The Cure

by Glenn Cooper

  “Who’s that?” Brittany said.

  He tried to wipe his eyes dry before telling her, “It’s a big girl named Kyra who wants to play with you. First I want to look at her arm.”

  He examined her wound.

  “It looks good. Who took the stitches out?”

  “I did,” Linda said. “I can’t drill a head but I can do that.”

  “Go ahead, Kyra, play with Brittany,” Jamie said.

  Linda poured from her ubiquitous bottle. “He wants an answer, Jamie. By tomorrow afternoon, Emma could be here with you. He let me see her today.”

  He stared at her and swallowed hard. “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “How’d she look?”

  “She looked good. She’s healthy. She said, ‘Where is Daddy?’”

  “She said that?”

  “She did.”

  That was the tipping point. He was already close to bowing to Edison. It was twelve days since Mandy lost power. He needed to make a move now or soon, all would be lost. Seeing Kyra and hearing about Emma sealed the deal.

  “Where is she?”

  “He’s got all the girls in one of the houses down the hill, past the largest barn.”

  “Give me a drink,” he said. “Tell him yes.”

  *

  Edison personally released him from captivity the next morning, leaving Gretchen to take his place looking after Brittany. Linda, Joe, and Mickey were already in the kitchen having breakfast.

  “Ready for some action, Doc?” Joe said, slurping his oatmeal.

  Jamie was more interested in the medical kits on the countertop than answering the man. He opened each box to familiarize himself with the contents.

  “Wanna know the plan?” Edison said, handing Jamie a coffee.

  “No.”

  “His attitude kind of sucks, Linda,” Edison said.

  “Your attitude kind of sucks, Jamie,” she said.

  He didn’t look up from the box of sutures and clamps.

  “Well, I’m going to tell you the plan anyway,” Edison said. He was ebullient, clearly relishing the day. “What we’re fixing on doing is moving right into the center of Clarkson. Belly of the beast. It’s the county seat so there’s a sheriff’s office there that maybe isn’t picked through yet. Could be lots of guns and ammo for the taking. We’ll hit some of the nice old houses in the town center. Rich folk live there. After that we’ll make a run to the hospital. You’ll be of real value there, with supplies and medicines and the like. When we go in, we’ll have two columns. The first bunches of boys—they’ll go in first ’cause they’ve got the experience. The new boys we got from Clarkson day before yesterday—well they’re only lightly trained.”

  Joe had a belly laugh. “Very lightly trained, I’d say.”

  “Put it this way,” Edison said, “those fellas are only getting pickax handles and shovels as weapons. Without a touch more drilling, they’d shoot their own dicks off. You clear on your role in this exercise, Doc?”

  “You get shot; I’ll try and stop the bleeding.”

  “Bingo.”

  “And when we get back, I get Emma,” Jamie said.

  “You do yourself proud today, she’s all yours.”

  Joe got up to put his bowl in the sink. “I will miss her,” he said under his breath.

  *

  With all the new recruits, the buses were getting crowded, so Edison told Mickey to follow along in one of Ed Villa’s vehicles and cram as many militiamen as he could inside. He groused to Joe that if they were going to expand their ranks and capabilities, they were going to need more transport vehicles and to teach some of the infected men how to drive again. Jamie and Linda drove with Edison in Pastor Snider’s bus and Joe followed in the school bus.

  “Nervous?” Edison called out over his shoulder.

  Jamie didn’t reply. Nervousness wasn’t his dominant emotion. It was fury at being pressed into perverted service, fury at being this man’s prisoner, fury at what Emma might have been subjected to.

  Instead, he turned toward the young men seated behind him. Their faces were ciphers, betraying nothing of what was going on inside their heads. Who was the big blond kid with big hands and red knuckles? What was his life like a few weeks ago before the world went off the rails? And the thin guy with long hair wearing a plaid jacket a couple of sizes too large? And the fat guy with a scraggly beard and apple-red cheeks? Who were they? Would they ever find themselves again? Were they doomed to remember only this version of their lives as soldiers in a cause not their own?

  “How far is Clarkson?” Jamie asked Linda.

  “We’ll be there soon.”

  “Will there definitely be trouble?”

  “We’re the trouble. They’re the sheep; we’re the wolves.”

  He shook his head at that.

  “What?” she said.

  “This is sick, Linda. You’re preying on defenseless people. You’re not seeing it?”

  “Oh, I see it clearly. Know why? Because I know how to survive. Do you?”

  The day had started misty, but by the time the small caravan turned onto Main Street, the fog was gone and the sun was out. Jamie thought the town center was attractive and prosperous, although the grass hadn’t been cut for a while and trash littered the curbs and blew in the wind. The commercial and municipal buildings were early twentieth century, constructed of red brick or yellow limestone. The houses were stately with wide porches and white window-frames and sills. It looked like a perfectly nice place to live.

  Edison pumped the brakes and brought the bus to a halt outside the sheriff’s office, a newer, concrete bunker of a building. There was a bank on one side of it and a pizzeria on the other. Across the street was the tallest building in town, the county courthouse, each brick floor separated by a decorative limestone border, its gabled roof topped with a high clock tower.

  “Okay,” Edison said, “this is our first stop. Everyone off.” He barked into his walkie-talkie for Joe to unload.

  Joe and Mickey pulled behind and shooed their militiamen out.

  Soon, over fifty men and boys with rifles, pickax handles, and shovels stood in the middle of Main Street, their breaths forming little puffy clouds.

  Edison laid down his orders. “Joe, stay here with half these boys and give Doc your walkie-talkie. Doc, stay here by the bus. If I need you, I’ll call you on the hailer. Linda, you come with me.”

  “What about me, Mr. E?” Mickey said.

  “Just stay out of the way, boy. Can you do that?”

  Mickey answered, “I believe I—”

  No one seemed to hear the shot that slammed into Mickey’s head, felling him like a tree. But what followed was ear-splitting.

  The crack of rifle and pistol fire rained down from the top floors and the clock tower of the courthouse, the roof of the sheriff’s office, and the bank. The able-bodied, sentient men of Clarkson, alerted to Edison’s earlier raid, were lying in wait.

  Before Jamie dived under the school bus, he heard Edison yell, “It’s a fucking ambush!”

  The militiamen stood in place looking particularly lost, as if awaiting Father’s orders that were never going to come. One of the newest recruits, a kid with a long-handled shovel on his shoulder, seemed to be fascinated by the muzzle flashes coming from the attackers on high, and he pointed up at the clock tower before taking a round in his chest. Jacob Snider was one of the few to react with aggression. Edison would have been proud if he had seen what he did before multiple body shots took him down. The boy had screamed something loud and monosyllabic and had gone raging off in the direction of the sheriff’s office, his rifle held high, getting ready to kill bad men.

  Jamie was planted face-down on the asphalt when he felt someone pushing against him.

  “Move the fuck over, man,” Joe shouted.

  “What’s happening?” Jamie shouted back.

  “They must’ve figured we were coming back. The fuckers had their shit together.”

/>   From his crimped vantage point, Jamie saw Edison’s boys collapsing to the ground, screaming, moaning, dying. Streams of blood flowed toward a storm drain under the school bus.

  “Joe! Joe! Where are you?”

  Edison’s voice was close.

  “Pa? Where are you?” Joe shouted back.

  “Sheriff’s SUV! Underneath it! You need to cover for me!”

  Joe let out a string of curses and wiggled out, leaving Jamie alone.

  Seconds later, Jamie heard his name being called. The voice was husky, a woman’s.

  “Help me. Behind the bus.”

  He moved his head and saw Linda sitting on the ground between the school bus and Mickey’s truck. He slithered to the rear, almost getting hung up on the drive shaft and rear axle. When he reached her, she was clutching her belly. Blood ran freely through her intertwined fingers.

  “Help me,” she rasped.

  He lifted her sweatshirt. The bullet wound was close to her navel. He heard one of the school-bus windows shatter.

  “I’m sorry, Linda, I can’t.”

  “Can’t or won’t?”

  “Both.”

  She looked at him with wild eyes. “I’m not sorry for what I did. I’m a survivor.”

  “You were a survivor. Now you’re not.”

  Her rifle was lying across her legs. He took it and began to crawl toward the driver-side door of Mickey’s truck.

  “Where are you going?” she said.

  “To get Emma. To get the hell out of here.”

  “Take care of Kyra. For fuck’s sake, tell me you will.”

  “I will.”

  The keys were in the ignition. Jamie climbed in and started the engine, trying to keep below the dashboard. He put the truck into reverse and floored it. Without the prop of the truck’s grill, Linda fell backward, still clutching at her wound.

  Jamie steered blindly, reversing at speed for the better part of fifty yards. The sniper in the clock tower had the best bead on him and put three rounds through the windshield before he slammed the truck into drive and made a left down a side street.

  He made it back to Dillingham, navigating through a spider web of windshield cracks. Edison had left the gates to the compound closed and Jamie crashed through them. He drove past the main house looking for the smaller house that Linda had described.

  *

  Edison was bleeding from a shoulder wound. He pressed a wad of gauze against it while Joe pushed Pastor Snider’s truck harder than it had ever been driven. It was not an aerodynamic vehicle and it tilted wildly at every curve. On a straightaway, they caught sight of Jamie’s pickup truck, a mile ahead.

  “Catch that son of a bitch,” Edison said.

  Joe said, “He’s as good as dead.”

  “We lost them. We lost all my boys.”

  “We’ll get more.”

  Edison yelped when he involuntarily tried to raise his hurt arm to point at the gate.

  “He busted through,” he said. “Drop me at the house. I’ll get Gretchen to dress my shoulder. He’s probably gone for his girl.”

  Joe let his father off then barreled down the back of the hill.

  *

  There were two houses near the big barn. Jamie didn’t know which was Emma’s. He parked the truck between them and ran into the one closest to the barn. It was the wrong one, the one where Joe and Mickey had been staying. When he ran out the door, he saw the bus parked next to the other house and Joe disappearing inside.

  He didn’t think, he just acted.

  He had Linda’s rifle, and while he was running, he test-fired it pointing toward the sky.

  In the second house, there was an entrance hall with a living room on one side, a dining room on the other, and a kitchen ahead. It only took Jamie seconds to see that no one was on the ground level. He went charging up the stairs. One of the bedroom doors was open. He entered that one first.

  Two young women were standing near the door, blocking his view of the rest of the room. He knew in an instant they were infected.

  “Get out!” he yelled, and even though they didn’t understand him, he scared them enough to make them take flight.

  Joe was standing at the bathroom door with an arm looped around Emma’s neck and a pistol stuck against her temple.

  “It’s Daddy, Emma,” Jamie said. “Don’t be scared.”

  *

  Gretchen sat Edison down at the kitchen table and cut off his shirt. Blood was oozing from a hole just above his right armpit.

  “Is the bullet in there?” he said.

  “I think it passed through,” she said.

  “Good, just clean it thorough and slap a dressing on. It hurts like a bastard.”

  “Let me get what I need upstairs,” she said.

  When she returned, Edison was surprised to see she had brought his sons, Seth and Benjamin, and his wife Delia. They all stood ramrod straight, their hands behind their backs in patient attention.

  “What are they doing here?”

  “They wanted to see you.”

  Edison smiled weakly and told them he loved them.

  Gretchen stepped to the side and said, “There’s the bad man. What do you do to the bad man?”

  Then Edison saw the kitchen knives in their hands.

  He said, “What the hell?” and looked for the gun he thought he had left on the table. But it was gone. Gretchen had scooped it up in his bloody shirt and carried it off.

  Seth, the fourteen-year-old, struck first, burying his knife in the right side of Edison’s chest. Benjamin was strong for twelve and plunged his blade all the way through Edison’s sternum. Edison got to his feet, horrified. He tried to find answers in the blank faces of his boys. It was left to his dear wife, Delia, to finish the job. A hard push of a paring knife through his neck painted her smock with arterial blood.

  *

  “Put the fucking rifle down,” Joe said. “I will shoot her.”

  Jamie looked into Emma’s eyes. She was terrified. “It’s okay, baby. Daddy loves you.”

  “Ten seconds and she’s dead,” Joe said, squeezing her neck between his forearm and meaty bicep. “It’ll be a pity. She was the best piece of ass I ever had.”

  Jamie heard a voice in his head. It was Linda’s voice, scolding him for not shooting at the pack of ravenous dogs circling the girls.

  If you want them to survive, if you want to survive this shitshow we’re in, you’ve got to pull the fucking trigger.

  He pulled the trigger and Joe’s brains splattered the wall.

  *

  Jamie found Gretchen in the kitchen of the big house, feeding cans of chili and beans to Edison’s wife and sons, while Edison lay dead on the bloody floor.

  “You killed him,” Jamie said. He didn’t come out sounding like he was leveling an accusation—it was more like a compliment.

  “It wasn’t me,” she said, “They did it. I’ve been teaching them. They’re good learners.”

  Emma wasn’t interested in the body. She was staring at the food.

  “I think she’s hungry,” Gretchen said. “Come over here, honey. Have a seat.”

  Jamie told Gretchen that Joe and Mickey were dead. She closed her eyes and thanked God.

  “There’re several young women in one of the houses down by the barn. They’re all safe. I’m pretty sure that your daughter and daughter-in-law are there.”

  “What about my son, Ryan? Did you see him?”

  “There was a massacre in Clarkson. The people there fought back. I don’t know about Ryan.”

  Gretchen didn’t have any more tears. She passed out slices of the bread she’d baked to sop up the last of their chili.

  Jamie went upstairs. The doctor in him made him check on Brittany one final time. He tested the strength in her arm and leg and told her she was doing great.

  “I won’t be seeing you anymore,” he told her.

  “Why?”

  “I’ve got to go see a friend.”

  “I’ll m
iss you,” she said.

  He brought Kyra downstairs and when she saw her, Emma leapt up and embraced her. The two girls held their clinch for a long time.

  “We’re leaving now,” Jamie said to Gretchen. “What are you going to do?”

  “This is my town,” Gretchen said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  He found the car keys and filled up the Volvo from Ed Villa’s stash of gas cans.

  With Emma and Kyra huddled in the back and Linda’s rifle resting against the passenger seat, Jamie sped out of Dillingham. He didn’t relax his grip on the steering wheel until he saw a sign on Highway 80 that said, Indianapolis – 400 miles. By then, his hands were so cramped and clawed, he had to straighten his fingers, one by one.

  43

  The drive took under six hours; Jamie didn’t make a single stop.

  When they arrived, Emma and Kyra were sound asleep under the blanket he had draped over them at the start of the journey.

  That blanket and the clothes on their backs were it for their worldly possessions, along with a flashlight, the rifle, a few boxes of ammo, and, of course, the vials of freeze-dried CREBs that had never left his pocket.

  The directions that Mandy gave him were long gone, but he knew the lab was on the biomedical campus, and he remembered the name of her research building. As soon as he exited I-70 at the downtown exit, he saw signs to the hospital, and it didn’t take too much searching to find the place.

  There were still a couple of hours of daylight left, and although the temperature was on the mild side, when he got out of the car and looked around, he shivered.

  The front door of the laboratory building was shattered.

  “Emma, Kyra, wake up.”

  The girls stirred and yawned then ran out the door to pee in the long grass.

  Cradling the AR-15, he told the girls to follow him. The doors were locked so they ducked inside through a broken panel. There was a directory, and on it, he saw, Dr. Amanda Alexander – 403.

  He used the flashlight to navigate the stairwell and while they climbed, he gave Emma a small lesson to distract himself and tamp down his own anxiety.

  The fourth floor was pitch-black; there was no natural light in the corridor. He shone his light up and down the hall until he found Room 403. The door was locked.