The 40th Day (After the Cure Book 5) (13 page)

“Y—yes, Gray let me out,” said the woman, with a fierce blush. She turned toward Father Preston. “What he said was true? That dart was really the Cure?”

“No, no, it was just coincidence. I was cured without any medicine, years before. Remember? It was the same miracle that cured you.”

Nella shook her head. “You’re
wrong
. You got lucky. Your body fought it off. You have no special powers, no miracles. I could forgive you believing that. Anyone could. Everyone wants some hope—” Nella’s voice caught and she stopped.

“But you were going to enslave those people,” said Frank, continuing for her. “You murdered people that only wanted to show some mercy to the Infected they could no longer care for. You forced a pair of Infected to pull a car. You were going to do the same or worse when you got your hands on the others from the hospital.”

“No, it was Gray,” said Father Preston, “It was Gray who said they could be useful. Why shouldn’t they be useful? Why shouldn’t they help us do God’s work rebuilding this world? To atone for—”

“Atone? For what, Brother Michael? Being ill?” Vincent folded his arms over his chest, his one eye squinting angrily at the other priest. “How could they atone if they had no choice? How could they atone for what wasn’t a sin?”

“Don’t speak to me,” spat Father Preston, “You’re a murderer.”

“So are you,” said Nella.

“So are we all,” said Frank, resting his hand gently on Nella’s back to recall her.

“I am no murderer,” said Father Preston.

“The corpses hanging on iron beams in the hospital field would say different. How many were there? A dozen? More?”

“That wasn’t murder. That was
justice
. Those people hired someone to kill their loved ones, people that depended upon them. People that might have been cured.”

The woman with the cart shook her head. “You didn’t kill those people for justice,” she cried, “You killed them to force Juliana to give us up. To give us over into your hands where you could use us. But these people stopped you. How foolish were those of us who stayed? How stupid to fall into your trap again. You’ve been using us just the same for months. You let
him
touch me and you
knew.
” She turned and pushing past Father Preston and Vincent and she cried, “No more, I won’t let him use the rest of them a minute longer. They have to know.” She ran for the tent at the far end of the camp. Father Preston’s face was deep red, the scars a dark, bruised purple. Nella thought he might have a heart attack. Instead, he pulled the hood of his robe up and shoved Vincent out of the way to go after the woman. Frank caught Vincent as well as he could through the fence.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

Vincent recovered his balance. He looked at the two of them, the people who were supposed to be his answer, his angels, and felt ashamed of Father Preston’s friendship. “I didn’t know about the hospital until now. Henry told me he found a Cure dart a few days ago, but I didn’t—
we
didn’t know what he had intended or that he murdered people. The others still don’t know. They have no idea how dangerous Gray is. We wouldn’t have let them stay.”

“How could you have known?” asked Nella, “He told you the story he wanted people to hear. He had no one to contradict him.”

“I feel more and more, that we’ve wasted the chance you gave us. We left the City because we couldn’t find a place in it. We let a pair of liars and murderers into our Colony and believed they were good people. We’re barely keeping infection at bay with this little camp. I cannot keep the Infected, I don’t have a hospital— or time enough.”

Nella smiled. “We are not your judges. You aren’t indebted to us. We happened to be here on the right day at the right time to help you. Just luck. I’m ashamed to admit it, but I thought about shooting you the next day while you slept. I thought it might be kinder. But Frank showed me there was more to the Cured than just stories of guilt and despair. If you’ve anyone to thank, it’s him.”

Frank shrugged and traced Nella’s scar with one finger. “I was just trying to save her. We’re just people like you. We’ve done bad things and stupid things and some good too. I’m glad we were here to help, but you don’t owe us an explanation for your lives before or since.”

Vincent glanced back at the large tent. He turned back to Frank. “You came— he’s only been here a few weeks. His scars weren’t even scabbed over by the time he got here. He didn’t pass through the City.”

“No,” said Frank, “I think the City was already closed by the time he would have been near enough. We know the radio signal was already working by then, and we got there too late even though we left a few days before Preston did.”

Vincent stared at them. “You were safe?” he asked. “You knew about the plague and you were safe? Where are your masks? You’ll be exposed. I thought you came from the City. You didn’t tell me—” He spun around as if there were a pile of surgical masks waiting behind him.

“Vincent,” said Nella, holding up her hand, “It’s done already. There’s nothing to protect us from.” The scratch on her hand glowed a fevered red.

“You were
safe
. Why did you come back? Why did you come here?” He was angry but he wasn’t certain why.

“Because it’s not enough to just be safe anymore,” said Nella. “We spent six years just being safe. Nothing got better. People like you were abandoned, when you could have been cured years ago because we were all playing it safe. We hid behind walls and the world decayed around us because it was safer to ignore it, to pretend the Looters were gone, that the Infected had died out, that we could just wait for someone to come along and rescue us. Things don’t fix themselves. Life doesn’t get put back together by being safe. No one’s coming, Vincent. We have to rescue ourselves instead of running and hoping it doesn’t follow. Frank and I tried to stop it, before, but we failed. We have another chance to stop it now. We have a chance to be better than safe. To do something better than just barely exist.”

Vincent squeezed Nella’s hand through the fence wire. He shook his head. “I don’t understand, how can you help? What is it you want to do?”

“The City is closed off,” said Frank, “but not completely. There must be half a dozen exit points in the Barrier and who knows how many people got out before the Barrier collapsed? Some of them are here, most are probably scattered, hopefully too scared of being shot to join other groups. We have to find them before they turn. Most of them won’t willingly submit to a quarantine like this, especially if they know they are sick. We’ll never be able to track them all down in time. We have to find a way to reach them all and to convince them to come back on their own. Not here. They’d overwhelm the Colony. Maybe the City. You believed we had a cure, maybe others will as well.”

“And then?” asked Vincent.

“There’s no choice. We have to end the threat. I don’t know how. A bomb maybe? A fire? We were hoping we weren’t the only ones thinking this way. Neither of us are military geniuses, we don’t know what would be best.”

“The bacteria can last for weeks, months even, in cloth or on surfaces. We’d need something that would sterilize everything,” said Nella.

“What if some of them are Immune?” asked Vincent.

“If they aren’t showing symptoms by now and they are from the City, they probably
are
. But someone not showing symptoms isn’t likely to look for a cure, are they? Your Colony is large enough that they can order the stragglers into the quarantine camp until they can prove they are immune.” Nella squeezed his hand back through the fence. “Sometimes the wrong people die anyway,” she added. “Nobody deserves this. We have to do what we can. Even if it means we aren’t part of what’s saved.”

“Will you help us?” asked Frank.

“We all will,” said Vincent.

Eighteen

Melissa held the radio as if she didn’t know what to do with it. It had finally gone silent a few seconds ago, snapped off by someone arguing with the woman screaming into it. Melissa looked up to find a large group of people had surrounded her, abandoning the stone wall to listen. They were all silent now. Rickey was leaning on a shovel beside her. He reached for a cigarette, forgetting there were none in his pocket.

“I knew he was bad,” he said, low enough so only she could hear, “but nothing like
this.
”

Some of the people around them were muttering now. “We have to do something, before there’s a riot,” whispered Melissa.

Rickey shrugged. “Why? If what she says is true, if they were going to use them as slaves, why should we stop them?”

“Because he’s lived with them for weeks after his plan backfired. He’s obviously not scared of them—”

“Or us,” offered Rickey.

“Or us. He’ll fight back, someone else will get hurt.”

There was a scraping noise as someone picked up the heavy dead blow hammer from the rock wall.

“Wait,” yelled Melissa, holding up her hands. Rickey shrugged and held up his too, the shovel still clasped in one hand. “Remember that the people in the quarantine camp might not be— they might not be themselves. Maybe this woman— maybe she turned.”

One of the men twirled a chisel on his palm. “Lisa’s only been down there a few weeks. She wouldn’t be sick yet.”

“Maybe she’s had to see things that upset her, gave her a bad scare or nightmares—”

“Well, let’s go find out,” said a woman from behind Melissa.

There were murmurs of agreement. Melissa glanced at Rickey. He hesitated, then nodded slowly. “Yeah,” he said, “why don’t we do that. But let’s leave the tools here, huh?” He chuckled as if it could break the tension. “Can’t exactly replace them easily. That might be the last chisel in a hundred miles you know.”

The man twirling the chisel looked down at it with a frown. He considered, then gently set the tool down into the grass. The shovels and hammers were quietly piled, one by one against the stone. “There,” said Rickey quietly, “they can be reasonable.”

Melissa’s skin prickled. “I don’t know if reasonable is the word for it. But at least there’ll be less collateral damage this way. One of us needs to find Henry or Amos.”

“If they decide to lynch him, I’m not going to stop them,” whispered Rickey as the crowd pushed past them, “and you should know that Henry and Amos won’t either.”

She stared at him. “You’ve discussed this?”

“Not
this
. But him. We knew they were faking Father Preston’s ‘miracle’. But we didn’t know he killed people. Or what he meant to do with the Infected if he gained control over them. We knew he had to go, but if we tried to expose him, who were Father Preston’s people going to believe? We couldn’t let him take them somewhere and keep manipulating them. So we pretended to be friendly. Now we can move against him. One thing’s clear, he can’t stay here. He’s dangerous.”

“The others should still know,” she said.

“I think they are finishing the latrine sheds today,” Rickey offered.

Melissa ran to find them.

Gray was in the garden with half a dozen of Father Preston’s people. They were meant to be picking the last of the beans for pickling, but he was dozing near the small tool shed. The news was softly spread, but swiftly, like a breeze across the field, and he didn’t wake as the Cured threaded their way toward him, slipping through the rows of corn and stepping gingerly around the green potato tops, knowing what each plant meant, even in their anger. They moved like a single animal, like a snake coiling around its prey, without speaking, without signals. They wrapped around him, armed only with rage, but each of them knew how much damage that alone could do. Most of them had scars to remind them.

Rickey hung back, watching the others. It wasn’t his injury. Though he didn’t like Gray and he’d make no move to save him, it wasn’t Rickey’s vengeance to take. There was a moment of stillness. A collective intake of breath. Someone in the center of the circle kicked Gray’s leg. He sat up with a grunt, his face tightening with surprised anger as he looked around him.

“What is this?” he snarled.

“We know,” said the woman who had kicked him.

Gray stood up and took a step toward the woman, towering over her. “What is it you
think
you know, darlin’?” he sneered when she didn’t back up.

“We know about the Cure,” said a man behind him.

“And we know about the people you hung at the hospital,” said another.

“And about what you wanted us so badly for,” finished the woman in front of him.

“Me?” Gray laughed. “What did I have to do with anything? I was just being faithful. Just following Father Preston. He said the people at the hospital were evil, that they had to be punished, that God said so. I’m just a humble man, who am I to argue with a priest? I just did as I was told. It was
him
that wanted you, it was
him
that lied to you. Not poor, guileless Gray.”

A rumble rolled around him through the crowd.

Gray turned toward a few of Father Preston’s people who were mixed in with the others. “I stuck with you. I stayed to care for you, keep you safe. But where’s Father Preston? Off doing his medicine show bit for strangers. He doesn’t care about you. You’re old hat. Used up. He needs new people to con. But ol’ Gray didn’t leave you. No, I stayed cause I knew you were alone in the world. That you needed a friend to look after you. I’ve kept you fed, haven’t I? Kept you from getting sold off to slavers or killed by bigger bands. Kept you from getting sick again.”