Before The Cure (Book 2): The Infected

by Gould, Deirdre

  “Everything okay?” Elijah asked from the door.

  “It’s— They put them in little cells. Where’d they take them? Who came up with this?”

  Elijah climbed the steps. “Oh,” he said, seeing the seats.

  “Do you know what this is?” asked Neil.

  “No. But my guess would probably be similar to yours. This wasn’t from the City, I don’t think. Come on, nothing good to be seen in here. Your little girl isn’t on this one.”

  “Yeah. Yeah, you’re right.” Neil followed him out of the bus.

  “Let’s get that water and get the hell out of here,” said Elijah. He wheeled his bike up to the entrance and parked it next to the picnic table beside the door. He turned to Neil. “Shay had us do these in groups of six. We’ve only got us. But the rules still work. They’ll keep us safe. First rule is nothing is more important than you and me. Not even water. Got it?”

  “Sure.”

  “That means even if you’ve found the holy grail, if it means one of us gets killed getting it out of here, you let it go. We can always return when we’re better prepared or find supplies somewhere else. Always.”

  “I understand,” Neil reassured him.

  “Then the second rule is you’re more important than me.”

  “No, I—”

  Elijah shook his head. “No, listen. I mean you’re more important to you, and I’m more important to me. If we get in trouble and it’s a choice between leaving me and making it out or staying and we both get injured or worse, you get out. I know you want to argue, but before you do— it’s as much for my sake as yours. You get out, you might be able to find a way to help once you aren’t struggling to survive. That’s exactly what happened with Lucia and the dogs I told you about. She escaped, found help, and came back for me. Obviously, we aren’t going to happen across a scav team here, but there might be other ways to save each other. It doesn’t happen if you don’t take the chance to escape. Okay?”

  “Okay.” Neil didn’t like it, but what Elijah had said made sense.

  “Third rule, we go room by room. Should be easy in here, just work our way around. Even if we don’t think it’s going to have what we need because we have to check for threats. Last rule, only take what we came for. Water. Anything else is a distraction and a burden if we need to cut out. We get the water, we get back here. No snacks. No books. No— I dunno, no weird souvenirs. Just the water. If we need something else, we’ll make another plan and go back in after we get the water. I know it seems counterintuitive, but these trips need to be quick and direct. If we get the water back out here, it’ll still be somewhere safe. Safeish. So if we have to retreat, it’ll still be waiting for us. If we stop to browse, we risk losing the water and whatever else we were carrying. If we get separated, we meet at the end of the exit ramp.”

  “What’s the plan if someone’s in there?” Neil asked.

  “Talk. If they’re sane, maybe they’ll trade. Most survivors will. And they didn’t set up any defenses out here or choke points. Most of the horror stories I’ve heard from the scavvers start with some kind of trap. Doesn’t mean there isn’t one inside, so don’t let your guard down. Either way, the best thing to do is try to talk sense.”

  “And if they’re Infected?”

  “Run. If we get to the bikes, we lose them. You remember how easy it was to make them forget you were there. A distracting noise, a flashing light. There are two of us, if we help each other distract them, we’ll be able to outmaneuver them unless we’re overrun. Hopefully, we see that coming.”

  Neil glanced back at the crowded parking lot. “Elijah— this is an in-between place. Nobody just comes to a rest area and stays. There’s going to be someone in there.”

  “Probably. We’re going to try. I’m not sure what we’ll find. You’re right that people don’t live at rest stops, but it’s just as unlikely that everyone started displaying symptoms of the Plague at the same time. I think something else must have happened here. Just not sure what.” He pulled his flashlight from his pack, shaking it to charge it. “You ready?”

  “I think so,” said Neil. Elijah opened the large glass door and stepped inside.

  The interior was dimly lit by the long skylights that lined the middle portion of the building and a set of glass doors that led to the gas station. Neil could make out the large fast-food signs at the kiosks on the edges of the large space, but not much more. Tables that had once neatly lined the dining area were piled up in a semi-circle against the far wall. Three vending machines were tipped against the barricade of tables. There were bones scattered over the empty tile where the tables should have been. Elijah clicked his flashlight on and swept it over toward the barricaded wall. He stopped on a large sign that had been stuck to a support column. The familiar blue and white logo of the CDC reflected the bright light. It was a list of directions for being processed through a checkpoint.

  “Border checkpoint? We’re still thirty miles from the nearest border,” whispered Neil.

  Elijah laughed softly. “A few weeks ago you thought that was a quick trip,” he said. “It still would have been when they put this up. And I doubt it was the only one. Just the biggest.” He nudged Neil. “Come on. The faster we find that water, the better.”

  “Yeah,” Neil agreed reluctantly. “Guess it’s too late to help whatever happened here.”

  Elijah swung his light around to the right. “Souvenir shop first, we’ll work our way around the circle.”

  “There’s not going to be water in there—”

  “Doesn’t matter, remember? Each room until we find what we need. We skip one and something could sneak up on us from behind.”

  “It’s a circle—”

  “Just— stick to the rules, okay? They work, brother. They always work.”

  “All right, we’ll go store by store.” He followed Elijah into the little nook that held the souvenir shop. The postcard racks lay on their sides, large fans of cards splayed out around them. There were dark spots of dried blood on the sweatshirts hanging from the wall. Elijah swung around the counter to look behind it. He pulled a plastic bottle from beneath the counter. It had about two inches of scummy water in the bottom.

  “We could boil it if we have to,” he said.

  “It’s going to take a lot of partial bottles to get us through the next few days,” Neil said skeptically. “Hand me a bag. I’ll start putting what we find in it.”

  “There’ll be more in the restaurants. Must be. There’s no way they would have had a captive audience of people waiting to be cleared at the checkpoint without having a ton of food and water to sell them.” Elijah dropped the bottle in a large plastic bag and handed it to Neil.

  “It was the beginning of a pandemic.”

  “There’s always money to be made in a crisis if you don’t care about how you look after it’s over.”

  “They didn’t feed us in the hospital. The people guarding it, I mean. Couldn’t be bothered even to tell us what was going on.”

  “Course not. There was no profit in it. They assumed you were already dead. If they’d let you go or kept you alive to talk, you’d only scare people. After everything you and Shay have told me about that place, I’m still kind of shocked they didn’t burn the place down with you inside. I’ve heard they did that to a few other places. But here, not everyone was sick. And some were going to remember their treatment. At least, I think that was kind of assumed at the time. It’s what I would’ve thought if I hadn’t already been sick myself. There’ll be supplies here. If another survivor hasn’t already grabbed them.” He came out from behind the counter.

  “I didn’t realize you were so cynical.”

  “Realistic. That’s all. Used to be, anyway. I don’t think we have to be that way anymore. Don’t get me wrong, life’s hard and it’ll stay hard probably until your little girl’s got grown-up kids of her own. But I’d guess that using people or abandoning them isn’t going to be an easy shortcut anymore. There just
aren’t enough of us left. You run out of friends out here— or in the City, you’d have a rough time. Very rough. We need each other. And that gives me some hope.”

  Neil shook his head and followed Elijah out of the souvenir shop. “I don’t know how that gives you hope. The world might have changed but people’s natures didn’t.”

  Elijah smiled. “Which one of us is cynical?” he asked. He lifted the counter hatch in the deli and walked into the small prep area. The coolers let out a noxious stench when he opened the sealed door but except for some mummified french fries, were empty.

  “Check the kitchen and the storeroom,” suggested Neil, pushing the swinging door to the rear. Something glass shattered on the other side and a series of thumps rattled the door as things fell behind it. Neil swore. Elijah whirled around to look behind them. Nothing came running and after several seconds, Neil pushed the door gently again. A few more thumps and he pushed harder as something heavy slid slowly across path of the door. The sharp tang of vinegar overtook the fetid smell from the cooler.

  “What’d you find?” asked Elijah, still nervously eyeing the silent center of the plaza.

  “Pickles, I think,” Neil grunted and gave the door one more shove with his shoulder. It swung open enough for him to slide inside. He shook his own flashlight and shone it through the wedge of open air before wriggling through. Stacks of boxes cut the small storeroom in half. More had been blocking the door and lay in a jumbled pile beyond it. He could see splashes of dried condiments coating the floor behind the wall of boxes and let his light glide over the boxes. There were large holes in almost every one, shredded cardboard and plastic poking through the cavities. He stepped further in. Broken glass crunched under his shoe and he looked down. There was the pickle jar. And a body. Several bodies. Bones now.

  “What’s in there?” asked Elijah from behind him.

  “I don’t— food. And people. I don’t understand what happened. They’re surrounded by supplies…” Neil stepped around an outstretched foot toward the boxes. He tried peering through the holes in the boxes.

  Elijah slid through the gap. “Doesn’t matter brother. They’re beyond our help. Let’s find a case of water and get out of here.” He bent over one of the tumbled boxes and started tearing it open.

  “I think these might be bullet holes,” realized Neil.

  “Yeah.” Elijah shoved the box he’d opened away and started on the next.

  “But— why? If they were sick, there was that bus sitting right outside.”

  “Not everyone would have willingly gotten on it. Would you?”

  “I— probably,” he admitted.

  “Help me with the boxes.” Neil pulled one of the boxes down from the wall. Cans of jalapenos. He set it aside. “You wouldn’t have, you know,” added Elijah.

  “Gotten on the bus? Depends on what they told me.”

  “They would have told you as little as possible. Jesus, the supplies in this one room would make a month’s worth of chips. Maybe more. Haven’t seen a jar of peanut butter in almost three months.” He sighed. “But that’s not what we came in for. Remember the rules, Eli,” he told himself and pushed a case of peanut butter jars across the floor. It knocked a bone loose with a rattle. “Sorry,” he murmured, putting the bone gently back with the rest of the body. “You might have made it through the processing line out there— if there ever was a real one, but you’d have got suspicious before you got on the bus. Might’ve gotten the other people in line to rebel with you. Probably what happened here.”

  “I’m not that brave,” said Neil.

  “Bullshit. Maybe that’s what you think of yourself, but you proved yourself wrong in the hospital. You were trying to break quarantine—”

  “I was trying to save my child.”

  “There were probably some parents in the crowd of people who came through here. Kids too. Probably some that were facing being separated. Maybe some who just didn’t believe what the workers were telling them. Or didn’t think it would matter if they didn’t go along because they didn’t feel sick, not until the very end.”

  “I just went along with Shay—”

  “That’s not how she tells it. Besides, even if you did, it doesn’t mean you wouldn’t have been this side of that box wall. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it was after. Maybe it was a fight between survivors trying to grab as many supplies as possible.”

  “No, then all this stuff would be gone. This must have happened when supplies weren’t a problem.” He shoved aside another box without opening it. Far too light to be water.

  “Maybe some of the people in charge got upset with how the other people in charge were treating the Infected then. Or maybe some of them got sick themselves. Doesn’t matter. Maybe it’s better not to know.”

  “It bothers me. Not knowing things.” Neil tugged on a heavy box. The contents sloshed and he tore the cardboard. Soup cans. “Not having some kind of— of reason.”

  “Ah, you’re going to be bothered a lot these days. It seems to be the defining feature of all this. Not knowing what happened. Not knowing why it happened. To any of us. Those scientists they found, the ones who admitted to making the Plague, even they don’t really know why. Just an accident. Just— shit luck. Bad things happen for no reason sometimes. Or worse, for a shitty, stupid reason. I promise you, knowing’s not going to make you feel better. The only thing that will is making something good happen next time instead.”

  “But that’s— knowing prevents it from happening again.”

  Elijah stood up, stretched his back. “Does it? If it were an honest mistake, sure. Look at those boxes. How many bullet holes do you think are in there? Fifty? A hundred? More? This wasn’t a mistake. If there were any lessons here, it was how to control whatever happened more efficiently. Not to avoid it.” He moved to another stack of boxes. “But the things that made this possible aren’t around anymore. I mean— the tools are there. The guns, the bus. But the system has mostly fallen apart.” He stopped and turned toward Neil. “You know— maybe that’s why I hated the City so much. It was trying to hold on to the old way of doing things. The same people in charge, the same way of thinking about rules, about people. We don’t have to do that, you said that. We don’t have to be that way anymore. There’s no lesson here for you and me because we’re never going to try to isolate people or coop them up.” Elijah fell silent, opening one box after another. Neil finally found a case of water ten minutes later. Three of the bottles were empty, a bullet hole went straight through the plastic.

  “Here’s some. Enough for the next two days or so,” he said, putting the remaining bottles into the plastic bag.

  “Good. Let’s go. We’re not going to have much sun left to get to the toll booths.”

  “Shouldn’t we take some of the food?”

  “Rules.”

  “I know but we haven’t seen anyone. And we are going to run out. We don’t know what’s ahead of us.” He watched Elijah hesitate and eye the case of peanut butter, obviously craving it. “Besides that peanut butter is worth the hassle of carrying it,” he added.

  Elijah grimaced and then relented. “One jar. Those things are like five pounds a piece.”

  “Four pounds. But if we’re talking about calories and protein and—”

  “I know. One jar.” He picked it up himself. “Let’s go before the light’s gone.” He pushed the door wide open now that the pile of boxes was cleared from behind it and walked back into the plaza. The light was even dimmer than Neil expected. Even the restaurant signs were oblong shadows and the barricade of tables just a hulking mass of dark against the back wall.

  Neil opened the glass doors to the parking lot when something clattered behind them. Elijah gave him a gentle push, even as Neil tried to look back.

  “Go,” he urged. Neil darted to his bike and slung the plastic bag of water over the handlebars. Elijah was right behind him. “Head for the exit ramp,” he whispered. He was still holding the peanut butter but didn’t sto
p to open his pack, tucking it under one arm and taking off. Neil pedaled behind him, headed for the far ramp. They’d just passed the gas pumps and entered the truck lot when the growling and screaming started. Shit, shit, shit, thought Neil, concentrating on Elijah’s back in the twilight. There were fewer vehicles in the truck lot, three or four semis and half a dozen smaller delivery trucks and cars with trailers. A figure leaped out from in front of the cab and grabbed at Elijah. Neil shouted far too late and Elijah was down, toppled sideways, skidding across the tar and away from his bike. The peanut butter jar cracked and splattered over the pavement. Neil dumped his own bike, sprinting for Elijah. The other figure was going to beat him there.

  “Get away from him!” he roared, desperate to prevent the attack. He was unsurprised when the figure didn’t turn at the sound. It lunged for Elijah, who had rolled to his back after finally coming to a halt and raised his arms to halt the Infected. Neil reached them just as the Infected’s weight landed squarely over Elijah. Neil rammed the figure’s side with his shoulder, barely thinking about it. The figure toppled but scrabbled back. Elijah kicked himself back and out of the path. Neil stepped between the Infected and Elijah, unsure what to do, but not willing to let the figure tackle Elijah again. “Get away,” he repeated, not even sure what he was saying. The figure sprang at him instead and he found himself grappling with a lean, muscular woman. It took him a few seconds to realize she was stronger than he was.

  She snapped her teeth together and growled, pushing him backward. He tripped over Elijah’s legs and went down. The Infected was above him. She got an arm loose and took a swipe at his face, her filthy broken nails digging divots into his chin. The scratches burned somewhere in the back of his brain, but it was distant, subsumed by a hot burst of adrenaline. She lunged forward and he knocked her face aside with his arm just before she bit. She growled again. Neil twisted until she was on the pavement and then snapped his own head forward. His teeth sank into her shoulder. He thought he heard Elijah yelling, but didn’t stop until the bitter metallic taste of blood hit his tongue. He let go in shock. It had happened without him really thinking about it. Some long-rehearsed habit kicking in. Elijah didn’t waste any time, dragging him up off the woman who snarled and jumped up from the pavement, a thick pulsing stream of blood flowing down her arm. Elijah shoved him.