The 40th Day (After the Cure Book 5)

by Gould, Deirdre

  Twenty-four

  She couldn’t understand it. Amos had warned them about damp hay combusting, but she and Henry had swept out the entire barn together. Nothing had been left except bare wood and concrete. “Is anyone here?” she shouted. “Is anyone hurt, do you need help?” The loft was entirely ablaze. She hoped no one was up there and she glanced quickly around the bare bottom floor. Only food bins. They were too heavy to move by herself. She ran to the wall of canned goods. The glass jars were already warm, hot even, burning her arms as she gathered as many as she could carry and ran outside with them. She didn’t know where to go. What was safe? If the wind changed, would the whole Colony burn? She wanted to cry. She ran toward the garden. That would be the last place to go. She’d make sure of it. She dumped the jars onto the soft dirt and turned back to get more. People were screaming, running past her. They needed someone to tell them what to do. So did Molly. She reached for the radio before she remembered they were all gone. Except Vincent. She could call him. He’d help her. How could he help her? He couldn’t save her. He might as well be on the moon. It was her turn to save them. It was Molly who had to stop this. She stopped a few people running past.

  “You, go get as many buckets and pots as you can. Grab as many people as you can. Meet us at the well.” The woman’s face was pale, but she nodded. Molly turned to the boy who was with her. “You go find as many blankets, towels, sheets as you can and come to the well. Tell everyone to come to the well!”

  Molly spared one more desperate look at the open doors of the barn and turned back to the well. The food and lumber inside were already lost. She had to save the rest while she could. She found a man already pumping water into a bucket and others lining up behind him. She split them into two groups, sending one to the shallow pond. Rickey had said he expected the well to go dry if they didn’t get some rain soon and she worried with every splash of water. But they needed it now, they’d worry about another well if the Colony survived. Soon, a bucket line had formed and she ran along it, directing the people to save the new cottages on either side of the barn. She had the kids pass out damp cloths to protect faces and lungs, knowing it would be a long time before they could stop.

  She could hear people beginning to gasp and cough around her, her own chest rattled and burned, even with the wet scrap of sheet tied around her head. Nobody stopped or complained. Nobody spoke, just the coordinated movement of bucket or pot down the line.

  It felt like hours, but Molly was certain it was closer to twenty minutes, when someone shouted, “Look out there, it’s going down!”

  Everybody stopped and looked up. Molly didn’t dare to. Don’t lean, she willed, just collapse. Don’t take anything else out. There was a crash and a roar as a ball of smoke puffed up. The barn had crumpled inward, burning on its own footprint. Molly shook with relief. She redirected the bucket lines to put out the fire, urging them not to risk their lives by getting too close. Her radio crackled and she stumbled toward the garden to answer it.

  “Molly?”

  “I’m here Vincent. Everything is— everyone is okay.”

  “What’s happened? All we can see is smoke.”

  “It’s the barn— all the winter stores, the spare lumber— it’s all gone. There was— is a fire. I don’t know what started it. I don’t know if there was anyone inside the barn. I tried to help, I tried to find anyone—” She let the transmit button go and sobbed. She calmed herself down. “We saved the other houses. We’re putting out the original fire now, but there was that big barrel of diesel in there, it’s going to burn for a while, no matter what we do. And all the food— I only saved a handful of—” she turned and looked at the jars beside her. “A handful of pickled beans. A lot of good that will do us.”

  “You saved the people, Molly, that’s what matters. Nobody is hurt and you did what you could. I wish that I could help somehow. But you don’t need infection up there with everything else.”

  “But what happened? We didn’t leave any hay in there. Everybody, even the kids know not to smoke in there. Even Rickey doesn’t anymore.”

  There was a long silence. “Don’t tell me it doesn’t matter, Vincent,” said Molly, “because it can’t happen again. We have to figure out why it started.”

  “I wasn’t going to say that.” Vincent’s voice was cautious, slow. “I don’t want to frighten you, Molly, but maybe somebody started it on purpose.”

  Molly felt the hairs on her arms spike painfully. She didn’t even bother to ask who Vincent meant. “Where would he— how would he have done it? He had nothing with him. Why? Why didn’t he just steal?”

  “I don’t know. But if he wanted to hurt the Colony, he’s done it. And he’ll go for the garden or the well next.”

  Molly glanced around her and bent over to pick up a hoe. She was isolated, a little way from the well and everyone’s attention was on the fire.

  “I’m scared,” she whispered into the radio.

  “I’m coming,” said Vincent, his voice hard and resolved.

  “No! No, he’ll know. It’s what he wants maybe. For us to panic enough to wipe out the whole place. I’m going to find him. I’m going to finish this.”

  “Molly, don’t go looking alone.” But Molly switched off the radio. She wasn’t going to risk anyone else. And she wasn’t going to wait around for Gray to make the next move. She wished she had something more than a hoe, but she gripped it tightly and ran toward the woods, certain he was sitting there, watching them. A few colonists saw her and ran toward her. “Go back,” she said, “Go back and guard the crops. This wasn’t an accident. We can’t let him get what’s left.” The people looked confused but ran back to the garden. Molly continued into the woods and stopped a few feet in. She had no idea how to find him. She wasn’t a tracker or a warrior. She was a teenage grocery clerk that woke up one day ten years older in a world that didn’t need her anymore. She spun around. Stop thinking that, she told herself, You just saved the farm. Give yourself a little credit. She looked back at the Colony, trying to see what he had seen. Where would he go if he were waiting for another chance to strike? Where would he wait if he were laughing at them? She crouched down and looked. The barn was still a ball of black and orange, the people’s faces shiny and red as they doused it over and over. Her gaze flitted over the Colony, searching for the hiding places, the shadows between buildings, the spaces empty of people. He’d hit where it would hurt the most, maybe he hadn’t hung around. The damage was done, wasn’t it? But just as she thought it, the curtain in the living room window of the farmhouse flickered and swayed. A hand pushed up the pane as she watched. Molly started running even before Gray’s face appeared in the open window. A scream of anger mixed with terror spilled from her as she ran and she saw him hesitate halfway out of the window to look up at her. He scrambled out of the frame, heading for the wall. But Molly was faster. She slammed the blade of the hoe down, catching the back of his calf. The impact shuddered up the pole, stinging and vibrating the stumps of her missing fingers and rattling her arm. Gray swore as he stumbled a few more steps. Molly lifted the hoe again, but Gray turned and hit the side of her head, knocking her backward onto her butt. The hoe clattered against the stone wall and out of Molly’s hands.

  “Fucking zombie!” he hissed as he tried to look at the deep slash in the back of his leg. He wound up for another punch. “Don’t you know when to stay in your place?” He swung but Molly rolled out of the way, grabbing for the hoe. She would have grabbed it, had her hands still been whole. The stumps of her fingers brushed by the handle instead. She sprung up and darted around him.

  “This is my place. It’s you who don’t belong here. Why couldn’t you just leave us alone?” Molly demanded.

  He swung again, this time connecting with her cheek and she fell backward into the wall.

  “You’re monsters. Vermin. Diseased rats that scrabble in the waste of normal people,” he gasped with another tight jab, splitting her lip as his ragged thumbnail slam
med into her mouth. Her head rocked backward and she struggled to keep it from smashing into the stone wall. A high buzz drowned out some of his words before dying away again “…cockroach-whore who should have died years ago. Practically ripped off your arm but still…” he grabbed her scarred arm and twisted it up over her head, driving her farther back into the wall. It ached as he pushed it farther behind her and she knew he meant to finish ripping it off, as if she really were a fly or a roach. She stood on tiptoe, her legs starting to slide up the wall as he pushed her arm up farther. Her other hand sought something, anything, grasping at the stones, reaching for the hoe. “You should all be extinct. Should be you that’s homeless and hungry, not me. Survival of the fittest. Should have left me, me and the other Immunes. Then there’d be no new Plague, no ruined City.”

  Molly’s hand yanked on stone after stone along the top of the wall, finally finding one that wriggled a little as he shouted into her face, his breath damp and acid on her skin. The arm in his grip trembled as he tightened and pushed backward. She was no longer on her feet, pressed halfway up the wall by his body. She cried out in pain, but the other hand knew what it was doing, slowly working the stone back and forth, rocking it free of its mortar. “This isn’t your place. You have no place.” There was a sudden jerk and then searing pain spread from her shoulder. “It’s my place. My world, all of it. And you don’t have my permission to exist,” he spat.

  Molly took a deep breath and leaned into the pain to stop the waves of unconsciousness that threatened to crash down on her. The rock was free. She whipped it up over their heads. “You’re not my God, nor my keeper. And we’re starting to remember that it’s our world too.” She let the rock’s momentum carry her down and forward. He let go of her arm to protect himself, but too late, the rock was already bashing the top of his head with a chalky clunk as if it had scraped the very bone of his skull. Molly’s dislocated arm flopped next to her, useless and boiling with pain. She tried to slide free of him as he clutched his head, but he was too heavy, still using his weight to pin her against the wall. She kicked and he loosened, but not enough. He was distracted, though, and she managed to press herself farther up the wall, wiggling until she was perched on top and shoving him in the chest with the flat of her feet. She went backward over the top, landing in the tall grass on the other side, free. She lay for a second, gasping to recover the breath that had been knocked from her lungs. It was no good turning back to the Colony for help, they were out of sight now, the wall watchers all pulled back to fight the fire or guard the crops. She crawled toward the quarantine camp, no real plan except to be near someone, anyone before he came back. Vincent would help her. They’d stop Gray and the Colony would be okay until Amos and Henry got back. It was worth getting sick, she thought. But there was a thud and the ground under her knees shuddered. She looked back. Gray had jumped over, but the jump had been more than he bargained for, and he’d landed awkwardly on his wounded leg. Molly forced herself onto her feet and began running toward the wired cages. A hundred yards, that was all. She could hear the uneven thump of his limping run behind her. She yelled and saw someone come to the wire fence. Still too far to make out who it was. “Help!” she yelled again. The person at the fence began yelling, but between the harsh rasp of her breath and the deep thump that came from behind her, she couldn’t make it out. He grabbed a fistful of hair and spun her in a painful circle. Before she could lose her balance and fall, he had a hand around her throat. He shoved her down and she kicked and clawed at him with her good hand. He punched the side of her head and she had a dizzy sense of tumbling though she was already on the ground. It was enough time for him to straddle her legs, making them useless. His other hand was closing around her neck when she heard a metallic rattle.

  Thank you, thank you, she thought, still trying to shove Gray off, Vincent’s come to save me.

  Gray looked up for a second, squinting at the rattle. It was Father Preston. “Get off her!” he yelled, shaking the fence. Gray grinned. “Make me,” he shouted back and then turned his attention back to Molly who was still flailing, trying to roll free. His hands clamped shut, the thin stream of breath she still had flowing and pulsing beneath his thumbs. It excited him.

  “Could have prevented this, Father,” he shouted, dodging another blow from Molly’s good arm. “You could have helped me and none of this would have happened. Somebody’s always got to pay the piper. So she’s gonna do it for you.”

  “Stop Gray! I’ll help you, let her go!” Father Preston rattled the fence again.

  Gray pressed harder on Molly’s throat, the stream of breath petered out, her chest beginning to sink. “Too late,” he yelled, and his grin grew wider as he saw Vincent come running up to the fence. But Vincent didn’t rattle the fence. He ran to the gate instead and Gray knew he was running out of time. He sank down, leaning into his forearms as they dug into Molly’s chest. Her arm stopped flailing. She clutched the grass.

  The sunny sky shrank to a small gray circle for Molly. Everything felt heavy, worn out. Gray’s smile was too much. She closed her eyes so she wouldn’t have to see. Can’t give up, she told herself, Vincent’s coming. Hold on.

  The pressure on her chest was suddenly released and she opened her eyes. Gray’s face was gone. His hands were gone. She tried to suck in more air, expecting a cool rush and a cough, but nothing happened. A thin wheeze, a trickling gasp was all. Then Vincent was leaning over her, his gray hair wild around him, his eye red and leaking. He gently tilted her head back. The trickle of air was steadier but still not enough.

  “Get the doctor!” he yelled over her. She wanted to twist her head to look for Gray, but she knew she wouldn’t breathe again if she did. The sky whirled as Vincent picked her up and ran to the wire cages.

  “You can’t bring her in here!” protested Father Preston.

  Vincent ignored him and pushed past. “Keep still,” he told Molly, “It’ll help to stay still.”

  Her vision was getting foggy again and her chest ached as if it were snapping apart. She could hear others around her now. “He crushed her throat,” she heard Vincent say.

  “On the sleeping bag,” said a woman’s voice.

  Molly felt the cool, slippery material on the backs of her arms. Hands on her face and then a gust of warm air in her mouth, but only a trickle made it into her throat. The deep, rhythmic ache of pressure on her chest again, where Gray had crushed her with his elbows. Everything radiated a tingling, tight pain. Another gust of warmth but no relief.

  “Her windpipe is crushed,” said the woman’s voice.

  “There must be something you can do,” said Vincent.

  “I’m not that kind of doctor. I wasn’t trained to fix things like this.”

  “But you know what has to be done to fix it.”

  “It’d be like you trying to operate on her.”

  Vincent squeezed Molly’s hand. She managed to squeeze back. “What are our choices?” He sounded worn out.

  “We can try a tracheotomy and maybe save her, but it would kill her within seconds if I cut wrong, or we can sit here and wait until she chokes to death which could be days, but you’d get to say goodbye.”

  “Is she in pain?”

  The woman sighed. “You mean from the suffocation or everything else he did? Yes, she’s in pain.” The woman’s voice rose to an angry shout. “And there are no more God damn pain killers left!” There was a silence. “Sorry, Father,” she mumbled.

  “Then try. Either she’ll pull through and make the suffering worth it, or it will end. Don’t let her linger without reason.”

  There was a bustling around her, but Molly seemed to float through it. She felt a prick in her neck and then liquid heat. There were some shouts but it faded. And she thought, Not King Arthur. Perceval instead. Wish I could tell him.

  Twenty-five

  “So how do you know all this stuff about radios anyway?” asked Rickey, pretending he wasn’t winded from Melissa’s brisk pace.

/>   “It was my boyfriend’s fault.”

  “You had a boyfriend?”

  Melissa rolled her eyes. “It’s not really that hard to believe is it?”

  Rickey blushed and stammered. “No, of course not, I didn’t mean— you’ve just never mentioned him. Or much of anything else about yourself.”

  She shrugged. “It was Before. I don’t like to think about Before very much. It just makes me sad or angry, and I can’t fix it. No use dwelling on it you know? Anyway, Ben was my boyfriend. He used to fly those stupid planes. The ones with the radio remotes, you know?”

  Rickey nodded.

  “Most people break the plane by crashing it. But Ben was always breaking the radio. He used to joke that he was cursed, that any radio that touched him was doomed. So I eventually got curious and figured out how they worked. Found out how to fix them.”

  “But you’re talking about little radios. Glorified walkie-talkies, that sort of thing.”

  “Yeah,” said Melissa.

  “You must have seen big towers too, right? I mean, we’re not walking all this way to fix a radio tower because you patched together your boyfriend’s toy right?”

  She shrugged with a grin. “I fixed the Colony’s radio, didn’t I? I did a little more reading after I fixed his stuff, if it makes you feel better.”

  Rickey smacked at his bare arm, startling a horse fly into buzzing lazy circles around his head. “You really think anyone’s going to fall for this?”

  Melissa shrugged. “If we sound official enough they will. Wouldn’t you if you thought you were sick?” She stopped to roll up the cuffs of her pants again, flicking shreds of burdock from them.

  “I guess, if I thought I was sick. What about the people that don’t think they are, though? Aren’t we worried about them?”