Cured

I grab the governor’s arm that is holding Kevin and pull, but the man kicks me squarely in the stomach, sending me flying backward. I slam into a gas pump and slide down to the ground. Cement collides with my head, and I stare up at the rust spots on the metal roof that shades the pumps. I lie there and stare up, trying to force movement into my aching, exhausted body while I listen to the sound of Kevin’s thrashing. My eyes shift and I can see him. He is still clawing at Soneschen’s hand, and his face is changing color—going from pale to red to a bulging, swollen purple—and I know he’s slowly suffocating to death.

  I force movement into my body and don’t think—just act. I stumble to the gun Soneschen knocked from Kevin’s hand and wrap my bloody fingers around it. For a split second I pause and stare at the thing, so familiar in my grasp. I am holding my father’s gun.

  Without wasting another second, I stand. Soneschen has his back to me. Kevin looks at me over Soneschen’s shoulder and mouths the word run. But I’m sick of running, and there is no way I am going to watch someone I love die when I have the power to stop it. I shake my head and lift the gun, but because of my wounded arm, I can’t hold it steady. So I trade hands.

  The gun feels awkward in my left hand. I raise my left arm and grip my wrist with my right hand to steady it as much as possible. If I’m off, even a little, I will kill the wrong person. Bracing for the recoil, I aim at the middle of Soneschen’s back. On an exhale, I gently squeeze the trigger, and my entire body lurches a step backward as the bullet leaves the chamber.

  Soneschen drops Kevin, and they both crash down onto their hands and knees. I don’t breathe as I stare at the two of them, identically posed, both gaping at the ground and gasping for breath. And then, like an answered prayer, a tiny red circle appears on Soneschen’s white shirt, slowly expanding like a flower opening to sunlight. Soneschen’s body starts to tremble, his nostrils flare, and he glares at me. A deep, guttural rumble starts in his throat, and he climbs unsteadily to his feet.

  “You,” he says, looking at me like I’m trash. “You’re the dentist’s daughter.” He starts staggering toward me.

  “Yes, I am,” I say, “and if you were as smart as King Solomon, you never would have underestimated me. I am smart, and I am brave.” I lift the gun. And shoot. The governor topples backward and lays still, his bloodstained white shirt glowing stark against the grimy cement.

  Kevin stands and hangs his head like it weighs too much. He’s still gasping for breath. I lower the gun and run to his side, drape his arm over my shoulders, and guide him to the four-wheeler. After I help him up, I climb on in front of him. Kevin wraps his arms around my waist and leans his head forward onto my shoulder. I turn the machine on and floor it. And then we speed away, with me too shocked to speak, and Kevin still gasping for air as if his throat is half-crushed.

  “Dean always said you were a good shot,” he rasps, lips beside my ear. I tuck my father’s gun into my belt and lean back against Kevin. He pulls me close and we drive west.

  Chapter 38

  We hide the four-wheeler in a dense patch of brittle shrub high up in the foothills. The other two four-wheelers are already there, but Bowen, Jonah, and Zeke are long gone.

  “Put these on,” Kevin says. He pulls something out of his backpack and hands it to me.

  “Socks?” I ask.

  “I don’t want you hurting your feet,” he explains. “We have a little ways to walk, and these will help a bit.”

  Instead of going to the shelter, we walk to a two-story house that is surrounded by a ring of brown pine trees—the house with the telescope.

  “Why are we here?” I ask. It feels like weeks have passed since I ran from this house, down the mountain and into the raiders’ hands.

  “If we’re being followed by anyone, they’ll have a harder time finding the shelter if we go in this way,” Kevin explains. His voice is still weak and raspy, and his neck is swollen and turning blue.

  The front door is locked. Kevin takes a scrap of wire from his pocket and sticks it into the keyhole and the lock clicks. We go inside, shutting and locking the door behind us, and go down to the wine cellar. He opens the hidden door and we step into darkness.

  “I used to have a flashlight,” I say. “But someone smashed it into the ground and broke it.”

  Kevin laughs a hoarse laugh and wraps his arms around me, holding me close. “Yeah. I’m lucky you didn’t kill me. Your bite is a lot worse than your bark.” He lets me go and I can hear him unzip his backpack. Something clicks and a flashlight flickers to life. “I guess it’s a good thing I brought my own. Can you hold this?”

  I take the light and he puts his backpack back on.

  “Here.” He pulls a folded paper out of his pocket and swaps it for the flashlight.

  The paper is glued together with dried blood, and I can’t open it, since my right hand is throbbing and practically useless. I hold it back out to him. “Can you unfold it for me?”

  Kevin puts his flashlight into his mouth, takes the paper, and removes a pocketknife from his belt. Easing the blade under the folded edge, he gently pries it open. Brown flecks rain down from the paper, catching the gleam of the flashlight like falling ash. When he’s gotten it all the way open, he glances at it and passes it back to me. “It’s kind of ironic I’m the one giving this to you.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ve been passing notes for Dean for nearly a year and a half.”

  I stare at Kevin. “What?”

  He nods. “I’m his delivery boy. His own personal pony express.”

  “For my brother?”

  “Yeah. Think of the first time I came to your house.”

  He’d been gone a month and a half. When I stood in the front yard, or on the roof during my watch, I always stared down the road leading north—the road Dean left on. I knew deep down in my heart that he would come back. It was inevitable. When he left, he took a piece of me with him, and it seemed to grow until I felt so empty that I could hardly get out of bed some mornings.

  He needed to come home so he could give the piece of me back, so I could feel whole again.

  I stood in the yard, facing north, breathing in the smell of sun on dead grass and the plastic-tainted smell of lacquered wood burning, courtesy of the elderly Mr. and Mrs. Pearson, who caught the bee flu and died when I was thirteen, leaving a house filled with antique hardwood furniture.

  The air stirred, making long-forgotten wind chimes sing. I closed my eyes, remembering the sound of green leaves rustling. Instead, I heard one of the dogs growl. My eyes popped open, and I stared north.

  A bearded man stood in the middle of the road, more than a block away. My heart raced with hope. Surely this was Dean, come back to give me my missing piece. I took two steps forward and paused with my toes touching the sidewalk—the line I was “never to cross again!” The last time I crossed it, I almost got my neck snapped by a cowboy.

  The person took a few slow steps toward me and then paused again. His hands came up over his head, like a surrendering criminal’s. Not a good sign. With that tiny gesture, I knew I was not looking at my brother. This person was a stranger.

  I took two steps back, and without taking my eyes from the stranger, yelled, “I need backup!”

  In less than sixty seconds, Steve and Josh were beside me. Thirty seconds later, Uncle Rob took his place on the roof.

  “What do you want?” Uncle Rob hollered.

  “I need to see the dentist.” Distance made his voice quiet, but we still heard him.

  “Are you a raider?” Uncle Rob called.

  “No.”

  “Do you have the mark of the beast?”

  “No.”

  Steve turned to me. “Jack, go inside.”

  “But—”

  “Just do it! Tell Dad to come out here.” Steve waited until I was in the house, with the door shut, before calling, “Come closer and show us your hands and arms.”

  Instead of getting Dad, I stood in the living room and part
ed the blinds, watching. The man wore fingerless wool gloves and was still holding his hands overhead. Slowly, he walked toward my brothers until he stood on the road directly in front of our house. The wind blew, pressing his tattered clothing against his broad chest.

  “Very slowly, show us your hands and arms,” Chris said. The man took one small step forward and stopped just beyond the reach of the dogs. He lowered his gloved hands, but I couldn’t see anything. Steve was blocking my view.

  “All right. Put this on over your eyes.” Steve tossed a red bandana at the man and stepped back.

  The man put his gloves back on and tied the red bandana around his scraggly, filthy hair. As he approached the front door, guided by Steve, I turned and ran to Dad’s room. He was already awake, sitting on the side of his bed with his Glock in his lap, waiting. “I’m needed?” he asked.

  I nodded. “A man wants to see ‘the dentist.’”

  He stood and walked out of the room. When he got to the front door and opened it, the blindfolded stranger stood framed in the doorway. “How can I help you?” Dad asked, holding his finger on the Glock’s trigger.

  “You’re the dentist?” the man asked.

  “Yes. What can I help you with?”

  “I need to speak to you alone.” The man’s teeth were the color of moldy cheese and so plaque-covered that the spaces between each tooth looked nonexistent. “Restrain me if you’d like. But this is important.”

  “Cuff him,” Dad said to Steve. The stranger was only a couple of inches taller than Dad, which to anyone else wouldn’t be all that tall, but to my five feet, one and a half inches, he seemed huge. The man put his hands behind his back and bowed his head.

  “Do you have a name?” asked Dad.

  “I’m the vagabond.” Mud caked the man’s grizzled beard and was splattered over his ragged clothing. I shuddered and took a step farther away from him.

  “Jack, stand watch at the workroom door. Steve, you and Josh double up on the front yard,” Dad said, leading the man to the workroom.

  “Yes, sir,” we all replied at once.

  I followed Dad and the vagabond to the office, then stood at the door, tense and ready to shoot, until my head started throbbing. Finally, almost an hour after they went in, the door handle twisted. Out strolled the vagabond, no longer blindfolded, uncuffed, smiling, and chatting with Dad. Dad’s eyes were red-rimmed, as if he’d been crying. But maybe it was because he’d been awakened too early.

  At the front door, Dad held his hand out to the vagabond and they shook. And then the vagabond held his gloved hand out to me. I put my hand into his and tried not to squirm at his touch. “Nice to meet you, Jack,” he said with a twinkle in his eye. He didn’t let go of my hand. The twinkle in his eyes turned into something else—an expression I knew well. Hunger. Want. Need. This man probably didn’t have enough food.

  I pulled my hand out of his, unzipped the bottom pocket on my tackle vest, and pulled out a container of applesauce. I stared at him and gouged the plastic sides of the applesauce container with my thumbnail while I mustered up the willpower to give it to him. It physically hurt, holding that applesauce out to the vagabond. Tears filled my eyes, so I blinked them into my eyelashes before they could trickle down my cheeks. He frowned and his face filled with wonder.

  “You’re giving this to me?” he asked. I gritted my teeth and grabbed his gloved hand, putting the applesauce into it before I could change my mind. “Thank you. I will treasure it,” he whispered, and strode out of the house and to the street.

  Dad put his hand on my shoulder. “You’re a good kid, Jack,” he said, and then he kissed the top of my head. Dad stepped out onto the front porch and took a deep breath of nearly warm air. “You are never to harm that man,” he called loud enough for Uncle Rob, Steve, Josh, and me to hear. “He’s a friend.”

  As we walk through the food-storage room, I think of my Dad’s red-rimmed eyes. He was crying the day he met the vagabond. “My dad has known all along about Dean joining the raiders, hasn’t he? You told him about Dean.”

  “He knows the real reason Dean joined them.”

  “Which is?”

  “To destroy them from the inside out.”

  I think of the saying my mom embroidered the first day the vagabond came—Doing the Right Thing Is Always Harder Than Doing the Wrong Thing—and stop walking. “My mom has known too,” I whisper. Kevin nods and shines the flashlight on the paper in my hand. Even with the flashlight illuminating it, I can barely make out the words through the bloodstains.

  Jack,

  Sometimes we do things that we hate to help the people who we love. By becoming a raider, I have helped save over one hundred women from the raiders’ hands, and freed nearly fifty from their camp. At first, I did this for you. And now, I am doing it for my newborn daughter. Trust Kevin. He’s the one who recruited me.

  With love,

  Dean

  P.S. Boys do cry. I’m living proof.

  I sink down to the floor, too tired and sore and overwhelmed to keep standing, and reread the letter twice before asking, “My brother has a daughter?”

  “Yes, he does,” Kevin says, sitting down beside me. “She’s probably about one month old now and as beautiful as her aunt.”

  “How? Who is the mother?”

  “He fell in love with one of the raiders’ women and killed any man who so much as leered at her.”

  “And the raiders didn’t think that was odd?”

  “No. A lot of them had ‘favorites’ and fought over them. Dean’s the only one who was never beat. Which is how he became their ruler.”

  I scratch my head. “And how did this poor woman feel about that?”

  “Well, she fell in love with him.”

  “But … I mean . . .” I bite the side of my cheek. “Where is his daughter?”

  “She’s at the colony in the mountains. Dean and I, with the help of a few others, broke all the women out of the compound. The woman and her child are safe. I’ll take you to see them if you’d like. We can leave as soon as you feel well enough to make the trek.”

  A smile jumps to my face. A real, true smile. I’m an aunt. I look back at the paper. “Dean says you recruited him.”

  “Not quite.” Kevin lifts his shirt and shows me the bullet wound scar on his ribs. “Your brother shot me. I guess injuring me upon first contact is a family trait.”

  My smile widens a little bit. “Why did he shoot you?”

  “I thought Dean was a raider trying to bring Fiona’s mom to their headquarters, so I tried to steal her away from him. He thought I was a raider trying to steal Fiona’s mom, so he shot me. When we got things figured out, I brought them to the shelter—well, he sort of carried me, actually, since I was bleeding to death—and they patched me up. While we were in the shelter waiting for me to heal, and waiting for the snow to melt enough to take Abigail Tarsis to the colony, he told me all about his amazing little sister who loved to cook and was a better shot than any of her brothers.

  “After a couple of weeks in the shelter, Dean got tired of waiting for me to heal, so he followed my map and took Fiona’s mom to the colony alone. I never thought I’d see him again. I thought he’d stay there with her. But he came back. And he had a plan. He said because he loved his sister Jacqui so much”—he tilts my chin up, and now I know who told Kevin my name— “he wanted to give all women a chance at survival, wanted to help me in my quest to help others get away from the raiders. He really recruited himself.”

  “So, is what you said when you tied me up a lie? Did you go to my house to see me, or was it really to pass notes to my dad?”

  “At first I went to your house to give your dad Dean’s messages. But it was seeing you that made it worth it. Even though I disgusted you.” I flinch and he laughs. “But after a while I started coming every couple of weeks whether I had a note to deliver or not.” His fingers sweep over the side of my face. “Because I fell in love with you.”

  He has that
look in his eyes again—hunger. Want. Need. And now I understand what it is that he hungers for, because I’m starved for it too. I put my left hand on his cheek. “I love you, too,” I whisper.

  “I know—I can tell by the way you look at me. I just can’t believe it,” he says. He slides his hands under my tackle vest and gently moves them over my back. They are warm and firm with only my T-shirt between them and my skin. And they’re trembling. I close my eyes and kiss him, feeding our hunger.

  After a minute, he pulls away from me. “Stop distracting me,” he whispers with a grin plastered to his face. “We need to get moving.”

  We walk in silence, hand in hand, to the end of the food-storage room. “Did you really find all of this food by scavenging?” I ask.

  “No, of course not! That would be impossible. My grandpa stored it. He is a major conspiracy theorist who had more money than he needed, so he spent it on things like top-secret bomb shelters, extreme vacations, and food storage. He had been storing food down here for decades, long before the honeybees started to go extinct. And then, when everything died, he was finally justified in his eccentricity.”

  We get to the pathway in the cave and deep voices carry on the air. Kevin steps in front of me and turns off his flashlight. The cave goes black.

  “Please say that’s you, Kevin,” someone calls.

  “Zeke?” Kevin turns his light back on and shines it down the path. Jonah, Bowen, and Zeke are sitting on the ground in the dark.

  “We were starting to worry about you two,” Zeke says, frowning. “What took you so long?”

  “We had a run-in with Soneschen,” Kevin explains, touching his neck. “What are you guys doing? Why didn’t you go on to the shelter?”

  Bowen claps Zeke on the back and says, “The old man forgot to bring spare batteries with him.” Zeke chuckles and holds up a dark flashlight.

  “I needed to take a break anyway,” Jonah says, his voice weak. He’s no longer covered with blood—just a whole lot of scratches and gouges. He’s obviously been cleaned up. A lot.

  “How are you doing?” I ask, crouching down beside him.