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

of what men had been. Nella felt a strange sense of displacement, again realizing that the world would go on, was going on, almost without change. Even without humanity directing it. This time, though, the thought brought no comfort. Her eyes adjusted and Frank was solid flesh again, but her mind lingered in the same deep, panic worn rut.

The car was silent and hot, a breathless tomb that had lost the crisp linen smell of him. Instead the air was limp and stale and Nella felt herself drowning in the stillness. She rubbed away a few weak tears before Frank could see them. He slid into the car and rolled the windows down. The car idled with a muted thrum as he stared blankly at the low gray prison. At last he shifted the car into drive. His voice was gutteral and rough. “For the first time in my life,” he said, “I sincerely hope that Hell is real.”

The car lurched out of its spot and tore away from the prison lot. “It’ll be a much shorter eternity if I know he’s burning alongside me.”

Nella felt her eyes spark and pinch again. “Don’t say that,” she said quietly.

“Sorry.”

Nella watched the road turn rosy in the last light of the sun. She could hear the frogs singing loudly through the open window and the breeze was soft and smelled like crushed grass. She watched a sprinkling of lights turning on, like a string with too many burnt out bulbs. The car swerved and she looked back at Frank in alarm. He was wiping his eyes with one hand and trying to steer with the other. The car swerved into the soft, muddy shoulder and stopped. Nella reached over and put the car into park before turning it off. She unbuckled as Frank doubled over, his head in his hands. He tried so hard to hold back that he shook and his chest was a collapsed, breathless cave. Nella wrapped her arms around him as well as she could without speaking. They stayed that way a long time. The fresh, clean breeze swirled through the car and the frog song an unearthly choir around them. She felt as if she were at a funeral that hadn’t happened yet. She stroked the back of his neck with her warm fingers, but he was like a closed shell, a stone without cracks. She felt tears cooling on her own face, but she couldn’t have said whether it was because of his grief or hers. She pressed her forehead gently against his cheek and at last he turned toward her. She pulled him further into her arms and he took a deep, ragged breath. She could feel the sobs shaking in his throat, but he kept them there after a struggle.

“What happened?” she whispered and held his face in her hands.

“I really didn’t believe he had them. I thought he might, you know, when I realized that he hadn’t really locked himself in, but I didn’t really believe it. And then, when you said it out loud, I started to think I was wrong, but I still thought he wasn’t really going to use them, I’d just talk to him and he’d hand them over. If he wanted to destroy the world, he would have done it long before I met him, wouldn’t he?” His voice broke and his breath was a sharp, hot wind over her arms. “All I had to do was reason with him and he’d turn the samples over. Then everything would be all right. The world would be safe,” he laughed a little and looked at her, though his eyes still streamed, “You’d be safe. I’d be a hero.”

Instead of answering, she pulled his mouth to hers. She could feel the tiny explosions of breath against her lips as he tried to suppress his grief. She kissed him until his breath smoothed out.

“I promised you that I would find them. I promised you that everything would be all right, that this was just the beginning. But when I told him about Dr. Carton and about his lab and finding Dr. Schneider but not the samples- I would have known then, even if we hadn’t figured it out before. He was so smug. He was like a snake closing in, tightening around all the time left in the world. And I knew before I even finished that he wasn’t going to turn them over. I wanted to hit him,” He shook his head, “No, that’s not true. I wanted to kill him. Right there. With my own hands. I haven’t felt that way since- in a long time.”

He touched her shoulder gently, feeling the ragged scar through her shirt and bandage. “Everything is repeating. The world is still dying. I still can’t protect what I love. And I’m still a monster. Nothing has gotten any better.”

“You aren’t a monster.”

“Normal people don’t think about killing other people unless it’s to survive.”

Nella laughed. “Yes they do Frank. Especially these days. The sane ones just don’t go through with it.” She drew her fingertips down the hollow of his cheek. “You don’t need to protect me. We are going to find the samples, and the world will go on and the sun will rise and the summer will come just as it has always done. But Frank, if we don’t- if the worst happens, you don’t need to protect me. Whatever comes, you don’t have to shield me. This is lonely enough without that.”

His breath hitched and heaved again and he closed his eyes, trying to calm himself. She pulled away from him slowly and got out of the car. She walked carefully over to his side, her shoes sinking in the soft spring mud, the gnats making a halo of fluttering gold around her. She opened his door. He unfolded himself and she was again reminded of a cave painting, a purple shadow of what had been rather than what was. He reached for her and they stood leaning against the warm car on the edge of the empty road as the last of the sun retreated and the City edged the horizon with a thin vein of light.

 

Midnight Mob

The packet of meal records slid from Nella’s limp hand as she dozed in Frank’s office. It slumped white on the dark carpet and the slight breeze on her legs woke her up. She leaned over and scooped up the papers. She started to straighten them into a neat pile and then gave up, tossing them haphazardly into her open briefcase beside her. She’d finished with them anyway. Nothing pure enough to revive the samples had been served in the past six weeks. All she had to show for her trouble was the return of a thumping headache. Nella switched off the light and walked carefully into the bedroom, trying not to bump anything in the unfamiliar dark. Frank’s back was a dark mountain range gently eroded by the blankets into softer lines. She undressed and stretched her wounded shoulder carefully. She was relieved to be free of the sling and decided not to wear it again. It just caused more questions than she wanted to answer. The sheets were cold as she slid onto them, but she didn’t want to wake him, so she left the space between them open. Her eyes slowly adjusted and she could make out the tired lines on Frank’s face. He remained sad and exhausted, even asleep.

She resisted the urge to smooth the worry from his face with her hand. Surely, he had to have defended people he knew had committed a crime before. He may not like to lie, but she’d seen him do it without too much trouble before. Admittedly, there had probably never been this much at stake before. Nella closed her eyes. She ought to be worried about whether she would blow it herself, rather than whether he would. Her thoughts fluttered like gray moths. Sadness for Frank, the strange visit of the jeweler, Wells’s worried face. One by one they made their circuits and floated away.

A thunk and a chiming crash woke her with a start. She froze and sucked in a panicked breath. Frank’s was already sitting up on one elbow. He brushed his fingers across her back, looking for glass. “Are you all right? Did it hit you?” he asked.

Nella was still disoriented. “What? I don’t think so. What is it?”

“Fucking zombie!” floated up from the street, “Don’t even have the decency to shoot the bastard when you’re with him.” The voice was oily and uneven.

“Drunk. Great, it’s starting early.” Frank stood up looking for his clothing in the dark. Nella sat up. “No,” he whispered, “stay there. There’s probably glass on your side. And this guy might have a gun or friends or something.”

Nella grabbed his wrist. “Don’t go,” she hissed, “Just let them go away.”

“I have to. I have to at least see who it is.”

“No, why? They’re all the same. What if there’s more than one?”

“What if they want to burn the house down?”

“No Frank, don’t-”

He leaned over and hugged her. “I have to. I’ll be careful. Stay here, don’t let them see you.” He pulled his wrist gently out of her hand and padded into the hallway in only his shorts. Nella scrambled to find her clothes. She crept down the stairs after him as he closed the front door behind him. The pack from their trip was still sitting beside overstuffed chair in the living room. She felt around in the pockets and found one of the guns. She thought it was the pistol but couldn’t be sure even by touch. She pulled the thick curtain an inch or two from the window and peered out into the dark street. The man was still yelling and the lights in the neighborhood were beginning to turn on, casting light onto the street in long, thick teeth of pallid gold. She could see the man half tilted over and holding a bottle by its neck. She couldn’t see his face. Frank must have sensed she was there, because he moved in front of the window, blocking the man from her sight.

“Terry? Go home. I won’t tell anyone you were here. Just go home and sleep it off.” She heard Frank’s voice as if it were far away, through water. Terry? Wasn’t that the new guard’s name at the prison? She tried to peer around Frank’s back, pulling the curtain a little farther from the window.

“You’re a piece of work you know ‘at? Your neighbors know what you done?” Terry stumbled in a half circle, facing the growing pool of window lights. His arm flailed upward with the almost empty bottle. Nella watched as Frank walked calmly toward him.

“‘Ese your friends? Nah. Zombies ain’t got no friends. You eats each other ‘stead.”

Nella