The Fireman

by Joe Hill

  “Are they all like that?”

  “I scratched them up the same. I got hysterical. I’m ashamed of that now, but it’s true.”

  “I don’t think that’s Dragonscale. I’ve seen a lot of it, I should know. And Jakob: you’ve been out of this house six weeks. Almost seven. If you don’t have it yet, that probably means—”

  “It means you’ll say anything to stop what happens next. I knew you’d try and tell me I wasn’t sick. I could’ve scripted this entire conversation. You think I don’t know what a burn feels like? It hurts all the time.”

  “It’s infected, Jakob, but not with the trychophyton. It’s infected because you clawed yourself up and it hasn’t been treated or dressed. Jakob. Please. You’re healthy. You should leave. You should go right now.”

  “Stop it. Stop bargaining and stop lying. I don’t want to hate you right now, but every time you tell me another lie, to try and save yourself, I just want to shut you up.”

  “When was the last time you ate?”

  “I don’t know how you can even talk about food. Maybe I should just do it right now. This is awful. This isn’t like we talked about. We talked about making love and having music and reading our favorite poems to each other. We talked about making it nice, a little party for two. But you’re just scared, and if I didn’t have this gun you’d run away. You’d run and let me die by myself. Without a shred of guilt about what you did to me. About passing it to me. That’s the real reason you keep telling me I’m okay, I think. You’re not just lying to me. You’re lying to yourself. You can’t face it. What you did.”

  His voice was serene, without the slightest trace of the hysteria she had heard when they talked on the phone. His gaze was serene, too. He watched her with the sort of glassy calm Harper associated with the mentally ill, people who sat on park benches chatting gaily with invisible friends.

  His newfound calm did not entirely surprise her. Terror was a fire that held you trapped in the top floor of a burning building; the only way to escape it was to jump. He had been stoking himself up to this last leap for weeks. She had heard it in his voice, every time they talked on the phone, even if she didn’t recognize it at the time. He had made his choice at last and it had brought him the peace he was looking for. He was ready to go out the window; he wanted only to be holding her hand on the way down.

  What did surprise her was her own calm. She wondered at it. In the days before the Earth began to burn, she had carried anxiety with her to work every morning and brought it home with her every night; a nameless, inconsiderate companion that had a habit of poking her in the ribs whenever she was trying to relax. And yet in those days there was nothing really to be anxious about. Her head would spin at the thought of defaulting on her student loans, of getting into another yelling match with her neighbor about his dog’s habit of tearing open garbage and spreading it all over her lawn. And now she had a baby in her, and sickness crawling on her skin, and Jakob was crazy, sitting there watching her with his gun, and there was only this quiet readiness, which she irrationally believed had been waiting for her all her life.

  At the end, I get to be the person I always wanted to be, she thought.

  “Is that really so terrible?” she asked. “Is it really so awful that I wanted to believe you didn’t have it? I wanted you and the baby to make it. I wanted that more than I ever wanted anything, Jake.”

  Something seemed to dim in his eyes. His shoulders drooped.

  “Well, that was stupid. No one is going to make it. The whole world is toast. Literally. The planet is going to be a cinder by the time we’re done with it. Everyone is going to die. This is the last generation. I think we always knew that. Even before Dragonscale. We knew we were going to choke on our pollution and run out of food and air and all the rest of it.”

  He could not resist lecturing her, even in the last minutes of her life, and it came to her then that she hadn’t been in love with him for years. He was a tiresome know-it-all. This was followed by a second, startling notion that she wasn’t quite ready to process, which was that she hadn’t gone to work in the hospital hoping to be Florence Nightingale, no matter what he said. She had gone to work there because she wasn’t interested in her own life anymore. She had never felt she was putting anything of great value at risk.

  This was followed by a slow throb of anger, which she felt as a hot prickle in her Dragonscale. Jakob had done that to her—plunged his philosophical syringe into her life and tried to suck all the simple happiness out of it. In a sense, he had been trying to kill her for years.

  She felt herself getting ready. She didn’t even know for what. She was gathering her courage for some act that was as yet unclear to her, but which she felt was coming, rushing toward her.

  “I read your book,” she said.

  And there, she saw a flicker of something human, something besides his patient, beatific, dangerous calm. Behaviorists talked about micro-expressions, emotions that jumped to the surface, revealing all, in a flicker almost too fast to catch. For the briefest instant he regarded her with uncertainty and a blanch of discomfort. It was a wonder, how much information could pass between two people in a single glance, without a word being said. He had, after all, really cheated on her with any number of their friends. That momentary look of shame was as good as a confession.

  “Pretty dirty, dude,” she said. “I was getting hot flashes that don’t have anything to do with Dragonscale.”

  “I asked you not to read it,” he said.

  “So shoot me.”

  He made a harsh barking sound. It took her a moment to identify this noise as laughter.

  She exhaled again and threw her hands down and shook them, as if they were wet and she were air-drying them. “Whoo. All right. The world is going to have to burn out without us. I want something good before I go.”

  He gave her a dull, hopeless look.

  “Please. I’ll try,” she said. “I’ll try to make it nice.”

  “I don’t know if it’ll do any good. I’m not in the mood anymore. I think maybe I just want to get it over with.”

  “But I’m not ready. And you want it to feel right for me, don’t you? Besides. I’m not going without getting laid once more.” And she laughed and tried to smile. “You’ve got no one to blame but yourself, Jakob Grayson. Leaving a bored and lonely woman all alone with that pile of shameless filth.” Gesturing with her head at the manuscript on the desk.

  He smiled himself, although it looked forced. “Sex means more to you than it does to me. I know that turns the stereotype on its head. You really live in your body more than I do. It’s one of the things I always found exciting about you. But now—at the moment, I suppose I regard the sexual act with a certain amount of disgust.”

  She turned and crossed to the Hello Kitty boom box on the shelf. She had brought it in here the other day after discovering fresh batteries in the basement.

  “What are you doing?” Jakob asked.

  “Music.”

  “I don’t need music. I’d rather just talk.”

  “I need music. And a drink. You need a drink, too.”

  Finally, something got through to him. He said, “I’d kill for a drink.” He made the harsh barking sound again, the one that seemed to stand for laughter.

  He could’ve shot her already, if her death was all he wanted, but it wasn’t. Part of him wanted more: a last kiss, a last fuck, a last drink, or maybe something deeper, forgiveness, absolution. Harper wasn’t inclined to let him have any of it, but was happy to let him hope. It was keeping her alive. She turned on the FM. The classic-rock station was playing an oldie but a goodie. A lovestruck Romeo was getting ready to start the serenade, you and me, babe, how ’bout it, and for no reason at all, Harper thought of Hillary Clinton.

  She stood in front of the sound box, moving her hips from side to side. She didn’t doubt that Jakob currently regarded sex with disgust, but he wasn’t the only one who had taken some psychology courses in college
. She hadn’t forgotten what lay just across the border from disgust.

  She kept her back to him for maybe ten seconds, pretending to be lost in the music, then cast a slow look over her shoulder. His gaze was fixed raptly upon her.

  “You hurt me,” she said. “You threw me down.”

  “I’m sorry. That was across the line.”

  “Except in the bedroom,” she said.

  He narrowed his eyes, and she knew she had pushed it too far, had strained his credulity—she never talked that way about sex—but before he could speak, she said, “Our bottle!” As if she were just remembering. “I want to have that bottle of wine we brought back from France. Remember? You said it was the best you ever had and we should save it for something important.” She gave him what she hoped was a wry look and said, “Is this important enough?”

  The wines were all there in the study with them, the whites in the cooler that wasn’t keeping them cool anymore, the reds in the cupboard. Whenever they went somewhere, they bought a bottle of wine, the way other people bought fridge magnets. They hadn’t gone so many places, though, in the last few years. She grabbed for the honeymoon French Bordeaux, and her palm was so damp with sweat it almost slipped out of her grasp and flew across the room at him. She imagined him jumping in surprise and shooting her in the stomach, just out of reflex. Killing her and the baby in one shot, which, when she thought about it, would be perfectly in keeping with Jakob’s character. He was parsimonious by nature, hated waste; he had often scolded her for using too much milk in her cereal.

  She pinned the bottle between her body and her right arm, and took two wine goblets from where they hung under one of the bookshelves. The deep crystal glasses clinked musically together, while her hands trembled. She got the corkscrew.

  Her plan was to use it to pull the cork, then ask him to pour the wine. And while he was pouring it, she would wiggle the cork off the screw and stab him in the face. Or, if she didn’t have the stomach for that, she would at least try to impale him in the back of the hand that held the gun.

  She sat down on the edge of the coffee table, facing him and the Great Egg. The gun rested on his knee, the barrel pointing at her, but without any particular intention. She had the corkscrew in her right hand, the twisted point sticking between her middle and ring fingers. He was a long way off—she would have to throw herself at him to get the corkscrew into his face. But maybe he would be closer when he poured the wine. Maybe.

  Then she shifted her gaze to his eyes and saw him staring at her with icy speculation. His face was pale and still and nearly expressionless.

  “Do you think if you get me drunk and fuck me, it’ll change my mind about what has to happen?” he asked her.

  She said, “I thought getting drunk and making love and having a good time was the whole idea. Doing it on our terms. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

  “It is. But I’m still not clear that’s what you want. I don’t know if that’s what you ever wanted. Maybe in some vapid, Lifetime movie sense, you liked the idea of pulling a Romeo and Juliet, and dying side by side, but you were never really committed. You never thought it would happen. Now it’s time, and you’ll do anything to get out of it. Including whore yourself.” He rocked back and forth and then said, “I know it’s politically incorrect to say, but what the hell, we’re both about to die: I’ve never thought much of the intelligence of women. I’ve never once met a woman who had any true intellectual rigor. There’s a reason things like Facebook and airplanes and all the other great inventions of our time were made by men.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “So they could get laid. Are we going to drink this wine or what?”

  He made the barking sound again. “You’re not even going to deny it?”

  “Which part? The part about how women are stupid, or the part about how I don’t really want to kill myself with you?”

  “The part where you think you can shake your ass and make me forget what I came here to do. Because it’s getting done. If nothing else, I have a moral obligation to stop you from going out in the world and infecting someone else like you infected me.”

  “Thought you said the world was going to end, so what would it matter? What would it—” But she couldn’t talk anymore. Something awful was happening.

  The cork wouldn’t come out of the bottle.

  It was a fat cork, sealed with dribbles of wax, and she had the bottle under her arm and was pulling at the corkscrew with the other hand, but the cork wouldn’t give in the slightest, felt fixed in place.

  He reached across the table with his left hand and caught the neck of the bottle and tugged it out from under her arm. His right hand continued to grip the gun.

  “I told you these needed to be kept someplace dry,” he said. “The cork swells. I told you it was a mistake to just stick the reds in the cabinet.”

  I told you had to be some kind of karmic opposite to the words I love you. He had always found it much easier to say “I told you.” It would’ve been something to resent, if she didn’t feel all the breath go out of her. Because now Jakob had the corkscrew. She had let him take it without a struggle, without an objection, the only weapon she had.

  He squeezed the bottle between his thighs, hunched and pulled. His neck reddened and cords stood out in it. Those fat blobs of wax split and the cork began to move. She looked at the gun. He still held it with his free hand—but it shifted a titch, to point more toward the bookshelf behind her.

  “Get your glass,” he said. “It’s coming.”

  She picked up her goblet and scootched forward, so her knees bumped his. Time began to move in small, careful increments. The cork moved another centimeter. And another. And came out with a perfect little pop. He exhaled and set the corkscrew down by his knee, where she couldn’t reach it.

  “Have a taste,” he said, and spilled a trickle into her outstretched glass.

  Jakob had taught her how to drink wine when they were in France, had instructed her in the subject with great enthusiasm. She stuck her nose into the cavern of the glass and inhaled, filled her nostrils with peppery fumes so strong it was possible to imagine getting drunk off them alone. It smelled good, but instead she flinched and frowned.

  “Oh, damn it, does everything have to be wrong?” She lifted her gaze. “It went over. It’s complete vinegar. Do we get another one? We’ve got that one from Napa. The one you said all the collectors want.”

  “What? It’s not even ten years old. That doesn’t seem right. Let me see.” He bent toward her, coming halfway out of the Egg.

  His eyes widened the instant before she moved. He was quick, almost quick enough to duck out of the way, but that little lean was all she needed.

  She smashed the glass into his face. The goblet shattered with a pretty, tuneful sound, and glass fangs tore open the skin in bright red lines, carving across his cheekbone, the bridge of his nose, and his eyebrow. It looked like a tiger cub had swiped at his face.

  He screamed and lifted the gun and it went off. The sound of it was a shattering slam, right next to her head.

  A shelf of books behind her exploded and the air filled with a snowstorm of flying pages. Harper came to her feet, pitching herself to her left, toward the door to the bedroom. She smashed a knee against the edge of the coffee table, coming around it, registered the impact but felt no pain.

  An awesome silence gathered around her, the only noise in it a high-pitched whining, the sound of a struck tuning fork. A torn sheet of paper, part of some book, floated down and caught against her chest, stuck there.

  The recoil flipped the Great Egg straight back, with Jakob still in it. The bottle flew as he fell backward, sailed across the room, and clubbed her in the shoulder. She kept going, crossed the den in three steps, and reached the door to the bedroom. The doorframe exploded to the left of her ear, throwing white chunks of wood into her hair, into her face. The sound of the gun going off was so muffled, it was like hearing a car door slam in the street. Then she was through
, into the bedroom.

  She snatched thoughtlessly at the sheet of paper stuck to her chest, pulled it back, stared down at it, saw a handful of words:

  his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history.

  She flung it aside, behind her, back into the den, and slammed the door after it.

  15

  There was a lock on the door that she didn’t bother with. No point. It was a button lock and he’d kick right through it. She wasn’t even sure the door would stay shut, half the doorframe missing where a bullet had smashed into it.

  She grabbed the wooden chair to the left of the door and flung it down, something to put in the way. Her carpetbag was at the foot of the bed, clothes stacked inside under The Portable Mother. She caught it by the leather handles and kept going, on to the window that looked over the backyard. She flicked the lock and shoved it up. Behind her, the chair shattered with a muffled crunch.

  The hill behind the house dropped steeply, a long grade that led down to the trees. The bedroom appeared to be on the first floor, if you were looking at the house from the front. But when you came around back, it was possible to see the bedroom was really on the second floor: a finished, walk-in basement was beneath it. From the bedroom window, it was a fifteen-foot drop into darkness.

  As she threw her legs over the sill, she looked down and saw she was pouring blood, the whole front of her white halter soaked with it. She couldn’t feel where she had been hit. She couldn’t take time to think about it. She jumped, dragging her bag. The window exploded outward behind her as Jakob put a bullet in it.

  She fell and expected to hit the ground and didn’t and fell some more. Her stomach flipped inside her. Then she hit, her right foot folding under her with a breathtaking flash of pain. She thought of pianos falling in silent movies, shattering on impact, ivory keys spilling over the sidewalk like so many scattered teeth.