Cured Page 6

  “What are you doing?” I whisper, glancing over my shoulder.

  “Covering your friends’ tracks. The raiders post trackers out here so that when Flint shoots off the flares, they have men who can find the runners.” He looks at me. “You and your friends are runners.”

  “Why didn’t Flint kill us himself?” I ask.

  “He wants you alive. If he can’t take the runners down on his own, he shoots off the flares. You guys were too tough for him alone, and he knew it.” He hits the street with his shirt again.

  “How do you know so much about the raiders?”

  He glances at the shadowed world. “When you live with your enemy, your best chance of survival is knowing how they operate.”

  My mom needs to turn that into one of her needlepoint sayings.

  He pulls me over to the side of the road, to a patch of dirt that used to be lawn. “Your biggest advantage right now is darkness. In a matter of minutes, it will be too dark to track you. Until morning, that is. So here’s what you’ve got to do. Do not walk on the roads or sidewalks. Stay in the dead grass. Their trackers don’t know how to track there. Look.” He steps onto the dusty road and takes a few steps. Every place his feet touch, the dust is moved.

  “Look over there.” He points down the road toward a small one-story house that probably wasn’t in good shape before the bees died off. Now it looks like it might collapse if someone sneezes at it. “That’s probably where your friends are. That’s where their tracks lead.”

  I study the dimly lit road and can just make out a faint trail. “I’ll cover the tracks,” the vagabond says. “You get them out of there and find somewhere else to hide. The farther you get from here, the better your chance of surviving.”

  “Okay.” Staying off the road and sidewalk, I take a step toward the house, but pause. I turn and watch the vagabond swing his shirt at the road for a moment before saying, “Thank you.”

  He stops swinging and looks at me. There is hunger in his eyes, and I wish I had some food for him. “You’re welcome, Jack.”

  I turn and run.

  Chapter 9

  As I cross the threshold into the dark house, I hear the click-click of Bowen’s M16 being engaged. I flinch and put up my hands. “It’s me, Jack,” I whisper. “Don’t shoot!”

  He curses under his breath. “I almost blew your head off! Never sneak up on me like that again!” Bowen, hardly more than a dark shadow, rises up from a corner of the house and lowers his rifle. “Where did you go?”

  “I’ll tell you later. We need to get out of here now,” I say, not moving from the doorway. “The raiders have trackers. They’re going to find us here.”

  “Trackers? How do you know?”

  “They almost caught me.” I don’t mention the vagabond. I don’t know what Bowen will think of him appearing again. I don’t know what I think about him reappearing.

  “How did you get away?”

  “I ran into a group of beasts,” I say, which is the truth. I just leave out the part about the vagabond leading me to the beasts and then intentionally waking them up. The thought of the beasts makes my knees knock together.

  “Fo, Jonah,” Bowen quietly calls into the next room. “We need to go. Now.” Jonah and Fo come out and, without a word, follow me out of the house and into the deepening dusk. I wait for the buzz of mosquitos for a split second, and then remember there haven’t been mosquitos for years. Bowen, rifle on his shoulder, walks down the driveway and out to the road.

  “Wait,” I whisper. “We need to stay off the pavement. That’s how they tracked me.”

  Bowen looks at me. “All right, Flapjack. Why don’t you lead the way to some shelter? But don’t leave us behind this time if we have to run.”

  I nod and turn west and start the slow process of sneaking through yards, climbing over tipping vinyl fences, and ducking past abandoned cars. After nearly an hour, I find a rusting fifteen-passenger van that has been driven down a shallow ravine on the side of the road. I stick my head through a broken window and, using what little starlight there is, try to check the van for unwanted inhabitants. The bench seats are made of dark, cracked vinyl, and the remaining windows are tinted, making it nearly impossible to see anything else about the van.

  “How is this for shelter?” I ask.

  Bowen opens the sliding side door and steps inside. After a full minute of examining the van from front to back, he says, “Perfect.”

  We all get inside. Despite the broken windows, I lock the doors. Locked doors make me feel a little bit safer. Bowen shrugs his backpack from his shoulders and sets it gently on the van’s floor, and then helps Fo get her pack off. Jonah, hunched over so he doesn’t crunch his head on the ceiling, walks to the back of the van and peers out of the rear window. He stands unmoving, giant backpack still on his back as if he’s oblivious to its weight. I take my backpack off. The sweat-damp spot it has left on my back makes me shiver.

  “So,” I say, looking at Bowen. “We’re not really going to Wyoming, right? That was, like, to set a false trail or something. Right?”

  Bowen sits on one of the bench seats and carefully sets his rifle over his knees. Fo sits and melts against him, so in the darkness they look like one entity. “Of course we’re going to Wyoming,” Bowen says.

  “Haven’t you heard about the settlement there?” Fo asks.

  My eyes bulge with disbelief. “You guys can’t be serious. Don’t you know that the rumors of Wyoming are a raider trap?”

  “What are you talking about?” Bowen asks, voice disbelieving. “How would you know, anyway? You’ve been cooped up in your house for as long as I’ve been in the militia. Longer, even.”

  “My dad’s an oral surgeon,” I say, as if that should explain everything. And, actually, it does if you think about it.

  Bowen doesn’t think about it. “And that means he fixes teeth. How does that make him an expert on Wyoming?”

  “Do you know what nitrous oxide is?”

  Bowen and Fo are silent. Jonah walks over to where we are and sits beside his sister. “Laughing gas,” he says. His voice makes me jump—they’re the first words I’ve heard him utter in, well, years.

  “That’s right,” I say. “When people are inhaling laughing gas, they tend to get loopy. Sometimes, when my dad thinks he’s got a patient that might have really important information, he ups the gas dose and pumps the patient for info about things. Like Sirens. And wolves.” I think of what the vagabond said: “When you live with your enemy, your best chance of survival is knowing how they operate.” “I might not be that big, or that tough, but I have all sorts of information up here.” I tap my head. “And Wyoming just happens to be one of the things I know about.”

  “Explain,” Bowen says.

  Evening sunlight was pouring in through the west windows of the house, making Dad’s pacing shadow stretch long across the family room floor. “Where are they?” he grumbled, looking at me. I had no answer. The sun would be going down in a matter of minutes, and Dean, Josh, and Steve weren’t back from their siphoning hunt yet.

  “I’m sure they’ll be back any minute,” Mom called from the other room, where she and my little brother were hanging a load of clothes up to dry. We always hung the clothes indoors so they wouldn’t attract thieves—we didn’t want to shoot a person if he was merely coming into our yard to steal a pair of pants or a shirt. “When they’re late, they usually have a good reason.”

  Last time they were late was because they’d found an abandoned dentist’s office and had hauled tanks of laughing gas back to our house. The time before that, they’d found a convenience store that hadn’t been looted as thoroughly as all the others and came home with two bags of candy bars. My mouth watered at the thought.

  Still damp from my afternoon on the treadmill, I went out the back door and stood in the yard for a minute. Our cornstalks were growing. I couldn’t wait for fresh corn on the cob. I took the pot of barley and lentils out of the solar oven. The smel
l made me want to puke. I was so sick of eating barley and lentils every other night. And on the nights we didn’t have barley and lentils, we ate beans and rice seasoned with salt and pepper. I wanted meat. And bread. And anything sweet.

  We did have a good amount of food stored in a secret room we dug below our basement. But we had to eat like food might never be grown again, so we were saving as much as we could. Because if the world stayed how it was now, we would run out of food in a few years.

  I carried the food into the house and listened for my brothers, but the only sound was Mom humming while she hung the laundry to dry. I was hoping they’d be back by now, with some canned fruit or vegetables. Even canned peas were better than plain barley and lentils.

  I set the lentils on the counter and lifted the hot lid off just as the dogs started barking. The lid slipped out of my hand and clattered onto the clean tile floor. My dad was past me and at the front door—Glock in hand—before the lid stopped spinning. Grabbing a rifle from the kitchen counter, I ran past Mom.

  “Your vest!” she cried, and my feet screeched to a stop. Handing her the rifle, I yanked the tackle vest from a coat hook by the front door and thrust my arms through, hardly able to zip it with my trembling fingers. I took the rifle from Mom, then stepped out onto the front porch.

  Uncle Rob was standing on the dead lawn between Bruiser and Duke, the rifle on his shoulder pointing northwest toward the bend in the road. All four dogs were barking, spit flecks flying from their jaws.

  “Tranquillo,” Uncle Rob said. The dogs went instantly silent, though they didn’t relax a muscle.

  “What have we got, Rob?” Dad asked, taking aim. I took my designated spot beside him and pointed my gun at a lone man slowly approaching the house.

  “I’m not sure,” Uncle Rob said. “I’ve only seen one, but there might be others. He looks like a raider.”

  “What do you want?” my dad called.

  The man paused. He was thick, with arms like clubs and a chest like a cannon. “I got punched in the mouth and need my teeth fixed,” the man called, his voice a deep, lisping baritone.

  “Are you a raider?” Dad asked.

  The man lifted his hands, showing round quarter-size brands on the palm of each. Raider. From the north side of the walled city. The raiders on our side, the south side, had four scars slashed across their forearms.

  “Are you alone?” Dad asked.

  “As you see,” the raider answered.

  Dad’s rigid stance went even more rigid at the raider’s nonanswer. “I need a yes or a no. Are you alone?”

  “Yes.”

  In a quiet voice Dad asked Uncle Rob, “What do you think? Should we take him in or is it too much of a risk without the boys here?”

  “We haven’t had a northern raider for months. I can stand guard out here, Jack can help you. If I need backup, I’ll call for Ellen,” Rob said, voice barely above a whisper. “I think the chance at information from the north is worth the risk, and the boys should be back any minute.”

  Dad glanced at me. “I can do it,” I said. I’d helped out lots of times before, just never on a raider. Plaque, blood, and gore didn’t bother me.

  Dad’s lips thinned, and he took a deep breath before calling, “All right, Raider, come forward but keep your palms where I can see them.” The raider, palms facing us, slowly walked up the road to our house. When he got to the yard, Dad handed me his Glock and disarmed the raider—a revolver and two sharp, blood-stained knives.

  I squinted against the last rays of the evening sun, studying the man. His greasy black hair was a little longer than his ear lobes, and his clean-shaven face was younger than I expected it to be. His eyes, pale hazel, darted to mine, and he looked me up and down, sizing me up. I put my hand up to block the sun, trying to get a better look at the man, because there was something familiar about him, but Dad pulled a bandana over the man’s face, blindfolding him. Next, Dad slapped a pair of handcuffs on him and led him inside. With Dad’s gun tucked in my waistband, and my rifle aimed at the raider’s head, I followed them into what used to be the master bedroom of the house but was now the work room. It got the best light.

  “I need the generator on,” Dad called. Feet thumped on the basement stairs and a moment later the generator filled the house with a gentle, throbbing hum. Dad guided the raider to a dental chair and had him lie down, unhooking the handcuffs to replace them with restraints we’d built into the chair.

  “Is that really necessary?” the raider asked with a chuckle. I tilted my head to the side, listening to his voice, the way he formed his words, wondering why it seemed familiar.

  “If you want your teeth fixed,” Dad said, voice fierce, “you follow our rules. Now open up.” Dad turned the exam light on and centered it over the raider’s face.

  The raider, still blindfolded, opened his mouth. The smell of infection and rot wafted out. I put a hand over my nose and tried not to gag. Pulling on a pair of latex gloves, Dad peered into the man’s mouth and frowned. “This is going to take some work. Jack, get the laughing gas.”

  “Is it bad?” the raider asked.

  “No, not bad,” Dad answered, fastening a mask over his nose and mouth. “Bad doesn’t even begin to describe your teeth. Your two front teeth are broken. It also looks like you haven’t flossed in years. Have you been gnawing on raw meat?”

  I smiled. That was Dad’s dental humor. The smile was replaced by repulsion when the raider answered, “You can tell that just by looking into my mouth?”

  Dad and I looked at each other and I felt the blood drain from my face. Sweat glistened below Dad’s white hairline. “Jack, put the gas on him. And double the normal dose. This is going to take a while.”

  I put the mask onto the raider and cringed at the chunks of gray flesh stuck between his molars. The gas hissed. After a minute, the raider’s body seemed to melt into the chair and he sighed. “Wow, that feels good.” I flipped off the gas and removed the mask.

  “So,” Dad said, leaning over the man’s mouth and starting the slow process of scraping his teeth. “Any news coming out of the north?”

  The raider laughed. “Yeah, actually there is. But I can’t talk about it. Top secret and all that.” It was hard to understand him with Dad working on his mouth.

  “What’s top secret?” I asked.

  Dad shook his head the slightest bit.

  “Well, I can’t tell you since it is a secret. But did you know that there are Sirens prowling the north?”

  “Sirens?” Dad asked, pulling a chunk of something pale and squishy from the raider’s teeth and wiping it on a paper towel.

  “Yeah. We think they’re just north of the city. We’ve tried to catch one but haven’t been able to. Not yet, anyway.”

  Dad kept working, scraping away while the raider lay still in the chair. “Oh my, what a big cavity,” he said after a few minutes. “I think we might need to pull this tooth. Jack, give him another dose of nitrous oxide.”

  I looked at my dad. It was too soon for another dose, but Dad nodded, so I put the mask back on the raider’s face and turned on the gas. The raider sucked it greedily into his lungs. At Dad’s signal, I removed the mask.

  Leaning back in his chair, Dad folded his arms over his chest and pulled the mask down off of his face so it rested just below his chin. “So, what’s the secret news coming out of the north?”

  The raider laughed. “Promise you won’t tell?”

  “Promise.”

  “Wyoming. Have you heard about Wyoming?” the raider whispered.

  “Yes, we’ve heard about the colony in Wyoming. What about it?”

  The raider giggled like a little girl. “It’s a lie. A trap. A piece of bait to lure people north. And then—hook, line, and sinker—we get them without even raising a finger. They walk right up to us, and the best part is, it’s mostly women trying to flee to Wyoming!”

  My stomach dropped and I gasped. I knew people who decided to try to relocate to Wyoming. We
never heard from any of them again—always assumed they’d made it. Now I knew the truth.

  Dad cleared his throat and wiped a sheen of sweat from his forehead. He put his mask back on and tapped the pick on the raider’s chin. The man opened his mouth again.

  “What’s your name?” Dad asked.

  “Don’t you recognize me?” The raider’s words were slurred from the pick and the gas.

  The pick froze, and Dad’s hand started to tremble. I thought he’d looked upset about the Wyoming news. I was wrong. Now he looked upset. “Recognize you?” Dad asked slowly.

  “Yeah, Mr. Bloom. I’m Elijah Ashton. I went to school with your son, Dean. We were both on the football team. I was a linebacker.”

  Elijah Ashton. I remembered him. When I was eleven and Elijah was sixteen, he’d come over to the house almost every day. He’d stare at me and tease me and try to get me alone. He finally did get me alone once by following me into my bedroom, then said something about liking younger, bigger girls like me. When he tried to kiss me, I ran out of the room. Dad found out and banned Elijah from the house. Dad had to beg Dean not to beat up Elijah.

  I stared down at the blindfolded guy restrained in the chair and took a step back. If he recognized me . . .

  “Where is Dean anyway?” Elijah asked. “He was the toughest guy on the football team. Never afraid to take a hit. He’d make a good raider.”

  Dean despised the raiders.

  “And what happened to your daughter? Is she all grown up and living inside the wall? Probably about to get married? I always thought she was a cute girl. And since when have you had a son named . . .” Elijah’s blindfolded head slowly turned in my direction and his nostrils flared. “Wait a sec. Is that you, Jacqui? Jack?” He yanked on the restraints, making the dental chair lurch and the muscles in his neck bulge. Thrashing his head back and forth, the bandana slipped up onto his forehead and he stared right into my eyes. His breathing quickened and a leer tugged at the side of his mouth, exposing his cracked front teeth. “Jacqui Bloom.” He growled deep in his throat, the wrist restraints snapped taut, and he started trembling with effort. Sweat popped out on his forehead and the restraints groaned.