Suffer the Children (23 page)

That night, she slept on the floor next to his bed, half expecting him to wake her up again with his morbid shouting. He didn’t. She checked his pulse in the morning.

Nothing. Nadine’s magical cure had come undone.

Ramona went to the bathroom and peeled the Band-Aid off her inner arm. The puncture site was a little bruised. She caught a whiff of her own funk and stripped off her clothes. Blood loss still made her head foggy; a hot shower would clear it. She caught her reflection in the mirror and started in surprise. She looked like a junkie, drawn and pale and strung out.

But also determined.

She wasn’t giving up. Not by a long shot.

There was a chance for Josh, if she fought hard enough. Ramona was a fighter.

The water felt great. Just what she needed. She ran her fingers through her long hair and savored the heat on her scalp.

She’d call Nadine, and the nurse would come and cure her boy. It was that simple. And this time, it would—

Josh roared,
“I’M HUNGRY!”

She flinched. He hadn’t shouted, she knew. It was her imagination. Her mind, and the white noise of the falling water, was playing tricks on her.

“I’M HUNGRY!”

Ramona turned off the water and shivered in the sudden cold.

She began to wonder if she should be afraid.

Nothing.

She turned the shower back on.

“I’M HUNGRY I’M HUNGRY I’M HUNGRY!”

“Stop,” she said, and it did.

After the shower, she wrapped herself in her bathrobe and checked on Josh, who lay in bed right where she’d left him.

“You’re not being fair,” she said. “I’m getting sick of these games. I love you, and you’re coming back again. Got it?”

She marched into the kitchen, picked up the phone, and called Joan Cooper.

“Nadine?” said a tired voice.

“No, it’s me. Ramona Fox.”

“Oh hi, Ramona. How are you?”

She pulled at her hair and enjoyed the mild pain along her scalp. “How are your kids? Are they still moving?”

Joan sighed. “No. They’re not doing much of anything anymore. How about—”

“Josh isn’t moving either.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. The nurse is on her way over. Do you want me to send her on to you when she’s done here?”

“Yes, please do that.” She tightened her grip on the phone. “I’d like to have a word with her. She lied to me. She said the cure would work. She
promised
.”

“But it did work. We got to spend some time with our kids.”

“That’s not the point—”

“She’s just a nurse. She doesn’t know what she’s doing. She’s just trying to help. Have you been watching the news this morning?”

“I’ve been totally focused on Josh,” Ramona answered.

“Other kids are waking up. Lots of them. Some of the moms were wearing bandages. They
cut
themselves, Ramona. We were lucky to have Nadine help us.”

Ramona yanked at her hair again. “I’m sick of feeling helpless.”

“We can’t give up hope. We had Nate and Megan back yesterday. It was a gift. I learned things about them I’d never known.”

“Really? Like what?”

“Little things. Nothing important to you, but in my world, they’re going down in the history books. They
lived
during that short time. They were
learning
. They were
growing
. They truly came back to life. What happened after was a minor setback, nothing more.”

Joan sounded like a woman holding it together by sheer force of will. It was heartbreaking.

“I wish I had your optimism, Joan.”

“It’s going to be okay. I really believe that.”

But she didn’t sound okay. She sounded worn out.

I’m stronger than you
, thought Ramona with a little thrill. Even now, she couldn’t stop comparing herself to the woman. She pulled at her hair.

“So that’s it, you think? We just have to give a little more?”

“It worked yesterday. It’ll work today.”

“How much are you going to give yours?”

“As much as I got. This time, it has to stick.”

“I don’t suppose you have a little extra medicine to spare for Josh.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” said Joan. “I don’t think so.”

“I’m not asking for much. One or two hundred mils, maybe.”

“Nate and Megan need everything that Doug and I have. I’m sorry.”

“See? You have a husband. I have no one here. I’m all alone.”

“I have twice the number of mouths to feed, don’t I?”

“I’m the one who told the nurse to come to your house. You’re not being fair.”

She heard a gasp at the other end of the line.

“What do you want me to say?” Joan asked.

“I want you to say you’ll help me! I need help!”

Joan’s voice took on a hard edge. “I have to take care of mine first. That’s all I can do. You know that.”

The doorbell rang. Ramona hung up on her and hurried to the door. She tied her skimpy red robe tighter around her waist and held it closed over her chest. She felt naked. She’d only partly dried herself; water soaked through the robe and made it cling to her body.

“Who is it?” she shouted.

“It’s Ross,” was the muffled reply. “Is now a bad time?”

It’s always a bad time. He should know that by now.

She opened the door. Ross stood at the entrance hugging several bags and wearing a large grin.

“
You
look nice,” he said.

“Oh, God. Come in quick. It’s freezing.”

The truth was she was glad to see him. She kept telling herself she had no energy or room in her heart for him, but she also knew she couldn’t do all this alone. Everybody seemed to have help except her. Joan had Doug. Bethany had Brian. And a small, selfish part of her still wanted to give herself to him and see what happened.

Ross dumped the bags onto the couch. “I saw on the news how the kids are getting better. They’re, like, perfectly normal again. I can’t believe it. So where is the little guy? Let’s go out and celebrate!”

She hugged her ribs. “What’s all this stuff?”

“This?” He grinned at the bags. “I stopped at a toy store on the way over here and got a few welcome-back presents for Josh. I hope you don’t mind.”

She eyed the boxes spilling out of the bags. “You got so much.”

“Well, that’s the thing. I stopped at the toy store, but it was closed. A crowd of clean-cut, middle-class parents was looting it top to bottom when I showed up. I sort of joined in.”

“So you stole some toys for my son.”

Ross smiled and shrugged. “Well. Yeah. It’s cool?”

“Very cool,” she answered. The old Ramona would have been
appalled. Now she didn’t care what anybody did. Ross could rob a bank, as long as it benefited her son. She picked up a Spider-Man Learning Laptop and inspected it. “Josh will love this stuff when he wakes up.”

“He’s sleeping?”

She yanked at her hair. “He’s had a bit of a relapse.”

Ross blanched at this news. “You mean he’s dead? Jesus, God. How? What the hell is going on?”

“His
condition
has returned. The nurse is coming with more medicine.”

“Medicine? I didn’t know there was a cure. The news said some of the kids were just getting better on their own. They’re calling it a miracle.”

“There’s a cure. Well, more like a treatment.” Ramona held out her hand. “Come on. I want to show you something.”

He followed her into Josh’s bedroom, where her son lay on the bed staring at the ceiling.

“He’s definitely, uh, got the same condition,” he said. “Damn. I’m so sorry, Ramona.”

“Ross, listen to me. I’m going to let you in on a secret about the children.”

He crossed his arms while keeping an eye on Josh, as if he expected the boy to leap out of bed and take a bite out of him. “Go ahead.”

“The children you saw on the news didn’t just return to life. We had to give them something. And what we gave them didn’t last. We have to give them some more.”

Ross nodded. “You mentioned some type of medicine. The nurse brought it, right?”

“Sort of. This is going to sound really weird to you, but it is what it is, okay?”

He smiled as if to say nothing was too weird for him. “Try me.”

You have no idea
, she thought, and said, “I’m going to trust you more than I trust most people. I’m going to let you in. Do you understand?”

His smile faded. “Okay.”

He sounded guarded. Ramona realized maybe he didn’t want that much responsibility so soon.
Now we’re going to find out what Ross is made of.
She took a deep breath. “The medicine is blood.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“None of this is anything I feel like joking about.”

“All you had to do was give him a transfusion?”

“No. Not exactly.”

Ross stared at her blankly. He didn’t understand.

She said, “Josh ingested it.”

Ross raised his hands and took a step back. “Wait a minute. You’re saying he
drank
it?”

“That’s right.”

“Then he came back to life—just like that.”

“Yes.”

Ross barked a short, disbelieving laugh. “That’s crazy. So he’s, like, a vampire.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Ross.”

But he was right. It was true. Josh was very much like a vampire.

“Ridiculous? This whole thing’s ridiculous. It’s a nightmare!”

Ramona understood perfectly how he felt. She just didn’t feel that way about it herself. She was in too deep. Her boy died, he came back, he asked for blood, and she gave it to him. One thing led to the next. It was that simple. Anything else was just noise.

“It is what it is, okay?” she said.

“I can’t believe you actually fed it to him. That you could do that.”

Parents trample each other at malls to buy their kids the latest toy, Ross. Cheat and lie to get them accepted into the best schools. Fight with their fists over different parenting techniques.

Do you really think I’d balk at giving him my blood if he needed it to live?

“It’s like a transfusion, Ross. Think of it like that if it’s too
weird
for you.”

Ross sighed and put his arm around her. “I’m sorry, Ramona. I get
it. If he were mine, I guess I’d do the same. It’s just weird, that’s all. It’s really weird.”

“It’s not evil.” Her voice cracked. “It’s love.”

He pulled her to him and hugged her. “It’s going to be okay.”

Oh, God, yes. That is exactly what I’ve wanted someone to tell me for days.

She rested her head against his chest. “Will you help me, Ross? I have no one else.”

He gave her a reassuring squeeze. “Yeah. Of course I will.”

“You really like me, don’t you?”

He chuckled. “I would think that should have been obvious by now.”

“I have to give blood today, when the nurse comes. What about you?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean
you
. We can be in this together.”

“I still don’t—”

“You know what I’m asking.”

“You want me to give my blood so Josh can drink it?”

“So you can help cure him. We’ll do it together.”

She felt his body stiffen against hers. “Sorry, but there’s no way I’m doing that.”

“Why not?”

“Ask me to do anything else. Please. Ask, and I’ll do it. But I’m not doing that.”

Ramona pulled away. “I thought you liked me.”

“That has nothing to do with whether I’ll do it.”

She opened her robe. Not enough to whore herself, but just enough to give him a taste. “I thought we could do this together.”

“You’re going way over the line,” Ross said, and stormed out of the room.

“I’m sorry,” she called after him. “I’m sorry!”

After closing her robe, she realized Josh was staring at her.

“I’m sorry.”

She let it hang in the air, hoping somebody would accept it.

2 days after Resurrection

Joan despised an untidy house.

She lay on the couch and idly rubbed the inside of her arm while Doug paced the living room like a caged animal. His feet tramped through Christmas toys and wrapping paper. She watched with anxious eyes. She wanted to clean it all up but didn’t have the energy.

The kitchen looked even worse. Plates filled the sink. Their unfinished dinner spoiled on the table. Flour and cake batter coated the counter, Megan’s work. That’s what children did; they made messes. It was her job to clean up after them. On any other day, Joan would have had this place spotless in no time, but today she had no get-up-and-go. The act of giving her blood, and then watching her children return to the darkness in which they slumbered, had taken everything out of her. She felt useless and drained.

She closed her eyes and drifted.

“She’d better come,” Doug growled.

His words brought her back. The mess was still there. That, and the horror of being back to square one.

He said, “She’d just better.”

Doug always viewed the world as out to get him. The politicians and the bankers. They’d engineered the system to screw people like him and keep them all down. He was no doubt thinking the fat cats were getting all the good medicine, while the little people got a shoddy batch that didn’t work.

Doug had no idea the bad medicine was his own wife’s blood.

She’d believed it was a cure.

I’m sorry, Nate. I’m so sorry, Megan.

It was all her fault. She’d let them down.

The children weren’t feeling any pain. At least there was that small comfort. They had no idea what was happening to them or what their mom and dad were going through. Nate said he’d fallen asleep and woken up in the bag, and everything after that was like a dream.

Right now, they were upstairs tucked into their beds.

The nurse was coming and would fix everything again. Maybe the problem was quantity. She hadn’t given them enough. Give enough, and they’d be cured for good. It was the only thing she knew to do.

The alternative was to let them stay dead. Which was no alternative at all.

“Are you with me here?” Doug was glaring at her. “It’s a bad time to get depressed, babe.”