Neil hesitated and then nodded.
“Give me the hatchet. I’ll check the outhouses. And those trucks.”
“Outhouses are empty. Just the vehicles left.” He handed the hatchet to Elijah.
“Stay here. Wrap your shirt around that wound and keep it tight. I’ll be right back.”
I’m sorry, Neil wanted to call after him, but didn’t, peeling off his t-shirt instead. It was covered in blood spatter and smears of viscous fluid from the bodies he’d moved and the people they’d killed. He turned it inside out before wrapping it around his calf. He didn’t know exactly, what he was sorry for. For all of it, really. He stared at the man who had bitten him, bothered by the traces of blood and beef broth staining his beard hair.
Neil was sorry for them, mostly. Sorry that they’d suffered like this, with weeks or months of food sitting right next to them. Sorry that they’d been sent here by their families and forgotten. Sorry that he’d survived. Sorry that he’d killed them instead of finding a way to bring them the Cure. Sorry that there’d been a Cure in the first place. That he’d woken up in this world. Sorry that he’d somehow betrayed Elijah, though he truly wasn’t certain how. Sorry that it seemed Neil had lost his friendship. Or at least his confidence. It’s done, Neil told himself. It’s all done and over. Nothing you can salvage except maybe Elijah. Maybe. Feel bad about the rest, but don’t tell him. For goodness’s sake, don’t tell him and have him leave you out here alone.
He’d calmed himself by the time Elijah returned. Or at least, he hoped that he had. Elijah helped him up.
“Lean on me,” he said, wrapping an arm around his back. “Got to get you over that fence and somewhere safe so we can get that bite cleaned.”
“I’m sorry,” Neil blurted out, even as he willed himself to just stay quiet.
“There’s nothing to be sorry for. You know how overwhelming the urge to bite is when you’re sick. He would have bitten me, too.”
“I meant about— about arguing. About hesitating. I thought we could fix them.”
“I know you did. I know.” He jerked his head toward the food packets. “That’s the wrong food for people so starved. Their hearts would have given up within a day or two. And most of them weren’t just starved. We couldn’t help them. I promise you, we did the only thing we could do for them. Trust me, Neil, please. I’ve been through things like this more than once.” He pulled them slowly forward. “Let’s— let’s just focus on getting somewhere safe before we lose the light.”
25
They only made it as far as the bridge’s control house. Elijah had to pry open the door to get them in, but all the windows were whole and it had only the one entrance to worry about. The shirt around Neil’s shin was soaked, but the bleeding had slowed to a trickle. He leaned against the side of the control house while Elijah grunted and swore at the hatchet. He used the narrow edge to pry at the door until it swung in with a crash.
“Go on,” said Elijah, giving him a gentle push. “I’ll get the bikes. Sit and take the pressure off that leg. We’ll clean it and bandage it in a minute.”
Neil hobbled into the cramped office. A rolling chair tilted unevenly near the large control panel. It creaked as he sank onto it. A chipped mug still sat on the corner of the control panel, a dark drip mark of ancient coffee interrupting the painted outline of a state map on the side. He could see both sides of the bridge from here. The huts of the quarantine camp and the long fence around it turning a warm gold in the evening light and on the other side, the peaked roofs of a town. He wondered if they’d find it fenced off, too. Or just empty like the other towns they’d passed through. The rows and rows of silent houses with their weedy yards and their motionless cars and playgrounds were beginning to eat at Neil. A few more days, he told himself, and we’ll be at the cabin. Joan and Randi will be there. Maybe the others they took with them. Maybe more people they found. Won’t matter so much, the emptiness outside. We’ll build up a little place. A sanctuary of sound and smells and humanity. It’ll be better. Just have to hold on.
Elijah trundled in the bikes one after another and then leaned them against the door to keep it shut. Neil had a feeling one of them would end up sleeping across it instead to make sure they were secure. He pulled a small box from his pack and sat down at Neil’s feet. “Let’s take a look,” he told Neil, pulling gently on the bloody t-shirt. It stuck and ripped at the fragile wound. “Sorry,” Elijah muttered, though Neil hadn’t flinched. Elijah frowned at the wound. “Was it a bite or scratch? It’s too dirty to tell.”
“Bite. I didn’t see him, he was under the tarp and I saw the food, I just— I’m sorry. I’m sorry I’m so useless at this. I’ll get better, there’s just so much I didn’t think about before—”
Elijah glanced up quickly. “It’s okay. I don’t want you to get better. I don’t want to get better. Not at killing people. I didn’t expect a place like this either. Around the City, they were high priority, even before the Cure. They didn’t let people linger like that. The hospital you were at, that was the worst I’ve seen until today. And there were only about a dozen of you left. I didn’t think there’d be big groups like this anymore. Especially outside, exposed. We would have had a very different discussion about what to do if I had. And the bite— shit, Neil, I would have been distracted, too. Or that one down under the ramp. I would have left that one because I wouldn’t have been as kind as you. I never would have pulled the others out of the water and I wouldn’t have seen that one. You did fine. As well as I ever want either of us to get at this, anyway. I don’t think either of us wants to practice this particular survival skill.” He focused on Neil’s leg again. “I’m going to have to clean it. It’s going to burn like crazy but it’s better than getting an infection. Bites are the worst, so much stuff living in our mouths.”
Neil looked down at the bite, trying not to think about all the ways it could go sour. “I had most of my vaccines. But— oh, tetanus, how long’s that one last again?”
Elijah shook his head, opening the small box and pulling out a bottle of clear liquid. It stank of alcohol as soon as he opened it, but the smell was almost a relief after the quarantine camp. He poured it onto a clean washcloth from the bottom of the box and wiped the edges of Neil’s wound. He’d been right, it stung and burned. “Don’t remember. Eight years maybe? I’m sorry, Neil, I wasn’t ever a doctor or anything related. All the training I have is from the camp. The stuff from Before, if I ever knew it, I’ve forgotten. Do you remember the last time you had one?”
Neil thought for a moment, trying not to jerk his leg back as the washcloth brushed over the deepest spots. “It was after I got a bad gash when we installed the dishwasher at work. Two years ago? No, four now. Have to remember I was sick. Some days I feel like Rip Van Winkle. Four years is still good, right? I think Randi’s doctor said ten years when we got hers. But maybe it was eight. Jesus, I can’t remember.” Neil scrubbed his face.
“I think you’re right. That rings a bell. Noah had like three vaccines right off the bat and— I got upset, you know? Because they cry and it breaks your heart. So I asked how many more we had to do, and they said there were a few more and then it was something like that. Like ten years. Got so I dreaded the doctor more than he did.” Elijah shook his head with a faint smile. “Used to cry in the car and hold him before we drove home so Abby wouldn’t see what a softie I was. Stupid. Like she wouldn’t have understood.”
Neil knew the feeling. He could still hear Randi’s unholy wail when the nurse pushed the vaccine into her chubby little leg. “I hated those visits, too. The toddler vaccines were the worst. When they’re too young to explain it to and old enough to remember that the doctor’s office means pain. And all the kids in the waiting room knew too, so the crying started way before we even got in the room. I always wished Joan would take her once in a while so I wouldn’t be the bad guy every time. But I worked nights and she didn’t so I got all the doctor duty. I had to hold Randi tight so she wo
uldn’t just run out of the exam room. God, I hated that. Always—” he stopped to wipe his eyes and clear his throat. “Always took her to the park after. Every time. To make up, you know? She’d still be crying until she saw the slides of the playground. Every time. And then— everything was better. Happy again. Well— she’d be happy again, I’d still feel guilty a few days. Wish it would be that easy this time. Wish I could be sure she’ll ever want to see me again.”
Elijah pulled out some thin strips of stiff cloth and began wrapping it tightly around Neil’s leg. “Noah never got that far. I never had to hold him to keep him from running. I’m not sure if I could have done it.” He stopped to untwist an uneven part of the bandage. Neil wanted to apologize for Noah. For reminding him of what had happened. But Elijah spoke first. “Randi will want to see you. Maybe not at first. Maybe not for a while. Reunions can be— rough. But give it time, it usually works out. And you don’t have all the— all the nastiness of the City telling her people like us are bad. That we lost our humanity and will never get it fully back.” He tucked the ends of the bandage in and pinned it carefully. “Whatever happens, at least try. That’s what she’ll remember, even if she decides she can’t— she can’t see you the way she did. She’ll remember you tried. I’ll remember that you tried. It will comfort her, someday, when she has her own to look after. When she’s uncertain she did the right thing, she’ll remember that trying is important, even when you can’t fix it.” He pulled back, putting his supplies neatly back into the small box. “I’ll be back in a minute,” he said, standing up.
“Where are you going?” asked Neil with an odd sort of panic.
“Just to the riverbank. We need some water to clean up the rest of the— mess.”
“But the bodies—”
“I’m going to go upriver a little, above the camp. It’ll be good to clear my head a little. Stretch my legs and work out the cramp in my seat.” He put the first aid box back and pulled a few of their empty water bottles from the packs. Neil stood up, trying not to put too much weight on his leg which was pulsing and hot.
“I’ll come with you,” he said.
Elijah shook his head. “I’m not leaving. Sit down. Rest. I just need a little time.” He sighed. “I’m not angry with you, understand? I’ve had to do what we just did before. More than I care to think about. It was just— I was never the one who had to make the final decision. They would never let a Cured decide that. I was just the— trigger. I’m not abandoning you because you hesitated or disagreed or anything like that. Hell, even if I hated you, I wouldn’t abandon you out here. You don’t do that to someone you can help. Not anymore. And I don’t hate you, Neil. There’s no fight, okay? Just rest. When I come back, we’ll get washed up and we’ll have something to eat. I won’t be long.” He patted Neil’s shoulder before sliding past the parked bikes and closing the door behind him. Neil watched him pass by the control house back toward the end of the bridge for a long time until Elijah had wandered down the exit ramp and out of sight.
The world outside the control room was more dusk than day by the time Elijah actually returned, a shadow figure that paced slowly up the road. He didn’t offer any explanation about why it had taken him so long and Neil didn’t ask. He handed Neil a few bottles of river water and they did their best to wash the stink and filth of the quarantine camp away. After they’d changed, Elijah took their clothing outside of the control room and dropped them over the side of the bridge without saying anything. Neil picked through their dwindling collection of food and thought about the pallets in the camp. And the stretched, hollow skin of the Infected.
“There’s food down there. In the camp, I mean,” he said reluctantly.
“I know,” said Elijah, pulling the cover off of a can of peanuts.
“Enough for years for a couple of people.”
“If you could transport it, which we can’t. A few weeks’ worth, sure. But we’ve still got a good sixty-odd miles to get to your cabin. If we got desperate, we know it’s here. We can come back with a wagon or something. Maybe figure out how to get some kind of vehicle going if we’re very lucky. There’s more food out there. I haven’t tried to find any since the rest stop because I was afraid we’d find someone again. I knew it was going to be hard to decide what to do if we did. Not this hard. Not dozens at a time hard.”
“Maybe we should take what we can carry then,” said Neil. “We won’t have to risk a store or someone’s house. We won’t have to decide again.”
“I’ve thought about it,” Elijah admitted. “Thought about stopping to drag it all onto the road, too, for the next person who needs it to find, too. There’s— there’s more in the trucks.”
“More? There’s more?” Neil found himself trying to breathe around an aching chest. “There’s so much and they starved to death. Starved and starved and ate each other and suffered—”
Elijah gripped his shoulder. “They didn’t know. And whoever was taking care of them— they took care of them for a long time. They tried Neil. Kept ‘em inside over the winter. Fed them as long as they could. They wouldn’t have been alive when we got here otherwise. Something else happened. Maybe their caretaker had an accident. Maybe they got sick. Lots of pneumonia these days and sepsis. Just from everyday things. Maybe one of the Infected got them. No one was keeping that food away from them, you understand? This wasn’t a— a torture center, much as it may have appeared so. It was just bad luck and the Plague. They couldn’t smell it, so they didn’t try to eat it. You know what attracted us. You know how overwhelming that need to— to bite someone was. It’s— it’s not much different than a store full of food with Infected dying in the parking lot outside. As for us taking the food— I don’t know that I could eat it after that— stench. It’ll— it’ll cling to the bags. Every time we picked up our packs we’d smell that camp. And if I opened one with that beef—”
Neil had an involuntary retch at the thought. Elijah nodded.
“Yeah, that’s what I mean. There are other places. Lots of them. No city to compete with, not that I’ve seen any sign of anyway. I— hoped when we saw those barricades, I hoped we’d find some people. Maybe they’re here. Maybe they’re hiding from us. Don’t know. But I haven’t seen any lights. Not from campfires or flashlights or anything. We haven’t heard anything. Or smelled anything, until today. Maybe ahead. But there will be grocery stores and convenience stores and empty houses and they’ll all have cans and boxes and root cellars. We don’t have to take the stuff in the camp. We don’t have to go back. We don’t ever have to see it again.”
Elijah handed him the can of peanuts.
“Where are they? The people. Did they all go to the City? Are there— I dunno, bunkers or forts or something that they’re holed up in? Why did they leave those Infected?”
“It still hasn’t hit you yet, has it?” Elijah asked. “This unending empty. You still think there’s some sort of group out there. An organization maybe. Some sort of government or part of the country that’s not like this. You think this is some kind of isolated zone, don’t you? They’re gone, Neil. Dead or Infected. Maybe some fled hoping to find some sort of safe place. It sounds like that’s what the people with your family were looking for. But the City’s the only truly populated place I know of. And it only exists because the Immunes managed to keep it clear until there was a cure. There’s no government. There’s no military. By the time the people in charge even realized there was a bacteria causing this, it was already too late. Most people didn’t even know they were sick. Did—” he broke off and shook his head.
“What?” asked Neil, alarmed to hear Elijah take a stuttering breath.
“Did you know? That you were sick, I mean? Before you snapped?”
“Oh.” Neil paused for a few seconds, thinking about how to answer the question. About why Elijah was asking. “Not for a while. I was with someone who was sicker than me. I saw what happened to him first. So did Shay. Otherwise, we might never have realized. And it wa
s still Shay who noticed first.”
“I didn’t see the symptoms. Not until it was too late. I would have gone away, I would have left if—”
“I know, I know you would have,” said Neil. “And your wife knew too, in that moment. I promise she knew it wasn’t you. Wasn’t what you’d normally have done.”
“She didn’t. She didn’t know. She was horrified. She was scared and— it was the worst moment of her life. Mine too— I—”
“You don’t have to talk about it, Elijah. I’ll never ask,” Neil said.
“She asked me to get up with Noah,” Elijah muttered anyway. “He just— he never slept through the night and I wasn’t home most times, so Abby had to get up every night. It was a day off. And I was tired. That was the thing. I was tired. Couldn’t even speak clearly. And I’d gone to bed just to— to reset, you know?” He had sagged against the large desk and rubbed the back of one wrist over his nose. “Noah woke up and started crying. And Abby— I don’t even know if she’d really gone to bed yet. Wasn’t settled in. But she just— she sighed, really deeply. The way you do when it’s just one thing too much. Just that final push into utter exhaustion. And I pretended Noah hadn’t woken me. That I was still asleep. Jesus, why did I do that? Why didn’t I just—”
Neil leaned against the desk beside him, taking the weight off of his injured leg. “Because you thought he might just go back to sleep. Because you were tired, too.”
“Because I was being selfish,” spat Elijah. “Because I just thought she’d take care of it. She always did. But that night, she just, she nudged me a little. And I was— infuriated. So unreasonably angry. Like I wanted to smack her. I never did, Neil, not before that. Not ever. No one else, either. And even then, some distant part of me was still working and realized that I was being insane. That she’d only asked me to check on our baby. That’s it. She didn’t do anything wrong. And even if she had, there was no good getting that upset about it. That little part won, for a minute. I wish it hadn’t. I wish I’d bitten her first. So she didn’t have to see, so she never had to know—” His voice broke off in a rattling husk and he turned his face so Neil couldn’t see it. Neil wasn’t certain what to do. He struggled to find something to say, some way to alleviate Elijah’s guilt, but Elijah started speaking again before Neil could think of anything. “So I got up. And I went into Noah’s room. Banged my knee on the changing table. I always did that. Every single time. Just something in my head that never remembered that it was there. That time though— oh that time… There’s something about a baby crying. Or maybe it was just Noah, I don’t know. But it was this constant wailing pulse. Normally, it made me or Abby come running. Biology, I guess. Most of the time, I wanted it to stop because I wanted whatever was hurting him to stop, not because of the actual sound. It was different that night. Like it was personal or something. Like Noah was doing it just to enrage me. I know how crazy that sounds. I can hear myself now. But in the moment— it was like the sound wasn’t coming from my child. It was like it was coming from a— a siren outside or a neighbor’s fire alarm or something. Completely divorced from me. Just an annoyance. Just an insistent irritation that had to be stopped. I picked him up too roughly and he screamed. He screamed and screamed. Just like when he got those vaccinations. I used to think that’s why Abby came running, but it took her too long.” He held out his hands as if he were still holding his infant, looking down into his baby’s face. “I don’t think it was the screaming. I think she thought I’d just startled him, maybe. I think— I think it might have been the quiet after. I think that’s why she came running. He was so tiny. It was so fast. It was all so fast, that it seems like it’s still happening. Even now, even this minute, that I’m still—” He shook with a sob and Neil wrapped an arm around him, trying to comfort him without knowing what to do, what could come close to easing the terrible grief in Elijah’s face. “And then it took me too long to kill Abby. It took too long, she knew, she knew what I’d done, saw me holding his little body. She knew a long time. Ten minutes? Twenty? I don’t know. I chased her. She almost made it. The worst was that she knew first. That’s—” he let out a shuddering sigh. “That’s why I didn’t kill myself in the camp. That’s the truth, brother. That’s why. Because if she had to know before she died, if she had to live with the idea that Noah was gone, that I had done it, well, then I have to know too. I have to live with it.”
Before The Cure (Book 2): The Infected Page 26
