He smiled at Britta, as if they now shared a secret.
“I’ll keep you safe,” he said.
Then the Master looked up at the painting of the four little girls. He tried to read the future in their faces, but the shadows around the glowing children only seemed to mock him.
CHAPTER NINE
THE FARMHOUSE
THEY MOVED SLOWLY, and Jem and Clare took turns helping Sarai, who, after some painkillers that Jem had found in the pharmacy, was both still in some pain and woozy from the drugs. When they reached the farmhouse that Jem, Mirri and Sarai had claimed as their own, it was full dark.
Once they had settled Sarai in bed, Clare collapsed on a sofa, Bear at her feet. She was too tired to worry about the Cured or the master-of-the-situation’s cure or what was going to happen next. She noticed vaguely that the others slept in the same room, but before she could really take in the arrangements at the farmhouse, she was in a dreamless sleep.
In the morning, Mirri and Jem showed her around while Sarai slept; Sarai had a low fever, but there was no redness around the stitches, and she slept soundly.
“The penicillin should kick in and get rid of that low-grade fever,” said Jem.
“Sure?”
“Sure. And if I’m wrong, we’ll give her Cipro.”
Clare didn’t know what Cipro was, but her confidence in Jem had grown steadily. Sarai would be all right.
When they went outside, Bear gave Clare an almost begging look, and she released him to go and explore the area. Now in the full light of day, Clare could see that the farmhouse had a wide porch. A barn next to it was tilted at what seemed like an impossible angle, and its red paint was peeling in long and interesting looking strips. In front of the house, a flower garden bloomed with golden marigolds and red and orange zinnias; nearby, a stone wall overflowed with phlox no longer in bloom but still full of vigor. Nothing had been pruned or weeded.
“The vegetable garden’s in back,” said Jem.
“The garden’s work,” said Mirri. “But we’ll take you scavenging. We break into all kinds of houses looking for food. That’s fun. Except for the dead bodies.”
Jem had a stick in his hand and was brushing the top of the grass with it. A grasshopper jumped out of the way, and he watched it go.
“Sometimes I can’t believe the world is still working at all,” Jem said. “Trees, grasshoppers, flowers. Pest hasn’t touched them.”
“If humans get going again,” said Clare, “maybe we’ll let everything thrive this time.”
“And we’ll have Peace on Earth,” said Mirri, primly.
“‘Peace on Earth,’” said Jem. “I don’t know about Peace on Earth. But it’s a nice day.”
It was a nice day. Clare wondered how many nice days she had left; she thought about the messages broadcast by the man who called himself the master-of-the-situation. The Master. If he didn’t have a cure, Sarai and Mirri would be, at the most, fourteen and twelve when Jem died. Clare would have died a few years earlier. If there were a cure, they needed to find it.
“We’re not staying here forever,” Mirri said as if reading her thoughts. “Jem says we’re sinking into leth-ar-gy here. That’s one of Sarai’s vocab words. He also says that eventually we’re going to run out of food. But Jem doesn’t think we’ll really need a cure for a while because he’s only thirteen.”
“I may be mistaken,” said Jem. “We may need to move sooner than I thought.” He glanced at Clare and then looked away.
“Well,” said Mirri. “Clare’s fifteen, and she’s all right.”
“She’s all right now,” said Jem.
Clare realized with a start that there was a woman in front of the barn, sitting on chair. Clare couldn’t make out her face, but her clothes were a bright splotch of blue.
“It’s the Cured-in-a-blue-dress,” explained Mirri.
“A Cured?” Clare stopped walking.
“She’s not like the other Cureds,” said Mirri quickly.
“We’ve gotten used to this Cured,” said Jem. “And so far, so good.”
“Used to her?” asked Clare.
“She followed us here,” said Mirri. “She doesn’t attack. She’s a pacifist Cured.”
“She picked up our trail after we found Mirri,” said Jem. “She doesn’t seem to want to harm us. She never comes close, but she won’t go away.”
The woman in blue stood up, and even at that distance Clare thought she saw the marks of Pest. The woman’s face looked like someone had put a thumb down and smeared it.
“She’s kind of like one of the family,” said Mirri.
“No,” said Jem. “She’s not.”
Clare looked from Jem to Mirri. She had the feeling that they’d had this argument before.
“Aren’t you at least a little afraid of her?” asked Clare.
“No,” said Mirri.
As they got closer, Clare could see the woman’s face more clearly. Her eyes and mouth had a beautiful shape, and Clare was strongly reminded of someone, but she couldn’t quite pinpoint whom. The rest of her face was marred, and Clare recognized that the course of Pest had been arrested during the final stages. The thick ropes of scar tissue matted the woman’s nose into her cheeks, and the marks of Pest on her neck were black. Her swollen knuckles had curled her hands into dirty claws.
Mirri stole a look at Clare’s face.
“She won’t hurt you,” she said. “I know it. She’s never tried to hurt any of us.”
“You need to be careful,” said Jem. “She’s not a pet.”
“I wasn’t thinking of her as a pet,” said Mirri.
It was at that moment that Bear rejoined them. He had the desiccated body of a long-dead squirrel in his mouth, and he dropped it at Clare’s feet. He then looked up at her, tongue lolling out, as if waiting for approval.
“That’s pretty disgusting,” said Clare, but she stroked Bear’s head as she spoke.
Bear snuffed the air and, in a moment, his body stiffened, and he made a move as if to lunge forward. Clare knew he had become aware of the Cured-in-a-blue-dress.
“Grab him,” said Mirri. “He’ll hurt her.”
Clare knew she could never catch Bear if he went after the Cured-in-a-blue-dress, but, after his initial movement forward, he stopped. He let Clare put her arms around him. His ears were pricked forward, and he was alert, but he made no move to attack.
“He’s not even growling,” said Clare.
“That’s because the Cured-in-a-blue-dress is harmless,” said Mirri. “Dogs know.”
Clare put a hand on Bear. He seemed relaxed. Perhaps Mirri was right.
Then Clare looked at the Cured-in-a-blue-dress. Oddly, the blue made her think of her mother. Not of Marie, her stepmother, but of her real mother, long dead. Clare remembered that they had buried her in a sky blue dress. Madonna blue.
They approached the barn, and the Cured-in-a-blue-dress got up and began to move away. She looked around urgently, as if for a place to escape. And then she ran past them and around the house.
“She isn’t very stable,” said Mirri. “That’s the word Jem uses—‘stable.’ Sometimes she does odd things. For no reason.”
“She killed our only chicken,” said Jem.
“You don’t know that,” said Mirri.
“But she didn’t eat it,” said Jem. “That’s not very stable—she killed for no reason.”
“Well, we ate it,” said Mirri. “So it doesn’t matter.”
Clare, as she listened to Mirri, felt she needed to get some perspective on her situation. She thought simply that there were too many unknown quantities in her world now. She didn’t really know Jem. Not really—not as she had known Robin. Mirri and Sarai were strangers. The Cured-in-a-blue-dress was a worry. And the Master was an enigma.
If only Michael were there, everything would be completely all right. He would know what to do. Sometimes she wanted him so much, she simply wished she could sit on the ground and put her head in her h
ands and rock back and forth until the want went away. And these children had never been part of her old world—even Jem had never been anywhere but on the periphery. She should be—what was the term Jem used? Vigilant.
But it then occurred to her that at some point she had already made up her mind: she trusted Jem. She trusted them all. Vigilance? It was already too late for that.
SARAI’S FEVER WAS gone that evening, and she was up on the sofa, reading, while Mirri and Jem showed Clare every corner of the house and attic before returning to the living room for dinner. The kerosene lantern shed a soft light, and what by day was, they assured her, a dingy wallpaper, looked a rich yellow with a golden inlaid pattern.
That night they lay on the floor of the living room, now covered in pillows, and ate out of cans and drank soda. Sarai moved gingerly, but she was clearly feeling better. Mirri seemed open and happy. She made a tower out of fruit cocktail tins in front of the blank television.
“I want to go explore east tomorrow,” said Jem. “We haven’t checked out that part of town.”
“Okay.” Mirri popped the top off another tin of fruit cocktail.
“I’m warning you about all that fruit, Mirri,” said Jem. “It’s going to bite you in the butt. No kidding.”
“It’s really good,” she said.
“Mirri,” warned Sarai. “Jem said.”
“Yeah, but you’re not the boss of me.”
“But I am,” said Jem. “And you’re not having any more fruit cocktail after that tin. You’ll get sick.”
Mirri turned away and toyed with some of the cans, but she didn’t eat any more fruit cocktail. She was smiling to herself, as if Jem had said something particularly reassuring. She obviously liked having Jem in charge.
Clare, meanwhile, was remembering her words to Bear about who was boss. It seemed strange to her now that there had ever been a time when they hadn’t understood each other. She reached down and scratched him on the belly until he wriggled in contentment.
Without electricity, bedtime was early at the farm, as it had been for Clare at the cabin, but here they liked to use the kerosene lantern for an extra half an hour of light. They bolted the door against the night, and then Sarai and Mirri settled down for a game of Old Maid. Jem and Clare sat on the floor in the pool of light shed by the lamp and watched them.
“Whoever thought of the Cure,” said Jem, “has a lot to answer for.”
“At least they tried to stop Pest,” said Clare.
“The Cure,” said Jem with some contempt. “The doctors were just playing around to see what happened.”
“Scientists worked on it, too. And epi—you know, the guys who work on epidemics. They helped develop the Cure.”
“They didn’t really know what they were doing,” said Jem. “Doctors and scientists love messing around with plagues and cures. And where do you think Pest originated, anyway? Have you ever seen 28 Days Later?”
“Your parents never let you see 28 Days Later! My parents wouldn’t let me see 28 Days Later, and I’m fifteen.”
“I was on a sleepover.”
They were both suddenly reminded of how young they really were.
What hope could they have?
CLARE THOUGHT OF the last days of Pest, the screams in the night, the dead in the streets, her sojourns with Robin through Hell. The Cured had seemed to be everywhere in the city. She thought of a kiosk near her house that had carried the enormous sign: ‘If you have any symptoms, see your doctor for the Cure.’ Someone had spray-painted ‘SYLVER’ over it the night before they left the city.
Better to be dead than be a Cured. She thought of her father’s lucid eyes as she brought him a glass of water on the day he died. She wouldn’t wish the Cure on him—or on Marie, either.
Especially Marie.
She wouldn’t have been safe from a Cured Marie.
The kerosene lantern was flickering, casting their shadows high up the walls. Clare looked at Jem’s eyes. In the soft light, they were deep green and fringed with dark lashes like a pond fringed with reeds.
Mirri and Sarai bent over their card game. Clare, taller than Jem, tilted her head towards him as they spoke.
“Do you think the Cured have anything of themselves left?”
“I don’t know,” said Jem. “But something really terrible’s happened to their minds.”
“Maybe they’re psychotic,” said Sarai, looking up from the game. “Jeffrey Dahmer was psychotic. He ate people.”
“The Cured-in-the-blue-dress, even though her mind is gone,” said Jem, “hasn’t tried to hurt any of us. Something about her’s different from the other Cureds. As far as I can tell, the others are all violent.”
“She likes us,” said Mirri.
“I don’t know if the Cured are capable of like,” said Jem seriously.
Then it was time for bed. Mirri’s pajamas had feet and were covered with unicorns and rainbows. Sarai wore sweatpants and a thin T-shirt with ‘American Beauty’ on it.
“I should change the dressing on your wound,” said Jem to Sarai.
“I did it already,” said Sarai. She was clearly proud of herself.
“And I helped her get undressed,” said Mirri. “And I checked the bandage.” Jem and Mirri then started clearing away the tins of fruit cocktail as Sarai curled up on the sofa and watched Clare unpacking more of her things.
Sarai explained to Clare that she, Jem and Mirri all slept in different beds in the same room. Jem looked up and watched Clare as Sarai spoke. When Clare caught his eye, he shrugged his shoulders. Clare felt very unsure of herself.
Sarai broke off and winced, as if in pain.
“Have you taken your antibiotics?” asked Clare.
“Jem already gave them to me. I’m not infected. He said.”
“You have to keep taking them.”
“I know. I actually feel pretty good.” There was a silence. “You’re not sleeping in here alone again, are you?” Sarai asked.
“I suppose Bear will keep me company.”
“I get creeped out alone,” said Sarai. “I don’t know how you did it.”
Clare thought of her night terrors at the cabin, of the heap of cans and the lack of a latrine.
“I didn’t do so well,” she said.
“Well, you’re brave to sleep out here in this room all alone. I’d have nightmares. Actually, I do anyway, but Jem and Mirri are right there.”
“I don’t really know what I’m supposed to do,” said Clare.
Sarai leaned in close to Clare and whispered, “Alone is scary. I always worry there are things in the shadows. And there’s a bolt on the bedroom door to keep us safe. I wouldn’t sleep out here if I were you.”
“I’m sort of old to be sharing a room,” said Clare. She was thinking of Jem. He wasn’t that much younger than she was. He wasn’t really a little boy.
“It’s like a forever sleepover,” said Sarai.
“Won’t Jem mind?”
“He understands about the dark. About being scared.”
So Clare moved her things into the bedroom, which was a cheerful mess of blankets and pillows. Jem’s things tended to be royal blue; Sarai had found over a dozen bright hand-made quilts; Mirri had accumulated an impressive amount of bedclothes decorated with unicorns and horses. Clare put down a heaped up blanket for Bear at the foot of her bed. Jem looked away as she got under the covers and arranged the bedclothes they had given her – a pink cotton sheet, a lavender blanket. A deep blue quilt that smelled like the outdoors and damp grass. From the color, that would have been Jem’s.
When they were finally in bed, they all said goodnight to each other.
“It’s like The Waltons,” said Clare sleepily.
“The who?” asked Mirri.
“Never mind,” said Clare. “Part of the old world.”
FIRST SHE HAD the old dream, the one that had kept coming back to her for years, in which someone she knew walked towards her in a garden. But this time the dream chang
ed, and she was looking at three white vultures perched on the bedstead. Their wings were open as if they were drying them in the sun; except for their red wattled heads, the birds looked like white angels. The dream began to slip away, but not before one of the vultures tucked up its wings and lurched onto her chest.
“Sylver,” said the vulture. “That’s the true name.”
The vulture moved closer to Clare’s head and cocked its head to one side. Clare could see the word burning in front of her: SYLVER.
“Sylver,” the white vulture said again, and then it leaned forward and plucked out her eye.
Clare awoke and, for a moment, didn’t know where she was. Then she heard thunder and the sound of rain pelting against the window. She was in the farmhouse, and the room was a storm of blankets and comforters. Mirri and Sarai and Jem were deeply asleep and their measured breathing was in stark contrast to the cacophonous sounds of thunder and rain and the creaking house.
A flash of lightning lit up the room.
Clare got out of bed and made her way to the window. Below, the mounded rows in the vegetable garden looked like graves. The red and yellow tomatoes, large green zucchini, yellow squash and wrinkled red peppers had been swallowed by darkness. Lightning burst over the house, and she saw the figure of a woman in the center of the lawn. Clare waited for another flash, and, when it finally came, she half expected the garden to be empty; instead she saw the woman’s pale, rain streaked face staring up at her.
Clare felt a hand on her arm. She almost screamed, and then she saw it was Mirri, her eyes blurry and vague with sleep.
“She’s always there,” murmured Mirri. “It’s just the same.”
“Let’s get you to bed,” said Clare.
Mirri went with her; once she was tucked in, Clare went back to her own bed, but not before checking that the door was bolted. For a long time, she lay awake.
In the morning, Mirri said nothing about the incident, and Clare was sure she had been sleepwalking.
“It looks like it rained in the night,” said Jem when he woke up.
“Yes,” said Clare. She thought of the vultures in her dream; she thought of the woman’s face in the rain.
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