“It’s just me now.” He brushed Corrina’s hair back from her sweating face and adjusted the IV that dripped into her arm. “Some of us turned V and we couldn’t stop them in time. The uninfected are gone. Some of them turned Faint. Others ran when they were only a handful left. We’re all Vs or Faints now. I suspect I’ll be joining them soon enough.”
He motioned to the empty bed next to Corrina. His arm had a white bandage wrapped around it. He half-smiled. “I’m prepared.”
“What’s that from?” I pointed to his bandage.
“One of the Feebs who went V. She bit me.”
“You didn’t get trapped in the fevers?”
He shook his head.
My mind began to spin. It was too simple.
I smoothed out Corrina’s bedsheet. Sweat glistened on her forehead.
Dylan pointed at my bandaged wrist. It wasn’t clean like his. Blood and pus soaked through the layers and my skin was swollen around the bandage. Shaky red lines snaked up my arm.
“That doesn’t look good.”
I shook my head and bit my lip. “It’s from a V, but I didn’t get trapped in the fevers.”
And I hadn’t fallen into a Faint episode in a long time either. I’d been losing hours at a time. The Faint episodes had been crowding so close together and then they had just stopped.
Gabbi and Ricker approached.
“Where are they?” Gabbi demanded.
Dylan motioned us to the back of the church. He shuffled through a set of doors and they followed. I promised myself I would follow soon but my brain buzzed with questions that needed answering. I needed to just stay still for a minute and let it puzzle through all the pieces.
We’d tried blood transfusions before. If someone was turning Faint, give them V blood. If someone was going V, give them Faint blood.
It had never worked.
But maybe just like the virus and bacteria had evolved over time—maybe things worked differently now.
I ran to Corrina’s table of medical supplies. I rifled through the glass containers and the bundled herbs. A beaker crashed to the ground. Glass shattered and flew everywhere. I found what I was looking for and snatched it up.
Gabbi and Ricker rushed back into the room.
“What happened?” Gabbi said.
“Are you okay?” Ricker said.
I drew blood from Corrina’s arm. I held up the syringe. “Where’s Ano?”
I didn’t bother letting them answer, but rushed into the back room of the church. My brain was buzzing and my muscles were so tense I thought if I wasn’t careful I would jump through the roof.
This was going to work. Somehow this had to work.
The doors had blocked the moans before, but now there was no stopping it from reaching my ears. At least ten people were strapped down to beds in this room. Their arms and legs were tied off, sometimes even their head and chest.
Ano was in the corner, thrashing against the straps. He’d lost so much weight. His collar bone stuck out under his shirt. He’d lost all the flesh and muscle on his arms. His face looked sunken in and revealed the shape of his skull underneath.
I plunged the syringe into his arm.
Ricker, Gabbi, and Dylan crowded around.
We watched Ano breathe in and out, shout in Spanish, strain and grit his teeth and collapse again on the bed and repeat the process. I strained to see a change, any change. I didn’t know if he and Corrina were the same blood type, but that shouldn’t matter. He wasn’t getting a blood transfusion, he was getting a fresh dose of the Faint bacteria. It was supposed to balance out the overload of virus he’d gotten each time he’d been injured by a V. That was what Dr. Ferrad had talked about. That was the point. Balance.
It felt like we held our collective breath for hours.
“How long is this supposed to take?” Dylan said.
“I don’t know,” I said.
It was late evening now. We had gotten chairs. Dylan brought in some canned peaches and water for our dinner, but otherwise we used the time to help change bedpans and IVs. As the hours ticked by and the moans stayed the same, I thought I might go mad.
“It should have worked by now,” Gabbi said. “Right?”
“I don’t know how long it’s supposed to take,” I said.
She looked at me until I looked away.
“But yeah, I think so,” I said. “It seemed like it was almost immediate when it happened to me. Each time the V bit me…” I trailed off.
Ricker and Gabbi perked up.
My brain buzzed again. The syringe was next to Ano’s bed.
But that was wrong. The bacteria spread like tuberculosis—through the air.
I had begun turning Faint after living with my own Faints—after sharing the same air for months. Dr. Ferrad had said the blood, given enough time, would neutralize the infections. Maybe the lungs kept the bacteria strong, maybe you couldn’t get the right dose through the blood, but you could get it through the air. That’s why whenever we found Faints it was usually everyone in the house. That’s why some of the uninfected in town had turned Faint.
I thought about who else had turned Faint. Corrina. Dylan. They both practically lived in the Faint hospital. Jimmy. I didn’t know how much time he’d spent with Faints, only that he had never gotten bit by a V after Mary had infected him.
I explained my ideas about the lungs and everything Dr. Ferrad said before she died. “We have to move all of them into the other room. Put every person who’s gone V in between two Faints.”
It was as if we were on fire. The four of us dragged the beds into the main church room within the hour. We placed Ano between Jimmy and Corrina. I moved Molly, Freanz, and the twins to the center of the room. They’d been infected longer than most, maybe their breathing contained more bacteria.
We collapsed on a pew pushed up against one of the walls. The beds were packed together with barely any room to walk. Moans and shrieks filled the room. Some of the Faints twitched as if the noises triggered something deep inside their brains.
“Do you really think this is going to work?” Gabbi’s eyes strayed to Kern who thrashed around on his bed. “Never mind. Just tell me it’s going to work.”
I shook my head. My arm pulsed with heat. My ankle had swelled and was leaking pus. Now both of my shoulders and my neck felt stiff and swollen. Something still wasn’t right. I was missing a piece of this puzzle. Even if the Faints brought back the Vs, how were we going to get back Jimmy and Corrina?
I considered drawing blood from Ano and giving it to Jimmy but my brain said that wasn’t right. It wasn’t in the blood. Corrina and Dylan had tried that before. Dr. Ferrad’s machine had done all sorts of stuff to the blood before it worked.
My wrist flared as if in answer. Sweat poured down my neck and back. My brain was so fuzzy.
I forced myself to relive the details of each V attack over the last few weeks. Dr. Ferrad’s “Exactly!” looped in my brain—
I stood up—
“What?” Ricker said, standing up with me. He felt my forehead. “Are you—”
He pushed a hand out and steadied himself against the wall. He couldn’t walk on his leg anymore. It hurt too much. It was too swollen, too infected, just like my wrist.
Except not like my wrist.
At the cave, the V had bitten my ankle. Ricker had slapped me. It didn’t trigger the memory-fever that always came. Except not always. Not after that V bite. I hadn’t thought about it at the time—we’d been busy trying not to die. But even then, the solution had been right in front of me, I just hadn’t seen it for what it was.
Tabitha had been bitten on the shoulder. I’d been bitten on the ankle and wrist. Neither of us had gotten trapped in the memory-fevers.
Bites were what had locked Ano and Kern into the fevers.
The Lyssa virus wasn’t in the blood anymore.
It was in the saliva.
The fever kept my thoughts foggy. I didn’t know how to get what I need
ed or put it where I needed it. I hobbled over to Ano’s bed and stared down at him. I thought maybe his breathing had calmed over the last few hours, but it could have just been my imagination.
I looked around for something to swab Ano’s mouth. I hesitated—Corrina would kill me for what I was thinking. There were so much other bacteria in the mouth. If this didn’t work, a different infection would finish off all the Faints.
As best I could, I washed my hands, a knife, and Corrina’s arm. She would have wanted me to test this on her instead of Jimmy in case things went wrong.
I used a piece of cloth and stuck it in Ano’s mouth until it was soaked, then I opened up a thin cut in Corrina’s skin. If I was right, Ano’s saliva would be full of active Lyssa virus. Putting it into Corrina’s bloodstream would trigger an immune system response or a bacteria response or—I didn’t really know. Dr. Ferrad would have known. I could only guess and hope that this time it would work even though everything else we tried had failed.
I rubbed the saliva-soaked cloth into Corrina’s cut before wrapping it tight around her arm.
When I finished it was like I had been holding the world on my shoulders and could finally let go. The adrenaline that had kept me moving drained away. All I could smell was the stink of my wrist and the swelling in my leg. My arm felt like it was twice as heavy as the other one. I sat down on the floorboards because the chairs were too far away. My bandage should be changed. I began to unwrap it. The cloth made a sucking noise as it unstuck from the layers of blood and skin. I blacked out.
I woke to a bright light. Sun streamed in through the window and hit me in the eyes like a flashlight. I shifted on the bed. The sheets felt cool but in the heat I knew they would soon soak with my sweat. I felt clean at the moment and relished the feeling.
I was awake enough now to remember the last thing I had done before blacking out. My heartbeat increased. I looked at my wrist. It was re-bandaged with thick strips of gauze and the blood hadn’t soaked through yet. Instead of the stink of infection, I smelled rosemary, lavender, and other scents I couldn’t place. The swelling had gone down in my arm and leg. The red infection lines underneath my harsh Feeb lines had faded.
I tried to sit up.
“Hold on. Take it easy, Maibe.”
Corrina’s voice.
She sat next to me. Her hair framed her face. There was a grin on her lips. There were dark shadows under her eyes too, but that didn’t matter. I didn’t even care if she was a ghost-memory. I was so glad to see her. From the beginning, she’d taken me in, cared for me, did her best to protect me. To protect all of us. Tears sprang in my eyes. I used my uninjured hand to wipe them away.
“She’s real.” Gabbi sat on the other side of the bed. “In case you were wondering. She’s not a ghost.”
I laughed. The sound surprised me. When was the last time I had laughed?
“Ano? Jimmy? The others?” I held my breath for the answer.
“See for yourself,” Corrina said.
Gabbi left my side. I was in a separate room, in a small office away from everyone. Gabbi came back with a wheelchair. The two of them bundled me into it.
“I can walk,” I said.
“The infection almost killed you.” The smile disappeared from Corrina’s face. “You’ve been in a fever for five days.”
I shuddered. I’d been so afraid of getting trapped in the V fevers and instead I’d gotten trapped inside a different kind of fever.
I was glad for their help after all. Moving from the bed to the chair left my muscles weak and shivering.
They wheeled me outside. It was still early morning. The sunlight had hit the window at just the right angle to wake me. I wanted to ask a million questions, but one look at Corrina and Gabbi and I knew they weren’t going to answer them until they were ready. They normally fought like cats and dogs. It was when they got along—that’s when you really needed to worry.
Except. Except I wasn’t worried. Corrina was awake. Gabbi wasn’t scowling.
I felt my face bust into a grin.
Ano’s saliva had worked.
Gabbi pushed me along the path to Corrina’s garden. The path was overgrown, the weeds wild in their abundance, the colors outrageous in their brightness. We entered through the garden gate.
Along the wooden fence, against the trees, a fresh pile of dirt overlooked the garden beds. Picked flowers and herbs covered it. The dirt mound looked like a grave.
“We haven’t made a marker for it yet,” Corrina said.
“Ano and I are working on something.” Gabbi’s words were so quiet I almost didn’t make them out.
“I’m glad she’s here with us,” I said. “I wish I could have known her like you did.”
Gabbi gave me a funny smile. “You’re too soft, Maibe. She would have forced you to toughen up or eaten you alive.”
“Literally?”
Corrina sucked in a breath. Gabbi froze.
I’d spoken without thinking. I was feeling giddy, hopeful. But my joke had been disrespectful. Too soon. Too dark after everything that had happened.
Gabbi looked at Mary’s grave.
I opened my mouth to apologize.
Gabbi laughed and there was both joy and darkness in it. Because that was Gabbi. That had always been Gabbi.
She pushed the wheelchair forward. “Forget what I said before. She would have liked you just fine.”
I settled back into the chair and released my own shaky laugh. Corrina helped Gabbi push the wheelchair over branches and piles of leaves that made the wheels slip. On the far side, where the evergreen trees threw some shade, people sat together on a picnic blanket. They were talking and laughing and sharing plates of food. My stomach grumbled, but I ignored it. I looked for any sign that somehow this wasn’t real. I looked carefully for those silver edges. I found none.
The air smelled sweet and clean. The heat hadn’t yet burned off all the moisture from the night. The coolness even lifted goosebumps on my arms. I relished the feeling. The blue sky above us was clear. They took me right up to the blanket. I held my breath as everyone stopped talking.
Ano. Jimmy. Dylan. Even Kern was here.
Gabbi plopped onto the blanket next to Kern. He put an arm around her shoulder and she didn’t throw it off. I wondered if she told him about his mother yet but decided now was not the time to ask. Jimmy cracked a joke I didn’t quite hear and Dylan laughed next to him. Ano smiled, though the smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. He still looked so thin. His eyes glanced at the fresh scar on my bare arm. Mary’s name. The haunted look in his eyes told me he knew about all of it.
“Hello, Maibe,” Ano said. “Welcome back. And thank you.”
I flushed. It meant so much to hear him say that. Jimmy echoed his own thank you. I got embarrassed and looked over the garden.
“The saliva contained the active virus.” Corrina shook her head. “The blood didn’t. We hadn’t thought—”
“I wouldn’t have thought of it either,” I said. “Except that I couldn’t let go of what Dr. Ferrad explained. It was like the last missing piece of the puzzle. She deserves the credit.” And my uncle, for setting me on all those puzzles so long ago. “Not me.”
“It wouldn’t have mattered to her,” Gabbi said. “She wanted a cure. She didn’t want something that would make it okay to be a Feeb again. You didn’t give up. You figured this out.”
“I wonder how many people she killed to get the cure?” Jimmy said. “Don’t you wonder?”
“No.” Gabbi shook her head. “I really don’t.”
I looked back over the group. I decided it didn’t matter if they thought Dr. Ferrad deserved the credit or not. I would remember how much she had helped, even if she hadn’t meant to. My gaze rested on each face for a moment and my heart burst with love for all of them. They were here and alive. They were all here—
I sat up like a shot. I looked around. A roar rose in my ears. “Where’s Ricker?”
There was a noise be
hind me. “Yes, my love? You called?”
Everyone laughed. I felt my cheeks flush.
I turned around in the wheelchair. Ricker had a crutch under one shoulder and limped toward our picnic. He carried something in his other hand, but what drew my attention was the crazy, neon yellow running shorts he wore. His injured thigh was bandaged from the end of the running shorts to his knee. He looked so worn out as he limped over and stood next to my wheelchair.
He fingered the edge of the shorts when he caught my gaze on them. He half-smiled. “It’s the only thing that would fit around the bandage.”
“Are you really okay?” I said.
“You had it worse,” Corrina said, settling herself onto the blanket next to Dylan. “The bullet was still inside his leg, but once we got that out, it ended up being not much more than a torn muscle.”
The smile disappeared from Ricker’s eyes for a second. “Everyone is waking up because of you and we almost lost you.” He grabbed my uninjured hand and squeezed it.
I squeezed back and relaxed into the comfort he offered. I scanned the blanket again, searching for people I knew weren’t there. “Does it work on all Faints?”
Corrina shook her head. “Molly and Freanz and the twins aren’t getting better.”
My happiness deflated. I had hoped—
“But,” Corrina continued. “They’ve been Faints longer than anyone else here. Maybe it’ll just take longer. We’ll keep trying.”
I looked at each of their faces again. I soaked up the sunshine, the trees, the garden, Mary’s grave. I had only known the real Mary through her friends, but I thought—I knew—this is what she had dreamed about. Her friends all together like this.
Safe.
As safe as we could ever be in this world.
“No matter what,” I said. “We’ll keep trying.”
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Thanks for reading my Feast of Weeds series. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I love to hear from readers so don't be afraid to send me an email and tell me what you think! ([email protected])
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