The 40th Day (After the Cure Book 5) (7 page)

She glanced over at the teen. The question was whether to make a decision now or wait and hope she didn’t become irrational. Marnie had to get to the camp. She might make it on her own, but that would mean asking the girl to take care of Christine, one way or another. Christine couldn’t do it. She couldn’t force the girl to do that. But at the camp, there would be others. Adults. People that would know what had to be done. People that could do it. She had to make it that far. Maybe they had a doctor. Someone who could tell her whether it was just the baby or if Christine was infected. The thought made her shudder again.
No use waiting around,
she told herself,
if there’s one more day, let’s get it done. Just get it finished.
She sat up. Marnie looked over at her.

“Are you okay? You hurt your mouth.”

Christine rubbed off the small crust of blood. “Fine,” she said, “must have bit it in my sleep.”

Marnie nodded and began sliding gear into her backpack. “We should get there this afternoon,” she said. “Oh, found this in the bottom of my pack. It’s not jerky, but—” she handed Christine a dented can of corned beef hash. “We can make a fire outside if you—”

Christine had already peeled back the tab and sunk her fingers into the cold mash. “I guess you can eat it that way,” said Marnie. “Those cravings are no joke, huh?” She went back to packing.

Christine could feel the tiny bubbles of grease squish onto her tongue, mixing with the over-salted canned beef. She remembered her parents taking her to a restaurant when she was ten. It had been fancy. All she remembered was the steak tartare her father had ordered. He’d let her try it and it tasted like a fresher, cooler version of the hash. More squish. More liquid.
More blood,
she realized. She rolled the beef over her tongue, sucking the salt from it before she swallowed. It was too soft. She wanted something with more resistance. With more warmth. She slid her hand around the inside of the can, trying to scoop up the last shreds of meat. The sharp metal edge caught on her fingers and sliced them. Christine felt it but didn’t stop. At last, she pulled her hand into her mouth, licking the little clumps of beef and potato, sucking on the slim flap of skin where her fingers were cut. She became more frantic and began to worry at the cut skin with her teeth, dropping the can to hold her injured hand still as she chewed.

Marnie turned as the can hit the floor with a thin ringing. The wrapper was covered with dark blood. She looked over at Christine, half her hand disappearing into her mouth. “What happened?” asked Marnie, already reaching for the first aid kit in Christine’s pack. She didn’t waste time waiting for an answer but began fumbling with the gauze pads and tape. She reached for Christine’s hand but the other woman resisted.

“I’m just going to bandage it, Chris,” said Marnie, pulling again, but Christine pulled back again. “I know you’re the one with the training but you can’t really do it yourself. Not with one hand. Just tell me what to do first, I can handle it.”

Marnie pulled on Christine’s arm once more. A deep, gurgling growl bubbled up from Christine’s throat and Marnie shrank back. “You can’t be,” she said, scrambling backward. “You can’t. Snap out of it Christine. Wake up.”

Christine gradually realized what she was doing. She forced herself to put her wounded hand into her lap. “I’m sorry,” she mumbled, not looking at the girl. Marnie hesitantly knelt beside her again and began wrapping the bloodied hand in thick gauze. She handed Christine a disinfecting wipe for her face without looking. She didn’t want to see.

“I thought you said—” she started. She sighed and stopped. “Maybe it’s like a weird deficiency or something.”

Christine didn’t answer.

“Can you say something besides a growl so I know you’re still you?”

“I’m still me.”

“For how long?”

Christine snatched her hand back and began stuffing items into her bag. “Long enough to find your friend. Long enough to bring you home.”

“And then?”

“I don’t want to talk about ‘and thens’. I just want to get through ‘and now’.”

Marnie was reluctant to drop the matter, but Christine turned away. Marnie got up and pulled the last of her things together. She regretted, again, having no weapon, but she wasn’t sure she’d be able to do it if the worst happened anyway. She pushed out of the store’s front door and waited for Christine on the already-baking tar.

Ten

The ring of falling metal woke Nella with a jolt. A seam of daylight flickered under the door turning the storeroom a deep brown. Voices began on the other side. She felt Frank sit up behind her. Her muscles pulsed with acid adrenaline but she stayed still, fighting the urge to burst out of the tiny closet to meet whatever was on the other side. There was a slow, ascending growl from the other side of the door and then a girl’s voice sharpening in warning. Nella sat up, swinging her feet to brace the door, expecting someone to thunder through within seconds.

“We can’t leave her,” whispered Frank. “It’ll kill her.”

Nella was troubled. She wanted to open the door as much as he did. His stricken expression triggered an echo and she could hear him telling her the story of the boy in the bunker again. “I had to open the door. It was someone's baby. Someone's whole reason for being,” he’d said, “Nella, how could I not open the door?”

She knew now, what he’d felt. She knew, also, if they opened the door and became infected, he’d never survive the guilt.

“She’s already dead,” she mouthed toward him, more to persuade herself than him, “We know for sure that they’ve been exposed.”

Frank hovered on his knees, leaning toward the door. “It sounds like it’s just a girl—” He reached toward the knob. Nella let her legs slide down to the floor and leaned in to stop him.

“You’ve been here before, Frank. For days, you’ve been begging me not to take any risks. We’ve gone to great lengths to stay safe.” She put a hand to his cheek, turning his face toward her and away from the door. “We’re in the bunker, Frank. We’re safe and the little boy is knocking again.”

Frank backed away as if she’d slapped him. “Why would you say that? Why now?”

She followed him, holding onto his hand as he tried to twist away. “Because I can’t stand to see you that broken down again. You aren’t blind. I know you realize that we probably aren’t going to make it. Not both of us. Maybe neither of us. You knew it the minute Christine called us on the radio. That’s why you begged me to stay away. We chose to come back anyway.
We
chose. If something happens— if I get sick and you don’t— I can’t let you blame yourself for it the way that you did with Sarah.”

He shook his head. “Don’t talk that way—”

“I
have
to.
We
have to. This whole mess, the false security of catching Dr. Pazzo, the reinfection of the City, Sevita’s death— it’s all because we met. I don’t blame either of us, we tried to stop it. We failed, but we tried. And I don’t think anyone else could have done any better. But I can’t fail
you.
We’ve been happy, these few months, in spite of everything falling apart around us. This has been the very best part of my life, even if it came after the Plague. But now we have to decide how we live what’s left of it. We have to decide who we’re going to become.”

Frank nodded but remained silent. The growl from beyond the door had grown.

“I can’t bear to think of the memory of us being soured. I can’t let you blame yourself for whatever comes next. So, here we are. We’re somewhat safe in this storeroom. There’s a child in danger that we might be able to save, for a day or two. But if we open the door, we’re going to do it together. It isn’t going to be anyone’s fault if one of us gets sick. I want to open the door, Frank. Who wouldn’t? You need to think for a moment. The moment is going to pass, like every other, and you’ve got to let it go, no matter what we decide. You can’t carry it around forever.”

She stopped talking and listened to the growl die away and their breath filled the space.

“Open the door, then,” he whispered.

He was beside her as she unlocked the door with a soft click, and then twisted the knob. Cool air flooded into the store room and Nella squinted against the bright morning light streaming through the display windows. The store was empty. The only things left were a few drops of blood scattered over the dull epoxy floor and an empty can of breakfast hash lying on its side. There was no girl, no growler, no bodies.

Nella let out a shaky breath. “Maybe it wasn’t a person with her. Maybe it was an animal.”

“What about the blood? And why would it growl?”

“Maybe it smelled us.”

“Maybe we waited too long,” Frank frowned and crossed to the door. He looked down the road for some sign, but it was empty.

She curled a hand around his. “Maybe she was someone else’s to rescue. Or maybe she just didn’t need rescuing. Besides, we have other people to save.”

He pulled her into a tight hug. “I don’t want to die in the bunker, Nella.It gets in anyway. It always gets in. I don’t want the rest of our lives to be a long, dragging dread. I mocked you once, when we were searching for the missing vials. You were scared that we had reached the end, that we had missed some chance to stop the plague, that we were all doomed. And I told you not to worry, because I thought you were overreacting. That you were irrational. I’m sorry. Now I know what you were feeling. No matter how I try, I can’t push that fear away. My mind is constantly screaming to turn around, to take you back to the boat and go. You said so yourself. You said we ought to go south, leave the City to take care of itself. Instead, we keep walking further and further from safety. And every choice is harder than the last, but we still keep going. And when we get there, what then? No one will know us. Nobody is expecting us. What can you and I do that will make any difference at all?”

“We can tell them what they don’t know. And help them do what has to be done. We don’t even know if they got Sevita’s message. They may not even know that the Plague is loose. And even if they do, they may be expecting someone else to stop it. The City or some government army. You and I know that no help is coming. We’ve seen the capitol. We’ve seen most of the coast. We know there’s nobody else out there big enough to stop this. We know that we can’t wait. You and I know there’s no cure waiting to be found. That there never was. Even after Sevita’s message, people are going to be desperate enough to look and to hang on to their loved ones. Bottle them up, just like Juliana did, hoping. We know the truth, and we have to make them know it too. That every Infected is a carrier and a danger. That anything from the City is tainted. That it must all be wiped away if anyone is to be safe.”

Frank shook his head. “Why should anyone believe
us
? We’re the ones that failed to stop it in the first place.”

“We’re the only ones that
tried
to stop it. And because we saved these people before. They are going to remember us. They are going to remember
you
. You are the last thing they saw before waking up sane.”

“You’re assuming the same people that we cured are the ones who are in charge still.”

“Yes. I have to assume there’s some chance. The reason we keep going, though both of us have the urge to turn back, though both of us have terrible doubts, is that we have to
try
. When I worked in the Cure camps I watched people go through agony trying to accept what they’d done while they were ill. I watched you come apart because of what you couldn’t control. You think you’re alone in your guilt, because that’s what the City
wanted
you to feel. They needed someone to blame, and the Cured were convenient. But the truth is, you may tear yourselves up about what you did, but the Immunes have to live with what they
didn’t
do. What they didn’t
try
. Certainly, it was hard to shoot a friend or a loved one, but soon it became normal. Nobody fought it, no one felt guilty after the first few. The Infected weren’t people. They weren’t even animals. They told us you couldn’t be cured, so nobody
tried.
Nobody did what Juliana did. There were no people in the City that secretly held relatives in the closet or the basement. We didn’t just kill to survive. We
hunted
the Infected. Took their resources, took their homes, claimed everything for the Immunes. And then, when you were cured, we still assumed you were less than human. We didn’t try to make you feel welcome, we didn’t return your goods or your families, we didn’t try to make you feel human again.

“Frank, I can’t tell you what keeps you going, when everything in you wants to turn around, but I can tell you why I keep going. It’s because I have to make up for not trying. I have to make up for all the things I
didn’t
do when I could have. For all the people I could have saved and didn’t because I was scared. Because I ever let myself believe that the Infected were anything less than human. Less than you’ve turned out to be. I can’t cure them now. But I can stop more from becoming Infected. And I can give the Infected the mercy I’d want. Not as threats, not as animals to be hunted, but as human beings that deserve better. That’s why I have to
try
. But not without you. I’d leave it all and live with my own failures if it meant staying with you. If you turn back, then I will follow you.”