Positive (47 page)

 

CHAPTER 140

W
hatever the reason for the short respite, by nightfall Red Kate got it fixed. Soon she was keeping up a steady stream of gasoline bombs, about one every minute. We kept putting the fires out, but it was just a matter of time before she got lucky and one of the Molotov cocktails hit something vulnerable. I don't even know what caught on fire first—­but soon enough a house was burning, roof to foundation, in the south part of town and then three of them were and then the fire was everywhere. My teams worked valiantly trying to put out the blazes, some of them rushing straight into the conflagration. I knew they would get themselves killed—­the fires were just too big, too out of control, so I ordered them to fall back.

That was when I heard Luke shouting for help. I hurried toward him as fast as I could and when I got there I found him already ordering my teams around, telling them to throw their water on a house that wasn't even on fire. For a second I thought he'd gone crazy but then I realized what he was doing—­he was trying to keep the fire from spreading.

“You bunch,” he said, pointing at a blanket team. “Drop those. Blankets won't cut it anymore. You see that shed?” he asked. “I want you to tear it down.”

They looked at one another, not at him. I could see they were skeptical.

But I gave him the benefit of the doubt. “Do what he says,” I shouted, and they moved.

Sometimes it helps to have the mayor on your side.

The shed in question was right in the path of the spreading fire, but it was made of corrugated tin. It was in no danger of catching on fire. But I watched as they used claw hammers and pickaxes to tear it apart, and then I saw what Luke was after. Hidden inside the shed were a bunch of jugs and bottles looped together with pieces of rubber hose. It was a still. If the fire had gotten to it, it might have gone up like a bomb. Luke moved in fast and started carting away the various pieces of the still, in the process getting a lot of alcohol on his shirt and pants. When he started running back in to grab more of it, I grabbed his arm. “Get away from the fire,” I said.

He looked down at himself and laughed. “That would be a pretty dumb way to go, huh?”

“I'll see to this—­you go see how far the fire's spread on the other side of town.”

He nodded and ran off without another word. I organized a team to finish cleaning up the still, then asked for some help getting up on a roof so I could see the extent of the damage.

It was already devastating, and it looked like it would get worse. The whole southern third of town was on fire. I didn't hear anybody screaming—­those houses weren't occupied, since they were too close to the wall, too close to stray bullets fired by stalkers on motorcycles, so I'd had the ­people who lived there moved to more central housing. I could be thankful for small mercies, at least.

The smoke started to get to me after a while. The flames dazzled my eyes, and as drugged up as I was, I started feeling very light-­headed. I had my team bring me back down off the roof, and I headed north, toward the municipal building.

I had to get every single positive organized, get them limiting the spread of the fire—­Luke would have good ideas about that. I needed to organize rescue parties just in case anyone was trapped down there. I needed—­

I came up short when I reached the main square. Maybe seventy ­people were there, all of them staring southward. Staring at the column of smoke and fire twisting over Hearth's southern half. They were dumbfounded.

I realized how calm I'd become. Maybe that was the pills, or maybe it was just because I knew somebody had to stay in control, somebody had to keep making decisions.

But yeah. When I thought about it—­Hearth was
on fire
.

It was too much. It was just too much. If I started thinking about it, I would cry or scream or something. This could be the thing that broke us, the final attack that destroyed us.

Except I wouldn't let it be. “It's just houses,” I shouted at the gathered ­people.

Some of them looked at me in horror.
Just
houses?

“Hearth,” I said, “isn't houses. We can build houses, rebuild all of them. But if we don't get to work right now, there'll be no point. I need teams of ­people to fetch water, I need teams to dismantle structures, I need—­”

I needed a lot of things. One by one, the ­people in the square began to snap out of their trance and give me those things.

 

CHAPTER 141

T
he fire burned all night, spreading despite everything we tried. Luke was nearly killed when a flaming house collapsed right next to him, but other than some superficial burns he came through okay. Within minutes he was back in charge of the crew dismantling a small factory on the east side of town.

We had no way to stop the fire, nothing more effective than buckets of water and blankets to smother the embers that scattered everywhere every time a house sagged and collapsed into the street. There weren't even enough of us to take care of what problems we could fix, much less think about how to stop the conflagration.

Every single one of us, every positive in Hearth, worked tirelessly, bringing water from the well, throwing buckets of dirt on smoldering piles of rubble, dragging wounded ­people out of buildings that were at risk. Some ­people did die in the fire, trapped inside buildings they were trying to save. Dozens of others were burned or suffered such bad smoke inhalation they had to be taken to the hospital in the municipal building.

I kept moving as best I could through all of it, though my wound and the pills made me dizzy, made me sway in the heat of the fires. I blacked out a ­couple more times, but I didn't tell anybody when it happened. I tried not to worry about it. I just got back to what I had been doing.

I think a lot of ­people were in that same condition, half dazed, half sick, barely able to stand but unable to stop working. Nobody was going to stop now, nobody was going to just lie down and admit defeat.

Even when we realized it was probably the end of us.

Even when we saw what the fire had done to the wall.

Whole sections of it were just . . . gone. Either it collapsed when the fire burned out the wooden supports, or the corrugated tin just melted from the intense heat. Where the wall still stood it sagged on broken timbers or leaned at crazy angles.

The only thing stopping Red Kate's stalkers from flooding into the town was the fire itself, and that wasn't going to last. As out of control as it was, there was only so much fuel for it to consume. The section of houses where it had begun was nothing now but a colossal pile of ash and burnt timbers. It wasn't even smoking anymore.

I brought Strong and her snipers down from the gate and had them set up on top of houses in the part of town that hadn't caught fire yet. I gave them all the guns and ammunition we had. Maybe, I thought—­maybe we had a chance. We had piles of sheet metal and corrugated tin from all the sheds and workshops we'd torn down, all the buildings we'd dismantled trying to slow the fire down. If I could get my ­people to run over to the wall, through the ashes, if they could get there in time to put up new wall sections—­they didn't have to be particularly strong or well fastened, they just had to look like one continuous wall, if—­if Kate didn't burn down the rest of the town—­if my ­people could stand up under the strain—­if—­if—­if—­

All my hypotheticals disappeared at once, when I heard the motorcycle engines biting and snapping at the smoky air.

Kate had seen that the wall was down.

The stalkers were coming.

 

CHAPTER 142

T
he first bike came right through the flames, roaring through a great plume of black soot and white ash. It hit a collapsed timber like a ramp and the bike jumped into the air, flying over a pile of burning rubble. Flames licked along the sides of the machine, but the stalker jumped clear before the motorcycle caught fire. It went skidding across scorched pavement, blue flames shrouding its gas tank. The stalker rolled up to his feet and ran right at a positive holding a blanket. She lifted it up as if it were a shield, but the stalker just slashed at her with a long knife, carving deep into her arm.

I started hobbling over to help, but another motorcycle was already buzzing toward me, and another over to my left. They burst out of the smoke faster than I could keep track, some of the stalkers jumping off their bikes as soon as they were inside the wall, others roaring great circles around us like they were herding pigs.

One came at me with an assault rifle in his hands, and I lifted my shotgun and fired right into his dark face shield. It turned white as it shattered and then blood poured out around the man's neck as he lifted his hands toward his face.

I kicked him over and pointed my shotgun at the next stalker I saw. He had a metal pole in his hands that he swung around so fast it knocked the shotgun right out of my hands. He came at me, the pole blurring in the air as it spun, and I knew if it touched my face or my chest it would hit fast enough and hard enough to break bones. But even as he brought his pole up for the fatal swing, a positive in a flower-­print dress stabbed him in the kidney with a carving knife.

He fell down in a heap. My savior helped me up, dragging me to my feet with both her hands. She couldn't be more than five feet tall. It took me a while to see past all the soot on her face and realize it was Lucy, the radio operator. “Thanks,” I said. “Grab that assault rifle.” I pointed at the one that had belonged to the stalker I killed. Then I bent to pick up my shotgun.

All around us positives were drawing weapons, getting ready for the next attack. There was no doubt in our minds that more stalkers were on the way—­we could hear motorcycles buzzing just beyond the cloud of smoke that wreathed the southern part of town.

I saw four stalkers down on the ground, all of them dead. Two positives were down as well, but one was just wounded, blood washing the ash off his hands and arms. I shouted for somebody to help him get to the hospital.

Lucy turned the assault rifle over in her hands. “I can't get this to work,” she said.

I traded her, my shotgun for the assault rifle. Ike had carried a rifle when we left the medical camp, and he'd shown me how it worked. This one had skulls painted on the stock but otherwise looked the same. It felt strange, though, a little light. I checked the sights, then ejected the clip to check for jams.

There was only one bullet in the clip. I was certain the stalker hadn't fired his weapon, that I'd killed him before he could shoot.

I looked around and saw that of the other three stalkers we'd killed, not a single one of them was carrying a firearm. They'd brought hand weapons—­knives and the metal staff.

Sometimes an idea just comes to you, a thought, a conclusion. Sometimes it's like the thing was just waiting for you to notice it, all the pieces in place, ready for you to come and see the bigger picture.

I shouted for Luke. He wasn't far away. Two more stalkers had come through at a different part of the fallen wall, he told me. They were both dead. One of them had been carrying an assault rifle. I checked its clip and found two bullets inside. Just two.

“Come on,” I told Luke. “Get all your teams together.”

“But the fire's still burning—­”

I shook my head. “I know how Kate thinks. This wasn't the last of it—­there'll be more of them coming through any second. Let's go get ready for them.”

 

CHAPTER 143

R
ed Kate liked to pretend she was a wild animal, a thing of chaos. But she waited a good hour before she made her next attack, which gave us all the time we needed.

She came into town through a gap in the wall big enough she could have driven tanks through it. Most of her stalkers came on motorcycles, but she came on foot. She inspected a piece of corrugated tin that used to be part of the wall. She tore it down and tossed it aside, nearly hitting one of her stalkers.

She had a big nasty smile on her face. She knew she'd won. Hearth was hers and there was no way we could keep her out, no way we could stop her from despoiling the town. From obliterating the population.

I wonder if she believed, even a little. If she thought she was doing the cult's work, that she would be giving strength to Anubis when he needed it the most, in his war against the Washington government.

I doubt it. I think she just liked the fact she had a job where she got to burn down ­people's homes. Loot their belongings. She was a maggot on the corpse of the world—­she'd told me as much.

For a little while, at Hearth, I think I had started to show that the world wasn't quite dead. That maybe we could bring it back to life.

She was here to prove me wrong.

The stalkers spread out through the streets of the town, their assault rifles up and ready. Most of them had left their bikes behind in the ashes. A few raced here and there, scouting ahead.

Some of them carried knives or staves or even clubs that looked like machine parts, like components removed from motorcycle engines. Some carried heavy metal chains. They were ready for whatever kind of fight we wanted to give them. It was impossible to see how they felt about this, with the face shields of their helmets down. Were they excited, salivating for the kill? Were they feeling devout? Were they scared? Did they just want to get this over with?

Maybe they were confused, as they moved farther and farther into Hearth and nobody ran out to gave them battle. Maybe they started to relax a little, to think that we'd all died in the fire or something.

I could see Kate's face. I saw how she looked when she got to the main square and hadn't found anybody. I saw her when she got to the gate at the north end of town, the gate that led to the road and the highway beyond. It was standing wide open, swinging a little in the wind from the still-­roaring fire.

The sniper nests on top of the gate were empty. No sharpshooters waited on the rooftops, looking to line up a good shot.

Kate saw that the town was open, defenseless, and she screamed in thwarted rage.

“No, you didn't, Stones,” she shouted. “No way. No way you just walked away. You don't get to do that! Not again!” She drew her knife, the one with the skulls on the hilt. The cult's knife. She pointed it at the empty gate. “I will hunt you down,” she vowed. “I will find you. And I will cut your fucking eyes out.”

Makes sense, right?

I mean, Kylie had even suggested it to me. That we pick up and go east, find a safer place to start over. I'd realized something when the fire tore through half of the town. Hearth wasn't the houses or the land or even the name. It was the ­people. The positives.
We
were Hearth.

If we had to run, we could run. We could go somewhere else, start a new life. The dream didn't have to die.

At least . . .

At least that was what I wanted Kate to think. I knew it would make sense to her.

She couldn't understand what this town meant to me. That I would never leave it.

I had sent Strong and her snipers—­with the last of our ammunition—­around the edge of the camp, skirting the wall on the outside. So they could come up behind Kate and her stalkers once they were all inside the town.

The rest of us were inside the buildings on the main square. Keeping our heads down, waiting for the signal to attack.

“We stayed, when we could have run,” I whispered to the terrified ­people crouching all around me on the second floor of the municipal building. “We stayed knowing we would have to fight. This is the time. We're going to fight because
we are Hearth
.”

Any second now, the signal would come, any second—­and then we would fall on them with all the fury and rage of a ­people besieged, and we would end this for once and for all.

Except of course it didn't work out that way.