Cured Page 10

  I stop walking and let my eyes close, and the world seems to spin around me. My jaw softens, my breathing slows, and my brain fills with dark cotton.

  “Jack,” Kevin whispers. I peel open my heavy eyelids. He’s standing right in front of me, his face mere inches from mine. I jump and take a step back, pulling my hand from his. “I think you were asleep,” he says. “We’re almost there. I promise. Come on.”

  He takes my hand again and pulls me into a dense copse of some kind of dead bushes that scratch my arms and catch on my clothes. If I had long hair, the thorns would be catching in the tangles. No brittle branches snap beneath our feet, and it occurs to me that the ground has been cleared of loose tinder, whether for firewood or to make it silent, I can’t say. But it makes me wonder about this Kevin person I’m blindly following. He’s smart. He’s a survivor. He’s a fast runner. And he could take me down in two seconds, tired or not.

  He leads me to a small shrub and bends, pulling it out of the ground. I blink and try to see more clearly what he is doing. No, he’s not uprooting a dead shrub, he’s lifted a perfect square of ground with a dead shrub attached to it, revealing a dark hole a little wider than a car tire. He steps into the hole and disappears, as if the darkness has gobbled him up. I peer into the sphere of black.

  “What is this?” I whisper, eyeing the rungs of a ladder that lead into the darkness.

  “A fortified structure,” Kevin says, his voice coiling up from the darkness. “It’s quite cozy. In fact, it’s my home.”

  I look around. I’m more than halfway up the foothills, in a totally secluded area. What if he’s leading me into a trap? What if there are ten men hiding below, waiting for me? What if Kevin’s a murderer? I clasp my head in my hands and try to silence the what-ifs.

  “Jack.” His voice carries right up to me.

  “What?”

  “I know what you’re thinking.”

  I doubt it.

  “Have your gun out if that makes you feel better. I swear you’re going to be safe down here.”

  Okay, so he does know what I’m thinking. I study the surrounding terrain again. Fresh sweat breaks out on the bridge of my nose and I feel like I might vomit. Not that there’s anything in my stomach—the oysters are long digested. I don’t know where to go. I don’t know what to do. But what other choice do I have?

  I take a deep breath, take my gun from my belt, and then step into darkness.

  Chapter 16

  The best hiding place is one that doesn’t seem to exist. If I go down, I will never be found. I hope that is a good thing.

  I pull the square piece of earth shut above me. With every step down, my muscles wind tighter, so by the time I reach the bottom of the ladder, I feel like a jack-in-the-box, ready to burst, and my palms are so damp I can hardly hold my gun.

  My feet touch down on packed dirt, and cool air coats my face with sticky dampness. I turn and face a doorway spilling out orange light and step through onto a clean cement floor. My mouth falls open.

  “Good thing there aren’t any flies down here. You would be catching your dinner,” Kevin says, followed by a laugh. He is standing beside the door—beside me. He puts his index finger under my chin and snaps my mouth shut. It falls back open.

  With his uninjured arm, Kevin moves me a little deeper inside and then steps out the door and starts up the ladder.

  “I shut the top,” I say without taking my eyes from his home.

  “I’m going to lock it.” His feet thump on the ladder.

  I am standing in a large room lit by two sputtering kerosene lamps. There’s a worn brown tweed sofa against one wall, with two brown leather chairs facing it, and a coffee table between them. A red threadbare rug is laid out on the cement floor under the table. But the most shocking thing is the sculptures. Wire sculptures. A rabbit and a frog made of yards and yards of barbed wire perch on the coffee table, staring at each other. Wire cowboy boots and a wire saddle hang from the wall. And then there are hands, lots and lots of hands, in all positions—clenched into fists, fingers splayed, clasped in prayer, holding wire flowers.

  On the far side of the room is a wooden chair with the chest and torso of a wire man sitting in it. Beside the chair is a box filled with tools—wire cutters, pliers, a blowtorch, a metal file. And next to that is a closed door.

  “So, what do you think?”

  With a jolt I realize I’ve let my guard down, and Kevin is standing right behind me with his hands in his pants pockets. Still holding my gun, I turn and study him by the light of the lamps. His hair is a couple of shades darker than copper and touches his shoulders, and his eyes are the color of the sky at sunrise. I tilt my head to the side. It is the first good look I’ve gotten of him, and I’m surprised to discover there’s something familiar about him. Maybe it’s because I’ve been in his presence for a few hours and, whether I’ve actually seen his face or not, I’ve sort of gotten to know him.

  He takes his hands out of his pockets and gently pries my gun from my icy fingers. Without a word, he removes the magazine and then hands both pieces back to me. “I’m not going to hurt you, so you don’t need to keep that loaded down here.”

  I nod and holster the gun, and tuck the magazine with nineteen bullets into my pants pocket. “Did you make all of these?”

  His eyes light up. “Yeah. When I was a kid, my grandpa took me to a museum in Denver that had a woman and child sculpted out of barbed wire. I wanted to be a sculptor when I grew up. I get lonely down here sometimes and needed something to do to keep myself busy, so I figured I might as well learn how to sculpt with wire. One day I’ll get brave and finish him.” He nods at the torso. “Or try sculpting a face. If I live long enough.” He grimaces and looks at his cut arm. “Now, if you don’t mind, I need you to fix this.” Skepticism plain in his furrowed brow, he looks at me. “You really do know how to suture, right?” I nod. “In that case, follow me.”

  He picks up my backpack and both kerosene lamps and leads me through the door at the far end of the room—beside the wire torso.

  Another shock waits on the other side. I walk into a kitchen, complete with a small table and two chairs, two burners, a sink, a small stove, and a microwave. Metal cupboards line the walls on my left and my right, and I can’t help myself. I walk up to a cupboard and open it. Shock number four: it is packed with giant labeled cans of food. Flour. Beans. Red wheat. Dehydrated onions. Dehydrated eggs. Powdered butter. Buttermilk pancake mix. Baby formula. I reach for the pancake mix and practically weep. It is full!

  Kevin clears his throat and I put the canister back. He’s standing by the sink, a first-aid kit in his hands. “You have to pump the water in, but there’s an endless supply, so use what you need. The waste water is pumped into an underground stream and flushed out.”

  I nod. “Take off your shirt.” The words make my cheeks flame, so I turn to the sink and start pumping the water handle. Water flows from the faucet and I scrub my hands with a small cake of white soap. Next, I open the bottom right pocket on my tackle vest and remove a small plastic bag. Beside me, Kevin begins unbuttoning his shirt, once a shade of blue but now more of a tan. By the light of the lamps, everything about him is a faded shade of brown. He looks like a sepia photograph of the old West.

  Easing his shirt off, he drops it into the empty sink, but when he tries to loosen the fabric bandage from his arm, sweat breaks out on his face and the air hisses between his teeth. I take a closer look at his wound and my stomach turns. I’ve seen a lot of wounds. I’ve doctored a lot of wounds under my father’s supervision. I wish my father were here right now because the fabric bandage has gotten stuck in the coagulated blood.

  I take my knife from my belt and flip out the blade. Kevin studies me with wary eyes but doesn’t say anything as I slice the excess fabric from the bandage. “Maybe if we soak the fabric, it will come off more easily.”

  He nods and leans into the sink. I pump the water for him. When he’s thoroughly drenched the wound, h
e moves a chair from the small table to the side of the counter and sits. Very gently, I attempt to peel the dripping fabric from his flesh while he studies my face.

  “So, how’d you learn to do this?” He talks to me like we’re old friends.

  “My dad’s an oral surgeon. He’s been teaching me how to do this type of thing since I was . . .” I close my mouth. Since I was about thirteen, which is a year older than I am pretending to be.

  “Since you were what?”

  I glance up at him and start to tuck my hair behind my ears … until I remember I don’t have hair to tuck. Nervous habits are hard to break. “Old enough to learn how to do it,” I say, and gently tug at the fabric.

  Kevin groans. “You’re killing me, Jack.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Hold on.” He pinches the bandage between his finger and thumb. “You know the easiest way to remove a sticky Band-Aid?” In one swift yank he rips the fabric from his skin. His scream explodes into the room. I can picture the sound filling the other room, rushing up the ladder, and bursting out into the night like a beacon for every living thing within five miles. I clasp my hands over his mouth and hold the sound in. Tears stream down his cheeks and wash over my fingers, but he stops screaming and whimpers instead. Slowly, I let go.

  “For the love of . . .” He wipes his eyes and sniffles. “These aren’t tears. I am not crying,” he gasps. “My eyes are just dripping from the shock of that.”

  My face does something that it hasn’t done in days and days, maybe even months. The edges of my mouth quirk up. Just a little bit. Kevin notices and smiles back even though he’s gone pale and tears are still dripping from his eyes. “Apparently the featherweight likes pain.”

  “As long as it’s someone else’s.” Even my voice has a smile in it, and something tiny and warm flickers inside me for a moment, before fading back to darkness.

  I clean his freshly bleeding wound, douse it with antiseptic from the first-aid kit, and then open the small packet I took from my vest—a curved suture needle with a long strand of thread attached. “This is really going to hurt without you being numbed.”

  “I figured,” Kevin says, grimacing and leaning away from his wound. He grips the back of the chair with his right hand. “Ready.”

  I pinch the wound closed and ease the half-moon needle into his skin, looping it underneath the cut and through the skin on the other side. Kevin gasps and squeezes his eyes shut. There’s a lot of fresh blood, so after each stitch I wipe the wound with the wet bandage. The cut is long, about two inches. It takes me several minutes to sew it together. Kevin doesn’t say a thing, just groans through gritted teeth and keeps his face averted while I work. When I’m done, I tie off the thread and slather the wound with more antiseptic.

  “All done,” I say.

  Kevin, face ashen and damp with sweat, takes a look at his swollen, bloody wound. “Not bad.” He stands and puts his face in the sink. “How about you give me a little water.”

  I push the water lever and he lets the icy flow cover his face. After a few seconds he stands up out of the water and looks at me. “Turn around and let me see your neck.”

  I do what he says. He leans in close and his breath brushes over the soft skin behind my ears. Gently, he folds down the collar of my tackle vest and I shiver at his touch. “I need you to take this thing off.”

  “No!” I turn to face him and wrap my arms over my chest. Heat scorches its way up my neck, over my ears, and sears my face. “It hardly even hurts. It can’t be that bad,” I blurt.

  “You’re right, it’s not that bad, but the collar of your vest is rubbing it. I’m afraid it will get caught in the scab, and I can tell you from personal experience, removing it isn’t fun.” He puts a hand on my arm and turns my back to him once again. “At least let me put some of this on it.” He gets the antiseptic and carefully slathers it over the back of my neck. Leaning even closer, he blows on my skin, drying the antiseptic. With feather-gentle fingers, he puts some butterfly bandages over the cut. “There. That should help.” His fingers go back to my arm, and he lifts the sleeve of my T-shirt up a couple of inches. “So, what’s this scar from? I could feel it through your shirt.”

  I look at the fresh scar. “I got shot by a raider two months ago. They were trying to catch Fo.”

  “Did it hurt?”

  “Not at first. They shot me and I didn’t even realize it. Getting it stitched shut hurt.”

  He sets the things back into the first-aid kit and closes it. His face is still pale and his left arm is swollen and bulging around the stitches. “Would you mind helping me clean up a little? I can’t lift my arm right now, or I’d do it myself.” There is dried blood on his ribs where his arm has rubbed against them. I take his wet shirt out of the sink, carefully lift his injured arm, and start wiping. As his skin comes clean, my hand pauses. There are two puckered, round scars on his right ribs. I touch them with my fingertips, and Kevin shudders.

  “Are these bullet scars?” I ask.

  “Yeah. I was shot by raiders about a year and a half ago.”

  “What were you doing when they shot you?”

  “Running from them.”

  I keep washing the dried blood from his skin. He’s got a nice chest, and nice, tight abs. I clench my jaw and wonder what in the world is wrong with me. This is really not a good time to be noticing stupid things like that. I shouldn’t notice them at all.

  “There’s a bathroom through that door.” I jump at his voice, like I’ve been caught ogling him. With his good arm he points to the opposite end of the kitchen, to a small accordion-looking folding door. “There’s a shower, but the water is really cold, and you have to pump it the whole time. But help yourself. The door locks. I’ll be in the other room, trying to get some sleep before I go find your friends.” He takes the dirty shirt from me and puts it back in the sink, then picks up one of the lamps and leaves the kitchen, shutting the door behind him. Taking the other lamp, I go into the bathroom and lock the accordion door.

  The bathroom is tiny, with a metal toilet, a narrow shower stall, and a metal sink. A toothbrush and small cup sit on the rim of the sink. Above the sink is a medicine cabinet with a mirror. I peer into the mirror. Black bags sag beneath my eyes, making them look more gray than blue, and a layer of dirt clings to my dark hairline. A smattering of freckles stands out on my nose, and my thin face has a healthy suntan. I look so boy that there is nothing pretty about me—a fact that should make me glad. Instead, I want to cry.

  I step away from the mirror and press my ear to the accordion door. Convinced that Kevin is not in the kitchen, I take off my clothes. There’s no soap in the shower. I open the medicine cabinet and blink. A box of tampons? Seriously? And they’re open. There are other things—Tylenol, shaving cream, razors, powdered shampoo, cakes of soap wrapped in cellophane, several toothbrushes still in their packages, and toothpaste. I take out some shampoo and soap and get wonderfully, blessedly clean in the frigid water.

  When I am done and shivering, I go into the main room. Kevin is lying on a cot that just happens to have been moved to block the door leading out of his home. His quiet, rhythmic breathing is accompanied by the nearly inaudible whisper of moving air. I look up at the ceiling and see a small vent. I hold my fingers up to it and cool air flows around them.

  A pillow and sleeping bag have been laid out on the sofa. I pop a few calorie tablets before setting the kerosene lamp on the coffee table and then crawl into the sleeping bag.

  I lie on my side and stare at Kevin, wondering if he can be trusted, wondering if I dare fall asleep with him in the same room. His face is a perfect blend of rugged and pretty, with slightly full lips, arched eyebrows, and a square jaw. I wonder how old he is, and if he has a girlfriend. Or a wife. Inside the wall, girls and boys marry as young as fifteen in an effort to rebuild the population.

  My eyes move down his face, over his neck, and stop on his chest. The blanket has slipped down around his waist and he’s not
wearing a shirt. I notice things I didn’t notice about him when I was washing the blood from his skin, like how wide his chest is and how his chest and shoulders are several shades whiter than his arms and neck and—he clears his throat and I look back at his face, meeting his intense eyes. For once, he’s not smiling.

  Fire fills my body, burning my face and making it hard to breathe. “G’night,” I grunt, rolling onto my other side so my back is to him. I sound just like my brothers. Kevin douses the kerosene lamp and the room goes black.

  “Good night … Jack,” he says. Something in his voice makes me feel even hotter, and for a brief moment I worry he might know that I’m a girl. But there’s no way. I look like a boy. I sound like a boy. I move like a boy. I pull the sleeping bag up until it’s covering my entire head.

  Chapter 17

  The real me exists only in dreams now. The other me? The one that exists in the real world? That’s the fake me.

  Golden waffles drenched in maple syrup fill my dreams. They’re on a plate, being held out to me by someone. I tuck my long, thick hair behind my ears and look up into Kevin’s smiling face. He has nice teeth. Really nice, like he still flosses even though the world’s gone all wrong. My dad would like his teeth. I lean toward him, but there’s something in his eyes that sets off alarm bells. It is the way he watches me, like a boy watching a girl. He reaches out and twines his fingers through my hair. And then it hits me. My hair is too long. I have forgotten to be a boy. And now he knows.

  I gasp and sit up, struggling to pull the sleeping bag from my face.

  “You all right?” a deep voice asks.

  I get the sleeping bag down and am face-to-face with Kevin. He’s sitting on the coffee table beside a burning kerosene lamp and leaning toward me. I run my fingers over my buzzed hair and sag with relief. My hair isn’t long and beautiful. It’s short and ugly. I smooth my hair down at the crown—the spot that always stands up when I sleep—and Kevin smiles, flashing his pearly teeth. I can’t help but look at them to see if they really are as nice as in my dream.