The Cured (28 page)

“Can I keep the same crew until this is over?”

Stephanie sighed with relief. “That will make things
much
easier. Tell them to meet up with you instead of here.”

Melissa pinched Henry’s elbow before scouting the crowd. “You have to let it go,” she whispered, “you think he’s going to tell you where the kid is if you threaten him? He’s protected here. You have to play nice to get what you want.” Henry shook his head but she was gone. Vincent was being swept away by a flood of kids whose school had been forgotten in the crisis. Henry panicked for a moment looking quickly at each small face, but of course Marnie wasn’t there. She was a big girl now. Vincent herded them toward the door with another adult.

“There’s the bell,” said Stephanie, “Want to help me get these tool bundles to everyone that’s left? We’ll head to the Farm a little late in case there are any stragglers.”

Henry leapt at the chance to get a closer look at the remaining crowd without Melissa or Vincent watching him. He pulled the heavy bundles over, one after the other, faster than seemed possible for his wasted frame. He paused to look at every face as he handed out a bundle.
Is this him? Have I forgotten his face?
Flashed through him each time, until dozens of faces later, he determined that yes, he had forgotten. His memories all ran together with the faces he saw now, muddied the waters. Henry felt a pang of despair. Phil could have walked right by him without being noticed. He could have been in one of the other crews. He could still be assigned to the graveyard. Maybe they were expecting that job to be in demand shortly. Henry shivered at the thought. Or Vincent could have been lying to keep him in the City.

“You want to stay here and wait for anyone that’s late?” Stephanie asked, “Just hang out for ten minutes and then come over to the Farm. Anyone later than that will just have to fend for themselves.”

Henry nodded dumbly, still circling the thought of Phil escaping him. The warehouse emptied around him. The air cooled in the vacant building and there was no shuffling or coughing. Finally, when Henry was shouldering his bundle, already weary now that the adrenaline had worn off, he heard the door to the office open.

“Sorry I’m late. Took forever to find the place. Hello?” Rumbled a voice from the office.

“In here,” called Henry irritably, picking up another bundle. He looked up as boots clomped into the warehouse doorway. And there stood Phil. Henry had expected him to be diminished somehow. Wounded maybe, from Marnie’s attack. Or sunken from losing power over others. Or just smaller, weaker in the face of Henry’s recovery. But Henry knew he’d never be the man he had been before the Plague, and neither would Phil. Phil seemed to grow larger, be more threatening, filled with a creepy jolliness the worse things got. Henry had withered over eight years, not just because of the deprivation he’d been forced to undergo.

Phil’s bulky work clothes filled the frame of the doorway and he looked as healthy and spoiling for a fight as he always had. The only sign that anything had changed was a deep purple scar that twisted across his thick jaw. But it was like a tar seam on a patched road, it belonged there, only made him seem more dangerous than he had before. And for the first time, Henry began to feel a little frightened that things were not going to go exactly as he had planned.

“Hello?” asked Phil.

“Uh, hello, sorry, I was just closing up to go to the Farm.” Henry had no idea what he was doing. He hadn’t planned this far ahead and now he was floundering. And you didn’t flounder in front of Phil. Not if you wanted to live. He handed Phil a bundle of tools and tried to catch up.

“Name’s Phil. I don’t recognize you, but then I don’t come over to the Cured side of town much,” Phil grinned as if he’d said something funny. Henry was strangely encouraged by the sight of Phil’s patchwork of missing teeth. “Are you new?”

“Yeah, got here a few days ago.”

“You Cured?”

Henry began walking toward the door. He hadn’t considered what he would say about himself. It was no good lying, he guessed. Other people knew who he was and would tip his hand for him. It was easier to tell the truth and hope he was changed enough that Phil couldn’t recognize him.

“Yeah, I’m Cured.”

“I thought everyone from the Cure camps came to the City months ago.”

“Yeah, well, I wasn’t ready yet.”

Phil laughed behind Henry as he closed the door. It hit Henry like a roll of thunder. “I hear you. Had a sweet setup until recently myself, decided to come to the City this winter though. Times are tough out there. What’d you say your name was?”

He turned around and stuck out his hand as if he were greeting a friend. “Henry.”

Phil shook his hand and gave him a greasy grin again. “Henry. Kind of old-fashioned isn’t it? Don’t meet too many Henrys anymore–” Phil interrupted himself with a snort of laughter, “well, I guess you don’t meet too many of anyone these days, but you know what I mean.”

“Family name,” Henry said dryly as he turned back toward the Farm.

“I knew a Henry once. You know, Before.”

Henry nodded and chewed on his nerves, ready to swing the heavy bundle of tools at Phil if he had to. “Where is he now?”

“Eh, you know how these things are. Dead most likely. He got sick. I tried to take care of him but he was out of his head. Ran off one day in the middle of winter. He must have frozen.”

“That’s too bad,” Henry said through his teeth. His knuckles gleamed around the dirty canvas. He focused on the iron gate of the Farm.

Phil trotted to catch up with him. “Yeah, I looked for him, you know, he was my buddy. I owed him. But he was long gone.”

“He give you that scar?” Henry asked. There was a vicious little thrill in his core as Phil reached up to touch it gently.

“Nah, that was someone else.” Henry flinched as Phil clapped a heavy hand down on his shoulder. “I’ll give you some free advice. World’s changed since you bought your seat at the long pig buffet. Can’t be kind anymore. Got to look out for yourself. You find yourself extending a helping hand to someone, you just remember the scar on my old mug and pull it back. People are ingrates. They’ll take what you’ll give em and then kill you to climb over your corpse and find whatever else you got.”

Henry longed to ask him if this was about the Lodge, desperate to find Marnie, but they had reached the gates of the Farm. Amos waved to him, and Henry felt the balance of power shift without Phil even realizing it. They parted ways, leaving Henry with mixed feelings of relief and urgency. He had to find out about Marnie, but he’d have to be more collected next time. He’d already given away too much.

“That guy giving you trouble Henry?” Amos asked, pulling him over to the seed sorting table, “I can tell Stephanie to assign him to Electric if you want.”

The thought of Rickey’s big mouth made Henry answer too quickly. “No, no. I don’t want to cause any trouble. It’s an old thing, not worth worrying about.” He smiled in what he hoped was a reassuring way.

Amos looked at him for a few seconds. “It sure
looked
like you wanted to cause trouble. You’re new here. I won’t say whatever he did isn’t worth it; chances are it probably was. But they take fights very seriously here. You can get thrown out or worse for things like that. And with everyone being on edge now, the punishment’s likely to be stiffer if you get caught. Things don’t work in here like they do out there.” he said, jerking his head toward the Barrier.

Henry stared hard at Phil. “Things don’t work
out there
at all. I’m not even sure they work so well in here either.”

Amos shook his head. “Whatever you’re planning, keep it out of the Farm. I’ve had enough of all of it.”

“Don’t worry. I’m not planning anything. And if I were, I’m not stupid enough to do it in public.”

Thirty-three

The yeasty smell of bread and beer hit Henry’s stomach a full block before he and Amos reached Margie’s. Smells, sounds, even lights carried so much further now. Henry supposed it was the lack of exhaust from cars, or the missing cushion of people that made it seem that way. The world was hard and bright and brittle now, without complex society to soften the edges. It was the silence that bothered Henry the most. Even when people were together, they mostly didn’t talk. Nobody swapped jokes or gossip, not even about the trial. No one laughed or shouted. So Henry thought he’d wandered into a past life when Amos opened the door to Margie’s and a blues song tumbled out into the street. Unlike the previous night, the employees were the only ones inside. The music was coming from the televisions, the screens showing picture after picture of faces in happier times. Amos smiled at the music but he avoided looking at the screen. Henry sat next to him, his eyes glued to the photographs. They fascinated him.

“What is that?” he asked. Amos grudgingly glanced up from his beer.

“Missing people. The DJ runs ‘em while he plays music for work or whenever they don’t have a movie to run. Probably no one at the station but him. Most everyone was at the courthouse I’d guess.”

“Missing people from the Plague?”

“Yeah. Relatives who want to know what happened post pictures asking if anyone has seen them. Maybe you’re up there.”

“How many are there?”

Amos shrugged. “There’s something like ten thousand people in the City. I think more than half probably know what happened to their families. Or know enough. Some more won’t have brought pictures with them. In fact, the Cured won’t have had anything with them at all for the most part. Still, say two thousand Immunes want to know. That’s a spouse, an average of two kids, parents, maybe two siblings; seven people that each person wants to know about. So fourteen thousand pictures around? That’s what I’d guess anyway.”

“Has it ever worked?”

“You mean have people found information or each other? I think people have probably found out information on some of them. But you’re not just talking about finding one or two survivors out of fourteen thousand, Henry. You’re talking about finding one or two survivors out of eight billion dead. You’d have had a better chance playing the lottery when there was one.”

“But doesn’t Immunity run in families?”

Amos cleared his throat and Henry sensed he might be treading near sensitive territory. “Yeah. It runs in families,” he stared at Henry for a minute. “Just ‘cause someone’s Immune doesn’t mean they survived.”

Henry was silent for a minute. Melissa walked through the door to the kitchen, carrying a load of boxes. It was the dinner delivery for the hospital. She caught his eye and it looked like she wanted to say something to him, but another delivery worker walked out behind her with more. Amos caught the glance between them though.

“So, you going to tell me what’s stuck in your craw today? Or we going to sit here until your friends spill it for you?”

Henry was quiet, considering what to say.

“Yeah. That’s what I thought. I get it. I don’t know you, you don’t know me. I’m trying though. Seems like you’ve already made up your mind that this place isn’t for you. That’s too bad. If it’s ‘cause you got a beef with that greaseball gravedigger, I get it. But you’re hardly the first one. The City’s a big place, getting bigger all the time. You never have to see him again if you don’t want to. We’ve all done bad things Henry. All of us. If we hadn’t, we’d be dead. Whatever you did, it’s over and done. There’s no going back and fixing it. Whatever he did, that’s in the past too. There’s nothing,
nothing
either of you can do to make up for it or atone or right it. You understand? Nothing’s gonna come close to what’s been lost. Not revenge or trials or blood money.
Nothing.
It’s useless to expect that. It’s a bad old world out there, Henry. We can keep chewing at each other and making it worse, or we can move on and try to make it better for people that come after.”

“That’s what I’m trying to do, Amos. He’s an evil person. The world would be better without him in it any more. He didn’t just do– he was cruel because he enjoyed it. Not because he was trying to survive. I don’t know why or how he came here, but he’s not someone who should be here. He’ll destroy this place from the inside out, just for the fun of it. In fact, when he remembers who I and my friends are, he’ll happily dispose of us himself. We’re not talking about a guy that just took potshots at Infected or hunted us for sport. He’s far, far worse than that. How can I live in the same city with him? I can’t even stand to live in the same world that he does.”

“Then go to the Governor. There are other things that can be done besides killing him.”

Henry scowled as if he’d tasted something bitter. “I did, before I knew Phil was here. I told the Governor what he’d done, what he was still doing. That he was in control of innocent people. People that belong here. The Governor said he couldn’t spare the men to go after him. Not until after this trial. And if I told him now that Phil was here… you said it yourself. The attitude here is forgive and forget. But I can’t. Not him. And I still don’t know what happened to the people who were with him. Some of them were kids. People who’ve done things like he has– he’s worse than the people they have on trial now. People like him shouldn’t be forgiven. You’re right when you say there’s nothing he can do to make up for what he’s done. There is no punishment severe enough to satisfy me. But he can be stopped.”