The Fireman

by Joe Hill

  “I hate a little that this feels good,” he said.

  “We’re just holding each other. We’re not even undressed.”

  “I shouldn’t have kissed you outside.”

  “We were drunk. We were having fun.”

  “I’m still in love with her, Harper.”

  “That’s okay, John. This isn’t anything.”

  “It is, though. It’s something to me.”

  “Okay. It’s something to me, too. But we aren’t going to do anything you have to feel bad about. You haven’t been held since she died, and people need that. People need closeness.”

  Firewood whistled and snapped.

  “But she isn’t dead. She isn’t alive, but she isn’t dead, either. She’s . . . stuck.”

  “I know.”

  The Fireman turned his head to look back at her, his gaunt features drawn in alarm and surprise.

  “I’ve known for a while,” Harper said. “I saw her once. In the fire. I know there’s something there, anyway, something in the furnace that you’re keeping alive. But whatever that is, it can’t be a person. It can’t be aware. Flame can’t have a consciousness.”

  “The spore can. That’s how the Phoenix seems alive. It is. It’s a part of me. Like a hand. Sarah’s body burned, but the girl in the fire remains. As long as I keep the fire going, some incombustible part of her survives.”

  “You should sleep.”

  “I don’t think I can. Not with my wrist throbbing like it is. Besides. Maybe I don’t just need to tell. Maybe you need to hear. Before you go any further down the road you’re on and wind up killing yourself like she did.”

  16

  “She took to the Bright straight off. I’ve never seen anyone get it faster. Four days after she developed visible marks, she was lighting up with us in chapel, brimming with brightness and joy. You know how the ’scale can be peculiarly beautiful? Comparing Sarah to the others was like comparing lightning to the lightning bug. It was exciting, and a little scary. She had more power than any of us. She’d play the organ, and after, no one could remember their own name—they could only remember hers. For hours after we joined together in the Bright, people would drift around, talking like her, walking like her.”

  “Carol has that effect on people now.” Harper considered for a moment, then said, “Allie does, too, I think. To a lesser degree.”

  “Sarah wanted me to show her how to light herself up, how to cast flame. She wanted to know how to send her consciousness out into fire. By then I was incorporating the Phoenix into rescue attempts, and Nick was making flocks of burning sparrows to hunt for the infected. I wouldn’t teach her, though. I was angry. I was so angry. Angry and scared. It was one thing to be contaminated by accident, and another to contaminate yourself on purpose. She wouldn’t let me off the hook, either. She threw every boast, every know-it-all lecture, every smug certainty back in my face. If casting fire was safe for her deaf nine-year-old and safe for her lover, it was safe for her. I had told her I wouldn’t trade the ’scale for anything, that I was glad to be a carrier. Didn’t we all say, in chapel, every day, how lucky we were? How blessed? She had seen us reeling with pleasure, with delight. How could I want that for myself and deny it to her? She had seen me fight for the sick and wanted to fight by my side. How could I refuse her?

  “The more she talked, the more pigheaded I became. I hated her, myself, the world. I was ill with it, sick with malice. There was so much I didn’t know. Only two people could throw fire without hurting themselves, Nick and myself. I held back on trying to teach Allie, although she had nagged me often enough. I had sound reasons for reluctance. Consider this, for example: What if full mastery of the Dragonscale is only possible for those with a Y chromosome? I’m sure that sounds sexist, but nature has never had any great interest in gender equality. What if you need a certain blood type to make it work? What if it’s a quirk of DNA, like those who are immune to HIV because of a mutation that strips of them of the receptor the virus needs to infect them?

  “So I wouldn’t teach Sarah. In the last weeks I was hardly talking to her. We shouted, we screamed at each other, but that wasn’t what I would call talking. I thought if I didn’t teach her, at least she wouldn’t be any worse off than anyone else in camp. At least she would be kept safe by joining the Bright. I thought I could protect her by shutting her out. Putting a wall up between us.”

  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 glass 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 balls 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 assumed 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 God, 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 hell 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 God. 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 embarrassment, 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 pass 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 brass 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 m
outh, 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?”