“Oh come on, Father. You never felt guilt at what they or we were doing until this morning. You going to drag your past with you for the rest of your life? We killed a lot of people. A lot. You remember them all? You going to whip yourself for every one? I don’t even remember the first person I ate. It’s all a blur, all the faces like melted wax. Seems like if it were important, a person would remember their first one. Do you?”
Vincent looked at the ground. He smoothed the edges of his makeshift eye patch. “No,” he said quietly.
But Henry did.
He had still been in his tiny shed. In the dark. It wasn’t cold any longer, and he could smell the crushed grass whenever someone opened the door to feed him or to splash him with buckets of clean water. But it had been days since anyone had done either. Henry raged, smashing himself against the walls, straining against the choke chain, chewing on the thick utility gloves that covered his hands. At last, Dave opened the shed door, a round shadow in the sharp spring light that Henry never saw. Henry roared until the metal collar cut off his breath.
“I’m sorry Henry. Phil says we aren’t to waste food on you any more, since the store owner won’t give us any more on credit. Elizabeth went to the other houses on the road to scavenge, but Phil grabbed it all.” Dave slumped down to the ground, ignoring Henry desperately scrabbling and clawing to reach him. “I never meant it to be like this. I should have listened to you when you told me to get rid of him. He strong arms everyone now. He’s even collecting people, says we need to band together to survive. But the people he’s choosing, I don’t think they are good people to have around Marnie. We’re supposed to visit the store tonight. Phil says we need to do some heavy persuading. I’m scared Henry. But I’ll bring you something to eat tonight, I promise.”
Henry’s rage had at last worn out and he had fallen asleep in the hot, smelly little shed, still chewing on the leather gloves that protected his hands. Men’s shouts drawing close to the shed woke him and he immediately flung himself forward and joined the noise with guttural snarls and the lurching clang of the chain leash and collar. Something metal dragged along the outside of the flimsy plywood wall. “You hungry zombie?” Phil’s thick voice oozed into the shed. The men with him hooted and laughed like hyenas, banged on the walls of his shed. Henry growled and pulled on the chain until he almost fainted from lack of air.
“Why are you doing this?” Dave’s voice whined through the door. “We have what we want. Just let him go.”
“No,” growled Phil, “he could have made this easy on himself and us, we could all have been friends. But instead, he sets booby traps for my guys. He broke Sam’s arm. He needs to pay.”
“You’re nothing but a band of thugs. We would never have been friends. The people left in town– they’ll have nothing now. You think they will go quietly away and starve? I’m not the only one that’s going to pay.”
“You see Dave? He doesn’t want to cooperate even now. Besides, your buddy sounds pretty hungry in there, you want him to starve?”
The door flung open and bright flashlights jittered and slid over the interior of the shed, finally resting on Henry’s face. “Well Wyatt, you don’t want to be friends with me, maybe you can make friends with Henry here.”
The man was shoved inside. “Here,” laughed one of the men, handing Wyatt a flashlight, “this way you can see his pretty face.” The door slammed shut and the padlock snapped shut with a clunk. Henry lunged, reached out, his fingertips brushing the man’s shirt, but he pressed himself against the far wall, just out of reach. There was a metallic tang to the air and Henry knew the man was already bleeding. Henry began to salivate.
The flashlight beam shook and blinded him. “Henry?” came the man’s voice, “Oh Henry, I’m so sorry this happened to you. When the men came, they said they were staying here and I asked them to let me see you. I knew you’d protect me, if you could. You seemed decent and honest last winter.” There was a low sob from behind the light. “I know you can’t remember me. Or maybe you do, but you can’t help yourself. I’ve seen it lots over the past few months. It’s me, Wyatt, from the store. I should have come with you then. I wouldn’t have let this happen. I know you would have gotten sick, but I wouldn’t have kept you in a flimsy woodshed. Like an animal.”
Henry growled deep in his throat and strained against the chain. It cut into his neck.
“Do they even feed you? The Sheriff was right. It’s a mercy to shoot you. You wouldn’t freeze or starve that way. This, this is worse.” Wyatt sucked in his gut as Henry’s glove caught on the buttons of his shirt. “Aw Henry, I would have shot you,” he sobbed. Wyatt sucked in great, ragged breaths for a moment. Then he clicked the flashlight off.
“I know what you’re going to do. I don’t know if there is any part of who you were left in there or if you’ll get better someday like we thought so many months ago. But in case some part of you understands, I know what you’re going to do. I know you can’t help it. I forgive you Henry, I want you to remember that if you ever come back to yourself. I forgive you.”
There was a rusty screech and dull cracking as the ring holding Henry’s chain came free of the flimsy wall. “I forgive you Henry!” Wyatt screamed into the dark. Henry fell forward with a thud as the chain loosened. “I forgive you! I forgive you!” Wyatt kept screaming until Henry found the soft, sagging folds of his neck. Henry’s teeth ached with want as they closed around the wrinkled skin and he drooled freely. Even eight years later he would remember how intense the salt taste of that first bite had been, the dull, rubbery snap as tendons broke, and the deep, secret heat of blood splashing onto his face.
Phil’s men left him there for several days. There was nothing left of Wyatt except bone and hair and cloth. The days were hot and the shed, still lined in plastic, was a stew of waste and rotten meat. But the men could hear Henry bashing against the walls, and they knew he was loose. They eventually forced Dave to take care of it. He waited until Henry was quiet and then shoved a plate of drugged food into the shed and locked the door.
Henry woke up as ice cold water jetted over him. Dave was hosing him down in the overgrown front yard. His leash was attached to a wooden post now, where he would stay for another six and a half years. It only took about a week to wear a dirt circle around it as he paced, hungrily, as far as the chain allowed. Marnie cried when she saw him there. It wasn’t long before he had company.
Sixteen
Vincent shook him and Henry woke with a start. “Bad dream,” whispered the priest.
“Thanks.” He sat up.
“You want to come in the kitchen? Melissa is up too. We can be a little company for each other at least.”
Henry nodded and stood up to follow Vincent to the kitchen. Melissa handed him a cup of boiled water. He sat at the table and watched the wax candle sputter and flare.
“Did you figure out how to get there?” Vincent asked Melissa. She pushed a map closer to the candles.
“He marked us as here. The shortest route would be this way. Should take us two days on foot, but we don’t know how bad the roads are. I can’t recall seeing any pavement in a while, can you?”
Vincent shook his head and they both looked at Henry. “Not since we left the Lodge,” he said, “but I wasn’t exactly following roads, I was chasing Phil’s men. Does it matter?”
Melissa shrugged. “I guess for healthy people it wouldn’t. One or two days more hiking might make them a little thinner but none the worse for wear. But we can’t afford that. We need to get it right the first time or find supplies on the way.”
“Can’t we just hole up here until we’re back to normal?” asked Henry.
Vincent glanced doubtfully at the small pile of supplies on the counter. “I don’t think we have enough food for more than another day or two here, even with us not eating normal meals.”
“These people can’t walk in their condition,” said Melissa, “let alone carry the water we’d need.”
“Ther
e’s a barn. Maybe we can see if there’s grain or a car or anything that can help us tomorrow,” said Henry.
“And if not?”
“I guess we scavenge and hope for the best.”
“It’s been eight years Henry, don’t you think everything will be ransacked?”
He bit at his ragged, filthy nails and stopped himself, shuddering with disgust. “We’re in a fairly rural area, right? And there were lots of cows left. We wouldn’t have made it otherwise. Maybe these houses got missed.”
Melissa nodded. “This was farmland all through here,” she pointed to a large sweep along their route, “Lots of them were dairy, but I remember farm stands on some of them during the summer. Maybe there are still gardens at some. We might find potatoes or carrots that didn’t freeze from last year. Or canned stuff in the basements.”
Vincent rubbed a hand across the gray stubble on his head. “This is going to take forever,” he said.
Henry wondered bleakly if Marnie had forever to wait or if he were already too late.
“Where exactly are we going?” he asked. The other two looked at him as if he were insane.
“The City. Where else is there to go?” said Vincent.
“You sure everyone is going to want to go the same place? Rickey seems dead set against the City. And I need to go back to find Marnie.”
Vincent shook his head. “Henry, she’s dead.”
“You saw her die?”
“No, but how could she still be alive? There were a lot more of us in the beginning, remember? And if one of us didn’t get her as she was letting us go, then Phil’s men must have. Even if she survived the night, she would have been on the run, alone, with nowhere to go and nothing to eat or protect herself with.”
“She’s clever and quick. She’ll be all right until I can find her.”
Vincent and Melissa exchanged a doubtful glance and Henry saw it. “Even if you’re right,” he continued, “even if she’s dead, we have to go back. What if there are still people like us trapped there? What if Phil has gathered more of us?”
“Look, I have no love for those thugs,” said Melissa, “But what do you expect six starving people to do? Even if we could make it back to their camp on foot, we have no weapons and we have no medicine to cure the Dogs.”
“Don’t call them that,” Henry said more loudly than he had intended. He rubbed the smooth scars around his neck. “Don’t call them that,” he said again quietly.
“That’s what they are. That’s what we were. There’s no reason to get upset about it. We didn’t make ourselves that way.” Melissa tightened her lips into a thin line and turned away.
“We have to get help before we do anything else. We have to get to the City,” Vincent broke in.
Rickey stumbled into the kitchen, rubbing his eyes. “What if we don’t all want to go?” he asked through a yawn.
“What do you mean? Where else are you going to go?”
“Why go anywhere? This place is quiet, no one will mess with us out here.”
“We’re almost out of food,” said Melissa.
“Oh these old farm houses always have basements filled with stuff. And if not, we’ll go find more. And I bet the deer population has exploded.”
“You remember seeing any?” asked Melissa, putting a hand on her bony hip.
Henry stared at her. “Why didn’t we see any? I doubt there’s many hunters out this far.”
Vincent started up from the table. “Maybe there’s another big camp around here. We need to find out–”
“Relax. There’s no one out here. They would have taken the cows instead of leaving them to fend for themselves. It was us. Well, people like us. Infected I mean.”
“Impossible. There would have to be hordes of people to wipe out the entire deer population of the area. How many of us did it take to bring down one cow? Weren’t there eight of us last time we did it?”
“Yeah,” said Rickey grinning, “we’re just missing the guy that attacked the people that cured us and the scrawny chick that Henry had as a snack.”
Henry felt heat rise into his face. He rushed to the door as he choked on bile.
“What?” he heard Rickey say behind him, “It’s not like any of us wouldn’t have done the same. You guys got to lighten up. Are you going to drag this along with you forever? It wasn’t our fa–”
Henry sucked in a great gulp of cold night air and blocked out the conversation. He tried to think about the deer so he wouldn’t think about the girl. There couldn’t have been that many people infected, could there? He had seen several before he got sick, sure, but nowhere near enough to wipe out all the deer. Who had been left? He felt dizzy as the emptiness surrounding them hit him.
“Hey,” he said, turning back to the others, “Why didn’t they eat the cows?”
“What?” asked Rickey.
“If there were so many people infected that they ate the entire deer population, why didn’t they eat the cows?”
“The fences kept them out. They couldn’t figure it out. I don’t remember climbing over anything while I was sick. Falling over stuff, maybe, but not climbing,” said Melissa.
“But we ate the cows.”
“The fences are down now, rotted away or knocked over. The cows just stayed close to what they knew. But in the beginning, when there were lots of people wandering around, the fences would have mostly been solid. I’m sure some fences broken and some cows were eaten. Or some starved or froze if they were stuck out in the fields. But there were a few left for us.”
Vincent shook his head. “Where did they all go? Did they kill each other? Is there anyone left? What are we going to do?” he asked. Henry closed the back door, shutting out the still night, the enormous silence that swallowed everything.
Seventeen
“Sweet,” exhaled Rickey as they opened the barn doors. Henry walked over to the large SUV, eyeing it doubtfully. “No, not that,” said Rickey and kicked the misshapen tire. It wheezed a little. “This isn’t good for anything but scrap. But this beauty,” he turned toward the enormous dusty tractor in the back, “might get us all out of here if we’re lucky.”
“How lucky?”
Rickey walked around toward the back of the tractor and Henry followed him. “Well,” Rickey called over his shoulder, “if we’re lucky, it’s diesel instead of gas. If we’re really lucky, Farmer John has a sealed supply of diesel that’s still good because it was too much of a pain in the ass to ride down to the local feed store and get it every month. If we’re super extra lucky, Farmer John was also smart enough to winterize the thing before the Plague hit and he disconnected the battery. We’ll probably have to find a way to clean the filters though, if it’s been sitting with fuel in it all this time.” Rickey rummaged around a large tool chest he had found.
“Well? How lucky are we?”
“First thing’s first,” mumbled Rickey and fished around some more in the tool chest, “Hey, pull those doors open on the other side. It’s pitch black in here.”
Henry moved carefully through the dark back end of the barn and shoved hard on the back doors. They squealed and stuck on the overgrown grass. Henry put his weight against first one door and then the other, wedging them farther open. Bright spring light filtered in. “That’s better,” called Rickey. Henry found the ladder to the second floor. More out of curiosity than anything else, he climbed up into the loft. Things scuttered out of his way and he hesitated. He could see the outline of another window on the far side though, so he carefully began crossing the floor.
“Careful Henry,” called Rickey, “If there are any roof leaks at all then that floor will be soft. Besides, there’s probably nothing up there but mice.”
“There’s another window,” yelled Henry, “I’ll be careful.” The floor was covered with scattered strands of straw and baling twine. It reminded him, perversely of what the castle must have looked like after Rumpelstiltskin was finished. It was still very dark up in the loft, even with bot
h sets of doors open. He gingerly tested the floorboards with each step. Coming at last to the window, he pushed against the wooden shutter and had to catch himself on the frame as it fell completely away with a loud clatter.
“You okay?” Rickey called.
“Yeah, it was just the shutter.” Henry turned around, the morning light turned an afternoon gold as flakes of hay made the loft into a swirl of dust around him.
“Anything good up there?”
“Nope. Just some old hay. And probably rats.” Henry made his way back to the ladder and down into the now bright barn.
“Got it!” Rickey waved a dented pack of cigarettes triumphantly.
“That’s what you were looking for? You realize that might be the last pack you’re going to find in a while right? And they probably taste like crap.”
Rickey shrugged, tapped the case on his wrist and pulled one out. He grinned and held it up to his mouth. “You know what’s weird?” he said before putting it into his mouth and talking around it, “Haven’t had one in eight years, you’d think I would be over them. Eight years. And there’s other stuff more important. We’re starving to death, haven’t gotten laid in almost a decade, but the first thing I thought about when I woke up was having a cigarette.” He shook his head and grinned, the cigarette bobbing from the corner of his mouth. He held up a rusty lighter. “You’re probably right. I’m going to regret this.” He lit it and took a short drag. Henry winced and Rickey coughed and laughed. “Yeah, it tastes like crap all right.” He took another drag. “But I don’t care. C’mon let’s look at the tractor.”
There was something comfortable about the stale smoke mixed with the ghost smell of gasoline and diesel and the thick scent of motor oil. Henry had never been a smoker, but there was something lived in, familiar about it. Rickey climbed a stepladder next to a steel drum and looked in. His lit cigarette dangling perilously close to the opening and the crazy patchwork of hair sticking out from his scrawny head made him look like a crazed scientist from an old movie. “Well, it’s diesel,” said Rickey and Henry tensed as the cigarette bobbed between his lips over the steel drum’s cover. He closed the cover and came down from the ladder. “It looks okay, but we won’t know until we try it. I’ll have to check the tractor first though. See if you can find the battery. I doubt it’s held it’s charge all this time, but maybe we can figure something out.”
The Cured Page 10
