Kill or Cure

by Rebecca Levene

  And after six days, we were short of water and even shorter of patience.

  "This cannot carry on," Ingo said on the sixth night. Our stock of candles was running low. Just one was flickering on the table now, casting everyone's faces in a dim, devilish light. Ingo's eyes were entirely shadowed, his face unreadable.

  "The boy's right," Soren said. "If we wait here any longer we'll have to start eating each other." His eyes strayed to Haru.

  "We can't stay, we can't leave - what can we do?" Haru said.

  "We need to understand," I insisted. "We can't risk going out there till we know what we're up against. I need to study one of the Infected, up close."

  Kelis frowned. "But you've already done that. And you told me you found nothing."

  I felt a quick twinge of guilt, swiftly suppressed. What was the point of telling the truth about the Cure? It wouldn't get them off Cuba any quicker. "I'm talking about a live specimen," I told her.

  Haru laughed. He stopped quickly enough when he saw I wasn't joking. "Are you crazy? I thought the whole reason we'd been hiding out here was not do draw any unwanted attention."

  I stared him down. "They wander off on their own plenty of the time. And the cameras aren't everywhere. There aren't any in the street behind this apartment - that was why we chose it. All we have to do is wait until one of them goes down there alone."

  "And then?" Soren said. He was sitting in the furthest corner of the small room, a congealed lump of darkness. But I could hear the click-click-click as he compulsively disassembled then reassembled his rifle, a nervous habit that had become almost constant in the last few days. "What do we do then?"

  I shrugged. "Capture them."

  I wasn't winning the crowd over, I could tell. Even Kelis looked sceptical. "How do you catch something alive when it doesn't feel any pain? That's the thing about them, isn't it - no fear and no pain?"

  I nodded. "There's something wrong with their nervous system - I could figure out that much from the corpse. But they've still got one, and anything with a nervous system can be anaesthetised." I held out the ampoules of Suxamethonium I'd liberated from the chemist along with the anti-psychotics. "This paralyses all voluntary muscles. Put enough of that into anyone, even one of the Infected, and they'll drop like a stone."

  "Yeah?" Soren said. "And did you get a tranq gun along with the drug?"

  "No," I told him, smiling slightly. "I thought this way it would be more of a challenge for you. Remember,' I added more seriously, 'the infection's blood-borne only - touch can't transmit it."

  He stared at me blankly for a long second, leaning forward into the candlelit so that it caught highlights in his blond hair. Then he leaned back and laughed. "Why the hell not? It's not like I've got anything better to do. But I've never given an injection - you'll need to get up close and personal yourself if you want to put that stuff into them." I noticed he didn't mention that the person giving the jab would also be the one most likely to get sprayed with any blood.

  "Yes," I said. "Won't that be fun?"

  Nothing on earth would persuade Haru to join in our little adventure. Besides, I'd seen him in a crisis already - I'd feel safer if he was nowhere near us. Ingo came though, as impassive as ever. He was almost like one of the Infected himself, all his emotions dialled down near zero.

  Ingo took up position in a first floor apartment in the same block as ours. The window gave him a clear sight line up and down the alley and we left him with the nearest thing we had to a sniper rifle. Insurance policy. If something went wrong, he could take out the Infected before it did us any damage.

  Yeah, right. Still, I felt better for knowing he was up there.

  Kelis was crouching in the shadows at the far end of the alley, where it opened up into one of those big, nondescript squares that might once have been pretty before Communism had turned it into something proletarian and bland. Once the Infected was through she had to make sure it couldn't turn back. Her gun was holstered. Instead she had opted for a pool cue, something that could incapacitate without killing. She was holding it like she'd used one before, and not for potting the black.

  Soren and I were halfway down the alley, standing in doorways to either side. If more than one Infected came through we'd let them pass and hope that they didn't see us, or that if they did they'd treat us with their usual indifference.

  But if one came down alone, we were ready. Soren had his usual two guns in the waistband of his jeans. In his hands he was holding a fishing net. We'd had to chance a trip out to the harbour to get it, just me and Kelis, clinging to the shadows and shrinking back from the Infected whenever they passed us. A big risk, but probably worth it. It was our best chance of subduing one of them without doing permanent damage.

  Then it was just me and the Suxamethonium. I looked at the needle in my hand, a fragile little spike, and thought that as plans went it lacked a certain finesse. I carried on looking at it, and sometimes at Soren, who was as patient as a rock, or at Kelis, fading into the distant shadows, as hour after hour passed with no sign of the Infected.

  Could they know what we had planned? Was there any way they could have overheard us? I had the sudden, nasty thought that the apartment might be bugged and Ash could know everything that we said and did. My mind worried at the thought, teasing it apart, finding it more and more convincing as the morning brightened into noon. The sun arcing to blaze down directly over the alley.

  When it finally happened, it happened fast. She was an old woman, hair entirely grey, body bent and frail, but she moved like greased lightning. She was past Kelis before we even noticed she was there. From the startled expression on Kelis' face I thought she might have fallen asleep leaning against the wall at the end of the alley, but with a soldier's quick reflexes she snapped out of it and took up her position blocking any escape.

  No need. The old woman showed no intention of turning back. God knows what she was running to, or from. She was thirty feet from us now and I could already smell her, the heavy, putrid stink of gangrene. I wondered what part of her she was about to lose.

  Fifteen feet and I knew the answer. There was a cavity where her ovaries should have been - just two deep holes, black in the centre and yellow-green around the edges. I gagged, holding the nausea in with a fierce effort of will. That wasn't a random, neglected injury. That had been done to her.

  No time to worry about it now. Five feet and Soren was on her. The net caught in her grey hair, dragging it against her face as he pulled it down over her shoulders, down to her waist. Instantly she was struggling and screaming, a high sound like the distant cries of the seabirds. I could see that she was strong though, stronger than a woman her age should have been. Soren had clamped his fists around her arms, but her leg lashed out and caught him squarely between his. He bent over in pain, bringing his head closer to hers. Instantly, her mouth snapped at him through the netting, missing his cheek by millimetres.

  "Now would be good!" he shouted at me, eyes glaring, angry and afraid.

  I squirted a needle of liquid from the syringe in my hand. No point putting an air bubble in her veins and killing her before we could talk to her. Soren had both arms clamped around hers now. Her mouth continued snapping, uselessly, at the empty air in front of her. The animal rage radiated from her like a physical force. She kicked him again between the legs, and again. Soren's face, covered with sweat, grimaced in pain. Another kick and I saw his arms loosen a little, his body jerking involuntarily away.

  He gritted his teeth and tightened his arms again, spinning round so that the old woman was facing me. Her eyes blazed into mine, bright with madness. One of her shoulders was twisted at an unnatural angle and I realised that she must have dislocated it as she struggled. She writhed and I heard a crack that might have been a bone breaking.

  The needle slipped easily into the loose flesh of her bicep. But she twisted at the last minute and I felt a jar as the point bottomed out against bone. She pushed further forward and I realised what
she was trying to do, to snap the point before the syringe could deliver its load. It was too dangerously easy to think of the Infected as mindless animals. But it was their feelings which were numbed, not their intellects.

  I pulled back, just enough to move the needle away from bone, and depressed the plunger, shooting the anaesthetic straight into muscle.

  Now I just had to hope that her circulatory system was still functioning in something like a normal way - that her brain and body would respond to drugs the way a normal person's would. I was so intent on watching her eyes, waiting for them to glaze over into sleep, that I didn't see the movement coming until it was too late. Her head jerked violently towards me and her teeth clamped over my nose with a vicious strength.

  Soren made a sound that was halfway between a grunt and a laugh. Yeah, I might have found time to think it was funny too, if I hadn't been in sudden agony. He made an attempt to pull her back and I grabbed desperately at his arms as her teeth tugged at my nose. I knew that she wouldn't let go, no matter how hard he pulled. The only thing that could give was my nose.

  Somewhere on the periphery of my attention I was aware that Kelis was running towards us. I saw Soren looking over my head helplessly, hoping his partner would know what to do.

  "Pull her jaw apart!" I gritted out through a throat that only really wanted to scream.

  "I can't!" he said. "If I let her go..."

  Then Kelis was there, and she had her hands round the woman's mouth, circling me from behind. I could see blood slicking down over her wrists and I knew that it was coming from me. The word Infected was ringing in my head like a mantra. Infected. Infectious. Her saliva in my blood. My mouth was filling with a coppery taste as the blood from my nose dripped into it and I thought that I was probably swallowing her saliva too. I'd already had the Cure, but did that mean I was immune to this twisted new strain of it?

  Kelis' fingers were white with strain on the other woman's face, digging in to her skin so hard each nail had torn the flesh, leaving a perfect semi-circle of red in the wrinkled old skin. Other than that, she was achieving nothing.

  I could feel the teeth sinking further into me. I felt the rasp of enamel against cartilage and the pain intensified. Her legs kicked and kicked, forward into my shins and backwards into the junction of Soren's legs. The discomfort of that was lost in the larger pain, like a whisper drowned out by shouting.

  The syringe was still in my hand, braced between my body and the old woman's. Use it! my mind was screaming at me. Straight in her heart. That will stop the pain. Or maybe it was the Voice, released by the rush of adrenaline through my body. But using the syringe that way would kill her, and then this would have been for nothing. So we stayed there: her teeth in my nose; Kelis' hands on her face; Soren's arms around her. Stalemate.

  The pain was almost unbearable. I realised that my hand was creeping up despite myself, the needle a glitter of silver pointed straight at the old woman's heart. That instinct to survive was stronger than anything, even my own conscious will. I watched, mesmerised as inch by inch my hand moved towards her. I wanted to stop it but I wanted to live, damn it. I wanted the agony to end. A few seconds now and the needle would be in her chest and this would all be over.

  My nose was still a burn of agony, but the pressure had let up. Her jaws had relaxed. In front of me, her eyelids were flickering, the muscles in her face slackening. Blood rushed back red into Kelis' fingers as they relaxed too. Soren's arms loosened, supporting the old woman rather than restraining her.

  A second more and she was entirely off me. Her jaw flapped open, strings of bloody red saliva hanging from her teeth and dribbling down her chin. I staggered back, the syringe dropping from my hand as I clasped it over my nose. "Jesus fucking Christ!"

  Kelis rested a hand against my shoulder. My eyes caught hers and I saw that she was uncertain how to help me. I managed a shrug. Nothing she could do. Then both our heads snapped round as we heard the rumbling sound of Soren laughing. "Well," he said, "you sure have a strange idea of fun."

  We secured her to the heavy wooden table in the kitchen before I let her come out of the anaesthesia. We'd put strong wire bindings at her wrist, elbow, ankle and thigh, wound over strips of cloth to stop her tearing her own flesh if she struggled. Not that we were worried about hurting her. I wanted to hurt her after I'd caught sight of my nose in the apartment's one cracked mirror. Her teeth had scored deep marks on either side, marks that would leave permanent scars. The nose itself was swollen and bulbous. I wanted to hurt her but I didn't want her to get loose and I was afraid that, given the chance, she'd happily saw off her own limbs to escape. She was struggling even before her eyes had opened, letting out soft little moans of complaint when she found that she couldn't move.

  "Give her the anti-psychotics now, before she wakes up," Haru said nervously. Even with the woman securely bound he refused to come within five feet of her. I'd noticed that he was leaving five foot of clear space around me too, and he wasn't the only one. Soren hadn't come within spitting distance of me since he'd seen the old woman's blood mingling with mine.

  I'd swabbed the wound on my nose with antiseptic when I got back, injected myself with antibiotics and anti-virals and told the others that that would take care of anything. They didn't look convinced, and why should they? The truth was if there was something to catch I'd got it, and the only defence I could count on was that my bloodstream was overloaded with the same infection already.

  "I don't want to give her anything till she's conscious," I told Haru now. "Seeing what effect it has on her will tell me something about what's wrong. Besides, there's no saying how long it will have an effect. Supply's limited and I can't afford to waste any on a sleeping subject."

  A moot point anyway. Her eyes were wide open now and flicking round, sizing us up.

  "Habla Inglés?" I asked her when her gaze caught mine. Something in the set of her face told me she'd understood, but she didn't reply.

  "We need you to answer some questions," Kelis said in Spanish. "We won't hurt you if you cooperate." But she looked at me as she said it and I shrugged. We both knew it was an empty threat and sure enough the old woman didn't bother to respond. Up close, I had a grandstand view of the gaping wounds in her abdomen where her reproductive organs had once been. What could we possibly threaten her with that was worse than that?

  "OK," I said, as Kelis translated into Spanish for me. "I'm going to give you an injection that might clear your head a little. It's just a standard anti-psychotic - there won't be any long-term effects." I didn't know why I was bothering to explain it to her, but it seemed very important to me to keep up the pretence of being a doctor now that I had so much blood on my hands.

  I thought the old lady might have shrugged, but her movement was too restricted by her bonds to be sure. It was as much permission as I was likely to get, and I yanked down the edge of her rough black skirt and pushed the needle into the sagging flesh of her buttocks. I nodded at the others that they could leave us in peace. Intra-muscular drugs took some time to diffuse through the system, particularly ones that have to cross the blood-brain barrier. Ingo seemed happy enough to go, and Haru couldn't get out of the door fast enough, but Kelis and Soren both stayed.

  "Could be at least an hour before we'll know if it's worked," I told them.

  "But you're staying," Kelis said.

  I shrugged. "Someone needs to."

  "Then we'll keep you company," Soren said, looking at Kelis and not me.

  "You really think this will work?" Kelis asked.

  I shrugged again. "I think it might. And if it doesn't, that will tell us something as well."

  "Yeah, but what? What exactly is it we're waiting here to find out?"

  I looked at her, casually picking her teeth with a fingernail, leg slung over one arm of the chair. The posture looked deceptively relaxed, but I could see that it kept the holster of her gun right next to her hand.

  "I want to find out what's made these peop
le sick," I said. "I think we need to find out, before it's too late. Because otherwise there might be nowhere in the world that's far enough to run to."

  She stopped picking at her teeth and sat a little more upright in her chair. "You think we're looking at another Cull?"

  Soren was watching me too, out of the corner of his eye, as interested in my answer as she was.

  "Yeah, I think that's exactly what we might be looking at," I told them, and it was pretty much the truth.

  After that she lapsed back into silence, and I was free to study our captured Infected as the anti-psychotic spread slowly through her system. I looked at her eyes most of all. She was studying the room, looking for escape routes. Everything a normal person would be doing in her situation. That wasn't what interested me though. I was looking for something else, something I'd seen in my own eyes for the last five years.

  There's a little game they make medical students play when they teach you about mental illnesses: Hearing Voices. One student interviews another - but the whole time a third student is talking in the interviewee's ear, just a stream of nonsense. It's supposed to give you an idea of what it's like to experience auditory hallucinations, and I guess it kind of does. But the most interesting thing is the expression on the person's face. Once you've seen it, you never forget it: the momentary distraction, the subtle blankness, the focus pushing to the horizon as the attention turns inward.

  I studied the old woman but I just didn't see it. If the Infected was hearing voices, hearing the Voice, there was nothing on her face to show it. Still, because I was studying her so closely, I was able to see the moment when the anti-psychotic began to take effect. It wasn't difficult, because the moment the madness went, the pain came.

  I'd been prepared for that. "Does it hurt?" I asked her in my own broken Spanish.