Cured (2 page)

I fill all the remaining space in the backpack with bullets. Bullets that fit my dad's Glock. Because if I am going out on my own, I am taking the best gun. The Glock is smaller and lighter than a rifle and has a clip that holds nineteen bullets. I think Dad will understand. And Mom should embroider
that
onto a piece of fabric:
If You Go Out on Your Own, Take the Best Gun
.

I shove the backpack under the bed again and go to the still zooming treadmill. I am about to get on when I hear Mom's
hushed voice drift down the basement stairs. I know this tone of voice. It means she is saying something she doesn't want me to hear. It is the voice that means I need to eavesdrop. Slowly, I creep to the basement stairs and look up. I can't see anyone, but Mom and Dad are obviously standing in the kitchen and holding a conversation.

“. . . our granddaughter,” Mom says. I frown and creep up two stairs. I can't be hearing them right, because they don't have any grandchildren.

“That's what he said,” Dad answers. “But it wasn't just them. It was all the women. That's why he mentioned moving Jack.”

Moving me?

Mom squeaks, and then she starts crying, audible sobs I can hear all the way in the basement. “Why?” she asks between sobs.

“You already know the answer to that, Ellen. It will be worth the risk. We have until morning to decide.”

It won't matter what they decide because I won't be here in the morning.

“I'm going to go relieve Rob. You try and get some rest. Be content in the knowledge that the child will be safe.”

I roll my eyes. I am
not
a child.

Dad walks by the top of the stairs and I press myself against the wall. When he's past, I go back down and get on the treadmill for the last time. As I jog, my plan runs through my brain over and over again, like water being filtered until the deadliest elements are removed. I hope my plan has been filtered to perfection. I really don't want to die yet.

To conserve energy, I run two slow miles instead of my
customary eight, and when I get off the treadmill, my brain is still going at top speed. After I call good night to my family, I go to my room, take off my sweaty clothes, and get dressed in a white T-shirt, boys' underpants, boys' green camouflage pants that have been taken in at the waist, boys' running shoes, and my tackle vest.

I lie down in bed with my ankles crossed and my hands behind my head and stare at the dark ceiling. My mind is still running. Still filtering. I do not sleep.

The best kept secret is the one no one thinks to ask. At five a.m., I go upstairs, and then out into the backyard and up the ladder to the roof. Josh has Dad's gun up and ready, but when he sees it is me, he lowers it and pats the shingles beside him.

“How's it going?” I ask, looking at the dark world.

“Totally dead,” he says, stifling a yawn. “It's been like this for two months—since they started letting anyone live behind the wall. All the Fecs went into the walled city to get the cure.”

“I never thought the feces dwellers would leave. I keep expecting them to come back,” I say.

They were like rats—sneaky, thieving creatures that lived in the sewers—but they made life interesting. “I'm glad they don't have to worry about turning into wild, savage beasts anymore. It's about time someone helped them.”

“You've got to be glad the raiders are gone, though,” I say with a shiver. I still have nightmares about the lawless gangs of men who ruled the streets and preyed on the weak and innocent—especially women. “Do you think they'll ever come back?”

“Not with everyone living inside the wall. The raiders don't have any Fecs to hunt anymore.”

“Here.” I hold a water bottle out to him, and he takes it without question. Josh is nineteen—two years older than me. He's short for a man but still several inches taller than me and has the same dark-brown, curly hair that all of us Bloom children have.

“So, you couldn't sleep?” he asks, unscrewing the lid and taking a swig of the slightly brown water.

I look down into the dark backyard, toward the well we dug. There is water everywhere, if you dig deep enough. After a year of drinking soil-flavored well water, I forgot what clear water tasted like. Now, more than three years later, I don't even mind the taste. And hopefully it will cover up the flavor of the drugs I put in the water bottle.

“Jack?”

I jump and look at him. “What?”

“You couldn't sleep?” he asks again, yawning.

I shake my head and study him, leaning in for a closer look at his face.

“Thanks for this.” He holds up the water bottle and a surge of guilt makes me sick. “But you
know
Dad will flip if he finds you out here. You should probably … go back into . . .” His eyelids look too heavy for his eyes. He pats his cheeks a few times and blinks. “Wow. I'm so . . .” His eyelids crash shut like they're
made of lead. I reach for his gun, but his eyes pop open again and he blinks at me. “. . . tired.” His head lobs forward, his chin rests on his chest, and snores rumble from his throat. Holding my breath, I ease him down so he is lying on his side, then position him so he won't roll off the roof.

“Sorry, bro,” I whisper. When he wakes up he's going to have a major headache, and he'll want to kill me. Hopefully I'll live long enough to give him the chance.

I ease the gun out of his hand and tuck it into the holster on my belt. Without making a sound, I cross the roof and shimmy down the ladder. Inside the house, I pause and listen for the sudden
click-click
of a rifle being cocked. I am greeted by silence. Sliding a folded square of paper from my pocket, I put it on the kitchen counter. There are only seven words on that paper, but it is the hardest thing I have ever written. It says:

I'm living inside the wall now
.

I creep to the basement stairs and pick up my waiting back-pack, then tiptoe to the front door and unlock all four deadbolts. Cool air swirls around my face.

Before I have the door half open, I dart onto the front porch and whisper, “Shh!” to the four dark forms in the front yard. The dogs wag their tails and walk toward me, their chains clanking. “
Sieda!
” I whisper. It means “
sit
.” Our dogs speak Italian, not English. That way no one can give them orders—unless they speak Italian. The dogs whimper but sit, staring at me with eyes that reflect moonlight. “
Buoni cani!
” I whisper, and take four treats out of a pocket of my tackle vest. I toss them each a homemade dog biscuit—whole-wheat flour, salt, water, and ground rat,
cooked until it's too hard to rot. The dogs snap their treats out of the air and crunch them. When the food is gone, they look at me with expectant, glossy eyes. “
Sieda, sieda
.” They sit.

Dawn is smeared against the eastern horizon and barely illuminates the debris-filled road. As usual, the morning is completely silent, like someone has pushed an omnipotent mute button. No birdsong, no crickets, no car motors, no droning airplanes, no voices. Opening the top pocket on my tackle vest, I take out a silver
J
—my lucky charm—and press it to my lips before tucking it back into my pocket. I need all the luck I can get.

Careful not to rattle the bulging pack on my back, I tiptoe down the porch steps and slink over the dead lawn. When I get to the road, I pause. I am about to step over the line that I have been forbidden to cross. I take a deep breath, walk off my property, and start to run, chasing the silence away with the gentle slap of my shoes on dusty pavement.

When I have covered three blocks, I stop running, take Dad's gun from my belt, and point it at the silent sky. The gun recoils in my hand as the bullet rips toward heaven, rumbling like thunder.

The sound echoes off the mountains, devouring the silence. If my plan works, every person in my house—except Josh—will be waking up right now, able to protect themselves. They won't be sitting ducks. My dogs start barking, as if they knew what I was planning. “
Buoni cani!
” I whisper.
Good dogs!

Movement catches my eye. My stomach drops, and I point my gun at a shadow standing frozen in the middle of the street.
His gloved hands are up, his voice quiet. “Please.” That's all he says, but it's enough. I am aiming my weapon at the vagabond that wanders to my house a couple of times a month for food. I lower the gun and run past him. My destination? The city inside the wall. I need to talk to Fiona Tarsis.

For three years I have trained for all worst-case scenarios. All worst-case scenarios include me running away from danger. I run and run. The sky slowly grows lighter, illuminating the tops of the Rocky Mountains. The golden glow creeps down their steep sides, and the world around me becomes visible. I gasp an involuntary breath. This is my first time off my property in two years, ten months, and sixteen days. Since the day I became Jack.

Silent, odorless, still, the dawn-washed world seems as if it is holding its breath. As if the oxygen has been stripped from it and everything exists in a vacuum. A city of black and white. The only bright color comes from the canary-yellow fliers nailed to power-line poles, poles that serve no purpose anymore except to hold the colorful announcements:

Cure!

My feet pump a rhythmic
thump-thump-thump
on the road, sending up little puffs of dust that float ghostlike above the cracked pavement, marking my path. A path where no other feet have trod for a long time. I push harder, run faster, wondering why running on pavement, out in the open, feels so different from running on the treadmill at home. It feels so easy.

The world continues to hold its breath around me, claustrophobic with silence as the sun's light creeps to the base of the mountains and paints the city. Abandoned houses? Gold. Broken-down cars? Gold. Rusted bikes? Gold. Glass skyscrapers? Gold. The tears in my eyelashes? Gold.

I swipe my eyes, blink away the tears that blur the houses on either side of the road into two long trains, and go faster, rushing through a world that breaks my heart. A world I've heard talked about for nearly three years but have never seen, except from my front yard. It is worse than I ever imagined. So empty. So abandoned. So dead.

By the time the sun hovers a hand span above the eastern horizon, I have passed through neighborhoods, business districts, industrial factories, and skyscrapers. I come to a jolting stop and stare up, and up some more, at a wall that springs skyward from the side of the road, as if it grew out of the sidewalk. It runs left and right with no door in sight. I turn left—south—and nearly trip. With hardly a thought, my hand is on my gun, finger trembling against the trigger. Slowly, just like I've practiced, I brace for the recoil and take aim at the man leaning against the corner of a building on the opposite side of the road.

Trust no one!
That is the first thing I was taught about survival.
That, and
never get caught
. And then I have to wonder how this timeworn beggar, who was at my house when I left, is now here in front of me. His cheeks look hollow beneath his scraggly beard, and I know he's hungry. The first time I saw him I gave him an individual serving of applesauce in a plastic container, the kind with the foil lid you can peel back. It was one of the hardest things I've ever done, but he looked so ravenous—I figured I could live one more day without it. I wasn't sure about him.

“Please. I'm not going to hurt you,” he wheezes, slowly lifting broad, gloved hands. He stares at me, eyes vibrant beneath bushy brows. A long, matted beard hides most of his face, and rags hang from his hunched body. What's visible of his face is flushed and damp with sweat, his chest lifting and falling fast beneath his tattered brown shirt. I swallow and keep my gun up and ready. “I'm not going to hurt you, Jack.” Only his mouth and beard move, like a ventriloquist's puppet.

I swallow past the fear in my throat—I know this guy … sort of—and take a deep breath. I narrow my eyes. “Weren't you by my house this morning?”

The man nods, and the unexpected movement makes me jump and almost drop my gun. He flinches. “Your dad was supposed to meet me this morning at sunrise,” he says. “Why don't you let me walk away from here? Before you accidentally shoot me.” Slowly, he lowers his hands and takes a tiny step backward. When he's taken ten steps, he turns his back to me and keeps slowly walking. I stare at his back, at the torn, ragged, dirt-covered shirt straining against a pair of thick shoulders, and my
knees go weak. I might be good with a gun. And I might know how to run. But without my brothers, Dad, and Uncle Rob, I am vulnerable. That guy would be able to snap me in half without even trying, and no one would come to my rescue. I wait until he's gone from sight to start running again, south along the wall.

After a few minutes, I slow my pace. They don't see me, the two guards who stand talking to each other at the wall's base, and I can't help but wonder how they've managed to stay alive if I can sneak up on them without trying. I clear my throat before I am too close so that they don't startle and shoot me. They both whip around, rifles aimed at my heart. I lift my hands and stop walking.

Their eyes dart over me and, despite the gun at my belt, they visibly relax. I don't blame them. I'm short, I'm too thin like everything else in this starved world, and they don't know that I'm a perfect shot. Without a second thought, they underestimate me. Being underestimated is an advantage, and yes, that saying is framed and hanging on the bathroom wall at home.

“What do you want?” one of them asks. His hair is sandy blond, cut short, with three lines shaved above his left ear. I take a few cautious steps closer, and his sun-bleached eyebrows furrow. “Aren't you the dentist's kid?” he asks.