The Cure

by Glenn Cooper

  She ran a finger over the spines of the books she’d brought and settled on a battered copy of a childhood favorite. The heroine of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Francie Nolan, had always been one of Mandy’s beacons, a guiding star for what a strong woman can endure and overcome. Mandy’s life had been pretty easy up till this point, nothing like Francie’s, but moving forward, she had a hunch she would need a bracing dose of Francie’s tenacity.

  She clipped on her little booklight, settled onto her sofa, and read until the book fell from her hands onto her chest.

  *

  When it was dark, and he was certain that the NKs weren’t coming back down their street, Shaun slipped on his bug-mask, clipped his machete to his belt, and grabbed a flashlight.

  “Where you going?” Boris asked.

  “Just want to take a walk is all.”

  “Why?”

  “Feel like it.”

  “Shaun?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I got kinda pathetic today.”

  “Don’t sweat it, man.”

  “I think it’s because my wrist still hurts. It threw me off my game.”

  “No doubt. Want me to change the bandage?”

  “Nah, maybe later.”

  Shaun proceeded with purpose. He went across the street, straight to the blue house with the chain-link fence where he’d found the peanut-butter-and-jelly spoon. The one with an infected mother. The one with a missing kid. The one where he left all the food.

  He cautiously went in through the half-open front door, not remembering if they had left it that way. He shone his flashlight around the front room and called out.

  “Anyone here? It’s Shaun from across the street. I ain’t gonna hurt no one.”

  He looked around the house. There was no sign of the mother, but in the kitchen, things had changed around since he was last there. There were crackers on the counter that weren’t there before, and the chicken that had been in the fridge was now on the kitchen table, all bones. A peanut butter jar was also on the table next to an empty jar of jam. He thought he heard a small sound and sat down on a kitchen chair.

  “You know how I like to eat my PB and J? I dip a spoon in the peanut butter first and then I dip it in the jam and then I stick it straight in my mouth. When I was a kid and I did that—my mama used to yell at me. I’m growed up now, but I still think about the way my mama used to go nut-balls when I did that.”

  He heard the sound again, took off his green mask, and pointed his flashlight.

  “Your mama go crazy when you dip your PB and J like that?” he asked.

  The broom-closet door creaked open and a little girl in pigtails, jeans, and a T-shirt poked her head around the corner.

  “What’s your name?” he asked.

  “Keisha.”

  “That’s cool. How old are you?”

  “Almost eight.”

  “Yeah? Figured you for at least eight and a half.”

  She thought that was funny.

  “I’m Shaun. Where’s your momma at?”

  “She went away.”

  “Through the front door?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And she didn’t come back?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  “Well, even though you’re a big girl and all, you shouldn’t be stayin’ on your own. If you like you can hang out with me and my friend, Boris. Would you like that? We got lots of jam.”

  “Okay.”

  “There’s but one thing, Keisha. Boris cries a lot. If you call him fat—even though he’s real fat—you’ll make him cry.”

  “I won’t call him fat.”

  “Then you two are gonna be real good friends.”

  29

  Ed Villa’s farmstead was about five miles from Edison’s. Villa’s father and grandfather had been farmers who grew soybeans, wheat, and tobacco. His father wanted him to study agriculture in college, but Villa went off to Penn State and gravitated toward business instead. He never seriously had any intention of getting his hands dirty. When his father dropped dead onto a row of soybeans a year shy of his fiftieth birthday, Villa sold off acreage and started buying local businesses. He had a head for numbers and got wealthy—by Dillingham and Clarkson standards—mostly from a chain of urgent care centers—docs-in-boxes—in the western part of the state.

  Villa was generous to his own, and every time one of his four sons got married, he built them a house on his land, and in that way, the Villa farmstead had become a little village unto itself.

  Villa hated government and loved self-sufficiency. At church socials he prattled on about the need to take care of you and yours if society went to hell in a handbasket.

  “When push comes to shove, you’ve got to help yourself,” he would say. “Government’s not going to help you. All government does is suck at your teat.”

  Edison recalled a few years back, asking Villa at a potluck dinner, “So Ed, with all this prepping you’re doing, what disasters do you think are gonna be happening to us?”

  “Well, I am not a seer,” he had said, “but you got financial disasters of all sorts that can happen, you got your solar flares wiping out all our electronics, you got your weird diseases, you got your foreign invasions, you got asteroids. One of them’s bound to get us.”

  It pained Edison that the jackass had been right.

  The night before the raid, Edison huddled with Joe and Mickey.

  “What’s the chance Ed and his people are gonna be sick up there?” he asked.

  “I’d say it’s low,” Joe said. “At the first talk about the virus, he would have locked that place down. No one in, no one out. I’ve spent enough time with his dipshit son, Billy, to know what’s going on inside Ed’s head.”

  “I gotta agree,” Mickey said, tugging on a beer. “I used to knock around with Davy Villa. That’s the way old-man Villa thinks. They’re probably as healthy as horses up on that hill.”

  “If they’re healthy, they’re going to be dangerous,” Joe said.

  “Well, that’s okay,” Edison said. “We got a Trojan horse.”

  Mickey’s classical education was wanting, and it was clear that he had no idea what Edison was talking about.

  “You know, our horse that’s about forty-foot long, gets about five miles to a gallon?” Joe said.

  Mickey emitted a “Huh?”

  “Son, you’re not too bright, are you?” Edison said. “I’m talking about Pastor Snider’s bus.”

  *

  Edison climbed the stairs, lighting his way with his kerosene lamp. He kept the master bedroom locked to keep Gretchen Mellon from wandering off and doing mischief or worse. When he let himself in, she was sitting on one of the floor mattresses with a small battery-lamp beside her. She had Cassie on her lap and when she saw him, she stopped brushing the little girl’s hair and gave him a hateful stare. He had stopped letting Brittany sleep with Cassie even if he was in the same room. It just took a few seconds for something to go wrong. Maybe Cassie would get hungry in the middle of the night or mad about something. Maybe he wouldn’t wake up fast enough to stop her. Of course, Brittany threw fits when he took Cassie up to her mother at bedtime, but he would tell her it was time to put away her toys.

  “Is she my toy?”

  “Yeah, she’s like one of your dolls only she’s alive.”

  Delia Edison had pride of place on the marital bed.

  None of them had gone to sleep yet.

  “What do you want?” Gretchen asked.

  “Don’t give me a fucking attitude, okay? I’m checking up. That’s what I do.”

  “You haven’t let me see Alyssa and Ryan. How come?”

  As they spoke, Joe was with Alyssa Mellon inside Pastor Snider’s bus. Edison expected that Joe would be up half the night with her. Ryan was locked in the hay barn with the Snider boys. They’d been fed well enough, so he figured they were all still in one piece.

  “They’re all fine. Don’t worry ’bout them.”

  “Can I se
e them tomorrow?”

  “Depends.”

  “On what?”

  “On whether you’ve made good progress. Show me what they’ve learned.”

  She stood up, pulling her long nightdress to her throat. “Ask your wife her name.”

  He held his lamp up so Delia could see his face. “Honey, what is your name?”

  “Delia.”

  Gretchen pushed her. “Say all of it, Delia.”

  Delia stuck her lip out.

  “Say, m-m-m—”

  Delia sparked. “My name is Delia.”

  Edison said, “Yes!” and leaned over to try and kiss her.

  She pulled away.

  “Why’d she do that?” he asked.

  “She doesn’t know who you are, Blair. That’s why.”

  “You going to teach her?”

  “I can teach her your name, but she’s not going to remember who you are to her. I can’t teach her that.”

  “Do the boys know their names?”

  “They do. Go to their room and see.”

  “It’s a start,” he said. “Beginning tomorrow I want you to teach them that I’m their pa and that they’re Edisons and they live on a cattle farm. And teach them more words. I want to be able to talk to them and have them answer me. Get off your butt, Gretchen, and I’ll let you see your other kids.”

  Edison went back down to the kitchen and got a snack-size bag of mini chocolate-chip cookies. He put a key into the padlock that he’d screwed into the frame of his office door. Trish Mellon was on his sofa bed, naked, the way he’d left her. He placed the lamp on his desk so that it cast a nice yellow glow onto her creamy, twenty-something flesh. She didn’t know who she was. She didn’t know that someone named Craig had been her husband. She didn’t know that he was dead, or what being dead meant. She only knew that she was hungry and that there was something tasty in the bag called cookies. And she knew how to get them because Edison had taught her that.

  He tore the bag open and unzipped his fly.

  *

  The morning was crisp as an apple and sunglasses-bright. Edison got up early to feed the livestock and then the boys in the barn. It struck him that the cattle and the men were behaving about the same. They all moved to the sights and sounds of food; they all responded to a soothing voice. He checked on the generator powering his dry-aging barn. The gauge was down to three-eighths full. He needed more diesel. If he found enough, he could think about powering the main house, but that was for another day. The meat he had hanging was aged enough to be stable. With the naturally cooling autumn temperatures, it wasn’t going to rot before they could eat it. He switched the generator off. On the way back to the house, he stopped at Mickey’s tent and called out to him. The flap zipped open and Edison sneaked a look. Jo Ellen Snider was dozing in a sleeping bag.

  “You get yourself ready,” Edison told a bleary Mickey. “Get her fed then lock her up at the house. Down in the root cellar’s a good place.”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. E,” the kid said. “Consider it done.”

  His next stop was the bus. He banged on the door until a shirtless Joe opened up, his sweat pants low on his hips.

  “All good things must come to an end,” Edison said. “You get what’s-her-name fed and put her in my office with her sister-in-law.”

  “Her name’s Alyssa.”

  “You didn’t wear her out, did you?”

  Joe grinned. “Still some miles in her tank.”

  “All right, then. I’m gonna get the bus ready. You go and make sure your ma and the kids are in good shape. And don’t you let on to Gretchen Mellon in the slightest fashion that you’re having your way with her daughter. We need her to take good care of our lot.”

  *

  Edison drove Pastor Snider’s bus up to the iron gate that blocked the long drive to Ed Villa’s compound. There was a camera and a speaker affixed to the gate-post on the driver’s side. The bus was pointed due east and the low, morning sun reflected off the windshield, making it difficult to see in from the outside. Edison had counted on that.

  Joe was crouched beside the captain’s chair.

  “You think that camera’s on the generator?” he asked.

  “We’ll find out soon enough,” Edison said.

  Within seconds they had their answer.

  The speaker crackled to life. “Pastor Snider, that you?”

  “Bingo,” Edison whispered. “Quick, let’s shift him.”

  They had hung Pastor Snider in the dry-aging barn with the other carcasses. Drained of blood, he was a pale piece of flesh now, his body ventilated from target practice, but his head was pristine. Propped up in the captain’s chair, he looked credibly animated.

  Edison half-rolled down the tinted window and shouted out, “Yeah, it’s me, Ed. Can you let me up there?”

  He pictured Villa up in his kitchen or wherever squinting into a little screen, his face screwed into a question mark.

  “How can I help you, Pastor?”

  Edison tried to flatten his voice. He had more of a twang than the good pastor. “Ed, I got the whole family here. None of us are sick. We’ve been real careful. Are you all healthy?”

  “Every one of us. We’ve been careful too.”

  “That’s good. Listen, Ed, we’re leaving town to be with my sister.”

  “The one in Ohio?” Villa asked.

  “The very one. I wanted to come up and speak with you briefly about a matter of great urgency to the church.”

  Edison knew that Villa took his role as an elder extremely seriously.

  “Well, I don’t know, Pastor. We’re kind of sealed in up here.”

  “Won’t take but a few minutes. I assure you that none of us are in the least bit ill.”

  Edison and his son exchanged glances as the seconds ticked by and then there was a buzzing sound. The gates swung open.

  Villa’s colonial style house was gleaming white with shiny, forest-green doors and shutters. It sat atop the hill, as pretty a spread as Edison had ever seen. Nearing the crest, Joe pointed out two smaller houses in a lower meadow, all with the same color scheme. Even the barns and outbuildings matched. There were late-model pickup trucks parked here and there, and in the distance, a big International Harvester tractor with a mowing rig.

  Edison whistled.

  “This fucker’s got more money than God,” Joe said.

  Edison pulled the bus into the circular drive and parked so that the passenger door lined up with the front door of the house.

  “Showtime,” he said. He stood and faced the back of the bus.

  The four Snider boys and Ryan Mellon were sitting quietly, looking through the tinted windows, all except one, holding a rifle. Mickey took up the rear as the herder.

  Edison stood too, sporting a friendly smile. He pointed toward them. “All of you. All of you boys are good boys. Father loves you. There’s bad men in there. Father wants you to kill the bad men.” He held up his own rifle and said, “Pow! Kill the bad men.” He put his hand on the shoulder of the youngest Snider boy, the sixteen-year-old who hadn’t been issued a rifle. Okay, son, go up there and do this.” He rapped his knuckles on the side of the bus.

  He sent the boy out of the bus and lined the others up ready to move. The boy went to the front door, but when he got there, he faced it like a wooden soldier.

  “Knock, you little shit,” Edison whispered.

  He didn’t have to.

  Villa must have had a camera on him because he opened up, holding a surgical mask up to his face, and said, “Why Evan, where’s your father?”

  Mickey and Joe pushed the other boys out the door while Edison exhorted them to kill bad men.

  Jacob Snider was the first boy to fire, but the other ones joined in. Villa fell in the volley, but so did Evan Snider who was in the way. Edison, Joe, and Mickey piled out, armed with pump-action shotguns. They herded the boys through the front door where they encountered the rest of Villa’s family who had gathered at the main house for
a group breakfast.

  Every man, woman, and child died in a hail of lead. Only two of Villa’s older sons managed to draw guns, but they didn’t get off effective shots before they were cut down. Edison’s little militia worked their bolt-actions smoothly and automatically. It was left to Edison and Joe to deliver buckshot coups de grace, and when it was over, and Joe had declared that every single Villa had been eliminated, Edison knelt beside a gasping Evan Snider, kissed him on the cheek, and said, “You’re a good boy. Father loves you.” Then he fired his pistol into his temple.

  The kitchen smelled of bacon and eggs and gunpowder. Breakfast was piled on plates, uneaten.

  Edison told Mickey to pull the bodies away from the table.

  “Why’d they have to kill the little kids,” Mickey said, trying not to look at the small, bloody bodies.

  “I guess they were all bad men to them,” Edison said. “We’d have needed a lot more time to instruct them in the distinction.”

  The militia boys gravitated to the kitchen table where eggs and bacon and grits were mixed with blood and gore. They were salivating like hungry dogs.

  Edison put himself between the boys and the food and addressed them. “You are all good boys! You killed the bad men and father loves you! And you know who else loves you? Jesus Christ. He’s up in heaven and he loves you too. I’m going to teach you about Jesus, so you can honor him. But right now, father knows what you want. Go on and eat the food! Eat all of it! You earned this bounty!”

  30

  They didn’t speak again until half of Connecticut was in the rearview mirror. Jamie kept getting distracted by the brass treble clef on the Volvo’s keychain, dangling in his field of vision, reminding him of the musical couple lying dead in their kitchen. The console tray had a selection of their classical CDs, sliding around.

  Linda finally broke the ice.

  “You want me to drive?”

  “No.”