With that out of the way, I'm tackling a new Stephen King book. After a well-deserved break (one new book a week is very tiring; especially when they vary in length and quality), I picked up a book about a psychic and a pyro with the ballsiest character being a seven/eight year old girl. And it's not divided into three parts. The last book that just had labelled chapters like this was 'Salem's Lot and I enjoyed that book quite a bit. Now get ready for a blaze of fire puns.
This book begins with an Ohio college teacher on the run with his young daughter. His name is Andrew "Andy" McGee and his daughter is Charlie. I didn't know they had male nicknames for girls back in the 80s. I also didn't know New York City was the city of choice to escape a government conspiracy. Isn't the U.N situated there? Also the junkies are just as dangerous as the secretive men in suits following him. Andy comes to a similar conclusion so he hails a cab and leaves the Big Apple. How do you get a city cab to travel all the way to Albany with a dollar, a sleeping daughter, and secret police after you? Having a telepathic mind control power that "pushes" the cabbie into following your directions doesn't hurt. Except for how it completely incapacitates him with a psychic mega-migraine (a "megraine" if you will). Andy is tired and follows his daughter's cue to nap. And that's Mr. King's cue for a flashback/dream sequence to explain a little bit.
Back when Andy was a broke college student, he signed up for a little clinical experiment to make some money. I would have second thoughts when the "doctor" says the stuff he's injecting into his test subjects is classified. Wait, it pays two hundred bucks? Hell, they could warn that it'd give me prostate cancer and a bushy mustache and I'd probably still take it. I don't often think far ahead. Andy meets his future wife, Vicky, at the college experiment. They say broke college student love is one of the purest loves there is. Back in the present, their precocious seven year old daughter is using her own super special power to steal coins from telephone booths because Andy is too weak and in pain to try and hustle some money himself. The seven year old girl is partly naive when she brings up how stealing is wrong but then sounds quite older when she thinks of how much she likes using her power. Someone would say this mixed bag of descriptions prove Mr. King doesn't know how to write children very well. I say, we need more children like her (or psychic Danny, or vampire slayer Mark). Wiser-than-their years, miniature adults who can save my ass from things that go bump in the night. If any parents reading this look upon their children with disappointment, I've done my job.
Charlie is a pyrokinetic. Or like Andy would say, a firestarter. Or like I would say, a firebender. (Flameo, hotman!) In any case, she accidentally set an army man's shoes on fire so they have to get away from the airport to avoid any suspicions. Too bad their shady government pursuers are hot on their trail. They're from the evil covert operation known as "The Shop". Hmm. Well it's no "Illuminati" or "Consortium" but it does remind me of 50 Cent's 2005 hit single, so the evilness shouldn't be underestimated. While attempting to hitchhike, Andy trips down a hill which triggers another flashback. A control group in the college experiment got water while the test group got some kind of hallucinogen. Andy and Vicky got the classified LSD and they tripped some serious balls in the university room. Andy apparently knew about The Shop back then which leads me to believe their organization is not good at being covert. No wonder a sickly man and a little girl can evade them for over a year. The stuff Andy and the other volunteers got injected with affected everyone differently. Besides the usual hallucinations and crying, there was also the mind reading powers and that case where a guy clawed his eyes out. Andy and Vicky are assured that they're seeing things and they share stories without ever opening their mouths; Andy lost his parents while young and Vicky was assaulted by a babysitter. Timmy Turner has no sympathy for her.
At night time, College Andy goes back to the building where the experiments were done and convinces the janitor to let him inside. By convince I mean "minor mind control". Andy gets a bit of a headache but goes inside. That'll have to sub for the kick in the ass I want to give him for going into the experimental place where subjects may have died. After dark. New mental powers or not, I'd stay the hell away from there. Got my two hundred. Pass Go or you *will* go somewhere worse than jail. Andy sees what a bloody handprint on a pull down chart. Proof that he didn't hallucinate the claw-happy student who was taken away by teachers in lab coats. He leaves pretty quickly but convinces Vicky to visit the hall about a week later when it's daytime and not so scary. Of course there's no bloody handprint. Of course the chart was replaced. He didn't even close the door behind him when he ran away. Andy has totally been put on a special Shop list. I hear shipping and handling to Area 51 is a killer.
Even though Andy was never sure just what he imagined that day in college, we get a little chapter naming the guys tailing Andy and his daughter and it pretty much confirms that two test subjects died, while another two went insane (including the guy who clawed his own eyes out). Oh man. I guess it was a matter of time before Stephen King tackled the secret shady government villain but those kinds of tales always seem to favor the secret government. I've seen it happen to Winston Smith, Michael Scofield, Mulder, the people of Ba Sing Se... Anyway, Andy and Charlie get to hitchhiking and they catch a break when they're picked up by a kindly bearded man in one of those mural vans. Andy dreams of the day his little baby Charlie set fire to her teddy bear and how he tried to call his old college buddy who had initially recommended that shady experiment. The phone call is very cagey and all but missing the words "you didn't hear it from me". Suffice to say, Andy and his wife and child were observed by The Shop ever since the experiment and luck kept them from having their powers discovered because the last person who was caught by those Shady Shop Suits ended up in a special government mental ward. And that guy was just able to unlock doors and bend keys. I think a girl who can create fire would be more valuable to our secret military than a wandless "Alohamora".
The Shop's headquarters are in Virginia in a large converted barn. I don't care if they have electric fences and TV surveillance. That secret branch of government is in a barn in Virginia. Even Sheriff Griffith would laugh at The Shop with its scenic duck pond. The captain of the whole operation has a meeting with the old doctor who first conducted the experiments at the college all those years ago. The doctor is raving hothead wanting to tie up loose ends by killing the last reminders of an LSD trip gone bad. The captain merely wants to lock them in a cell while they poke and prod them. Apparently they know Charlie can make fire and they captured her before. I look forward to that flashback. Cap gives orders for his Shady Suits to capture the girl but kill the father. He also brings in a large, scarred up, half Cherokee man named John Rainbird and gives him an assignment. How did the secret government get their hands on a scary Native American? If there was an exchange of beads, I wash my hands of it.
Looks like it's Charlie's turn to stroll down guilty memory line. To the time she burned her mother's hands because she was angry she couldn't play with a friend. That was when her parent's told her about her power and made her promise to control it. And she did. Say what you will about Andy and Vicky's denial, their parenting skills are alright. The Shop Suits are on their tail and this chapter is full of near misses as Andy and Charlie try to get to a family cabin in rural Vermont while the Shop Suits set up roadblocks all around New York. The journey to Vermont hits a snag when a farmer picks them up and takes them to his house for lunch instead. That gives the Shop Suits time enough to close in on them, with a few reinforcements. Andy tells the farmer the truth about them and he doesn't believe until the cars start pulling up. Now it's a face off. A bunch of lying government suits and a little girl who can start- well, looks like three guys are on fire. And the cars are exploding into flames. And some farm chickens are extra crispy. She could really use more training in the aim department. No matter. She gets slapped out of it and they scared away the Shop guys who weren't immolated. But they'll probably be fired for letting them get away again.
So Rainbird's assignment before was not about Andy or Charlie. It was to kill the raving doctor who first cooked up those stupid "Lot 6" experiments. Good riddance. And judging by his fascination with death and shoes, I can understand how he became a member of the Shop. The dude is straight up obsessed with knowing the meaning of death and hopes when it's his time to go, it won't be quick and he'll finally get his answer. Yeah, that's totally sane. After he gets all the information he can about Charlie from the frightened, old doctor, Rainbird makes his kill and thinks about Charlie's power. And what it would be like to snuff it out. No wonder the Captain of the Shop is creeped out by him. Andy and Charlie finally make it to his grandpa's cabin in Vermont and it looks like it's secluded enough for everything to be okay. In fact, there's no action going on so let's have another flashback. Back to the day Andy's wife was killed and his daughter was kidnapped. All because the idiot Shop Suits jumped the gun a little too hastily.
It all started with a bad feeling that may have been precognition. Andy rushed home to see his chair tipped and his salt askew. Untidy Shop bastards. Then he found Vicky's body behind an ironing board. They apparently tortured Vicky by pulling out her nails before killing her and hiding her away in the laundry room. Yeeesh. That's some Big Brother torture tactics right there. Along with TV and radio deprivation, and profanity-filled screeching. Because Big Brother is also the name of a reality show, you see. Andy got his wits gathered and tracked down his daughter, like a more bookish Bryan Mills. Using his mental push to find out where the van was headed, he caught up to the Shop Suits and used the push to blind one guy, immobilize the other, and convince the few people at the rest stop that nothing was wrong. He got a megraine for his troubles but he also got his daughter back. He should've run over the blind Shop bastard but Andy McGee is one of those nice guys with morals and all that. Nice to know his daughter won't be taking after her father when the time comes. Or when it came and went. At the barn. Not the Shop barn but that nice old couple's barn. Argh. Flashback and tense screw ups. I don't need them.
They spend the winter in the Vermont shack and for a while I'm relieved. They deserve some kind of peace, even if Charlie catches a cold and Andy resorts to stealing oil from a camp to keep the cabin warm. On one of his trips into town, Andy makes a decision. They can't live like hermit people forever so he'll tell their story to every congressman and news outlet he knows. Sure, it may cause the government to put Charlie under observation but maybe public outcry will keep them from being guinea pigs. The word Guantanamo comes to mind. I can't say it's the brightest of ideas but there are very few options here. If only Andy's powers were less debilitating. Or Charlie's powers were less reckless. Andy mails his five letters but there's a snitch in that little town and Andy's letters get intercepted despite the rural postman's steaming mad protests. Charlie should've burned the survivors when she had the chance. Now they know where Andy is and probably stole some poor old Grandma's birthday card when they were mail tampering.
The Captain of the Shop is hearing rumors of people blaming the farm fire incident on him and he wants to get the McGees. But after hearing what the girl can do when she's protecting her father, he decided to try and capture them alive which means biding their time, surveying them and taking photos while they live in that little shack. What a creep. And here comes the chief creep. Rainbird is assigned the Andy and Charlie case but he blackmails a twitchy Captain into letting him have Charlie when they're done probing her brain for the mysteries of pyrokinesis. After many threats and dry mouth, the Captain reluctantly agrees. I don't know if he's gonna try to double cross Rainbird or if Rainbird will try to doublecross him (I hope for the rare, combined quadruplecross so Rainbird's threat of getting the Shop shut down if he dies mysteriously comes to pass). Rainbird explains that he wants to befriend the little girl he'll ultimately kill. A firestarter and a rainbird. There's symbolism here and it smells like burnt chicken.
On the day Andy is suspicious and antsy enough to want to go back to New York City and tell his story in person to whatever publication will listen, Mr. John Rainbird rounds up his Shop vultures and they surround the cabin. They shoot Charlie and Andy with tranquilizers. So... let's skip ahead five months to liven up the string of flashbacks. Okay then. I guess Mr. King doesn't want to go through five months of drugs and tests and secret trust exercises in excruciating detail. Not unless it's from someone's POV via flashback. Rainbird has disguised himself as a low level shop employee to earn Charlie's trust but it's slow going. The doctors keep giving her different meds whenever she has a bad reaction to them and after months of neither the daughter nor the father showing their powers, they want to bring out the heavy stuff. Shock treatment and physical force. Rainbird objects to that because it'll screw up his progress and screw up any chance they'd have of learning her secrets. Also he'd probably want to be the one who tortures her because his end game is to kill her. After befriending her. I'm fervently hoping for a last minute heel face turn for this "Injun John".
Rainbird the fake janitor gets a chance to earn Charlie's trust when a huge storm blows the power out. This is why you don't have secret government facilities in a freakin' barn! Andy gets a chance to cry about his pills and trip when the power goes out. See, over the past five months, while Charlie suffered in defiant silence as she got pumped full of drugs, Andy lifted the white flag and enjoyed his furnished cell with it's up-to-date TV and fully stocked fridge. The guy gains about thirty pounds and has pretty much lost his ability to mentally push people despite his attempts. Suddenly though, his psychic senses start to tingle and he senses his daughter is in trouble. That girl is sympathizing with the Indian devil so naturally Andy summons the strength... to throw a pity party and reminisce about the time he used his powers to help women lose weight. Hot.
Rainbird is at "call Chris Hansen" levels of creepy fascination over Charlie (he uses the word "love" a few times and yet still wants to kill her) and you know, when I first used the Chris Hansen tag, it was meant as a one-off joke. I've learned so much in these past few weeks of Stephen King literature. Like even after cutting out five months worth of description, and being only four hundred or so pages long, parts of this book still read overly drawn out. Even when he's writing about something worthwhile that does happen, like Andy using his own mental push on himself to get over his pill addiction, King still manages to stick in extra names, vaguely related flashbacks, and metaphorical dreams with dead doctors and half Cherokee pirates. Let's just hurry on to what King's been building up to.
Three weeks after tricking me into thinking the power outage would spark a barn break, Charlie gets convinced by Rainbird to show her powers to her doctor and their Shop scientists but on her terms and with the end goal to see her father. Meanwhile, her father finds out he's getting shipped to a facility in Hawaii and he kickstarts his information gathering plan by mentally pushing his doctor into telling him where they are. The doctor he pushes turns out to be a bicurious crossdresser. I'm sure this will be important in the future. More trust is established between Charlie and Rainbird. She gets to play with horses now. Yay ponies. Andy's finally taken to the Captain and he finds out his doctor committed suicide in lingerie. See how important that was? Knowing he won't have a better shot, Andy finally uses his mind push powers on the head honcho of the Shop and gets a plan into motion that involves him attending his doctor's funeral. He also finds out about Rainbird's true intentions and there's not much use in that since he still can't get to his daughter and he has to play Drugged Up Fattie No-Powers. This is the slowest escape plan ever.
After a metaphorical dream with erotic undertones where Charlie rides her favorite horse (Not even kidding, she's screaming in excitement for the horse to "Go faster", there's a fiery heat all around her, and oh yeah, she's naked), it's time for another fire demonstration. There have been several so far inside special fireproof rooms with a water source she can direct her fire when she's done. There's also plenty of eyewitnesses and cameras behind glass but this time the fire experiment is held in a converted church for that extra toasty blasphemy. After reaching degrees of over one thousand with focused accuracy, Charlie demands to see her father and subtly threats her doctor. Excellent. After driving back from the funeral, Andy hypnotizes the Captain into accompanying him, and his daughter, on the plane trip to Hawaii. He's also ordered to slip a note to Charlie without anyone seeing him. The Captain keeps thinking about golf and snakes but follows instructions. And Andy's face is partially paralyzed. He thinks one more hard push might kill him but for Charlie, he'll stop at nothing. Don't you die on me, Druggedy Andy.
Charlie reads her father's note which explains her new Indian friend is a traitor and they're totally escaping on Wednesday. After some mental anguish about being betrayed, she's ready to leave in a few days (the note directed her to be at the stables at a certain time) and she's rightfully wary of Rainbird but pretending like nothing has changed. Meanwhile, the Captain has lost his Tennille, mentally speaking, and he's imagining snakes in his golf clubs. If he ends up dying with golf clubs stuffed somewhere, I'll have to rethink the badassery of Andy's push power. Of course, things can't go smoothly for the McGees. That crafty Rainbird set his keen eye on the surveillance tapes to figure out why the Captain visited Charlie. He figures out, with the computer's help, that the probability of Andy mentally pushing the Captain is pretty high. Wait. Why would probability of him using the power be lowest for himself but highest for the captain? What are these odds based on? Everyone experimenting on Andy thinks he's lost the gift and is just mooching off them for food and drugs. Wouldn't their data input into the computer skew the results? Is this based on the assumption that he did have his power? And since he never used it in front of them what are they basing his level and experience on? The little self-help businesses he set up in New York? That rescue attempt all those years ago? Ugh. My head is gonna hurt about as much as Andy's so I'm just gonna say Rainbird is smart enough to figure out they're escaping on Wednesday, especially after he gets a phone call from the Captain himself sending him on a little mission the morning of the plane departure.
On the day of the great escape, Charlie is excited about leaving. Andy is nervous and hoping his plan will go off without a hitch. Rainbird, the weirdo hitch, uses hacking skills (yes he has hacking skills) to cancel his flight to some bogus mission. And the Captain is crazy, thinking there's snakes everywhere. I really hope Andy makes him think there's a snake in his boot before getting to the press. In case I wasn't clear, the plan is supposed to be: the three take the plane (Captain, Andy, and Charlie), they get off at a refueling place in Chicago, and the McGees sneak off to tell their story of flashbacks and barn labs to the Chicago Tribune or whatever newspaper isn't focused on the Cubs. I would've mentally taken control of the plane and flown them all to Switzerland or something. As far as I can tell, the Shop is under U.S law and shouldn't be able to pursue them there since they've got about as much authority as FEMA. Oh well. Let's see how well this plan will go with Rainbird ready and waiting for Charlie in the rafters. Rainbird who loves her. And still wants to kill her with his bare hands. I've heard some ladies like this type of love. They also listen to Chris Brown.
Anyway, Rainbird has cleared the stables of people because he's sure the animal-loving eight year old girl won't try to set any fires for fear of hurting the ponies. I guess she doesn't love chickens. When Andy comes in, Rainbird tries to convince her to climb up and talk to him or he'll shoot her father. Meanwhile. the escort who took Charlie to the stables has set off the alarm, convinced she's making an escape attempt (maybe Charlie shouldn't have burned him and sent him running). So now the whole Barn Shop, and their many weapons, know something is going down in the stables. This will not end well. Aaaand the Captain has attacked a hose. Great. Rainbird is distracted by the Captain and Rainbird is mentally pushed into jumping off the hayloft. Half of Andy's body goes numb from the extreme push which won't compare to the bullet Rainbird manages to put in his neck. Charlie is freaking out and the whole barn is catching on fire. The second bullet Rainbird fires at Charlie actually melts in mid-air. Charlie saves some horses and accidentally kills some Shop agents surrounding the stables with their useless guns. I'll rephrase my "it won't end well" prediction because anytime there's a pyro in the mix, you can at least count on a big bang. And I do like the big bangs.
I should be angry and sad at Andy's death but I'm just mildly surprised. Andy's last words to Charlie is for her to fight back and burn the whole Shop to the ground. I concur. Too bad he had to die to grow a backbone. Charlie set fiiiire to the raiiin... bird. Hope the mysteries of death were worth it. (I don't really. I dislike Rainbird very much and once again am annoyed we're spared the description of a jerk's demise in a King book). As for the Captain, well he's in the great golf course in the sky, watching out for snakes. Charlie's the only survivor in the stables and it's her against a Shop-full of armed men. Will King kill off a little girl? Let's find out. The Shop idiots start shooting at the first thing that runs out of the barn; the horses. Well that's just going to upset PETA. And also Charlie. She surrounds the place with fire. She's got men going up in flames like so many spontaneous combustion cases. A full-on armored tank comes at her and it melts like butter on a hot tin roof. She blows up the testing area. Charlie found Vengeance Mountain. Yaaaay.
The wild dogs and the electric fence also help fan the flame of panic as Shop lab workers and secretaries try to escape but get shocked or bitten and torn apart. Charlie doesn't want to kill anyone who isn't attacking her which is noble, I guess. She uses the duckpond to cool her flames and I just wish she had taken out a Shop guy that was nicknamed OJ before she stopped the fire power. That misogynistic, cowardly bastard survived the barn burning and now this? Has there ever been a bigger injustice involving an OJ escaping? In any case, Charlie is shellshocked but she escapes, leaving behind barn rubble and a few injured survivors. Ambulance sirens are heard in the distance. I'll take you to the burned up Shop. Where a girl made everything go "pop". When you see smoke, just stop. And resist shouting "what the f-"(woah)!
The last chapter is called 'Charlie Alone' with a temporary new Shop head ordering the assassination of Charlie McGee. Because King doesn't know when to quit and likes taking candy from babies just to make them cry. Charlie made her way to the kind old farm couple whose farmhouse she burned. The house managed to get fixed up nice after a year and some Shop hush money. The farmer and his wife take her in but worry about how long they can keep her a secret in a gossipy town. She stays with them for the winter and they think of Charlie's plan to tell all. They guessed right that the still-recovering Shop is keeping their eyes glued to all the major newspapers. The news of Charlie's whereabouts spreads thanks to a blabby doctor but luckily, when the Shop people in fire suits show up at the barn, they all find out Charlie left. She goes to a library to ask for a publication that's honest, with a nationwide audience, and no ties to the government. The book ends with Charlie at the offices of Rolling Stone magazine. Either that librarian was screwing with her or Stephen King is doing so with me. Or maybe that magazine was waaay different back in the 80s.
***
Wow. That story was certainly something. Most stories I read provoke strong reactions in me. Whether there are characters I totally hate or final battles I totally love. I always feel emotionally invested. Maybe it was the two week break but this story, save for a few spots, didn't provoke strong feelings either way. This story combined Carrie's power with The Shining's gifted, young protagonist and the shady government of The Stand. I enjoyed these three books to various extents but the pacing and detail in The Shining works to create an isolationist feeling in the hotel. The frightening power of Carrie has readers cheering because she's been an underdog all her life. The shady government who unleashed the virus in The Stand don't make up a large part of the novel. Oh. Lightbulb!Half of this book takes place in that stupid reformed government barn and I feel like most secret government shows and movies tend to avoid that because we want to see the hero escape or plotting to get the truth out. We don't care about the dickish conspiracy planning their next set of tests. The only example I can think of off the top of my head that may contradict this is the video game Portal but even then we're solely with the hero who is actively trying to escape. It's not all that interesting to read pages of secret meetings and lab techs being cautious. We're not gonna get some heroic break out with guns and chairs to the face because the protagonist lab rats are a drugged up, fat teacher and a scared little girl. This story didn't win me over but it's not horrible, like some parts of The Stand or even the dreaded (ugh) Dead Zone. I guess if I had to jump back into Stephen King books, I could've done worse.
I may need another break for this. Maybe set my reading for bi-weekly posts. It's not like I have many, or rather any, readers of this. If only I had a way to promote this blog... on a national level with no government ties because the X-Files and Stephen King has made me paranoid. To Indian Country Today!
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