“Every
day is September eleventh,” she said “How are we supposed to live our lives
when every day is September eleventh?” (Harper says to her husband, Jakob
Grayson, p. 38)
For when Allie insisted altruism was
really selfishness, and kindness a form of manipulation, she sounded like
Jakob. (p.195)
It is the first time for me to read the
book about apocalyptic theme, and I only enjoy the genre through films. I found
myself enjoy the writing style – beautiful written - interesting plot. The
author also provided creative description enough to make me feel as if I was
there watching the events. But unfortunately the 747 pages is too long to me, and the
only error printing is on page 691. Despite of it, this fiction is inspiring
and interesting one. The apocalyptic thriller is published by William Morrow,
an Imprint of HarperCollins Publisher in 2016.
The son of the so-called Master of
Horror, Stephen King, whose full name is Joseph Hillstrom King, set after the
world infected by a pandemic spore called Dragonscale
then sends the victims on fire. Nurse Harper,
the main character, is pregnant when she is infected. She insists to keep the
baby, but her husband, Jakob Grayson, disagrees, and turns to be insane. The
husband wants Harper joining him to suicide, the nurse runs away.
Then Harper finds an infected community,
there she is involving with conflicts - including ritual one, but also finding
happiness when she meets a man called Fireman. Google has been down, communication is limited, it is only radio on the air. One of the broadcasts says there is Martha Quinn’s island, an
island of hope for Harper’s baby and others, later they find it is only
a trap and a fake hope. Obviously the author doesn’t intend to create super
human/hero here, but he picks the main character an ordinary young woman who
never give up. The book depicts humanity, ritual, describing people’s reaction
on apocalyptic event, friendship, loyalty, betrayal, love, and spore.
The
Fireman (2016), an Apocalyptic Thriller by Joe Hill: summary
School was suspended statewide that
evening, with assurances they would open when the crisis passed. As it
happened, it never passed. Harper imagined she would have the house to herself,
but when she got home, Jakob Grayson was already there. Half the kids in school
saw it. A man was in the playground around staggering like a drunk. Then he
fell down and caught fire. He burned up like he was made of straw. Half the
kids saw it.
Harper had only been working at
Portsmouth hospital for three weeks as the volunteer nurse. A man wore the same
yellow rubber jacket all the fireman wore and he had a child in his arms, a
boy, hugging him around the neck. A hundred and thirty-one of them, weary and
strained with Dragonscale, they also in the line were having the emergency. His
English accent distracted Harper, it was her job to keep the people who were
waiting content. The boy was not his son. The fireman was with a dangerously
ill child and a heavy iron bar, a hooligan thing.
The boy was more or less the most beautiful
child Harper ever seen. His dark, curly hair was delightful tangle above the
lucid pale green and empty of an empty Coke bottle. He had on shorts and
everyone could see the marks on the back of his calves: black, curving strips,
tattolike, delicate and almost ornate. Nick was deaf, fortunately she ha, at
some point in nursing school, had a single day of instruction in American Sign
Language, of which she remembered nothing. The kid was under the gas, the
pediatric surgeon, was cutting him open to remove an inflamed appendix the size
of an apricot. The boy was in recovery for three days. On the fourth day he was
gone.
In the hospital, the infected were
divided into two groups: symptomatic normal and smolderers. Smolderers smoke on
and off, already to ignite. Smoke curled from their hair, from their nostril
and their eyes streamed water. The stripes on their bodies got so hot they
could melt latex gloves. The hospital filled every ward and infected kept
coming. The cafeteria was converted to an immense dormitory for the healthiest
of the sick. That was where Harper met Renee Gilmonton, who stood among all the
others by virtue of being the only black person in a room of two hundred of
patients. She was fortyish, pleasantly rounded and bespectacled, gray showing
in her neat cornrows, and she had not come alone: she brought a potted mint
with her, named Daniel. And a photo of her cat, Mr. Truffaut.
In a former life, she had been a
professional do-gooder: organized a weekly pancake breakfast for a local
orphanage, taught English to felons in the state prison, and managed an
independent book store that lost money by the bucket load while hosting poetry
slams. Old habits died hard. Around the cafeteria, Renee was known as Mrs.
Asbestos because she didn’t have fevers, didn’t smoke, and when someone went up
in flames, Renee ran toward them to try and put them out, when most people ran
away. Running toward the flame was, in fact, against the doctor’s advice, and
she often scolded for it. She took off, Renee’s mattress had been stripped bare
and her personal items taken away. She was reading to some little kids, and the
girl sitting in her lap jumped u because Mrs. Gilmonton was getting warm. Then
people started to scream and scatter.
Flame gushed from every shattered
window. Thick black smoke, pilled a thousand feet high, the hospital burn.
Haper didn’t know if she crying because she was sad or because there was a lot
of smoke in the air, the smell like charring hot dogs. It came to her that the
hot dog smell was the odor of burning corpses.
Jakob has wound up a deputy manager with
the Portsmouth Department of Public Works almost by accident; he intended to be
a novelist He had dropped out the college to write, had been working on the
book ever since, six years now. He had 130 pages he had never let anyone read,
not even Harper.
She brought home the spore, Dragonscale,
but the same time she got herself one month pregnant. Smoke had hovered over
town all summer long. Twelve percent New Hampshire was on fire. Washington,
D.C., was still burning. So was Manhattan. The woman and children who had been
marched out of the trees were bunched together into a tight group. The field
was in full view of the high way. George Clooney was shot as he climbed out of
his limousine. Although Clooney was dead, had burned to death while on
humanitarian aid mission to New York City.
Jakob thought they were both about to
die, and he had a moral obligation to stop his wife from going out in the world
and infecting someone else. She ran away to the woods when Jakob intended to
kill her. As he came from the bushes, the fireman was so filthy it was nearly
black. The fireman wrestled with Jakob. As Jakob tried to pull back on the
Fireman’s hooligan bar, at the moment the Fireman reached over the bar and put
his hand on Jakob’s throat, and fire belched from his hand. That flame was as
blue as blowtorch.
Allie was first out of the tree. The
Fireman had been spying on her. They headed to a summer camp named Camp
Wyndham. There were she met Tom Storey, Allie’s grandfather. They called him
Father Storey, the program director at the camp. He had the place opened up as
a shelter for folk with Dragonscale. He had got more than hundred people hiding
there. They had three meals a day, there was no electric power, but they had
got working showers. They got a school, and a kind of junior police force
called Lookouts, to keep watch for Quarantine Patrols and Cremation Crews.
That’s mostly teenagers –Allie and her friends. There were a few oldsters, but
a lot more who ought to still be in school. Most of them had lost family, seen
the people they love burn to death in front of them. Then Father Storey and his
daughter Carol- Allie’s aunt-taught them they didn’t have to die. There was a
woman with them, of course, there was no chance at all Harper could’ve
forgotten the woman who fled from Portsmouth hospital, Renee Gilmonton.
They emerged alongside Little Harbor
Road, looking across the blacktop at the turnoff into Camp Wyndham: a lane of
hard-packed white shell and sandy earth. The Fireman, John Rookwood, wasn’t
there and he didn’t want to be there. He preferred to keep his distance. He was
the person who led most of them in the first place. Harper asked them to call
her maiden name. Grayson belonged to Jakob, and she felt she had left
everything of Jakob’s mind in the woods. Her maiden name was Willowes.
Harold Cross, the loner, said he had
been texting with a doctor in Berkeley who thought our community might
represent a real breakthrough. There was another doctor in Argentina who wanted
Harold to take blood samples of people when they were in the Bright. Mr. Ben
Patchett said tracing the location of the smartphone was the easiest thing in
the world and made him give up his cell. Harold wanted the camp to have a vote.
On the night of the first lottery to see
who would eat and who wouldn’t, Harper pulled kitchen duty. Lunch was watery
porridge with a side of peaches, dished out from yet another can. It was the
lottery ticket for meal. Nelson Heinrich, reminded Don Lewiston who was sixty
to quit the line. For they had a bad luck, they only had a cup of coffee with
some sugar.
The night the locket went missing, Renee
and Harper were listening to the Marlboro Man on a battery-powered radio. The
Marlboro Man called the infected people as the burners. He ran the Cremation
Crew, the Dragonscale’s hunter. It’s made up of eight men and women, and that
two were able to supply some heavy ordnance. They travelled in two vehicles. A
van and a big orange truck and they had a police scanner.
Harper had never imagined Allie, who was
so daring, so clever, so beautiful, and so funny, could be so cruel to Renee.
She accused all of Renee’s altruism was a selfishness and a form of
manipulation. People in the camp always listened to static, listening to Martha
Quinn, who used to be on TV. Martha Quinn’s land was only their hope. Don
Lewiston knew where it was.
Harper had never seen the Fireman in
chapel before- no one had. Word had passed that Father Storey was going to make
an announcement about the thefts in the girls’ dorm.
Jakob had told her that all acts of
altruism were secretly acts of selfishness, that you were really only doing for
others to please yourself. She had not thought she was a religious person, but
in the church at Camp Wyndham, she had discovered everyone was religious.
Harper picked the shattered pieces, it
was private notebook of Harold Cross. There might be quite a few people in camp
who would want to know what Harold had written about in the weeks before his
death.
Harper wanted to look for Martha Quinn.
Most of buildings around the pond was dark, but police department and the
parking lot alongside it were lit up like a football stadium on game night.
From where she sat, Harper could see two big hills of a waste burning in the
lot. A few fire trucks were park nearby, the fire department managing the blaze.
Harper spied a man men in helmets and fire jackets moving here and there about
the bonfires. The Fireman involved Allie, the sixteen-year-old girl in their
mission. They went to drainage pipe beneath the causeway.
A man dressed in a fireman’s turnout
jacket and knee-high boots tried to attack the Fireman, the attacker was a real
fireman with a gas mask. Harper saw another fireman sprint through drifting
white cloud of smoke. Harper hit him with Fireman’s halligan. Then they were
through the smoke and into the parking lot, the Portsmouth Police Department
not hundred step away on their left. They had come out close to one of the two
bonfires. Harper and John Rookwood, the Fireman, emerged from the smoke right
next to a coup with a round, freckled, innocent face, dressed in a black poncho
and black rubber glove. The bonfire to left was a heap of desiccated bodies,
blackened and shriveled corpses.
She glimpsed a dead woman, holding a
dead child of about eight, the boy’s face buried in her breast. John saw Jakob,
the ex-husband. Jakob sat in the open passenger door, elbows on his knees. He
was flushed, oiled with sweat from the heat of the bonfire, and hadn’t shaved
in a while. He had lost his weight. And it showed in his face, in his sunken
cheeks and deep hollows around his eyes. He wasn’t infected with Dragonscale.
John studied the spore, only spreading
through ash. The Fireman, John Rookwood, was a lowly mycologist at a state
college. John was at the hospital, when Harper was infected. He was too late to
warn anyone. Farmers in South America would burn an infected crop and the
airstream would carry fungal spores in the ash halfway around the world to New
Zealand. The ash infected a host who eventually burnt alive, creating more ash
to infect new hosts.
They got caught by the Gasmask Man, he
wrestled with John. Harper help John, she hit the attacker with John’s
halligan. John had smashed ribs and a broken wrist. A rowboat sat on the bank,
no canoes and no sign of Father Storey and others. A mist had come up and was
piled atop the water, blanket the horizon. John’s little island was no more
than three hundred feet offshore.
Allie had been crying. Her Captain
America mask, grimy and battered, hung around her neck. He was crying blood,
Father Storey was stretched of in one of the camp beds. Father couldn’t say
anything about what happened. Without opening his eyes, Father Storey said he
was better, thanked Harper. Then he was silent, and he did not speak again for
two months.
Harper read Harold’s notebook, picked at
random. The convicts were handcuffed together, the chain looped over a length
of pipe located almost seven feet off
the floor, so they had stand there, each with an arm raised. Mark Mazzucchelli
and Gilbert Cline were accused of bashing in Father Storey’s head. They got
caught Mazz trying to boost one of the community’s cars and blood all over him.
Allie observed that Mazzucchelli was wearing Father’s Storey’s boots and coat.
They voted to make Ben Patchhett to give
him final authority on all security matter and they voted to make Aunt Carol
head of chapel services and daily planning, which was Fathter Storey used to
do.
Harper meant every word of what she had
promised Allie that she was going to paddle over to Fireman’s island, checked
his condition and came back. She had left out the part about needing to go home
first because the infirmary cupboard was all but bare and she was going to have
hunt through her personal supplies for the things John needed. She saw Jakob
was at the pool but the Marlboro Man was superior at holding his drink. She had
promised to Allie she would be back in two hours. It had been maybe twice that.
Allie talked about how they weregoing to start making examples out of people
who broke the rules.
The
Fireman and Sarah Storey
Sarah Storey was pregnant at seventeen
by her piano instructor, an angelically beautiful Lithuanian only a few years
older than her. Cast out of the private academy where her father was professor. Father Storey taught ethics and history of Christianity at a prep school in Massachusetts. Tom Storey, her father, was her best friend in the entire world, and the most
forgiving man she knew. She got married in a town office the day after she
accepted her diploma. Her Lithuanian, humiliated and unable to get a job
teaching, returned to private lessons, which is Sarah discovered that screwing
his students was one of his nervous tics.
Nick was born John came into the story.
He was deaf. The father suggested putting him up for adoption, Sarah suggested
him a new place to live and threw him out. He supposedly to take Allie to a
dental appointment, and promptly disappeared with the kid. He was arrested four
long days later, in a motel near the Canadian border. He tried to go to the
Lithuanian embassy and tried to scuttle back to Europe with her. He was out on
bail when he hung himself.
Tom Storey had supervised worship at
Camp Whyndam since the 1980s, and was made camp director a decade later. The
spring that Nick turned seven, Sarah suggested the camp host a two-week program
for the deaf, and Tom made it happen. Sarah couldn’t accept her sister, Carol
who had been engaged to a younger woman. Carol dropped in on her fiancée by
surprise, while the boy was doing a residency at a theological institute in New
York, and discovered him in bed with a nineteen-year-old Cuban dance student.
Nick saw it first- a black, oily tower
of smoke, coming from the end of the block. A lot of the neighbors had come out
onto the sidewalks were standing under the trees. A guy was on fire even before
he hit the propane tanks. A couple weeks later, Nick had the stripe across his
wrist. All of them got infected except Sarah. Fifteen million people were
infected.
Only Carol and Ben get decided got to
decide what’s best for the people in Camp Wyndham now. Now the kids called her
Mother Carol. Ben Pachett and Carol made a show of punishing Harper. She was
going to put a stone in her mouth in some moronic self-abashing act of
contrition when she didn’t have anything to feel contrite about. All of them
put a rock in their mouth.
Harper had not imagined there was
anything left in the Harlod’s diary to learn. Martha Quinn was real. The island
was real. She learned the photos. 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 waits of the two closest. She
was a bony 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 arms, a black-and-gold scrollwork that brought
to mind ancient writings Kanji.
A second photograph showed a pretty
Asian woman with a clipboard in one hand. It also showed white, clean, sterile
hall of hospital. The third photo began to load as the song faded out. A voice
began to speak- a voice she knew only form 1980s retrospectives on VHI and MTV.
The voice was asking about Michael Fassbender, new episodes of Doctor Who, and
Duran-Duran.
In unexpected turn of events, Father
Storey-completely recovered and wearing an immaculate suplice- told Harper to
go unto the old school bus, at the gates of Camp Wyndham. Storey shared
Harold’s story to Harper. Carol, his daughter, had called a Cremation Crew on
Harold Cross. She set him up- arranged the whole thing, so when Ben Patchett
shot the poor boy, it would look he had to, to protect the camp and keep Harold
from giving information to enemies. Carol and Tom fought over that. She said
Tom was weak and that people in camp would abandon them if they didn’t show
strength. Carol threatened Harper to drive out from the camp, and the baby
would be taken from her if Tom Storey died. Harper insisted to look for Martha
Quinn’s island, she believed there was a medical facility where she should
safely deliver her baby. Harper considered telling Renee about
the Marlboro Man and his secret broadcast-the radio station he claimed to hear
in his thoughts, his psychic from the future.
A woman eight months pregnant and a man recovering from a chest full of
busted ribs.
Storey was dead. Carol accused the
Fireman tried to kill him three month ago and failed. He and Harper injected an
air bubble into bloodstream and induced a fatal heart attack. A totally
complete fabrication. Carol made up story to draw people’s sympathy, a made up
note from her father that was asking her to protect the children from Harper
and the Fireman. She also accused the Fireman and Harper conspired to kill
Carol and Ben Patchett. Although Renee already explained to the people, that
was lies. John and Harper never wanted to kill anyone, they only wanted to do
was get a small group of them out the camp and off to Martha Quinn’s island.
There was no need for torches anymore.
The camp was all lit up. Harper faced a surging crowd of men and women with
eyes that were bright and blind and shining. All of them were scrawled with
glowing lines of Dragonscale, the spore casting a crimson light that shone
right through sweaters and dresses. Harper and Fireman were convicts. She heard
screaming. She was conscious of motion the edges of her vision, people running.
A rock whickered past her left ear and clattered off the standing stone to
which she tied. She reached up with one hand, found the duct tape around her
head, and yanked. She opened her mouth and the rock in it fell into her palm.
The people of Camp Wyndham were already
on their way, the whole mass of them. All of people already gathered in the
church. Carol walked slowly toward the altar and as she waded into the crowd
they rose their feet and reached for her. The worshipers reached for her and
sang with her and many gazed upon Carol with adoration. Another Molotov
cocktail crashed against the south side of the church. Flame leapt up a section
wall, two men ran at it and began to beat at it with coats. Bullets drummed
into the wooden doors behind them. Harper and the Fireman tried to find the way
out from the chapel. The worshipers still sang and they shone. Their eyes
glowed as blue as blowtorches.
A yellow blast of flame gushed from one
the worshipers, Norma, then her neck began to blacked, while dark smoke boiled
from her nostril. Her arm was on fire. It was a chain reaction, they were all
going down together. When Carol went up in the flames, she was at the center of
the throng, dozens of worshippers reaching in to touch her. The Fireman and his
small group survived from the flames, ran away, and left the camp.
Harper
looked at the garage doors of building for ground screw and wondered if there
was enough room in there for an antique fire truck. They had to put the dead
man down when they reached the corner of garage. At the back of the garage, a
bank of windows looked into a cluttered office. Harper knew that The Fireman
hardly to forget Sarah Storey. The Nurse was already in love with him, later
they were a couple.
The office had a Formica counter with a
sink, a microwave, a Mr. Coffee, and a radio that was so old. She turned the
radio around, and found a battery compartment in the back. She dialed through
the FM bands, hoping to hear Martha Quinn and knowing she wouldn’t. The kid
doing the announcing sounded about eleven and like he was having the time of
his life. Down at the very bottom of dial she found a boys’ choir singing “O
Come All Ye Faithfull” and stopped at listen.
When the song faded out, a woman began a
report, “Today in Blessings”. 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 allover with the devil’s handwriting and had used her money and
status to protect and transport others who were sick. In a local blessings,
National Guard, supported by a volunteer militia, had discover six hundred
infected sinners hiding on the grounds of Camp Wyndham.
A billboard stood on the green side of
the road. A message in black suggested the direction to Machias for Martha
Quinn’s island. Later they found first cottage with a notice that said the
cottage had designed temporary overnight shelter for those infected with Draco
Incendia Trychophyton a.k.a Dragonscale. They were 131 miles from Maciahs,
where the infected might be provided with transport to the free Wolf Island.
Late in afternoon they came over the
hill and looked down into more green, and this time it was on both sides of the
road. A mile away they saw a white away they saw a woman standing in the
dooryard, shading her eyes with one hand and peering back on them. They arrived
at a fence stripped, shining logs, with the farm buildings on the other side. A
white bedsheet hung over the fence, one corner flapping in the breeze. The
written words said they were healthy, Machias was 126 miles. The woman’s
husband had a rifle.
On the fourth day after the crutch, they
broke for lunch. Someone had dropped them in a plastic shopping bag and left
them dangling from a mailbox at the end of a gravel driveway. Harper was nine
months pregnant. Harper lifted her head to see what had caught his attention
and saw a pair of jeeps. Parked in such a way as to block both lanes of the
highway, nose to nose. Two men stood in yellow rubber overalls and yellow masks
with clear faceplates.
The man called Jim welcomed them in
Machias. No cell phone coverage, but we had got a working landline system in
Machias. They could communicate with people farther away by CB. Jim proclaimed
he had saved six hundred and ninety-four men, women, and children. Jim brought
them to another volunteers. The woman, Vivian, gave them information and a
picture of Web site and gave their housing assignments and some supplies for
the trip. Renee explained to her a technique for pacifying the infection. The
spore was under control with almost any kind of group activity that gave
pleasure. It had something to do with a hormone brain releases, oxytocin. All
of the women were exited, the older women, newly minted grandmother began to
fiddle with her camera and looked vexed. The Fireman and Harper admitted that
they were husband and wife to Jim and the volunteers.
Their yacht awaited. The ship was grimy,
the deck slopping with a quarter inch of nasty water. There were three men in
biohazard suits in the pilot’s cabin: Jim, one of the gunmen from the
checkpoint, and whoever was steering. The captain, Harper imagined. They hadn’t
been introduced. On the ship Jim announced there was no Martha Quinn’s island.
They got a hundred hours of Martha Quinn on old recordings. They just played
them on a loop. The governor’s argument had always been that this was the
fastest way to wipe the epidemic out in the Northeast. Bring all the sick to
one processing center and then humanely dispose of them. Dropping them in the
North Atlantic Current, where there was no chance of the bodies washing back up
in Machias.
John asked for the option, but Jim shot
him in the stomach. The blood all over the deck. The boat slewed across a high
wave. Allie grabbed Nick by the vest and stepped onto the cushioned seat and
leapt. Harper had her arms around Renee and carried her over the side. A man
was screaming behind her. The pilot’s cabin was full of fire. A blinding tower
of fire rose into the sky from the immolated wreck of the boat. Jim and his
crew wanted to kill them all the infected. They kicked together in the water.
Their bodies smoked in freezing water. John ignited, all at once, with soft,
deep whump, as if someone had thrown a match on a pile of leaves soaked in
lighter fluid. He was a roaring bed of flame, a nest, and a bird began to rise
from it. A great red prehistoric thing with vast and spreading wings.
Don Lewiston backed the sail and his
long white craft slid the last hundred feet toward them. Only Don had been out
to Martha Quinn’s island, sailed around it and walked on it, and had seen
nothing but blasted dirt and blackened skeletons. If Martha Quinn’s island
wasn’t a refuge, then it was a trap. In the last couple of days, people had
stopped broadcasting about them and he hadn’t known where they were or what was
happening. The baby waved fat arms and squalled. It was a girl, she named her Ashley
Rookwood. Nick had crouched down on his knees to be next to her. He looked at
the baby with a sweet, plain curiosity and then moved his hands, writing on the
air.
******
July 2017
Sekapur
Sirih
Benar-benar baru pertama kali
membaca fiksi bergenre apokaliptik, selama ini hanya menikmati tema ini lewat film, sesuatu yang baru dan menarik. Teknik penulisannya bagus, disertai
tulisan indah. Dalam apokaliptik thriller setebal 747 halaman ini, yang
diterbitkan oleh William Morrow 2016, berkisah tentang wabah penyakit yang
mudah menginfeksi bernama Dragonscale, sudah menyebar ke seluruh dunia. Bisa
dikatakan dunia sudah dalam kehancurannya, Google sudah tidak beroperasi, kota-kota
besar lumpuh, hari-hari asap kebakaran di mana- mana, seperti 9/11 setiap hari.
Serangkaian bunuh diri dan penembakan terhadap mereka yang terinfeksi tidak
terkontrol, bahkan George Clooney yangdalam misi kemanusiaan pun ikut ditembak
mati. J.K Rowling pun ditembak dan penembakannya pun ditayang.
Tokoh utama Harper, perawat muda tengah
hamil di saat dirinya terinfeksi Dragonscale, ingin mempertahankan kandunganya yang
masih sebulan, walau suaminya Jakob Grayson tidak setuju. Ia malah mengajak
untuk bunuh diri bersama, Jakob sudah kehilangan akal, ia tidak mau menularkan
pada orang lain dan tak ingin berakhir dalam keadaan terbakar. Harper berhasil
melarikan diri, dan ingin bertahan hidup dan menemukan komunitas sependeritaan
di hutan, pria yang bisa disebut sebagai pemimpin bernama julukan the Fireman.
Penulis bernama lengkap Joseph Hillstrom
King, adalah putra dari penulis misteri dan horror Stephen King. Sebelumnya ia
sudah menelurkan empat judul yang juga laris terjual. Ia juga pernah menerima
Penghargaan Eisner untuk penulisan komik berseri berjudul Lockey & Key.
Penulisan novel ini bagus dan mudah
dimengerti, plotnya kuat, walau sedikit bosan banyaknya percakapan yang tidak
terlalu perlu dan ada juga bagian rancu ketika tokoh-tokoh keadaan sekarat
dikaitkan dengan politik. Mengesampingkan hal itu karya ini tetap menarik. Jika
Anda penggemar thriller apokaliptik, pastilah dengan mudah menikmati karya ini,
sangat tepat untuk dimiliki.
Ringkasan
Terjemahan dalam Bahasa Indonesia: the Fireman (2016) karya Joe Hill
Sebuah sekolah dikejutkan dengan
kehadiran seorang lelaki yang sempoyongan dan tiba-tiba terbakar, api di sekujr
tubuhnya. Pemerintah telah mengeluarkan penutupan sekolah untuk sementara.
Pandemik wabah Dragonscale menular
dengan cepat yakni ditandai kulit hitam dan seperti guratan pada sekujur tubuh,
tahapan puncaknya penderitanya pada akhirnya akan terbakar.
Sejak infeksi Dragonscale merebak,
Harper bertugas sebagai perawat sukarela pada rumah sakit negeri di kotanya,
Portsmouth. Pasien terinfeksi kian hari membludak, hingga kafetaria dirubah
menjadi ruang perawatan, di sanalah ia bertemu dengan Renee Gilmonton, wanita
berkulit hitam satu-satunya di antara dua ratus orang. Harper merasa dekat dengan
wanita yang berprofesi sbagai pekerja sosial sebelum wabah. Renee membacakan
cerita untuk anak-anak kecil di rumah sakit yang sama dengan Harper. Sangat
kaget dan terpukul mendapati Renee pergi meninggalkan tempat tidurnya, dari
gejalanya, ia sudah terinfeksi dan meninggalkan rumah sakit.
Seorang lelaki mengenakan seragam
pemadam kebakaran memotong antrian. Aksen Inggrisnya menambah perhatian Harper.
Adalah tugas perawat Harper untuk menertibkan antrian. Pemadam kebakaran itu
bersikeras, anak kecil yang dibawanya tengah
sekarat. Walau berdebat akhirnya, Nick, lelaki kecil tuli, dirawat dan
dioperasi. Beberapa hari kemudian ia sudah pulih dan meninggalkan rumah sakit.
Ketakutan dan kecemasan menyaksikan
rumah sakit terbakar, kepulan asapnya menguasai udara, banyak korban yang belum
sempat menyelamatkan diri. Jakob suami Harper menyusul sang istri begitu
mengetahui kebakaran itu. Harper begitu terpukul, beberapa hari kemudian ia
mendapati guratan hitam, ciri-ciri Dragonscale pada tubuhnya, namun suaminya
Jakob tidak terjangkiti sama sekali. Hari yang sama pula ia mendapati dirinya
hamil satu bulan. Keadaan itu sangat mengesalkan bagi keduanya, terutama Jakob.
Harper mengakui keadaannya pada
saudaranya, meminta pertolongan saudara untuk merawat bayinya kelak, apabila ia
mati. Saudaranya tidak mau bertindak pahlawan untuk bayi itu kelak, mereka
sendiri memiliki anak yang harus diselamatkan.
Sebagai tanggung jawab moral pada
kemanusiaan, juga ditengah keputusasaannya, Jakob sudah mengatur cara bunuh
diri yang tepat bagi mereka berdua. Harper berhasil melarikan diri, ia tak
ingin mati, ia ingin mempertahankan bayinya. Kejaran peluru Jakob membuat
Harper melarikan diri ke hutan dan bertemu dengan lelaki yang berseragam
pemadam kebakaran yang pernah ia temui di rumah sakit. Perkelahian antara Jakob
dan the Fireman sempat terjadi, tetapi ia membiarkan Jakob hidu, dan mengajak
Harper bersamanya. Lelaki itu bersama gadis muda bernama Allie, mereka pun
menuju sebuah kamp komunitas mereka yang terinfeksi Dragonscale.
Kamp yang menampung seratus enam puluh
lebih orang, didominasi anak-anak muda, hanya segelintir orang dewasa di sana.
Awalnya Kamp adalah untuk acara keagamaan seperti reatreat yang dibangun dan
dipimpin oleh Bapa Storey, Tom Storey. Seorang professor teologia bersahabat
dengan John Rookwood, lelaki yang selalu berpakaian Fireman (pemadam
kebakaran).
Profesor memilki dua putri Sarah dan
Carol. Sarah hamil ketika berusia tujuh belas tahun oleh guru les musiknya
berkebangsaan Lithuania. Bapa Storey adalah sahabta yangbaik bagi Sarh dan bisa
menerima keadaan putrinya. Sarah pun menyelesaikan diplomanya setelah
melahirkan putrinya, Allie.
John masuk ke dalam kehidupan keluarga Storey
ketika Nick lahir. Ia terlahir tuli, sang ayah ingin anak itu agar diadopsi
oranglain, namun Sarah ingin anak itu dibesarkan di tempat lain dan dibuang. Suami
Sarah tidak kunjung mendapat pekerjaan, akhirnya dia kembali mengajar privat,
perbuatannya sangat memalukan, ia didapati mengganggu murid di bawah umur. Saat
untuk kunjungan dokter gigi, suami Sarah membawa lari Allie. Empat hari kemudian
dia tertangkap di perbatasan Kanada. Ia berniat membawa lari Allie, berapa lama
kemudian terkuak ia telah pergi ke kedutaan Lithuania untuk urusan paspor. Suami
Sarah pun memutuskan bunuh diri.
Sarah pun meminta agar kamp ayahnya
dirubah menjadi penampungan perawatan orang tuli, John pun direkrut ikut di
dalamnya. Tidak terelakkan, John Rookwood dan Sarah saling jatuh cinta. Wabah
Dragonscale pun mencapai kediaman mereka, namun anehnya Sarah tidak terjangkiti
sama seklai. Nick-lah yang pertama kali melihat asap hitam dan menggapai rumah
mereka.
John Rookwood belajar biologi tentang fungi
(jamur) di kampus, dia juga sempat mempelajari sifat wabah, ia berkesimpulan hanya
asap dari raga pengidap terbakar yang bisa menularkan wabah itu. Bernyanyi dan
melakukan aktifitas suka cita akan membuat penderitanya lebih baik, serta mereka
dapat mengontrol penyakit menular itu. The Fireman juga yakin ketika hormon cinta
kasih, kebahagiaan, yakni disebut oxytocin,
keluar saat itu juga akan menghambat reaksi ganas dari spora Dragonscale.
Sejak terjangkit John Rookwood memilih
seragam pemadam kebakaran, karena ia memang selalu bercita-cita menjadi pemadam
kebakaran. Allie sendiri memilih kostum Kapten Amerika.
Sarah Storey ingin merasakan penyakit
yang menjangkiti orang-orang yang disayanginya, ia pun mengumpulkan asap wabah
dalam botol dan menghirupnya, reaksi itu yang membuat Sarah mati. Kepergian
Sarah sangat membuat John Rookwood sedih, sehingga ia lebih menikmati tinggal
sendiri di sebuah pulau kecil di seberang kamp. Perjuangan komunitas juga tidak
mudah karena persediaan makanan menipis, anggota komunitas bertambah. John dan
polisi muda yang dibentuk bernama Lookouts, dikerahkan dalam pencarian
perbekalan dan persediaan medis.
Tom Storey, lelaki berhati lembut, dan
dianggap lemah oleh putrinya sendiri, Carol. Keduanya kerap berdebat, apalagi
masalah Harold Cross. Adalah anak muda cerdas itu penyendiri. Ia mengaku telah
mengirim email ke beberapa negara dan pusat studi penyakit menular. Carol
menilai tindakan Cross berbahaya, karena pihak pemerintah atau milisia anti
orang terinfeksi akan mendapati dan membunuh mereka. Carol bersikap tegas
sekaligus memberi pelajaran bagi yang lain agar tidak membuka akses apalagi
membocorkan keberadaan mereka. Harold pun direkasaya, dibunuh oleh Ben Pachett,
lelaki yang disegani sebagai keamanan kamp.
Harper menemukan catatan harian anak muda
yang telah meninggal itu. Ia mendapati banyak informasi mencengangkan dan
kejadian di kemah, tetapi yang paling menarik perhatiannya adalah adanya pulaunya
Martha Quinn, sebagai pulau harapan bagi mereka yang terinfeksi.
Bapa Storey nyaris saja terbunuh, ia
diserang dengan batu. Terjadilah peralihan kekuasaan, diambil alih Carol dan
Ben Patchett. Ibadah penyembahan pun kini dipimpin oleh Carol, anak-anak pun
memanggilnya sebagai Mama Carol atau Mother Carol. Konflik berkembang tiap
hari, puncaknya Harper dan John Rookwood dituduh telah berkonspirasi hendak
membunuh Tom dan Carol Storey. Walau Rene telah menjelaskan itu hanya karangan
belaka Carol, namun anak-anak muda itu pikirannya telah teracuni oleh Carol. Harper,
John, dan kelompok kecil mereka hanya ingin meninggalkan kemah untuk mencari pulaunya
Martha Quinn.
Ancaman dari milisia pembantai mereka
yang terinfeksi the Cremation Crew, sangat
mengancam, kini Jakob, mantan suami Harper, ikut ambil bagian. Misi mereka
adalah membunuh siapa saja yang terjangkiti, mereka memiliki radio penyiaran, didirikan
dan disiarkan oleh orang yang berjuluk Marlboro Man. Penyiar idola Harper
sebelum wabah.
Akhirnya Tom Storey meninggal dunia,
komunitas mengadakan pemilihan dan menetapkan Carol sebagai pemimpin dan Ben
kepala keamanan. Mereka membuat sebuah ritual aneh memasukkan batu kecil apda
mulutnya mengenang dan menghargai duka Tom Storey, kepala lelaki tua itu telah
dipukul dengan batu, membuatnya
menderita, hingga akhirnya meninggal. Harper menolak memasukkan batu ke dalam
mulutnya, tindakan bodoh menurutnya. Ia pun sempat dianiaya oleh anak-anak muda
itu termasuk Allie. John menyelamatkannya, kegilaan Carol memuncak, semua
penghuni kamp diajak beribadah dengan lagu-lagu pujian mereka, dikunci di dalam
gereja, dan akhirnya membakar diri.
John, Harper, Renee, Nick, Allie dan
beberapa yang lain berhasil selamat. Mereka pun meninggalkan kemah, mencari
pulaunya Martha Quinn. Dalam perjalanan yang memakan berpuluh-puluh hari akhirnya
menemukan titik terang, di mana lokasi pulau harapan itu. Atas beberapa petunjuk
jalan, penginapan, dan dibantu persediaan. Akhirnya mereka berhasil menggapai
daerah yang disebut dalam petunjuk, Machias.
Di sana mereka bertemu Jim dan tim
sukarelawan. Mereka diberi tempat tinggal sementara, perbekalan, dan
dipersiapkan kapal untuk menyeberang ke pulau Martha Quinn. Seorang wanita sukarelawan
juga meyakinkan mereka di sana ada rumah sakit, fasilitas untuk penyembuhan
mereka, penuturan wanita itu semakin membuat para wanita terinfeksi bersemangat
dan percaya. Jim mengaku telah berhasil menyelamatkan enam ratusan jiwa, ada
yang anak-anak, pria, dan wanita, menuju pulau harapan itu.
Mereka pun berlayar ke pulau itu, di tengah
perjalanan, Jim menyandang senjata, menjelaskan bahwa pulaunya Martha Quinn
tidak ada. Semua cerita di radio, dan iming fasilitas itu adalah bohong.
Pemerintah sengaja memberi harapan agar mereka yang terinfeksi ke sana untuk
tujuan dibunuh. Pulau terisolasi yang tidak memungkinkan mereka bertahan hidup,
pulau berada di tengah Lautan Atlantik yang dingin dan ganas.
Jim menembak John. The Fireman terluka
parah darahnya menggenangi kapal, membuat Harper dan yang lain terkejut. Mereka
baru tersadar, Jim ingin membunuh mereka semua. Sebuah jilatan api besar
tiba-tiba muncul. Juluran lidah api membentuk seperti burung bersayap muncul ke
udara hingga menghilang. Lidah api yang keluar dari kumpulan asap dari raga John
Rookwood, the Fireman.
Harper dan yang lain berhasil keluar
dari kapal terbakar, api yang ada dalam tubuh mereka menghangatkan dalam air Laut
Atlantik yang sangat dingin, nyaris bersuhu es. Don Lewiston, salah seorang
penghuni kamp, baru saja kembali selamat dari pulau Martha Quinn, ia menyelamatkan
Harper dan yang lainnya.
Don adalah satu-satunya orang yang pergi
ke pulau itu, telah menyaksikan bahwa tidak ada apa-apa di pulau itu. Hanya
tipuan belaka, hanya timbunan bongkahan tengkorak yang sudah menghitam. Harper
pun melahirkan, ia menamai bayinya Ashley Rookwood. Walau ada berita radio
menyiarkan tentang pulau harapan di tempat lain, mereka semua menyangsikannya,
trauma dengan informasi jebakan.
******
July 28, 2017
