“Please,” I repeat. I close my eyes and think a brief prayer to God. I’m sorry. “It’s not worth it, Fred. We need you. Stay inside. Let the police do their jobs. Promise me you won’t leave the house.”
A muscle flexes in his jaw. A long moment passes. At every second, I keep expecting the blast: a tornado of wooden shrapnel, a roaring tunnel of fire. I wonder if it will hurt.
God forgive me, for I have sinned.
“All right,” Fred says at last. “I promise.” He lifts up the receiver again. “Just stay out of the way. I don’t want you screwing anything up.”
“I’ll be upstairs,” I tell him. He has already turned his back to me.
I pass into the hall, letting the swinging doors close behind me. I can hear the muffled sound of his voice through the wood. Any minute now, the inferno.
I think about going upstairs, into what would have been my room. I could lie down and close my eyes; I’m almost tired enough to sleep.
But instead I ease the back door open, cross the porch, and go down into the garden, being careful to stay out of sight of the large kitchen windows. The air smells like spring, like wet earth and new growth. Birds call in the trees. Wet grass clings to my ankles, and dirties the hem of my wedding dress.
The trees enfold me, and then I can no longer see the house.
I will not stay to watch it burn.
Lena
The Highlands are burning.
I smell the fire well before I get there, and when I’m still a quarter-mile away, I can see the smudge of smoke above the trees, and flames licking up from the old, weather-beaten roofs.
On Harmon Road, I spotted an open garage and a rusted bike mounted on the wall like a hunter’s trophy. Even though the bike is a piece of crap, and the gears groan and protest whenever I try to adjust them, it’s better than nothing. I actually don’t mind the noise—the rattling of the chains or the hard ringing of the wind in my ears. It keeps me from thinking of Hana, and from trying to understand what happened. It drowns out her voice in my head, saying, Go.
It doesn’t drown out the blast, though, or the sirens that follow afterward. I can hear them even when I have made it almost all the way to the Highlands, cresting like screams.
I hope she got out. I say a prayer that she did, although I no longer know who I’m praying to.
And then I’m in the Highlands, and I can think only of Grace.
The first thing I see is the fire, which is leaping from house to house, from tree to roof to wall. Whoever set the fire did it deliberately, systematically. The first group of Invalids breached the fence not far from here; this must be the work of regulators.
The second thing I notice is the people: people running through the trees, bodies indistinct in the smoke. This startles me. When I lived in Portland, Deering Highlands was deserted, cleared out after accusations of the disease made it a wasteland. I haven’t had time to think about what it means that Grace and my aunt are living here now, or consider that others might have made their home here as well.
I try to pick out familiar faces as they blur past me, darting through the trees, shouting. I can’t see anything but form and color, people holding bundles of their belongings in their arms. Children are wailing, and my heart stops: Any one of them could be Grace. Little Grace, who barely made a sound—she could be shrieking in the half dark somewhere.
A hot, electric feeling is pulsing through me, as though the flames have made their way into my blood. I’m trying to remember the layout of the Highlands, but my mind is full of static: An image of 37 Brooks, of the blanket in the garden and the trees lit gold by the dipping sun, keeps playing there. I hit Edgewood and know I’ve gone too far.
I turn around, coughing, and retrace my path. The air is full of cracking, thunderbolt crashes: Whole houses are engulfed, standing like shivering ghosts, burning white-hot, doors gaping, skin melting from flesh. Please, please, please. The word drills through my head. Please.
Then I spot the sign for Wynnewood Road: a short three-block street, fortunately. Here the fire has not spread so far and remains caught up in the tangled canopy of trees, and skating over the roofs, an ever-growing crown of white and orange. By now, the people in the trees have thinned, but I keep thinking I hear children crying—ghostly, wailing echoes.