“What do you mean comfortable? Did you have him sitting in your lap for story time?”
“Don’t be awful!” Renée cried, with a look on her face that suggested such awfulness was, in fact, delightful. “It was literary talk, not pillow talk. He was hard to draw out—shy, you know—but I thought he had fine insights and told him so. I had encouraged him to seek a degree in English from UNH. I believe he had just enrolled in an online course when the first cases of Dragonscale began to appear in New England.” Renée looked down at her boots and said, in an offhand tone: “We appear to be reconvening the book club, as a matter of fact. I have Ben’s permission to visit the prisoners. He even let me set up a corner of the basement with some ratty chairs and a scrap of carpet. Once a night, the prisoners are allowed out of that awful meat locker, to have a cup of tea and sit down with me. Under guard, of course, although whoever is watching us usually sits on the basement stairs to give us some privacy. We’re reading Watership Down together. Initially Mr. Mazzucchelli was opposed to reading a story about rabbits, but I think I’ve brought him around. And Gil—Mr. Cline—well, I think he’s just glad to have someone to talk to.” Renée hesitated, then added, “I’m glad to have someone to talk to, too.”
“Good,” Harper said.
“I understand Gil has a quote by Graham Greene on his chest,” Renée said. She was studying a bit of wet snow as it slid off the tip of one boot. Her voice was calculatedly indifferent. “Something about the nature of imprisonment. But of course I’ve never seen it.”
“Ah!” Harper said. “Nice. If Ben comes in on the two of you and you’ve got Gil half out of his clothes, tell him it’s a matter of urgent literary research, and ask him to come back later . . . after you’re done consulting Gil’s Longfellow.”
Renée quaked with barely contained mirth. Harper half expected smoke to begin coming out of her ears, and in those days of burning and plague, this was not an entirely unrealistic possibility. It felt good to see Renée laughing over a little innocent filth. It felt like normal life again.
“Uh-oh. The hens are clucking over something.” Ben Patchett brushed through the curtain into the ward and offered them an uncertain smile. “Should I be worried?”
5
“Speak of the devil,” Renée said, wiping at her eyes with one thumb.
The hens are clucking. Harper thought it would be a toss-up, which term for women she hated more: bitch or hen. A hen was something you kept in a cage, and her sole worth was in her eggs. A bitch, at least, had teeth.
If there was irritation on her face, Ben didn’t see it or didn’t want to. He paced halfway to Father Storey’s cot, considering the tube filled with amber-colored juice, the mostly empty plastic bag hanging from the lamp by the bed.
“Is that ideal?” Ben asked.
“Feeding him out of a Ziploc bag? Or the hole in his skull that I sealed with a cork and candle wax? Totally ideal. Just like they’d do it at the Mayo Clinic.”
“Okay, okay. You don’t need to snip at me. I’m not snipping at you. I’m a fan, Harper! You’ve done amazing things here.” He sat on the edge of Father Storey’s bed, across from her. Springs creaked. He looked at the old man’s grave, resting face. “I wish he had told you more about this woman he planned to send into exile. He didn’t say anything except he thought he was going to have to send her away and maybe he’d go with her?”
“No. He did say one other thing.”
“What?”
“He said if he left he wanted John to be in charge of the camp.”
“John. The Fireman.” His voice flat.
“Yes.”
“That’s a fascinating piece of information to be hearing at this late date. Why would—the Fireman’s not even part of the camp. That’s ridiculous. Why not Carol? Why wouldn’t he want his own daughter for the job?”
“Maybe because he knew she was the type of nervous paranoid who would think it’s a good idea to hand out rifles to children,” Harper said.
Ben glanced quickly at the curtain into the waiting room, as if worried someone might be standing just on the other side, eavesdropping on them.
“I’m the one who decided to distribute the firearms, and no one under the age of sixteen got one. And I’ll tell you something else. I require the Lookouts to walk around with the bolt open at all times, to prove their rifle is unloaded. I ever see the bolt closed on any of those guns, they’ll be sucking on a rock until . . .” His voice trailed off and he left the sentence unfinished. A rose hue suffused his cheeks. “And you might not want to run around camp calling Carol ‘paranoid.’ You’re in enough trouble as it is. In fact, that’s why I’m here. You strayed from camp two days ago, went home, and nearly walked right into a Cremation Crew. Then, after slipping away—thank God—instead of returning to your post you went across to see the Fireman and stayed there most of the night.”
“My post?”
“Mother Carol made it clear she expects you to remain by her father’s side, night and day, until the crisis passes. One way or another.”
“The immediate crisis did pass, and I have other patients.”
“Not as far as Mother Carol is concerned.” Ben lowered his head, thought a moment, then looked up. “Is that when the Fireman plans to make his move? When his busted ribs are healed up?”
“Make what move? Move where?”
“Here. To take over.”
“He doesn’t want to take anything over.” It crossed Harper’s mind that she might’ve made a tactical mistake, telling Carol’s first lieutenant that Father Storey had wanted someone else for Carol’s job. Then she thought, Fuck it. If the notion of a power struggle with the Fireman made Ben squirm, all to the good. Let him feel harassed and threatened for once. “But I suppose he’ll do whatever is best for the camp in the end. John always has.”
Renée coughed in a way that seemed to mean Shut up.
Ben took a moment to compose himself. He laced his fingers together in his lap and looked down into the bowl made of his palms. “Let’s go back to when you wandered out of camp. I’ve been trying to figure out what to do about that. I think I know how to fix it.”
“What do you mean—fix it? There’s nothing to fix. I went, I came back, everything is fine, and it’s over.”
“It’s not that simple, Harper. We’re trying to protect a hundred and sixty-three people here. A hundred and sixty-four if we count that baby you’ve got on the way. We have to take steps to keep people safe. If people do things that aren’t safe, well, there have to be consequences. If people steal. If they hoard. If they go wandering and potentially get themselves captured by the people who want to kill us. Harp, I know why you went back. I know you had the best intentions. But every kid who ever went to Sunday school knows where good intentions get you. You weren’t just risking your life and the life of that precious cargo you’re carrying—”
Harper could not say why the phrase precious cargo made her feel ill. It wasn’t the precious part, it was the cargo bit. Possibly it was also an aversion to cliché. When it came to speaking in clichés, Ben Patchett left no stone unturned.