The Cured

by Deirdre Gould

  “Maybe everyone will wake up sane in a week or two. Then there’ll be a reckoning, I guess. There’ll be a reckoning for everyone.”

  Henry’s hand closed around the sharp metal. He wasn’t sure how much Phil knew or guessed, but Henry intended to let his plan play out as far as it would go. A shadow flickered in the headlight and Henry whirled around. There was nothing there. Henry had decided. There was no reason to stay and chance running into someone or something that wanted what he had. Or who he had. He had no way of knowing whether Phil was telling the truth about the death of all his men. He got back into the truck and started it up again, which brought a fresh round of banging from Phil.

  Henry pulled off the road next to Phil’s ruined snowmobile. It had been pushed into the edge of the woods at some point, its edges rusted and it’s skis pulled off, the handle bars barely sticking out of the old crumbling ditch. But Henry knew right where it was. He got out of the truck and took the keys and his large backpack with him. Phil shouted to be let out, but Henry ignored him, heading off into the woods to relieve himself and pick up a few bundles of sticks from the edge of the woods. He was taking a risk, not going all the way to the Lodge. But he didn’t want to be surprised in the dark. He had no idea what to expect and it scared the hell out of him. He’d make a fire here and Phil could come out if he behaved or piss his pants in the truck if he didn’t. It was all the same to Henry. How liberating it is knowing Phil is going to die, thought Henry as he walked back toward the dark road, to know I don’t have to worry if he doesn’t eat or soils himself or injures himself. This must be how he felt about me for years. Every day expecting me to die, it not mattering much every day that I woke up alive. Until the last one. It was a quick thought, gone almost before Henry realized he had thought it. But the shame in him was immediate and strong. He fought it, trying to feel the justice in it rather than his own coldness. But he kept imagining Vincent with him, exhorting him to be a good man. The world doesn’t need good men any more. The age of the good man is over. The reign of the strong man has returned, he thought. But it was no use. Vincent’s words came back to him still: “You think I’m the weak one, that I’m vulnerable, naïve. Maybe silly and stupid. But I’m no fool Henry. It takes a strong man to strike his enemies down, to deliver justice to the wicked. But it takes a stronger man to stay his hand. To trust judgement to someone wiser and to show mercy to the people who seem to deserve it least.”

  There was a rustle in the brush and Henry leapt back onto the road and flipped the headlights on. Nothing came out. Still, he felt better with the lights on, even at the risk of attracting attention so he built the fire in their glow. He pulled a few packets of food that were wrapped in old corn husks out of his pack and began cooking them. The smell made Phil bang on the door again. The shame in Henry’s heart stung him. He grabbed the stun gun and slid the plastic bio-hazard suit back on with a sigh. He walked around to the truck doors. “I’m letting you out to eat. I’ve got the gun. Don’t try anything stupid or you’ll be sorry.”

  Henry knew he sounded like an idiot, but he wasn’t sure what else to say. He unlocked the door and dropped the key down the front of his suit. He held the gun up with one hand and turned the door handle with the other, quickly backing away as the door swung open. Phil was crouched in the front, obviously ready to leap, but Henry had the gun up in time and Phil changed his mind, giving Henry a nasty grin.

  “You didn’t read my note,” said Phil in a mock hurt tone.

  “I did.”

  “Then why the bio-hazard suit?”

  “It doesn’t change anything.” Henry saw Phil’s smile falter as a flicker of fear passed over him, and Henry knew Phil still believed he might be infected. “You getting out or what?”

  Phil nodded and slowly climbed down from the truck, his legs stiff and unsteady from the long ride. He stumbled when his foot hit the tar sooner than he expected. Henry saw and didn’t waste the opportunity. “Careful,” he said, “it feels like walking on a moving boat, doesn’t it? It’s going to get worse you know. Soon it won’t just be your feet. Soon your hands won’t do what you wanted them too. And then your tongue won’t say the words that you tell it to. But it’s all right. Soon you won’t care anyway. That’s what you believe, right? You’ll just be another mindless attack animal. No better than a dog.”

  Phil sneered back at him. “I just tripped. Could happen to anyone.”

  “That’s what I thought in the beginning too. That’s what we all thought. Just a trip. Just a klutzy day. Just a dizzy spell. Just a bad argument. Until there weren’t any normal times left, until the shambling, violent, hungry days were every day.”

  “C’mon Henry, this is all a bluff. I’m sorry you’re angry about what happened, but we didn’t know you were going to get better. And it made life a hell of a lot easier to have you around the way we did. You lived. I lived. You’ve had your little play at revenge. Let’s cut the shit and tell me what it is you want.”

  “This is better than any revenge I could think up,” said Henry, “and that body sure didn’t seem like a bluff to me. I just took the opportunity as I saw it. See, I don’t have to do anything except let you live. The rest is going to happen on its own. But I can’t let you infect anybody else. I’ll kill you if I have to, but I prefer to watch you suffer. The way you watched me suffer. The hell of it is, you won’t even get to experience the worst part.”

  “What’s that?” said Phil, squinting at him in the dim light from the fire.

  “The worst part wasn’t what you put us through. As terrible as you were, the collars, the pens, the starvation, the helpless people you threw in for us to kill, it pales in comparison. The worst part was waking up. But you don’t have to worry about that. You’ll never be cured. But it makes this whole thing kind of lose its sizzle.”

  Henry pointed toward the fire and Phil moved toward it, sitting on the warm tar nearby. “I can see why you had to think up worse and worse things as time went on,” Henry continued, “it would have been so boring to be just routinely evil for so many years.”

  “See, Henry, that’s what I don’t get. You seem to be a fair man. You didn’t try to kill me as soon as you got to town. You’re friends with an Immune. Even talked to me like a reasonable person. Why is it you think I’m so evil? How am I worse than everyone else that survived? Hell, I think I’m better, I kept you all alive. It was a big risk, keeping you alive. And it was hard to do, feeding all those mouths. Not just yours but all the people at the camp. I worked hard to give everyone a decent life. I fought off other gangs, made the hard choices that no one else wanted to make, got us through eight years without starving to death. I had to keep you in those pens to keep you from hurting other people. And I had to keep you chained up to keep you from hurting yourself. I saved you Henry. All of you. Sure, it started for Dave’s sake, but he wouldn’t have made it a year without me. You’d be dead now if not for me. We’re both just survivors of a terrible event. There’s nobody guilty here.” Phil turned toward the campfire and dragged the corn husks out of the coals with a stick. He began picking at the food. Henry nodded.

  “You might have convinced me. Once. But that was before I knew about Elizabeth. And about what your men did to the people in the toothless pen. And what you did to Dave. And what you’ve implied you did to Marnie. I don’t know how you can justify any of those things. Elizabeth least of all, because if she’d been allowed to finish giving us the Cure, we might now be allies and all the other terrible things you’ve done may not have happened. Maybe you were a good man once or even just an average man. Maybe you could have stayed that way if you let Elizabeth live. Maybe you even thought you could be a good man again if nobody knew about what you’d done. But I know. I can see the monster you really are.”

  “You don’t understand how it was. You didn’t live in constant terror. You didn’t have to worry about feeding anyone or controlling anyone or protecting anything. You weren’t human any more. You were just a fucking f
amily pet, Henry. You were never supposed to wake up. You were never supposed to remember. I did what I had to do to stay alive. To keep your friends alive. The red light district– I guess what you call the ‘toothless pen’ was an outlet for my men. It was a way to control them. So they didn’t get violent with normal women.”

  “How is that better?”

  “You weren’t real. You were animals. You didn’t feel.”

  “I’m real. I felt, even then. Even animals deserve better. And we weren’t animals. At worst we were insane. Vulnerable.”

  “You were going to die anyway. What did it matter what happened before?” Henry felt a cold wave of disgust slap him in the chest as Phil spoke out loud the very thing he’d been thinking just moments before. It left a bad taste behind. It made Henry not want to go through with it. Deep down he didn’t really think he’d ever be as evil as Phil, but there it was, in the open, like a perfect still pond, the same thought engulfing each.

  “And Dave was a victim of his own cowardice,” continued Phil around a mouthful of food, “he wouldn’t do what the group needed him to do to survive. He was dead weight. We had to get rid of all the useless people or we would have starved.”

  “And Elizabeth?” asked Henry, already sure he didn’t want to hear any more.

  Phil held out the other corn husk. “You going to eat?”

  Henry tapped his face mask. “Not what you’ve touched or breathed on.”

  Phil shrugged and opened the second packet of food. “Our camp was fragile. Our lives were fragile. Everything we did was based on the idea that people like you were trying to kill and eat us. That you were incurable. That you were either evil or incapable of restraining your urges. It was you or us. I told Elizabeth to wait. I told her to let me explain things to everyone, to give me time to let them come around to a new idea of what you were. But she didn’t want to wait. The whole thing would have fallen apart. It would have been chaos. We would have fought with you or there would have been suicides or people would have fled. We needed everyone working together in their proper places if we were going to survive. Elizabeth upset that. I did what needed doing to protect us all.”

  “It’s time to get back in the truck,” Henry snapped.

  “You aren’t going to ask me about the girl?”

  “I don’t want to hear what you have to say. You’d just lie anyway.”

  “But isn’t that why I’m still alive? Isn’t that why we’re out here?”

  “We’re out here because this is where you suggested. You’re still alive because I want to see you turn. I don’t want to hear any more about the girl.”

  Phil spat into the fire. “Suit yourself. But I gotta take a leak before I get in the truck.” He started walking toward the woods.

  “Hey!” yelled Henry, “Stop right there.”

  Phil turned around. “I told you, I need to piss.”

  “You can do it right there.”

  “I can’t with you watching.”

  “Then hold it.”

  Phil sighed and turned his back on Henry, undoing his belt buckle.

  “Uh-uh, turn around. I want to be able to see your hands.”

  “Should I put them on my head? Maybe you can hold it for me while I go. Or you just curious how you measure up?”

  Henry’s arms were getting tired of holding up the gun and his patience was completely exhausted. “Either go now, the way I said, or get back in the truck and hold it. Or wet yourself. I really don’t care.”

  Phil hesitated and then grinned. He urinated into the fire causing an acrid plume of steam. The meager bundle of sticks Henry had built it with collapsed into a pile of dull coals. He was surprised by the sudden dimming of the light. Phil was quick, lunging at him before Henry even realized he’d finished. He pulled the trigger and Phil fell immediately onto the tar. Henry dropped the stun gun and leaned forward, sliding his knife out of his plastic sleeve and putting it under the large scar on Phil’s jaw line. He waited for Phil to stop convulsing.

  “You ready to get in the truck now?”

  Phil started laughing, still lying on the ground. “It’s not even a real gun? You think you can keep me from killing you by holding me hostage with a thirty second shock?”

  The fire began to recover and Henry could see the humor in Phil’s face fade as Henry spoke. “You keep misunderstanding our position Phil. I don’t need anything from you. I don’t need to control your actions or direct where you go. You chose to come out here, not me. All I have to do is make sure you don’t infect anyone else. Including me. I only need the stun gun to slow you down.”

  Phil’s adam’s apple retracted and bobbed back under the flat of Henry’s knife. “Am I really infected Henry? What’s going to happen to me?”

  Henry shrugged. “What does it matter? You’re already dead. Get back in the truck.”

  Phil got up slowly. “You’re bluffing,” he said with a slow smile.

  Henry didn’t say anything, just prodded Phil toward the truck doors with the butt of his knife. He bent down and picked up the gun as Phil sauntered back to the truck, his momentary doubt forgotten or buried. “You got a blanket or something?” he asked.

  “Nope,” said Henry, “it’s a warm night. You won’t freeze. Be thankful you aren’t chained to a post outside without clothes.”

  “You saving that one for tomorrow night Henry?”

  Henry shut the truck door and leaned against it while he fished out the keys and locked it. He didn’t feel like talking any more. He walked over to the smoldering fire as he stripped his bio-hazard suit off again. He threw another handful of sticks on it, more for the light than the heat and pulled another packet of food from his bag. He half dozed between bites, too tired even to get back into the truck. He sat up confused, a little while later. The fire was barely glowing cinders and Henry was sure he’d heard a rustle in the bushes across the road from him. He gathered everything up and threw it into the truck bed. Except the mostly uneaten packet of food in his hand.

  “I don’t know who is there,” he said loudly, “but we don’t have to fight. And you don’t have to hide. There’s plenty. It’s okay if you’re scared. I understand. We’re leaving in the morning, we won’t bother you. I’ll leave this here, just in case.” He placed the food next to the coals and climbed back into the truck’s cab. You’re crazy Henry. Talking to yourself, he thought. But he locked the doors before he fell asleep, just in case.

  Forty-five

  The morning was clear and warm, almost cruelly beautiful. Henry stalled, repacking his bag, putting a fresh charge into the stun gun, sweeping away the cold ashes from the fire. The food that he had left was gone and he thought about looking for who or whatever had crept so close while he slept, but Phil began banging on the side of the truck again and Henry knew it was time to face the place he’d dreaded for so long. He started the truck and double checked his tear gas cannisters and rolled down the last mile and a half toward the Lodge.

  It wasn’t the rescue mission he’d envisioned a few months earlier. He wasn’t the same man who’d envisioned it. He shouldn’t be doing this alone. Henry was disappointed to see the log fence was still there, it’s gate standing open, but not hanging off kilter or splintered or torn away. He tried to remind himself that it had only been a few months as he pulled into the driveway.

  He’d expected it to be a ruin. Burned or torn down or rotting away. The soil salted and empty. The camp was the same as the last time he’d seen it, even the footpaths worn into the yard hadn’t been shrunken by new grass yet. He parked the truck and got out. The only thing that had changed was the overwhelming silence. Henry walked to the large clump of prefabricated sheds where the Immunes had lived. Some of the doors were open and in a few Henry could see a few bones scattered across the dirt floors. But scavenging animals had taken most of them away. The little huts were still filled with old belongings, some tumbled and broken, but most neatly put away. As if everyone just got up and walked away. It isn’t fai
r, thought Henry, that this place of misery can exist still, completely untouched, when all the people have vanished. The place should die with the people. He wondered which had been Dave and Marnie’s, but he didn’t go looking for it. He didn’t want to see what had survived them. He wandered toward the front pens, where his friends had been.

  The gate was closed and Henry glanced around, wondering if there were people still living at the lodge, maybe watching him wander through. He didn’t see anyone and decided it was too late to worry about that now. He unlatched the wooden gate and it swung open. His breath snagged in his chest as he caught sight of the line of posts sunk at the center of lonely dirt circles. The chain leashes still dangled from some. Others were anchored to the earth by bones. Henry walked up to one of the bodies, it’s neck still inside the shining metal collar. Henry didn’t know who it was. Just another Infected stranger unlucky enough to wander into Phil’s domain. It’s arms were stretched as far as they could reach. Marnie had let them all go. Someone else had put these people back. Then walked away and let them starve. It wasn’t hard for Henry to imagine how it had felt. Pacing that circle day after day, straining to reach anything that moved, that collar suffocatingly tight for a while, then looser and sagging as time went on. Eventually even the insane rage of the Plague would have lost to hunger. Eventually they must have spent the days lying down, reaching toward the gate but unable to struggle against the chains any longer. Henry crouched on his haunches and sobbed with his hands over his face as if the image were in front of him instead of playing a constant dragging loop in his head. They escaped. Henry could understand them being killed in self defense. He knew that if he looked hard enough in the little huts he’d find jumble of bones, tiny battlefields where people had fought and died and were crumbling away to dust. But these had escaped and someone had recaptured them instead of killing them. Someone had taken the time to not only trap them in the pen, but chained them back to their posts. Without food, without water, without the opportunity to end it for themselves. Henry looked out of the gate to where the brown delivery truck sat glinting in the warm sun. Only one person had been left alive to do it. Only one person had walked away from the camp knowing there were still people trapped here.