Neil wanted to press, ask him what he’d meant to say, but Elijah just pointed to the map.
“This the bridge you want to try?”
“Yes, this one first. It’s one of those you pull up for boats. Hell of a lot easier to leave it up than blow it up. But I’m hoping it was just this bridge.”
“We stay out of the town then. Off the side streets. We stick to this one route and don’t take any detours.”
“I’m not a tourist. We’re going to the bridge, that’s it.”
Someone had tried to block off certain streets. Cars and cement barriers sat in the mouth of several junctions, backed by large sheets of plywood jammed between abandoned dry-cleaning shops and liquor stores. Some had been broken apart or shoved aside, but others seemed to remain intact. Elijah was grim but seemed calmer than he had in days. Maybe because it’s rational, Neil told himself. This is what happened at the hospital. This is what people do to stay safe. This isn’t something that Infected do. And whoever made these, they might not be cruel. Or selfish. Might be welcoming to other sane people. Maybe. Or maybe we’d be run out because we’re Cured. Best not to tell anyone unless we have to. Should talk to Elijah about that, if we get a chance. The main road was mostly clear, here and there a car sitting dead in one of the lanes or a shopping cart escaped from a nearby lot.
“Why’d they leave this road open?” asked Neil. Elijah glanced back at him.
“It took a lot of energy and resources to block the other streets. Maybe they just ran out of stuff or time.” He turned back to the road. “Or maybe they didn’t care who passed this way. Or maybe they were trying to corral people down this particular road for an ambush. Just be ready.”
They’d stopped to fish out the guns Shay had given them and loaded them, putting them in the top portion of the packs. Neil had argued against it, but Elijah had insisted that if they were desperate, they’d need them. “We don’t want what happened at the rest stop to happen again. No truck cabs to hide in and most of the buildings are blocked off,” he’d said. Neil knew Elijah was thinking of that very thing now, though he seemed neither panicked nor desperate.
A mile from the bridge, Elijah slowed and stopped, veering into the parking lot of a small gas station.
“What is it?” asked Neil stopping beside him.
“Do you smell that?” he asked abruptly, wrinkling his nose.
Neil sniffed, tried to pick out whatever was off. There was a faint sulphuric smell, just a trace. “I think there were some chemical plants or maybe it was a shipyard, I can’t remember.”
Elijah shook his head. “No— not that kind of smell. Besides, nothing’s been running for years. Anything from that should have gone away by now. It’s something rotting, I think. Something dead.”
Neil thought for a moment. “You think we’re walking into a trap.”
“Don’t you?”
“I’m not sure. It looks like whoever built those barriers is gone. Some of them have fallen down. And if they wanted to ambush people, they could probably have forced them into a smaller space than this road. Maybe they just wanted people to move through and not stop.”
“Why blow up the bridge then?”
“We don’t know if it was the same group of people. Or even if it happened on the same side of the river. For all that we know people across the way are having some kind of feud with these people.”
“That doesn’t make me feel any better.” Elijah sighed. “But… if we want to get information about your family, then we’ll have to go look.”
“We’re two people. They could have jumped us at any point now.”
“That’s true. Just— why go out looking for prey when it’s going to walk right up to you?”
“Because I don’t think much wanders up here anymore,” said Neil. “Besides, you keep telling me, if I want something, all I have to do is walk to the nearest store or dealership and take it. Money’s useless. Most goods are useless, except food and water, and if they wait for someone to pass by to eat, then they probably didn’t last very long.”
Elijah nodded. “You’re probably right. And we’re going to have to try to find out who they are at some point. No good sitting here until it gets dark and we’re stuck in a place we don’t know. Just—” He stopped, stared at Neil for a second. “I don’t want to tell you this, but I feel like I need to. We look bad, Neil. We look sick. Even me. We’ve got scars. And you’re washed out from being in that dark hospital so long. Too skinny still. I look twenty years older than I am. We both look like Infected.”
“I know. I’ve seen myself. I was thinking, when we do meet someone, might be best not to tell them we were Infected. Some people… may not like the idea that we can come back.”
Elijah laughed. “You don’t have to tell me that. I’ve met plenty of them in the City. Out here though, people are going to shoot first and then ask questions. Even people who don’t want to hurt anyone. So if we see people, we start talking. About anything. It’s the fastest way to show them we’re not Infected.”
“Okay. Are you ready?”
“I think so. Really don’t like that smell though.” He balanced his bike and started slowly off. Neil followed close behind.
The smell grew stronger, altered. An undercurrent of sourness mixed with the sulfur and the deep stench of urine and waste. The long bullet-body of a gray submarine sat beached in gravel on the left side of the road after the buildings had petered out. Large chain-link fences took the place of the barricades, lining the road to either side. “Think it’s coming from that?” called Neil, pointing to the submarine. Elijah shook his head and pointed farther down the road. Beyond the submarine, Neil could see a fleet of drab green trucks parked to the left behind the fence. On the right, scraps of cloth and tattered shreds of paper poked partway through the fence on that side. There were a few soiled dolls and molding stuffed animals placed here and there along the foot of the fencing. Fast food boxes and bags rolled across the tar or caught against the weeds. It was too unkempt to be any kind of memorial, the items seemed scattered instead of clustered. And there were no pictures. No flower vases. No crosses or stars.
“What is this?” he muttered, as they rolled past an overturned suitcase. The reek grew stronger. It reminded Neil of the night the restaurant’s pipes backed up, the hours of mopping up the gray, slimy filth had seared the scent into his brain. That’s not it, he told himself. It’s more familiar. I’ve smelled this recently. But the only places I’ve been recently are— oh. He skidded to an abrupt halt. He could just see the tops of the bridge’s lift towers shining at the peak of the next hill. The chain link fencing blocked off the road from the shallows of the river to either side and from the four-lane underpass below them. He could see large trucks parked across the lanes below, blocking it off. They’d made the town a fortress. Elijah had been wrong. The survivors here weren’t bandits. They weren’t trying to lead anyone into an ambush. They were trying to contain the Infected. Trying to quarantine the town, cutting it off from people fleeing from other towns. The barricades and fencing was a crude sort of corral.
Elijah had noticed that he’d stopped and biked slowly back to him.
“Elijah,” he whispered, hyper-aware that any noise might attract whatever Infected were still in the area, “They were keeping people here. We’re not headed into an ambush, we’re headed into a— I don’t know. A quarantine station? A detention camp? Something like that. This stuff on the side of the road—” he pointed to a mildewed red backpack with clothing vomited from its open flap. “They were supplies. For people put here.”
“Which means they hadn’t snapped yet when they came here,” Elijah agreed grimly. “This one smells like a big one. Probably put together really fast. From the look of the town, something went wrong. They got out. Or maybe they drove people here from other places and some of them snapped in the trucks, escaped to hunt down the immune survivors.”
“You think— you think there are still some left?”
“Yes. Otherwise, it wouldn’t smell so badly still. Not just a few, either.”
“Have you seen places like this before?”
“You were in one, Neil. They’re all over the country. And where they aren’t— everyone’s just dead. Infected, too, from exposure or starvation or just other sicknesses and injuries.”
“We should turn around. The bridge will be out. No way that Joan came through here. Not— not with it smelling like this. Not knowing what was here.”
Elijah hesitated, staring at the tops of the lift towers. “We can turn around. God knows I want to. But it might not have smelled like this when Joan passed through. She might even have had help at that point. All of these quarantine camps had military and healthcare people assigned to them. Some of them had to be immune. Eventually, they may have become overwhelmed and didn’t have the manpower or capacity to keep the Infected separate. Or they may have run out of supplies to care for them. But it could have been after Joan passed by. That bridge is going to be intact because that’s how they got the Infected here. From both sides. They would have left it open so they could truck in more if they had to and as an escape route for whoever was left. If your family made it this far, they probably did take this way. I know you don’t want to think it, Neil, but your wife and daughter saw places like this. More than once. They knew what it was. Likely thought the place you were in was like this. It wouldn’t be frightening to them the way it is to us. Actually, she might have steered straight for it, because she would have known there would be help here. People in charge. People that knew what to do. Maybe. At least, there was supposed to be. And that most of the Infected population would be safely fenced away. This would have been the safest route a year ago. Two.” He tightened one of the belts on his pack. “But we can go. Find another way over and work our way back to this route on the other side. What’s ahead— is going to be awful. Probably dangerous, if there’s a break in the fencing. And if they are as hungry as I think they are. That smell— no one’s been caring for them for a while. That smell is pure misery.”
“I know,” said Neil. “I remember it.”
Elijah waited for him to make a decision.
“Can we just turn around now? We know what’s up there. We know there are people suffering in there, even if they don’t have the— the awareness to realize more than just constant hunger. It could be months before someone else comes along.”
“It could be. It could be never, too, Neil.”
“Then— how can we just leave them?”
Elijah puffed out his cheeks with a breath. “Didn’t we agree that the best thing we could do for any Infected we found was to leave them as they were if we could? We don’t have the Cure. If we let them out, they’ll kill anyone else who’s still here. Or each other. If you want to find your family, we can’t stay and care for them. Even if we could figure out how. The only other option is killing them. Is— that what you want to do?”
“No. No, I don’t want to kill anyone if we don’t have to.” He glanced back down the road they’d arrived on. “We could go back. Go to Shay and tell her about this place and about the rest stop. Surely between the two, it should be enough to get them to investigate. Or we can find a camp—”
“It won’t work,” Elijah said gently. “You have to understand how long it takes them to set up a camp. And remember how many other people are out there waiting for the Cure right now. It took us a year after the Cure was found to reach you. Do you understand? Your hospital was one of the first goals on the list. Not only for your sake, but also because we needed the medicine in that building. We aren’t able to manufacture the sedative they use in the Cure. We don’t have the people or the supplies for that. We barely have the tools we need to produce the antibiotic. Every dose has to be scrounged from what was left behind. Doctor’s offices, hospitals, vets— not just that, the materials for the camps themselves. Sure, a lot of the food and supplies come from the scav teams that run ahead of the camps, but at least some of it is trucked in from the City every time. This is a long way to travel with fresh food. And all of that is in addition to keeping up with the demands of the City. Shay is less than twenty miles from the City’s center, even after all this time. And they are moving the barrier this month. There won’t be more Cure camps while that happens. The scav teams will work as long as they can into the winter, but the camps will only last as long as the good weather. You just can’t heat giant tents full of people efficiently in December. And every iteration of a camp takes eight weeks. One to set up, one to break down, and six for recovery. Even if we turned around right now to put this place on the City’s list and even if there weren’t other goals in front of it, we’re better than fifty miles from the camps. And in the wrong direction. The scav teams are pushing west, not north. That’s two to three years at best before they even get here. And it’s never the best case. Seven or eight years is more likely. If someone were taking care of the Infected here, it’d be one thing, but—”
“Maybe they are. Maybe they’re just falling behind,” Neil cried and then startled at the volume of his own voice returned to a whisper. “Or maybe we can bring the Infected to the camps. That’s what you did with us, wasn’t it?”
“Three miles. After you were sedated. Not fifty. And there were thirty scavengers bringing people to that camp. We’re alone.”
“Maybe there are only a few left—”
“How would we get them there, Neil? Even if we could find a truck or a bus that’s still working, we’re not going to find gas that’s not sour. That’s to say nothing of getting the Infected into it. Or keeping them from killing each other or us once we did.”
“Then— we’ll go get the darts. Bring them back here and sedate them and then find a way to get them back to the City. Or one of the camps.”
Elijah shook his head. “I want to brother. Wanted to at the rest stop, too. But they need care even while they’re sedated. IVs to keep them hydrated and to halt the starvation. Treatment for wounds— someone who knows what to do if they wake up before the infection is gone. That’s why we have teams—”
“Let’s go look, then,” interrupted Neil. “Let’s go see if it’s a few of them or if it’s more. If it’s just a few, maybe we can persuade this governor of yours to let us try. More workers for him, right? And no cost to the City, just us doing it. It’s a win for him. Let’s go see. Find out how bad they are. Maybe they’re healthier than I was. Maybe they’d be okay for the few days of sleeping during the Cure without all that. You said someone was caring for them—”
“Even if it means Randi has to wait longer? Maybe until the spring if the weather closes in while we’re going on this rescue mission?”
That made Neil pause. “I can’t teach her to be a good person if I leave people to starve and freeze. I can’t ask her to forgive all the terrible things I’ve already done if I don’t try to be better than I was when I was ill. It’s— worse now, to leave them to die.”
He could see that Elijah wanted to protest. Wanted to say something. But after a few seconds, he must have decided the argument wasn’t worth it and simply said, “Okay, let’s go look.” He turned his bike back toward the bridge.
23
The fence on Neil’s left warped and drooped until finally collapsing flat just before the large bridge. There were bones lying on top of the wire where people had no doubt been trampled when the fence had given way. More scattered on the grass behind it, a dark gray skull peering out from a clump of dandelions. Nothing but the grasses moved on that side of the road. But the fence on the right was intact. An overgrown field sloped gently down to the river where a paved pier sat. A cluster of long buildings sat on the pier, presumably the primary living area of the quarantined. If you could call that living, he thought. The odor was intense, though the area near the fence appeared clear. Down between the small buildings, there were dark piles of what looked like cloth and bundles. Neil had a feeling they weren’t just discarded clothing. Bodies
, probably. Dozens of people wandered between them, stumbling occasionally. A few squatted near one of the piles, their backs to Neil. He thought they might be eating. The remains of a few tents poked up from the tar, a jumble of canvas and poles and whatever had been beneath them when they collapsed.
“Why aren’t they fighting?” Neil wondered. “You think they’re Immune?”
“No. They aren’t Immune. They may have just eaten— there are bodies down there. I can see them. Or maybe they’re so starved that they’ve become listless. I can’t tell which, but I’ve seen both.” Elijah pointed toward the far corner of fencing that ended fairly far into the water of the river. “That’s the only way they’ve lasted this long. Like you and the pool in your hospital. All that’s in their bellies is a few scraps of meat and some dirty river water. Jesus. This is— this is pure suffering.”
Neil was alarmed to hear a choked sob come from Elijah and turned to see him wiping his face with one hand, the other clinging to the chain link.
“But we’ll bring them the Cure. They’ll recover—”
Elijah shook his head and scrubbed at his eyes more frantically.
“They will, I did. This is almost the same condition that I was in.”
“You wouldn’t have made it much longer. They won’t. If the starvation doesn’t do it, the exposure will. Jesus, this is why I didn’t want to look. Forgive me, brother, I didn’t want to see this.” He took a shuddering breath and tried to calm down. “There’s no way they made it this long without help. Someone must have kept things warm last winter. This must have happened recently. They aren’t going to make it, Neil. Look—” He picked up a large branch that had fallen over the fence and banged it against the hollow poles. “Hey!” he shouted.
Before The Cure (Book 2): The Infected Page 23
