The 40th Day (After the Cure Book 5) (23 page)

She pushed past him. “She’s dead,” she said blankly. “I’m sorry,” she added, but couldn’t muster the same sympathy for him as she had for Vincent. She didn’t know if he’d even known her.

“I have to talk to you,” he said.

She kept walking. “I don’t want to hear any of your lies.”

“But it’s my fault! And yours too—”

She wheeled around. “What’s my fault?”

Father Preston pointed at the tent. “
Our
fault. The girl lying in there.”

“
Our
fault? I did what I could. I’m not a surgeon. I warned him— the world is— is broken. Nothing
works
anymore. Even if I saved her, she’d have been infected. Everything is— everything is
wrong.
” Her last word threatened to tumble into an angry sob and she pinched the bridge of her nose with two bloody fingers to stop herself from crying in front of him.

“Not that,” said Father Preston, and his voice was softer than she’d ever heard it before. “I know you did everything you could. It’s our fault that Gray attacked. I have to talk to you about him.”

Nella shook her head. “
You
made him, not me. I’m sorry, Father. A few years ago, maybe even a few months ago, you might have found a sympathetic ear with me. But I’ve seen your brand of fanaticism too many times. And there’s barely anyone alive who isn’t carrying some kind of guilt for what’s happened. It’s become the new norm. Besides, I’m dying. Office hours are over. I’m not your confessor and I’m not your therapist. Find someone else to dump your sermons on.” She felt terrible almost as soon as the words left her lips.

“But you don’t understand— I
must
speak to you—” he continued. She walked back to her tiny cell and slid into the tent, covering her head with one of the sleeping bags and burying her face in the crushed grass so she couldn’t hear him. Startled, Frank met Father Preston at the fence.

“It’s about—” he started.

Frank waved a hand. “She’s upset. Let her calm down and we’ll listen to what you have to say. Whatever it is, it can wait.”

“No—” protested Father Preston.

Frank gripped the wire fence tightly. “Yes, Father, it
can
. We’re trapped in here. Unless what you have to tell us can be solved inside this wire fence, then it can
wait
. It’s just your bad conscience talking. I won’t let you dump your guilt on to her. She’s had more than her share of that. Leave her be. We’ll speak later.”

The priest backed away and Frank returned to Nella. She was crying and trying to wipe the blood from her mouth and hands.

“She didn’t make it?” he asked, offering her a cup of cool water. She shook her head.

“There was nothing I could do.”

“I know.”

“I tried,” she said.

“I know.”

“It didn’t even mean anything. It didn’t even
count
. He got away. He’ll come back, hurt some more people. And it won’t mean anything either. And in a month, I’ll die too and then you and then none of this will have mattered. None of
us
will have mattered. Because everything and everyone will be gone.”

Frank shook his head. “That’s not true. We know there are others out there. We’ve seen them. And even if they weren’t— even if there were no more humans, it doesn’t mean we didn’t matter or that what we suffered made no difference. We are a handful of people, the leftovers of billions. We don’t hold the memory of every person that lived and breathed before us. Not even in our modern age where everything seems to be recorded. How many millions and millions of people were born and lived and died without leaving a single trace in history? But they mattered. Their lives meant something. How many thousands just in the past few years, that were lost in the Plague, that have nobody left to remember them? But they still matter. So do you and I.”

“To whom? When there is no one left, to whom will we matter?”

“To each other. To the people that lived with us, who knew us. To me, if you can’t think of better. It matters that I met you. It matters that you loved me. Even if this is it. Even if it all stops when we do. You gave my life meaning. It means something that that girl existed. That she was loved by her friends. Even if they don’t make it either. Besides, Gray isn’t going to come back. You didn’t see what she managed to do to him. I did. He’s lucky he didn’t lose his leg. He still might. He won’t come back, not knowing they are ready for him this time. She
saved
them. Whether she saved them for an hour or a month or years, that means something. And you saved
her
, the first time around. Maybe so she could do this very thing. That meant something too.”

“I didn’t cure her, I just got bitten. You saved her.”

Frank smiled. “Very well, I saved her. But you saved me. I don’t know if I believe we are fated to do anything, or that we have a purpose outside of just existing. But if I were looking for a worthy one, I think helping these people would be a good one. And loving you would be the best one. I don’t need any more than that.”

Marnie slid her small fingers through the fence and fumbled with the latch on her lock. She unhooked it and slid out of her small cell, heading toward the tent where all the commotion had been. It was silent now, and she held up the flap to look inside. A girl was lying on the ground, pillowed by a few bloody sleeping bags. Vincent knelt beside her, brushing her hair from her forehead. He was quiet but the way he rocked slightly told Marnie he was crying. She sat down quietly beside him.

“What was her name?”

Vincent picked up the girl’s hand. Marnie could see it was broken and scarred. “Molly,” he said.

“Was she at the Lodge?” Marnie asked.

Vincent nodded.

“Did Phil do that to her arm?”

“No. It was one of our friends before they were cured.”

“You’re friends with people that tried to eat you?”

Vincent smiled. “I’m friends with whoever will have me as one. She and Henry were the best of them, though.”

“What happened?”

Vincent’s hand tightened over Molly’s limp one. “Someone worse than Phil. Someone worse than all of us. Someone who enjoys being a monster.”

“What will you do?”

He placed the hand across the girl’s chest and then the other on top of it. “Say goodbye.”

“What about the bad guy? Aren’t you going to find him?”

Vincent shook his head. “If he comes back, I can’t answer for what will happen to him. But I won’t chase him. Molly died trying to protect this place. She’d want us to stay and protect it too.”

Twenty-nine

Amos winced as the sprayer bounced violently over an unseen rut. He slowed down, glad he was the one driving with the chemicals. He eased the pickup over the dip, glancing at the dark truck bed as if he could will the box of pesticide containers not to move. The headlights swooped up to illuminate the back of the sprayer again, its tank still swaying slightly from the slosh of the water. He could hear crickets even over the rumble of the trucks and the wind blew a dry tang of smoke into the cab. Too heavy to be the campfires. They were still too distant for that to reach him. He was unsurprised to see the sprayer speed up. Henry was panicking. Amos had considered warning him, when he was certain the smoke had to be from the Colony. But there was nothing to be done. They had to trust Molly and Vincent to hold it together without them. Amos understood the impulse, but he kept his foot light on the gas pedal. It’d do no good to blow himself up. Then there’d be two fires instead of one. He’d kept his own panic in check as the day crawled on because the signs of smoke had diminished instead of grown. He knew they’d controlled it somehow. What he didn’t know, was whether it was an accident. Had something truly ugly happened? He rubbed a rough hand over his face. He’d seen it before. Quarantines gone wrong. It didn’t take much. A superstitious group, a collective fear, one person could set it off. It wasn’t even hate, just sheer terror that would cause it. They’d certainly had enough of that.

Before, he’d been an outsider. He’d been trained. Grown up in a western world where things like witchcraft didn’t cause disease. He’d looked down on the people he was trying to protect, even as he told himself he didn’t. He practiced pretending they were equal, they were the same as him. But deep in his head, he looked down on their fear. Minimized it even as he tried to show that he cared, that they were there to help. Soldiers weren’t built to fear, even when they did. He’d expected to be an outsider at the Colony too. As hard as Henry tried, as much as he liked the others, Amos really had been. The lone Immune. Nobody treated him badly, nobody pointed or stopped conversations when he came near. But he was still the outsider. Still the helper. Part of it was purely practical, he knew about farming. It was easy to fall into the role of teacher. And then leader. The others had been content to let him.

And then the radio message had changed everything. He understood the terror now. Now he wasn’t the Immune. They were all vulnerable. And burning down the quarantine camp didn’t seem as irrational anymore. It was
wrong
, but he could understand it now. He was one of them and he was afraid with them. For them. For himself. For the Infected.

He was a little ashamed of the sinking feeling he got when the sprayer pulled to a stop between the wire fence of the quarantine camp and the Colony’s stone wall. The camp was still there, the tents a string of softened light in the dark. The Infected were safe. And still a threat.

What had burned? He parked beside the other truck and watched the people running toward the wall above them. Henry looked torn between running for the wire fence or racing up to the Colony.

“What’s happened?” rumbled Amos toward the wall. “Where’s Molly?”

The guard shook his head. “We don’t know. She disappeared just after the fire was under control. We’ve been searching for hours. We think he must have dragged her off—”

“She’s dead.” Vincent’s voice cut through behind them and Amos turned to see him leaning on the fence. Henry took a few steps toward the fence. “No,” said Vincent, holding up his hands, “Don’t compound it by exposing yourself. You can’t help her anymore. It’s done. Dr. Ryder tried to save her but…” He ran a hand through his straggling gray hair. “There were no other casualties down here. I don’t know what the state up there is, though.”

“She— how? With all these people to protect her— how did she get hurt?” asked Henry, shaking his head.

“She was the one protecting them, Henry. Go and see. We will speak later. We still have many things to finish.” Vincent let go of the fence and walked farther into the dark camp.

Amos didn’t waste time, but raced up the hill. Henry sank down into the long grass. He sucked in the cindery air and sat in silence for a long time, staring into the dark woods. He looked up at the dark silo, expecting to see Molly’s small form perched in the window, her head haloed by soft lantern light. But the window was dark and the side of the silo blackened with soot. Henry suddenly felt he had been gone for decades instead of a few hours. He climbed wearily up to the farmhouse, not even pausing at the wreckage of the barn where Amos was sifting through ash while others surrounded him, telling him the story. He found the spare handset and clicked it on.

“Vincent?”

“I’m here.”

“I don’t want to hear how it happened from anyone but you.”

“Why did you let him go, Henry?” Vincent moaned, a sound of grief Henry had never heard from him before.

“I thought I was doing what was right. I thought I was keeping us from becoming like him. Or like Phil or all the others who used the situation as an excuse to shed their humanity. I can’t say that I’m sorry for letting him go. I’m sorry for not staying today, though. For not being here, where I was needed.”

“I could say the same. She said she was lonely, that we were all on ‘quests’ and she kept getting left behind. She saved the Colony today, Henry. It would have burned to the foundations without her. When he comes back—”

“When he comes back,” said Henry, his voice lowering to a sharp growl, “My face will be the last thing he sees.”

Thirty

Rickey stumbled over a thick cable. He caught himself on the half buried arm of a lift chair. “Watch out,” he called to Melissa. “There’s a lot of metal lying around.”

“We must have hit the resort. We aren’t far now,” she said, carefully picking her way around the tangled cable.

Rickey kicked at it. “Hope the radio equipment is in better shape than this.”

“That’s why I’ve got you along.”

Rickey scratched at a thin patch of hair. “I can fix some things, but I don’t know much about radios. How do we even know anyone will be listening? What’s the damn thing broadcasting anyway?”

Melissa shrugged. “Probably the message from the City, unless someone’s stopped it. It was still broadcasting that message when we left. It would have been broadcasting the last emergency message before that.”

“For eight years? Why would anyone tune in now? Who even has a radio anymore or anything to power it? You know, I didn’t want to say anything before we left, but we’re down to the last few gallons of gas ourselves, let alone batteries.”