Mister Monday: Chapter Seven (Part One)

[pangolin20]

Chapter Six | Table of Contents | Chapter Seven (Part II)

Corneille Blanche: A good day, everyone, and welcome back to Mister Monday! Last time, Arthur was chased by Monday’s Noon, and he managed to exploit Noon’s weakness to escape unscathed. When we left off, he was about to attack the Fetchers Noon left behind to get the Atlas back. Let’s see what happens now!

We open on Arthur throwing salt on the Fetchers. They immediately stop laughing, “dissolving into startled yelps and cries.” They try to escape, but end up tangled with each other, which only makes it easier for Arthur to throw salt on them.

The salt “sizzle[s]” as it strikes, and both flesh and clothing melt, “as if the salt were the most potent acid imaginable.” Even the tiniest bit reduces a Fetcher to “a bubbling pile of nasty-looking scum” withing a few seconds. That is quite effective indeed! Also good to see that Arthur has regained a grip on the situation. After all, just a few chapters ago, the Fetchers nearly caught him, and now he can easily dispel them.

After his “ninth or tenth handful of salt”, the Fetchers are gone. The only thing left is “fourteen hubcap-sized mounds of evil-smelling glop that looked like a cross between elephant dung and hot tar.” Yuck. He stares at the piles, salt dripping from his hand. He can feel his lungs tighten, so he takes the Key, and immediately, he can breathe freely again, and he describes how it holds an asthma attack at bay. Too bad he has to physically touch it to experience its effects… The best solution I can come up with is hanging it from a chain around his neck, but that would come with problems, too…

Anyway. Arthur tells us that the asthma is a reaction to what just happened, as he is shocked by what the salt did to the Fetchers. It reminds him of “salting the leeches that had attached themselves to his legs on a hiking trip last summer.” Great. He also doesn’t want to search through the heaps to get the Atlas back.

He decides that he will absolutely not do it by hand, so, “[b]reathing only through his mouth”, he touches the nearest pile with the tip of his shoe. Just as he does so, the pile shivers, and becomes “a column of smoke” as black and shiny as his shoes. Arthur leaps back as the smoke forms a “miniature replica” of the Fetcher. It spins around a few times, and then vanishes.

Moments later, the rest of the piles do the same, and as Arthur tries to kick them, the last pile vanishes. Now, there is only the floor of the alley, and every sign of the Fetchers has gone, along with the Atlas. That was fast; Arthur could only really use it for a single purpose before he lost it!

The fire alarms and sirens are still going, which does not help him to think. He can hear many more sirens, and also helicopters, so he assumes the fire must be worse than he thought. Suddenly, he remembers Mrs Banber. He was so scared by Noon and the Fetchers that he had forgotten about her, and now he decides he has to tell the firefighters she is still in the library.

He runs into the hall and looks up. Clouds of smoke come out of the doorway and “out of the library roof as well.” He says the fire must have spread incredibly fast. He goes towards the stairs, reasoning that, if the Key helps him breathe while he has asthma, it might also protect him from smoke. And maybe it will protect him from fire as well, as it healed the cut from Noon’s sword. At least, he hopes it will.

He runs up the stairs, and he can hear “the deep bellow of the fire”. He finds it quite frightening, which isn’t helped by the flames that light up the smoke. When he is almost at the top, “he [feels] something grab his ankle.” He falls, loses his grip on the Key, and feels his lungs lock up because of the smoke and the heat. Then he grabs the Key and he can breathe again. He grips it tightly and turns around, ready to strike at a Fetcher.

It turns out not to be one. Instead, he sees a “fluorescent yellow suit and helmet and an indistinct human face behind the visor of a firefighter’s breathing apparatus.” That’s quite good to see! The fireman shouts that they’ve got Arthur, their voice “muffled and distorted”, and they lift Arthur over their shoulder. He can see other firefighters going past, all in full suits and breathing apparatus. Some have “axes and extinguishers” and others carry hoses.

He manages to say Mrs Banber’s name as he tugs at the elbow of a passing firefighter, since he can’t say the face of the person whose back he’s shoulder he’s slung across. He notes that smoke has come in his lungs when he lost the Key. He can “feel it being cleared out”, but obviously the Key needs to take its time.

That makes me wonder just how the Key is cleaning out his lungs. If Arthur is breathing out the smoke, for example, it might indeed take some time.

He says that Banber is at the front desk. The other firefighter stops to ask what Arthur said. Arthur repeats it, and they say that Banber was already evacuated (nice!) before asking if anyone else was inside. Arthur says no, and he is sure that no one else was inside, “[u]nless they’d been hiding in the shelves, like he’[s] hidden from Noon.”

Hmmm, it was during break, so there might not have been anyone else, and I think Banber would have indicated that, but still… someone might have slipped in when Banber was looking at Arthur… We will not get any clarification on this front, either. It just sits a little uncomfortable with me, but not in a bad way.

Anyway, the firefighter shouts that Arthur will be okay, and then leaves. Arthur’s own takes him down the stairs, along the alley, which is now clogged with firefighters, and around the side of the library to the front of the school. There there are even more firefighters. There’s four fire engines in the street, “three ambulances, six police cars—and parked behind them, a whole row of odd-looking buses.” It takes Arthur a little time to realise that they have “no windows and no markings.” That spells nothing good…

The firefighter takes Arthur to a place in the parking lot where stretchers stand ready, puts him onto on, claps him on the shoulder and smiles. He smiles back and realises the firefighter was a woman, and then she is gone. Hmmm, not sure what to think of this. Yes, we get the reveal that the firefighter is a woman (Arthur previously used he/him for her), but what does it matter? I don’t know, it just doesn’t stick with me.

Anyway, Arthur notes that the other stretchers are empty, and he guesses that Mrs Banber has been already taken to the hospital. Given that this is the last time she’s mentioned, I guess I’ll assume that, too. I just hope she got out of the hospital reasonably soon, given what will happen later on…

He lies on his back on the stretcher, feeling “dazed and suddenly very tired” because of the very stressful situation he just was in. He holds the Key tightly, though he pushes it against his leg, so it will not be seen.

Arthur now sees “three helicopters” in the sky above him. He expects them to be television news ones, but they are not… He sits up. One of the helicopters is “dark green” and has “ARMY” on its belly, and the other two are “bright orange” and have “large black ‘Q’s” on their sides and belly. “Q for quarantine”.

Well, things really aren’t looking up for him, aren’t they?

He looks around and he can see paramedics coming toward him, carrying first-aid stuff, “marked with bright red crosses”, which is reasonably normal. They are also wearing “full biohazard suits”, which is not normal at all. Arthur can feel the fear that he carries with him solidify into reality.

He can see police in “blue biohazard gear”, and also soldiers in “camouflage biosuits.” The soldiers are setting up equipment, including “portable decontamination showers”. The police lay out “quarantine tape” and direct the last class out of the school to the windowless buses. The children are all “silent and downcast”, without any of the talking and doings that would accompany “an escape from the usual school routine.”

That went bad very quickly. In fact, let me just stop here, as this chapter is long enough to be split up.