Before The Cure (Book 2): The Infected

by Gould, Deirdre

  “There’s more, Neil! There’s more!” he kept yelling. Neil stumbled but recovered and Elijah swung the plastic bag of water bottles at the woman’s chest to keep her back. She teetered with the blow but kept coming. “The truck, get in the truck!” He swung again. Neil didn’t look to see if it hit, just raced for the truck cab. He could hear other shrieks echoing around them. He yanked at the cab door. It swung open easily and he had a wave of gratitude for the luck. He hauled himself up the large step and turned back to grab Elijah’s arm. Elijah flinched for an instant, but the Infected woman howled behind him, grabbing the back of his shirt. It tore as Neil yanked him up into the cab. He turned and planted a foot against the woman and pushed her back, swinging the door closed.

  “Lock it!” he yelled. “Lock it so they don’t get in!”

  Neil fumbled with the lock on the driver’s side. “Fuck! Automatic locks,” he muttered, jabbing the button repeatedly. Nothing happened. Jerking shadows raced out from between the other trucks toward them. “What do we do? What do we do?”

  The woman’s hand smacked against Elijah’s window. “Find a rope or a— I dunno, something to tie the doors shut,” said Elijah.

  Neil looked around the cab, too panicked to really know what he was even looking for. The woman’s slaps were joined by another hand. Elijah kept a tight grip on the armrest. “Radio cord, Neil! Pass me the radio cord!” he shouted. It gave Neil something to focus on and he yanked on the long wire above his head. The microphone fell from its hook and clattered across the dash. Elijah grabbed it, wrapping it around the armrest. “Tie the other side to the steering wheel,” he said. “Tie it as tight as you can.”

  Neil grabbed the other end of the cord just as the door yanked and Elijah caught it, slamming it closed again. There were slaps on Neil’s window, too. He ignored it and focused on trying to make the thick cord bend into a knot. “It isn’t going to hold for long,” he said.

  “Just hang on to it. And your door. I just need a few minutes. I’ll find something better,” said Elijah, letting go of his handle. Neil clung to the awkward, too loose knot and pulled on his own door. The Infected hadn’t found his door handle yet. Too dark? He wondered. The smacks still startled him. He could make out five or six faces but couldn’t see if there were more beyond. How many would it take to tip us? More than I saw, wouldn’t it? Where’d they come from? Why are they out here and not inside? A harsh ripping sound erupted behind him and he glanced over his shoulder. Elijah grimly tore the dusty blanket he was holding again. The cord jerked under Neil’s hand and he tugged to slam the door closed again.

  “Hurry,” he said.

  “Almost there,” said Elijah. He leaned over Neil, wrapping a thick strip of blanket around Neil’s armrest, then the other. The top of a head smashed into the window and then away. Neil tried not to flinch. Elijah seemed almost calm, tying the ends of the blanket strip tightly together. “Let me do one more before you let go,” he told Neil, pulling another strip through the handle.

  “How many are there?” asked Neil.

  “Too dark to see very far, but I can make out— uh, eight I think?”

  “They won’t be able to tip it will they?”

  “They’d have to work together to do that. They’ll turn on each other once they forget about us.”

  “We’re just going to let them kill each other?”

  Elijah pulled the blanket strip tight and tied it. “You can let go now. Come in the back. If they don’t see us, they’ll forget in a while.”

  “And start attacking each other.”

  “Yeah. We both know what they’re going to do. Come on, Neil, come in the back.”

  “Can’t we stop it?” Neil asked, reluctantly releasing his grip on the handle and letting the radio cord slip away from the steering wheel.

  “How? By keeping them scrabbling for us? And then what?”

  “If we had taken the Cure we could have helped them.”

  Elijah gently steered him toward the rear of the cab by the shoulder. “I know. And there’s enough food here we could have done it. The one who grabbed us, she seemed in relatively decent shape. They probably would have survived the process. But we don’t have it. And we’re stuck in here. So we have to make a choice with things as they are, not the way we wish they could be. We have no way to drive them off. We have no food and about two days’ worth of water. It’s going to broil in here once the sun comes up again. Nobody is going to happen along with the Cure or a way to distract them. So all we can do is hope they get tired of trying to get in here and wander away. We know what they’re going to do. Once they eat, they’ll get slow. Maybe sleep. Maybe just walk away. Probably back to wherever they were. Must be a water source nearby that they are hanging around for and they look solid enough that they must have some kind of food otherwise this place would be empty. So. We wait. Try to sleep.”

  Neil sat down on the narrow bunk. Elijah pulled a water bottle from the plastic bag. “Let’s get cleaned up,” he said and handed Neil the bottle.

  “Cleaned up? Are you hurt?” asked Neil.

  Elijah shrugged. “Just a little road rash from the fall. Nothing serious. I meant— I meant your mouth, brother.”

  The metallic taste of the blood had almost faded, but Neil could feel the already tacky crust of it around his lips and in his stubble. “Oh, God. What did I do?” He twisted open the bottle of water in a frenzy and filled his mouth before spitting it into the corner of the cab. “It didn’t work. The Cure didn’t work. You have to put me out there with them—”

  “Breathe, Neil,” said Elijah. He dampened a torn strip of blanket and handed it to Neil. “The Cure worked fine. You aren’t sick. You aren’t going to change back.”

  “I already have,” Neil cried, scrubbing at his mouth with the blanket. “I bit her. I bit her. I wanted—”

  “No.” Elijah grasped his shoulders to stop him. “You didn’t want to eat her, Neil. I promise. That’s not what that was. That was instinct. It was your body protecting you the same way it did every day for two years. Just— muscle memory. You aren’t Infected. Just scarred.”

  “How do you know? Have you done this? Is this something that happens to us after we’re Cured?”

  “I haven’t. But that doesn’t mean—”

  “Shit, shit, it’s me, it’s me, I’m bad.”

  “Neil. Neil!” Elijah shouted over the groans of the Infected outside and grabbed the rag from Neil’s hand to stop him from scrubbing his face raw. “I haven’t done this because I haven’t had to. The Cured haven’t had to. They’re all in the City. They rarely encounter other Infected anymore. That’s on purpose. Even on the scav team, I had other weapons. I never had to rely on physical strength to survive after I was Cured. You just did what you had to in the moment. She’s not dead and neither are we.”

  “I could have— I could have shoved her away or kicked her or— I had her pinned. She couldn’t have done anything. Why did I bite her? I must have wanted to.”

  “It’s over. We’re okay. It was adrenaline and fear. You have to calm down. Just breathe for a minute.”

  “What if I do it again? What if I get too angry or— what if I did it to you? Or— Jesus, what if I did it to Joan or Randi?”

  “You won’t. You won’t ever do that to any of us, because none of us are going to attack you.”

  “What if I liked doing that? What if I enjoyed hurting her?”

  Elijah sat down beside him on the bunk. “Did you?” he asked, keeping his voice neutral.

  “I don’t— I can’t remember feeling anything. Except terrified. Maybe that’s worse.”

  “I think it was just your body reacting to a threat. I don’t think you’re bad. And I don’t think it’s going to happen again. You didn’t enjoy it, or you wouldn’t be such a mess now.”

  “I don’t want to kill anyone.”

  Elijah touched his shoulder. “Maybe we should turn around. Go back to the City until you’re ready for all this.”
<
br />   “We can’t. I have to find them.”

  “We’re going to do our best, but out here— things aren’t safe. There’s going to be more people who try to grab us. Some are going to be sick. Some aren’t. Well— not with the Plague anyway. And some, maybe, aren’t going to be people that want to hurt us, but they’re going to die because of decisions one of us made. It’s okay to turn around. It’s okay to go back to the City. No one will blame you or make you ashamed—”

  “I can’t, Elijah.”

  “Then you need to be prepared to face something like this again. Maybe that just means we scout better before we go into something. Or that we settle down somewhere a lot longer before dark. Or that we have weapons out and ready to use. Or that I know I need to watch my own back.”

  “No, no, I’m not going to hesitate if you’re being hurt. You don’t have to think that.”

  “I don’t. But if I should be ready—”

  “No. We’re out here together so we can protect each other.”

  “Then— I can’t promise you that you aren’t going to have to hurt anyone. Or kill anyone. I don’t want to either, but we don’t live in the world you remember. There’s a chance that we might not even make it out of this truck without having to hurt someone.”

  Neil was quiet, listening to the roars and snarls and thumps of the Infected outside the cab. “I don’t want to be a monster anymore,” he said, at last, trying to hide the waver in his voice.

  Elijah slung an arm around his shoulders. “Neither do I, brother.” They sat in the dark cab while the Infected tore each other apart outside.

  Neil woke to the sun blazing through the truck’s windshield. The side windows were streaked with blood, the light glowing pink through the mess. He turned to find Elijah, wincing at the ache in his neck from sleeping in the bucket seat. Elijah was still passed out on the narrow bunk. Neil thought about letting him sleep. He peered through the smears on the passenger side. He could just make out their bikes. He couldn’t see any Infected, but he couldn’t be certain they weren’t just wandering down the side of the semi or around a corner or underneath the trailer. He shuddered to picture the last one. That’s exactly where I’d be in this heat. Probably sleeping off the food. Don’t call it food. Don’t think of it as food. He turned away from the window. Best if they took their chance now. The Infected were quiet at the very least. Likely slow. If he and Elijah waited, that could change. Rapidly. He touched Elijah’s shoulder and waited for the little, startled gasp.

  “I think they’re gone,” Neil whispered. “We should go now, before they get hungry again.”

  Elijah sat up. “Can you see the bikes?”

  “Yes. Well— somewhat. There’s a mess. But I can’t see anyone around them.”

  “Then it doesn’t matter if they’re still prowling. We make a dash for the bikes and we’ll beat them to it. If we get separated, meet at the tolls. That’s far enough to lose them.” Elijah stretched, then began untying the blanket strips. “Are you ready?” he asked calmly.

  “Yes,” said Neil, picking up the plastic bag of water bottles.

  “Straight to the bikes. No matter what.” Elijah pulled the loose strips from the armrests. Neil opened the truck door and jumped down. The tar was wet and scattered bloody lumps fanned in an arc toward the front of the truck. “Go!” hissed Elijah behind him and Neil remembered to move. He sprinted to his bike. It lay just where he’d dumped it. So did Elijah’s, the arc of splattered peanut butter baking to the pavement in the morning sun. They were out on the highway again before Neil even thought about the woman he’d bitten again.

  “Hey,” he called to Elijah, just as the green overhang of the empty toll booths came into view, “What are we going to do about the Infected?”

  Elijah slowed to a stop. “Do?”

  “Yeah. The ones at the plaza. What are we going to do? Is there— I dunno, some way to get word back to Shay? She said they talked to people on the radio.”

  “She does. And people in the City do. But this plaza’s a long way out. And I only saw a half dozen or so. The City’s not going to send a Cure camp out this far unless we find a lot more Infected or resources.”

  “So— what? Those people back there, they’re worthless?”

  “No. It isn’t like that. Their lives aren’t worthless and neither are the Infected’s lives who are closer to the City. But there are only so many workers, only so many Cure camps and supplies. If even one of the smaller camps came out here— say the one attached to the scouts— it would take them a lot longer than it took us. The roads are in bad shape and even the small camps have a few trucks. Every day they are out clearing roads instead of curing Infected, people are dying. And once they got here, they’d still have to devote six weeks to recovery. For half a dozen Infected. In the meantime, there are hundreds dying of starvation or exposure or just from battling each other elsewhere.”

  “Then why wouldn’t they let us take the darts? It wouldn’t have cost them anything and—”

  “Because it’s dangerous. Could we have helped these people? Maybe. Probably. They seemed healthier than a lot of Infected we’ve come across recently. I could manage to keep them alive until they woke up. And the two of us could likely feed them. But the other stuff— remember your mouth? Those rotten teeth might have killed you without treatment. I don’t know dentistry. You don’t know dentistry. And we could try to treat other wounds, maybe we’d even get lucky. But there’s the mental adjustment, too. Neither of us is ready to help them through that. There’s teaching them to exist in the world now. We’ve got maybe three months before the snow. And there’s— there’s the politics, Neil. I know it shouldn’t be that way, but it is. Whoever controls the Cure, controls what’s left of the world. If the guy in charge were— anyone else, he’d be directing Cure doses distributed to anyone who can realistically be expected to help Infected. But he’s— he uses the Cure in lots of ways. To clear resources the City needs. To save settlements who pledge loyalty to the City from being attacked by nearby Infected. To— to make people who are reluctant to join the City more willing to go along. So unless we find— I don’t know, another fully stocked hospital or somewhere with a lot more Infected, he’s not going to help them. And asking the scav teams to just give it to us— Mateo was right. The governor would hunt down his own people, Shay included, to keep control. We can’t save those people back there. We did the best thing we could do, leave them alone and hope they stay healthy until the City changes or decides to come this way.”

  Neil looked back down the road. The service plaza was long out of sight.

  “I don’t like it either,” said Elijah, “but like I said, we have to make our choices based on where we are, not where we wished we could be. You think you’re the monster because you bit someone to defend yourself. The Immunes can be monsters too.”

  22

  They had to abandon the highway just before the state line. The bridge had collapsed and only the jagged piles remained, one dangling a severely twisted beam.

  Elijah stared at the dull, green metal wreckage in the river below. “Damn,” said Neil, getting off the bike to pull out a map. “This is the only one that doesn’t open for boats. I thought for sure this one was the best bet. The other two bridges go right through town. If they’re even crossable.” He opened the map looking for one of the other bridges trying to figure out how much it was going to alter their route.

  “I don’t think this was a storm. Steel doesn’t twist like that because of some rain or wind. I think this might have been on purpose. Keep people from crossing. Maybe they thought they were keeping the plague out. Or maybe it happened later, trying to defend something. I doubt the other bridges are going to be intact. At least not any of them that are within biking distance for the day.”

  Neil glanced up with a frown. “Well, we need to try. Joan went this direction, one way or another. She would have come to this bridge first, but if it was already gone, she would have tried the other
two. Especially if they were low on gas or were on foot by now. We’ll try the Sarah Long first. It’s the closest one. It’s only a few streets over, we’ll be across before evening.”

  Elijah wheeled his bike to the edge of the road, trying to look down into the town. “We don’t know what’s down there. Someone who has enough firepower to blow up a bridge and is desperate or crazy enough to try— we don’t want to mess with that. Could be survivors. And they might not be friendly.”

  “I have to know, Elijah. Maybe they’re waiting for me at the cabin, but if I take the long way around, go all the way up to the next major bridge and we get there and no one is living there— I’m never going to forgive myself. I have to go the way she went. I’ve got to try.”

  Elijah backed away from the edge and turned to face him. “We don’t know which way she went.”

  “I have to look. She’d have come this way. This was the way we always took. And if it was this way when she got here, she would have gone for the closest crossing.”

  “Or she would have gone for the safest. She had your daughter with—”

  “Joan doesn’t know how to deal with this! We weren’t equipped for this— she’s a sales clerk for a food distributor, not some paramilitary survival expert—”

  “She wasn’t, when you knew her. Things change. The world changed. You’ve been sick for two years, you have to remember. She’s been out here longer than either of us. If she’s alive, she knows how things work now. She’s not going to take a stupid risk, especially with other people relying on her. I’ll go down there with you, you know that by now, but I think we need to be ready for whatever we find. And you need to start thinking about what you’re going to do if she didn’t—” He stopped, shook his head. “Let’s just plan out how we’re going to go so if we need to get out of there quickly, we aren’t turning down some blind alley.”