Before The Cure (Book 1): Before The Cure

by Gould, Deirdre

  “So why’d you tell us to shut off the cell phone then? If the decision’s already been made, what did it matter? Just to save face so people outside don’t know what’s happening? If we survive, people are going to know any—”

  “I told you to shut it off for me, Neil. For my sanity. I have to watch through the hospital cameras but listening too— that was worse.”

  “You took away our one bargaining chip because you didn’t feel like listening?” cried Shay.

  “It wasn’t a bargaining chip,” sighed Harlain. “The feed was found within ten minutes, probably less and it was taken down. I was the only one who could see it. Well, me and my superiors. Can’t ever tell whether they’re watching or not. Which is another reason I asked you to shut it off. So I could help you.”

  “No,” said Neil, “Cody showed me. Thousands of people were watching when we were in the courtyard.”

  “They weren’t. It was easy to make you think they were. You’d be amazed what the guys in tech can do. That feed was valuable to the people above me. You went to all sorts of places where we had no coverage. Plus the audio. My bosses thought it best you be encouraged to keep the video active and showing you large numbers of viewers seemed to be the best way of keeping you filming. If they knew I’d asked you to shut it off, I’d be in serious jeopardy. But I just couldn’t take any more of it.”

  “Why would your superiors care if you were helping us? Isn’t that your job, to help us? What kind of cruel—”

  “It’s part of my job to make sure you don’t breach the containment. Any of you. It’s a big hospital. A lot of screens and a lot of people wandering the halls. Some are sick and some are still sane enough to try to get out on purpose. They wouldn’t mind me helping, except that it means I’m not glued to the other screens. I only have a little time. Going to go off shift in less than an hour, so we need to do this now, or else wait until tomorrow.”

  “We haven’t decided whether we’re helping you yet,” said Shay. “Why should we? You keep saying you’ll help however you can, but so far you haven’t done anything for us.”

  “You’re not helping me,” said Harlain. “You’d be helping the people starving around you. You’ve been careful with the sick people you found. You could have hurt them. Killed them. Other people in the hospital have. I’ve watched them. Other people had to. You’re risking your necks keeping Cody with you. I just thought you might want to save the people who had a chance of surviving this.”

  “If you cared about saving people, why didn’t you warn us earlier? Before Debbie climbed under that truck?” asked Neil.

  “I didn’t know you were going to do that. The only cameras in the courtyard are at the doors. And I knew the side entrance was barricaded. I thought you’d find the barrier and just keep going to the maintenance tunnel. When I realized you were talking about going over, I tried to call you in the other wing, to talk to you, but it only drew the infected and they started— they started massacring each other. I had to wait until you were somewhere safe. And hope you didn’t do something stupid like climb under a truck.”

  “Then why didn’t you call your people and tell them not to shoot? Why didn’t you warn them that we weren’t sick?”

  “I told you,” said Harlain, “I’m not in charge. I don’t give orders or suggestions or anything else. The soldiers outside have been given clear directives. None of us know if you are infected. Not even you. Our only chance at stopping whatever this is, is containment. Until we figure out what this is and develop some kind of test, we can’t know. We don’t know how it spreads, we don’t know how long it takes to incubate, we don’t know how to cure it. Not yet. So you have to stay put. If you try to break quarantine, the soldiers will do what they have to. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry about your friend. The quarantine should have been— more clearly delineated. It shouldn’t have gotten this far. If I could show you what’s already happened out here— I’m not your ticket out. Not before the quarantine gets lifted. I’m just trying to make sure as many of you survive as possible.”

  “You still haven’t told us what you’re going to do to help us,” said Shay. “If you’re not going to get us out, doesn’t matter what we do to save these people, we’ll all starve before anyone gets here. Cafe’s stocked, but not for the amount of time you’re talking. Not for how many people are likely still here. The guards the other night said the headcount was a hundred thirty-four. That wasn’t including the guards. A week, sure, I could comfortably feed that many. Could stretch it to two pretty easy. But you said twenty-one days after the last infection. We don’t even know when that’ll happen. We know it’s not today.”

  “A lot of those people are already dead. Some are infected. I counted about thirty including you and the lady you left in the cafe still sane enough to have a shot. There are definitely more in the patient rooms that I can’t see unless they come look out their doors, but not a hundred. Not even close. And they’ll drop supplies in the courtyard at some point. They aren’t going to risk people, but a helicopter drop they can do. You stand a better chance together than apart. It’s in your own best interest to help these people if you won’t do it just to be decent. I don’t know what else you want.”

  “We want our families to be safe,” said Neil quickly. “You’re somewhere safe, some secure military post somewhere. You go get our kids and our spouses and bring them there. That way if this thing isn’t as contained as you seem to think, they’ll be safe far away from it. Do that, and we’ll talk about going to the security office and doing what you want.”

  “You aren’t listening,” said Harlain, “I don’t have that type of control over the situation. I’m just a— a glorified security guard. I sit here and watch video screens. Mark down visible symptoms so we can have some idea of how this disease works. Keep track of where people are. Report back. That’s it. I can’t get clearance for your kids.”

  “You don’t have clearance for this, either, but it didn’t stop you. Bring them to your house on your base or something. Say they’re nieces and nephews, anyth—”

  “You don’t understand. Your kids, your spouses, your coworkers, people for five blocks around your float at that parade, anyone who might have had contact with you, they’re in quarantine too. There’s no way for me to get them out of their facilities. Best I can do is track down which ones they are in and— and maybe get them on the phone for you. Maybe. Gonna have to call in a truckload of favors just to do that much—”

  “Our kids, our babies are in places like this?” cried Shay. “You left them to be attacked—”

  “No, Shay. You got it worst. Your hospital was— it was panic. Bad planning or no planning, I admit that. They didn’t know what was about to happen. Those who had symptoms should have been isolated, but since we didn’t understand what the symptoms were yet, it didn’t happen that way. It’s different now. Your families were in the second or third wave of quarantines. They’ll be separated in different cells with plenty of guards. If they get sick, they won’t have a chance to attack each other.”

  “Unless the guards get sick,” said Shay. She started crying, frantically wiping at her eyes.

  No response from Harlain.

  “You get those favors done then. You connect us. I want to hear Randi’s voice. My mom. Shay’s kids, Cody’s kids. My friend Dante’s kid and his wife. You get them on the phone or we’re not moving.”

  “I can’t prom—”

  “It’s not negotiable,” said Neil and hung up. He put an arm around Shay, careful not to squeeze her wounds. “We’re getting out,” he told her. “And then we’re going to find them. And this lady’s going to help whether she means to or not.”

  “How?” sniffed Shay. “The maintenance tunnels were our best bet.”

  “They still are. There are a lot of exits to the hospital. If they’ve got quarantines set up all over the city, there’s no way they have enough guys to really cover them all. Not the way they should be. Even that video ou
tside the hospital, sure there were some soldiers there but nowhere near enough to keep the crowd out and us in.”

  “It’s been a while since we were able to see outside. Or even turned on a television. The situation could have changed, Neil. Or might still.”

  “That’s why we need to move fast. We’re going to let the people out of their rooms, just like Harlain wants. Give them an hour to make it to the cafe. Then we’re going to make a distraction on one end of the hospital. What’s the farthest exit from the parking garage?”

  Shay thought a moment, grabbed a tissue from a large box nearby. “Physical Therapy, I think. But I’m not positive. I just know it takes forever to walk from the garage to the therapy pool.”

  “Good enough. That’s where we do it then.”

  “Do what?”

  “Set off all the alarms and phones and radios or televisions possible. Draw as many infected as possible to the pool exit. We smash through one window. The soldiers will call their friends to help—”

  “While whoever’s in the pool gets chomped? Or shot by the soldiers? It’s a suicide run.”

  “Yeah,” admitted Neil.

  “And as shitty as it is, the soldiers aren’t the bad guys. They’re protecting the world outside. We aren’t talking about just getting you and me out now. That was bad enough, but you and I aren’t sick. If we purposely let the infected people out— we’re risking more than our own kids.”

  “We’ll make sure it’s a choke point before we set off the alarms. If they even wander out there. Most of them will probably attack each other. We’ll only make the hole big enough for one or two to get out at a time. It’ll scare the soldiers, but not overwhelm them.”

  Shay shook her head. “Even if I thought this was somehow— okay, we’d still be using these people as cannon fodder so we could escape. You keep telling me they’re people, Neil, just sick.”

  “You heard Harlain. Nobody’s coming until the quarantine is over. Do you think we’re going to feed the people who don’t make it to the cafe? We’re just going to roll the lunch carts up and down the halls every day and toss food to the sick people? It’s not going to happen. They’ll starve just as well as the healthy people locked up in those rooms would.”

  “What if they find a cure in the next few days? How are you going to feel then?”

  “Don’t know much about medicine, Shay, but I don’t think they find treatments that fast. These people are going to die. And unless we find our kids soon, they might, too. They don’t have this contained or under control, whatever Harlain says. If they did, she’d have told us how it was spreading. She’d have warned us how to avoid getting sick. Their only solution is to lock us all up. Maybe that’ll work. Maybe not. We can find one of those suits. Those plastic ones they use in the movies. Got to be one here somewhere. There are masks and gloves right in this room. We can protect the world from us. But we can’t protect our families from here. You said you’d do anything. If you’ve got a better idea, you let me know.”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Going to check on Cody,” he said and headed for the front of the pharmacy. Halfway down the short aisle of medicine shelves, he stumbled, crashing into the rack on his left. Large bottles of pills rattled and tumbled over him, thumping onto the carpet.

  “You ok?” Shay said, springing up to help him. Neil looked around for what he’d tripped over.

  “Yeah,” he said slowly, picking up a few of the bottles. He looked blankly at the jumbled shelf in front of him, trying to guess where they went. He supposed it didn’t matter much. “Just— tired I guess.”

  Shay helped him replace the bottles. “Lie down then. I’m awake. You didn’t get much sleep, but Cody’s going to be out a good few hours after the sleeping pills. Can’t really move until he wakes up anyway. And we’ve got to wait for Harlain to find our families. I’ll watch.”

  Neil was too confused and exhausted to argue much. He checked Cody to make sure the man was still breathing easily and then lay down across the doorway and fell quickly asleep.

  26

  After hours of waiting, mostly spent in a strange cycle of dozing and obsessively checking on Cody’s breathing pattern, the phone finally rang again. Shay got it the first time. Neil had hurried back, tripping again and thudding painfully into the pharmacy counter before he could hear the tearful tone of her voice and realized the conversation was personal, something for her alone. He returned to his spot near the door instead, rubbing the new bruise growing on his hip. When it rang again, he was surprised to see Shay coming to the front. Her eyes were still red.

  “They found your daughter, she’d like to talk to you,” she said. Neil hauled himself up, banging his shoulder on the doorknob. He groaned and froze for a moment in pain. Shay hurried over. “It’s okay, take your time. They aren’t going to let her hang up. Lot of trouble to get her on the phone. My babies too.”

  He tried to believe his clumsiness was from moving too quickly, tried to brush it off as she had, but doubt lingered in the back of his mind. He ignored it, too eager to hear Randi’s voice to dwell on it. It was Harlain’s voice he heard first, though.

  “We’ve contacted your daughter’s mother. She’ll be here to collect her from quarantine in case— in case you aren’t. I thought you’d want to know,” she told Neil.

  “Thank you. But my mom should be with her, they’ll be okay together.”

  “I’m so sorry,” said Harlain. “Your mother is infected.”

  It took an extra second to understand what Harlain had said. “No, no there’s been a mistake. Maybe you got the wrong lady, mix up in your paperwork or something.”

  “She was still coherent when she arrived at the facility yesterday. We were able to verify her identity.”

  “But she wasn’t at the parade at all. I didn’t have any contact with her, not for almost a week. We were supposed to go to her house for dinner but we never—”

  “She had contact with your daughter, Neil,” Harlain reminded him.

  “Does that mean— is Randi sick?”

  “She’s not symptomatic. But that doesn’t mean she’s not contagious. Just like you. You may not be symptomatic but you could still be spreading this. That’s why the quarantine is so important. I really must repeat my warning not to try and break—”

  “We agreed to do what you wanted if you got us in contact with our families, didn’t we?”

  “And it has taken a lot to hold up my end of the deal. I’m not entirely certain I’ll still have a job after this, Neil.”

  “Not so sure I will either, but for what it’s worth, sorry about that.”

  “I just want to make sure you’re going to follow through,” said Harlain.

  Neil sighed. “Look, we weren’t going to just let them starve anyway. You want us to do a decent thing. We wanted you to do a decent thing. I don’t know you, but greaseballs don’t call someone up to ask them to save strangers they’ll likely never meet. You probably would have found our families if we’d just asked. And we would have gone to the security office even if you hadn’t called back. Can I talk to my daughter now?”

  “Of course. Just hang on a minute while I connect you.”

  A soft breathy hum came through the line a few seconds later. She always did that, when she was waiting for something. He tried to recognize the song, felt like it was vital somehow, like he needed to remember this, every second. But the tune escaped him. “Randi?” he asked.

  “Dad! Where are you?” He could feel the real question down to his core. Why aren’t you here? That’s what she really meant.

  He struggled to keep his voice calm and even. “Still at the— still at the doctor’s, Bunnypop. Where are you?”

  “The library. The one at the big school, remember? Where we saw the puppet show. They have funny little rooms behind the books. Some people brought me a sleeping bag and a flashlight. It’s like camping indoors. Except they won’t let me share a room with Grandma and they keep taking my temper
ature. Got shots too. Mom always holds my hand when I get shots. I asked them to let Grandma, but they said she couldn’t. Tommy’s the only other person I know here, but they said we had to stay apart, too.”

  He ached for the fear in her voice and tried to think of something calming to tell her. Something that wasn’t an utter lie. “I know, baby, it’s because Grandma’s sick. They don’t want you or Tommy to get sick, too. Did they call Mom for you?”

  “Yeah. She’s going to pick me up in a few days, she says.”

  Neil doubted she’d be allowed to. “Listen, Randi— is anyone there acting funny? Maybe tripping a lot? Or kind of mumbling so you can’t understand them?”

  “No. I only see the doctors and Miriam though.”

  “If you see anything like that— you keep the door to your room closed and hide, okay? Hide until Mom or I come. The people who are clumsy are sick. They don’t know what they’re doing. They’ll hurt people. You understand?”

  “Is that what’s wrong with Grandma?”

  “Yeah, baby,” Neil’s voice cracked despite himself. “If you see Grandma, you hide. Hide and don’t look.”

  “She won’t hurt me, Dad.”

  He sobbed into the crook of his arm, trying to smother it. After a moment, he recovered enough to speak again. “I don’t think she’ll know it’s you, honey. She’s so sick. It’s like she’s having a nightmare. If she knew it was you, she’d never hurt you. But she’s having a bad dream. Walking around in her sleep. She’ll hurt you without knowing it. So you hide, ok?”

  “Okay,” said Randi after a long pause. “Dad, I want to come home, now.”

  “I know you do. Me too. A few days, then Mom will be there, right?”

  “What about you? When are you coming home?”

  “As soon as I can. You’ll probably get there first, but I’ll be home soon. Just need to do what the doctors tell me for a little longer, ok?”

  Randi was silent for a few seconds. “Daddy,” she said at last, “Are you sick?” She hadn’t called him “Daddy” in almost five years, lost the last syllable somewhere in the rapid evaporation of toddlerhood, and using it now startled him.