The Cured (16 page)

“All right,” said Melissa, interrupting his thoughts, “leave the sled here so we can just dump what we find onto it. Ten minutes and then we’ll meet back, if anyone finds a jackpot, call out.”

Henry stood next to the toboggan for a moment as the others wandered away. He was reluctant to leave it. What little they had was all packed on it.
There’s nothing there, Henry. A few cans, a box of milk, some old rags. Let it go.
He looked around him. Everything was quiet except a few curtains rustling where the others were hunting for more. He turned away from the sled and walked to the house next to it. It was blue once, now beginning to peel in spots. The roof looked solid though. Feeling foolish, Henry knocked on the front door. He waited for a moment and then tried the door. Locked. He began walking around the house. The living room window was one solid pane. He felt badly about breaking it and decided to find another way. The bathroom window was too small and the kitchen window was too high off the ground. He looked around for a rock, but on his way back he found the basement bulkhead doors. They were loose. He opened them onto a very dark hole. “Hello?” he called, and swung himself down onto the ladder.

For the first time, Henry got lucky. In the thin gray light from the bulkhead he could see several flashlights hanging neatly from a post. He tried one and was relieved to find that it worked. He gathered up the rest without even checking. He swung the flashlight around until he found a cardboard box. It was filled with empty jars. He pulled them out and dumped the other flashlights in. Placing the box on the wood stairs, he walked around the basement. Tools and a furnace, a washing machine and dryer. Just a typical house. He wondered for a moment whether he ought to go through the tools. He decided anything other than the essentials would be too heavy for their wasted frames for now. He dragged the box up the wooden stairs and into the kitchen. There was a rustling and scrabbling as he shut the basement door. Henry froze. “Hello?” he said. There was a squeak and Henry laughed at himself. He prepared himself to be disappointed, expecting that the mice had gotten to any food left in the house. Most of the cabinets were empty, the contents carried away either by the former owners or looters or in tiny bits over the years by rodents. But he found a few ceramic cannisters sitting on the back of the sink. Rice, coffee, sugar, pasta noodles. He smiled to himself as he put them in the box. He had no idea whether they would still be okay, but for the moment, it didn’t matter. A jar of bouillon cubes and a few containers of spices were swept into his box as well. Other than that, the kitchen was empty. Henry took one more moment to sift through the silverware drawer until he found a can opener. His flashlight sparkled on the silver refrigerator front. Henry put his box down on the kitchen table and moved closer to the refrigerator. There were photos of a family taped over the front, but they didn’t bother him. It was like the photos that used to come already inside of picture frames. Not real, distant, strange. And it wasn’t the crayon Christmas cards or the clunky homemade magnets covered in seashells. They weren’t connected with anything. Just something to pack away in a box. Someone else’s history. It was the torn envelope that made Henry stop. Just a normal business envelope, it’s little cellophane window peeling inward, the top flap ragged where it was opened. The return address was what caught his eye. It was his old work address. There was a yellow sticky on the front of the envelope. “Last Payment! Let’s celebrate!” it said. That was all. Henry hadn’t thought about his job much. Not even when he was working there. It wasn’t something he really liked or disliked. It was just a job. He wasn’t terrible at it, though he didn’t much like harassing people for money they didn’t have. He’d still done it. Regularly. People that managed to pay off their debt completely just didn’t happen very often. Closing an account had always been one of Henry’s secret joys, though it meant less money for his company. He imagined the utter relief these people must have felt with that last payment. Like a thousand pounds lifted off their backs. And then– Henry shook his head. He hoped they had celebrated before it didn’t matter any more.

He turned away from the refrigerator and made his way with his box into the living room. There wasn’t much of immediate use, and Henry was getting nervous about the others, so he hurried past and into each of the home’s bathrooms, emptying the medicine cabinets into the box without even looking at what he was doing. He wondered if anyone else would remember toothpaste and soap and grabbed them too, narrowly avoiding a nasty bite from some mice that had made a nest in old toilet paper under the sink of the upstairs bath.

Henry opened the door to the first bedroom, looking for blankets and towels, but then quickly backed up. The curtains were torn down, letting the deep yellow of late afternoon in. The room was purple with dried blood, the whole coated in a stiff, chalky layer of it. Furniture was tipped, bedclothes torn to streamers and dragging nail marks raked the walls. A heavy wall mirror lay smashed, face up, where it had fallen, reflecting the gore and the terrible, breathless stillness in a thousand different pieces. “I’m sorry,” said Henry, as if he’d caught someone naked in the bathroom. He shut the door. He looked toward the other bedroom, but decided to skip it and headed quickly down the stairs. He unlocked the front door, took a quick glance around the room to make sure he wasn’t missing something vital and then picked up his overflowing box and opened the door.

There was a small boy climbing over the toboggan, pulling things off. He couldn’t be more than five or six, probably not even born yet when the Plague had hit. An odd sensation of missing time hit Henry again. He put the box down on the front step, just as the boy looked up and saw him standing there. The boy froze, a dented can in one hand, his knees already tensed to spring away. Henry held up his hand, “Wait,” he said.

The boy began running. “Infected!” he screamed, “Infected! Infected!”

“Wait!” Henry called after him and began running down the steps. He made it halfway across the street before he heard gunshots blast around him. He should have run back to the house. Instead he threw himself over the sled, as if they were trying to shoot the supplies instead of him. Henry held his arms over the back of his head and winced into the pavement. The cans jittered and clunked and poked him as his stomach tensed over them with each shot. Whoever was shooting wasn’t very good at it, and they didn’t waste many bullets on him, for which Henry was very thankful. He wondered if it was actually the little boy himself. He pushed the thought aside and sat up, still shaking. The others were running toward him, and Henry’s relief that they hadn’t just abandoned him almost overwhelmed him.

“Are you hurt?” asked Pam as she reached him.

“No, but I think we’re missing some stuff.”

Rickey scowled and picked up a shovel from the sled. He brandished it and made a move to go after the kid. “No, don’t,” said Henry, “it was just a little boy. I think he might be alone. He probably needs it more than us. I tried to talk to him, but I guess I scared him.” He picked himself up from the street and rubbed the side of his face with one hand. “I guess I look worse than I thought,” he said with a rueful smile.

“We all do,” said Melissa. “Let’s get out of here before the kid’s big brother shows up. Everyone grab your stuff, we’re going to find a place to hole up for tonight at least.”

“Wait,” said Henry, “did anyone find a wagon or a wheelbarrow or anything? This sled is starting to splinter on the broken tar.”

“I found two of those bike stroller things,” said Molly, “And more bikes. But I need help hooking them up.”

“I’ll pull this stuff to you then,” said Henry, jogging back to retrieve his box. The others drifted off to get their things. Henry followed Molly back to a garage and felt immediately better as they pulled the sled inside. In the end, they had found so much that it filled both of the small trailers and a hiking pack that Molly volunteered to wear for a while. The sun was setting as they headed out of the small suburban street and onto the main road. Melissa assured them that they’d be at the hotel by the time the light was gone, so they put their tired legs through a little more and rode into the thickening dark.

Twenty-one

Melissa led them into the alleyway between two hotels. “We’ll go in the back way, far from the lobby,” she said softly, “by the pool. We can lock ourselves in there if anyone else is living here.”

They wheeled their bikes through the glassed in hallway. The pool was empty long ago, but it still smelled faintly of chlorine. Henry felt a little exposed in front of the large plate-glass windows, but they overlooked an empty courtyard between them and the lobby, and everything looked dark and still. Melissa led them into the large, windowless women’s locker room. She swept a flashlight beam over the area before Pam flipped the light switch. There were a few gasps as the light flickered on. “I thought so,” said Pam, “I hope no one else knows.”

“How did you know?” asked Vincent.

“There was a really bad storm several years ago,” said Pam, “everyone in the area was without power for weeks, except this place, the hospital and the high school. Those got power back first. This hotel just happened to be on the same line as the hospital. They could have made a killing. Instead they housed the electricians who were fixing the lines for free and opened their doors for anyone that wanted a hot shower or to do laundry while they waited for the power to come back on. I brought my kids swimming here for a few weeks.”

“But why would it still be on now after all these years?”

Pam shrugged. “I assume the City restored power at least to itself. It’s been a long time. Someone would have figured out how to get it running again. And they’d probably power the hospital first. We aren’t that far away. We’re just lucky that the hotel happens to be on the same line.”

“You mean we can have hot showers and sleep in our own rooms in an actual bed? Maybe we can figure out how to run the hotel videos,” said Rickey excitedly.

Melissa shook her head. “Sorry, but we can’t do any of those. The boiler probably ran out of oil ages ago, so the showers will be cold, if we’re lucky and the pipes haven’t burst yet.” She walked over to the sink and twisted the tap on. It chugged for a moment and then spat brown water that gradually ran clear.

“Why can’t we sleep in the hotel rooms?” asked Rickey.

“The battery packs on the door locks are all dead. That’s why we were able to get in here. We couldn’t lock any of the bedroom doors either. And every one we open to sleep in, we risk finding someone hostile. Plus we’d be farther from a quick exit.”

“And separated,” said Molly, with a panicked look.

“The pool entrance and these locker rooms have manual locks, and we’re close to an exit with all of our gear nearby. And–” Melissa walked over to a wooden door and opened it, flicking another light on. “There is a pass through here that used to be a sauna, so we can use both locker rooms and still be together.”

“Why are you so convinced that other people are here?” asked Rickey, “we didn’t know about the electric until Pam turned the light on. And what are the chances that anyone else is left alive that knows or would expect that the electricity has been restored out here too?”

“The only reason we didn’t know is because we came during the day,” said Henry with a dull groan. He sat down on a changing bench. “The parking lot lights, the lobby lights, any lighted signs that aren’t broken, they’re all on timers aren’t they? And now the sun has gone down. This place must look like Vegas in the middle of the desert. We should leave now-” he started to stand up, but Melissa shook her head.

“There’s nowhere to go Henry. This place is warm, we can lock ourselves in, we can even use the camp stove that Pam found in the shower room if we use the vent. The hotels around us are already dark and they don’t have back entrances like this. If we’re quiet and don’t go wandering around, no one will know we are here. There’s no reason for anyone to come down here. We’ll be okay, and in the morning we’ll sneak out the back again.”

“I agree. Let’s get the other room set up and all of our gear safe and locked in with us,” said Vincent, and he pulled Henry up onto his feet.

Henry gradually felt better about staying, after the doors were locked and the cracks under the door were stuffed with cloth to keep the light from shining out. Rickey made a casual survey of the old lockers where members and hotel guests had left an assortment of mostly useless junk. Vincent rummaged through the food trying to choose something that would fill them up without killing them. Henry hoped it would be more than oatmeal mush this time. He went to take a shower. Cold or not, it would still make him feel more himself if he could get really clean. He covered the shower room mirror with an old towel from the lockers. He’d seen his face as he shaved, but he had tried to pretend it was someone else. And he wasn’t ready to see the scars over the rest of him. He didn’t want to know what the kid had seen that made him run screaming away.

The water started a dark brown and Henry waited for it to clear. He waited a few extra seconds before he realized he had been waiting for it to heat up out of sheer habit. He stood under the water and it was colder than the pond had been. He didn’t care. He stood under the water and smelled the ghost scent of bleach and soap and hair gel. He found his own soap and the smell of his own patches of rotten, broken wounds disappeared underneath the bar. He tried not to wince where it stung his cuts or where his too tight skin felt sorely pressed between the bones jutting out from inside and the water tapping down from outside. Gradually, an aroma of food cut through the water and Henry turned off the shower. He sighed as he pulled clean clothes over his clean skin. For the first time in as long as he could remember, he felt good. Not just an absence of pain, but really good. He even pulled the towel off the mirror and faced himself. He still didn’t recognize himself. Too old, too thin. He wondered if Marnie would scream and run away like the boy did. She had more reason to. She’d seen what he’d done.