“Not by yourself,” Henry said, “we’re here to help.”
“I thought Pam’s pen was the one they took the women from,” said Melissa quietly.
Rickey glanced at her quickly and then away. “Not just women,” he said.
“But you both have your teeth–” she began. Rickey jumped up.
“Yeah, well some of them liked it rough, okay? They got a kick out of extra risk. You want to know more?” he snarled.
Melissa turned to Henry. “I hope all of those men were eaten alive. We’re supposed to just let Phil die comfortably in bed decades from now, an old man, maybe with kids and grandkids, no one ever knowing what he’s done?”
“No,” said Henry, “but if you want me to do something about it, I’m going to need your help.”
Forty
Henry sat in the front of the delivery truck with Melissa. The others rode in back or walked. “Just do your normal thing,” said Henry in a low voice, “let me do mine.”
“What is it you are planning to do Henry? If it’s dangerous–”
Henry shook his head. “It’s not. Not this part.”
“This would be much easier if you just told me what we were doing.”
“No. I’ll tell you all when everything is done. No one is going to stop me or interfere or try to persuade me that I’m wrong. You’re going to have to trust me. We aren’t ever going to have to think about Phil again.”
Melissa pulled up to the hospital and parked. “I don’t want to stop you,” she said quietly.
“I know. But you have to be able to sleep at night afterward too.” He reached for the door handle.
“So do you,” she reminded him.
He turned back to her with a grin that was too easy, too loose on his tight face. “I’m going to sleep just fine afterward. Better even.” He opened the door and got out of the truck. Melissa felt a shiver wriggle from her fingertips to her shoulders.
Henry walked slowly around the barricade to the back of the hospital, the grin already faded away. A few bored-looking soldiers were standing near the back door.
“I’m here to pick up empty food trays,” said Henry, “boss told me they’d be back here.”
“Sure,” said one of the soldiers. His voice sounded hollow behind his plastic bio-hazard mask. He pointed to a metal cart stacked with trays sitting outside the door of the hospital. “Right there.”
Henry fidgeted. “You– you want me to come past the barricade?”
“Yeah, it’s fine,” said the soldier, “everyone is confined upstairs, no one’s even tried to come out. We’re just here as a precaution.”
“But you have suits.”
The other soldier chimed in. “Don’t worry about it man, there’s nothing contagious out here, it’s just part of the uniform.”
Henry started forward and stopped in front of the cart. The soldiers had turned back toward the road, ignoring him. “Hey,” he called. They turned around again. “They been eating off these right? Breathed on em and stuff.”
“This your first day man?” asked one of the soldiers, “sure, they ate off em, the trays have been cleaned and disinfected already. They’re fine, really.”
“How do I know? I got no protection, not even a pair of gloves and you want me to pick them up?”
There was a long shhhhhhhh as the soldier sighed into his mask. “Look, you want protection? There’s gloves, masks, entire bio-hazard suits in that bin over there,” he said waving to a plastic crate farther down the building, “if it makes you feel better, knock yourself out, I don’t care.”
“Thanks,” said Henry. The soldier shook his head and went back to the road. Henry pulled a suit out of the bin. He started pulling it on then looked around. The soldiers weren’t watching. He grabbed another plastic package from the bin and gently stuffed it into the baggy leg of his suit. He finished putting the suit on, complete with mask and gloves, and then casually wheeled the cart of cleaned trays past the barricade and down the road toward the truck. He could hear the soldiers laughing at him as he passed them. He didn’t care what they thought. Hell, he felt like laughing too. But this was the easy part of the plan. The next part was going to require either luck or patience or some incredible fakery. Henry just wasn’t sure which yet. They were getting close to the end of quarantine for the people who’d been most at risk now, and he had to finish this before then. He loaded the cart into the delivery truck and then sat up front, carefully removing the suit and putting it into his work sack where no one would see. He helped with the rest of the deliveries without comment and Melissa, still disturbed by their earlier conversation, didn’t ask.
He trudged home after work, the late spring gnats bunched in little fluttering clouds of gold and the smell of warm tar made the evening seem peaceful, almost normal, as if it were a day borrowed from Before, hung out for one last time. For a few blocks anyway. But then the quiet seeped back in as people reached home, shut their doors, left Henry walking alone down the road. He could have gone to Margie’s. But they’d all been saving their tokens. He didn’t want to visit the others, they’d just ask questions. So Henry went home instead. Turned the television on while he unpacked the bio-hazard suits and made dinner, just to have another voice around. It was the music again. The music and all the dead people. Henry ignored it for a while, busy with his plan, moving around the house. At last the adrenaline wore off, though, and he sat in a chair watching the faces cycle by in a slow moving blur. There had been a few broadcasts from inside the hospital, but they had been short, mostly allowing people to see that their friends and family were okay and hadn’t become sick. Now that most people were out, there were occasional movies and short announcements. Almost all of the rest of the time, the dj played the photos and the music. Henry wondered when the guy running things slept. Must be on a loop or something, he thought and tried to concentrate on where he could find a body. He’d thought of asking Vincent if he had any funeral services coming up, but he knew there was no way to ask politely or that wouldn’t make Vincent suspicious. Phil would know about them first anyway. No, the only way to do this was to make something that could pass for a body. He pulled out the map of the town that he’d been given on his arrival. Amos had laughed when he’d asked about a butcher. Meat just didn’t exist anymore. Not unless you were truly wealthy. Hadn’t there been something on the news about that? Henry tried to think. No, it wasn’t the news. It had been Rickey. Just a day or two ago. Henry hadn’t been paying much attention though, he’d been too busy, lost in his plots. He decided to pay his friend a visit.
Rickey was sitting in a creaky porch swing in his front yard, the sharp red star of his cigarette all that was visible in the dark. Henry sat down next to him. “So that house you were telling me about, the one where you had to shut off the electric, tell me that again.”
“Tell you what again?”
“I don’t know exactly, was it something about meat? I don’t remember.”
“Jesus, Henry, when you tune out, you miss everything don’t you?”
“Sorry. Just tell me the whole thing again, I’m paying attention this time.”
Rickey flicked his ash into the damp grass. “A few days ago, another electric worker and me were sent to go kill the power at this rich guy’s house. We’re not just talking has a few extra cans and a suit kind of rich here, Henry. This guy was rich. He had a security system, a lab in the basement, nice furniture, liquor. Stuff I didn’t know you could get anywhere anymore. I think it was a bank before or something. Anyway, this guy had a stroke about a week ago and he was taken for medical care. But all that electricity costs a lot of man hours. And we’ve had to make up a lot of work with the hospital running extra hard and people in and out of quarantine. We just don’t have enough warm bodies to keep things running at that rate. We’ve been going house to house all month shutting off anything left on in the empty places, you know, refrigerators, clocks, porch lights, those sorts of things. But this guy’s house was something e
lse. Lit up like Christmas even in the middle of the day. Guess the docs think he isn’t going to recover, because they had us go in and shut everything off, right at the breaker. So we get to this place and I asked my buddy, ‘what makes this guy so special’ and he turns and stares at me like I’m from another planet. ‘This is the guy that made the Cure,’ he said. There were a couple of soldiers at the door guarding the place. Probably don’t want anyone breaking in while this guy is gone. So one of them leads my buddy to the breaker in the house and the other soldier takes me down to the basement, where the lab is. Whole separate setup. We had to spend a lot more time down there, had to make sure all the equipment was shut off and safe so it wouldn’t blow anything out when they started the electric up again. You don’t see this kind of equipment anymore. I don’t know if most people would have seen it Before either. Made me nervous just being there. So, you know me, I asked the soldier if he wanted a cigarette, just to take the edge off. He said sure, that he had to prop open the back door anyway, because he wasn’t sure if it would lock when the power was out and we couldn’t go out the main door because the elevator wouldn’t be working. A fucking elevator to get to his lab, Henry. You believe that shit?”
Henry shook his head, but Rickey couldn’t see him in the dark anyway. “So we’re both smoking a cigarette and I’m starting to work on the equipment and this soldier starts shooting the shit with me. Nothing big, you know, normal stuff like how he got here, where I was from. And as we’re working down there, I start smelling this odor. And my stomach started rumbling. It was real gradual. Like smelling someone way down the street start up a barbecue. It grew and grew. Finally, I asked the soldier about it. He grimaced. ‘It’s meat. These rich guys are the only ones that can afford it.’
‘Hmm,’ I said, ‘it just smells weird. Not spoiled or anything, just– weird.’
The soldier took a peek outside the lab door and then came back and leaned over the lab table where I was disconnecting the gas line. ‘Well, you didn’t hear it from me, but there’ve been some rumors flying in the past few weeks about this guy. One of the guards at the court told me the prosecutor showed up to question Dr. Carton for the trial and found him down here in the lab with the walk in freezer door open. Hanging in the freezer was a corpse.’
‘So,’ I said, ‘he’s a scientist right? He probably needs bodies to test stuff on.’
The soldier shrugged. ‘Sure, that could be it, but the guard said the prosecutor saw that there were chunks taken out of the legs of the dead guy before Dr. Carton shut the door. And that reporter? The pretty anchor who’s in quarantine? She said she was in there earlier and there was a chunk of meat thawing in the sink, and she swore she saw a part of a tattoo on one part.’
‘No way,’ I said, ‘that’s got to be made up.’
The soldier looked around. ‘Want to check it out for yourself?’ he asked.
‘Hell no,’ I said, ‘it ain’t hardly lunchtime yet.’ And we laughed and went on with our work. Thing is, Henry, I’m sure he was right. It was like as soon as he said it, I recognized the smell. It was like I’d been craving it this whole time and didn’t know it. I’ve had nightmares for days because of it. Why would anyone do that?”
“Maybe he was Infected and just never got over it,” said Henry.
“No dumbass, how could he make the Cure if he was Infected?”
They sat in silence for a few minutes. “You think they cleaned out that freezer?” Henry asked.
“I don’t know. I doubt it. I think we were the last ones in there. Probably waiting for this Carton guy to kick the bucket then they’ll go in and clean it out. Don’t envy whoever has that job.”
“Did the lab door lock when you closed it?”
“I didn’t check.”
“You still really fast at picking locks?”
Rickey sat up. “What are you talking about Henry?”
“You want Phil to suffer for what he did as badly as I do. More maybe. I can make it happen. But you have to help.”
“What are you going to steal?”
“Nothing anyone will miss. Are you going to help me or not?”
Rickey got up from the swing. “Let me get my tools,” he said.
Henry sat back and swung lazily back and forth, an unseen smile spreading over his face in the dark.
Forty-one
The large house was a crisp, tailored shadow against the street lights. Henry and Rickey tried not to stumble into the back door to the lab. There were no soldiers standing guard now, the house was just an empty box, another thick tombstone in the almost desolate City. Rickey fumbled with his tools, scraping the metal door and setting Henry’s teeth on edge. They had no light, batteries were too expensive, but Rickey said he could get the lights working in the lab and there were no windows for anyone to see them inside. The blanket around Henry’s shoulders made him sweat in the warm spring night, but he knew he’d miss it later. There was no help for it. He had to have something to cover it with. Even in an empty city, Henry didn’t want to risk being seen carrying a body over half the dark streets. Rickey gave the door a gentle shove and it clicked open.
“Wait here,” he hissed, “and keep the door propped so I can see a little bit.”
Henry pressed the door open farther to give Rickey as much light as he could. The lights flickered on within seconds and Henry slid inside, carefully closing the door behind him so no one would see. The smell hit him almost immediately.
“Pah! How could you say this was gradual? My eyes are watering.”
Rickey was holding his shirt over his face. “The freezer was turned on then. It’s been almost a week, those things warm up pretty quick. Is this even going to work?”
Henry nodded. “It’s fine, it’ll just be more convincing this way.”
Rickey stood in front of the shining silver freezer door. He hesitated. “Hard to believe we smelled worse than this just a few weeks ago.”
“Don’t remind me. I can’t tell you how grateful I am that this isn’t making me hungry though. I was scared.”
“You and me both, brother. I was really scared I was going to relapse or something too. I think I can definitely say I’m Cured now. You ready?”
“Wait, let me take a few deep breaths. It’s going to be even worse when we open the door.” They both forced themselves to breathe deeply and then hold it. Henry nodded and Rickey swung the heavy door open. There were four shelves on either side of the door, each holding a heavy plastic bag. There was another on a rolling cart in the middle of the warm and stagnant freezer.
“Oh God, there’s more than one,” said Henry.
“Maybe he doesn’t like grocery shopping,” said Rickey, trying to smile, but his face had gone very pale and his voice shook. “Who were they Henry?”
“I don’t know. Someone’s baby once though.”
“Maybe we shouldn’t do this. Maybe we should let them rest.”
“This isn’t any better Rickey. And however they got here, at least I’m going to give one of them a decent burial. They’re going to do one last good thing first though. They’re going to help me stop the devil.” He rolled the silver cart out of the freezer and closed the door gently on the other faceless bags.
“At least we won’t have to carry it on our backs,” Henry said.
“Where are we bringing it? And what are we going to do with the cart afterward?”
“We’re bringing it to the All-Work Station. Melissa parked the delivery truck there.”
“Oh no. No. She’ll kill us.”
“I’ve already talked to her about it.” Henry walked over to the wall and picked up a nicely bleached lab coat that hung near the door. “Take this and–” he looked around until he found a plastic face guard and a surgical mask. “These too. You’re going to play doctor in the morning. Come on, we’ll talk about it on the way. Let’s get out of here.” He pushed the cart toward the door.
“Henry, what about the cart– someone will know where we got it.�
��
“You and Melissa can drop it at my house. Let them find it. After tomorrow I won’t be going back there.” He rolled the cart through the door and waited for Rickey to kill the lights.
The cart rattled on the broken pavement of the City roads and Henry kept looking nervously around. But they avoided the residential areas and it was almost midnight by the time they reached the truck. No one was around to see them. They rolled the cart up the truck’s ramp and closed the rear door. Henry piled the bio-hazard suits and Rickey’s disguise in a far corner. Rickey found the interior light.
“Jesus, Henry, it’s moving,” he said and slid backwards, hitting the side of the truck with a dull thump. Henry looked over at the opaque white bag. It wiggled and bulged.
“This is going to be bad,” Henry said.
“What is it?”
“Maggots.”
“No, it was sealed, in a freezer.”
“A warm bag in a warm freezer, Rickey.”
“It’s not right,” said Rickey jabbing a finger toward the squirming bag, “They shouldn’t get to eat you if you’re in plastic. That’s why you get buried. To keep you safe from those things.” Rickey gagged. What difference does it make? Wondered Henry. It would have gotten eaten either way. What does it matter whose belly it’s in?
“Maybe you should go have a cigarette while I do this.”
“You’re really going to open that thing?”
“I have to. This won’t work if I don’t.”
Rickey stumbled out of the truck and closed the door behind him. Henry took a deep breath. He rolled the cart sideways so that it touched the truck wall and then unfolded the blanket onto the floor beside it. He unzipped the bag. A gray mass of pulsing, curling mouths had covered it up to it’s chest. Only a few had made it up to the face. Henry had prepared himself to be revolted, to shove the thing quickly onto the blanket and fling the body bag with it’s seething, frothing mass of maggots away. But when he looked at the face, he could only feel a terrible sorrow. He almost recognized it. Neither male or female, just a face. But wrecked, broken long before Dr. Carton found it. Scarred and thin and stretched. A great blank with no identity. Like the woman in the snow from so long ago. Someone’s baby once. Undoubtedly Infected. Henry blinked away the blur in his eyes. He wasn’t sure if he was crying for the corpse, for missing the Cure and the world after that terrible madness had lifted, or if he were crying for himself for living long enough to wake up Cured. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but we still have work to do. He gently rolled the bag onto the blanket and pulled the plastic away. He rolled the body with its legion of companions into the blanket and tied it shut with old, dirty pieces of rope. The corpse started leaking through the blanket almost immediately. It stained the cloth as he lifted it carefully onto the cart. Henry looked at the spreading dampness. Good, he thought, it’s scarier that way. He pulled out on of the bio-hazard suits and spread it out against the wall of the truck. He turned it so the back faced him and made a thin slice down the back of one pant leg, not large enough to open until Phil put his leg in. Then he carefully folded it again and replaced it in its plastic bag. He did the same to the other suit, not knowing which one Phil would pick. He turned off the interior light and closed the truck door. He stuffed the body bag into the space between the spare tire and the truck undercarriage and then walked home with Rickey without speaking, saving his energy for a shower and climbing into bed.
The Cured Page 27
