The Fireman (2016), an Apocalyptic Thriller by Joe Hill: summary

“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