Cured Page 5

  “That’s close enough, grampsy,” Dean called when the man was standing in the middle of the road in front of our house. I sighed with relief, waiting for the man to stop, but he didn’t. Dean didn’t give him another warning. He pulled the trigger. Sparks flew around the man’s dusty cowboy boots—boots that finally stopped walking forward.

  “Where’s the dentist?” the stranger called.

  “Why do you need him?” Dean asked.

  “I have a tooth problem.”

  “Jack.” Dean’s eyes stayed locked on the stranger. “Go wake Dad.”

  Clutching my rifle against my chest, I ran into the house. Dad was scheduled to take night watch, so he was getting caught up on sleep. I burst into his room, and he flew out of bed, his prized Glock aimed at me.

  He lowered the gun. “What is it?”

  “A man wants to see you. He’s out front.”

  Dad rushed past me, barefoot, and went out the front door. I followed. The stranger hadn’t moved. When he saw Dad, though, he took a step closer. Dad’s gun was up in an instant. “That’s close enough,” he said. “What do you want?”

  “I’m an old man,” the stranger called. “One of my teeth is giving me a real problem and I can feel infection spreading into my face. Will you take a look?” Dad hesitated. The stranger took a step toward us.

  Dean stepped between the stranger and Dad. “Before you come any closer to my father, show me your hands.”

  “What’s that?” The stranger took two steps closer, his hands dangling at his sides, the toes of his boots nearly even with the edge of the sidewalk.

  “Show us your hands and arms, old man. Now,” Dean said, his voice intense.

  The stranger frowned and stepped up onto the sidewalk, and my hackles bristled.

  “I’m hard of hearing,” he yelled, even though he was a mere five steps away from us. He took another step forward and paused, gaze darting up to the roof before focusing on me. His eyes softened and his mouth quirked up at the edges. He stepped onto the matted-down dead grass of the front yard, and his ankle wobbled and twisted to the side. The old man fell to his hands and knees and cried out in pain.

  I didn’t think, just acted. Three steps was all it took, though, before my brain overrode my impulse to help the man. But three steps were enough. I was one step beyond where the dogs could reach. Before I could get my rifle up and aimed, the old man was off the ground and leaping at me like a snake striking prey. Hard hands cinched around my head, clutching my forehead and chin. One firm yank and my neck would snap.

  Right before the man grabbed me, I saw his palms. A quarter-size scar had been branded into each.

  The dogs started barking again. Dean yelled something. My uncle had his gun aimed just above my shoulder. Only Dad seemed calm and collected, his gun held loosely in his hand and pointing at the ground. Everything seemed to slow down, like the universe had taken a deep breath and was holding it.

  “What do you want?” Dad asked. The afternoon sun gleamed off his white, sleep-messy hair.

  The man’s hands tightened on my chin and forehead, twisting my neck to the side just a bit and pulling my back against the front of his body. “All I want is for you to fix my tooth so I don’t die from infection. If you agree to that, I’ll let your son go. But first I want your promise that I will walk away from here alive.”

  “Are you a raider?” Dean asked.

  “Why else would I ask you not to kill me?” The old man took his hand from my forehead and held it forward, showing his branded palm. Dean cursed and gritted his teeth.

  “We have helped raiders before.” Dad’s fingers twitched on his gun. “There is no need to hold my son’s life for ransom.”

  “Word is,” the raider said, “that one of my boys came to you for some work a little bit ago, but he never came back.”

  I shivered. I knew exactly who the old man was talking about. Dad paled. “He didn’t give me a choice. If my patients cooperate, they walk out of here alive—that’s a promise. But if they try to steal from me, or harm my family, we have no choice but to kill them. That promise stands for you as well.”

  The raider released me, and I fell to my hands and knees at his feet, too weak with fear to move. Air swished across my face, and the raider was on the ground beside me, eyes round with shock, and Dean straddling his chest. Dean shoved the barrel of his rifle into the man’s mouth and put his finger on the trigger, his eyes flashing with rage. He looked insane.

  “If you ever—EVER—touch my little brother again, you’ll be eating my bullets, old man!” He shoved his gun deeper into the raider’s mouth, making him gag and squirm. “Do you understand me?” Dean yelled so loudly that I flinched. The raider gurgled something. “Good. Because I don’t feel like blowing your head off in front of him.” He removed his rifle from the man’s mouth and then jerked him to his feet.

  “Put this on over your eyes,” Dean said, pulling a red bandana out of his pocket and chucking it at the man. The raider did what Dean asked. Guided by Dean and Dad, the raider walked into the house.

  A moment later, Josh came outside and helped me to my feet. Face grim, he brushed off my book and handed it to me. I sat down on the front porch and stared at Josh’s back as he kept watch. I was too wound up to read.

  Two hours later, the raider was escorted out of the house. On the front porch, he pulled the bandana from his eyes and looked at Dean. “If you ever get bored here,” he said, “come and find me. I’m always looking for boys like you. I can promise you food and women.”

  “Get out of here before I break my dad’s promise not to hurt you,” Dean growled.

  “Suit yourself.” He winked and smiled at me when he passed, showing me a silver front tooth.

  “You want your gun or not?” the cowboy asks, his silver tooth flashing.

  I dart forward and grab the gun. It is warm from his hand. I stare at the cowboy and wonder if he recognizes me. His smile widens to a grin and he shrugs, showing me both of his open palms. They are scarred from one side to the other, with no visible circle brand. But I don’t need to see the brands to know the truth: we have just walked into the enemy’s hands.

  Chapter 8

  I raise my gun and point it at the cowboy. He smirks and folds his arms over his chest, leaning back against the booth. His boot starts tapping against the floor. “I don’t think you got it in you to shoot a man point-blank, Freckles.” I swallow and try to hold my gun steady.

  Bowen stands but doesn’t lower his rifle. “Fo, get the atlas and make sure it’s marked.”

  Fo hurries to the display of faded atlases beside the door and takes one, flipping through the pages. “It is marked.”

  “Good. Let’s go.” Bowen waits while I dash out of the diner, followed by Fo and Jonah, before slowly backing out.

  “You all be careful out there,” Randall Flint warns. The hair on the back of my neck bristles. “Remember what I said. Trust no one. Follow the marked path. And stay away from the mountains so the wolves don’t gobble you up!”

  The very moment my feet touch the road, I sprint in the direction of the interstate. The others follow and I am surprised that Jonah, his left foot clumsy beneath his large frame, can keep up with Fo and Bowen. I pull ahead of them all, my feet pounding, doing what I do best, doing what I’ve been training to do for more than three years—running.

  Something hisses. My feet skid on pavement and I crane my head up, looking for the source of the sound. A white ball of fire is arcing across the sky, leaving a trail of pale smoke against blue. Two more fireballs follow, and then the evening is quiet again. For a moment.

  A pink ball of fire bursts into the sky, crossing three fading trails of smoke. Bowen curses and puts his rifle on his shoulder. “He’s shot off flares! They know we’re coming, and they know we’ve got a woman with us! Get off the interstate!”

  I turn left, west. Dread makes me faster than I have ever been before as I sprint the width of the interstate and hurdle the cement
barrier. My feet come down on crisp weeds. Bowen lands beside me, then Fo and Jonah.

  “Which way?” I ask.

  Bowen presses a finger over his lips for silence, then points north and west.

  I nod. “Follow me,” I whisper, and run to the nearest paved road, leading us nowhere in particular. We run and we run with me in the lead, our feet slapping pavement. The farther we go, the quieter the sounds of the others become until I realize … I can’t hear them anymore. I have outrun them.

  I screech to a halt in the parking lot of an abandoned strip mall and wait for them to catch up. Drenched with sweat and panting so hard I can barely hear anything over my own noise, I stare in the direction from which I’ve just come. Evening shadows stretch over empty pavement, but nothing moves. I am about to retrace my steps when a lone figure finally appears. Thinking it must be Bowen or Jonah, I almost wave. But then I take a closer look. He has wide shoulders, a scraggly beard, and his clothes hang funny on him. And he is running toward me.

  I drop to my hands and knees. The mall’s shadow is stretched long across the parking lot, nearly hiding a lonely, dusk-colored car that sits on four flat tires. I crawl to the rusted car and press myself against one of the tires.

  Slowly, carefully, I peer under the car and scan the street for feet. I frown. No one is there. A whisper carries on the silent air, and something rattles. Goose bumps dance down my arms and I rub my hands over my thin, wiry biceps. And then someone crouches beside me.

  I open my mouth to scream, but a wool-gloved hand clamps down over it. Fuzzy fabric sticks to my tongue, and I am staring at a scraggly face I know but don’t necessarily trust. I pull his hand off of my face and glare. “What are you doing here? Are you following me?”

  “Look,” the vagabond whispers. He nods toward the road, in the opposite direction I came from. I barely lift my head above the hood of the car and look.

  Three men are walking slowly toward the strip mall, and one of them is leaning forward and studying the ground. When they get to the parking lot’s entrance, the man staring at the ground pauses and crouches. He runs his fingers over the pavement, his eyes narrow, and a smile splits his face.

  “They’re tracking you,” the vagabond whispers.

  I duck behind the car again and shrink against the tire. “I wanna go home!” I whisper.

  As the men walk into the parking lot, their voices carry to me. “Pink flare means a woman,” one says. “When we catch her, think of the reward Hastings will give us. Look. Two sets of tracks go to that car and stop.”

  I focus on the parking lot. The pavement is covered with dust. Except where the vagabond and I have walked. “I’m so dead,” I whisper. With those words floating on the air, the vagabond jumps to his feet and yanks me to mine. I stand in frozen shock for a moment, staring at the stunned raiders. The vagabond runs, leaving me. But then he stops running, turns back to me, and screams, “Come on!”

  I don’t have time to think, just react. I chase him across the parking lot and through broken glass doors, into the strip mall. Glass shards crunch beneath my feet and stick to the soles of my shoes, making it hard to run.

  Gunshots thunder in the quiet air, and faded, plastic-wrapped rectangles of printer paper explode beside me. I scream and cover my head, but the vagabond yanks one of my arms down and wraps my hand in his, pulling me toward the back of the store. We stop in an aisle of rat-eaten computer chairs and office furniture, and the vagabond tugs me down behind a tipped particle-board desk.

  “If we go out the back exit, there’s a grocery store backed up against this mall,” he says, panting. “We need to go into it if we want to get away.”

  I shake my head. “No. I need to find my friends.”

  “You can’t find them if you’re dead. Just trust me long enough to get us out of here alive, and then find your friends. Okay?”

  I clench my jaw and firm my shoulders. He’s right. I shake my head no but say, “Okay.”

  He squeezes my hand. “On the count of three, we run. One . . .”

  A spray of bullets echoes through the store, and I can see three silhouettes framed in the store’s front windows.

  “. . . Two . . .”

  Footsteps thud on the gritty, warped linoleum, and my heart is beating so hard it’s almost choking me.

  “. . . Three!”

  He doesn’t let go of my hand. I am yanked forward and dragged to the back of the store, to a door that leads into a sunset-bright world, with the back of a huge grocery store in front of me. We sprint over empty pavement and up a truck ramp that leads to the grocery store’s delivery entrance. Before we set foot inside, the smell hits me like a wall. Sewage. Rotting food. Dead animals. We step through the missing delivery door and into darkness, and the smell nearly knocks me over. I cover my mouth and nose with my hand and pause. The quiet, indistinct hum of an air conditioner fills the building. It is a sound I never used to notice in the old world, but now that I am used to absolute silence, it sticks out like a warning. My skin crawls.

  “I don’t think we should be in here,” I whisper.

  “That’s the point,” he says. He rummages in his ragged clothing, and I get a whiff of something else that brings me back to the old world. Sunblock. And then it dawns on me. This vagabond, who is always filthy and covered with dirt and dead grass, does not stink. I look at him but can’t see his face in the darkness. But I do see what he’s holding in his hand, as it reflects the small bit of sunlight that is shining like a rectangular beacon from the door we just came in through.

  “Where did you get a gun?” I whisper. In the year and a half that I have known him, he has never been armed. At least, I never knew he was armed.

  “I always carry it with me.” I gawk at him, and he squeezes my hand. “Don’t worry—your father knew I carried it, and he never seemed to mind.”

  Shadows flicker in the store’s rear doorway as three men cautiously creep up the truck ramp. They’re each holding a gun. I reach for my gun, but the vagabond puts his free hand over mine. “You won’t need that,” he whispers. “We are going up.”

  Up? For the first time I look around. We’re standing in a room lined with empty stock shelves that reach all the way up to the high ceiling. The floor is cluttered with stained egg cartons, mangled milk containers, torn and empty boxes, and lots and lots of lumpy stuff. I squint at the lumpy stuff and stop breathing. It is brown. And it stinks. I scan the room again and dig my fingernails into the vagabond’s hand.

  In the farthest corner of the room, in the direction of the air conditioner sound, is a mound of something that at first glance looks like a huge pile of old, dirty clothes. But there are arms and legs and tangles of matted hair mixed in with the rags. And if I squint really hard, I can see the pile breathing.

  “There are beasts in here!” I whisper. “We have got to get out!”

  He doesn’t say anything, just starts pulling me toward a massive tower of metal shelves. “Go up,” he says when we reach them. “Quickly!”

  I put my hands on the cool metal and start climbing. The vagabond climbs up behind me, his feet softly clunking on the shelves. The sound seems to draw the raiders’ attention. The three of them burst into the grocery store, guns ready.

  I get to the top of the shelves—nearly two stories high—and lay down on my belly, peering down. The vagabond reaches the top and lies down on his stomach, with his head by my feet. He lifts his gun, takes aim toward the store’s delivery door, and fires a single shot. One of the raiders screams and clutches his shoulder. The other two let loose and start firing in every direction but up.

  Big mistake. The beasts in the corner of the room are no longer huddled in a sleeping mass on the floor. They are up and running for the doorway. And based on the way the raiders are shooting everywhere and nowhere in particular, they have no idea they are about to be hit with a dozen beasts. If they knew, they would be aiming all of their firepower at them.

  “Run!” The word is shrieked, echo
ing above the noise of guns and beasts. I scream it so loudly, my throat feels raw. But I can’t lie up here and watch a bloodbath. The thought makes me sick.

  The gunfire stops. One of the raiders points to the beasts, and they start firing in their direction. Some of the beasts fall to the ground, but the others are almost at the raiders. The raiders stop shooting and run. The beasts follow them out the door, all but one little boy, with glossy black hair, who can’t quite keep up. He goes out the door ten seconds after the others.

  I rest my forehead on the cool metal shelf and just breathe. My body feels like unresponsive mush.

  A hand clasps my ankle and gently shakes it. “We need to get out of here, Jack,” the vagabond says. I don’t move. “Before the beasts come back,” he adds.

  I gasp, swing my feet over the side of the shelves, and climb down as fast as I can. At the bottom, the vagabond takes my hand in his and leads me out of the stock room and into the nearly dark grocery store. We weave past trash and grocery carts left in the aisles, past empty shelves, and then go out the front doors.

  The sun has just set. The evening star hovers above the pale purple silhouette of the Rockies.

  “I need to find my friends,” I whisper, pulling my hand away from the vagabond.

  “I know. Follow me and be quiet.”

  I stay a step behind him and we quickly walk east and south, wading through the patches of dust and dead weeds that line the sides of the roads. When we get to a bend in the road, the vagabond crouches, running his fingers over the pavement. And then he points west. “They went that way,” he says, and stands. But instead of walking in the direction he pointed, he pulls his shirt over his head and peels his arms from the long sleeves, revealing a dingy short-sleeved undershirt and muscular biceps. Next, he takes the long-sleeved shirt and starts hitting it against the road. A cloud of dust billows up around the shirt, and I can’t tell if it is coming off the filthy garment or from the road. He takes a few steps and does it again.