The Fireman (44 page)

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins
Publishers

....................................

8

Before she climbed out, Harper reached into the bin under the thwart and found her hidden grocery sack, which still contained a bottle of cheap banana-flavored rum and the long box of Gauloises. Don waited for her halfway up the shale, under the bow of the long white sloop. He had a hand on the hull when she caught up to him.

“Can you sail it?” she asked.

He lifted an eyebrow, gave her an amused, sidelong glance. “All the way around the horn and on to exotic Shanghai if I had to.”

“I was thinking just a ways up the coast.”

“Yuh,” he said. “Well. That would be easier.”

They went on arm in arm, through the dunes, up the narrow, weedy trail, over the hill, and on to the Fireman’s shed. Don lifted the latch and eased the door open onto laughter and warmth and shifting golden light.

Renée stood at the furnace, wearing oven mitts and hanging the kettle on its hook over the coals. Gilbert Cline had settled near her, sitting in a straight-backed chair against the wall. He had his gaze on the door when it opened—ready to move if he didn’t care for the company, Harper thought.

The Mazz sat at one end of John Rookwood’s cot and John at the other, both of them quivering with laughter. The Mazz’s wide, ugly face was suffused a deep shade of red and he was blinking at tears. All of them—all except for Gil—had their eyes on Allie, who stood over a pail, pretending she was a man taking a piss. She wore John’s fireman helmet and held a plastic lighter at her crotch.

“And this is only the
second
coolest thing I know how to do with my dick!” Allie announced in her intentionally atrocious English accent. She flicked the lighter, so her pretend cock spurted flame. “I’ll have your campfire going in no time, but if you’re really in a hurry to bake your hot dogs, I’ll just bend over, and you can—”

Allie saw Harper in the doorway and her voice trailed off. Her grin faltered. She let the lighter go out.

John, however, continued to tremble with amusement. He gestured to the Mazz and said: “What she just demonstrated, that
did
happen to me once. But this was years before Dragonscale, and a little penicillin cleared it right up.”

The Mazz bellowed with laughter, was so raucous it was impossible not to be entertained. The ghost of a smile even briefly reappeared on Allie’s lips—but only for a moment.

“Wow,” Allie said. “Ms. Willowes, you got huge.”

“I’m glad to hear your voice, Allie. It’s been a while. I’ve missed it.”

“I don’t know why you would. Mostly when I
do
open my mouth, it seems like people just gets hurt.”

Her gaze dropped. Her face wrinkled with emotion. It was difficult to watch her trying not to cry, all the muscles in her face struggling at once with the strain to hold it in. Harper reached out and took Allie’s hands, and when she did, Allie lost the fight and began to weep.

“I feel so bad,” Allie said. “I think we were supposed to be really good friends and I fucked it all up and I’m so sorry.”

“Oh, Allie,” Harper said, and tried to squeeze her. Her stomach made squeezing people tricky, and instead of a hug, she wound up giving Allie a rubbery bump with her belly. Allie made a strangled sound that was part sob, part laugh. “We
are
really good friends. And to be honest, I had wanted to try a shorter haircut for years.”

This time Harper was certain the sound Allie made was a laugh, although it was choked and half muffled; Allie had her face buried against Harper’s chest.

At last, Allie stepped back, wiping her hands down her wet cheeks. “I know everything in camp is going bad. I know everyone is batshit crazy, my aunt especially. It’s scary.
She’s
scary. Threatening to take your baby away if Granddad dies, when you’ve already done everything anyone could do—that’s so fucked up and sick.”

John sat forward, his smile fading. “What’s this?”

“You were unwell,” Harper said, not looking directly at him, but speaking over her shoulder. “I didn’t want to bring it up. You look better now, by the way.”

“Yes,” John said. “Antibiotics and Dragonscale have a lot in common. One is a mold that cooks bacteria, and the other is a mold that cooks us. I wish there was a pill we could take to cure us of Carol Storey. She’s out of her good goddamn mind. She can’t have meant it. Take your baby? What is this rubbish?”

Harper said, “Carol told me . . . she told me if Tom died, she’d hold me personally responsible, and send me away. She’d keep the baby, so that if I’m captured by a Quarantine Patrol or a Cremation Crew, I won’t be tempted to give away any information about Camp Wyndham.”

“It’s not just that. She really would want the baby to be safe. She wants to protect us.
All
of us,” Allie said. She cast her gaze around the room, looking at each of them, and her voice was almost pleading. “I know she’s awful. I know she does terrible things now. Thing is, my aunt Carol would
die
for the people in this camp. Without a second thought. She really
does
love everyone . . . at least everyone she isn’t suspicious about. And I remember before Granddad got his head bashed in. She was
good
then. When she knew she could help people by singing and playing music and showing them how to join the Bright. She was the best person in the world to have as your friend. I could always go cry to her if I had a fight with my mom. She made me tea and peanut butter sandwiches. So I know you guys all hate her, and I know we have to do something. But you also have to know I still love her. She’s a fuck-up, but so am I. I guess it runs in the family.”

John relaxed, leaned back against the wall. “
Decency
runs in your family, Allie. And a really unsettling streak of personal daring. And charisma. All the rest of us flutter around you Storeys like moths around candles.”

Harper thought automatically of how the romance between a moth and a candle usually ended: with the moth spinning to its death, wings smoking. It didn’t seem like a thought worth sharing at that particular moment.

Gilbert Cline spoke up from over by the furnace. When Harper glanced at him, she noticed Gil had one hand around Renée’s waist. “It sure is a relief to be out of that meat locker for a while. Next time I step out for a breath of fresh air, I’d just as soon not have to go back. Right now, though, we’ve got half an hour. If we’ve got things to figure, we better figure ’em now.”

The Mazz lifted his chin, was looking down the length of his bulbous nose at Harper’s grocery bag. “I don’t know about anyone else, but I always do my best figuring over a drink. Looks like the nurse brought just what the doctor ordered.”

Harper lifted out the bottle of banana rum. “Don, would you find us cups?”

She dashed a little rum into a collection of chipped coffee cups, tin mugs, and ugly tumblers and Don passed them around. The last cup Harper offered to Allie.

“Really?” Allie asked.

“It tastes better than a rock.”

Allie tossed back the quarter inch Harper had given her in a single swallow, then made a face. “Oh, God. No it doesn’t. This is piss. Like drinking gasoline after someone stirred it with a Butterfinger. Or like a banana smoothie that went rotten. Horrible.”

“You want another slosh, then?” Harper asked.

“Yes, please,” Allie said.

“Well, too bad,” Harper told her. “You’re a minor and one sip is all you get.”

“I used to eat sardines out of the can and drink the oil afterward,” Don said. “It was a gruesome thing to do. That oil always had little fish tails and fish eyes and fackin’ fish guts and little black rubbery strings of fish shit, and I drank it anyway. Just couldn’t help myself.”

Gil said, “Saw a movie where a fella said he’d eaten dogs and lived like one. I never ate a dog, but there was men that caught and ate mice in Brentwood. They called ’em basement chickens.”

“Worst thing I ever ate?” the Mazz speculated. “I wouldn’t like to go into the details in polite company, but her name was Ramona.”

“That’s lovely, Mazz. Very tasteful,” Renée said.

“Actually, it wasn’t even a little tasteful,” the Mazz told her.

“This reminds me: Are you going to eat the placenta?” Renée asked Harper. “I understand that’s a thing now. We stocked a pregnancy guide at the bookstore with a whole chapter of placenta recipes in the back. Omelets and pasta sauces and so on.”

“No, I don’t think so,” Harper said. “Dining on the placenta smacks of cannibalism, and I was hoping for a more dignified apocalypse.”

“Rabbit mothers eat their own babies,” the Mazz said. “I found that out reading
Watership Down
. Apparently the mamas chow down on their newborns all the time. Pop them down just like little meat Skittles.”

“The worst part,” Allie said, “is that you’ve all only had one drink.”

Don said, “So who’s the captain of this ship? Who’s settin’ our course?”

“You’re so adorable when you’re nautical,” John Rookwood said to him.

“He’s right, though,” Renée said. “That’s the first order of business, isn’t it? We need to hold the election.”

“Election?” Harper asked. She was vaguely aware that she was the only person in the circle who didn’t have a knowing smile on their face—a fact she found mildly irritating.

“We need to settle on an evil mastermind,” Renée told her. “Someone to set the agenda when we have meetings. Someone to call a vote. Someone to make on-the-spot decisions when there isn’t time to vote. Someone to boss around the minions.”

“That’s silly. There’s just seven of us. Eight, if you count Nick.”

Don Lewiston lifted his eyebrows and turned an expectant expression toward Renée Gilmonton.

“You’re off by fifteen,” Renée said.

“Make it seventeen,” Don said. “The McLee brothers are with us too.”

“There are . . . what . . . twenty-five people ready to . . . strike out on their own?” Harper asked.
Dumbledore’s army,
she thought.
The Fellowship
.

“Or strike out at Ben and Carol,” Don said, “and take back the damn camp.” He saw Allie blanch and added, “Strike back gently, I mean. Politely. You know. With good manners.”

“We can do some things by way of a vote,” Renée said. “But working in secret as we are, a lot of choices will require an executive decision. It’s a necessary job, but I don’t think it’s likely to be a terribly rewarding one . . . or particularly safe. You want to think about what might happen to whoever we put in charge, if we’re discovered.”

“I don’t
need
to think about it,” Allie said. “I know. When my aunt talks about slicing the rottenness out of camp, she’s not playing with words. She’s talking about cutting a bitch. She’d have people killed. She’d have to set an example.” Allie smiled at them, but looked wan. “I read in history that public executions used to be popular events. I’m sure if Aunt Carol announced one, Mrs. Heald would make sure there was popcorn for everyone.”

The fire cracked and hissed. A coal popped.

“You really think it could go that far?” Gil asked, his voice suggesting only mild curiosity. “Public executions?”

“Boy,” the Mazz said. “After the shit we seen go down in Brentwood, I’m surprised you got to ask. Myself, I can’t get too worried about the consequences. I’ve already decided I’ll do
whatever
I have to, to get out of that basement meat locker . . . one way or another. On my feet or on a slab.”

“Same,” Gil said.

Harper said, “But we
can’t
vote tonight. Not if there are fifteen—seventeen—other people who want to throw in with us. How would we manage such a thing?”

Don and Renée and Allie traded looks and Harper felt once again that they were ahead of her by a step.

“Harper,” Renée said. “We’ve
already
managed it. Everyone has already cast their vote, except for the seven of us in this room, and maybe the McLee brothers.”

“Nope,” Don said. “They made their wishes known, too.”

“So it’s down to just us. And let me tell you, it was hard work getting us this far. It isn’t so easy to hold an election for the head of a secret society. Because I wouldn’t tell anyone who was in and who wasn’t. I don’t like to be paranoid. But I couldn’t discount the possibility that some of the people who told me they want to leave Camp Wyndham are feeding information back to Carol. For example, I never heard a single vote for Michael Lindqvist. I’m sure most people would be
shocked
to hear he’s with us. He’s always been Ben Patchett’s right hand. No . . . most of the voting condensed around the two or three really obvious candidates.”

“What makes someone an obvious candidate?”

“Anyone who isn’t a part of the Bright anymore. Anyone who isn’t singing Carol’s song. Basically: the people in this room tonight. Not only do we all still have to cast our vote, we’re also all the leading candidates.” She reached into a worn, striped shoulder bag she had brought with her, and came up with a tablet of yellow lined paper. She placed it facedown on an end table. “After we fill out our own ballots, I’ll let you know how everyone else voted.” Renée reached into the shoulder bag again and came up with a pad of red sticky notes. She peeled squares off, one at a time, and handed them around. Don found a chipped mug with pens stuck into it and passed them out.

“Do we have an official title for the man or woman who wins this thing?” Gil asked, frowning at his own blank square.

“I like ‘Master Conspirator,’ ” said the Fireman. “That has a nice ring. A touch of poetry and darkness to it. If you could get killed for having the job, you should at least have the pleasures of an official title with some sex appeal.”

“So it shall be,” Renée said. “Cast your vote for Master Conspirator.”

There was a fidgety silence and the sounds of pens scratching on paper. When they had each finished, Renée was waiting with her tablet in hand.

“Of the fifteen people I spoke to,” Renée began, and cleared her throat, and went on. “We had two votes for Don and two votes for Allie.”