“Are we at the Cured Colony?” asked a voice.
“You’re close to it,” offered Vincent, squinting against the light. “Where are you coming from?” he asked again.
“Look, you can’t turn us away. We’ve nowhere to go. There are women and children—” shouted a man.
Vincent raised one hand to calm him. “We aren’t going to turn you away. Are you from the City?”
“Yes,” said the man hesitantly, “but you can’t send us back there. There were riots— half the soldiers are dead. People went crazy— just like before. Just like the Plague. The soldiers keep trying to round them up, to put them somewhere so the rest of us can be safe, but there aren’t enough of them anymore. We had to leave. You have to help us.”
“Of course. Of course we’ll help you. We’ve been expecting you—”
There was a murmur of relief and a few sighs as the small crowd surged toward him.
“But we have to protect the people who are already here,” Vincent continued.
“Please,” said a woman stumbling forward, “we’ve been walking for days. Most of us haven’t had anything to eat in almost a week—” She was carrying a sleeping boy whose arm hung crooked in a sling. Vincent gently reached out and lifted the child from her.
“I’m taking you somewhere safe, where you can rest. There will be food and medicine, but you’ve all been exposed to the new disease. The people at the Colony haven’t been. We have to quarantine you. We’ll take care of you, but you must cooperate.”
“But we aren’t sick!” cried someone.
“It’s a precaution. What if you brought it with you on your clothes or on your skin? Do you want to risk turning the Colony into the same nightmare you just left?”
“What about you? Now you are exposed. Maybe infected.”
Vincent nodded, wanting to close his eyes, wanting to flee. “I’m staying in the quarantine camp with you. When we’re all clear in a few weeks, we’ll go rejoin the Colony. Together. In the meantime, I’ll do what I can to help. Are you ready?”
The woman nodded, and Vincent hoped she was speaking for all of them. He didn’t wait for people to protest or threaten violence, instead he turned and carried the boy up the trail and back to the quarantine camp. The others followed closely behind. Father Preston was waiting at the entrance. Vincent brushed past him with the sleeping boy, hoping the other priest would let them at least get through the door before launching into his faith healing bit. He placed the boy gently down in one of the small tents and turned its lantern on. The others crowded into the cell around him.
“You can’t expect us to live here,” protested a man. “I admit things may not have been great in the City for you Cureds, but we didn’t make you live in tents. You had as good as we did.”
Vincent looked up at him. “I promise you, this is the very best we could do with the time we had. The people up in the Colony are living in tents and plywood sheds too. You’ll see in the morning. Most of the people up there are hoping their families are coming here, that their friends and loved ones will rejoin them in a few weeks. They want you to be comfortable. They want you to come home to them. Whatever we have, we are sharing.”
The man looked stricken. “This— this is how you’ve been living? You left the City for this?”
The boy’s mother knelt beside Vincent and stroked the child’s cheek, gently lifting sweaty strands of hair away from his skin. She looked up at Vincent and smiled. “I’m sure it won’t always be this way. We can make better lives here, when we’re out of quarantine. It’s better than what we left.”
Vincent stood up. “Let’s get everyone to where they ought to be, and then Lisa and I will get you a meal and do what we can if you have injuries.” He paused for a moment, “Is anyone here a doctor or nurse?” Nobody answered. “That’s okay,” he said with a tight smile, “I just had to check.”
“We don’t need a doctor,” said Father Preston from the back of the crowd. Vincent could hear the satisfied smile in his voice.
“I meant for other ailments, Father Preston,” Vincent sighed. “These people are tired and hungry, we’ll talk about things in the morning.” He hoped it would forestall any more miracle talk. He led them out of the cell, sorting them into tents and taking their names. A few tried to protest the separations until he tried gently to explain that it was for their own protection. Most were too tired to bother arguing at all. The mother, alone, pleaded to stay with her sleeping son.
“He’s sick,” she whispered, when Vincent and she were alone again. “The others don’t know.” She wiped away tears. “I know he’s going to turn. I know there’s no cure. But the soldiers would have taken him. They are taking anyone who might be sick. At first they said it was a vitamin deficiency, that they were taking people to get injections of vitamins. But the sick people never came back. And in a few days, the Infected started popping up on the streets, the ones who had hidden from the soldiers or who didn’t seem sick at first. They couldn’t hide what was happening anymore. I know they tried not to hurt the Infected. They tried to avoid shooting them, some of the soldiers got hurt rather than killing their own people. But it all ends the same, doesn’t it?”
Vincent started to shake his head but the woman just smiled. “You don’t have to pretend. I know what’s going to happen. I didn’t come here to hurt anybody, I meant to leave the group days ago, but I didn’t know how to do it without terrifying my son. I just wanted a quiet place for the last few days of it. I just wanted to hold him until— until I can’t anymore.”
Vincent squeezed her hand.
“You’re going to— you’re going to get rid of the ones who get infected, right? So they don’t make anyone else sick?”
Vincent nodded. “We don’t have much choice.”
“When he goes, I go.”
“But you might be Immune.”
She patted his hand. “Mothers are never immune to what their children suffer from. I’m going to stay with him. I go when he goes.”
“Okay,” said Vincent. He handed her two mismatched bowls with food in them. “Does he need anything for his arm? We don’t have any doctors, but I do know a good deal of first aid.”
The woman shook her head. “It happened when we left. I made a sort of cast, but— well, it doesn’t much matter anymore, as long as he isn’t in pain.”
Vincent nodded and turned to leave. He could see Father Preston talking to someone in a cell far down the lane. He turned back to the woman, almost hating himself as he said, “Don’t give up yet. Where there is life, there’s hope. Miracles do happen.”
The woman teared up again. “I can’t expect a miracle. I don’t deserve one.”
Vincent quietly backed out as she bent to kiss the sleeping child’s cheek. He locked the cell and glanced back at Father Preston. I don’t deserve a miracle either, and here I am, pleading for one, he thought. He watched the other priest for a moment, trying to conquer the deep dislike and unbelief he had for Father Preston. Keep my miracle. Make his real. For all their sakes. Make his real.
Three
The abandoned gas station’s windows flashed in the afternoon light. Seeing it again made Nella uneasy and depressed. As if she were stuck in one long loop that had closed around her when she wasn’t looking. She hadn’t wanted to come this way. She knew Frank would have avoided it too, if they could. The world wasn’t the regular, organized net of roads it had been. If they hadn’t retraced their steps, Nella wasn’t certain they’d ever find the farmhouse. She still doubted there was anyone there to find.
It had taken a few extra days to skirt the City’s barrier and Frank had insisted on keeping it barely in sight, as if the concrete wall, itself, oozed the Infection through its pores. But the perimeter had changed and they’d accidentally missed the Smuggler’s entrance. They found themselves forced closer to the Barrier as they neared the main gate where the forest clustered thickly around the road. It was a shock as the trees gave way to a wide band of flat ta
r that ended abruptly on one side in a tumbled hill of debris. The smashed metal of a vehicle poked through a huge mound of rubble. The massive chunks of cement left holes scattered throughout the pile. Some were large enough that people had tried to crawl through. Nella could see some of them stuck there, halfway between the City and the open world. Half a dozen maybe. Most of them didn’t move. Shot or crushed, they’d been dead for some time. One of them saw her, though, and reached out to her with one arm. The other arm was pinned behind its body. Frank pulled Nella farther from the rubble.
“What if they’re Immune?” she whispered.
Frank shook his head. The person reached out to her again. Nella tried to take a step toward the rubble, but Frank held onto her hand to stop her. “Don’t Nella—” she looked angrily back at him. He let go, but he shook his head again. “Please don’t. Even if it’s an Immune, we’ll never be able to unbury them. Don’t get sick for nothing.”
She hesitated. The person strained forward, trying to push its way free. “We can’t just leave them— it must hurt.”
Frank rubbed a hand over his head. “There must be someone inside taking care of them. They did for the others.”
Nella tried to peer through the small gaps in the concrete. She couldn’t see anything but the empty street. “Maybe whoever was helping is gone.”
A faint moan came from the person above them. Nella looked up. It was still reaching for her. “Can you hear me?” she called. Frank felt his stomach clench with panic. He wanted to tell her to be quiet, for goodness sake, not to draw attention. He looked around, expecting a flow of people to burst over the top of the mound, like a dam suddenly breaking.
“Please, just tell us your name?”
The person groaned again, this time using its outstretched arm to grab onto a nearby rock. It tried to pull itself forward.
“No— don’t, you’ll hurt yourself, we’ll come and help you.” Nella shrugged off her pack and started climbing the jagged pile of concrete, picking her way quickly around the twisted spikes of rebar that poked through.
Frank dropped to his knees beside her pack, too afraid to waste time arguing with her. He fumbled in the pockets for a few seconds before his hands closed over the small gun she kept. He stood up, checking it as the person in the rubble let out a howl of pain. Nella stopped to look up. She was almost within reach, if she just reached an arm up— the person’s face turned down toward her. Most of its features were covered with soot and dried blood.
“I’m coming to help,” Nella tried to soothe it.
“Don’t touch it, Nella. Get back,” Frank shouted.
Nella turned to look down at him. He was holding her gun. The howl of pain turned into a shriek and Nella whipped around. The person was reaching for her, it’s pinned shoulder twisting too far, the angle all wrong, and the person started to slide forward, screaming in pain.
“It’s an Infected, please, come back,” Frank was yelling behind her. She ducked away from the outstretched arm. There was a clunk and then a rattle as a few chunks of debris loosened and fell away. She glanced up and saw a screaming mouth above her. Unnerved, she slid away and down the loose stones. Frank didn’t wait. He shot and missed, once, and then again. Nella was beside him as he shot the third time. The person’s arm flopped onto the rubble and the screaming stopped.
Frank pushed the gun into Nella’s hands. “It was an Infected,” he said.
Nella was silent, looking at the weapon.
“It was an Infected,” Frank insisted, “and we couldn’t do anything for it. You were right, we couldn’t leave it that way. It would have taken another day to die. We couldn’t—”
She caught one of his hands in hers and squeezed it. “It’s done,” she said, when he had stopped. He took a deep breath and nodded. She knelt and tucked the gun back into her pack, taking the moment to think.
She looked back at the rubble that had once been a bustling front gate. Then she looked back at Frank. “You have to trust me,” she said, placing a cool hand on his flushed cheek, “I made it a long time without anyone looking after me.”
“I know, I know. I’m sorry. I thought you’d get sick—”
“We might. Maybe we already are. But I’d rather spend the last few weeks of my life helping people and trying to be a decent human being than hiding from everyone and everything for the rest of it, hoping not to get infected—”
Frank shook his head. “That’s because you don’t know what it’s like. It’s not the last few weeks of your life. You go on and on, month after month, hurting people. More than the few you would have helped before you turned. Killing them. Destroying families. I can’t let it happen. I can’t let us get sick.”
“But if we go into the City— if we do what you are planning to do, destroy it so the Infection can’t spread, we will get sick, Frank. You understand what we’re talking about?”
“I’ll find a way. You can’t get sick. Anything but that.” He pulled her into a hug.
“And if I do?” she muttered into his shoulder.
“Then I won’t let you suffer as I did.”
She was quiet for a moment, the logical part of her realizing she ought to be horrified that he was willing to kill her, the rest of her oddly comforted by it.
“Let’s go,” she said at last, “we can’t help anyone by standing around here. I think we can reach the top if we go slowly.” She let him go and began picking her way up the mound again.
“What? Where are you going?”
She looked back down at him. “To find Christine, of course.”
“No— the plan was to get help first. We have no biosuits and we have nothing to defend ourselves with.”
“We can’t just leave her in there, she’s waiting for us. We’re right here—”
“She’s safe. Safer than us. She’s tucked away in that bunker, she’s got food and water and electricity. She’s fine. All she has to do is stay put. We’ll go get help and a way to stop this thing first. Otherwise, we’ll just be dragging her and us into possible infection or attack.” Frank shook his head. “I know you want to see her. I know you are missing Sevita too. But if we go get Christine now, we might not make it to her. Or we might get her sick. We just have to go a little further, and I know we’ll be able to help.”
Nella turned to come back down, peering back through a small hole in the rubble for a few minutes.
“She’s safe,” said Frank again. Nella nodded and took his hand as he helped her down onto the street. They turned away from the slumping Barrier and the silent City and walked up the empty road.
They had reached the abandoned gas station almost at dusk. Frank stood for a long moment looking down into the station’s tire pit. Three small piles of rubber glowed in the ruddy sunset. Nella remembered making them a few months prior, burying the abandoned remains of three unknown people who had died while Infected. The store was as empty as it had been the first time they’d seen it, but multiple footprints and campfire rings around it told Nella that it had been used several times by travelers in the past few months. Had they been fleeing the City or trying to enter it? The question unnerved her. How far had this thing spread?
“We should go somewhere else,” she said. “It looks like there’s been lots of traffic here in the past few days.”
Frank frowned. “I don’t remember there being any other real shelter between here and the farmhouse, do you? A couple of places that were falling down, but that’s it.”
“If we go a few miles farther out before we head to the farmhouse there should be some empty neighborhoods—”
“Then we risk getting lost. Or running into strangers. The people that came by here had to go somewhere. They didn’t get into the City if that’s where they were headed. And if they were escaping, they won’t have gone far.”
Nella looked nervously into the large empty store. The sun was setting but the City’s soft glow was absent. It would be dark, so dark in an hour or two. Any light, even from the tiny ba
ck room where she and Frank had slept before, would be like a neon sign to anyone in the area. Even the woods would be preferable. In the open, they wouldn’t be trapped if something, someone found them. “It’s warm. We’ll find somewhere, not on the road, not where people can find us.”
Frank shook his head. “We know there are Infected in those woods. One bit you last time.”
“That was miles farther. And those Infected were almost dead when we found them. And those had to have been kept somewhere. Nobody is left, no Infected could have survived this long on their own.”
“We don’t know how many new Infected escaped the City, Nella. Here, we’d have a door or two between us and them. We don’t know how many people are just desperate because the City has collapsed. There’s no more trade, there’s no more security, and there’s nobody enforcing peace in the area. Seeing two people on their own, we’d be vulnerable to anyone that wanted to rob us. If we stay quiet, nobody will know we’re here. It’s obvious to anyone looking at this place that it’s been stripped clean a long time. Nobody will come in looking for food or supplies if they don’t know we’re inside.”
Nella hesitated, but she knew he was right. She followed him into the station and flipped the lock on the glass door.
“Better not,” said Frank, seeing her hand on the door. “If someone tries it and finds it locked, they’ll think there is something valuable in here and they’ll get curious. If it’s unlocked they’ll pass by.”
She unlocked the glass door. “All right, but we’re locking the store room. If anyone gets that far, I want some warning.”
Frank nodded. They closed themselves into the small stock room, the late summer air stifling in the windowless closet.
Four
Christine thundered through the thick underbrush, scraping herself on the thorns of a wild raspberry patch as she tried to follow Marnie toward the road. She stank from her struggle with the man in the tunnel, her arms and back still covered in drying muck, and she was so exhausted that she stumbled frequently. But she knew something was wrong. Off. Maybe it was the pregnancy. Maybe it was the stress. All Christine knew for sure, was that a few days earlier she would have had no trouble keeping up with or leading the teen. Emergency work had kept her in great shape for years and she’d worked hard during her pregnancy to stay healthy and active. There was no real reason she should be so exhausted. Or clumsy. Marnie was standing still ahead of her, waiting for her to catch up. Christine reached her, gasping for air. The girl handed her a bottle of water she’d packed from the bunker.
The 40th Day (After the Cure Book 5) Page 2
