Krisis (After the Cure Book 3) (7 page)

“I’m— I’m going to get Juliana. She won’t be able to come in, because you are still contagious. But I’ll be back later and she’ll bring you food. If you show us that we can trust you, we’ll take off those restraints. I’m sure this is very confusing. I wish I could explain, and I will, but first I think we need to concentrate on getting you well.” The man just stared at her. Ruth offered him an awkward doctor smile and then bolted from the room. Juliana was waiting for her just outside.

“Is he okay?” she asked.

“He’s fighting off the pneumonia. It’ll take some time, but he should recover very well. No only that, but I think his body is also conquering the Plague.” The mask crinkled around her cheeks as she grinned.

“Is that possible? Will they all start to recover now?”

“I don’t know, it’s still too early to tell if the bacteria has run its course or if it’s been defeated by something in his immune system. But it means there’s hope for the rest of them and for Charlie. What do you know about him? Did his family bring him? I’d like to talk to them.”

Juliana shook her head. “Someone found him on the road, too sick to be a threat. He didn’t have a wallet or anything, just rags of black clothes. And a bell was tied to his neck.”

Ruth frowned. “A bell? Like a cow bell?”

“No— a hand bell. Like a teacher used to use a long time ago. The only other place I’ve seen them is in church. It was heavy. I thought that might be why he was having trouble breathing. That’s all that he came here with.”

Ruth shrugged and then disinfected her hands again and rummaged around in her kit. There’d be time to find it out from the man himself. She pulled out a few more face masks. “Look, he’s stable for now. I’ll be back by this evening, but I need to go home and tell Bill. This changes everything—”

“Ruth,” said Juliana, her smile fading.

“Look, it’ll be fine. Just wear the mask and make sure to wash your hands before—”

“Ruth, I have to tell you something.”

“I won’t be gone long. You don’t even have to go in, just slide his bowl to him from the doorway. I’m telling you, he’s almost sane.”

“Ruth!” Juliana raised her voice a little and Ruth stopped and looked at her. “When I went to your house, I looked for your husband everywhere. I called and called, but nobody came to the door.” Ruth felt an oily wave of nausea begin in her gut. Juliana put a hand on Ruth’s shoulder as she continued. “I knew you needed those IV supplies, so I went into your house. I kept calling for your husband, but there was no answer.”

“Did you hear anything? Did you hear Charlie?”

“The house was quiet. I found your lab in the basement and grabbed what I could find from your list. I’m sorry, Ruth.”

“Maybe they are out. Maybe Bill needed something. He’s been really reluctant to leave Charlie in the house alone when we make supply runs. Maybe he found a way to take him.”

Juliana shook her head. “I promised you I’d give him your message before I left. I thought if I couldn’t find him, I’d leave him a written note at the very least. It seemed so important to you. I couldn’t find any paper in your living room or kitchen. I should have gone back down to the lab. I’m sorry Ruth, I don’t know why I didn’t look in the lab instead.”

Ruth’s heart was pounding so loudly in her ears that Juliana’s voice was almost lost in the rush of her own blood. She didn’t want to hear the rest, but Juliana’s hand on her shoulder felt like an anchor keeping her frozen in place. “I went upstairs to find some paper and saw a whole notebook lying in front of the bedroom door. They were in there.”

“They?” asked Ruth.

Juliana nodded and she began to cry. “I’m so sorry,” she sobbed, and tried to hug Ruth. But medicine had been a way of life for so long, that Ruth stopped her out of habit.

“I could be contagious,” she said, her face a blank. Juliana just wiped her eyes and hugged herself, still crying. Ruth was confused. She thought she should be crying too, but she didn’t really know why. Her mind, usually so busy and rapid, was like a cold, empty room. It had all stopped. “Okay,” she said at last, “I’ll go home and tell Bill. I’ll go see him upstairs.”

Juliana shook her head but didn’t try to stop her. Ruth picked up her kit and walked back down the long gray hallway toward the entrance. She took off her mask and crumpled it into a ball in her hand. The city was a lavender shadow as she walked home. The thaw had finally started and Ruth fell through the dissolving crust into deep snow several times. It was slow going and she was soaked and freezing before she got halfway. Her brain kept trying to jumpstart, like she was being shaken partly awake.
Today was the day,
she’d think, but then the thought would shut off.
The day for what?
It was like poking a bruise. She tried not to ask too hard or too often.

She passed a corner market that she didn’t remember scavenging before and decided to go inside. It was an Asian grocery. Ruth wandered around in the dark aisles looking for Charlie’s favorite brand of peanut butter before realizing the shelves were almost completely empty except for a few marinade bottles and a some packets of freeze dried seaweed snacks. Even the tea was scattered and spoiled. She absentmindedly grabbed a box of rice candy that the mice and scavengers hadn’t gotten to, some subconscious part of her knowing that it didn’t matter anyway.

She stopped at the end of her street. The house was dark.
Bill must have let the generator run out of gas,
she thought.
I hope he’s started a fire in the fireplace. Charlie will get cold.
Her brain took a sideslip again.
I can’t remember if it’s a school night. With all this snow they’ll have to cancel. Maybe Charlie will play cards with me and Bill in front of the fireplace until the power comes back on.
She shook herself and looked around, realizing the thought was wrong, but not why it was wrong. She shrugged and trudged up to the house.

She went inside to get the last can of gas and powered up the generator. She frowned as she noticed the footprints on the little shed above it, forgetting they were hers from the day before.
I have to tell Charlie not to play on the shed. He could get hurt if it collapsed.
The generator roared on; out of habit, she glanced up and down the street, but nothing came. She went into the house and began shucking her wet clothes. The fireplace was dark and the house was as cold as the street had been.

“Bill?” she called.
Oh, that’s right, they’re upstairs,
she thought and put a hand on the banister. Something inside fought with her though, not wanting her to go up. Not wanting her to see what she already knew. She tried to remember why she’d rushed home. She had something to tell Bill. Maybe seeing him would make her remember. She started up the stairs to the bedrooms. She opened the door to her own first. Bill wasn’t in there. She got dressed in dry clothing and then headed down the hallway to Charlie’s room. She tripped over the notebook Juliana had mentioned and picked it up. Taped to the paper was a thin plastic syringe, it’s cap on tight and a tiny silver bubble floating in the center. Below it were just a few lines in Bill’s handwriting.

Ruth-

It had to be today. I’m sorry. We couldn’t wait any longer. We’ll see you soon.

She placed the notebook carefully on the accent table nearby. The syringe flashed in the yellow electric light. She opened the door to Charlie’s room.

They were slumped on the floor, Charlie lying with his head on Bill’s chest, just the way he had when he was small. The room was terribly silent. Ruth watched Charlie’s stomach for a few long minutes willing it to bubble out with an inhale. She used to stand by his crib and watch the same way. She’d been so scared that he would just— just stop. Every night. She knew it was a compulsion, but she’d checked every night, for years. Always the same few agonizing seconds between breaths and then the relief of his rising chest and she’d blow out her own breath and realize she’d been holding it. But now his belly was still. She knelt down beside them, touched Charlie’s cheek, hoping to feel warm skin. But his face was cold and stiff like canvas. She looked up at Bill. His eyes were closed and his arms were around their son. She had imagined they would look peaceful or eased afterward, but Bill just looked blank. Like a mannequin, expressionless, almost unrecognizable. She didn’t have to check his pulse to know he was gone. She sat back on her haunches.

“But I had good news,” she said, “why couldn’t you wait? What was one more night? I could have saved us.” She curled up next to them, the cold from their skin radiating into hers. She wanted to cry. She needed to cry. But she couldn’t. A dull ache spread from her chest to the rest of her body. Shock, and pain and exhaustion overtook her.

Juliana found her asleep next to the corpses of her son and husband the next morning.

Chapter 5

Seven Years Later

It had seemed like such an obvious place to look. People had always gravitated toward water, why was it any different now? But she and Frank had covered hundreds of miles of coastline looking for survivors, new little towns springing up or just small bands of wandering scavengers. Almost a decade after the December Plague hit, Nella had expected hundreds, thousands of people even, to be clustered near the ocean, building new lives. The ocean was full of food; the fish population had thrived, and it was a quick escape if a village were threatened. It’s why her home city sat where it did. But after the first few days, as they reached the edge of their existing trade network, they’d seen almost no one.

Once, they’d seen a few small boats on the horizon that Nella hoped were fishermen. And they’d found a lighthouse keeper who had been alone since the Plague hit, who kept the lamp lit anyway. Its beacon had saved their small sailboat, but Nella had the eerie feeling that he’d kept it going for someone else, for hundreds of ghost ships that would never arrive.

Then she and Frank had wasted almost a week scrambling through the burnt rubble of the capitol city. It was the first place they had planned to go, it had made sense. They had both given up on any kind of government rescue years before, on any kind of government existing, save their own military governor. But others wouldn’t have given up. They would have flocked to the capitol looking for aid, to rebuild, to find other survivors. They had even avoided the port, hiding the boat miles away in case the people didn’t turn out to be friendly.

They should have known almost immediately, though, that the capitol had been abandoned. It hadn’t struck Nella as odd that nobody met them on the little back roads, that was why they had chosen the little hotel dock on the edge of farmland. A few days later, they reached a four-lane highway, and still met no one.

The highway was breaking up, saplings shooting up through the edges of the tar, charred rings dotted the roadway where refugees had lit campfires along the way. Stray cars had been moved into the median, sprouting grass in the cracks of the hoods and trunks, puffing angry balls of mosquitos from the wells of the flat tires. All the signs of people were there, but nobody moved along the road. There were no new signs or markets along the way, something common on the roads leading to Frank and Nella’s city. Frank was just ahead of her, his body a cool blade of shadow against the hazy setting sun. He whistled as he crested a slight hill and turned back toward her.

“You’ve got to see this, it’s incredible.”

She hurried up the hill and looked down into a low plain. It was obviously marsh most of the year, the thick odor of decaying leaves still strong in the dry heat of the early summer. A herd of deer jostled and crowded each other, their brown backs like a heat shimmer over the long grass. More than a hundred of them wandering over eight crumbling lanes where thousands of cars had zipped through just a decade before.

“I haven’t seen a deer in years,” said Nella, “I thought they were all eaten. I thought the Infected got them.”

Frank shaded his eyes with one hand. “It’s the capitol, maybe the Infected were better contained here. I heard on the radio in the shelter that the President issued an executive order to shoot on sight. They would have protected the capitol before everything else.”

Nella tore her gaze from the animals and scanned the horizon, looking for some sign of the large buildings of the capitol, buildings that should have been visible by then. “What about survivors? What are they eating? Wouldn’t they hunt any game in the area?”

She saw a frown flash over his face, but he glanced at her and quickly exchanged it for a grin. “C’mon Nella, when have you ever heard of a politician performing actual manual labor?”

She smiled back, but when she took his hand, he squeezed it a little too tightly.
Joking aside, what about the refugees?
People who had camped on the road before them had almost certainly been hungry and used to providing for themselves. A herd of deer like this would feed hundreds of people. Unease began to rumble through her. She tried to shake it off. “Do you think we should go around them?”

He shook his head. “No, we can go through, they’ll probably scatter when we get closer.”

They walked down the slope, heavy hiking boots clumping against the road, the boxes of Cure darts jingling in Nella’s pack. A few of the deer looked up at them, chewing lazily. None of them moved. Frank waved his long arms at them, but the few that had looked up went back to grazing and ignored him.