The 40th Day (After the Cure Book 5) (3 page)

“What if they’re Immune?” she whispered.

Frank shook his head. The person reached out to her again. Nella tried to take a step toward the rubble, but Frank held onto her hand to stop her. “Don’t Nella—” she looked angrily back at him. He let go, but he shook his head again. “Please don’t. Even if it’s an Immune, we’ll never be able to unbury them. Don’t get sick for nothing.”

She hesitated. The person strained forward, trying to push its way free. “We can’t just leave them— it must hurt.”

Frank rubbed a hand over his head. “There must be someone inside taking care of them. They did for the others.”

Nella tried to peer through the small gaps in the concrete. She couldn’t see anything but the empty street. “Maybe whoever was helping is gone.”

A faint moan came from the person above them. Nella looked up. It was still reaching for her. “Can you hear me?” she called. Frank felt his stomach clench with panic. He wanted to tell her to be quiet, for goodness sake, not to draw attention. He looked around, expecting a flow of people to burst over the top of the mound, like a dam suddenly breaking.

“Please, just tell us your name?”

The person groaned again, this time using its outstretched arm to grab onto a nearby rock. It tried to pull itself forward.

“No— don’t, you’ll hurt yourself, we’ll come and help you.” Nella shrugged off her pack and started climbing the jagged pile of concrete, picking her way quickly around the twisted spikes of rebar that poked through.

Frank dropped to his knees beside her pack, too afraid to waste time arguing with her. He fumbled in the pockets for a few seconds before his hands closed over the small gun she kept. He stood up, checking it as the person in the rubble let out a howl of pain. Nella stopped to look up. She was almost within reach, if she just reached an arm up— the person’s face turned down toward her. Most of its features were covered with soot and dried blood.

“I’m coming to help,” Nella tried to soothe it.

“Don’t touch it, Nella. Get back,” Frank shouted.

Nella turned to look down at him. He was holding her gun. The howl of pain turned into a shriek and Nella whipped around. The person was reaching for her, it’s pinned shoulder twisting too far, the angle all wrong, and the person started to slide forward, screaming in pain.

“It’s an Infected, please, come back,” Frank was yelling behind her. She ducked away from the outstretched arm. There was a clunk and then a rattle as a few chunks of debris loosened and fell away. She glanced up and saw a screaming mouth above her. Unnerved, she slid away and down the loose stones. Frank didn’t wait. He shot and missed, once, and then again. Nella was beside him as he shot the third time. The person’s arm flopped onto the rubble and the screaming stopped.

Frank pushed the gun into Nella’s hands. “It was an Infected,” he said.

Nella was silent, looking at the weapon.

“It was an Infected,” Frank insisted, “and we couldn’t do anything for it. You were right, we couldn’t leave it that way. It would have taken another day to die. We couldn’t—”

She caught one of his hands in hers and squeezed it. “It’s done,” she said, when he had stopped. He took a deep breath and nodded. She knelt and tucked the gun back into her pack, taking the moment to think.

She looked back at the rubble that had once been a bustling front gate. Then she looked back at Frank. “You have to trust me,” she said, placing a cool hand on his flushed cheek, “I made it a long time without anyone looking after me.”

“I know, I know. I’m sorry. I thought you’d get sick—”

“We might. Maybe we already are. But I’d rather spend the last few weeks of my life helping people and trying to be a decent human being than hiding from everyone and everything for the rest of it, hoping not to get infected—”

Frank shook his head. “That’s because you don’t know what it’s like. It’s
not
the last few weeks of your life. You go on and on, month after month, hurting people. More than the few you would have helped before you turned. Killing them. Destroying families. I can’t let it happen. I can’t let us get sick.”

“But if we go into the City— if we do what you are planning to do, destroy it so the Infection can’t spread, we
will
get sick, Frank. You understand what we’re talking about?”

“I’ll find a way. You can’t get sick. Anything but that.” He pulled her into a hug.

“And if I do?” she muttered into his shoulder.

“Then I won’t let you suffer as I did.”

She was quiet for a moment, the logical part of her realizing she ought to be horrified that he was willing to kill her, the rest of her oddly comforted by it.

“Let’s go,” she said at last, “we can’t help anyone by standing around here. I think we can reach the top if we go slowly.” She let him go and began picking her way up the mound again.

“What? Where are you going?”

She looked back down at him. “To find Christine, of course.”

“No— the plan was to get help first. We have no biosuits and we have nothing to defend ourselves with.”

“We can’t just leave her in there, she’s waiting for us. We’re right here—”

“She’s
safe
. Safer than us. She’s tucked away in that bunker, she’s got food and water and electricity. She’s fine. All she has to do is stay put. We’ll go get help and a way to stop this thing first. Otherwise, we’ll just be dragging her and us into possible infection or attack.” Frank shook his head. “I know you want to see her. I know you are missing Sevita too. But if we go get Christine now, we might not make it to her. Or we might get her sick. We just have to go a little further, and I know we’ll be able to help.”

Nella turned to come back down, peering back through a small hole in the rubble for a few minutes.

“She’s
safe,
” said Frank again. Nella nodded and took his hand as he helped her down onto the street. They turned away from the slumping Barrier and the silent City and walked up the empty road.

They had reached the abandoned gas station almost at dusk. Frank stood for a long moment looking down into the station’s tire pit. Three small piles of rubber glowed in the ruddy sunset. Nella remembered making them a few months prior, burying the abandoned remains of three unknown people who had died while Infected. The store was as empty as it had been the first time they’d seen it, but multiple footprints and campfire rings around it told Nella that it had been used several times by travelers in the past few months. Had they been fleeing the City or trying to enter it? The question unnerved her. How far had this thing spread?

“We should go somewhere else,” she said. “It looks like there’s been lots of traffic here in the past few days.”

Frank frowned. “I don’t remember there being any other real shelter between here and the farmhouse, do you? A couple of places that were falling down, but that’s it.”

“If we go a few miles farther out before we head to the farmhouse there should be some empty neighborhoods—”

“Then we risk getting lost. Or running into strangers. The people that came by here had to go somewhere. They didn’t get into the City if that’s where they were headed. And if they were escaping, they won’t have gone far.”

Nella looked nervously into the large empty store. The sun was setting but the City’s soft glow was absent. It would be dark, so dark in an hour or two. Any light, even from the tiny back room where she and Frank had slept before, would be like a neon sign to anyone in the area. Even the woods would be preferable. In the open, they wouldn’t be trapped if something,
someone
found them. “It’s warm. We’ll find somewhere, not on the road, not where people can find us.”

Frank shook his head. “We
know
there are Infected in those woods. One bit you last time.”

“That was miles farther. And those Infected were almost dead when we found them. And those had to have been kept somewhere. Nobody is left, no Infected could have survived this long on their own.”

“We don’t know how many new Infected escaped the City, Nella. Here, we’d have a door or two between us and them. We don’t know how many people are just desperate because the City has collapsed. There’s no more trade, there’s no more security, and there’s nobody enforcing peace in the area. Seeing two people on their own, we’d be vulnerable to anyone that wanted to rob us. If we stay quiet, nobody will know we’re here. It’s obvious to anyone looking at this place that it’s been stripped clean a long time. Nobody will come in looking for food or supplies if they don’t know we’re inside.”

Nella hesitated, but she knew he was right. She followed him into the station and flipped the lock on the glass door.

“Better not,” said Frank, seeing her hand on the door. “If someone tries it and finds it locked, they’ll think there is something valuable in here and they’ll get curious. If it’s unlocked they’ll pass by.”

She unlocked the glass door. “All right, but we’re locking the store room. If anyone gets that far, I want some warning.”

Frank nodded. They closed themselves into the small stock room, the late summer air stifling in the windowless closet.

Four

Christine thundered through the thick underbrush, scraping herself on the thorns of a wild raspberry patch as she tried to follow Marnie toward the road. She stank from her struggle with the man in the tunnel, her arms and back still covered in drying muck, and she was so exhausted that she stumbled frequently. But she knew something was wrong. Off. Maybe it was the pregnancy. Maybe it was the stress. All Christine knew for sure, was that a few days earlier she would have had no trouble keeping up with or leading the teen. Emergency work had kept her in great shape for years and she’d worked hard during her pregnancy to stay healthy and active. There was no real reason she should be so exhausted. Or clumsy. Marnie was standing still ahead of her, waiting for her to catch up. Christine reached her, gasping for air. The girl handed her a bottle of water she’d packed from the bunker.

“How close are we?” asked Christine between gulps. The water tasted tinny and warm and Christine fought to keep herself from vomiting. She thought she’d left the morning sickness behind a few weeks before, but the heat and the faint odor of sewage that still clung to them from the tunnels made her nauseous.

Marnie stared at the map trying to place them. “It’s hard to tell. The map doesn’t have the wall on it. It must have been made before everything.”

Christine squinted up at the dark Barrier. She didn’t know either. All the panels looked the same and she was used to seeing the other side anyway. “Look, I need a rest, and I’m sure you are as hungry as I am—”

A woman’s voice floated in the distance and Christine fell suddenly silent. She grabbed Marnie’s arm and pulled her down into a crouch. They waited for a second, and the woman’s voice came again, but it was too far to hear what she was saying.

“I’m going to go look,” whispered Marnie.

“No, not alone.”

Marnie peeled Christine’s hand off of her arm. “You’re too tired, you are making too much noise. I lived out here a long time. I know what I’m doing. I have to see if they are dangerous before we get too close. Stay here, I’ll be back before you know it.”

“No—” hissed Christine, but Marnie had plunked her pack on the ground beside them and was already moving quickly through the thick trees, the golden sun threading through the shadows as she slipped silently away.

Christine sighed and sat on the leafy ground, too tired to protest or follow.

Marnie heard a man’s voice yelling and sped up, running lightly over the knotted, lumpy ground, falling back into the rhythm and instinct of her years at the Lodge. She wished again that she had a weapon. There was a scream of something in terrible pain and Marnie flinched and tripped over a raised root. She went sprawling and heard the man yell again. She was on her feet just as a gunshot was fired. A second and a third, like stronger and stronger echoes came from just ahead as she scrambled forward, sliding into a crouch just behind the tree line. A mound of rubble interrupted the smooth wall of the City. Marnie could see the huge gate she had entered through. It twisted and rippled outward like the steel petals of a giant metal morning glory. A man and woman stood in front of her. They were looking at a corpse in the rubble and the man tried to hand a gun to the woman.

“It was an Infected and we couldn’t do anything for it,” the man said quickly. “You were right, we couldn’t leave it that way. It would have taken another day to die. We couldn’t—”

The woman took the gun and then held his empty hand in hers. “It’s done,” she said. She knelt and tucked the gun back into her pack.

Marnie watched her face. She didn’t look shocked that the man beside her had shot someone, but she didn’t look triumphant about it either. She just seemed tired. Sad. Like Marnie’s mother had looked, the day she left the Lodge.

As if she had suddenly realized she had come to the end of things. As if she had no choice but to follow the path in front of her,
thought Marnie, and her eyes filled with sudden tears, the first she had for her mother in years. The couple was talking about going into the City. Something about destroying the Infection. Marnie listened closely. Did they have a cure? They talked for a few more moments, but turned away and walked down the road. Marnie knew she should run back to Christine, but she was torn. What if she lost them?
Why do I care?
She asked herself. She was going back to Henry. She and Christine would be safe. She didn’t need to worry about cures or the City or anyone else. Besides, she didn’t know anything about the couple. They could be dangerous. They could be Looters or they could be scared of being infected and shoot her just for coming from the direction of the City. It’s what she’d do, if she were in their place, Marnie admitted to herself. The couple disappeared over the top of the long hill. Marnie made her way back to Christine, trying to convince herself she’d made the right choice. But her mother had made a different one. Her mother had died to bring the Cure to the Lodge. To save Henry. To save Marnie and her father.