“You remember now.” It wasn’t a question. The voice beside him was Danica. Of course.
“Some. Enough,” Neil admitted, again resisting the urge to throw off her arm. He didn’t feel like being touched. He didn’t feel like pretending he was human. But she needed to, and as much as Neil hated himself for what he’d done, what he hadn’t felt— still didn’t feel, he couldn’t muster up any anger or hatred for the other Cured. Starving and grieving and lost in this new world, they made pitiful demons. He wondered if anyone else would ever see them that way. Or if they’d just see the wreckage they’d left in their wake. If the disease just blotted out everything else. Who they’d been before. If Before would ever matter again.
“Now you know why you can’t forgive me,” she said flatly.
“What?” He pulled away slightly and looked at her. “Of course I can. And have.”
She shook her head. “You can’t forgive what I did because you can’t forgive what you did, and they’re the same thing. Just to different people. For what it’s worth, I am sorry. I want to— to atone. I know I can’t. Not really, but I want to try—”
“No,” said Neil abruptly and pushed her arm off. He stood up. “No, I don’t want— that’s— it’s not me you should be trying to apologize to. I lived. And you were— you were not in control—”
“Is that what you believe? Or what you want me to believe? Because if it’s true for me, then it’s true for you. If I don’t carry guilt for what these hands, this body did, then you don’t carry guilt for yours.”
He couldn’t quite agree to that. He knew what he’d done. He knew, in the moment he’d bitten and scrabbled and clawed, he’d meant it. He’d been enraged. The reason may not have made sense— still didn’t make sense, but he’d wanted to kill and to consume just the same. Could he have stopped himself? Could he have resisted the urge? He wanted to believe he’d been like a natural disaster. A tornado, a flood. Not a beast. And not a rational human. “There was still harm caused, even if we didn’t intend it,” he said, trying to ignore the creeping uncertainty.
“Then we should try to make amends,” cried Danica.
“Not to me! Not me.” Neil lost his temper and shouted, distressed by how much weight she was putting on him.
“Then who? Who’s left? You’re the only one still alive—”
Neil backed away, tripping backwards over a cot. It tipped and banged into a metal cart with a loud clang. Neil went tumbling. A staff member was between him and Danica before he was able to get up. “Just stay away from me, okay?” groaned Neil, slowly rising. “I don’t want your apology. I don’t want amends, I just want— I just want to be left alone, get it? Find someone else to watch you rend your clothes and throw your ash. Not me.” He stumbled away, already feeling awful about what he’d said. About everything. Danica didn’t follow him. When he finally returned to his cot, she was gone and the neat line of beds restored to their spots.
7
That night, he dreamed of the hospital again, of running through corridors with the sound of feet just behind him, but their owners were always just out of sight. He wasn’t certain when or how the dream shifted so that he was the one chasing and the footsteps fled ahead of him, and he woke with a sudden sharp inhale. But that’s not right, he told himself, there was no one left to be frightened of me by then. The terrible things I did— they were to other Infected. Everyone still sane escaped. They got out. I set off the alarm and they got out. Didn’t they? He sat up in the dark tent. The sound of crying had dwindled drastically. It was late enough that almost everyone had slipped into at least a shallow doze. There was no way Neil would be able to sleep. Not after the dream, not after realizing he didn’t know what had happened to the people he tried to help. Wallet’s gone. The photo of Shay’s kids was in there. With her address. He wondered if he could go back and find it. The hospital was empty now, wasn’t it? Safe? But there’d be— remnants. Of how he’d lived. What he’d done. The pool, that’s where he’d been, mostly. He could remember wandering the ground floor in slow, confused loops, but he had always come back to the pool. Water had been there. And— food. The cement walls had been a soothing light blue at one point, but the way he remembered them was a deep brown rust. And the shallow end freezing in chunks of thick, algae green water in the dead of winter. Best see if there’s another way to find her. Simon said he knew a Shay. And Elijah said something about a list. Maybe she’s on the list. Won’t be looking for me, but I can at least see if she’s there. Randi and Joan, too. Mom. And Dante… Dante had been in the hospital with him. A floor up and a wing over, that was it. Maybe— maybe he was already here, right in the tent somewhere nearby in the sea of cots. Jesus, he must hate me. Now he knows. He knows I just left him in there. Should find him. Won’t take that long, right? And everyone’s in their cot. I just have to look for him. Go cot by cot. And I’ll tell him, I’ll tell him what happened, why I didn’t save him. He hurried to the end of the row of cots, trying not to trip over the uneven ground. Thank God, thank God I didn’t kill him. Thank God I didn’t go through with it when we thought it was our only option. The lighting was sparse, just small solar garden lights scattered here and there between the cots. And except for the variation in scars, the sleeping faces looked very much the same. Blade of a nose rising out of overstretched skin and the too wide wings of cheekbones on either side, the rest of the face sinking away. Most of them had opted to shave off their hair, and those who hadn’t had the same short crop to salvage what was left. Without most of their hair, without varied clothing, without the soft contours a little fat could make, there was no way to identify them. And except for Danica or Thomas, Neil had no way to know if he should recognize any of them at all. He spent several long minutes hovering over the first sleeping Cured trying to imagine what their face would have looked like, trying to trace some scant hint of familiarity. He gave up, turned to his left to look at the next. The same process, over again. He tried, at least, to memorize a few scars. Maybe he would recognize them in the morning. Seek out these people and ask if they’d been in the hospital. If they’d seen Dante. If they knew what had happened to the people in the cafe. He was most of the way down the first row of cots when the man he was staring at woke up. The man’s eyes opened, blinked. The man screamed as Neil backed away and flung an arm out. It pushed Neil into the cot behind him and jostled the woman on it awake. She cringed.
“Sorry, sorry,” Neil whispered quickly, “I wasn’t trying to scare you.”
Several workers trotted toward them.
“What’re you doing then?” cried the man.
“Just looking for a friend. I didn’t mean to wake you. I just— it’s hard to recognize anyone…” he trailed off watching as the people around them began sitting up.
The man nodded, his alarm bleeding away.
“Sorry,” Neil added again. “Did you come from the hospital?”
“No, man. The mall. Went crazy in the mall. You knew someone— had somebody with you when you got sick?”
“Yeah, my best friend. He got sick before me— I left him. I just left him wandering and sick,” said Neil.
“That’s rough. I’m sorry,” said the man. The workers had reached them and a nurse tugged gently on his elbow.
“Let’s let everyone get some rest,” she said quietly.
He let her pull him to the end of the row. “I don’t think I can sleep right now,” he told her. “I need to find out if my friend was one of the people you woke up from the hospital. And what happened to the other people who were there. The ones who weren’t sick.”
“I have a list of names of the people we recovered, but the list of the people who have joined the City— we just don’t have that here. It changes so often and our resources are thin. If your friend was in the hospital when the Cure team went in, it’ll be on our list, otherwise, you’ll need to wait until you get to the City.”
“It’s a start,” said Neil.
“Will you try and rest
if I get you the list of Cured in the camp?”
“Yes,” he said, “I’ll try.”
She brought him to the small cafeteria area, sitting him at a plastic table and turning on a small camping lamp for him. “Stay here, I’ll get the list.”
It was a man who returned with a thick binder, however. He was dressed differently than most of the people in the tent. Jeans and a heavily patched t-shirt instead of the bland canvas uniform. Heavy stubble shadowed the bottom half of his face and he looked exhausted. “You’re looking for who we found in the hospital?” he asked.
Neil stood up. “Yes. My friend— his name is Dante Owens. If he’s here I’d like to find him.”
The man opened the binder and flipped about halfway through. “Here they are. Not so many of you. I’m sorry. It’s a long time to survive, locked in like you were.” He pointed to the names. After a minute he shook his head. “No Dante Owens.”
“Could I— could I look?” asked Neil. The man slid the binder toward him.
“He might have given a different name once he got here,” said the man gently. “It happens. People are— understandably nervous about what their families will think of them. Sometimes they’re scared to admit their old names or they— think it’s easier if their families continue to believe they’re dead.”
Neil sat down again, reading each name carefully. He flipped back a page knowing it was useless. Every name had a date and a location. The previous pages all had “Freeport Mall” written next to the names. He turned the page again, desperately scanning all the names with “Wing Memorial” next to them. None of them were familiar. He hoped he’d know what kind of name Dante would think up, if he were going to, but he couldn’t be sure. He wanted to believe Dante wouldn’t do that to his family. A few years ago, Neil would have sworn to it. But now— Neil wasn’t the same man he’d been two years ago. Not in any way. Why wouldn’t Dante be different, too?
“Are you— could there be others left in the hospital? He wasn’t down by the therapy pool. I left him by the security—”
“I’m sorry.” The man sat down across from him. “We went room by room. There’s not a living soul left in there.”
Neil nodded. “He could have— were all the exits still boarded up?”
“There were a few that were open. The door near the pool was— was wedged open by— by debris. And one of the doors from the hospital kitchen was unlocked. The parking garage exit where some Immunes escaped a few years ago. So maybe your friend wandered out.”
“Could I go back? To see? I might be able to identify his— his body if—”
The man shook his head. “The governor wants that building after the barrier gets pushed out again. It’ll be cleared out by the time you’re released from the camp. I’ll ask the scav team to look for some identification if that will help, but—”
“He won’t have any. He was in a hospital gown. I’m not even sure where his wallet ended up.”
The man nodded but didn’t respond.
“If he did wander out— do you Cure us if we’re outside or just if we’re in a valuable building?”
“We try to Cure everyone. That’s why the progress is so slow. We’re still less than fifteen miles from the City gates. Every six weeks, we comb a new sector and expand the cleared zone—” he broke off after seeing the lost expression on Neil’s face. “They haven’t told you about any of this yet, have they? Shit. I hate that they do that. Listen, we held the City center— well, not me, the soldiers and some survivors held it, through the worst of the plague. And gradually, as resources began to run out, we had to push farther and farther from our safe haven. So they came up with these groups. Scavenging teams. They’d go in, clear a building and grab supplies. But we lost a lot of people doing that. Especially as we had to go out farther and farther and Infected wandered back over the area we had cleared a few weeks earlier. So the military governor reworked the system. This giant barrier was made. Just a wall on wheels, really. And the scav teams started picking sectors and clearing them in grids. We’d report back when it was safe, and the barrier would be trucked out to where we’d cleared and the City would expand. When the Cure was discovered, we just started shooting you with tranquilizer darts rather than— than bullets. We don’t pull up the barrier until we’re absolutely certain there are no more wandering Infected in that area. We don’t want them wandering into the population center. So your friend may have wandered past our grid area, but if he did, he won’t get the Cure for another six weeks or so, when the camp moves. If he’s out there, we’ll find him eventually. But— people who were outside since the outbreak aren’t— there aren’t many left. Your friend, maybe he left the hospital recently. It’s summer. And it was a wet spring. Lots of available water and mild temperatures. Lots of wildlife if he’s still physically capable of catching it. He’s got a good chance for the next few months. After that—” The man shrugged. “Two years is a long time to go without anyone feeding you. I don’t think— I don’t think anyone in here would make it more than another month, but then, I really thought both the hospital and the mall would be completely empty, so maybe they’d last longer than I expect.”
Neil stared down at the names again, willing something to change. He smoothed the page. “Did you— have you cleared the university hospital yet?”
“You had someone at the university hospital?”
“Yeah, my mother. Maybe my daughter.”
“It was cleared about a year and a half ago. I don’t have the report with me, it was another scav team that did it. But when you get to the City, you’ll be able to find out. They had better records there, before it all went to hell. They had some kind of tip about what was going on fairly early. You’ll at least know what happened. Either way.”
Neil slowly closed the binder. “Thank you,” he said, sliding it back toward the man.
“Wish I had better news for you. Trying to find a couple people from your group, too. My wife’s looking for her old coworkers. She’s hoping some of them survived.”
“Your wife?”
The man nodded. “Yeah. We weren’t even supposed to do Wing Memorial until the next sector. You were just past the grid edge. It was a special request. She used to work there, you know? I told her it wasn’t likely she’d find anyone, but there’s a name or two on that list. You aren’t Tariq Anderson by any chance?”
Neil shook his head. “Sorry. Neil Newton. I didn’t work—”
He was startled as the man broke into a grin and slapped the table. “No shit! You’re Neil? I’m Mateo.” He stuck out his hand. “You don’t know how happy Shay’s going to be to see you—”
“Shay? She got out then, she’s alive?” Neil grasped his hand and Mateo shook it vigorously.
“She is. She and almost thirty more made it out. She says it’s because of you. I’ve heard so much about you and Cody. I know he didn’t make it but— Jesus, man, I’m glad to meet you.”
“You’re— Shay’s your wife?”
“Yeah, yeah, we got hitched about a year ago.”
“Her kids— did she find her kids?”
“Yes, she found the kids. Hers and a bunch more. Her group was one of the first to reach the safe zone the military was trying to establish. They had some kind of guide. Communications officer. Harley? Hannah? Something like that. Ah, I’m sure she’ll tell you the whole—” Mateo broke off as Neil burst into tears and sank back into his chair. “Oh. Oh, man. I’m sorry, I didn’t think— these are never easy.”
Neil swiped at his face with the end of a sleeve and tried to calm down. “Was my daughter with them? Randi. She’s— she’s about this tall. Or she was then.” He held his hand up. “She’s got brown hair and she—”
“I don’t— I wasn’t with her then. Hadn’t met Shay. Most of that original group spread out over the City. I haven’t even met most of them, just heard about it. But she’ll be here in a few days. She was on the scav team for the mall, they should be almost done stripping the p
lace soon and she’ll come back here. She’ll tell you everything, I’m certain. I’ll keep trying her on the radio. She should be in range in a day or two.” Mateo squeezed Neil’s shoulder. “Was your daughter alone?” he asked.
“I hope not,” Neil answered. “I hope her mom found her. She was in the library over at the university.” He was surprised to see Mateo break into a smile again.
“Oh man, do I have good news for you. The university library quarantine was where Shay’s kids were too. It was the first place she went. Things were already breaking down by the time she got out of the hospital, but she made it there. There were still a lot of people there. They’d been moving the Infected to the hospital, so most of who was left by then were Immunes. I don’t know your daughter, I’m sorry, but if she was still at the library when Shay got there, she was safe.”
Before The Cure (Book 2): The Infected Page 7