The Cure

by Glenn Cooper

She laughed. “You’re the expert in head trauma. What should we do for a concussion?”

  “Couple of Tylenol couldn’t hurt. And a cold compress.”

  “Coming right up.”

  She came back with a washcloth wetted in snow and laid it on his forehead.

  “Jeremy told me you saved Darren’s life.”

  “I was a more attractive punching bag.”

  “Why was he beating him?”

  “Darren made a pass at another guy. Add virulent homophobia to Streeter’s many fine attributes.”

  “You don’t forget you’re gay, right?”

  “Sexual orientation has nothing to do with memory.”

  “Thank you, Doctor,” she said.

  “You’re welcome, Doctor,” he replied.

  In the middle of the night, he awoke, his mouth terribly dry. A shaft of moonlight painted their bed and, in that light, he saw her, on her side, staring at him.

  “You okay?” she said.

  “Headache’s better. Just thirsty.”

  He felt her hand on his thigh.

  “Do you mind?” she said.

  “No.”

  She brushed against him and he got hard, fast.

  “You were very brave today.”

  “Or very stupid.”

  She was the second person that day to straddle him, but the second time was preferable. He didn’t tell her that having sex right after a concussion probably wasn’t the best idea in the world, because he didn’t care. It had been a chore remaining celibate while sleeping next to an attractive woman, and if it took a beating to break their logjam, so be it. As they kissed, he thought about Mandy. He was sure she would have approved of getting on with life.

  “There’s a lot of fooling around going on in this cabin,” Connie said, lying beside him afterwards.

  “Less lately. I moved the key to Dylan’s room.”

  She kissed him. “Spoilsport.”

  “Does this mean our cold war is over?” he asked.

  “Seems so,” she said.

  *

  Early the next morning, there was a polite tapping on the door. Connie was the only one up, making weak coffee to preserve their dwindling supply. It was Holland, which was unusual. He looked like he hadn’t slept. Connie and Jamie knew he had not been eating much since his wife died, and sometimes, they found him weeping into his hand.

  “How’s Jamie?” he asked. “I heard about his fight with Chuck.”

  “He’s okay but Streeter’s a fucking animal, Jack.”

  “I know. I’ll speak with him.” He didn’t sound convincing.

  “I’m letting him sleep.”

  “Yes, he should get his rest. Do you think you could help me with something? At my house?”

  She got dressed and followed him through the woods. It was cloudy, and the frozen lake was gray and lifeless. She thought he was leading her inside his house, but he pointed and said, “Over there.”

  Gloria Morningside was sitting with her back to the outhouse wall. She was barefoot, dressed lightly, as gray and frozen as the lake.

  “Oh, God, no,” Connie said.

  There was nothing to do but stare.

  “I thought I heard her getting up last night,” Holland said. “I didn’t think to check on her. I should have. I don’t think she was able to recover from Melissa’s death. She took it worse than I did. Can you imagine?”

  “Taking care of Melissa was the last thing keeping her going,” she said. “Jack, don’t you think that now’s the time to let us go?”

  “Maybe. Maybe it is,” he said with a faraway voice. “Give me a little breathing room to think about it, all right?”

  57

  Rocky called it right. He told Jamie it was going to snow like hell, and that’s exactly what happened. His prediction was all the more impressive for it was accomplished without technology. Holland did have a mercury thermometer at his house, but you didn’t need a thermometer to tell you it had gotten insanely cold. Rocky was a creature of these mountains. He had a nose for the weather, just like the deer and the bears. He could tell what was coming. He couldn’t begin to say how he knew—not even a red sky at night, sailor’s delight—but Jamie had come to bank on his weather forecasts.

  When Jamie and Connie turned in for the night, a foot of wet snow had already fallen. The wind was howling and it was still coming down hard. They had left the bedroom curtains parted and a dull light announced the morning. It got Jamie to open his eyes, but the window was frosted over and he couldn’t make out anything, not even the nearest branches. The cabin was dead quiet. He let his hand wander a few inches under the blankets until his fingertips scraped lightly against Connie’s jeans—on account of the cold, both of them had gone to sleep fully clothed. Even after they became intimate, he had never shared a bed with a woman as still and noiseless at night. Lately, coming out of a dream, he would get scared she had disappeared, and it took a reach to reassure him. He pulled his hand back. He didn’t want to wake her.

  His breath condensed into its own little weather system and settled back onto his face. The fires in the potbelly stove and the fireplace were both low. They weren’t going to stoke themselves, so he slid out of bed as quietly as he could. Despite his heavy socks, the floorboards still felt cold, so he stepped into his boots.

  The other bedroom doors were shut and Dylan’s was padlocked; the key was now under Jamie’s shaving bowl. He dispensed chunks of wood liberally and the hot embers got them going. He got up from his crouch to answer the call of nature.

  He got a shock when he opened the door. There was a drift of blown snow—easily four feet—packed so hard that none of it fell inside. The snowing had stopped, but the wind was whipping around and a spray of icy surface powder flew into his face.

  How am I supposed to get through there? he thought.

  The shovel was a good yard away, propped against the side of the cabin. Not even its handle was showing.

  A tin can had to make do as a urinal. When he was done, he filled the kettle from the plastic container and put it on the stove. He had gotten used to a lot of things since the epidemic hit, but weak, black coffee wasn’t one of them.

  When the water boiled, he took two mugs back to his bedroom. Black hair appeared from under the bedclothes.

  “It’s so cold,” she moaned.

  “I just got the fires lit.”

  She took a coffee and smiled at the first, hot sip.

  “We’re snowed in,” he said. “If you need to pee, I’ll bring you a chamber pot.”

  “I didn’t know we had one.”

  “It’ll look a lot like our stewpot, but don’t worry, I’ll wash it out before the next stew.”

  “How much snow is there?”

  “How tall are you?”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  The banging on the door startled them.

  “It’s Jeremy! Open up!”

  Dylan called out from his room. “Mom? Mom? What?”

  When Jamie opened the door, Connie was at his heels.

  Jeremy’s snowshoes kept him from sinking into the drift. His unzipped parka was flapping in the wind. He looked down on them from the top of the snowbank like some kind of giant, winged creature with crazy eyes and a gaping mouth.

  “You gotta come to Uncle Jack’s house!”

  “What’s happening?” Jamie asked.

  “It’s Streeter! He’s gone crazy! He’s shooting people! He’s killing everyone! I opened the bunkhouse doors and told everyone to run!”

  Connie said, “We didn’t hear any shots.”

  “He’s got the silencer on his rifle. He came up on everyone all Ninja and shit.”

  “Where’s your uncle?” Jamie said.

  “I don’t know. You gotta come! You’ll need your snowshoes. I’ll clear away the snow so you can get out.”

  “I’m the surgeon,” Connie said. “I should go.”

  Jamie wouldn’t hear her out. “I need you to stay with them. I’ll
come get you when it’s safe.”

  “But—”

  “Please. Just please.”

  Dylan’s door rattled against the lock. “Mom?”

  “Stay in your room,” she shouted. “I’ll let you out in a minute.”

  Jamie began lacing up his snowshoes. Through the door, they heard Jeremy grunt as he frantically shoveled.

  Connie helped Jamie into his heavy coat.

  There were low voices coming from the other bedroom, then Emma’s high-pitched call for Dylan.

  “I’m here, Emma, in my room! My door is locked!” Dylan yelled back, rattling the door again.

  “Take care of them,” Jamie said, zipping up.

  “I will,” Connie said, “but don’t you dare die on me, Jamie Abbott. Against my better judgement, I’ve become attached to you.”

  Running in snowshoes was slow going. Jamie tried to keep up with Jeremy’s head start. Ahead, near Bunkhouse Two, he saw a patch of bright red on the virgin snow. Jeremy stopped there and waited beside Darren’s body, sunk into the powder. Jamie paused to see if there was anything to be done. He had been shot in the head point-blank—for what? For sweetly wanting to kiss a man? For finding himself in the path of rage?

  They started moving again, side-by-side now.

  “Why’s he doing this?” Jamie asked.

  Jeremy said, “He’s been acting weird lately. It’s all the meth, I think.”

  “Do you have a gun?”

  “No.”

  They came upon a group of recruits struggling to make way in the deep snow. They were heading toward the flagpole, the assembly point they knew, but it was near Holland’s house, near Streeter.

  “No!” Jeremy called to them. “The other way! Go the other way!”

  *

  Holland’s house was freezing cold. He hadn’t been good about keeping his fires going. He hadn’t been good at much of anything since the women died. The last lesson he gave the recruits was the day before his wife passed. The topic was Christian duty.

  Now he sat in his icy living room, hardly raising his head, while Rocky and Streeter pointed rifles at each other.

  Rocky stood between Holland and Streeter—piggy-in-the-middle—blocking Streeter’s line of fire. He was wheezing from the exertion of traipsing after Streeter and could hardly get out his words.

  “Chuck, please,” he said, “put down your rifle. You’re not right. You need sleep. You’ve killed enough.”

  “No, you fucking well put yours down,” Streeter said. His voice was hoarse from shouting at the people he had gunned down. He’d taken the last of his meth that morning, three times his usual, and his brain was on fire.

  “What’s the end game here?” Rocky said.

  “I’m going to kill every single one of the motherfuckers in this camp. I’m killing Jamie fucking Abbott last because I hate that smug motherfucker and I want him to see his girls get killed in front of him.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s all gone to shit. You know it’s gone to shit. Look at this snow. It’s abnormal. It’s a sign it’s all gone to shit.”

  “You know that don’t make any sense, right?”

  “It makes all the sense in the world. Jack’s the one’s been making it snow. He’s trying to end the world. Admit it, Jack.”

  Holland looked up at that. “Maybe the world ought to end. Maybe it’s God’s will.”

  “That is a fucking admission,” Streeter hissed. “Now put your weapon down and get out of my way.”

  “You shot Roger. He didn’t do nothing to you. Was he one of the motherfuckers? He was your friend.”

  Streeter looked like he was thinking hard. “I didn’t shoot Roger. I don’t think I shot Roger.”

  “I saw you doing it. You want to shoot me too, Chuck?”

  “I don’t want to shoot you, but I guess I’m going to,” Streeter said, right before he pulled the trigger. If there had not been so much blubber in Rocky’s belly, the round might have struck Holland too. Rocky’s knees hit the ground first. Then he fell onto his side, grunting and gurgling for a short while.

  “You just killed your best friend,” Holland said quietly. “I think that’s very sad. I’m glad Melissa wasn’t here to see this day.”

  *

  When Jamie got to the flagpole, he found two more bodies in the snow. One was poor Valerie. The other was Roger. Roger’s rifle had sunk down a foot. Jamie fished it out and made sure it was loaded.

  “Stay here,” Jamie told Jeremy.

  Jeremy knew that Roger also carried a pistol. He turned the body over and found it.

  “No, I’m coming.”

  “Kyra’s going to need you if something happens to me,” Jamie said.

  Jeremy wasn’t going to be talked out of it. “She’s going to need you more,” he said.

  *

  “It’s your turn, Jack,” Streeter said.

  Holland briefly looked up. “Do you hate me?” Ever the academic, he seemed genuinely curious about the answer.

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s your fucking eyes. They speak to me even when your mouth is shut. I can tell from your eyes you think you’re better than me.”

  Holland said in a dull monotone, “I was better than you. Melissa was better than you. I was always astonished you and she had the same parents. We were college professors. You were coarse and uneducated.”

  “Maybe so, but you couldn’t have gotten fucking Camp Clean Ass off the ground without me.”

  “It was a noble undertaking that needed an ignoble person like yourself.” His condescending eyes met Streeter’s wild eyes. “You should kill me. I’m tired. I’m ready to go to my God.”

  “All right, Jack, consider it done.”

  *

  The house was thirty yards away.

  “Go around the back to the kitchen door,” Jamie told Jeremy.

  Near the porch, Jamie fumbled to get out of his snowshoes, but with one off, one on, he fell sideways and sank into the snow. It took him time to right himself, get the second shoe unlaced, and make it to the door. It was ajar. He slowly pushed it open.

  Streeter was in the archway between the living room and kitchen, aiming his rifle at Jeremy. The kid’s hands were raised. Roger’s pistol was at Streeter’s feet.

  Holland was in his favorite chair, his face gone.

  Rocky was sprawled out at Holland’s feet.

  A floorboard creaked and Streeter half-turned toward Jamie. He said, “If you move the muzzle of that rifle one inch my way, his head comes off. Then if your shot doesn’t drop me cold, your head comes off. You got that, motherfucker? Say you got that.”

  Jamie said he understood.

  “I’m sorry, Jamie,” Jeremy said. “He must’ve seen me through the window.”

  Streeter said, “Now put the rifle down and slide it over with your foot.”

  Jamie would have had to swing his barrel about thirty degrees up and thirty degrees over to get it pointed at Streeter’s center mass. By the time he pulled the trigger, Jeremy would be dead, and maybe him too. The decision came automatically. He felt himself a passive observer. The rifle seemed to slide across the floor on its own. The sun came out just then. Through the living-room picture window, he saw the sunlight shimmer on the fresh snow, bedazzling the lake.

  There were worse final sights.

  Streeter used his rifle as an extension of his arm, wagging it at Jeremy and saying, “What were you going to do, boy? Shoot your own flesh and blood?”

  “There’s something wrong with you, Uncle Chuck.”

  “Only thing wrong with me is that I’m too damned practical for this world. I’m the only one who gets shit done. Everyone else is talk, talk, talk. It’s me who’s the son of a bitch who gets things done. I am tired of useless motherfuckers.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jeremy said.

  “Take you, for example. You remember the night you came to my place, crying tha
t my brother and your mother were out of it with the virus?”

  “I remember.”

  “And remember I went over there the next morning? And when I came back, I told you that both of them were dead? From turning the gas on? Carbon monoxide, I said.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Well, they were dead. I killed them. I put them both out of their fucking misery. You didn’t want retards for parents. I took care of things. I took care of you.”

  “You killed them?”

  “You deaf, boy? That’s what I just said.”

  From the kid’s look of hatred, Jamie knew what he was going to do before he did it. He pushed off like a sprinter coming out of the blocks and charged.

  Streeter pulled the trigger. The silenced round sounded deceptively benign.

  Jeremy kept coming and he grabbed Streeter with both hands, pulling him to the floor. If he picked up his rifle, he wouldn’t have had a shot. All he could do was dive onto the thrashing bodies.

  Three men grappled on the floorboards. Jamie tasted blood; he had no idea where it was coming from. Streeter’s strength seemed super-human and Jamie couldn’t pry the rifle from his vice-like hands. As the bodies shifted and tumbled, the rifle butt slammed into Jamie’s ribs, a knee, and finally his jaw. The last blow dislodged him from the scrum and gave Streeter the chance to push away from Jeremy with his feet and get his rifle up firing position.

  Jamie felt something hard and cold against his hand.

  Streeter was swearing at his nephew. He got his finger inside the trigger guard.

  Jamie fired eight times before the slide of Roger’s pistol locked back.

  He threw the gun aside and pulled the rifle out of Streeter’s twitching hands.

  Jeremy was moaning in pain.

  “Let me look at you,” Jamie said. There was an ugly hole in his arm. He pulled off Holland’s thin leather belt and used it as a tourniquet.

  “That’s as much as I can do,” Jamie said. “I’m getting you to the best surgeon I know.”

  58

  It was days until Jamie and Connie felt they could breathe again. After the rampage, they moved themselves and the kids into Holland’s house along with Jeremy. Connie had lived up to her reputation as a boffo trauma surgeon. She stopped Jeremy’s bleeding, cleaned out the through-and-through wound, and splinted his fractured humerus. Kyra was tickled that her boyfriend was now the one with a cast. They took Holland’s bedroom for themselves after exorcising it by removing all Jack and Melissa’s personal items and turning the mattress over.