کتاب 09-02

2

When day broke, the engine was completely covered by a pair of tarps, one over the front, another over the rear. Harper had imagined they might be able to put the fire truck inside, but the garage already contained a John Deere and a backhoe. An orderly if cobwebbed collection of rakes and shovels hung from hooks on one wall. An expansive worktable ran the length of the other. That was where they put Gilbert, covering him with a third tarp.

At the back of the garage, a bank of windows looked into a cluttered office: two desks, a corkboard on the wall, an empty water cooler, and a couch the creamy green hue of snot. That was where they slept. Harper took the couch. Allie and Nick slept in each other’s arms on the floor, wrapped in a gray blanket that Allie found in a back compartment of the fire truck. Renée didn’t join them. She sat on a stool beside the worktable, holding Gilbert’s hand. Sometimes she talked to him. Sometimes she laughed, as if he had said something clever. Often she just moved her thumb across his knuckles, or pressed his cold hand to her cheek.

Nick had told Harper he was the thief and promised to take her to where he had stashed the loot. But the Portable Mother was nowhere in sight. The same went for all the other little valuables that had gone missing from camp. Harper assumed Nick would explain when he was ready.

She curled up on her side under a black Windbreaker. The jacket had a print of Death himself on the back, one skeletal hand clutching a scythe . . . and the other raising a lacy bra. GRAVEDIGGERS LOCAL 13—BAD TO THE BONE, it said. The Windbreaker smelled of coffee and menthol and made her think of her father, who was always smearing Bengay on his bad neck. She cried herself to sleep, thinking about her dad, who might be dead now and who she doubted she would ever see again in her life. But she wept quietly, not wanting to disturb anyone else.

When she woke, the children were yet asleep. Was Allie still a child? Looking at her smooth cheek and long eyelashes, Harper wanted to think so. Even in sleep, though, she had a whittled-down quality that made her look very much like a young woman, worn by her cares and worries, too busy to think the things that made children happy.

Harper gazed through one of the picture windows facing the garage and saw Renée had climbed up onto the plywood table and dozed off against Gil, one plump hand resting on his chest. The high windows under the eaves looked out on featureless darkness. Harper had slumbered through the day, and might’ve slept through much of the next night if she weren’t so hungry. They would have to do something about food soon.

The office had a Formica counter with a sink, a microwave, a Mr. Coffee, and a radio that was so old it had a cassette player built into the front. It was plugged into a wall socket, but of course there was no power. There was a fridge, but Harper didn’t look inside, didn’t want to smell what might be in there. She turned the radio around and found a battery compartment in the back. It required six big D batteries. There was a package of fresh D-cells in the third drawer she tried.

Harper carried the radio out of the office and into the cool, stony quiet of the garage. She paused at the workbench, beside Renée and Gil. The tarp had slipped down to their waists. Gil’s shirt was unbuttoned slightly and Renée’s hand was curled on his chest, her cheek against his shoulder.

Written in faded blue letters, ornate, almost Gothic, across Gil’s chest, were two lines:

It is impossible to go through life without trust:

that is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself.

—G. Greene

Harper lifted the tarp up, smoothing it over the two of them, and left them to each other.

She settled on the cement step in a night of surprising, almost liquid warmth, filled with cricket song. She flexed her toes in the damp, gritty loam. When she tipped back her head and looked into the sky, she saw so many stars it made her ache with love for the world. And what a thing: that she still loved the world, even now. The face of the radio glowed a lightning-bug green. What was better than a warm spring night, bare feet in the warm dirt, the smell of budding trees in the air, and a little music on the radio? All she was missing was a cold beer.

She dialed through the FM bands, hoping to hear Martha Quinn and knowing she wouldn’t. She didn’t. Through a hiss of static she brought in a station playing archival recordings of black gospel, but after a few songs it faded out. Farther down the dial she found a young man—or was it a kid? His voice had the high-pitched, strained quality that Harper associated with incipient puberty—reporting from Red Sox spring training in Fort Myers. She stuck there for a while, pulse thudding heavily, shaken by the thought that baseball was going on somewhere in the world.

But after half an inning she began to suspect the kid of making it all up as he went along. Bill Buckner was playing first base again, over twenty-five years since his last game, and every single ball went between his legs. Vin Diesel was batting as the Red Sox’s designated hitter and stroked a ball right at a shortstop named Kermit deFrock. When deFrock caught it, the force of the hit pulled his arm out of its socket. The Sox were playing a team called the Heretics, largely made up of Muppets, monsters, and madmen, who erupted into flames and died on the field whenever they made an error. Harper listened, smiling, for another inning. The Sox were up 3½ to 1 when she changed the station. She wasn’t sure how they had scored half a run. The kid doing the announcing sounded about eleven and like he was having the time of his life.

Down at the very bottom of the dial she found a boys’ choir singing “O Come All Ye Faithful” and stopped to listen, and at some point she realized she was crying. She had not wanted any of them to die. Not a single one, and it didn’t matter how hard it had been to live with them.

When the song faded out, a woman began a report, “Today in Blessings.” It was news, of a sort. She said word had come in that J. K. Rowling, author of the godless Harry Potter novels, had been killed by firing squad in Edinburgh. Her execution had been televised on what remained of the Web. She was scribbled all over with the devil’s handwriting and had used her money and status to protect and transport others who were sick. When offered the chance to ask forgiveness for her many sins—deluding children, hiding the contaminated—she scorned the opportunity and said she would not apologize for a single adverb. The announcer accounted it a blessing that she would burn eternally in hell, praise Jesus.

In local blessings, the National Guard, supported by the Seacoast Incinerators—a volunteer militia—had discovered six hundred infected sinners hiding on the grounds of Camp Wyndham. A pitched battle ensued, ending when the sick burned to death in a church they had converted to a heavily armed compound, say hallelujah.

Farther north, new fires had started in the south of Maine, but in a sign of the Lord’s mercy, the blaze was contained to a mere twenty-mile swath. The New Hampshire Soldiers for Christ had pledged to send more than a hundred men and a dozen fire trucks within the week. Grand Corporal Ian Judaskiller was in close communication with the Maine forest services and stood ready to help any who heard and accepted the truth of his own divine revelations, glory be. Grand corporal? His former title had been governor, but then, his former name had been Ian Judd-Skiller.

The boys’ choir returned to sing something in Latin.

When Harper lifted her gaze, Nick sat on the other end of the step, squeezing his knees to his chest.

“Nice out,” she said, but with gestures, not her voice. “I love a warm night. Almost like summer.”

He nodded, just a little, his chin hovering right above his knees.

“Eat we have to,” she said, knowing she wasn’t getting it quite right. “I’ll find eat. Bring here. Don’t worry if me not back soon.”

He shook his head.

“I know where there’s food,” he told her with his eloquent, expressive hands. “Come on.”

He pushed himself up and led her into the graveyard.