The Fireman

by Joe Hill

  “Five on the road, Jim,” said one of the armed men, his voice muffled by his mask.

  Jim looked up from his book and gazed mildly around. He had a big, humorous beak of a nose, and pale eyes, and overgrown eyebrows. He dropped his crossword puzzle and hopped out. He squeezed between the gunmen, and as he did, he reached out absentmindedly and put his hand on the barrel of one of the machine guns, nudging it so it pointed down at the blacktop. Harper took this as a promising gesture.

  “Welcome to Machias!” called the one named Jim, slowing as he walked toward them. “You’ve had quite a walk. Dorothy didn’t have to go half as far with Toto.”

  “Are you going to take us to Oz?” Renée Gilmonton asked.

  “It’s not exactly the Emerald City,” Jim said. “But they’ve got hot water and power out on the island.” His gaze drifted to Harper’s stomach, and for a moment his smile faltered, and he looked thoughtful and a little sad. “Doctors, too, although their head researcher, Professor Huston, died in the big fire back in January.”

  “Big fire?” Renée asked. “Does that mean what I think it means?”

  “No cure, I’m afraid,” Jim said. “And more than a few setbacks. Including one mishap that was, well, pretty awful. No way around it. A whole control group of thirty infected had some kind of reaction to a drug they were testing. They all went up within a few hours of each other. The fire slipped out of control and burnt down the central medical facility, although the remaining staff has set up shop in a farmhouse. Now, don’t you worry. We sent word one of you was pregnant and looked to be pretty far along. When are you expecting?”

  “I believe I’m a few days overdue, actually,” Harper said.

  Jim shook his head. “At least you didn’t have to deliver on the road. The medical folk out on the island are aware of your condition. They’ve got a bed all made up for you.”

  Harper was surprised by the intensity of her relief. For a moment her legs felt wobbly beneath her. Something, some muscular ache, a cramped tightness, seemed to let go behind her chest . . . some part of her that had been clenched up, perhaps for months.

  “If we move we can have you there by midnight,” Jim said. “It’s a three-hour ride in the boat, and we have to pass you through processing before we can depart. The good news is we knew you were coming. Boat is already loaded, prepped to go.”

  “What’s he saying?” Nick asked with his hands.

  Harper explained. The man named Jim watched, his bushy eyebrows knitted together, half smile on his face.

  “Deaf?” he asked, and when she nodded he shook his head. “Deaf and infected. Some kids get all the luck.” He crouched down, hands on his knees, to look into Nick’s face, and in a very loud voice, moving his lips slowly, he said, “There’s plenty! Of kids! Where you’re going! Lots of little guys! To play with!”

  Nick looked at Harper and she explained with her hands, standing to one side. Nick’s reply required no translation at all. He gave a thumbs-up.

  Jim nodded, satisfied, and slopped his mask onto his head. “Come on. Jump in the jeep.”

  Harper walked beside the Fireman. She held his elbow with one hand and carried the Portable Mother in the other. She raised her voice to be heard over a sudden gusting wind. “I have only two questions: When do we get to meet Martha Quinn, and does she take requests?”

  Jim glanced back at them as he got behind the wheel. Through the plastic window in his mask, he smiled. “You’ll be with her before you know it.”

  He didn’t answer the second question.

  31

  After twenty days of walking, Harper found the rush of moving at high speed in a jeep a little alarming. She sat up front, next to Jim. Renée and the Fireman sat in back, Allie squeezed between them and Nick perched on Renée’s lap. One of the gunmen traveled with them, too, although he sat on the very back of the jeep, holding on to the roll bar, his feet dangling over the rear fender and his gun swinging carelessly from a strap around his neck.

  It didn’t help Harper’s troubled stomach any when Jim turned the jeep around and drove it up onto a wide gravel path, not a road at all. They jounced over ruts and potholes, the branches of fir trees whipping past above them. Jim said they were on something called the Sunrise Trail.

  “This thing was intended for bicycles,” he said, by way of apology. “And hikers. But it’s the best route to the processing center without bringing you through town.”

  The Fireman leaned forward. “I’m surprised you’re wearing all that gear. They must thoroughly understand how transmission works by now, after, what, a year of study? If we understand it, they must. Your experts out on the island.”

  Jim listened but didn’t reply.

  “It’s the ash!” the Fireman yelled to be heard over the roar of the slipstream. “If you don’t come in contact with the ash, there’s nothing to worry about!”

  “That’s one theory,” Jim said.

  “It’s not one theory. It’s the fact!” the Fireman said.

  “You some kind of biologist?”

  “I used to teach at UNH.”

  “I’m sure they’ll be glad to have your expertise,” Jim called back. “Put you right to work.”

  The way he said it, Harper wasn’t sure if he was making fun or being serious.

  Back on the highway, it had been a dim, rose-tinted dusk. Beneath the trees it was already full splendid night, the pines whipping by in a warm blast of darkness. Through gaps in the trees, Harper glimpsed an estuary, a broad plate of black glass under a blushing sky. She spotted a scattering of electric lights, the town over there somewhere.

  The Fireman leaned forward again. “You still have power. Do you have cell phone coverage as well? I’m curious how folks were able to pass word up the road that we were coming.”

  “We’re very grateful to everyone who put food out for us!” Renée called.

  Harper was grateful to everyone who had put out food except for whoever decided to get rid of their rancid bologna by dumping it on the pregnant lady. Her stomach was a knot of worms.

  “Yeah, power in some places. Though it’s spotty and it goes out quite a bit. No cell phone coverage, but we’ve got a working landline system in Machias—the governor saw to that—and we can communicate with people farther away by CB.” Jim thought for a moment, the steering wheel rocking gently in his hand, then said, “We don’t get too many coming from the south anymore. Not across the wastelands. We don’t get many at all these days, but when we do have new arrivals, they’re usually from the north. Across from Canada.”

  “How many have you saved?” Harper yelled. She thought talking might help take her mind off her building nausea.

  “Six hundred and ninety-four men, women, and children,” Jim proclaimed. “And with you it’ll be six hundred and ninety-nine. No, make it seven hundred on the dot, counting baby! Can’t forget baby!”

  “We need to talk about that,” Harper said. “About who will take him, assuming he’s born without contamination.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s been a while since I’ve read the medical literature, but last I heard, there was a hypothesis that the children of mothers with Dragonscale are unlikely to carry the infection themselves.”

  “I’m afraid my medical expertise pretty much ends at putting on Band-Aids when my eight-year-old scrapes her knee.”

  “But there must’ve been children born on the island, with almost seven hundred people there. Maybe?”

  “Above my pay grade!” he said cheerfully.

  The trees began to break up, and to the right of the jeep, Harper saw high grass, a stretch of wet sand, and distant water. Out across a bay stood a lighthouse, sweeping the ocean. It did actually resemble a candle on the water, a thick white one, lit to mark a child’s first birthday, perhaps.

  “If the baby is born uncontaminated,” Harper tried again, “I’d like to have some say over the foster family.”

  “I don’t know anything about that.
I haven’t heard of anyone adopting sick babies.”

  “He won’t be sick,” she said, feeling he was missing the crucial point.

  Jim’s smile broadened behind his clear plastic faceplate. “It’s a boy? You know that for certain?”

  “Yes,” Harper said. It felt certain to her.

  She waited for him to comment, but Jim fell quiet again. She decided to leave it, supposed she could coordinate with the medical staff on the island. The trees fell away and they went on and on. To the right was a shabby tilting fence of pickets and wire. Harper saw, in the distance, a striped yellow-and-white tent, brightly aglow, a sight that made her think of small-town fairs. There would be a bucket to bob for apples under there, and a place to buy caramel corn.

  As they approached the pavilion, the grass thinned out on their left, and Harper saw a narrow road running parallel to their trail. Up ahead was a parking lot, off to one side of the big striped tent, a few cars parked there. Harper smelled the boat before she saw it, a sickening stench of cheap diesel. Her stomach flopped. As they rolled the last few hundred feet to the processing area, she saw a dock at the end of a spit and a dirty fishing trawler, THE MAGGIE ATWOOD written in cheery cursive across the back. Men in full-body biohazard outfits carried cardboard boxes down the ramp and onto the deck.

  Beneath the pavilion were a few long folding tables. Christmas lights had been strung along the steel pipes overhead, creating a weirdly festive air. It was almost crowded, nine or ten people in yellow rubber suits moving around behind the tables. A steel pot steamed on a camp gas burner in one corner.

  “They’ve got cocoa,” said Jim. “And gingerbread cookies. And a pretty good turkey stew. Everyone gets fed before they go across the water.”

  Harper turned in her seat and moved her hands, passing along the good news to Nick.

  He grinned and signed back to her: “Look at all the lights! It’s like where Santa lives! It’s like we walked all the way to Christmasland!”

  Harper signed, “I think you mean the North Pole,” but Nick wasn’t paying attention anymore, craning his head to see into the pavilion.

  Jim turned the jeep into a place where the grass was flattened down and switched off the engine. They followed him into the tent, under the festive lights.

  “Come meet the volunteers,” he said.

  The volunteers were all women, most middle-aged or older. They reminded Harper of the sort of cheerful, efficient old dolls who organized baked-bean socials for their church. Jim led the refugees to the folding tables, where the first of the women waited for them with forms on a clipboard. Through the clear window in her rubber mask, she showed an eager grin, and seemed especially delighted to see a little boy with them.

  “Hello! And haven’t you come a long way on foot! You must be ex-hausted. My name is Vivian, I’m going to take your information. Then we’ll get a picture of each of you for the Web site and give you your housing assignments and some supplies for your trip.”

  “And some of that soup, I hope,” Renée said. “Smells so good it’s making me light-headed.”

  Harper could smell it herself, an odor of chicken broth and stewed carrots, mixed with the black stink of the boat. It made her feel very close to retching. It appalled her that she had been stupid enough to have even a single bite of that rotten sandwich. She should’ve had some sense, if not some self-restraint. She had let pregnancy turn her into a foul pig and now she was getting what she deserved. She knew she was going to puke, she just didn’t know when.

  “You bet!” Vivian cried. “Soup and fresh milk and coffee for the grown-ups and we’ll get you on your way! We’ll make this as quick and painless as we can. Let’s just begin with the basics—who are you?”

  Harper opened her mouth to speak, but Renée got there first. “We’re what’s left of the Camp Wyndham Conspiracy. These are our evil leaders, Mr. Rookwood and Nurse Harper. We come in peace.”

  Jim, who had moved behind the folding tables to join the grannies, threw back his head and barked a laugh at this.

  “Whoo!” Vivian said. “An evil conspiracy! Haven’t had one of those yet.”

  “Well, we’re a democratic conspiracy. Everyone gets a vote. Even the kids.”

  “I don’t know how I feel about that one. My kids would probably vote for ice cream for dinner and no bedtime. Did you get to vote on your bedtime?” she asked Nick, bending down to look into his face.

  “I’m afraid he’s deaf,” said the Fireman.

  “You’re British!”

  “All the best evil masterminds are. And if my son did get a vote, he would probably vote for chicken stew before filling out forms.” Harper almost missed him saying my son, but she didn’t miss it when John put his arm around her waist and added, “My wife, too.”

  Vivian put them down just as he said: husband and wife, Mr. and Mrs. Rookwood. Harper didn’t object. She felt that, in many ways, John had told the truth. She put her head on his shoulder while Vivian asked her questions and scratched down the answers.

  Vivian wanted to know how far they had come and where they had set out from. She asked when they got sick and where they had traveled since their infection. She wanted details on their symptoms, if they were prone to hot flashes, charring, smoking.

  “Not at all!” Renée said. “We have a technique for pacifying the infection: daily sing-alongs. Keeps it from going critical. You can bring the spore under control with almost any kind of group activity that gives pleasure. Something to do with a hormone your brain releases, oxytocin? Nurse Harper can explain it best.”

  But Nurse Harper didn’t need to explain anything. Vivian smiled. “I understand group therapies are very popular on the island and are still the most successful treatment. They have eighties sing-alongs after breakfast. Toto and Hall & Oates.”

  “In that case,” the Fireman said, “I think I’d rather burn alive.”

  There were a lot of questions about the impending baby. All of the women were excited, and the plump old woman who took their photos told Harper at length about her own first grandchild, little Kelly, who had been born three weeks before, and who she said sounded just like a sheep when she cried.

  “Baa! Baa!” said the older woman, laughing.

  But when Harper said she was hoping to talk to someone about adoption for the baby, assuming it was healthy, the newly minted grandmother began to fiddle with her camera and looked vexed. “This thing!” she said, and wandered away.

  Farther down the table, the Portable Mother was opened and searched for weapons by a thin, indifferent woman with a sharp, narrow face and nothing to say. Yet another lady handed them blue folders, a thick stapled packet inside each. Harper saw a photocopied thirty-page document, Free Wolf Island: A Guide to Health and Safety, published by the CDC.

  Each folder also had a real estate listing in it. Harper and John and the kids had been offered a two-bedroom, two-bathroom cottage at 3 Longbay Road. A smeary black-and-white photo showed a small white cottage and a leaf-strewn backyard with a child’s play set in it. Renée was offered a bedroom at 18 Longbay, in the Longbay Bed & Breakfast, which was a kind of dorm for half a dozen others. Some color photocopies showed the island from above, on a fall day, the trees dressed out in their autumn colors, a patchwork of rusty oranges and buttery yellows. A map of town marked out the clinic, the communal greenhouses, the town library, a former general store that was now serving as a supply-distribution center, and other points of interest.

  At the end of the line of tables a beaming Asian granny dished out paper bowls of stew and paper cups of milk, and they were directed to sit and rest their feet on a stack of hay bales just outside the pavilion. Harper couldn’t eat. By the time they had made their way through processing, she was having contractions—bad ones—and her stomach was boiling with sickness. She sat on the edge of one of the bales and clutched her abdomen in both hands, grimacing. Her distress unsettled John, who skipped his meal as well and sat beside her, rubbing her back in circles.r />
  “I haven’t seen you like this,” he said. “Do you think you’re going into labor?”

  Her stomach cramped and she made a small sound of unhappiness, then shook her head. “Get something to eat, John. You need your strength.”

  “Maybe in a minute, Harper,” he said, but he never did get up, although Nick brought him a creamy, sugared coffee.

  They sat on the bales, on the outer edge of the light, John stroking Harper’s back and Harper waiting for her contractions to pass. They did—eventually—but the nasty slick feeling in her belly and intestines remained. Filthy clouds of black smoke rolled back up the beach from the boat and when she caught a whiff of the stink, it took all her will not to gag.

  Before they departed, the woman named Vivian approached, holding a little shoe box. She brought it to Nick and held it out to him, then spoke to the Fireman, so he could translate.

  “These are all my Doctor Who episodes,” she said. “There’s a boy who went over to the island three months ago. He’s a few years older than Nick here, about fourteen, and I happen to know he’s a science-fiction fan. I promised I’d get him my collection so he’d have something to watch. Will you tell Nick to give these to Jared Morris? And please tell Nick he can watch them, too. I think Jared would like that. I think Jared would also like a smart friend who can teach him sign language.”

  “You’re too kind,” John Rookwood said, and explained to Nick, who solemnly took the shoe box full of DVDs.

  When Vivian stood, her eyes glittered with tears. “You people. I can’t imagine what you’ve been through. I pray every night you’ll be healed. A lot of us do. Someday you’ll be back and you’ll be well, and what stories you’ll have.”

  “Thanks for everything you’ve done,” Harper managed.

  “I wish it was more,” Vivian said. “Turkey stew and old DVDs for people who have been through hell.”