksgiving.

The pressure of the crowd behind Harper ejected her out of the stairwell and into the night. A pair of planks ran alongside each other, across the snow, dwindling off into the darkness. The salty gale battered at Harper, caused her to stagger. She wasn't as steady on her pins as she had been a couple months ago. Her center of gravity was s.h.i.+fting. She steadied herself against a boulder wearing a white cap of snow.

The Neighbors girls pa.s.sed her, went on ahead. Emily Waterman skipped along behind them, and Harper heard her saying, "They have ice cream on Fridays! Homemade ice cream! Three flavors, strawberry, vanilla, and I think coffee. Coffee is my favorite."

"Ice cream every day!" promised one of the Neighbors girls.

"Ice cream for breakfast!" said the other, and then they were gone into the night.

Allie took Harper's elbow, helped her to stand straight.

"Think Nick went to the cafeteria?" Allie asked in a low, dispirited voice. He hadn't returned to the dorm, hadn't been seen since running out.

"I don't know," Harper said. "Probably."

"Think Renee will ever talk to me again?"

"I think you'll feel better as soon as you apologize."

"Don Lewiston knows where it is."