The Cured

by Deirdre Gould

  “What’s wrong with this place?”

  “Nothing. It’s just– safe. It’s neutral ground. I can pretend I’m not friends with any Cureds even if they show up here, because this is the Immune side. I don’t have to defend my actions or claim anything but a passing acquaintance with Cureds here. If I was really friends with people like Stephanie, or you, I’d visit your houses, babysit your kids, meet you at your speakeasies. If I really value you, that’s what I ought to do.”

  “Being friends shouldn’t be anyone’s business but ours.”

  “It shouldn’t be, but it is. It also shouldn’t be true that Cureds can’t get jobs they are qualified for or homes that aren’t falling to pieces. It shouldn’t be true that the Immune kids get to go to highschool but Cured kids and kids who were born on the Cured side of town can’t find a desk past elementary. Or that Immunes who get caught stealing from a Cured or beating up on them are given far less severe punishments than the other way around. But some places have seen so much bad, there’s just no fixing them. No matter how much you want to. You either let em stay bad or you destroy them trying to change it.” Amos shook his head, “It’s time to start over. Somewhere new. Somewhere with less bad memories. It’s a big empty world out there. There has to be some space to try again.”

  The pool game broke up and the others rejoined them. Henry kept thinking of what the soldier had said about the people at the dental clinic. He started to form a plan that night, surprised at how very simple it seemed. He slept in the bed meant for Marnie without waking until the first bell.

  Thirty-nine

  The red tokens clinked halfway up the old bell jar and Henry smiled. Halfway home, he thought. Phil and he had not crossed paths in weeks. Almost everyone had been released from quarantine, but a few workers had been kept at their special assignments for the remainder of the month. People like Phil, who had no graves to dig and Melissa, who still needed to deliver meals to the people left at the hospital. Henry wasn’t sure if Phil was avoiding him or if Stephanie or Amos had finally forced the grave digger to start showing up on time.

  It rankled a little, having to wait to find out what had happened at the Lodge, but at least Henry didn’t have to pretend to be friendly. He hadn’t been merely biding his time either. This was the day that his plans for Phil would begin.

  He walked through the hazy gold of the late afternoon to Melissa’s small apartment. The row houses around it had all had their tiny yards plowed and planted with herbs and vegetables. Henry and Amos had been helping while so many of the owners had been quarantined in the hospital. Henry had been practicing for the coming months. It gave him a pleasant surge of pride to see the neat green rows of uncurling plants like stitches in a new shirt. Many Cured families would have an easier summer and fall because of Henry and Amos.

  He knocked on Melissa’s door. “Hi,” said Melissa, opening the door. He heard Rickey yell something about cannibals from farther within and ignored it.

  “Is Vincent here?” he asked, trying to look over Melissa’s shoulder.

  “No, just Rickey.”

  “Good. I need your help.”

  Melissa led him to the living room where Rickey sat at a table covered in a pile of red tokens. He was counting them with an unlit cigarette hanging from his lips and a spare behind his ear.

  “Here,” said Henry, handing him the glass jar.

  “What the fuck is this?” said Rickey, shaking it. “You been blowing it all on loose women and horse races or what?”

  “Relax,” said Melissa, “Henry’s been paying for Molly’s medicine. It’s not cheap.”

  “We won’t get any from her either. She’s still doing physical therapy every day,” grumbled Rickey.

  “It’s not like it’s any good to us out there. What are you going to do with it all?”

  Rickey raked a hand through the wild tufts of hair left on his head. He looked at Henry and winced.

  “What?” asked Henry.

  “We’re up to twenty now.”

  “Twenty? Where are we going to put twenty people? How are we going to feed them?”

  Rickey shook his head. “It looks like all of Amos’s savings is going to go for seeds and saplings. We still need tools for farming, for building, for everyday life. One farmhouse isn’t going to cut it any more. I don’t think we can afford lumber, not usable stuff anyway, so we’ll have to get woodworking tools too. That’s not even mentioning transportation, storage bins, medical supplies– there’s so much to do. But the thing I’m worried about this second is water purification tablets. They’re rare and expensive.”

  “Don’t worry so much about finding everything here. Those houses in the suburbs had lots of tools, no one seemed to want them. And the farm itself must have a few, it’s not like we were looking for those things when we left. And we can boil the water instead,” offered Henry.

  “Those propane tanks will run out faster than you expect. And then we’ll have to cut wood every time we need water.”

  “There has to be a well. A farm like that always has a well.”

  “And if not?”

  “There were other farms out there,” said Melissa, “a few needed only slight repairs. One of them has to have a well. It’s warm enough now, we can use tents until we get something permanent. But I’m not staying in this City for a moment longer than I have to. I hate the thought of that monster walking around free to do what he wants day after day.”

  Henry felt the warm glow of anger shared between them. Rickey sighed and scrubbed his face. Then he grinned at them. “If my poor Ma could see me now, she’d have the shock of her life. She’d never have guessed I’d be responsible for the survival of twenty people. She’d be horrified.”

  “So am I,” teased Melissa. Henry elbowed her.

  “Why’s that so hard to believe?” asked Henry.

  Rickey started stacking tokens in little columns, clinking and wiggling them between his fingers. “Well, I wasn’t exactly the most obedient kid. I told you I grew up on a farm right? My dad’s ticker stopped cold when I was fourteen. He was out driving the tractor. It just kept going until it smashed into the barn. He was already dead by then. Anyway, my Ma wasn’t able to run that big place by herself, and she wanted me to stay in school, so she let a neighbor buy the place for a song and we moved near my Ma’s folks in the city. It was a stinking, loud, bright and beautiful place to me. I didn’t stay in school long. Found some friends and we got our kicks stealing cars and breaking into apartments. We never really did much, just went joyriding and ate people’s food and rented movies on their cable. At least, not till I was older. I was really good at stealing cars. Really fast. So some of the older kids got me into a group that had it’s own chop shop. My Ma, she never let on that she knew what was going on, but I know that she knew. She used to beg me to go back to school, not hang around with the bad kids anymore. I always promised I’d do better, and for a while I would, but eventually I’d go back to it. I finally got caught. I mean, I’d been arrested before, but I could always talk my way out of charges. Not the last time though. Didn’t have that kid face any more. I got sentenced to seven years. Seven years. But honestly, I was lucky I didn’t get ten, the way I acted in court. Such a stupid kid. I was six months from getting out when the Plague hit.

  “Prison’s a funny place. It’s this isolated world where everything that would seem trivial out here take on this huge importance in there, while the world could actually be ending out here, and no one would really notice in there. Not until the staff stopped showing up anyway. You wouldn’t realize how little daily life depends on contact with the outside world until you aren’t in it anymore. My buddy noticed first. He said the guards were different one day. But I was on my way out and I wasn’t paying attention anymore. I figured they must have been fresh out of training or something. But a few days later, my friend noticed there were less of them around. Every day, less and less. We counted. Finally, one morning, we woke up and there was no head count
s. There are always head counts in prison. For everything. But not that morning. But the cell doors released, just like always, so someone must have had pity on us. Someone immune, cause none of the prisoners got sick, not then. It only took a few minutes to realize something was off. Things got really bad, really fast. My friend pulled me into his cell and we blocked the door with the mattress and hid. You’d think hundreds of guys that just found themselves without guards or locked doors in the way would just walk out of the prison and rejoice in their good luck, wouldn’t you? But that’s not what happened. For a few minutes people did just start running for the doors, but only for a few minutes. Then fights started to break out. There was nothing to stop them. Years and years of old arguments just spilled into this riot. It was like the whole place had gone mad. Like it was full of Infected. But it wasn’t. Nobody was sick yet. They just tore each other apart out of plain old human meanness. My buddy and I hid for a few days, but we didn’t have any food. We finally snuck out of the cell one night when it seemed quiet. There were dead and dying guys everywhere. It was like one of those old war movies. We could hear other people hiding in their cells. We tried to get a few of our buddies to come with us, but they were too scared. Some of them were scared of the other prisoners, but most of them were scared of whatever had happened outside. I should have been scared too. But I was a dumbass. Why would a prison just be left unlocked? What could be worse than letting hundreds of criminals loose? I should have thought first, but I didn’t.

  We got out okay, my buddy and me, but we both wanted to go check on our families. So we split up. I never saw him again. No idea if he was immune or if he got sick like me, later on. I went straight to my Ma’s. There was no one sick yet in my town, but we saw on the news that it was coming. My Gramps had a fallout shelter from when they used to worry about the bomb, but it was winter and he and my Gram were in Florida. So I got it ready for me and my Ma. We didn’t have a lot, but Ma always helped Gram put away preserves and pickles and stuff every year, so we were okay for a while. We stayed in the house for a few months, I put plastic on all the windows and doors and stuff. I didn’t let Ma go to the store or anything, we just sat in the house until the power went out. We would have stayed longer, but the neighbors kept knocking on the door looking for help or food, I don’t know. It was only a matter of time before they broke in and we would be exposed to the air. So we went downstairs and locked ourselves down in the shelter. There wasn’t any power and we only had one of those little potties for camping and a little propane. So every day I’d listen at the door until I was sure it was okay and then I’d open it for a while and I’d go dump the potty as long as no one was around.” Rickey glanced around at them, “It wasn’t all bad you know. Ma and I had some good talks in the shelter. We played cards and dominoes. She told me stories about when she was a kid. We spent more time together than we ever had before. But we were only in there maybe six months. Then Ma had a stroke or a heart attack or something. Don’t know for sure. Just woke up one morning and she wasn’t able to move right and her face kind of sagged on one side. She tried to get me to stay in the shelter, but I knew she needed a doctor. So I brought her to the hospital. But it was gone. Burned to the ground a long time ago. So I drove to the next one. We didn’t see anyone. No people on the street, no cars, no police, no lights on, nothing. My Ma started crying halfway to the next hospital. She kept saying ‘We’re the only ones left. Everybody is gone.’ I kept telling her they were probably in their shelters or evacuated, we’d find out at the hospital. Our radio had stopped working a few months before. I thought it was broken, like I cranked it too hard or something, but now I know there was nobody left to broadcast.

  So we got to the next hospital, it was a big one, like the one here. I got the creeps as soon as I saw the empty parking lot. But I thought maybe I’d find somebody. A janitor, a security guard, someone. Or a sign telling us where to go or something. So I parked right where the ambulances are supposed to be and told Ma to wait in the car. I went in the emergency section first. All the lights were off, even the battery backups. You don’t realize how dark hospitals are until there’s no power. There were no windows in the emergency wing. I yelled a few times, but nobody came. There was furniture tipped over in the waiting room and papers scattered everywhere. Patient folders and flyers about smoking and release forms all over the floor. No signs though. Nothing. Just dark and empty. I don’t know why I didn’t leave then, but I was convinced there had to be somebody, so I walked down the hall toward the labs and the coffee shop with it’s overpriced, tacky get well gifts. There was a receptionist desk there, and I guess I was thinking there had to be some kind of sign or something. I kept calling out, trying to get someone’s attention. Nobody ever answered. There were a lot more windows at the front entrance and it was a sunny summer day, so I could see pretty well. The floor was white rubber or something, you know, like those cheap linoleum jobs they put in high schools that are easy to clean. In front of reception though, it was black. Dull black with no shine. I got a little closer until I saw that it was dried blood. Yards of the stuff just spread out down the hallway and out the door. Like it had been painted there. I got real scared then and I stopped yelling for anyone. We’d heard reports of the Plague, but not anything like this. We’d just heard that people were getting sick and dying. Not how. I went running back for the car. When I got back near the Emergency Room, I heard a little yelp. It sounded like Ma yelling for me and I raced out to the car. Her door was open and the car was still running, but my Ma was gone. I yelled for her, but she didn’t answer. I looked everywhere for her. Hours and hours. I went back into the hospital and searched, I drove all the side streets and parking lot, pushed through all the little hedges, but I never found her. I spent the night at the hospital hoping she’d come back. I didn’t know what to do. So I went home again. Just to check. Maybe she’d got back somehow. But the shelter had been broken into while we were gone and everything was gone. My Ma wasn’t there. I thought about checking on the neighbors or even going back to the prison, just so I could find some people. Anybody. But I was too chickenshit. I decided to go see how my buddy was doing. If anyone would help me, it’d be him.”

  “I thought you said you never saw him after the prison,” said Melissa.

  Rickey shook his head but didn’t look up at them. “I never did. But that was my plan anyway. I drove the car until it ran out of gas and then I stole another one that was outside an empty house. The gas stations were already dry. The groceries too. I had to break into a lot of houses to find food. I used to get real happy when an alarm went off. I thought, good, the cops will show up and this whole shitty nightmare will be over. But the only time anyone came, it was an Infected. He was pretty desperate so he was fast, but he was also already weak. I didn’t know what he was going to do. I kept talking to him as he came at me, I thought maybe he was looking for help. ‘Man,’ I said, ‘am I glad to see you. It’s like fucking Christmas.’ But the guy didn’t say anything, just kept running at me. I had time to think that he either wanted my stuff, or he was so glad to see someone he wanted a hug. I was so stupid. I started backing up real quick. ‘It’s okay, man, what I got is yours too. We can share, I don’t need it all,’ And he stopped. Like he heard me. But he didn’t say anything, just stood there, breathing real heavy and looking at me. I wasn’t in many fights in prison, I just stuck to myself mostly. But I’d seen lots of them start. And I knew this guy was going to attack me. I could see him tense up, but I wasn’t quick enough. He jumped on me and we fell over. He was on top of my chest scratching at me with his fingers, like he thought he had claws or something. He tried to lean down and bite me, but I got an arm in between us and held him off. I managed to roll out from under him, but I think that’s how I got infected too. We were in this restaurant kitchen and I had one of those massive cans of tomato sauce. I had to hit the guy in the head to stop him. I don’t know if I killed him, I ran away and I stuck to unlocked doors after that. I didn’t go
straight to my friend’s house. I didn’t want to go empty handed and be a burden. It took a couple of weeks for me to get all the things together I thought I’d need or would help. By the time I made my way to my buddy’s house I was pretty sick. I couldn’t seem to steer right and I kept forgetting that I was driving. It wasn’t a problem because there wasn’t anyone else to hit. Until I ran into Phil’s scroungers.”

  “Oh Jesus,” swore Henry.

  “They were parked outside this run down bar, a big line of motorcycles a tow truck and a station wagon with one of those trailer things on the back. I guess to carry everything. Nobody was outside. I saw the bikes. I always had a thing for bikes. Anyway, I wanted to get a closer look and I forgot I was driving. I drove right into them. Took out four or five by the time I realized I’d hit em. Phil’s guys come running out and I’m just sitting there in my car, complete space shot. I didn’t even get pissed when they pulled me out of the car. But then one of the guys started waling on me, just pounding the living hell out of me. And it was like something snapped. Like one of those glow sticks I used to have as a kid. Like some glass vial in me snapped and the right chemicals mixed together and I was something different. Angry. Glowing. I killed the guy that hit me by the time they were able to stop me. There was a fat, balding guy with glasses that had a gun. I thought he was going to shoot me. But somehow, I wasn’t scared. I didn’t care at all. All I cared about was the way his fat little wrists were going to slide around between my teeth.”

  Melissa winced. Henry thought he must have been talking about Dave.

  “But Phil stopped him. Said I must be Infected and he wanted me to replace one of the dogs he’d lost. That’s how he said it too, I was going to replace a dog. They tied me behind one of the bikes and made me run up the road until we got to the Lodge. I fell a few times. That’s how I got this lovely patchwork,” Rickey pointed to the wrinkled purple splotches between tufts of hair on his head, “but Phil didn’t let them kill me. Then he put me in the same pen as Pam. And the rest is history I guess.” He crossed his arms over his bony chest. “Couldn’t survive in prison, couldn’t take care of my Ma, couldn’t even take care of myself. Now I got to take care of twenty people.”