After the Cure, Deirdre Gould [the beach read TXT] 📗

break in the trial. And you couldn’t have gone alone. Not just because of- of us. We have to find and destroy that bacteria. If you disappeared how would anyone have known if it were still loose out there somewhere? This was the only way.”

“You could have been fired. Or jailed.”

“We all could have, but what else could I do?”

Nella sighed. “I’m not upset. Just worried.” She looked out the window as they turned onto the desolate highway. It was like the blank page at the end of a book. Empty, with nowhere left worth going. “We aren’t going to be able to take the car past the Barrier,” she said to break through the overwhelming feeling of loneliness.

“I know, but I don’t want to leave it at the house. If I do, neighbors will start asking questions about why I’m always home.”

“Your neighbors care whether you are home or not?”

Frank looked confused. “Well, I don’t know if they necessarily care, I hope they do, in a good way. But they’d definitely gossip. Wouldn’t yours?”

Nella shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said, “I’ve never even met mine. Anyway, what’s your plan?”

“We’re going to the wrecking yard where they dumped all the abandoned vehicles. I have a friend that works there pulling parts and siphoning gas. He’ll watch it for me without asking why. It’s only a few miles to the Barrier. But I don’t know how we’re going to get through without attracting attention.”

“I have my old medical badge. I was planning on telling the gate guards that I was due to rendezvous with the last Cure team but got delayed. I wasn’t expecting you to be with me though. I think we’ll be okay if we talk and move fast. They’re trying to keep Infected out after all, not keep anyone in.”

Frank shook his head. “That might have been true a few days ago, but you and I have had our faces broadcast all over the news by now. Most of the population may have been in the auditorium, but I guarantee anyone who wasn’t able to be there is watching it live. Even in the guardhouse. I’m not worried about being stopped, I’m worried about being noticed.”

“There’s the smuggler’s entrance,” Nella said hesitantly.

They turned off the highway and onto a pitted gray road. The tar looked like dirty ice pack slowly evaporating from the dust underneath. “What’s the smuggler’s entrance?” Frank asked.

“Its where the scavenger teams dump extra things that were special requests. You know, booze, contraceptives, that sort of thing.”

“You mean anything the DHRS has deemed illegal. You’re lucky I’m a public defender Nella.”

“Hey, I didn’t say I’d ever used them. I just know where the entrance is. Christine told me a while ago.”

The car stumbled to a stop in front of a wide metal gate. Frank rolled the window down and pressed a buzzer. “How does Christine know where it is? No, nevermind. Why did she tell you where it was?” He gave her a wicked look.

Nella laughed. “It was nothing bad. I needed a sedative for a patient who was having very bad nightmares. I could have requisitioned some from the military stockpile, but those are becoming scarce and were more powerful than my patient needed. So I asked Christine to find out if there were any over the counter sleeping pills available from the scavenging teams. She said they’d been forbidden in case of suicide or accidental overdose. But she said if this man really needed some that I should go to the smuggler’s entrance and talk to her friend. The time I went, it was completely unguarded. No one knows where it is except the people that are supposed to know, and things move out of there so quickly that they don’t even bother trying to defend it. And even if someone is there this time, they aren’t going to want to blab about seeing us.”

A little man covered in sweat and grease walked up to the gate and started opening it. He grinned when he saw Frank.

The car rolled slowly through the blinding glitter of glass and chrome that lay snarled around them. The little man who had opened the gate jogged beside them. “Pull it around the shed Frank, I’ve got a tarp you can use.”

Frank waved a slender hand at him to show he understood. They rolled past a rusting corrugated metal shack with dusty windows. The only part of the wrecking yard that wasn’t littered with shattered glass or twisted strands of rubber was the green patch of grass behind the shack. Frank carefully parked the car on it and got out, followed by Nella.

The sun was unbearably bright, reflected like empty mirrors from the broken metal around them, but it was still cold and distant and the grass still crunched softly under Nella’s feet from the frost. She pulled their packs from the trunk as Frank talked to his friend. She wished they’d had a chance to change at the courthouse. At least she could ditch her heels. She left them in the trunk and pulled on her heavy boots. She wanted to rummage around and find her warm clothes but she didn’t want to draw more suspicion than they were already risking. They’d have to wait until they found somewhere that had been left empty. She patted the side pocket and felt the reassuring shape of the dart gun without opening the pocket.

Frank’s friend was eyeing the large packs as Frank handed him the keys. “Where’d you say you were going Frank?” he asked.

“This is Dr. Rider. She’s taking me out with her to the Cure team while the court is in recess. I wanted to get in contact with a witness on the team and she knew where they were. Unfortunately, as you know, no cars outside the barrier. So we’re walking.”

The little man’s face rippled into a gap-toothed smile. “Oh, well hey, it’s kind of cold, you guys have jackets?”

“Sure do Jim, thanks for asking. Just watch after my car for me until we get back, will you? Don’t strip it for parts or put sugar in the tank.”

Jim laughed, “No problem Frank, it’ll be here and in good order when you get back. I’ll see you next week.” Jim waved and walked back around the corner into the piles of wreckage. Frank picked up his pack.

“Sorry,” he said, “I don’t like to lie to a friend, but I thought it was the easiest way.”

Nella nodded, heaving the pack onto her shoulders. They headed casually toward the metal gate which still stood open. The road split and stuttered into gravel as they walked toward the Barrier. The land around them had been scraped and flattened by the Barrier in great arcs as it pushed outward, farther and farther retaking the Infected zones. Left behind were artificial plains that were slowly clothing themselves in short grasses and brush. Unlike the City, where it was easy to find shelter and food among the few humans that remained, the birds here did not flock in great numbers. The early spring wind blew without stopping, chilling Nella’s legs and pinching her eyes. She looked back toward the wrecking yard almost regretfully. The empty plain that already stretched between her and the big metal gate made the glittering junk yard seem like a far away reflection of water, a mirage, a memory of humanity in the great barren world. Nella sighed and turned back toward the road. Frank walked ahead of her, seeming to glide on his long legs above the dirt and wind. She struggled to keep up.

Frank turned to check on her and waited when he saw her lagging behind. “Are you all right?” he asked.

“Sure, just cold. Aren’t you? Your head must be freezing.” She pulled the pack down and searched through it, finding her wool hat. She handed it to him. He looked a little awkward in a suit and tie with an old winter hat, but she stopped shivering when she looked at him.

“Thanks,” he said, “We’re going to have to find somewhere to change into warmer clothes or we’re going to freeze.”

“When we turn north to get to the smuggler’s entrance I’ll be able to find some old shacks where the first camps were. I think the medical huts for the doctors were left behind. It shouldn’t be much farther.”

Frank matched her pace and walked beside her, blocking the gusts of wind that rolled across the road like massive waves. Nella was instantly warmer. She slipped a cool hand into his as they walked. It was only half an hour until they caught sight of the Barrier.

“It’s gotten much farther out than I thought,” said Nella, “we should turn here so we aren’t seen by the guards. We can get closer to the Barrier after we turn north, away from the gate.”

They left the road and cut across the rocky scrub. The world was gray, as if the wind had swallowed it up. The sky was colorless metal with a hole cut into it for the sun to poke through with a cold glow. The grass and brush were dead and silver, rustling and twisting and spitting themselves in pieces into Nella’s face. The Barrier was a looming black mountain on her right side and there was only bare pale dirt in its shadow. Nella was glad that the snow was gone. As it was, her eyes started to muddle the earth and sky after only a short time and she looked for anything that would provide a break in the horizon. She pulled them closer and closer to the Barrier, hoping it would provide some sort of windbreak, but it was facing the wrong direction. Even Frank was becoming tired, holding his arm across his face to protect himself from the wind and slowing his pace even below hers.

Nella felt a soft bang as something smacked into her shin. She leaned down and picked it up. It was a bandage wrapper. She looked up. Off in the distance was an uneven smudge of darkness holding still against the wind.

“Everything okay?” Frank asked.

“Yeah, I just found a piece of trash from the camp, we must be getting close. I think it’s that black line over there,” she pointed.

“Good,” he said, “This is rough. I can’t imagine how cold your legs must be.”

“I should have changed in the car. I wasn’t thinking, I was too startled at the change of plans.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be, I’m not.” She smiled at him and he grinned back. They trudged on toward the camp, too cold and uncomfortable to stand still and talk.

 

Scars

The debris from the camp grew as they walked. Farthest out were just a few fluttering scraps of paper caught in the brush by the wind. As they approached the perimeter of where the tents had been, the trash became heavier. Plastic bottles gleamed and flashed as they rolled ceaselessly in the wind. Nella squinted against the added