The Cure

by Glenn Cooper

  When she didn’t come running, he began looking for her. Up on the landing he saw Gretchen coming out of her room, looking like death warmed over.

  “Now, Blair, you’re going to need to control yourself.”

  “What happened?” he said in a near panic.

  “There’s been an accident.”

  “Brittany?” he shouted. “Is it Brittany?”

  He followed her back inside her bedroom where Brittany was poking out from under the covers, her head on a pillow. Little Cassie was on the floor, staring into space.

  “Oh my God, is she dead?” he cried.

  “She’s hurt.”

  “Hurt where, hurt how?”

  “She slipped and fell down the stairs. She hit her head and she’s not waking.”

  “Oh no she didn’t. No, no, no she didn’t,” he said pointing a threatening finger. “She’s careful on the stairs. She always holds on real tight. You’d better tell me what the fuck happened, Gretchen.”

  Cassie began to cry.

  “Why’s she crying?” Edison shouted.

  “Because of your yelling.”

  “That ain’t why. You know what I think? I think the little shit pushed her down the stairs. Is that what happened?” he bellowed. “Is that what fucking happened?”

  Gretchen stepped between him and Cassie.

  “It was an accident, Blair. Accidents happen. She didn’t mean to hurt her. It’s two little kids playing, is all.”

  “It ain’t two kids playing,” he screamed. “It’s my little girl who’s normal and perfect, and your retard daughter. I’m gonna kill her, I swear I will.”

  Gretchen shocked him by the level of her ferocity. She got up in his face and shrieked, “You get away from her! See to your own girl and leave mine alone! It was an accident!”

  She watched his hands for violent intent, but they remained at his sides.

  “Get her out of here,” he said. “I don’t want to see her face. I don’t want to see her anywhere near my Brittany,” and as she scooped Cassie up and ran out, he sat on the bed and talked to the unconscious girl. “Can you hear me, honey? Your daddy’s here. Your daddy loves you. God’s looking out for you. You’re gonna get well.”

  He left the room and went looking for Joe and when he found him and told him what happened, he ordered him to drive like there was no tomorrow to the hospital in Clarkson.

  “Find a doctor and bring him back.”

  “What kind of doctor?”

  “The kind that’ll fix her head. How do I know? Just find someone fast.”

  *

  It was the middle of the afternoon when Edison heard Joe’s pickup screech to a halt in front of the house. He looked out the bedroom window and was immediately angry.

  Joe ran up the stairs and came in, looking defeated.

  “I couldn’t find a doctor of any kind.”

  “You went to the hospital?”

  “Of course, I went to the damn hospital. I had to break in. I swear I searched every single room and it’s a big-ass place. There’s no doctors left in there. They must’ve all gotten sick or just plain run off, including the foreign guy I brought back before.”

  “What about nurses?”

  “None of them either.”

  “Was it emptied out?”

  “There were some patients, I guess. I mean they had patient gowns on, but all of them were either fucked-in-the-head sick or sick some other way. Some fucking retard tried to take a bite out of my leg. It’s bad in there. Stinks to high heaven. There’s dead bodies. They’ll all be dead before long.” Joe looked at Brittany, cringed at her stillness, and asked if she had improved at all.

  “She’s still unconscious.”

  “What are we supposed to do?”

  “We gotta pray, son. We gotta pray to God for his help in this our time of need.”

  “Do you still want me to put up the roadblock through town?”

  “It must be done. We can’t let tragedy lead us to inaction. We’re definitely gonna need more men that ain’t fucked in the head—men we can trust—but for now, let’s do this in three shifts. You take tonight, then Mickey, then me. We’ll take about a dozen of our boys each shift. Remember, this is our town and we’re gonna keep it.”

  *

  The narrow, winding road was so dark that Jamie felt as if he was driving in a tunnel. He had no clue what was on either side of the road, he had no idea what was beyond the reach of his high beams.

  Kyra was whimpering in pain from her wound and the tight tourniquet, and Emma was saying, “No, no, no,” in a kind of nervous tic.

  “What’s the map say?” Jamie asked.

  The musicians had left a spiral-bound atlas of the eastern United States in the seat-back. Linda was reading it by flashlight.

  “We pass through Dillingham on this road to Clarkson where the hospital’s at. I think it’s about seven or eight miles.”

  The headlights caught a sign.

  Entering Dillingham, Population 729

  “Okay, getting there,” he said.

  He drove for half a mile and thought he saw something ahead.

  “Is that a light?”

  They entered another bend of the road and Linda said she didn’t see anything.

  The road curved back and they both saw it. Three or more lights that seemed to be hovering directly ahead.

  “What is that?” he asked.

  She responded by clicking off the safety on her rifle and moving the Glock from the console to her lap.

  “I’ve only got six AR rounds left,” she said, “and ten in the Glock.”

  “We don’t know this is trouble,” he said.

  “We don’t know it’s not.”

  As they got closer, it was evident that the lights weren’t levitating. They were lanterns hanging from the windows of a yellow school bus parked perpendicular to the road. Jamie slowed to a crawl.

  “Is there any other way to get to the hospital? If we backtrack?” he asked.

  “I don’t see any.”

  “What do you think?”

  Linda looked back at Kyra and said, “First option, we try to talk our way through.”

  “Second option?”

  “We shoot the fuckers.”

  He didn’t love option two. “Let me do the talking.”

  When Jamie was close enough to get the complete picture, he wanted to give his decision a serious rethink. A line of young men with raised rifles stood in the middle of the road in front of the bus.

  “We need to go back,” he said.

  One of the men was giving hand gestures for him to come forward slowly.

  “We’re too close,” Linda said. “They’ve got assault rifles. If they open up on us, we’re dead.”

  As an act of goodwill, Jamie lowered his beams and inched ahead. The leader of the pack gave him a stop sign. Jamie stopped about ten yards away and lowered his window.

  He leaned out and said, “Hi there. We were hoping to get to Clarkson.”

  Joe called back, “What business you got there?”

  “We’ve got a wounded girl. We’re trying to get to the hospital.”

  “Hospital’s closed. There’s no doctors or nurses there.”

  “I’m a doctor,” Jamie said. “If I can get medical supplies, I can take care of her myself.”

  “You’re a doctor?”

  “I am.”

  “You got any weapons in there?”

  “Don’t tell him,” Linda whispered.

  “Why do you want to know?” Jamie said.

  “I’m the one who’s in a position to be asking the questions. If you value your life, you’d better answer truthfully. I’m gonna find out either way.”

  Jamie made an executive decision. “We’ve got a rifle and a handgun.”

  “Well, there you go. Throw them out of your vehicle. Then we can talk.”

  Linda swore at Jamie. She hesitated.

  “You’ve got to do it,” Jamie hissed at her.


  She stared into the blank faces of the young men with their heavy rifles and banana clips. She swore again, opened her door and placed the guns onto the road.

  Joe told the closest militiaman to pick them up, but he didn’t understand the command.

  “Get the guns,” he said slower.

  The young man’s response was, “Bad men?”

  “No, not bad men. For fuck’s sake, I’ll get the guns.”

  As Joe approached cautiously, his rifle pointed at the windshield, Jamie said to Linda, “Jesus, look at them. I think all of them except for this guy are infected.”

  Joe plucked the weapons off the ground and scampered back to the front of the Volvo.

  “Okay, I’m gonna have a better look at you. If you lied to me and you got more guns in there, my boys will light you up.”

  Joe had a tactical light on the rail of his rifle, and he used it to explore the interior. He lingered on the back seat and the girls shielded their eyes.

  “Who are they?” he asked.

  “Our daughters.”

  “You two married?”

  “No. Our daughters are best friends,” Jamie said.

  “You capable of talking?” Joe asked Linda.

  “I’m capable of a lot of things.”

  “I’ll bet you are. Is that where she’s hurt? In the arm?”

  “Someone shot at us on the highway,” Jamie said. “She’s got a piece of glass deep in the muscle.”

  “Where you headed?”

  “Indianapolis.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “I’ve got a friend there.”

  “Traveling pretty light.”

  “We had our car stolen.”

  “So, you stole someone else’s.”

  “Something like that.”

  “I like that. Shows initiative. What’s your name?”

  “Jamie Abbott.”

  “Tell you what, Dr. Jamie Abbott and Miss Capable. We can help you out because you seem to be nice folks. Our compound’s not far. We’ve got some medical supplies there. Leave your car here and climb on board the bus.”

  Joe had them take seats toward the front of the bus, and before climbing into the driver’s seat he forcefully told his militia that these were not bad men.

  “They’ve got the sickness,” Joe told Jamie.

  “So I gathered.”

  “They don’t know a lot of words, but we taught ’em to respond a certain way to bad men. Your girls—they’ve got the sickness too.”

  “They do.”

  “So I gathered.”

  At the iron gate to the compound, Joe walkie-talkied the house and Edison opened it.

  Jamie heard the exchange.

  “Why’re you back so soon?”

  “A car came along.”

  “And?”

  “And I’ve got a doctor here.”

  Edison was waiting at the front door of the big house. Jamie, Linda, and the girls climbed down, and Joe drove the bus off toward the militia barn. Jamie thought the slump-shouldered man in a plaid shirt who extended a meaty hand was as rough as a coarse-grade sandpaper. He looked like a laborer.

  “Blair Edison. This is my house.”

  Jamie warily introduced himself and the others. Edison hardly looked at anyone but him.

  “I hear you’re a doctor.”

  “That’s right.”

  “What brings you to Dillingham?”

  He told him what he had told the bus driver, as he called Joe.

  “Bus driver’s my son,” Edison said. “You’re not sporting masks. Not worried about getting sick?”

  “The girls have been sick for a while. We’re immune.”

  “Me too,” Edison said. “Luck of the draw, I suppose.”

  “Look,” Jamie said. “Your son told me you had medical supplies. I need to treat this girl’s wounded arm. She’s had the tourniquet on for a long time.”

  “Come on in. I’ll show you what we got.”

  Edison took them into a kitchen bathed in lamplight. He asked them if they wanted something to drink and opened the refrigerator door, letting cold air escape.

  “You’ve got electricity,” Linda said.

  “Generator. We’re only running a few appliances. Help yourself. I’ll get the medical kits from the basement.”

  Edison kept the safe-room door open because he didn’t want to keep using Ed Villa’s decomposing fingers. Villa was an organized son of a bitch—he had to give him that. On a rack labeled Medical, he found several plastic cases and brought them to the kitchen. The girls were slurping down cans of Coke. Joe had returned to the house with Mickey, both of them with pistols on their belts. They stood at the kitchen doorway, gawking at the girls. Jamie could see that Linda didn’t like the looks of them and neither did he, but all she could do was fix them with her hardest police officer’s stare.

  “Any one of these suit you?” Edison asked Jamie.

  One of them was a minor trauma kit, a big step up from a routine first-aid box.

  “This one’s perfect,” Jamie said. “Most people don’t keep something like this at home.”

  “We’ve got a well-stocked bunker.”

  “If you’ve got a strong light, I’d like to get started. I’m not a surgeon, but I’m hopeful I can patch her up.”

  “What kind of a doc are you?”

  “I’m a neurologist.”

  Edison’s eyebrows turned into arches. “That’s a brain doctor, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “So, here’s the thing, Doc. I’m going to have you look at my little girl before you do anything with that arm.”

  Linda started to speak but Jamie cut her off. “I’m happy to look at her after I do this procedure. Like I said, her tourniquet’s been on for too long.”

  Edison sounded threatening. “No, sir. You’re gonna look at my girl first.”

  “The hell he will,” Linda said loudly.

  Edison drew his gun and said, “Who do you think you are? You are a guest in my town, and you are a guest in my house. Don’t you fucking raise your voice to me.”

  Jamie tried to defuse the situation. “What’s wrong with your daughter?”

  “She fell down the stairs this morning and hit her head. She’s not waking up.”

  “Okay, let’s have a look.”

  Linda said, “Jamie!” but he told her he’d be right back.

  He followed Edison up the stairs and noticed that all the bedroom doors were padlocked from the outside.

  Edison unlocked one and said, “She’s in here.”

  In the kitchen, Linda kept staring down the two young men.

  “How old are they?” Joe finally asked.

  Linda seemed reluctant to engage with them but after a long pause spat out, “Fifteen.”

  “They look older,” Joe said.

  “Where’re you from?” Mickey asked.

  “Boston.”

  “City girls look older than country girls,” Mickey said.

  He and Mickey retreated a way into the hall where Linda could hear them giggling like middle-schoolers.

  Upstairs, Jamie was getting his first look at Brittany. A woman sat in a chair by the bed, fixing him with a blend of shock and something else. Was it fear?

  “I’m Dr. Abbott,” he said. “Are you the girl’s mother?”

  Edison didn’t give her room to answer. “Gretchen’s the caretaker and not a good one ’cause this happened on her watch.”

  Jamie positioned a lantern by the bed to better examine the child. He pulled the covers back and ran through a neuro exam.

  When he was done, he straightened from his bedside stoop and asked, “How many hours ago did this happen?”

  Gretchen lowered her head and spoke to the floor. “About twelve.”

  “Has her condition changed at all over the twelve hours?”

  The woman told him that she was the same now as she was right after the fall.

  Jamie squared himself to Edison. �
��I’m afraid she’s got a serious problem. She’s got a subdural hematoma on the left side of her brain.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s a blood clot pressing on the brain. She has a non-depressed skull fracture that caused a blood vessel to leak. I think the bleeding probably hasn’t progressed, but she’s got pressure on her brain that’s causing her coma.”

  “What do you have to do?”

  Jamie rubbed his eyes while he was thinking. “This should be handled by a neurosurgeon in a hospital.”

  “We don’t have one of them. We got you.”

  “I’m not qualified.”

  “Well, Doc, you better get yourself qualified pretty fucking fast, because you are going to help my little girl, or your girls are gonna suffer for it. Just tell me what else you need for the job that ain’t in the medical box.”

  Jamie was cornered. Edison was seething. This Gretchen woman was obviously scared. The girl was in danger of dying.

  “Okay, here’s what I need. Get me a cordless drill with a stainless-steel, quarter-inch bit, and sterilize the drill-bit in boiling water. Gretchen, I’ll need you to shave the left side of her head. While you’re doing that, I’m going to take care of Kyra’s arm.”

  Edison perked up and said, “Sounds like a plan, Doc, but I need you to understand one thing. The rules of before don’t apply no more. If my girl dies, your girl dies.”

  36

  The girl had never seen her brother cry before. Not once.

  “What’s wrong, Tyrone? What happened?”

  K filled a juice glass with Scotch and drank every drop before answering. “It’s Easy. He’s dead.”

  “Easy’s dead?”

  “Yeah, man. He got shot.”

  “Who shot him?”

  “An old man. Can you believe it? All the dudes we ever gone up against and some fucking gramps blows him away? It hurts real bad. Easy was my main man. I knew him since we was pups.”

  Easy was K’s enforcer, a sadistic criminal, but to the girl, he was another big brother.

  “He was a nice boy, that’s for sure,” she said. “Mama liked him too.”

  “How is she?”

  “She’s in bed. I got her and Grammy all cleaned up before that. The water’s coming out of the tap real weak, so I couldn’t fill a tub. Washed them with a washcloth.”

  K lifted his shirt to wipe his runny eyes and nose. “When Mama gets better, I’m gonna tell her how good you took care of her.”