کتاب 07-03

3

Music played, tinny and flat through the little iPhone speakers, barely audible over the rain, but no less lovely for all of that. It was a song Harper used to perform herself when she was eight years old, using a wooden spoon as the microphone, sliding across the kitchen linoleum in her Miss Piggy slippers. Ric Ocasek sang that this one girl was just what he needed, over a melody that sproing-sproinged along like a Slinky walking down a staircase.

Photos loaded, but slowly.

The first showed a vast gradual slope of waist-high grass, yellowing in the autumn. The ocean was a sheet of battered steel in the background. Martha Quinn stood in the center of a long line of children, five on either side of her, her arms around the waists of the two closest. She was as bony as ever and even at nearly sixty, her face was impish and kind, her eyes narrowed in a way that suggested she had a good joke she wanted to tell. The wind blew her platinum hair back from her high brow. Her sleeves were rolled up to show the Dragonscale on her forearms, a black-and-gold scrollwork that brought to mind ancient writings in Kanji.

As the song faded, a second photograph loaded. A doctor in a white lab coat, a pretty Asian woman with a clipboard in one hand, crouched to be at eye level with a scrumptious nine-year-old girl. The little girl clutched a stuffed raccoon doll to her chest and her nose was wrinkled in a shriek of laughter. Her bare, chubby arms were lightly scribbled over with ’scale. They were in the white, clean, sterile hall of a hospital unit somewhere. There was a sign on the wall in the background, blurred, almost out of focus. It wasn’t an important part of the image and so Harper saw it without really noticing it . . . then narrowed her eyes and looked again. When she registered what it said, the intensity of her emotions drove all the air out of her. Just two words:

• Pediatrics

• Maternity

The third photo began to load as the song faded out. A voice began to speak—a voice Harper knew only from 1980s retrospectives on VH1 and MTV. The volume was already so low, Harper could barely hear Martha Quinn over the furious tinny drumming of rain on the ceiling, but out of caution she turned it down still more and bent close to listen.

“Whoo, hello, was that just what you needed? It was just what I needed. Well, it was one of the things I needed. It’s a pretty long list. I NEED to know that Michael Fassbender is still alive, because, HELLO! That man was right in so many ways. He was setting ladies on fire way before the spore got loose, you know what I mean? I NEED new episodes of Doctor Who, but I’m not holding my breath, because I bet everyone who made that show is dead or hiding. Is there still an England out there? I hope you didn’t burn up, British Isles! Where would the world be without your epic contributions to culture: Duran Duran, Idris Elba, and Love Actually? Drop me an e-mail, England, let me know you’re still hanging in there!”

The next image showed a large tent with some folding tables set up in it. A processing center. The tables were manned by the sort of broad-shouldered, blue-haired old ladies that worked high school cafeterias . . . although they wore the bright yellow spacesuits that were standard for anyone who might come in contact with Ebola, anthrax, or Dragonscale. One of the stout old ladies was offering a stack of blankets, pajamas, and forms to a kind of family: an old man with bushy gray eyebrows, a fatigued-looking woman of maybe thirty, and two little boys with bright coppery hair.

“I need peach pie. BAD. I am sorry to say there is no peach pie here on Free Wolf Island, but we do have our own apple orchard, and boy, I can’t wait until it’s apple-picking season and I can go out and get myself a basket of Granny Smiths, Cortlands, Honeycrisps, Honey Boo Boos, Honey Grahams, Graham Nortons, Ed Nortons . . . all that good stuff. No bad apples here! I wish there was a fruit named after me. I wonder what a Quinn would taste like. Probably it would taste like 1987. The best thing about radio is you can imagine me just like I looked in 1987, every man’s fantasy. And by ‘every man,’ I mean shy thirteen-year-olds who liked to read comics and listen to the Cure. ANYHOO! I need more solar panels. I only have four lousy solar panels! It’s okay, that’s better than none. But as you know, I can only broadcast for three hours a day and then our transponder transpires to expire. A heads-up: you are probably not hearing me live, but on a recorded loop. We upload a new loop every day, around eleven A.M., give or take twenty-four hours.”

Nick couldn’t hear Martha Quinn, but he could see the images loading on the screen, and he bent forward, eyes as wide as one who has been mesmerized.

“What else do I need? I need you to get your butt up to Machias and come on over, because we got cocoa! And barrels of walnuts! And a former TV weather anchor who makes amazing fresh bread in a wood-fired stove! Do you know what I’m talking about? I’m talking about Free Wolf Island, located seventeen miles off the coast of Maine, a place where you can safely settle if you—yes, you!—happen to be the lucky winner of a case of Dragonscale. We’ve got a bed for you. And that’s not all! We’ve got a federally operated medical facility, where you can receive cutting-edge experimental treatments for your condition. As I speak to you, I myself, Martha Quinn, am lubed up in a cutting-edge experimental salve that smells and looks exactly like sheep shit, and guess what! I have not burned alive all day! I haven’t even had a hot flash! My last hot flash was in 2009, and that was before the infection even got started.”

Now a photo of an island seen from off the coast: a ridge of green, a beach of blue stone, a scattering of New England–style cottages along a single dirt road. The sun was just coming up or just setting and it cast a gold flare upon the dark water.

“No one is saying the word cure. Do not even whisper the word cure. There are six hundred sick people on this island, and what they are mostly sick of—besides the Draco tryptowhatever—is getting their hopes up over the latest treatment. But I will say that our last death by fire was almost twelve weeks ago. That’s right: six hundred infected and just one dead in the last three months.”

A final image showed a smiling elderly pair with a child. The man was gangly, weathered, with high, almost patrician cheekbones and a weary relief in his eyes. His wife was small, round, the corners of her eyes deeply grooved with laugh lines. The man had a five-year-old boy up on one shoulder. They wore fall clothes: flannel shirts, jeans, knit hats. The woman had Dragonscale scrawled all over the backs of her hands. The caption read: Sally, Neal, and George Wannamaker arrive at the Machias Processing Center and prepare to depart for Free Wolf Island. Do YOU have friends and family on the island? Click for a photo gallery of the—and here a counter showed the number 602—people to receive shelter and comfort in the Free Wolf Island Quarantine and Research Zone.

“When you get to Machias—and you will get here, you have to believe that; I got here and so will you—you will be directed to a processing tent. They’ll take care of you. They’ll give you a pillow, a blanket, a pair of cute paper slippers, and a hot meal. They’ll put you on a boat and send you right over to us, where you will be fed, clothed, and housed. All that, plus the opportunity to rub elbows with incredible celebrities like myself! And a guy who did the weather for a channel in Augusta, Maine! What are you waiting for? Pack your stuff and get your little butt here. Your bed is made. Time to sleep in it.

“I’m going to spin another song, and then I’ll be back with a list of the latest safe routes from Canada . . .”

Nick pointed to the picture of the island, and then asked Harper, in sign, “Is this a real place?”

“You bet,” she said in gestures. “A good place for sick people.”

“When do we go?” Nick’s hands asked.

“Soon,” Harper said, unconsciously speaking aloud while saying it with a gesture at the same time.

In the bed behind her, Father Storey sighed heavily and in a voice of quiet, gentle encouragement, said, “Soon.”