by Hill,Joe
“Fuck,” she said. “Fuck fuck fuck.”
“Is that the best you can do?” the Fireman asked. He was holding his nose and blinking back tears. “Just a lot of ‘fuck fuck fuck’ over and over again? Can’t you expand your range a little? Goddamn bloody arsefoam. Daddy drilling Mommy on the kitchen table. That sort of thing. Americans curse without any imagination at all.”
Harper sat up, her shoulders hitching with her first sobs. Her legs were trembling and her ankle was broken and Jakob had nearly killed her, had wanted to kill her, and people were shooting guns and bursting into flame and she had fallen out of a tree, and the baby, the baby, and she couldn’t help herself. The Fireman sat up next to her and put an arm around her and she rested her head on the slippery shoulder of his jacket.
“There, there,” he said.
And he held her for a bit, while she had a good, unglamorous cry.
When her sobs had subsided to hiccups he said, “Let’s get you up. We should be going. We don’t know what your deranged ex-husband might be up to. I wouldn’t put it past him to call a Quarantine Patrol.”
“He’s not my ex. We’re not divorced.”
“You are now. By the power vested in me.”
“What power vested in you?”
“You know how captains of ships can marry people? Little-known fact, firemen can divorce people as well. Come on, up with you.”
The Fireman encircled her waist with his left arm and hoisted her to her feet. The hand on her hip was still warm, like fresh bread from the oven.
“You set your hand on fire,” she said. “How did you do that?”
On the face of it, she already knew the answer. He had Dragonscale, same as her. His hand was still uncovered and she could see a black-and-gold scrawl tracing the lines of his palm, running in a coil around and around his wrist. A fine gray smoke trickled from the thicker lines.
She had seen at least a hundred people with Dragonscale ignite—ignite and begin to scream, blue fire racing over them, as if they were painted in kerosene, their hair erupting in a flash. It was not something anyone wanted or could do to themselves, and when it happened it was not controlled and it always ended in death.
But the Fireman had consciously lit himself up. And only part of himself, just his hand. Then he had calmly put himself back out again. And somehow he had not been hurt.
“I thought about offering a class once,” the Fireman said. “But I couldn’t figure out what I was teaching. Advanced Pyromancy? Spontaneous Combustion for Dummies? Arson 101? Besides, it’s hard to get people to sign up for a course when failing a test means burning alive.”
“That’s a lie,” Allie said. “He won’t teach you. He won’t teach anyone. Liar, liar, pants on fire.”
“No, not tonight, Allie. This is my favorite pair of dungarees and I can’t afford to burn them up just because you want me to show off.”
“You’ve been spying on me,” Harper said.
The Fireman glanced up into the branches of the oak, where she had been perched only a moment before. “There’s an excellent view of your bedroom from up there. Isn’t it odd, how people with something to hide will pull the curtains at the front of the house, but never think to cover the windows out back.”
“You spend a lot of time wandering around in your underwear, reading What to Expect When You’re Expecting,” Allie said. “Don’t worry. He never peeped through your windows at you while you were getting dressed. Maybe I did once or twice, but not him. ’E’s a proper English gen’lem’n is wot he is.” Allie’s faux English accent was at least as good as Dick Van Dyke’s in Mary Poppins. If Harper had been a sixteen-year-old boy, she would’ve been mad for her. You could just tell she was the best kind of trouble.
“Why?” Harper asked the Fireman. “Why spy on me?”
“Allie,” the Fireman said, as if he had not heard Harper’s question. “Run on ahead to camp. Bring your grandfather and Ben Patchett. Oh, and find Renée. Tell Renée we have acquired her favorite nurse. She’ll be so pleased.”
Then Allie was gone, springing into leaves in a way that made Harper think of Peter Pan’s shadow zinging around Wendy’s bedroom. Harper had a head crammed full of children’s books and could be quite compulsive about assigning people storybook roles.
When the girl was gone, the Fireman said, “Just as well to have you to myself for a moment, Nurse Grayson. I’d trust Allie Storey with my life, but there are some things I’d rather not say in front of her. Do you know the summer camp at the end of Little Harbor Road?”
“Camp Wyndham,” Harper said. “Sure.”
Dead leaves crunched underfoot and their smell sugared the air with autumn’s perfume.
“That’s where we’re headed. There’s a fellow there, Tom Storey, Allie’s grandfather. They call him Father Storey. Once upon a time Tom was the program director at the camp. Now he has the place opened up as a shelter for folk with Dragonscale. He’s got more than a hundred people hiding there, and they’ve banged together a decent little society. There’s three meals a day—for now, anyway. I don’t know how much longer that will last. There’s no electric power, but they’ve got working showers if you can stand being pelted by icewater. They’ve got a school, and a kind of junior police force called the Lookouts, to keep watch for Quarantine Patrols and Cremation Crews. That’s mostly teenagers—the Lookouts. Allie and her friends. Gives them something to do. They have all the religion you could possibly want, too. In some ways it isn’t like any religion that’s ever come before and in other ways, well. Fundamentalists are much the same wherever you go. That’s one of the things I wanted to forewarn you about, while Allie ran on ahead. She’s even more devout than most, and that’s saying quite a lot.”
There was a rending crack, a sliding, reverberating crash that shook the forest floor and caused Harper’s pulse to leap. She stared back through the woods in the direction they had come from. She couldn’t imagine what could possibly have made such an enormous, shattering noise.
The Fireman cast a brief, considering glance over his shoulder, then took her arm and began to move her along again, a little more briskly now. He continued as if there had been no interruption at all.
“You have to understand that most of the camp is between your age and Allie’s. There are a few oldsters, but a lot more who ought to still be in school. Most of them have lost family, seen the people they love burn to death in front of them. They were in shock when they found their way to camp, refugees, deranged by grief, and just waiting around to burst into flame themselves. Then Father Storey and his daughter Carol—Allie’s aunt—taught them they don’t have to die. They’ve offered them hope when they had none and a very concrete form of salvation.”
Harper slowed, in part to rest her sore ankle, in part to absorb what he was saying.
“What do you mean, they’re teaching people they don’t have to die? No one can teach someone with Dragonscale not to die. That’s impossible. If there was a treatment, some pill—”
“You aren’t required to swallow anything,” the Fireman said. “Not even their faith. Remember that, Nurse Grayson.”
“If there was anything that could prevent the Dragonscale from killing people, the government would know by now. If there was something that worked, really worked, something that could extend the lives of millions of sick people—”
“—people with a lethal and contagious spore on their skin? Nurse Grayson, no one wants us extending our lives. Nothing could be less desirable. Shortening them—that’s what would best serve the public good. At least in the minds of the healthy population. One thing we know about people with Dragonscale: they don’t burst into flame if you shoot them in the head. You don’t have to worry about a corpse infecting you or your children . . . or starting a conflagration that might take out a city block.” She opened her mouth to protest and he squeezed her shoulder. “There’ll be time to argue
this point later. Although I warn you, it’s been argued before, most notably by poor Harold Cross. I feel his case largely settles the matter.”
“Harold Cross?”
He shook his head. “Leave it for now. I only want you to understand that Tom and Carol have given these people more than food or shelter or even a way to suppress their illness. They’ve given them belief . . . in each other, in the future, and in the power they share as a flock. A flock isn’t such a bad thing if you belong, but a few hundred starlings will tear an unlucky martin to feathers if it crosses their path. I think Camp Wyndham could be a very unfriendly place for an apostate. Tom, he’s tolerant enough. He’s your inclusive, modern, thoughtful religious type, an ethics professor by trade. But his daughter, Allie’s aunt: she’s barely more than a kid herself, and most of the other kids have made a kind of cult around her. She sings the songs, after all. You want to stay on her good side. She’s kind enough, Carol is. Means well. But if she doesn’t love you, then she’s afraid of you, and she’s dangerous when she’s afraid. I am uneasy in my mind about what might happen if Carol ever felt seriously threatened.”
“I’m not going to threaten anyone,” Harper said.
He smiled. “No. You don’t strike me as the type to make trouble, but to make peace. I still haven’t forgotten the first time you crossed my path, Nurse Grayson. You saved his life, you know. Nick. And you saved my skull, while you were at it. I seem to remember it was just about to be kicked in when you intervened. I owe you.”
“Not anymore,” Harper said.
Ahead of them, in the dark, branches rustled and were pushed aside. A modest assembly emerged, Allie leading the way. The girl was breathing hard and had a pretty flush of color on her delicate features.
“What happened, John?” asked a man standing directly behind her. His voice was low and melodious and even before she saw Tom Storey’s face, Harper liked him. At first, she could make out little more than his gold-rimmed spectacles flashing in the darkness. “Who do we have here?”
“Someone useful,” the Fireman said, only now she knew his name: John. “A nurse, a Miss Grayson. Can you take her the rest of the way? I’m no doctor, but I think she fractured her ankle. If you’ll help her along to the infirmary, I’d like to go back and collect her things while there’s still time. My guess is there’ll soon be police and a Quarantine Patrol swarming her place.”
“Gee, can I help?” said one of the other members of the greeting party. He stepped forward, slipping easily between the Fireman and Harper, and put his arm around her waist. Harper slung hers over his shoulders. He was a big man, maybe quarter of a century older than Harper, with sloping shoulders and pale silver hair beginning to thin up top. Harper thought of an aged and well-loved Paddington Bear. “Ben Patchett,” he said. “Glad to meet you, ma’am.”
There was a woman with them, too, short, squashy, her silver hair braided into cornrows. She smiled tentatively, perhaps unsure Harper would remember her. Of course there was no chance at all Harper could’ve forgotten the woman who fled Portsmouth Hospital, shimmering as brightly as a flare and just as sure to explode.
“Renée Gilmonton,” Harper said. “I thought you ran away to die somewhere.”
“That’s what I thought, too. Father Storey had other ideas.” Renée put an arm under Harper’s armpits, helping to support her from the other side. “You took such good care of me for so long, Nurse Grayson. What a pleasure to have a chance to tend to you for a bit.”
“How’d you bust your ankle?” Father Storey asked, lifting his chin so the dim light flashed on the lenses of his spectacles, and for the first time Harper could see his features, his long, skinny, deeply lined face and silver beard, and she thought: Dumbledore. The beard was actually less Dumbledore, more Hemingway, but the eyes behind the lenses of his glasses were a brilliant shade of blue that naturally suggested a man who could cast runes and speak to trees.
Harper found it hard to reply, didn’t know yet how to speak of Jakob and what he had tried to do to her.
The Fireman seemed to see in a glance how the question defeated her, and answered himself. “Her husband came for her with a gun. I chased him off. That’s all. Time is short, Tom.”
“Isn’t it always?” Father Storey replied.
The Fireman started to turn away—then pivoted back and pressed something into Harper’s hand. “Oh, you dropped this, Nurse. Do keep it on you. If you ever need me again, just blow.” It was her pennywhistle. She had dropped it running from Jakob and forgotten all about it, and was absurdly grateful to have it returned.
“He doesn’t slip everyone his slide whistle of love,” Allie said. “You’re in.”
“Mind out of the gutter, Allie,” the Fireman said. “What would your mother have said?”
“Something dirtier,” Allie said. “Come on, let’s go get the nurse’s gear.”
Allie dropped the Captain America mask back over her face and bounded into the trees. The Fireman cursed under his breath and began to hurry after her, using that great iron pole of his to swat aside the underbrush.
“Allie!” Father Storey cried. “Allie, please! Come back!”
But she was already gone.
“That girl has no business mixing herself up in John’s work,” said Ben Patchett.
“Try and stop her,” Renée said.
“The Fireman—John—he lit himself on fire,” Harper said. “His whole hand burst into flame. How’d he do that?”
“Fire is the devil’s only friend,” Ben Patchett said and laughed. “Isn’t that right, Father?”
“I don’t know if he’s a devil,” said Father Storey. “But if he is, he’s our devil. Still . . . I wish Allie wouldn’t go with him. Does she want to get herself killed like her mother? Sometimes it almost seems she’s daring the world to try.”
“Oh, Father,” said Renée. “You raised two teenage girls. If anyone understood Allie, I’d think it would be you.” She looked off into the woods, in the direction Allie had disappeared in. “Of course she’s daring the world to try.”
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollinsPublishers
....................................
2
It was barely a mile to Camp Wyndham, but it seemed to Harper they were tromping after Father Storey, through the weary, stifling darkness, for hours. They wallowed in drifts of leaves, wove in and around pine trees, clambered over a pile of rocks, always moving toward the briny scent of the Atlantic. Her ankle thrummed.
Harper did not ask where they were and Father Storey did not say. Not long after they started moving, he popped something into his mouth—it was the size of a blue jay’s egg—and after that made no sound.
They emerged alongside Little Harbor Road, looking across the blacktop at the turnoff into Camp Wyndham: a lane of hard-packed white shell and sandy earth. The entrance was barred by a chain hung between a pair of tall standing boulders that would not have looked out of place at Stonehenge. Beyond, the land mounded up in green hills. Even at night, Harper could see the white steeple of a church, sticking up over the ridge a half mile away.
The burned-out and blackened hull of a bus was parked off the road, just past those totemic blocks of granite. It was up to its iron rims in weeds and had been baked down almost to the frame.
Before they crossed the road, Father Storey clapped twice. The four of them hobbled up out of the brush and crossed the blacktop to the sandy lane. A boy descended the steps of the bus to stand in the open doorway and watch them approach.
Father Storey removed the white egg from his mouth and glanced back at Harper and her human crutches.
“The bus may look like a wreck, but it isn’t quite. The headlights work. If someone unknown were to come up our road, a boy in the bus would wait for our visitors to move out of sight, then flash a signal. Another boy, up in the steeple of the chu
rch, keeps a lookout for it. The eye in the steeple sees all the people.” He smiled at this, then added, “If necessary we can get into hiding in two minutes. We drill every day. Credit to Ben Patchett—this inspiration is his. My own ideas involved a fantastical system of bird whistles and the possible use of kites.”
The boy in the bus had a beard that made Harper think of Vikings: a stiff coil of braided orange wires. But the face behind the beard was young and soft. Harper doubted he was any older than Allie. He lazily twirled a nightstick in one hand.
“I guess I misunderstood the plan, Father,” the boy said. “I thought you were off to bring us a nurse, not someone who needs a nurse.” His gaze shifted from one face to another and he smiled in a worried sort of way. “I don’t see Allie.”
“We heard a thunderous crash, a stupendous roar of mindless violence and senseless destruction,” Father Storey told him. “Naturally, Allie ran straight toward it. Try not to worry, Michael. She has the Fireman with her.”
Michael nodded, then dipped his head toward Harper in a way that was almost courtly. His eyes shone with the fevered innocence of someone who has been Saved. “Hello to you. We’re all friends here, Nurse. This is where your life begins again.”
She smiled back at him but couldn’t think how to reply, and in another moment it was too late, Ben and Renée shuttling her along. When Harper looked back, the boy had vanished into the bus.
Father Storey was about to put the gumball back in his mouth, then saw Harper looking at it. “Ah. Bit of a compulsion of mine. Something I picked up reading Samuel Beckett. I stick a pebble in my mouth to remind myself to be quiet and listen now and then. I taught in a private school for decades, and with all these young people wandering about, the urge to deliver impromptu lectures is very strong.”
They followed the winding lane through leafy darkness, past a dry swimming pool and a riflery range where brass cartridges glittered dully amid dead leaves. All seemed long abandoned—an appearance maintained at some effort, Harper learned later.