She still heard a dry and gritty rasp she didn’t like, but if it was no better, it was also no worse. He was smiling and, in sleep, almost looked his old, calm, wry self. The smoke around them was as good as an oxygen tent. It wouldn’t make his pneu monia go away—the best chance for him now was a course of antibiotics—but it might buy him time.
In the early afternoon, though, they dragged him clear of the haze and went on beneath a clear, cloudless, hateful blue sky, the sun throwing blinding flashes off every piece of metal and every sooty fragment of glass. By the time they finally got off the road, John was worse than Harper had ever seen him. His fever returned, a sweat springing up on his cheeks and in his gray, depressed temples. His tongue kept flicking out of his mouth, looking swollen and colorless. His teeth chattered. He spoke to people who weren’t there.
“The Incas were right to worship the sun, Father,” the Fireman said to Father Storey. “God is fire. Combustion is the one inarguable blessing. A tree, oil, coal, a man, a civilization, a soul. They’ve all got to burn sometime. The warmth made by their passing may be the salvation of others. The ultimate value of the Bible, or the Constitution, or any work of literature, really, is that they all burn very well, and for a while they keep back the cold.”
They settled in an airplane hangar beside a small private landing strip. The hangar, a blue metal building with a curved roof, didn’t have any planes in it, but there was a black leather couch in one office. Harper decided they ought to bungee him down to it, so he didn’t fall off in the night.
As she was binding him down, his rolling, baffled eyes locked in on her face. “The truck. I saw the truck this afternoon. You ought to leave me. I’m slowing you down and the plow is coming.”
“There’s no way,” Harper said, and brushed his sweaty hair back from his brow. “I’m not going anywhere without you. It’s you and me, babe.”
“You and me, babe,” he repeated, and flashed a heartbreaking smile. “How ’bout it?”
After he drifted off into fitful slumber, they collected together by the open hangar doors. Allie broke up a bookshelf with a hammer and Nick made a campfire from the shelves and piles of flight manuals. He ignited the whole mess with one pass of his burning right hand. Renée turned up some Dasanis and dried pasta in a cupboard. Harper held a pot over the flames, waiting for the water to boil. Harper’s hand extended straight into their cook fire, the blaze licking around her knuckles. Once you had mastered Dragonscale, you could skip the oven mitts.
“If he dies,” Allie said, “I quit. I don’t care about Martha Quinn’s island. I don’t even like eighties music.”
The fire snapped and popped.
“Here’s the part where you promise me he won’t die,” Allie said.
Harper didn’t say a word for ten minutes, and then all she told them was, “Pasta’s done.”
24
Late the next morning the small party of pilgrims came around a bend and drifted to a shuffling, weary halt.
What stopped them initially was a shock of color. On the left side of the road was the sort of scenery they were used to: blasted trees and a long slope of burnt sticks and ruin. But on the right was a gray-green forest of pine. The branches of the firs were caked in ash, but the trees beneath were healthy, undamaged, and the grass growing below them was rich and lush. Through the evergreens they saw a gleam of black water.
A billboard stood on the green side of the road. Originally it had featured an ad for GEICO insurance. A dainty little gecko suggested that fifteen minutes or less could save a buck or two. Spray-painted directly under this helpful suggestion was a message in black:
NEW MAINE FREE ZONE
INFECTED TAKE GLOVES + COAT
STAY ON ROAD CONTINUE NORTH
TO MACHIAS FOR MARTHA QUINN ISLE
INFECTED WEAR ORANGE SAFETY
GARMENTS AT ALL TIMES!
An elderly pickup was parked alongside the billboard. The flatbed contained milk cartons crammed with bright orange work gloves. A pile of orange rain slickers had been heaped beside them. Nick climbed up to root around, lifted one of the slickers, and turned it so they could see.
A biohazard symbol had been stenciled on the back in black.
“What now?” Renée asked.
“Looks like we get dressed,” Harper said. “Will you be a hon and find me a coat? I don’t want to try and climb up there.”
Ten minutes later they walked on, all of them in the orange slickers and orange gloves that marked them as sick. They hadn’t tried to pull a coat on the Fireman, had only tossed one over his chest.
The pond they had glimpsed through the trees turned out to be a nasty body of water indeed. Masses of dead fish rotted on the stones at the edge of the water, and the shallows were hidden beneath a floating blanket of ash, although the center of the little pool was clear and black. There were a few undamaged and empty cottages built alongside the water, from the days before there were setback rules on construction. Notices had been nailed to the front doors, above more black biohazard symbols.
“Hang on,” Harper said and left them in the road.
She climbed the steps of the first cottage and read the notice.
THIS HOUSE HAS BEEN DESIGNATED A TEMPORARY OVERNIGHT SHELTER FOR THOSE INFECTED WITH DRACO INCENDIA TRYCHOPHYTON A/K/A DRAGONSCALE. IF YOU ARE HEALTHY DO NOT ENTER.
DO NOT DRINK THE WATER OR USE THE TOILETS. THERE IS BOTTLED WATER IN THE FRIDGE AND CANNED GOODS. DO NOT TAKE MORE THAN YOU NEED. THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO SQUATTING. VISITORS MUST DEPART WITHIN 12 HOURS. THIS RESIDENCE IS MONITORED BY LOCAL LAW ENFORCEMENT.
WEAR YOUR ORANGE SAFETY GARMENTS AT ALL TIMES. IN FECTED FOUND NOT WEARING CLOTHING THAT MARKS THEM AS SICK WILL BE CONSIDERED HOSTILE AND MAY BE SHOT.
YOU ARE 131 MILES FROM MACHIAS, WHERE YOU MAY BE PROVIDED WITH TRANSPORT TO THE FREE WOLF ISLAND D.I.T. CARE UNIT. OUR PRAYERS ARE WITH YOU.
“What’s it say?” Allie shouted.
“It says we can stay here overnight if we need to,” Harper said, but she already knew they weren’t going to. It was too early in the day to stop.
She let herself in, pushing back the door and stepping into the front hall. The cottage had a pipe-smoke and dusty-book smell that Harper associated with the aged. The phone on the wall had a rotary dial.
Harper found her way to a kitchen with a view of the pond. A 1950s-era Coldspot refrigerator the color of a banana milk shake stood against one wall. A picture of Smokey Bear in a rustic wooden frame hung next to the back screen door. ONLY YOU CAN PREVENT FOREST FIRES.
The light switches didn’t work. She peeked into the fridge and found pallets of room-temperature bottled water. The bathroom was as dark as a closet, and Harper had to fumble around for a while before she found the catch on the medicine cabinet.
When she came out of the lake house five minutes later, Harper had a case of water under her left arm and a bottle of Bayer aspirin in her right hand. She squatted on the flagstone path and used a rock to crush four aspirin tablets into a fine powder. She spoonfed the smashed pills to John, mixed in with little sips of water.
“Will that make him better?” Allie asked.
“It’ll bring down his fever,” Harper said. For a while, she thought. If they didn’t get antibiotics into him soon, all the aspirin in the world wouldn’t keep his infected respiratory system going. He’d suffocate on his own fluids.
“Chim chim cher-ee,” John muttered. “Chim chim cher-uck. Here comes Jakob in his truck. Chim chim cher-ee, chim chim cher-all. Desolation’s plow sweeps away all.”
Harper kissed his sweaty, damp cheek, stood, and nodded to Allie. Allie bent and took the handles of the ladder.
“Let’s go,” Harper said.
25