The Fireman

In a near-future New Hampshire, a fungal spore called Dragonscale, formally known as Draco incendia trychophyton, spreads across the globe, marking its hosts with black-and-gold stripes before eventually causing them to burst into flames. Harper Grayson, a school nurse, witnesses her first spontaneous combustion when a man ignites on the playground. Within weeks, cities burn and civilization collapses. Harper watches the catastrophe unfold with her husband, Jakob, a deputy manager at the Portsmouth Department of Public Works.

That summer, Harper volunteers at the overwhelmed Portsmouth Hospital, where she encounters a wiry Englishman in a yellow firefighter's jacket carrying a sick deaf boy named Nick and wielding a halligan bar, a heavy firefighting tool. Harper defuses the confrontation and diagnoses Nick with a burst appendix. The man, known only as the Fireman, departs, promising he owes her a debt. Harper also bonds with Renée Gilmonton, a warm patient who organizes reading sessions for children. Shortly after Renée disappears, a chain reaction ignites in the cafeteria and the hospital burns, killing hundreds. Jakob rescues Harper, and that night they conceive a child.

In August, Harper discovers Dragonscale marks on her own body. Jakob, uninfected, reacts with fury and leaves to quarantine in a dead coworker's trailer. He insists they must kill themselves as once discussed, but Harper refuses: She is pregnant and intends to carry the child to term, citing evidence the spore cannot cross the placental barrier. Alone, she reads Jakob's unpublished novel, Desolation's Plough, and discovers contemptuous portraits of herself and evidence of his affairs. Meanwhile, masked children visit her door bearing prenatal vitamins, revealing the Fireman's covert surveillance.

In October, Jakob returns with a revolver for a murder-suicide. Harper smashes a wine goblet in his face and escapes through a window, fracturing her ankle. John Rookwood, the Fireman, intercepts Jakob in the woods, driving him off with controlled flame from his bare hand. John leads Harper to Camp Wyndham, a hidden camp where over 100 infected people suppress spontaneous combustion through communal singing. Father Tom Storey, a former ethics professor, and his daughter Carol Storey lead daily chapel services; when the congregation sings together, their Dragonscale glows rather than burns, a state called "joining the Bright." Harper reunites with Renée and meets Ben Patchett, the head of security, and Don Lewiston, the camp's only medical provider. John warns Harper that Carol can be dangerous and that the camp has cultlike qualities; he lives apart on a nearby island, tending a mysterious fire.

Harper struggles for weeks to join the Bright. At a Thanksgiving food lottery, Allie Storey, Father Storey's granddaughter and one of John's young companions, whistles "A Spoonful of Sugar." Harper spontaneously joins in singing and finally connects, her Dragonscale glowing for the first time. She also discovers a hidden notebook left by Harold Cross, the camp's ostracized former medical student, who was killed after contacting outsiders. Harold's research reveals that oxytocin, the social-bonding hormone, suppresses combustion while stress hormones trigger ignition. The notebook also documents "pyromancers," long-term infected people who can control fire once the spore penetrates the brain's language centers.

In January, Father Storey is bludgeoned while walking through the woods, and Harper performs emergency brain surgery. He falls into a coma, and the camp votes to give Carol authority over daily operations and Ben control over security. Conditions deteriorate: Ben arms the teenage Lookouts, the camp's sentries, with rifles. Carol threatens that if Father Storey dies, Harper will be exiled and her baby kept. Chapel services grow disturbing as the congregation hums mindlessly, their identities blurring into Carol's.

Harper returns to her destroyed house for medical supplies and narrowly avoids discovery by Jakob, who has joined the Cremation Crew, a volunteer militia that hunts the infected. On his island, John tells Harper his history: His girlfriend Sarah Storey, Carol's sister and mother to Nick and Allie, deliberately infected herself to gain fire-casting abilities but immolated because the infection was too new for safe control. Something of Sarah's consciousness survived in the coals John keeps alive in his furnace. Carol orders an ambulance raid that goes wrong, drawing the Cremation Crew. John sends a Phoenix, a giant bird of flame, to drive off the attackers. Harper forms a secret alliance with John, Allie, Renée, Don, and others, including two escaped convicts, Gilbert Cline and Mark Mazzucchelli (the Mazz). A vote for leadership ends in a tie.

Father Storey wakes from his coma and reveals that Carol engineered Harold Cross's death. Before Harper can act, Michael Lindqvist Jr., a Lookout who is secretly Carol's lover and enforcer, ambushes them. Michael confesses to smuggling Harold out of camp, summoning the Cremation Crew that killed him, and bashing in Father Storey's skull. He murders Father Storey, frames Harper and John, and manipulates Carol into calling a public tribunal. The Mazz betrays the conspiracy, and the congregation begins to stone the Fireman.

The Cremation Crew attacks the camp before John can be killed, led there by a maimed survivor of the ambulance raid. Jakob crashes his Freightliner through the chapel while the militia opens fire. Nick unleashes devastating fire powers. Ben redeems himself by rescuing the injured Nick before being shot dead. Carol leads the trapped congregation in a final hymn that triggers mass spontaneous combustion, and the worshippers burn together. Gilbert Cline drives a fire truck into the battle, allowing the survivors to escape, though he is killed. The Fireman disappears into the smoke.

The survivors regroup in a cemetery building. Using a hidden cell phone, Harper discovers a website advertising refuge on Free Wolf Island, Maine, with recordings from television host Martha Quinn. Don Lewiston, who escaped camp earlier on the sailboat Bobbi Shaw, is spotted offshore. They disguise the fire truck and cross a bridge checkpoint into Maine. Jakob's Freightliner catches up, and the truck goes over a collapsed overpass. Sarah Storey's surviving consciousness emerges from the coals as fire, kills Jakob, and briefly reunites with her children before dissolving. Harper's water breaks.

Allie drags the injured John on a makeshift stretcher while Harper walks alongside at nine months pregnant. Orange-marked waypoints provide food and medicine left by healthy residents. When they reach Machias, an intake worker named Jim loads them onto a fishing trawler. At sea, Jim reveals the truth: The government destroyed Free Wolf Island months ago, the broadcasts are recordings on a loop, and the food was drugged. The operation exists to drown the infected. Jim shoots John in the stomach.

Despite his mortal wound, John generates one final Phoenix that destroys the boat. Harper, Allie, Nick, and a drugged Renée are thrown into the freezing Atlantic in life vests. Harper sings to activate the Dragonscale's warming properties, and the four glow together, their body heat keeping them alive. Don arrives on the Bobbi Shaw, having discovered the island was a ruin. Harper delivers a baby girl on the deck at sunrise. The infant's eyes are bright rings of gold, confirming she carries Dragonscale. Harper names her Ashley Rookwood. Don tells them about An Tra on Inisheer, an island off the coast of Ireland, where 8,000 infected people live with government support. The novel ends as they set sail across the Atlantic with the sunrise behind them.