کتاب 07-18

18

In an unexpected turn of events, Father Storey—completely recovered and wearing an immaculate surplice—told Harper to go unto the old school bus, at the gates of Camp Wyndham, and keep a watch on the road. He even used the word unto, like someone quoting verse from the Bible. He issued this command from a throne of bleak white rock, at the center of the Memorial Circle, while his flock emerged from the vast red doors of the chapel behind him. The people of Camp Wyndham were in gay spirits, laughing and chattering animatedly, while some of the children sang “Burning Down the House” in their high piping voices. Harper was troubled to observe some of the adults lugging big red cans of gasoline.

“What’s going on?”

“It was foretold we should have a cookout,” Father Storey informed her. “For we expect friends to come upon us tonight, bearing happy tidings. I say unto you, arise and go along the road and keep your watch. We will prepare the cookfire, and roast s’mores in the name of the Bright.” He winked at her. “Don’t take too long and I’ll save you one.”

She wanted to ask who had done all the foretelling, but time skipped before she could find out, and then she was walking along the road, beneath a dark and starless sky. In the distance, she could hear the congregation roaring the Talking Heads, bellowing about the sweet release of burning it all down. She hurried. She didn’t want to miss s’mores. She wondered who had brought them chocolate and marshmallows. Probably the same person who had been foretelling things.

She was in such a hurry she almost stumbled over the man in the road. She took a wild lurch into high, wet grass to avoid stepping on him. She had not yet reached the bus, which was farther down the hill.

Nelson Heinrich lifted his head and looked up at her. She knew it was Nelson by his ugly Christmas sweater, even though half his face had been flayed off, to show the red bunching muscles beneath. His foggy, good-humored eyes peered out from that glistening crimson mask. He looked almost exactly like the anatomical bust that had once been on the counter in the infirmary.

“I told you I’d get here!” Nelson said. “I hope there are enough s’mores for everyone! I brought friends!”

The Freightliner rumbled at the bottom of the hill, filthy smoke coming unstrung from the exhaust pipe behind the cab.

Nelson pulled himself another half a foot, arm over arm. His guts—long ropes of intestine—dragged in the dirt behind him. “Come on, guys!” he shouted. “I told you I could show you where to find them! Let’s go get something sweet! A spoonful of sugar for everyone!”

Harper fled. She didn’t flee as well as she used to. At eight months pregnant, she ran with all the agility and grace of a woman carrying a large stuffed chair.

But she was still faster than Nelson, and the Freightliner wasn’t moving just yet, and she crested the hill ahead of both of them and came into the light of the great fire. An enormous bonfire blazed, a mountain of coals as big as a cottage, great tongues of flame lapping at the overcast night. Instead of stars, the night was filled with whirling constellations of dying sparks. Harper opened her mouth to scream but there was no one to hear, no one standing around the fire with marshmallows on sticks, no knots of adults drinking cider, no children chasing one another and singing. They had not gathered to enjoy the fire; they were the fire. It was a great sagging hill of black corpses, flames squirting through the eye sockets of charred skulls, the heat whistling through baked rib cages. The fire made a quite cheerful sound, knots popping, bodies seething. Nick sat on the very top of the bonfire. She could tell it was Nick, because even though he was a cooked and withered corpse, he was staring back at her with his burning eyes, gesturing frantically with his hands: Behind you behind you behind you.

She whirled just as Jakob pulled the air horn of the Freightliner in a shrill, heartrending blast. The truck idled, headlights off, twenty feet away, her ex-husband no more than a dark figure behind the steering wheel.

“Here I am, darlin’!” he shouted. “You and me, babe! How ’bout it?”

And there was a great crash as he threw the big orange truck into gear and the headlights snapped on, so much light, so much—