The Fireman: A Novel Part 41

Harper said, "But we can't vote tonight. Not if there are fifteen-seventeen-other people who want to throw in with us. How would we manage such a thing?"

Don and Renee and Allie traded looks and Harper felt once again that they were ahead of her by a step.

"Harper," Renee said. "We've already managed it. Everyone has already cast their vote, except for the seven of us in this room, and maybe the McLee brothers."

"Nope," Don said. "They made their wishes known, too."

"So it's down to just us. And let me tell you, it was hard work getting us this far. It isn't so easy to hold an election for the head of a secret society. Because I wouldn't tell anyone who was in and who wasn't. I don't like to be paranoid. But I couldn't discount the possibility that some of the people who told me they want to leave Camp Wyndham are feeding information back to Carol. For example, I never heard a single vote for Michael Lindqvist. I'm sure most people would be shocked to hear he's with us. He's always been Ben Patchett's right hand. No . . . most of the voting condensed around the two or three really obvious candidates."

"What makes someone an obvious candidate?"

"Anyone who isn't a part of the Bright anymore. Anyone who isn't singing Carol's song. Basically: the people in this room tonight. Not only do we all still have to cast our vote, we're also all the leading candidates." She reached into a worn, striped shoulder bag she had brought with her, and came up with a tablet of yellow lined paper. She placed it facedown on an end table. "After we fill out our own ballots, I'll let you know how everyone else voted." Renee reached into the shoulder bag again and came up with a pad of red sticky notes. She peeled squares off, one at a time, and handed them around. Don found a chipped mug with pens stuck into it and pa.s.sed them out.

"Do we have an official t.i.tle for the man or woman who wins this thing?" Gil asked, frowning at his own blank square.

"I like 'Master Conspirator,'" said the Fireman. "That has a nice ring. A touch of poetry and darkness to it. If you could get killed for having the job, you should at least have the pleasures of an official t.i.tle with some s.e.x appeal."

"So it shall be," Renee said. "Cast your vote for Master Conspirator."

There was a fidgety silence and the sounds of pens scratching on paper. When they had each finished, Renee was waiting with her tablet in hand.

"Of the fifteen people I spoke to," Renee began, and cleared her throat, and went on. "We had two votes for Don and two votes for Allie."

"What?" Allie cried, sounding genuinely surprised.

"Three for the Fireman," Renee said, "four votes for Harper, and four for me."

Harper flushed. Her Dragonscale p.r.i.c.kled-not unpleasantly.

Don said, "When I spoke to the McLee boys, they made their intentions clear enough. They both picked Allie."

"No, no, no, NO," Allie said. "I don't want the f.u.c.king job. I'm sixteen. If I won this thing, my first act as head honcho would be to burst into tears. Besides, Robert McLee only voted for me because he has a weird crush. A muscle twitches under one eye whenever he talks to me. And the other one just does what Robert tells him. Besides, they shouldn't get a vote! Does Chris McLee even have pubic hair yet?"

"I agree," the Fireman said. "No p.u.b.es, no vote. And since I'm against child sacrifice, I'm in favor of allowing Allie to unnominate herself. Did anyone who voted for Allie have a backup choice?"

"As it happens," Renee said, peering at her pad, "they do. One person chose John as an alternate. The other selected Don."

"Fack," Don said.

"Did the McLee brothers have a backup choice?" Renee asked.

"It wouldn't matter if they did," Don said, "since we agree they're too young to vote." Which was how Harper knew they had also picked Don as a backup.

"That's three for Don, and four for Harper, John, and myself."

"Better make it five for you, Renee," Gil said, unfolding his sticky and setting it on the table before him. "You did most of the planning and thinking that took us this far. I don't see any reason to change horses now."

Renee leaned toward him and lightly kissed his cheek. "You're such a kind and sweet man, Gil, I will ignore that you just called me a horse."

The Mazz said, "And five for the Fireman." Raising his own sticky so the rest of the room could have a look. "I seen him literally bring h.e.l.l down on the Portsmouth PD. That makes him the man in my book."

Don unfolded his own sticky and said, "Me, myself, I voted Harper. I seen the way she handled the infirmary when Father Storey was brought in and I seen the way she drilled into his head." He lifted his rheumy blue eyes and met Harper's gaze. "The worse things get-the more people are screamin' and cryin' and carryin' on-the calmer you get, Nurse Willowes. I couldn't stop shakin', and your hand was as steady as a board. I want you for it."

"We still have a three-way tie for the lead."

"Not anymore. Make it six for Harper," Allie said. "I think it ought to be her, too. Because I know no matter how bad I f.u.c.k up, she won't ever stick a stone in my mouth and make me feel like Judas. Even though after what I did, G.o.d knows she'd have every right."

"Oh, Allie," Harper said. "You apologized once. I don't expect you to do it over and over."

"It's not an apology. It's a vote," Allie said, meeting Harper's gaze almost with defiance.

"Yes, it is," Renee said. "And my vote is for Harper, too. It is awfully good of some people to have asked me to take the job, but I'd rather read about a grand escape than plan one. Besides, I'm terrible at keeping secrets and I hate to scheme against people. It seems rude. I don't deal with guilt well and I'm worried we might hurt some feelings in the process of defending ourselves. Also, I'm juggling a couple of books. Being a full-time conspirator would take away from my reading time. So it'll have to be Harper."

"Hey!" Harper said. "I've got books to read, too, lady!"

"It also crossed my mind that you are very pregnant, and I think that makes it much, much less likely they'll hang you if we're caught," Renee said. "And Harp, I hate to break it to you, but I think this puts you in charge. By my count you just won the vote, five to seven."

"Make it six to seven," Harper said. "Because I voted for John."

"What a coincidence." The Fireman opened his mouth in a toothy grin that made him look just mildly deranged. "So did I." Opening his vote and turning it to show what he had written there, a single word: myself.

9.

Ten minutes later the others were gone. Only Harper and the Fireman remained behind.

"Tell Michael I'll be along in a few hours and not to worry," Harper told Don Lewiston.

Renee leaned in from outside, through the half-open door, her hand on the latch.

"Don't forget to come back, Harper," Renee said, her eyes glittering from the cold or from delight, it was hard to say.

"Go on, you," Harper said. "Hurry. Don't you know the first rule of running a conspiracy? Don't get caught."

The door closed. Harper and the Fireman heard whispers, choked laughter, Allie singing a line of "Love Shack," and then the crunch of boots moving away. Finally it was just the two of them again, in a taut but agreeable silence, the kind of silence that precedes a first kiss.

They didn't kiss, though. Harper was aware of the open furnace at her back, the heat cast by the s.h.i.+fting flames, and wondered who was watching. He had gotten up twice to feed driftwood to the fire, and each time she thought, If we abandon Camp Wyndham, he won't be with us. He has to stay here and tend his private flames.

"It was a setup," she said. "You guys counted the votes ahead of time."

"Well. I wouldn't go that far. Let's just say the outcome was not entirely unforeseen. Why do you think Michael made a special point to let you know there was no rush to return tonight?"

There had been time, when they were all together, to sketch two different plans in broad outline. One imagined what they would do if they had to leave in a hurry. The other plotted a method to (gently) wrest control of camp away from Carol. It had been left to John and Harper to work out the details for both eventualities.

"I'm ready to hatch schemes if you are," he said.

"I need sugar for my best scheming," she said, found her canvas tote, and tugged out a Mary Poppins lunch box. "Nothing gets me in a conspiratorial mood like an illicit candy bar, even if they are a year old."

His brow knotted. "I warn you. Claiming to have candy bars when you don't would be a gross violation of your Hippocratic oath never to inflict needless suffering."

"I have news for you, Rookwood. I'm a nurse. We don't take the Hippocratic oath. That's just doctors. Nurses only swear to one thing-the patient will take his medicine."

"Sometimes you say something just a bit menacing and it gives me a happy little s.h.i.+ver," he said. And then, without any change of tone or hesitation, he added, "I'd burn Camp Wyndham to the ground before I'd let Carol and her sycophants take your baby from you. There'd be nothing left of this place but charred sticks. I hope you know that."

"Wouldn't be very fair to the rest of them, would it?" Harper asked. "They're not bad people, most of them. All they want is to be safe."

"Isn't that always a permission slip for ugliness and cruelty? All they want is to be safe, and they don't care who they have to destroy to stay that way. And the people who want to kill us, the Cremation Crews, all they want is safety, too! And the man I killed with the Phoenix the other night-the man behind the .50 caliber. I felt I had to do it. I had to cook him down to the bones. It was the only way I could know for sure you'd get back to me."

He looked at her with a curious mix of bemus.e.m.e.nt and grief. She wanted to take his hand. Instead she gave him a miniature Snickers and took a tiny Mounds bar for herself.

"Are we going to have to kill people to be safe?" Her voice was very quiet. "Do you think it will come to that? With Ben? With Carol? Because if you do, I think maybe I should row back to sh.o.r.e now. I don't want to make a plan to murder anyone."

"If you row back to sh.o.r.e now," he said, "it might murder me. So I guess you'll have to stay."

"I guess so," she said, and poured them each a little more rum.

10.

He said the candy bar was awful and he needed another one to get the taste out of his mouth. She gave him a cigarette instead and another splash of rum. He lit up with his thumb.

Harper wasn't so sure about the escape plan. It had too many moving parts. She had a list going, beginning with the letter A (Father Storey is responsive), continuing on through E (create a distraction by dropping the bell in the steeple), and finis.h.i.+ng with Q (Don leads the other boats north). That was way too much of the alphabet.

The Fireman, on the other hand, loved the plan. Of course he did. He had the starring role. Harper kept trying to subtract letters, and he kept trying to add them.

"I wish we had time to dig a tunnel," the Fireman said.

"To where?"

"It doesn't matter. You can't have a decent prison break without a tunnel. The aspiring novelist in me wants a secret tunnel hidden behind a false wall, or a poster of a famous movie star, or possibly in the back of a wardrobe. We could call it Operation Narnia! Don't tell me you wouldn't like that."

"I wouldn't like if you turned into a novelist. I might have to tear off half your face. That's what I did with the last wannabe writer to cross my path."

He swished the dregs of his banana liquor around his paper cup and then tossed the last of it back. "I forgot your husband was an aspiring novelist."

"Sometimes I think every man wants to be a writer. They want to invent a world with the perfect imaginary woman, someone they can boss around and undress at will. They can work out their own aggression with a few fictional rape scenes. Then they can send their fictional surrogate in to save her, a white knight-or a fireman! Someone with all the power and all the agency. Real women, on the other hand, have all these tiresome interests of their own, and won't follow an outline." A glumness settled upon her. It crossed her mind that she had never been Jakob's friend or wife or lover, but only his subject, only material. Writers were as parasitic, she supposed, as the spore itself.

"I am in one hundred percent agreement on the subject of outlines. Any writer who works by outline should be burned at the stake. Possibly with their own outline and notecards used as kindling. That's what I dislike most about our plan. It's an outline. Life doesn't work by outline. If I were writing this scene, I wouldn't even bother describing our plan, not in any detail. I already know it won't work out the way we're hoping. It would just be wasting the reader's time." He saw the look on her face and kicked her foot. "Oh, come on. We have candy bars and smokes and booze and evil plans. Don't get morose on me. What else is in that lunch box of yours?"

She took out a deformed, tumorous potato and set it on the bed.

The Fireman recoiled. "Aa! What the awful, bearded Christ is that?"

"That? That's Yukon Gold, Chumley," she said.

"Ah, well," he said. "I suppose we've had enough chocolate. How about a baked potato?"

He picked it up and clasped it between his hands. Smoke began to rise from between his fingers and with it, the smell of roasting spuds. The smell cheered Harper up. She couldn't help it.

"I love a man who knows how to cook," Harper said.

11.

He had salt and a little tumbler of olive oil and they split the potato. The fragrant mineral smell of it filled the shed. It was so good, it made Harper feel a bit teary, and when it was gone she licked oil and salt off her hands.

"You know what I miss?" she said.

"If you say Facebook, you'll ruin a perfectly lovely evening."

"I miss Coca-Cola. That would've been so good with a c.o.ke. You know, we might've f.u.c.ked up the planet, sucking out all the oil, melting ice caps, allowing ska music to flourish, but we made Coca-Cola, so G.o.dd.a.m.n it, people weren't all bad."

"As a species, we might not live to regret melting the ice caps. That's where it comes from, you know: the spore. I'm eighty percent sure. That's why all the earliest cases were along the Arctic Circle. It was under the glaciers. I think it's happened before, too. Everyone believed the dinosaurs were wiped out by a meteor strike, but I figure it was the spore. It hides under the ice until the world warms up enough to let it back into the air. Then it burns everything until the world is so blanketed in smoke the planet freezes over again. The mold dies out, except for a little bit that is preserved once more under the ice. There have been six extinction events in the life of this planet. I bet every one of them was the spore."

"You're saying it's a planetary T cell. It attacks any infection that throws the environment out of whack. Like us."

He nodded.

"That's the third-best theory I've ever heard. I like the idea that the Russians bred a superfungus back in the seventies, out on this island for testing biological weapons. Rebirth Island, I think it was called. They had to abandon the site in 2000 after the spore got loose. But the island was in a lake that dried up and animals crossed back and forth, carrying the ash in their fur. All the early cases were in Russia."

"You said third-best theory. Is there something better than Arctic melt or a Russian island of pure evil?"

"I also like the idea that G.o.d is punis.h.i.+ng us with killer athlete's foot for wearing Crocs." She gave herself another tipple of banana liquor. In her medical opinion, another sip wouldn't give the baby a deformed brain. "Now that the world is over, what do you most regret not getting to do?"

"Julianne Moore," he said. "And Gillian Anderson. At the same time or separately, it really would've made no difference."

"I mean what did you want to do that actually might've happened."