The 40th Day (After the Cure Book 5) (19 page)

Molly’s hand yanked on stone after stone along the top of the wall, finally finding one that wriggled a little as he shouted into her face, his breath damp and acid on her skin. The arm in his grip trembled as he tightened and pushed backward. She was no longer on her feet, pressed halfway up the wall by his body. She cried out in pain, but the other hand knew what it was doing, slowly working the stone back and forth, rocking it free of its mortar. “This isn’t your place. You have no place.” There was a sudden jerk and then searing pain spread from her shoulder. “It’s
my
place. My world, all of it. And you don’t have my permission to exist,” he spat.

Molly took a deep breath and leaned into the pain to stop the waves of unconsciousness that threatened to crash down on her. The rock was free. She whipped it up over their heads. “You’re not my God, nor my keeper. And we’re starting to remember that it’s our world too.” She let the rock’s momentum carry her down and forward. He let go of her arm to protect himself, but too late, the rock was already bashing the top of his head with a chalky clunk as if it had scraped the very bone of his skull. Molly’s dislocated arm flopped next to her, useless and boiling with pain. She tried to slide free of him as he clutched his head, but he was too heavy, still using his weight to pin her against the wall. She kicked and he loosened, but not enough. He was distracted, though, and she managed to press herself farther up the wall, wiggling until she was perched on top and shoving him in the chest with the flat of her feet. She went backward over the top, landing in the tall grass on the other side, free. She lay for a second, gasping to recover the breath that had been knocked from her lungs. It was no good turning back to the Colony for help, they were out of sight now, the wall watchers all pulled back to fight the fire or guard the crops. She crawled toward the quarantine camp, no real plan except to be near someone, anyone before he came back. Vincent would help her. They’d stop Gray and the Colony would be okay until Amos and Henry got back. It was worth getting sick, she thought. But there was a thud and the ground under her knees shuddered. She looked back. Gray had jumped over, but the jump had been more than he bargained for, and he’d landed awkwardly on his wounded leg. Molly forced herself onto her feet and began running toward the wired cages. A hundred yards, that was all. She could hear the uneven thump of his limping run behind her. She yelled and saw someone come to the wire fence. Still too far to make out who it was. “Help!” she yelled again. The person at the fence began yelling, but between the harsh rasp of her breath and the deep thump that came from behind her, she couldn’t make it out. He grabbed a fistful of hair and spun her in a painful circle. Before she could lose her balance and fall, he had a hand around her throat. He shoved her down and she kicked and clawed at him with her good hand. He punched the side of her head and she had a dizzy sense of tumbling though she was already on the ground. It was enough time for him to straddle her legs, making them useless. His other hand was closing around her neck when she heard a metallic rattle.

Thank you, thank you,
she thought, still trying to shove Gray off,
Vincent’s come to save me.

Gray looked up for a second, squinting at the rattle. It was Father Preston. “Get off her!” he yelled, shaking the fence. Gray grinned. “Make me,” he shouted back and then turned his attention back to Molly who was still flailing, trying to roll free. His hands clamped shut, the thin stream of breath she still had flowing and pulsing beneath his thumbs. It excited him.

“Could have prevented this, Father,” he shouted, dodging another blow from Molly’s good arm. “You could have helped me and none of this would have happened. Somebody’s always got to pay the piper. So she’s gonna do it for you.”

“Stop Gray! I’ll help you, let her go!” Father Preston rattled the fence again.

Gray pressed harder on Molly’s throat, the stream of breath petered out, her chest beginning to sink. “Too late,” he yelled, and his grin grew wider as he saw Vincent come running up to the fence. But Vincent didn’t rattle the fence. He ran to the gate instead and Gray knew he was running out of time. He sank down, leaning into his forearms as they dug into Molly’s chest. Her arm stopped flailing. She clutched the grass.

The sunny sky shrank to a small gray circle for Molly. Everything felt heavy, worn out. Gray’s smile was too much. She closed her eyes so she wouldn’t have to see.
Can’t give up,
she told herself,
Vincent’s coming. Hold on.

The pressure on her chest was suddenly released and she opened her eyes. Gray’s face was gone. His hands were gone. She tried to suck in more air, expecting a cool rush and a cough, but nothing happened. A thin wheeze, a trickling gasp was all. Then Vincent was leaning over her, his gray hair wild around him, his eye red and leaking. He gently tilted her head back. The trickle of air was steadier but still not enough.

“Get the doctor!” he yelled over her. She wanted to twist her head to look for Gray, but she knew she wouldn’t breathe again if she did. The sky whirled as Vincent picked her up and ran to the wire cages.

“You can’t bring her in here!” protested Father Preston.

Vincent ignored him and pushed past. “Keep still,” he told Molly, “It’ll help to stay still.”

Her vision was getting foggy again and her chest ached as if it were snapping apart. She could hear others around her now. “He crushed her throat,” she heard Vincent say.

“On the sleeping bag,” said a woman’s voice.

Molly felt the cool, slippery material on the backs of her arms. Hands on her face and then a gust of warm air in her mouth, but only a trickle made it into her throat. The deep, rhythmic ache of pressure on her chest again, where Gray had crushed her with his elbows. Everything radiated a tingling, tight pain. Another gust of warmth but no relief.

“Her windpipe is crushed,” said the woman’s voice.

“There must be something you can do,” said Vincent.

“I’m not that kind of doctor. I wasn’t trained to fix things like this.”

“But you know what has to be done to fix it.”

“It’d be like you trying to operate on her.”

Vincent squeezed Molly’s hand. She managed to squeeze back. “What are our choices?” He sounded worn out.

“We can try a tracheotomy and maybe save her, but it would kill her within seconds if I cut wrong, or we can sit here and wait until she chokes to death which could be days, but you’d get to say goodbye.”

“Is she in pain?”

The woman sighed. “You mean from the suffocation or everything else he did? Yes, she’s in pain.” The woman’s voice rose to an angry shout. “And there are no more
God damn
pain killers left!” There was a silence. “Sorry, Father,” she mumbled.

“Then try. Either she’ll pull through and make the suffering worth it, or it will end. Don’t let her linger without reason.”

There was a bustling around her, but Molly seemed to float through it. She felt a prick in her neck and then liquid heat. There were some shouts but it faded. And she thought,
Not King Arthur. Perceval instead. Wish I could tell him.

Twenty-five

“So how do you know all this stuff about radios anyway?” asked Rickey, pretending he wasn’t winded from Melissa’s brisk pace.

“It was my boyfriend’s fault.”

“You had a boyfriend?”

Melissa rolled her eyes. “It’s not really
that
hard to believe is it?”

Rickey blushed and stammered. “No, of course not, I didn’t mean— you’ve just never mentioned him. Or much of anything else about yourself.”

She shrugged. “It was Before. I don’t like to think about Before very much. It just makes me sad or angry, and I can’t fix it. No use dwelling on it you know? Anyway, Ben was my boyfriend. He used to fly those stupid planes. The ones with the radio remotes, you know?”

Rickey nodded.

“Most people break the plane by crashing it. But Ben was always breaking the radio. He used to joke that he was cursed, that any radio that touched him was doomed. So I eventually got curious and figured out how they worked. Found out how to fix them.”

“But you’re talking about little radios. Glorified walkie-talkies, that sort of thing.”

“Yeah,” said Melissa.

“You must have seen big towers too, right? I mean, we’re not walking all this way to fix a radio tower because you patched together your boyfriend’s toy right?”

She shrugged with a grin. “I fixed the Colony’s radio, didn’t I? I did a little more reading after I fixed his stuff, if it makes you feel better.”

Rickey smacked at his bare arm, startling a horse fly into buzzing lazy circles around his head. “You really think anyone’s going to fall for this?”

Melissa shrugged. “If we sound official enough they will. Wouldn’t you if you thought you were sick?” She stopped to roll up the cuffs of her pants again, flicking shreds of burdock from them.

“I guess, if I thought I was sick. What about the people that don’t think they are, though? Aren’t we worried about them?”

“Yeah,” said Melissa, “at least, I am. Vincent’s theory is that anyone that was infected in the City should be showing symptoms by now, so they’ll know. We’re just hoping they didn’t infect anyone else, but that’s why Vincent’s waiting for a week or two, to make sure no one else starts turning. But I know how desperate people can be to avoid illness. They’ll deny it until the bitter end. I saw it last time too.”

“You saw it? Thought you were a mailman— lady. Mailperson.”

“I was, had my own walking route for years.”

“So how come you didn’t get sick first? You talk to all those people every day, you’d think you’d catch it before anyone else. I was in prison, that’s how I avoided it as long as I did.”

Melissa sighed. “I don’t think it had anything to do with what I did. In fact, I probably
caused
more infection than I prevented.”

“How would you cause more infection?”

She shook her head. “It’s a long story.”

Rickey pointed up at the distant mountain. “We got time,” he said.

“Why do we all have to trade sob stories, huh? Why do we need to know the dark, dirty past of everyone left?” she snapped.

Rickey held up his hands. “Whoa, I didn’t mean to pry. If you don’t want to talk about it, you don’t have to. I just thought that’s what friends did, shared each other’s lives. I don’t know what you did Before and to be honest, I don’t really care because I like who you are now. But I felt better after telling Henry what happened to me. I thought you might feel the same.”

Melissa was quiet for a long moment. “I guess you’re right. You really want to hear this?”

He nodded and watched her as the trail steepened and they began to climb.

“Honestly, I think it was just dumb luck that I didn’t get sick very early. I had a pretty rural route. It didn’t go quite as far as our farm, but I’d subbed that route before. It was close. Most of the people I delivered to were farmers or retired. They didn’t go to town much and since it was winter, they didn’t visit much either. If it had been summer, or even a few weeks closer to the holidays, things might have been much different. But nobody got sick at first. The office heard rumors from other branches of course, but they were confused, muddy. You see some weird things delivering mail, believe me.”

Rickey snorted. “I bet,” he said.

“So hearing that another postman got bit by a patron wasn’t really that unusual. But it kept happening and by the time the fourth or fifth report came in, it was on the news too. I came in one morning, it was the day before the airport shut down.”

Rickey shrugged. “I don’t remember that part, but I wasn’t watching the news at that point.”

“It was late. When things started to fall apart and the hospitals started getting overrun. The national guard was already coming in. Anyway, I came in to the office to pick up the day’s bins and the post master just had this little messenger bag filled with these bright yellow sheets of paper. They were evacuation orders, just photocopied, not even personalized. He said we were going to deliver them and we would be escorted by some soldiers. When we were done, we were to follow the order ourselves. They wanted us to report to the local high school. I told the postmaster that most of my route were stubborn old farmers. They’d never leave their homes. He told me that was what the soldiers were for. I think that’s when I knew this was different. It wasn’t just some riot on television or someone else’s problem. It was real. Picking up that bag of evacuation orders was like stepping out of my life into someone else’s.”

“
You
were scared? I don’t think I’ve ever seen you scared,” said Rickey, serious for once.

“After that— I’m not certain what could be scary again. Not even waking up. Not even seeing the aftermath. It had all already happened in my head when I picked up that bag. Those soldiers were proof that everything I knew, everything I depended on, had failed. That order and civilization were over. Because I knew they’d shoot whoever didn’t comply. And knowing they’d do it was as bad as seeing it done. But there was nothing else to do. I picked up the bag and got into the car. Three military trucks followed me. Any house that was empty, I left an order tacked to their door and an armed soldier stood there and waited. I don’t know how long. Most people were home, though. Some of them cried. Some of them yelled. They all asked me what was going to happen and none of them believed me when I told them I didn’t know any more than they did.