“What?”
“Your daughter. The one that untied us. Are you going back for her now?”
Henry looked down into the flat white of the milk. “She’s not my daughter.”
“Oh. I’m sorry. I just assumed, she seemed to bring you things.”
“Her parents were friends of mine.”
“Oh.” Pam sipped another spoonful and avoided looking at him.
“She couldn’t still be there. She would have run away during the confusion, don’t you think?”
She shrugged. “I had babies. You know, Before. But not as old as her. I’m going back home to find them.”
Rickey shuffled into the room, his pants puddling around the knees and feet. He flopped down next to Henry and eyed his almost empty glass. “Didn’t you read that letter? It’s been eight years. Almost everyone’s dead. Your babies won’t be home,” he said, downing the last few drops of his milk and sliding closer to Henry.
“You don’t know that,” said Molly from the doorway. “The letter also said there was a city with lots of people. Even people like us, and families that reunited. I’m sure your kids are there, Pam.”
Pam smiled at her. “They were away when I got sick. They went on a school skiing trip. I can’t wait to see them again.”
Rickey snorted.
“What’s so funny?” asked Henry, with a warning look.
Rickey shrugged. “Well, it’s just– Let’s say this city is real and that they allow people like us inside–”
“People like us?” asked Vincent wandering in with Melissa in tow.
“Yeah. Infected. Cannibals. Zombies. Uh, Cured or whatever it was the psychiatrist chick called us. People like us. Let’s say they allow us to come in. And let’s even pretend that Pam’s kids here, are actually alive and living in this city. You think they’re going to want to see her? You think they’re going to kiss and hug her and pretend everything is okay, when they know what she’s probably done in the past several years? You think anyone will want to be around us?”
“Hey,” said Henry quietly, “relax.”
“We don’t know what is normal any more. If there are enough– enough Cured around, if we outnumber the Immunes then maybe what we’ve done isn’t really that unusual. Maybe it’s not even surprising,” said Melissa, throwing a scrawny arm around Pam’s shoulder.
Henry scrubbed at his itching, crawling beard. “Murder’s not normal,” he said quietly and felt his eyes prickle with tears. “There’s nothing normal about what we’ve done.”
“We just did what we had to do to survive,” said Molly, “We didn’t know what we were doing.”
“We do now,” said Rickey, “and so does everybody else. Why would they let us in? Why would they want us back after that?”
“The people that cured us were willing to accept us,” said Vincent, holding his hands out toward the pile of supplies spread on the coffee table between them, “They’ve left us directions straight to their home. And if things are as bad as Dr. Rider’s letter says, I can only assume the things they have left us are scarce and valuable now. They could have killed us or left us to fend for ourselves, but they didn’t.”
Rickey shook his head. “It’s a trap. You think they are just going to give us this stuff without expecting something in return? Have you people forgotten the past several years? Have you forgotten what Phil and his gang did to us?” he waved at Pam, who shrunk backward into Melissa, “did you forget what he did to you? No one came to help us in all those years. What makes you think this city is any different? This guy,” he flicked the letter with a finger, “What’s-his-name, Frank? He’s probably this woman’s slave. That’s all we’ll be. First guard dogs and whores. Now servants or slaves. Pam’s kids hope she’s dead. That’s the best anyone can hope for. We have no friends. We have no families. Their lives and memories are happier if they continue to believe we’re dead.”
Henry stood up. He shoved his almost empty cup into Rickey’s hand. “Shut up and drink your milk,” he said and walked toward the kitchen.
“You know I’m right,” Rickey called after him, and picked up the spoon to finish Henry’s food. Pam got up and followed him into the kitchen.
“Do you think he’s right?” she asked.
“I think he’s kind of a jerk. I don’t know what to think about the City or the people that left us that note.”
“Aren’t you worried about going there then?”
“It’s a little early to worry about that. I don’t think any of us are going anywhere for a while. We’ll have to wait until we’re stronger.” He started rummaging through the kitchen drawers.
“What are you looking for?”
“Scissors. I can’t stand this hair any more. Although, if I come across soap first I’ll be equally happy.” He could feel bugs and debris wiggling and itching and it made Henry want to scream. Now that the overwhelming pain of his empty stomach was gone, it was all Henry could think about. If he didn’t get rid of the itches soon, he thought he’d scratch himself until he bled.
Molly heard them and walked over. “I could die happy if I could brush this foul taste out of my mouth.” Henry nodded. The taste in his own mouth was the congealed memory of all his sins.
“I think there are two bathrooms,” said Pam, “but they might have been cleaned out already. I’ll go look.”
“Want to get some more water with me Henry? We can warm it up on the stove.” Molly picked up a large pot.
“I’ll go too,” called Vincent from the other room. There were no scissors in the drawers. Henry could feel himself building into a panicked frenzy. He grabbed a steak knife from the drawer instead and picked up a soup pot on his way out the back door.
Fourteen
The knife was dull and pulled more hair out than it cut away, but Henry was beyond caring. He sawed away at his beard first. It was a mass of rotten meat and clumped colonies of fly eggs and maggots. The knife kept slipping in the slick mush that stuck to the hairs or sticking in the crusted clots of mud and gore. Henry wept as he chopped at it. It was as if he were seeing his memory of the past eight years in physical form. Blood and dirt and pain all bunched together. The hair on his head was easier. Cleaner even. He was able to calm down as the cold air hit more and more of his scalp and the weight on his neck lightened. The smell of rot receded into the background. He sat next to the pond, unwilling to bring the mess back into the house. It took him a long time to get rid of all of it, the sun was beginning to set and his hands were shaking with cold by the time he’d cut most of it. The others came and went with pots and basins of water, but they let him be, passing silently back and forth to the house. He looked at the dark mass next to him. He kept worrying about whether the maggots would crawl into the pond and infect the water, even though some part of him knew that the idea was insane. He thought about burning the hair in the fireplace, but he didn’t want it in the house. Now that it had been shorn, now that he was free of it, he recoiled from the thought of touching it again. Even to move it. He looked around the darkening field. There was a snow shovel leaning against the back door of the house. Henry grabbed it and came back to the tangled, matted chunks of greasy hair. He scooped it up with the shovel and then hesitated.
Where was he going to go? Why was he worrying about this? But it was no use. The hair bothered him and he wouldn’t be able to rest until it was gone. He walked to the far fence, holding the shovel as far from him as possible the whole way. He set it down near the post and then chopped away the dead grass and stiff, cold dirt with the steak knife, until he had made a small dent in the ground. Tipping the hair in, he hastily covered it with the chunks of earth he had cut away. Strands stuck out here and there, and Henry’s mind flashed to the frozen woman he had found in the snow so long ago, her hair barely fluttering against the drift. I should have known then, he thought, I should have gone back to the lodge and killed him before I got sick. What’s he going to do to Marnie? What’s he already done? Henry’s sight was
suddenly blurry with tears. He tore up the grass around him and stuffed handfuls onto the little grave of hair, trying to hide it, pressing it into the chilly mud.
“Hey man, you okay over there?” Rickey was calling him from near the pond. Henry sniffled into his shoulder, then picked up the shovel and knife and turned back to the house.
“Yeah,” he called back, “Just taking care of something.” He walked slowly back to the pond and traded the snow shovel for his pot of water. Rickey’s tufts of hair were trimmed and combed over the bald patches and his beard was gone. His nose stuck out like a log splitter’s wedge and the scars on his bare neck shone purple and smooth even in the dim light. Henry wasn’t sure if it was an improvement or not.
“Man, I thought you looked like shit before. Did you pull all that hair out or what?” Rickey asked him.
Henry held up the steak knife.
“That priest found some razors and the chicks found some bars of soap in the bathroom. You could use both. C’mon, let’s get this water inside. The priest says we can have another cup of milk, and he says we can put a little oatmeal in it. One of the girls is cooking it right now.” Rickey rubbed his long hands together before picking up his pot of water. Henry followed him into the house without comment.
Someone had made a fire and the kitchen glowed in the light of three fat candles. One of the women was stirring a small pan of milky oatmeal. Henry wondered if it would feed them all before he remembered how little they were meant to eat. He looked at the woman, but her hair was chopped short, spiking like needles from her head, and he couldn’t tell who it was, having seen very little of anyone’s face before.
“I’m going to have to introduce myself all over again,” he said to her, “I can’t recognize anyone without their hair.”
The woman smiled, “Melissa. And since you aren’t running at the mouth or missing an eye, you must be Henry.”
He laughed, feeling ten times lighter without the halo of filth surrounding his head. She eyed the choppy hair that was left. “Did it hurt to cut it with the knife?”
Henry blushed. “Yeah, but I had to get rid of it.”
“I understand. You might want to clean it up a little though. There’s no one in the bathroom now, if you want it. Dinner will be a little longer.”
“Thanks,” said Henry. He found Vincent trying to tape a gauze pad over his empty eye socket in front of the mirror. “Here,” he said reaching carefully for the tape, “it can’t be easy to see what you are doing with your hands in the way.” Vincent held out the soft pad with a tight smile.
“You aren’t bothered by it?” he asked.
Henry shook his head. He washed his hands in the water someone had filled the sink with. It was warm and the soap stung his nose in a pleasant way. “I think the only thing that can bother me any more are the things I’ve done.” He dried his hands on a towel and took the gauze from Vincent’s hand. He carefully straightened the tape. “Do you think it matters that I didn’t mean them? Would it have been better if I had died before I got sick?” He gently pressed the tape across Vincent’s brow and then at the edges of the socket.
“Why are you asking me? Haven’t I done the same sort of things?” Vincent’s brow wrinkled and Henry pressed the tape down a little harder so it would stay.
“Well, you said you were a priest. The church must have something to say about violence while a person is not in control of themselves.”
“Are you a Catholic?”
“No, I mean, I wasn’t. But I’d feel better knowing anyway.”
Vincent slid down, making room for Henry at the sink. “You’re asking about sin?”
Henry nodded and tried to hide his embarrassment by bending to wash his face.
“For someone to sin, they must have free will. You have to choose. We weren’t operating under free will. If we could have stopped, we would have. But we didn’t even realize what it was we were doing at the time. At least, I assume it was the same for you as it was for me.”
Henry straightened. “Yes,” he said slowly, “if I’d known what would happen, I would have found a way to end it before it began.”
Vincent shook his head and looked distressed. Henry held up a hand. “I know, that would have been suicide. I know. I still would have done it. But–” He glanced at Vincent and picked up a razor. His hand shook as he brought it to the patchy stubble on his face. “Father, I feel overwhelming guilt for what I’ve done. But while I was doing it– every time I bit someone, every time I fed, it felt good.” Henry nicked his chin as tears once again blurred his sight. Vincent put a hand on his shoulder and handed him a towel. Henry pressed it against his cut.
“Henry, we were little more than beasts. Don’t you think lions or hawks or wild dogs feel the same– the same satisfaction when they catch their prey? But that is just the body’s reaction to food. You are back to your rational self now, and you would not choose to kill someone now. You could not have sinned, because you had no choice.”
Henry turned to look at the old priest. “Is that really what you believe?” he asked, “That it was something separate, divorced from us, and that now we can go on, untarnished by what we’ve done?”
“Are you asking me what I believe as a priest, or as a man?” Vincent sat down on the closed lid of the toilet and rubbed at his chest, as if he ached there. “Doctrine says that I needn’t repent of something that’s not my fault. But as a man, how could I not? How could I not spend every day trying to lessen the harm I’ve done?”
Henry shook his head. “How can we lessen it? We will never lessen it by even a hair, no matter what we do.”
Vincent stood up, and squeezed Henry’s shoulder again. “No,” he said, his old voice creaking, “we can’t. But maybe we can stop any more harm from happening.”
Rickey knocked on the door frame. “Uh, dinner’s ready. Better let Henry finish up.”
Vincent nodded and let Henry go. He left the bathroom. “Just ‘cause you cut it off doesn’t mean it wasn’t real you know,” said Rickey, still leaning on the frame.
“I know,” said Henry, “I’m not trying to pretend it wasn’t. I just had to get free of the mess. Just wanted to feel human again.”
Rickey shook his head. “Don’t be long or you’ll miss dinner” said Rickey, “Oh, and we found the toothbrushes. Bad news, there are only four. Just try and clean it really well after. Don’t want your cooties, man.” He grinned and held out the four brushes like an apology.
Henry nodded and took them. The bristles were already bent over and dingy from the vigorous use they’d gotten from the others. Henry chose the newest looking one and looked for the toothpaste. The tube was empty and Henry groaned, but there was a box of old baking soda sitting next to the sink. He decided to shave first and then refill the sink with clean water before dipping the brush in.
The face that emerged from the stubble was one that Henry didn’t recognize. His nose had been broken in a few places and his teeth didn’t line up the way they used to, a combination of wear and a badly healed break. His neck was circled with a dashed line of welts where his chain collar had choked and cut him whenever he had lunged at something. Still, he’d been luckier than most, protected in his little shed and then in the pen. He didn’t have scars as severe or noticeable as the others, and it wasn’t the damage to his face that shocked him. It was his age. Henry felt as if he were looking at his father and not himself. Exhaustion and thin, loose skin from recent starvation made him look as if more time had passed than the eight years since he had last seen his own reflection.
He felt like a living Rip Van Winkle, outliving his friends and family, waking in a shattered world, a stranger even to himself. Henry turned from the mirror and began scouring his teeth with the gritty baking soda and a dirty toothbrush. Everything is wrong, he thought, everything. It’s as if I’ve woken up on another planet. He washed the toothbrush as well as he could and passed through the darkening living room into the kitchen with the others. They were e
ating silently, none of them looking at another. Five people with whom Henry had spent the past eight years living, who’d seen him at his sickest, darkest moment. And they were still perfect strangers, each completely alone in the silent, vacant world. But I’m not alone. There is someone I know out there. And I made a promise to take care of her.
Pam stood up to get him a bowl of oatmeal and milk. He smiled as she handed it to him, smiled as he realized there was a reason he had been cured. “Yes Pam,” he said, “I’m going back for Marnie.”
Fifteen
“You know you’re batshit crazy right?” Rickey thumped his dusty pillow and flopped onto the couch . Henry shoved a new log into the fire, pushing it far to the back with the bottom of one bare foot, forgetting he wouldn’t feel it until too late if he got burned.
“You think I should leave her? She’s the reason we’re here and cured.”
Rickey rolled his eyes at the ceiling. “Yeah, you can thank her for that too, when you see her.”
Vincent sat up from his blanket on the floor. “You don’t want to be cured?” he asked.
“C’mon Father, are we really better off this way? A few days ago we weren’t worried about what anyone else thought or what happened to them. We didn’t know we were cold or hungry, had no guilt, no responsibility, no pain. Or if we did, it didn’t register. We wake up here, to what exactly? An empty belly, an empty world with no future and all of us dragging our memory with us. We have no friends, we have no food besides the little that’s here, we’re wounded– hell, you’re missing an eye and we’ve got nowhere to go. What’s better about this?”
Henry turned around to face the two men. “We aren’t killing and eating people.”
Rickey sat up. “Oh please. We didn’t even know we were doing it. It was just another meal to us. It helped us survive didn’t it? You think what we did is any worse than what Phil’s guys did?”
“Are they the example you want to judge your life by?” asked Vincent.
The Cured Page 9