Cured Read online

  To my brother, Matt—childhood playmate, nemesis,

  and partner in crime. Once you even rescued me.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Bethany Wiggins

  Chapter 1

  A person can survive on sixty pounds of beans and three hundred pounds of rice a year. Dinner in the Bloom home tonight is beans and rice for the 365th night in a row. And we ran out of pepper yesterday.

  I stare down at my plate of food and frown at the brown bean juice seeping past the scoop of white rice. My empty stomach doesn’t even rumble.

  “Eat up before it gets cold,” Dad says with forced enthusiasm. “And when you’re done, you can bring a plate out to Uncle Rob.”

  I open my mouth to complain—

  “And before you whine about the food, think of all the kids who are going to bed hungry tonight.”

  I sigh and put a bite in my mouth. As I chew, I stare at the framed embroidery hanging on the wall across the table from me: Faith and Hope for the Future. It is made with purple and red embroidery floss and has white needlepoint lilies with green stems sewn around the words. That’s the first one Mom made.

  I look at the empty chair below the framed embroidery saying, and my heart aches like it has a hole in it. The chair has been empty for almost a year and a half. Mom says time will make Dean’s absence easier to bear—I’m surprised she hasn’t embroidered that yet. Time hasn’t helped. It has only made me miss my brother more—made the hole in my heart bigger.

  I can feel Dad’s eyes on me, and a wave of dread makes my hands cold. I set my fork down and look at him, wondering if he can tell that I am planning something dangerous. He wipes his mouth with a stained cloth napkin. “Your hair’s getting too long, Jack. Maybe Mom should buzz it tomorrow.”

  I force myself not to sigh with relief and run a hand over my head. Too long means my hair is finally long enough to hide my scalp when I am standing in sunlight. It means it is finally long enough to stick up a little bit in the morning when I get out of bed. It means I am a little less ugly than normal.

  “She’s . . .” Mom clears her throat. “He’s still good for a few weeks.”

  I gulp down another bite of beans and rice and stare at my plate. I won’t be here in a few weeks. I won’t be here tomorrow.

  “But—”

  “No one who looks at Jack will see anything but a boy,” Mom says, cutting off Dad. “Sometimes even I forget what Jack really is.”

  “Yeah,” Chris says. “I don’t remember you ever looking like a you-know-what.” He’s eight. I stopped looking like a girl when he was five.

  Josh nudges my ribs with his elbow, and the smell of rancid fuel settles around me. He and Steve spent the afternoon siphoning gasoline from abandoned cars and filtering it so it will run the generator. “You’ve got being a boy down so good I almost expect you to start peeing standing up.” It is meant as a compliment, but my older brother’s words flood me with shame. I bite my bottom lip and scowl.

  It was the day Mom began embroidering things like Faith and Hope for the Future and Speed Is Better Than Strength onto spare pieces of fabric and framing them around the house. It was the day I, Jacqui Aislynn Bloom, was seen for the last time in the real world.

  I knew something was wrong before I woke up. The sound was part of my dreams. Muted popping. Distant cheering. It was like the Fourth of July, and I was hearing it from inside my house. Only it was October.

  I opened my eyes and the sounds didn’t flit away like dream sounds do when you wake. The deep thump of an explosion rumbled my window pane. I looked out of it, at the pale outline of dawn shining down into the window well and lighting up the glass, and pulled my covers closer around me. I didn’t have anything to wake up early for, since school had been canceled for nearly a year.

  Upstairs, feet pounded through the house. Dad yelled. Someone came barreling down the basement stairs and my bedroom door was thrown open. I sat up and blinked the sleep from my eyes.

  Dean, armed with Dad’s Glock, stepped into my bedroom and closed the door behind himself. His blue eyes flashed with worry. “Under the bed!” he ordered, dragging me from my covers by the arm.

  “Ouch! What are you—”

  “Now!” he yelled, making my ears ring. Dean never yelled at me.

  My bottom lip quivered and he glared. I fell to my stomach and clawed at the carpet, squeezing myself into the narrow space until I barely had room to take a full breath, with the bed pressing on me from above and the floor from below.

  “What’s going on?” I asked, voice muffled by the dusty carpet squished against my cheek.

  “The gangs have finally made it to the suburbs. They are looting anything and everything. Some of the neighbors are joining forces with us, and we’re going to try to keep them out of our neighborhood, to keep our families safe.”

  “Why do I have to hide? I want to see what’s going on.”

  Something popped outside my window, followed by a woman wailing. Dean leaned his face down and looked at me. “Jacqui, they’re looting things like food and guns. They’re also taking women and girls. We love you too much to risk you getting taken, so just stay put. We’re going to protect you. Even if we die trying.”

  Dean stayed in my room all day, an armed guard standing in front of my bed. I lay wedged under there until sunset, until my stomach was so empty I thought I might die, until the neighborhood grew silent again. That’s when Mom came into my room.

  “Quickly, Jacqui. Come here,” she said.

  I dragged my way out from under the bed like a beached walrus and screamed. Mom’s long, thick hair was gone; her apron was gone, her wedding ring, her earrings, her nail polish—all gone. She wore men’s clothing that hung loose over her ample body, and she was armed with the electric clippers that she used to trim my brothers’ hair.

  I stared at her peach-fuzz hair and stark scalp gleaming through. She plugged the clippers in and turned me so my back was to her. When the blade buzzed down on my forehead and into my hairline, I threw my hands in the way. The blade caught my skin and nicked it.

  “Mom! What are you doing?” I wailed.

  “Cutting your hair,” she said, yanking my hands out of the way. “It’s the only way we know how to keep you safe, so don’t fight me! If only you were a boy,” she added under her breath.

  I sucked the blood from my finger and stood stone-still as the clippers buzzed off row after row of my hair, until the thick, dark mass of it was spilled in a pile around my feet. When she finished, I was too stunned to move. All I could do was stare at the thick, glossy, deep-brown hair that curled in smooth ringlets on the floor—the one thing I had that every girl coveted—and suc
k on my finger, even though it wasn’t bleeding anymore. My head felt too light, and cold air breathed against my scalp. I had been stripped of the one thing that gave me the confidence to go out in the world and ignore the rude things people said about me. Now, I felt naked.

  “Dean,” Mom said, raking my hair up off the carpet with her fingers and stuffing it into the garbage can beside my bed. “Get the size-fourteen boys’ clothes from the storage room.”

  Dean did what she asked, setting a plastic storage tub onto my bed. Mom opened the container and started sorting through the clothing. She pressed a pair of well-used but clean tighty-whities at me, followed by a pair of jeans and a gray sweatshirt. She rifled through my underwear drawer until she found the sports bra that I had never worn.

  “Put those on,” she said. “Quickly!”

  There was such panic in her voice that I didn’t wait for Dean to leave. I pulled my purple nightshirt over my head, rolled my underwear over my thighs and down to the floor, and then put on the bra and pulled on my brother’s old underwear and sweatshirt. I could hardly get the pants up over my thighs, and then had to suck in my stomach to button them.

  Mom crouched by my feet and rolled the hem of the pants one time. “Better.” She dumped the contents of the storage tote onto my white bedspread, and then took all the clothes out of my drawers and stuffed them into the storage tote. “From now on you are Jack! And you’re a boy.”

  I stared at her back as she hurried out of the bedroom. And then I ran my hands over my boot-camp hairdo and started to cry. Dean came back into my bedroom and wrapped his solid arms around me.

  “It’s okay, Jack,” he said, his embrace strong and firm, his voice level. “But you’ve got to stop crying. Boys don’t cry.”

  He let go and I looked up in time to see him wipe the tears from his eyes.

  Chapter 2

  We use the generator for only two things. First, the hair clippers. Because me looking like a boy is my family’s highest priority. Second, the treadmill. Because my physical endurance might be the only thing that saves my life one day. Hanging on the wall beside the treadmill is a recently completed embroidery saying, When in Doubt, Run.

  I peer up the stairs, see no one, and then run past the zooming treadmill to Dean’s old room. Josh sleeps here now. I move the small table beside his bed and fall to my knees. The carpet is cool against my fingers. I pinch the fibers and lift.

  A manhole covers the cement beneath the carpet. I slide it aside and the smell of damp earth oozes out around me. Dropping down into the hole, I look at the food we have stored down here and my mouth waters. Several cans of dehydrated ground-beef substitute and cornmeal are mixed in with countless barrels of beans and rice, but we are saving them for a special occasion—the day my brother comes home. We used to have lentils and barley, too, but we’ve eaten all of that.

  Peering at the entrance to the storage room, I pull three bottles off a shelf and take them out of the storage room. With trembling hands, I replace the manhole, cover it with the carpet, and put the table back on top of it. And then, with the three containers in my hands, I dart to my bedroom.

  I drag my backpack out from under my bed and unzip it, cramming the three containers of calorie tablets inside, right on top of my spare pair of boys’ underwear, size fourteen, my toothbrush, and toothpaste. Next, I put a water purifier attached to a two-liter bottle inside. When contaminated water is put into the purifier, it is filtered into the two-liter bottle and comes out clean enough to drink. One purifier can clean roughly ninety gallons of water. A person typically needs two liters of drinkable water a day. One purifier should give me clean water for 180 days. I hope that will be enough. Dying of thirst is supposed to be slow and painful.

  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.

  Chapter 3

  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.