The Cure

“She’s dead.”

My heart stopped beating as a tear burned a trail down my cheek. I clasped her hand and stroked the slowly cooling face. “No, that was too fast. She should have had another week…please!” Dropping to my knees I begged the medic. “Please.”

A sob escaped me as my forehead pressed into my dead wife’s side. I tried to breathe, but only choking sounds escaped me. A hand landed on my shoulder as I shook. “Zinnia, we need you.”

I looked up into the pale green eyes of the leader. “What?”

“We need you. You know that you are the only one who can cross the dead lands to find it with me. You’re the only one who knows what to do once we get there. I’m the brawn, you’re the brain.”

I shook my head. “I can’t leave her. If I thought it would save her.”

“What about everyone else? You could save…everyone. It holds the cure. She’s gone now, but you survived. I survived. We need to go.”

Rotating to sit on my butt, I pulled my knees up to my chest and took in Lavan’s lean body in his black cargo pants and black combat vest. He was ready to leave.

I nodded. The disease had hit a small city in a southern state of the United States. They thought they could contain it, but people felt they didn’t need to follow the rules regarding epi656. It spread. First south towards Mexico, then across the pond and eventually everywhere. No one realized it had such a high mortality rate. In the first wave, the one most people lived through, there was a small percent of the survivors who mocked the people who tried to stop the spread. But there was a second wave…oh gods, the second wave.

They said a doctor had found a cure. He put it in a heart-shaped locket with a picture of his daughter, or so the rumor went, but he was told by his superiors he couldn’t administer it until the governments of all the countries agreed. Rumor had it he didn’t survive the benevolent lock and key care he was held under. Can you imagine?!

Well, we were going to find that heart-shaped locket, we were going to find the cure, and we were going to release it. There weren’t any governments left to stop us. Just roving bands of survivors. And, there were the mutants.

There were two known reactions in people who caught epi656. Most died outright, some mutated. As far as they knew, no one was immune. The disease ate away at the parts of the brain that allowed people to be…well people. It ate their soul. They became violent killing animals. This happened to about a quarter of the infected, and those mutants were roving around everywhere. Lavan and I had to travel twenty more miles to get the center with the locket.

Lavan reached down and pulled me up. “We need to get food, and packed.”

I reached one more time to the woman I’d loved. The medic, wearing a full body hazmat suit, was covering the diseased to take to the incinerators. I shut my eyes, an uncontrollable shudder taking me over from head to toe. I knew this was the right path, but the desire to go with her was strong.

Lavan placed a hand on my upper arm. “Zinnia, I know it’s hard. You two were close. But we have to do this. Please, help me…” It looked like he wanted to say more, but stopped himself.

I swallowed my grief and turned to him, allowing him to give me a quick hug before we moved out.

I donned a uniform matching his and packed the pockets with food and weapons, knives and guns. We each had two guns, one on a chest holster and one at our waist. Then we strapped on thigh rigs for the knives. I had one, but Lavan had three. We filled the pockets of the vest with amo for the guns. More went into our sacks along with food and water. We figured some water could be found along the way. We’d been training on the road over the last six months. Well Lavan had been training me.

We sat and had a last dinner. Stop thinking such thoughts Zinnia! You will survive, you can do this. Then we were off.

There were no usable cars; there wasn’t gas, so what would run the cars? There were no electric vehicles, either. The electrical grid was down, again, nothing to run the system. If we went on bikes, we’d be too obvious. Walking was the only choice. Our goal was to travel ten miles each day.

The first day we made it with little issues. We found an empty house that was still standing where we could safely spend the night. A small cabin set far back from the road and hidden by the trees. Most of the buildings by the road were burned down or wrecked by other means. The mutants loved to kill and destroy.

I woke up early the next morning having to pee and saw clouds of black smoke above me. Coughing, I shook Lavan. “Lavan, wake up, fire!”

I sat up. There was fire all around us. Lavan sat up and searched for an exit. We both lifted the bottoms of our shirts to cover our mouths.

Lavan grabbed a cushion off the tattered couch we had slept on and yelled at me over his shoulder. “I’m going to make a path through the side door. Have a gun ready!”

Keeping one hand up over my mouth, I pulled one of the pistols from the chest holster. Lavan picked up a cloth from the floor, was that a towel? He opened up the door, then crashed through the screen door. A path was open, but flames licked at his shirt. I ran after him. I saw three mutants. Nausea struck me at their hunched form, reddened eyes, and vacant expression. These things had once been human, had jobs, lived in homes, with hopes and dreams. Now? Now they were killing beasts. Passing Lavan, I took aim at the first, controlling my breathing and trying to slow the drum solo in my chest. I pulled the trigger.

The sound punched my ears and the recoil vibrated up my arm. I swung to the next mutant who was barreling towards me with a hitched gait. No time to aim; I took the next shot. His shoulder jerked, but he kept coming. I heard a blast from behind me as I adjusted my aim and shot again. The two mutants dropped to the ground.

Whipping my head, I checked the first mutant I’d shot at, but forgot to double check in my fear of the other two. He was crawling towards us. Lavan walked to him and shot his head at close range, a spray of blood blossomed out, hitting my shoes and pants.

I panted and coughed, clearing the last of the fear and smoke from my system. My arms slowly lowered, and my heart rate slowed as I checked each of the three mutants and scanned to see if more were coming. We had just made a lot of noise.

“I count three targets down. Clear. Zinnia?”

I managed to get air into my lungs. “Clear.”

Lavan wrapped arms around me from behind. “You did great. I know this was your first battle, love, you did great.”

I leaned back for a minute, soaking in his strength, then pulled away. Shaking my head, I dropped the gun’s magazine and replaced it. “Lavan, we’ve been over since you dumped me two years ago, before these diseases even happened. You can’t do this now…I just can’t.”

“I know, and I’m sorry. I was wrong then, and…I’m sorry.”

I tended Lavan’s burns, putting some lotion on then and bandaging his arms. Both our lungs hurt, but we had to move out. We had about ten miles to go and we’d be moving slower.

When the sun was past its zenith, the burns on Lavan’s shoulders and back began to bother him, so we took a break and ate lunch beside a small lake. It was late in the day, but there was a cool breeze, and the sound of birds told us we were probably safe. I changed his bandages, we ate some energy bars, and drank water. We rested, letting the soreness of the long march seep into the lush grass and blow away in the wind.

Once we were ready, we consulted the map to determine the last leg of our march. Just then, the birds stopped chirping and the wind stopped blowing. Even the lake seemed to freeze its calming murmur.

Lavan jumped up. “Zinnia, put the lake behind us, side to side, we can do this. Get your gun out. But be ready. We only brought so much ammo.”

I was ready this time. I did as Lavan had instructed during training. Relaxing my body, turning my emotions cold. These assholes were not going to take me by surprise again.

From the road, six mutants approached, hunched, arms out, snarling. They carried pieces of metal and wore helmets, as if they knew they needed protection. Somehow, they were learning, bonding, and getting more dangerous.

They seemed to growl louder as they dragged closer. Lavan started giving directions, aim to take down their shields, shoulders, faces, knees. “We need to stop them before they get here. Look at their muscles. They’ll be strong.”

When they were within my range, we began to shoot. Aim, breathe, pull the trigger. Feel the recoil and reacquire target. Repeat.

Not all of my shots hit their marks; their shields made it hard. We brought down four of them before the last two were on us, jumping on Lavan. They knew the bigger target. I couldn’t use a gun, not when I could hit him. I yanked out my knife.

The back of one of the mutants was to me. They must not have realized we had more than guns. I stuck my knife in his back and yanked it in and out several times, aiming for his spine. He twisted as he fell, a look of shock in his eyes. The other mutant was chewing something. My heart pounding and eyes barely able to focus, I was so crazed with fear, I saw that below Lavan’s chin was all red.

What?

I lunged forward with my knife and opened a line of crimson across the last mutant’s throat. He grabbed at the opening, falling back. Both mutants gurgled and moaned in the dust at my feet before going still and silent.

Trembling, I knelt by Lavan. “How can I save you?”

His eyes found mine and he shook his head, then the light dimmed.

I howled to the sky a goodbye. Inside my body things broke. I remembered the day he proposed and the day he’d changed his mind. He had been my life once. I didn’t love him now, but I had. Twice now this fucking disease had torn out my heart.

Time passed. I couldn’t wallow. I stood, cleaned and put away my weapons and started to walk. No longer feeling anything but determination, I felt sorry for any mutant who crossed my path.

It was late. Well past midnight, when I found the building. I had to break a window and crawl in. The bloody scrap on my leg from a glass shard focused me and felt good. The building was a morgue filled with dead bodies, too late to save themselves. I found the room; it was exactly where the plans said it would be. In the safe with the combination of his daughter’s birthday, was the heart-shaped locket. Inside the locket I found the cure.

The cure that would save everyone, everyone but the ones I loved.