The Cured (10 page)

“Shouldn’t we call someone? A hospital?” said Molly pushing aside the matted curtain of hair in front of her face.

Vincent shook his head and reached for a fluttering piece of paper on the table. “I’m not sure when you got sick, or if you know what has happened since, but I don’t think there’s anyone to call,” he said, handing her the paper. “It’s not all bad news,” he said as he saw Henry’s grin collapse. “And we’re alive and sane again.” Henry helped Molly up and followed Vincent into the kitchen.

“How long have you been awake?” Henry asked.

“Only about an hour longer than you. There are the other three that haven’t woken up yet too.”

Henry looked doubtfully back into the living room. “Are you certain they are alive?”

Vincent clattered around in dusty cabinets looking for pots. “Yes. I checked you all. So far, we’re all alive. But without food and water, we aren’t going to last very much longer. None of us are in good shape.”

Henry looked out of the kitchen window at the thick whorled grass still silver with frost. “It’s cold. We should find some clothes.”

Molly stumbled into the kitchen, still holding the paper. She stood next to Henry and looked outside. “It’s all gone, isn’t it?” she asked.

Henry looked over at her, tried not to see the tarry stripes of old battles on her thin arms or the maggots wriggling on the surface of a new wound near her chin. He tried to smile. “Someone woke us– cured us. It can’t all be gone, someone must be making medicine still. And they didn’t just shoot us, so they probably weren’t looters. Not that we had anything valuable anyway.”

Molly twisted the mat of hair back with her mangled, clawed hand. She looked up at Henry. “I guess that’s true,” she said and she smiled a little too. Vincent emerged from the cabinet with two large stock pots. He looked over Henry’s shoulder at the gray, frosty day and shivered.

“There must be clothing here somewhere.” He placed the pots near the door. They heard sounds of people moving from the living room.

“I’ll check upstairs if you want. There must be a bedroom here,” said Henry, “If you’ll check on whoever is waking up.”

“Be careful,” said Vincent, “I haven’t been upstairs yet. I don’t know what, or who, may be up there.”

Henry shuffled toward the dusty entrance hall. His legs were rickety, like unoiled wood and he wondered how he had been able to chase anyone when he could barely keep himself upright. He stopped in front of the front door. The man had shot him with a dart as he banged on the front door trying to get to the woman.
That
was the last thing he remembered, not the field. There must have been a sedative in the dart. He wondered how long he’d really been sleeping. If the past several years had just been an awful dream. Maybe this was the dream. He turned toward the dark stairs and almost groaned as he counted them. Dark spots and splashes wove across the treads and Henry hoped whoever was bleeding had gone away long before. He went up slowly, leaning on the wall, but he was still out of breath when he reached the top. There was a pile of bloody clothes and sheets in the hallway corner. They were so soaked that the blood was still wet and a heavy copper smell hung in the top of the stairwell. Henry’s stomach roiled and he was horrified to find his mouth watering. He hurried past the pile and into the first bedroom. He wiped his forehead and tried to push away his stomach’s reaction. Tried to push out the memory of all the other times he’d given in to that particular desire. He wasn’t ready to think about it. His body couldn’t afford for him to become overwhelmed by grief and guilt. He could hear long sobbing wails rising up from downstairs and knew someone else had just woken and realized the past was real and not the nightmare it seemed.

The dresser was askew and the bed unmade but not dusty, though everything else in the house seemed to be. Henry assumed it was the wounded woman and the man who had shot him, but where had they gone? And why had he been brought inside? Henry struggled with the swollen dresser drawer. It squealed open at last. Men’s clothes. He hesitated, thinking of the grime and blood and acrid sweat that covered him. He’d never wanted to bathe so badly in his life. He had to eat first. Before comfort and definitely before vanity. Henry pulled on an old pair of jeans and a shirt. He looked at the shorts and socks, but it was too personal. He grabbed armfuls of clothing and walked back to the stairs, throwing the clothes down ahead of him. He didn’t want to come back up here if he could help it. The heavy copper smell made his stomach cramp again. He turned toward another bedroom. The curtains were drawn and only a gray glow outlined the furniture in the room. Henry crossed to the window, relieved to be away from the bloody clothing. He opened the curtains and watched a flurry of dust specks settle lazily back onto the windowsill. The room had been closed for a long time, everything neatly tucked into place, it still smelled lightly of pine needles. Henry looked around and saw the naked trunk of a Christmas tree, tiny glass lights slung over its bones, here and there a shining ornament clung to the thin wood claws, a pile of dark needles and shattered sparkling glass at its base.

Henry walked around the carefully made bed to the stenciled white dresser. He began rummaging around the drawers, pulling out armfuls of women’s clothing this time. A shadow caught his eye and Henry looked up, catching his reflection in the dusty vanity mirror. He stumbled backward and the withered tree snapped underneath him, ornaments shattering with a musical tinkle around him. He got up, brushing himself off and blushing, realizing the reflection was his. His face was almost entirely hidden, dark, matted hair covering all but his eyes and nose. He tried not to look, but he caught a glimpse of himself anyway. His bones seemed to be rising as the rest of his face sunk away. His nose had a crook that he didn’t remember and there were white wriggling maggots in the muck caught in his long beard. Henry shuddered and picked up the clothing. He hurried away from the mirror and down the stairs, away from both his hunger and revulsion, toward the safety of the others.

He carried the large bundle of clothing into the kitchen where the whole group now milled around. The three newly awakened people argued tearfully with Vincent and Molly for food.

One of them, a weaselly looking man, whose hair only remained in patches of long tufts stood very close to Vincent, his eyes squinting and his chest thrown forward. Henry thought there might be a fight and wondered if he had enough energy to stop it. “Look,” said the weaselly man, “how do you know all this stuff? Maybe you just want all the food for yourself. Why should we trust you?”

“What’s your name, son?” Vincent asked calmly.

“Rickey. And I’m not your son.”

“Rickey. I was a missionary before– before this. I worked in places with severe famine. I’ve seen people die because they were allowed to eat too quickly. We need to start with this powdered milk.”

“We’re not starving,” sneered Rickey, “We had that cow just a few days ago, don’t you remember?”

Henry watched Molly put her good hand to her mouth, as if she could stop the vomit that wasn’t going to come. It was a dry heave instead. He tried to block out the image of the rotting cow, but he could feel the slick, spoiled mush of the meat between his teeth even now. One of the women behind Rickey spoke up.

“I don’t think that was a few days ago. I think we’ve been asleep a while. I fell and scraped my hand on the porch when we were chasing those people. It was very bloody and I was so hungry. I– I kept licking my hand until I passed out. And now, the scratch is almost gone.” She held out a small hand where a large scab was flaking off and leaving clean skin behind.

“Even if it was only a few days ago,” said Vincent, “we haven’t been eating properly for a long time. Probably since we got sick. And the little we got from Phil’s men stopped, what? Three months ago now? Our bodies aren’t meant for that. We have to be careful.”

Henry held up the bundle of clothes. “Then let’s get dressed and get that water so we can at least have some of the milk.” He dumped the clothing onto the tiled floor and picked up one of the soup pots. He didn’t want to hear them argue about food any more, it made his whole body ache. He opened the back door and walked carefully onto the cool, overgrown yard. The dead grass was matted down in great silver whorls from where the snow had lain. A few patches of early clover had begun to poke through. Henry trudged slowly down a small slope to the pond. He had to push through thickly clustered reeds and yellowed lily pads to get to the water. He felt the chill of the water on his ankles before he realized he had stepped into the water. He backed up in surprise and looked at his feet. He touched them, poked his heel, pinched his big toe, but he couldn’t feel anything. He wondered when he’d had shoes or even socks on last. It was like trying to remember an endless bad dream, but he thought it must have been at the lodge. Marnie had made sure they had things like that. His feet must have been frostbitten sometime in the last three months. Henry wondered what else he didn’t know about his own body.

He watched his feet carefully as he filled the pot with the gray-green water. He didn’t want to make them worse. He’d have to remember to find some shoes to protect them. He wondered where Marnie was as he struggled back to the house with the heavy pot. She had come to visit him after Dave had stopped. Henry could remember her pushing a plastic plate full of food toward him with the handle of a broom. He had lunged at her, but the little girl hadn’t even flinched. She just looked sad. “I told you I’d take care of you if you got sick, Henry,” she’d said. She was the only one who’d called him Henry after a while. Henry sat down on the back porch, the heavy steel pot between the knobs of his knees. His memories were blurry, angry things, a smear of bloody rage populated by strange voices and faces. He hoped they would stay indistinct, locked away. But Marnie stood out, sharp and vibrant. He remembered every time he’d seen her. Something in his infected brain had built a barrier around her, as something separate, untouched by the madness that swallowed him. He hoped she had escaped the carnage at the lodge. He could still feel the warm pressure of her weight on his back as she unhooked the chains that held him and he could almost feel the warm panic in her breath as she’d said goodbye. He had been gnashing his teeth, roaring, straining to leap at the men beyond his pen. She probably thought he hadn’t heard her, but he had. He had to find her. Had to protect the little girl who’d been abandoned to the world by the people meant to care for her the most.

The back door creaked open behind him. The weaselly man, Rickey, came out holding an empty pot. “You ever going to bring that in, man?” he asked.

“Yeah, sorry, it was just heavier than I expected,” said Henry standing up.

Rickey snorted. “It looks bigger than you are, man. I mean, no offense, but you look like you’re hung together with spit and a prayer.” He glanced down at Henry’s soaked pant cuffs. “And if you’re taking a bath, I think you missed a couple spots.”

Henry laughed. “And you’re such a model of excellent health.”

“You’re okay. I’m Rickey.” He stuck out a thin hand.

Henry shook his hand. It felt good to be doing something human again. Even if he was wary of the man’s intentions. “Henry, nice to meet you.” He bent over and picked up the heavy pot. “Well, I better get this into the house. We’ll have to figure out a way to clean it I think. The pond’s mucky.”

Rickey nodded and headed toward the pond. Henry opened the back door and slid the heavy pot slowly across the kitchen floor. One of the women grabbed it and lifted it onto the stove top with a grunt. Vincent and Molly were portioning scoops of dry milk into empty cups. The other woman was sitting at the table reading the letter that had been left for them.

“How do we clean the water? Is it safe the way it is?” asked Henry.

Vincent shook his head, but it was the woman standing next to him that answered. “This is a gas stove, I think,” she said, “If it’s hooked up and we can find some matches we can boil the water.”

“Good idea Pam. If we can’t get it to work, there’s a fireplace in the living room,” said Vincent.

Henry opened the drawer next to the stove. Fishing around under the dish cloths and pot holders, he found an old box of matches. “Think they still work?” asked Pam.

Henry shrugged. “I’m not even sure how long it’s been since I got sick let alone when these people left.” He handed her the box. She turned the burner dial, but there was no thick hiss and she sniffed close to the range.

“The gas is off, I think.”

Henry remembered the neatly made bedroom. “I think these people evacuated. They must have closed up the house first. I’ll see if I can find the propane tank.” He looked around. “Anyone seen any shoes lying around?”

The woman reading the letter looked up. “There’s a laundry room with coats around the corner. I think I saw some boots in there.”

“Thanks,” said Henry and made his way into the little windowless room, tripping on objects in the dark. After fumbling around for a few minutes he found a mismatched pair of boots that fit him. They were both right feet, but Henry didn’t care. He just wanted to eat. As he passed the table on his way out, he slid a finger along a small spill. It was stale and musty, but he didn’t think he’d tasted anything so good in a long while. He immediately regretted trying it. It only made him hungrier. He hoped the gas tank’s nozzle hadn’t rusted, he didn’t think any of them had enough strength to fight with it. He found the tall cylinders just around the corner from the back door. The people that had lived there were careful, the hose was disconnected and carefully coiled and covered with a plastic tarp. The propane cannister was turned off and capped with a snug plastic piece. Henry sighed with relief and reconnected the hose and turned the gas on. Rickey was stumbling back toward the house, trying not to spill half of the water. Henry helped him bring the heavy pot back inside. Pam was already heating the water. Henry tried not to watch the stove or the glasses with their drifts of tiny powdery balls. He walked over to the woman who had been reading the letter. It sat in front of her now as she watched Pam at the stove.