The Fireman

by Joe Hill

  “Turkey stew and old episodes of Doctor Who comes pretty close to my idea of heaven,” Renée said.

  Vivian nodded. She couldn’t speak, was obviously overcome with emotion. She held her gloved fingertips to her faceplate and mimed kissing them and then reached out and touched Nick’s cheek. “Tell Jared his aunt loves him.”

  She raised her hand in a last wave and turned away, blinking at damp eyes.

  “Did you like the stew?” Renée asked Allie.

  Allie gave her a blank look. “’S’okay. Can we get this show on the road?”

  “Yes!” Jim said, walking over to them. “Let’s. Your yacht awaits.”

  32

  The boat beat its way down a wide inlet, into the hard slap of the waves. Harper threw up over the side before the lights of the pavilion were out of sight. John stroked her neck while she gasped and spat.

  “Want some of my coffee?” he said. “I’ve still got half. It’ll get the taste out of your mouth.”

  She shook her head. He tossed the rest of his coffee over the side and the paper cup, too.

  “It wasn’t very good anyway,” he said.

  The ship was grimy, the deck slopping with a quarter inch of nasty water. An exhaust pipe protruded from the rear of the little captain’s cabin and the wind blew the smoke back down on them, where they sat in the open on the stern. They huddled on cushioned seats along the sides, squeezed into their orange life vests. Nick’s vest was so big on him, most of him had disappeared behind it: there was nothing left to see of him except his head poking through the collar and his feet sticking out below.

  “Is it raining?” Harper asked. Cold, salty spray drizzled down on them.

  “That’s coming off the chop,” John said.

  “I think I hate the open ocean,” Harper said.

  They banged through a wave and Harper turned her head and vomited into their wake again.

  There were three men in biohazard suits in the pilot’s cabin: Jim, one of the gunmen from the checkpoint, and whoever was steering. The captain, Harper imagined. They hadn’t been introduced.

  “You told them we’re married,” Harper said, when she had recovered herself and wiped her lips. “I was wondering about that. Remember you said that a fireman could grant divorces? What about marriages?”

  “I’ll tell you a secret. I’m not a real fireman. But the man steering the ship is a real captain, and they can marry people.” He looked at her with a sudden luminous gleam of inspiration. “Ms. Harper Willowes! I think I should ask you something.”

  “No,” she said. “No, don’t. Please. I was just kidding, John.”

  His head sank and his expression took on a glum, downcast look.

  “But only because my answer might involve kissing. And I can’t kiss you now, that would be gross. Not with the taste of vomit in my mouth.” Although now that she had been good and sick her stomach felt better—or would’ve, she thought, if the goddamn contractions hadn’t started up once more.

  His face lit back up. She took his wet, cold hand and squeezed it, and his grin made his ears jut from the side of his head.

  Waves hit the boat and came over the rail in an icy, drenching spray.

  “Thank God for the rain slickers,” Harper said as they crashed into another trough. “This is miserable.”

  “It isn’t bothering Nick.” Nudging her with his elbow. “I think he was out before they untied us from the dock.”

  “He’s done a lot of walking,” Harper agreed.

  The boat pitched. She looked through the drizzle for the lighthouse she had seen earlier, but they were already too far out to see it.

  John yawned into the back of his hand. “Maybe I’ll catch a few minutes of shut-eye myself.”

  “How can you sleep in this?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Renée managed it, though.”

  Harper looked across the stern. Nick dreamed with his cheek against Renée’s bosom. She slept with her chin on his head. Allie was awake, though, clutching her life preserver in both hands, and staring darkly into the captain’s cabin.

  “John,” Harper said. “John, why is Renée sleeping? Who could sleep in this?”

  “Well. You said it yourself. We walked at least fifteen miles today, and—”

  “Wake her up,” Harper said.

  “I don’t want to wake her up.”

  “Try. Please.”

  The Fireman gave her a sidelong look—his gaze hooded and questioning—and then he rose on his crutch and leaned across the deck and shook Renée’s knee.

  “Renée. Renée, wake up.”

  The boat slammed over another wave and unbalanced him. He managed to heave himself back onto his seat before he could fall down.

  Renée smiled in her sleep and showed no reaction.

  “What’s wrong with them?” Allie asked.

  John’s chin had sunk a little. Harper thought his eyes were just slightly unfocused.

  “Goddamn it,” John said. “Can’t something work out? Just for once?”

  Allie shook Nick’s shoulder. He slumped over, fell face-first into Renée’s lap.

  “The stew,” John said.

  “The coffee,” Harper said.

  “But Allie is fine.”

  “I didn’t have any,” Allie said. “I didn’t trust them. I just pretended to have some and I poured it out when no one was looking.”

  “I wish you hadn’t,” Jim shouted to be heard over the engine and the wind.

  He had opened the door to the pilot’s cabin and leaned in it, staring out at them through his clear plastic faceplate. He had a .45 in one hand, but he wasn’t pointing it at them, just casually holding it down by his leg.

  “We try and make it peaceful,” Jim said. “No fear, no pain. A little something to put you to sleep and then over the side.”

  “No,” Harper said. “No, no, no, no. You can’t. Please. This doesn’t make any sense. Why? Why would you go through this big charade? Why didn’t you just fucking shoot us? Anyone could have shot us anytime. Why put on a big act for us?”

  “But it isn’t for us,” the Fireman said. “Is it?”

  Jim shrugged. “I like to think it’s nice for you folks to go out on a high note. To fall asleep dreaming of a place where you’ll be safe. Where you’ll be looked after. Christ. We’re human beings, not monsters. We don’t want anyone to suffer. But—no. No, we do it for the community. People like Vivian believe in the island, too, most of them. You don’t know how important it is for morale, to believe they’re saving people. Helping people. If they thought we were sailing out here just to throw people over the side, there’d be a lot of broken hearts. A lot of discontentment, too.” He paused while the boat crashed over another wave and steadied himself against the doorframe. “You have to understand. You folks said you’re—what? The last remnant of a little democracy? You voted to come here? Well, we’ve got a democracy, too. Our own private leadership council. Just the governor and twelve others, including myself. You aren’t the only ones who took a vote. So did we. And this is what we voted for.”

  “There’s no island,” Allie said.

  “There is! Or there was. The CDC abandoned the place in November. There was a revolt. They were using some experimental drugs that had killed some people and the ungrateful sons of bitches seized control of the hospital. They said they didn’t want a cure anymore. They were raving about how they had made their own cure, were learning how to control fire. They were holding the medical staff hostage to deter military action. But they don’t know our governor. He doesn’t cut deals with terrorists. He commandeered a B-17 out of Bangor and dropped daisy cutters from one end of the island to the other. It’s just a black rock now. They could see the smoke from Machias. That’s when we made up the story about some burners having a bad reaction to one of the new medicines and the hospital burning up.”

  “But we heard Martha Quinn on the radio,” Harper pled. “We heard her.”

  “Yeah. We’ve
got a hundred hours of her on old recordings. We just replay them on a loop. The governor’s argument has always been that this is the fastest way to wipe the epidemic out in the Northeast. Bring all the sick to one processing center and then humanely dispose of them. Drop them in the North Atlantic Current, where there’s no chance of the bodies washing back up in Machias. I am really, truly sorry.”

  “You can’t,” Harper said. “Please. My baby might be healthy.”

  At this, his face hardened. She could see his jaw tighten behind his mask. “That’s a lie. If you’re sick, he’s sick.”

  “That’s not true. You can’t know that. There are studies.”

  “I don’t know what studies you’ve been looking at. It’s true a lot of women who are sick will deliver babies without visible Dragonscale. But blood tests show it lurking in the DNA, waiting to emerge. And I don’t mind saying: I don’t think much of a woman in your condition carrying a baby to term. You were a nurse. You had access to pills. You should’ve taken something a long time ago. Put yourself to sleep. The thought of you gestating a little guy loaded with disease—that makes me want to throw up over the side.” He cast a glance into the blackness, then looked back at them. “Look. I don’t want to shoot you. It’s better in the water. More peaceful. It doesn’t matter you didn’t get dosed up. The cold will put you to sleep inside ten minutes. It’s like the end of Titanic out there. Besides, if I have to shoot you I might put a hole in the boat. It’s inconvenient, you know? Help a fella out. Take off your vests. Pull the little boy out of his.”

  “Either we get out of our life vests,” John Rookwood said, “or you shoot us. Is that right?” He was tugging at the fingers of the glove on his left hand.

  Jim nodded.

  “How about a third option,” John said, yanking his glove free, throwing it over the side. His palm crawled with threads of gold light.

  “How about not,” Jim said and shot him in the stomach.

  33

  John touched his navel. His hand was still aglow and it seemed he was bleeding light, that his palm was a saucer filling with gold. He was full of gold and now it was coming out of him. A wave struck the side of the boat—it felt like they had slammed into a rock, it jolted them so hard—and John dropped ungracefully to the deck.

  Allie was trying to scream. Harper could see her at the edge of her vision, Allie’s mouth open, the tendons standing in her neck, so it looked like she was choking. If she was actually making a sound, Harper didn’t know, couldn’t tell. She couldn’t hear anything except the deep, hard wallop of her own pulse in her ears.

  Harper sank to one knee, gripping John’s shoulder, turning him a little. The dirty water slopping around the deck was already turning red while his blood pumped into it. His face was white with anguish and shock. She felt for the wound, thinking Pressure, stop the bleeding first, then try and assess the damage.

  “Oh,” he said, his voice a faint gasp. “Oh! I’ve been shot right through.”

  “Goddamn it,” Jim said. “Now there’s blood all over the deck.”

  “John,” she said. “Oh, John. John, my love. Please stay here. Stay with me. Please don’t go.”

  “Get away from him. Stand up and take your vest off or I’ll shoot you, too. I’d rather not. Please. It’s better in the water. Easier,” Jim said, but she wasn’t listening.

  The blood dripped into John’s palm, sizzled, and smoked, smelled like a burning frying pan. Harper wasn’t crying, but he was.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I was so self-important. So full of myself. So fucking smug. I’m seeing it all and I was so—so desperate for attention—so desperate to impress you. Oh, Harper. I’m sorry I wasn’t a better man. I wish I was better.”

  “You are perfect. You are the most perfect thing. You make me happy. You make me laugh. I never laughed in all my life like I laughed with you. You don’t have to apologize for anything.”

  A weak smile twitched at the corners of his mouth. “Maybe one thing. I apologize I didn’t cook that half-wit with the gun before he shot me. But better late than never.” Gold rings flashed in his irises, his eyes brightening like steel coils with an electric current passing through them.

  The hand, hidden under his body, began to leap with red flame.

  “Do me one favor,” he said. “Please. Promise me one thing.”

  “Yes, my love. Anything. Anything for you, John.”

  “Live,” he said.

  Harper shoved herself away from him. He lifted his chin and opened his mouth and Jim screamed “What the fuck!” and a jet of yellow flame poured in a great hot blast from the Fireman’s open mouth. Jim raised one arm. Flame spattered over the yellow rubber of his suit, blistering the material. He reached to steady himself against the doorframe. The boat lunged over another swell and Jim staggered and waved his gun wildly, pointing it into the cabin. It went off with a harsh blam. The skipper ducked. A window shattered.

  The armed sentry shouldered past Jim, lifting his assault rifle. Harper was already rising from her knee. The boat took another lurch and flung her into the soft, warm mass of Renée Gilmonton.

  The Fireman ignited, all at once, with a soft, deep whump, as if someone had thrown a match on a pile of leaves soaked in lighter fluid. He was a roaring bed of flame, a nest, and a bird began to rise from it. A great red prehistoric thing with vast and spreading wings. The assault rifle thundered, splintering the deck.

  The boat slewed across a high wave. Allie grabbed Nick by the vest and stepped onto the cushioned seat and leapt. Harper had her arms around Renée and carried her over the side and as she lifted she had a sense of something tearing in her groin, in her abdomen. A man was screaming behind her. A yellow light was rising.

  She hit black water, so cold it burned, it was like dying, it was like spontaneous combustion. A hundred thousand silver bubbles spun around her in a frantic whirl. She came up gasping, caught a mouthful of salt water and began to choke.

  A blazing bird of fire, with eyes of blowtorch blue and the wingspan of a single-engine airplane, opened its terrible beak and seemed to scream. A man who wore a shroud of flame twisted madly before it. The pilot’s cabin was full of fire. Gray smoke boiled from the destruction. The boat was still moving, leaving them behind, already almost a hundred feet away.

  Another wave slapped Harper in the face, blinding her, deafening her. Her vest carried her up and down in the tormented water. She rubbed her hands in her eyes and cleared her vision just in time to see The Maggie Atwood shatter, as the flames reached what must’ve been a propane tank. There was a flash of white light and a blast of concussive sound that struck Harper like a blow, knocking her head back. She would discover her nose bleeding a few moments later.

  A blinding tower of fire rose into the sky from the immolated wreck of the boat, and a bird was hatched from that column of fire, a bird as big as God. It spread its wings and lifted into a sky of roiling black cloud, drew a great red circle of light in the sky, spinning above them. To Harper, it seemed magnificent and dreadful, a thing barbaric and triumphant.

  It circled once, and again, and although it was high above them, Harper could feel its heat on her upturned face. Then it banked—banked and began to sail away, giving its wings one slow, dreadful flap, leaving them and the sinking, burning, hissing wreck.

  Harper was watching it go when she noticed her thighs weren’t as cold as they should’ve been. There was a sticky, unnatural warmth around them.

  Her water had broken.

  Delivery

  The water seemed less choppy once she was in it. Her vest lifted her gently to the top of each wave and dropped her back down over the side. The motion was almost soothing, didn’t make her feel seasick at all. Or maybe she was too numb, too frozen through, to care. She already couldn’t feel her hands, her feet. Her teeth were chattering.

  Renée blinked and sputtered, shaking her head. She peered around in a frightened, shortsighted sort of way. She had lost her glasses. “What? Did
we capsize? Did we—” A wave caught her in the side of the face and she swallowed some, coughed and choked.

  Harper struggled toward her and took her hand. “Allie!” she screamed. “Allie, where are you?”

  “Over here!” Allie cried, from somewhere behind Harper.

  Harper kicked and waved her arms feebly and got turned around. Allie was making her clumsy way to her, towing her brother by the back of his vest. He was still asleep, his plump, smooth face turned to the sky.

  “G-G-G-God,” Renée said when she could speak again. “S-s-so c-c-c-cold. What—what?”

  “You were d-d-drugged. The stew. They were going to kill us. John. John.” Harper had to stop and catch her breath.

  Instead of trying to explain, she pointed at the wreck. The prow of the boat had already dived into the water, the stern lifting into the air. The big rusted blades of the motor, snaggled with seaweed and algae, revolved slowly in the dark. The flames sputtered and seethed as The Maggie Atwood slid into the water. A great black oily bank of smoke mounted into the night. Harper moved her finger from the blazing ruin to the Phoenix, which was now no more than a distant bright glare of yellow in the night sky, like a remote passenger jet.

  Renée looked at her without any understanding at all. She was still half doped, Harper thought, incapable of following any complicated chain of cause and effect.

  Allie caught up to them and took Harper’s other hand. They were strung out in a line now, the four of them, kicking feebly in the black and icy water. Harper could see her breath. Or maybe that was smoke.

  “We’ll die,” Allie panted. “We’re g-g-going to freeze to death.”

  “S-sing,” Harper said.

  Allie looked at her incredulously.

  Harper lifted her voice and called out, ““In every j-job that must be done, there is an element of fun! Find the f-f-fun and, snap! The job is a game!”

  “Why?” Allie said. “Why? This is s-s-stupid! It’s over. Does it matter if we die in t-t-ten minutes or in t-t-ten hours? We’re going to drown out here.”