The empty woodshed blazed with light. The curved stand of trees behind it seemed darker and closer than ever, a hovering chorus of hunched scavengers over the flimsy plywood and tin. Henry’s skin tightened against his warm sleeves as he watched Dave staple plastic over the interior of the empty building. Not the shed, he thought, not like a dog, this isn’t how I want to die.
He walked up to the small shed and tripped at the threshold. Henry fought the panic raking across his chest. “I should just go, Dave.” The smell of sap echoed even through the plastic covering the interior of the shed. It made Henry feel cold and achy. A pile of blankets and a sleeping bag slumped in one corner and the camping lantern sat in the center of the small floor. Otherwise, it was empty.
Dave stopped stapling and turned toward him. “Go where Henry? To freeze in the dark? If you are really sick, I don’t think you’ll be able to take care of yourself.”
“You won’t be able to take care of me either. I’ll just be another mouth to feed. And a dangerous one.” Henry shuddered.
“It’ll be okay. Elizabeth and I can manage until you get better. We’ll be careful, keep Marnie away. Keep– keep the door locked.”
“I don’t think you’ve really thought about this Dave. I won’t be able to have a fire or even a heater without burning the place down.”
Dave shook his head. “No, the plastic will keep your body heat in. I’ll make sure there are no gaps. We’ve got lots of blankets. You won’t freeze. Look, I know it might be uncomfortable, but even if you made it to one of the other cabins and were able to get inside, you really would freeze. At least now I can keep an eye on you and figure something else out if this won’t work.”
“What happens when I’m delirious and begin attacking people?”
Dave kicked the pile of blankets over and exposed a snaking bundle of rope and thick cargo straps from the car. He didn’t look at Henry. “That’s what these are for.”
Henry was startled and brushed away sudden tears with the back of his arm. “Like an animal Dave? You want to tie me up like a wild dog? Someone would have to feed me. And– and clean me. And I would be trying to hurt whoever was helping me the whole time.”
“It’s only for a little while, you’ll either beat this thing in a few weeks or they’ll start developing a cure.”
Henry shook his head and swiped at the tears still escaping him. “We don’t know that. We don’t know what’s going to happen. Maybe I’ll die. Maybe I’ll be ill for months or permanently damaged if I survive.”
Dave slammed a fresh staple into the wall. “What do you want me to do?” He shouted, “If you leave, you’ll starve or freeze for sure. At least here you have a chance.” He sat on the floor suddenly, shoving his glasses up with a gloved finger. “I know I haven’t been the best or bravest of friends Henry. I know I’ve made stupid mistakes in the past few weeks. But we’ve been friends a long time. Can’t you trust me to do this for you? If things are as bad as you say, if there are people shooting the infected and no one is reporting any news or directions on where to go and what to do, we’re going to need each other Henry. You are going to need me. And if– when you get well, I’m going to need you.”
Henry slumped against the cold plastic. “This isn’t like running Trevor Harmon off when he was going to beat you up for lunch money. I can’t save you from this. I can’t even save me from this.”
Dave nodded. “I know. But stay anyway. Just stay.” Henry just shook his head.
“Don’t decide now. Have some dinner with us, so at least I know you’ve had something to eat. Eat and warm up at least, for my sake. Then, if you feel the same after dinner or in the morning, I won’t stop you.”
Henry sighed. “Okay,” he said, “I’ll go after dinner.”
It was a relief for Henry to walk away from the tiny woodshed and into the warm kitchen. Dave followed him in and Henry barely paid attention to the bustle of Elizabeth and Dave over the stove. He sat down as Marnie set the table. The meal was filling and the stove was very warm. Henry felt more and more drowsy. He tried to fight it, but his body seemed more and more unresponsive and at last he fell into a heavy doze in his chair.
He woke in the pitch black and he was shivering on a floor. He tried to sit up, but his hands were bound behind him. There was a weight on his chest and Henry tried not to panic as he struggled to shrug it off. He twisted until he was sitting. His hand damp plastic behind him and he realized where he was. A blanket slid from his chest and hit the plastic beside him with a soft crinkle. He tried to twist his knees underneath him so that he could stand, but a thick rope around his waist grew tight when he tried. He realized he was tied to the wall. Harnessed and leashed like a wild dog.
The little room was warm and the dark pressed in like water. Henry wondered if he would suffocate. He began to struggle to at least sit up. The slick plastic made it hard to press himself up and he was out of breath and sweating by the end. He sat for a minute to rest. The sound of his breath washed against his ears, drowned out anything else. He strained to hear anything outside of the shed, but there was nothing. Not even wind rustling the great trees that surrounded him.
He began to yell for Dave. The sound bounced around him and he wondered if it escaped the shed at all. He yelled louder. But no one came. He kicked out with his feet, searching for a wall. After a few tries he found it and banged his foot against it while he yelled. He had no shoes on and his feet became sore quickly so he stopped. He realized he was tired. And his thoughts were muddy. He tried to concentrate on getting out of the ropes, but his heart wasn’t in it. He gave up and tried to grab the fallen blanket with his teeth and then with his foot. He managed to snag a corner of it and worked it slowly back up his cold legs. Henry lay on his side, his arms prickling painfully as they lost feeling around the ties. Like an animal. He thought it over and over, like a skip in a record, each time making the groove deeper, more natural. He forgot to think about anything else. He felt warm water on his face but he wasn’t sure if it were the condensation from his breath on the plastic or if he were crying. He decided it didn’t much matter and fell asleep at last and dreamed he was in the lion’s pen at a circus his father had taken him to as a kid.
A raw wind splashed over him. Henry squinted and slid backward as the light from the open door hit his face. “Henry? Are you awake?”
Henry struggled to sit up. The door banged behind Dave as he squeezed into the shed. He put down the plate he was holding and helped Henry up.
“What did you do?” Henry asked as he twisted his hands behind him, trying to wake them up and get the blood circulating again.
“I had to,” said Dave, “I couldn’t let you just walk out into the woods to die.” He squatted next to Henry and pulled a piece of foil off the plate. “I’m sorry about tying you up, but I wasn’t sure how much time we had.” He fiddled with a fork while Henry glared at him. He held a piece of toasted waffle up to Henry’s face. “I’d untie you now, but your hands are in bad shape. Why do you keep biting them?”
“What? I wasn’t biting them.” But the memory of the blood oozing out of his thumbnail came back to him. He shook his head. “I can’t stay here like this Dave. I can’t die like this.”
“You aren’t going to die,” sighed Dave and waved the piece of waffle in front of Henry. Henry felt the back of his neck begin to heat and the skin of his face began to burn.
Like a dog. Or an infant. He kept his thoughts to himself. “It’s not safe,” he said.
Dave shoved the waffle into Henry’s mouth while he was talking. “It’s fine. We’ll be careful. You don’t need to worry about anything.”
Henry turned his head and spat the dry piece of waffle out. “You aren’t listening to me Dave. It’s not safe. I’m not safe.” His voice rose as he spoke. Dave shook his head and poked another bit of waffle.
“It’s not safe, Dave!” Henry yelled. Dave looked up, mildly alarmed. Henry shouted again. “It’s not safe. Not safe.”
Dave backed up slightly, his rear brushing against the damp plastic wall. “Calm down Henry. It’s going to be fine.”
“Not safe!” Henry lunged toward him, sliding across the plastic floor. Dave dropped the plate and stood up. He backed toward the door as Henry continued to yell.
“I’ll come back when you calm down,” he said, pushing his glasses up with a shaky finger. One leg was already out the door and the cold air blasted through the small space and rattle the foil still sticking to the plate. “It’s all for your own good you know Henry. It’s just for a few weeks. Just till you’re better.” He tried to yell over Henry, but gave up at last, sliding out the door. A heavy scratching came from the outside as Dave locked Henry in.
Henry just kept yelling, “Not safe!” and couldn’t seem to stop himself. This time, even though it was almost as dark as it had been the night before, Henry knew the damp on his skin was from crying. He couldn’t seem to stop that either. At last his shouts became one long roar, whether of warning or grief at his loss of control, or just rage at being left to die penned in the cold, even Henry couldn’t have decided. It lasted until he had worn himself out and he drifted into an aching, restless sleep.
Twelve
Eight years later
Henry could smell them even before he opened his eyes. The smell overrode any thoughts he might have had of dreaming it all. It was a putrid gassy mix of rotting meat and mildew that hung over him, pulsing, undeniable, and real.
He tried to focus. What was the last thing he could remember before the reek? He had chased a man and a woman across a field. She was wounded. He had smelled the blood even over his own stench. Henry had been hungry. So hungry. He had ached with it, he still felt hollow, but the pain had subsided. He realized he could taste the rotting meat on his tongue as well as smell it and his stomach clenched, but there was nothing to vomit. When he thought of what he had meant to do to the woman, to the man too, if he caught them made his stomach cramp again, but whether it was from nausea or hunger he couldn’t tell. Have I shaken off my madness at last? He wondered.
And what about the others? Henry had seen them from the corners of his eye as he ran across the field. They had been only competition then, and he would have eaten any one of them if they had been easier to catch. Were they still sick? Had he awakened only to be devoured by them instead? His muscles stiffened painfully as a weak splash of adrenaline hit them. Not enough energy to run now. If they didn’t eat him, he’d die of starvation anyway.
Henry risked opening his eyes just a crack. A mountain of brown hair shuffled around about an arm’s length from him. He stopped breathing. It seemed to sway for a moment and then a thin brown arm reached out for something. The hand was missing its last two fingers and the arm was little more than a wrinkled stick. He opened his eyes a little more so he could see what it was trying to grab.
Henry started to sit up as he saw the hand reaching for a pile of boxed food on a nearby table.
“I wouldn’t do that,” growled a thick voice to his left. The hairy thing’s arm and Henry both froze. Relief wrestled with wariness in him. At least the man could talk and the mountain of hair could presumably understand. Not infected then. But what did they want with him? Why were they here? Henry turned his head. The man next to him was naked, except for the spackling of mud and grass on his skin. His gray hair tangled into his straggly beard and hid everything except one watery eye and a ragged socket where its mate ought to have been.
“Oh please,” said the voice under the hill of brown hair, “I’m so hungry, I just want a little. Just a little. I’ll do whatever you want.”
The hair began to sob and the gray man leapt out of his chair and knelt beside it, surprising Henry with his energy. “It’s not mine,” the gray man said, “I think it’s for all of us. I won’t try to keep it from you, but if you eat it, if we eat it, we’ll get sick.”
“I don’t care,” snivelled the woman next to him, “I’m too hungry.”
“What was your name?”
“Molly. And I used to work in a grocery store. And there were impossible amounts of food just ready to pick up and eat. I’ve been hungry for so long. Months? years? I had to eat. I had to.” The woman slumped down on the floor and cried harder. “Oh God! What did I eat? What did I eat?” she sobbed. The gray man wrapped a skeleton arm around her shoulder and tried to help her get up.
“It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s done now. We don’t have to do that any more,” he said.
“We?” asked the woman.
He patted her gently. “I was Vincent. And I was a priest. Listen, Molly, we can eat real food now, but we have to be careful. If we eat so much that we get sick, we may die. We have to start small, with a little broth or some milk. But I need help,” Vincent held out his emaciated arms. “I can’t lift very much water by myself and there are a lot of us.” He turned toward Henry. “Now that you’re awake, maybe you can help?” His remaining eye squinted and Vincent drew back hesitantly. “That is, if you’re– if you’re not still sick.”
For the first time in almost a decade Henry felt himself smile with relief. “I’m not sick any more,” he said, his voice crackling with thirst. He pushed himself slowly off the wooden floor.
“There’s a kitchen and a few soup pots, but the water is out. There’s a pond behind the house.”
“Shouldn’t we call someone? A hospital?” said Molly pushing aside the matted curtain of hair in front of her face.
Vincent shook his head and reached for a fluttering piece of paper on the table. “I’m not sure when you got sick, or if you know what has happened since, but I don’t think there’s anyone to call,” he said, handing her the paper. “It’s not all bad news,” he said as he saw Henry’s grin collapse. “And we’re alive and sane again.” Henry helped Molly up and followed Vincent into the kitchen.
“How long have you been awake?” Henry asked.
“Only about an hour longer than you. There are the other three that haven’t woken up yet too.”
Henry looked doubtfully back into the living room. “Are you certain they are alive?”
Vincent clattered around in dusty cabinets looking for pots. “Yes. I checked you all. So far, we’re all alive. But without food and water, we aren’t going to last very much longer. None of us are in good shape.”
Henry looked out of the kitchen window at the thick whorled grass still silver with frost. “It’s cold. We should find some clothes.”
Molly stumbled into the kitchen, still holding the paper. She stood next to Henry and looked outside. “It’s all gone, isn’t it?” she asked.
Henry looked over at her, tried not to see the tarry stripes of old battles on her thin arms or the maggots wriggling on the surface of a new wound near her chin. He tried to smile. “Someone woke us– cured us. It can’t all be gone, someone must be making medicine still. And they didn’t just shoot us, so they probably weren’t looters. Not that we had anything valuable anyway.”
Molly twisted the mat of hair back with her mangled, clawed hand. She looked up at Henry. “I guess that’s true,” she said and she smiled a little too. Vincent emerged from the cabinet with two large stock pots. He looked over Henry’s shoulder at the gray, frosty day and shivered.
“There must be clothing here somewhere.” He placed the pots near the door. They heard sounds of people moving from the living room.
“I’ll check upstairs if you want. There must be a bedroom here,” said Henry, “If you’ll check on whoever is waking up.”
“Be careful,” said Vincent, “I haven’t been upstairs yet. I don’t know what, or who, may be up there.”
Henry shuffled toward the dusty entrance hall. His legs were rickety, like unoiled wood and he wondered how he had been able to chase anyone when he could barely keep himself upright. He stopped in front of the front door. The man had shot him with a dart as he banged on the front door trying to get to the woman. That was the last thing he remembered, not the field. There must have be
en a sedative in the dart. He wondered how long he’d really been sleeping. If the past several years had just been an awful dream. Maybe this was the dream. He turned toward the dark stairs and almost groaned as he counted them. Dark spots and splashes wove across the treads and Henry hoped whoever was bleeding had gone away long before. He went up slowly, leaning on the wall, but he was still out of breath when he reached the top. There was a pile of bloody clothes and sheets in the hallway corner. They were so soaked that the blood was still wet and a heavy copper smell hung in the top of the stairwell. Henry’s stomach roiled and he was horrified to find his mouth watering. He hurried past the pile and into the first bedroom. He wiped his forehead and tried to push away his stomach’s reaction. Tried to push out the memory of all the other times he’d given in to that particular desire. He wasn’t ready to think about it. His body couldn’t afford for him to become overwhelmed by grief and guilt. He could hear long sobbing wails rising up from downstairs and knew someone else had just woken and realized the past was real and not the nightmare it seemed.
The dresser was askew and the bed unmade but not dusty, though everything else in the house seemed to be. Henry assumed it was the wounded woman and the man who had shot him, but where had they gone? And why had he been brought inside? Henry struggled with the swollen dresser drawer. It squealed open at last. Men’s clothes. He hesitated, thinking of the grime and blood and acrid sweat that covered him. He’d never wanted to bathe so badly in his life. He had to eat first. Before comfort and definitely before vanity. Henry pulled on an old pair of jeans and a shirt. He looked at the shorts and socks, but it was too personal. He grabbed armfuls of clothing and walked back to the stairs, throwing the clothes down ahead of him. He didn’t want to come back up here if he could help it. The heavy copper smell made his stomach cramp again. He turned toward another bedroom. The curtains were drawn and only a gray glow outlined the furniture in the room. Henry crossed to the window, relieved to be away from the bloody clothing. He opened the curtains and watched a flurry of dust specks settle lazily back onto the windowsill. The room had been closed for a long time, everything neatly tucked into place, it still smelled lightly of pine needles. Henry looked around and saw the naked trunk of a Christmas tree, tiny glass lights slung over its bones, here and there a shining ornament clung to the thin wood claws, a pile of dark needles and shattered sparkling glass at its base.
The Cured Page 7