Krisis (After the Cure Book 3) (25 page)

She pulled the heavy curtains that were over the window open to let in the sun. There were small canoes and kayaks lining the lobby, but Bernard walked right past, following a path only he knew. They climbed a set of stairs and came out in a long gallery with a musty display of small boats of the world.

Ruth felt a pang of homesickness. The gallery had obviously been abandoned long before the Plague, one of those small exhibits that never changed and were a perennial favorite of school trips. Charlie would have loved it. How many things she had missed doing with him. Bernard stopped in front of a bright red boat that hung from the wall. Wide and flat, the placard said it was used for carrying goods to floating markets. There were some long handles paddles propped next to them. She looked doubtfully at the boat. “Do you think it will hold all of us?” she asked.

Bernard pointed to her, pointed to one end of the boat, then pointed to himself and the other end.

“And Juliana?”

He looked sober and pointed to the length between.

“You think she’ll be too sick to sit?”

He nodded sadly.

“There’s not much room for supplies,” she said. “That is, if I can even find any.”

Bernard smiled and put a finger to his lips. He pulled up one of the floorboards in the boat and showed her a shallow compartment that ran the length of the boat.

“This is where you got the idea to hide the vegetables?” she asked.

He nodded and grinned. Ruth scratched at the back of her neck. There wasn’t much room and she didn’t know if it would even float after hanging for what must have been decades in the museum. Still, they probably kept it restored. And it was better than anything else she had. She struggled to pull it off the wall. It was awkward and pretty heavy, but she could still get it to the beach.

“Can you get the paddles?” she asked Bernard and headed slowly down the stairs, letting it slide gently down to the lobby. They wouldn’t be able to stay in it for long. It wasn’t the floating fortress she’d imagined when she thought out the plan, but it would work for a fairly quick getaway.

She tried to feel relieved as Bernard happily paddled the boat onto the bright water, the dog panting in the bow, but she felt the minutes creeping by and knew she had no more time to improve the plan. She called him back into the shore.

“I have to go. I have to help Juliana and the Infected. I’ll try to send friends with supplies but— I don’t know what else to do. I have no time. There are probably a lot of people who would help Juliana left in the city, but no one is going to helm
me
. What I’ve done hasn’t left many survivors,” Ruth exhaled. “I’ll try to save what you paid so dearly for.”

Bernard shook his head and hugged her with his good arm.

“I don’t know what will happen. But it will happen tonight or tomorrow morning. Can you guard the boat until then? Will you be all right here?”

He nodded and pointed to the dog.

Ruth shook her head. “I’ve left you with nothing. No food, no water. And no way to get it, now that your hand is mangled.”

Bernard pulled the boat up onto the rocks with his good arm and placed the paddles inside. He tied the rope to a sturdy wooden post and then led Ruth back into the restaurant. He pulled her into the dark kitchen and opened the back door, letting in some light. There was a dead refrigerator case half full of bottled water. He tossed her one and she grinned. The lukewarm water washed the salt off her lips and tasted like nothing she’d had in years. He tapped her on one shoulder and pulled out a plastic bin from beneath the cook’s stainless steel line. She peeled off the cover and he slapped her on the back. It was full of oyster crackers. The mice hadn’t been able to get at it in the bin and the looters either missed it or never hit the place. It wasn’t much; even taken together it’d never get them through more than a few days, but Ruth felt a palpable ease wash through her. At least they had that. At least they would have a couple more days to find a better place. She hugged Bernard and told him to stay out of sight. Then she started back into the sweltering city to handle the toughest part of the task.

Chapter 23

They had begun seeing lights about a week from the capitol. Here and there, just a campfire or two. They had been far apart at first, maybe the people that made them weren’t even aware of each other, but from the boat Frank could see them all. The little lights had cheered them, but with stores dwindling, Nella didn’t want to risk delaying if there were a big group ahead. They had sailed past the solitary camps waiting for the tiny string of fires to become a cluster. As the miles slipped by, they could see planted fields and little markets near the shoreline. In the evening, the windows of the houses shone with lanterns more and more often, sometimes grouping in small squares.

Many of the small harbors were blocked with wreckage. Boats or buildings tossed around in a hurricane years before littered the water around the coast. Rotting wood and jagged metal made the shallows a murky labyrinth, even for the rowboat. Nella regretted passing the groups of people, but it was too dangerous to attempt a landing. The coast fell away behind them and a few days later Frank steered them into a wide bay. Skyscrapers huddled on the banks, their shadows hanging over the water the only relief from the bright glare of the summer morning. The shore roads were all empty, shimmering in the blazing sun. The only movement was the hundreds of seabirds crying and skittering down the sand or wheeling over the road and between the shattered windows of the buildings. One of the largest cities in the world and there were no people walking on the roads, no sounds of industry, no heaps of recent trash. No signs of humanity beyond the decaying structures.

“Do you see anything?” Frank whispered, afraid of setting off an endless echo.

Nella squinted against the sun and pointed to a thin cloud far inside the city. “Is that smoke?” she asked.

Frank framed his eyes with his hands. “I think so.”

“Well, we didn’t come all this way just to turn around without looking,” said Nella.

“We don’t know who’s in there. We should wait until dark so we can get a look without them seeing us.”

“But we don’t know this place. We’ll just get lost.”

Frank thought for a minute. “I don’t see a good place to conceal the boat. I think we should wait until dark and then take the rowboat to one of those little shops on the beach. We can camp out there and then in the morning, we’ll go exploring. I don’t want to draw attention to ourselves until we see what kind of people are in there. Also, if there are Infected—”

“It’s been eight years, Frank. I don’t think there are any Infected left, even in a big place like this.” She tapped the cases of cure darts in her pack. They jingled. “I’m not even sure why we bother lugging these around.”

“We thought there were none left a few months ago and one got you. I don’t want to risk that again.”

Nella sighed and rubbed the scar on her shoulder. “Okay, you win, we’ll go tonight.”

Frank stared at the wisping plume of gray.
Let it be people,
he thought,
let there be SOMEONE in there.

Chapter 24

“She’s loose.” Gray scowled and scraped the ax head over the concrete floor of the old pool hall.

Father Preston regretted using the building while the church was being restored. There were other, cleaner places. Especially now that they would be moving to a quieter farming community and would never get to use the old Spanish cathedral anyhow. Father Preston was beginning to regret many things. That ax Gray had adopted was another.

Father Preston hadn’t said or done anything to rein Gray in, reasoning that the more dangerous a man appeared, the less real harm he had to do to prove his reputation. But now, he regretted Gray altogether. The man seemed insatiable, bent on vengeance.
Justice
, Father Preston internally corrected himself. Even when that justice had little to do with Ruth. He had been the one who brought the pictures to Father Preston in the first place. He had volunteered to track down their owners in the vast emptiness of the dead city. And then there was the debacle with the gardener.

“Yes, I know she is loose,” Father Preston sighed. “She was probably trying to get to the garden. Thought she could wait us out if she could bring back enough food. But she’s not going to go far. She’ll be back for Juliana before long. And back to finish off the Afflicted while they are vulnerable in their cells. Juliana may be more persuadable while Ruth is away.”

“If she’s away then we don’t need to fear that she’ll carry out mass murder. We can take— we can
rescue
the Afflicted while she’s gone. We don’t have time to waste negotiating with Juliana.”

Father Preston shook his head. “No. I will talk to Juliana. She will listen to reason. I won’t risk her coming to harm in the confusion.”

Gray shook his head. “This is foolish. We should be breaking ground on the new mission right now, not sitting here at the whim of two old women. We’re going to run out of time before winter. It’s almost July, summer is flying by. Would you let a hundred of your own people freeze and starve just to humor the feelings of one woman? Why is
she
so much more important than the rest of us, who have faithfully followed you? Than the Afflicted she locked away?”

Father Preston clutched the front of Gray’s filthy, sooty shirt and pulled him close. “Because she’s
good,
” he hissed, “and I don’t know if there’s another soul alive who is. I know
you’re
not, though you think you have me fooled. God knows
I’m
not.” His voice dropped to a mumble as he released Gray. “She saved my life. And all of theirs too. She deserves to be at peace in her final days. She deserves to believe that we will care for the Afflicted as well as she has done. I owe her that much.”

Gray shook his head but raised his hands in surrender. “Have it your way, Father.” He began walking toward the door.

“And suspend the executions until I say otherwise,” commanded the priest. Gray paused and looked as if he would turn to say something, but he shrugged and continued out of the building.

He had surprised himself. He was accustomed to thinking of himself as “good.”
Better
than other men. But Gray had forced the admission from him. Why had he changed his mind? And when? Juliana was weak. As weak as Vincent had been, maybe. Close to as broken. But she was still better than Father Preston. Still more
worthy
. The thought wriggled inside him, taunting and biting like a poisonous centipede. He tried to stomp it out. She wasn’t
better
. She was just untested. Father Preston though, he had been through the fire. Him and all of his brothers. Only he had emerged. Only
he
was worthy. Chosen all those years ago in that barren December. He’d known he would survive that very first night. He’d known he had to take the Abbot’s place as a leader of the faithful as he had pressed his back against the Abbot’s door to prevent it opening.

The old priest had flung himself at it over and over, as if he were a small child having a tantrum.

Brother Matthew had shaken his head. “He’s going to hurt himself,” he said.

“There’s nothing we can do. If we let him out, he’ll hurt someone else. Find something to bar the door.”

A large oak pew was brought and slid in front of the Abbot’s door. Time did no good, hours later he was still flinging himself against it. Both the doctor and the police were unreachable. As the monks cleaned and prepared Brother Andrew’s body, the air around them thickened with panic, every other breath laced with the unceasing cries of their leader.

Father Preston had paced in front of the door. Some of the others watched him, doing nothing themselves. It was unnatural, this idleness. This thing, this plague, was eroding their sense of duty, their good work. Father Preston was certain it was evil. Brother Matthew refused to believe it was anything but a disease.

He’d passed the door of Brother Andrew’s room, where a few men were scrubbing the floor. One of them looked up.

“Someone has to say the funeral mass,” the man said.

Father Preston stared blankly at him. “But the Abbot—” he started, and fell silent.

The monk shrugged. “Maybe it can wait,” he turned back to the dark stains.

The electric bells clanged for morning prayer. Everyone looked up. Father Preston started walking toward the church. He glanced back. A few of the brothers rose to follow him, but many sat still where they were, or went back to cleaning. He felt his lip curl back in a sneer, but he didn’t waste his breath chiding them. Each man must discipline himself or fall apart. It was not for him to force them into piety.

He tried to clear his mind as he entered the dark, clean room. There were only a handful of brothers. They all looked at him as he crossed to the podium. The Abbot reserved the reading of the morning prayer for himself. But the Abbot was a raving devil, his breath still stinking of flesh and damnation. Father Preston cleared his throat and read the prayer. The Abbot’s shrieks were a distant wail through the stone walls, but he still found himself clutching his book so tightly that he left fingernail marks in the covers each time he heard the sound.