Cured (15 page)

The cupboards on the other side of the kitchen are filled with more supplies, like gallons and gallons of kerosene and extra blankets. I kneel down for a closer look. There's a box of diapers in there too.

I get to the farthest cupboard, nestled behind the table, and open it. This cupboard is different. It has a damp, musty smell. Shiny half-gallon cans of whole wheat flour with tan labels fill this cupboard from top to bottom. Visions of fresh-baked bread fill my imagination, and I wonder if I've overlooked any yeast. I take out a can of flour and pause. The musty smell has intensified.

I take out another can and find more cans of flour behind it. The flour is four cans deep, four cans wide, and three cans high. One by one, I take out all the cans of flour, stacking them onto the cement floor beside me, until the cupboard is empty and there are forty-eight cans of flour taking up most of the kitchen floor. With the cupboard empty, the musty smell is stronger, and the
cupboard seems cooler than any other part of the shelter. I stick my head in for a closer look and my hands start to tremble.

Backing out, I go to a supply cupboard, get a flashlight and insert batteries, and shine it into the depths of the cupboard. At the back is a door handle. I crawl inside. Placing my hand on the doorknob, I twist and yelp with surprise when it turns. The back of the cupboard swings away from me, opening into pitch-blackness.

Let Fear Outweigh Your Curiosity
. Mom started sewing that one minutes after she finished stitching a knife wound on Josh's thigh. He was curious whether or not a Fec would actually cut him if he didn't give the Fec something to eat. There was still blood under Mom's fingernails as she jabbed the needle and floss into a stained linen napkin.

I stand in a narrow cement hallway that smells like soil and rock and moss. The beam of my flashlight illuminates about thirty feet of darkness in front of me before it is swallowed by black. The hall is utterly silent and I stand still, wondering if I should explore. Wondering if I
dare
explore. Fear and curiosity are waging a battle inside me.

Taking a deep breath, I grip the flashlight in one hand, pat the gun at my belt with the other, and then start walking. My mother would be furious.

My feet scrape on the cement floor, and the damp cement walls throw the sound back at me. In several places, water is seeping through cracks in the walls. I trail my fingers over one of these drippy cracks. The wall is slimy with a nearly invisible sheen of moss. I wipe my slimy-wet hand on Kevin's pants and smirk. “You totally deserve that, Kevin,” I whisper.

As I continue along the narrow hall, my heart starts to pump harder. Every time my shoe scrapes cement, I whirl around and look back the way I've come, waiting for Kevin to appear out of the darkness and get me. But I don't stop walking because, for once, my curiosity outweighs my fear.

After a few minutes of walking, everything changes. The cement floor turns from a straight walkway to a twisting and turning path, and the cement walls are replaced with jagged rock. The ceiling disappears, and when I shine my flashlight up, it reflects off of rock high, high above.

I run my fingers over the jagged earth wall as I walk. There's a new sound here, a gurgling like boiling water. I take a step forward and icy water fills my shoe all the way to the crevasses between my toes and splashes up onto my borrowed pants. A narrow stream crosses the cement path before disappearing down a crack in the rock. I shine my flashlight at the source of the water and see a spring bubbling up out of the ground. Someone has built a small pool around the spring, trapping a decent amount of water, and there are pipes sticking into it.

“The source of Kevin's water?” My voice echoes and dances through the cave. I start walking along the cement path again—haven't taken three steps—when it begins to slant upward and
the air loses a bit of its mustiness. I follow the sloped path for a few minutes and then
bam
. I am up against a wall.

I shine my flashlight around and discover I'm in front of a wooden door braced with rusty metal, making it look like a metal and wood checkerboard. I place my hand on the knob and turn. It doesn't move.

“No!” I glower at the door. “You have to open!” I try the handle again and find it is stuck fast. Shining my light on it, I see a lock, so turn it. The lock clicks, I twist the handle, and the door opens. A gust of warmer, drier, wood-scented air hits me. I step through the door and shine my light around. My jaw drops open.

I am in a massive warehouse-size room with cement pillars every ten or so feet. They look like immense tree trunks that reach up to the smooth cement ceiling. There are rows and rows of wooden shelves as far as I can see, loaded with half-gallon tin cans labeled with tan stickers. I shine my light on the cans and start walking. There has to be a decade's worth of food here. At least!
Dehydrated beef. Dehydrated chicken. Soy beans. Pinto beans. White beans. Chili. Beef bouillon. Dehydrated clam chowder
. The types of food seem limitless. I come to a section of shelves with brick-size vacuum-packed yeast and almost cry. I could make hundreds of loaves of bread with a brick of yeast and the forty-eight cans of flour spread all over the kitchen floor.

I keep walking to the other end of the room and find a metal door with bright-red words painted on it:
ENTERING COMPROMISED ZONE
. I unlock it and step into the next room. A blast of even warmer air wraps around me, leeching the dampness from my skin.

I've entered a room filled with empty wooden shelves and broken glass bottles. Fancy, stained paper still clings to some of the shattered bottles. I crouch down and read one of the labels—
Chardonnay
—and frown. I'm in some freaky, trashed wine cellar and the door I've just come through is covered with the same wooden shelves that line the rest of the walls. I never would have known there was a door here if I hadn't opened it from the other side.

I take a big chunk of broken wine bottle and prop open the door, then keep going.

I come to yet another door and open it. I flinch and throw my arm up over my eyes. Sunlight burns against my eyelids. Peering through my lashes, I see a stairway leading up. I'm on the surface of the world again, where everything is wrong. Fear makes my legs heavy, as if they're trying to keep me underground, trying to warn me. I pause, close my eyes, and listen for any type of human sounds. My heart and my breathing are all I hear. My hand moves to my belt, and I remove my gun. With my finger on the trigger, I go up.

The light is so bright at the top of the stairs that I can't see anything at first. I press my palms over my watering eyes.

When my eyes adjust, I am shocked to be standing in a large room with an enormous intact window overlooking half-dead pine trees, and far below, the distant city. I am in a structure built on the side of the Rocky Mountains. The floors are rustic wood, the furniture is rustic wood and cracked leather. Dusty elk, moose, and deer heads are mounted on the walls, and the kitchen, to my left, has dusty granite countertops and stainless-steel appliances. The refrigerator still has scraps of paper stuck to it with magnets.

I walk to the fridge and pull a scrap of paper out from under a frog magnet. It's a grocery list scrawled in faded pencil. I put the list back under the magnet and open the fridge. It is empty,
as if someone cleaned it out before the food could rot in it. Same with the cupboards.

Leaving the kitchen, I find a flight of stairs that leads up. Framed photographs cover the stairwell walls, and I glance at them as I slowly ascend. They're school photos of a boy and a girl, from kindergarten on up until maybe middle school. And the boy has hair a few shades darker than copper, and eyes the color of the morning sky.

Upstairs, I find three bedrooms and two bathrooms. I pass the master suite and go into a small bedroom. It's a girl's room, with a pale pink quilt on a perfectly made bed, as if the girl who sleeps here is going to come home from school this afternoon, remove the three white throw pillows, and sleep in it. I step up to the bed and run my hand over the quilt, and my fingers leave stripes in the years' worth of dust that has settled on it.

The next room has a bed, a dresser, a closet, and a telescope pointing out a window that faces the city. A lacrosse stick hangs on the wall behind the bed's headboard, surrounded by first-place ribbons, medals, and plaques. I walk up to the wall and study a plaque—the name
Kevin Winston Emerson
is etched into the tarnished brass.

“Aha! So
here
's the real you,” I whisper, and read every single ribbon, medal, and plaque. They all have his name on them. Apparently he took first place a lot in lacrosse, and for some reason that tiny fact makes me feel like I know him a hundred times better. Like, just maybe, I can trust him. I run my fingers over his bed and pause. It isn't like the girl's bed. There is no dust on the faded red quilt.

I go to the closet and open the door. It's a deep walk-in closet with shelves on the left and bars with hangers on the right. The hangers hold filthy clothes that desperately need a washing. I run my fingers over a threadbare trench coat that has so much dried mud on it that it is stiff to the touch. Little granules of dirt fall off and sprinkle over the dusty wood floor. On a shelf above the clothes are other things—scarves, hats, and beanies, and grass and twigs from mouse nests.

I leave the closet and go to the chest of drawers and start going through them, through boys' socks, through boxer shorts that look way too small for Kevin but have his name written on the waistband in permanent marker. The next drawer holds lacrosse stuff, like cleats, a mouth guard, a jock strap, and grass-stained padding. They still smell faintly of grass and sweat. The bottom drawer isn't filled with clothes but with newspaper clippings, yellow and faded. I kneel on the hardwood floor and take one out. The headline says:

I get two more clipped articles:

And:

The article has a picture with the text. The boy has auburn hair, bright eyes, and a wide smile. Kevin. The girl has the same hair and eyes but looks several years younger.

I put the clipped articles back into the drawer and go to the telescope. It isn't pointed at the sky, the obvious place, but slightly north of the city. I put my eye to the lens, careful not to change its position, and take a look.

My heart leaps into my throat, and I force myself not to flinch. What I am looking at is miles away, but it still makes me want to run home and hide under my bed. I am staring at raiders. Lots and lots of raiders. They're gathered in a Walmart parking lot, wearing guns and camouflage, standing around five four-wheelers. Several are holding chains attached to big dogs, as if they're about to go hunting. But hunting for what?

I take an unsteady step away from the telescope. I know exactly what they're going to hunt. Me. And Fo, Bowen, Jonah, Kevin, and the beast-child. We need to get away before they find us, which means right now.

“Where are you, Fo?” I whisper, glancing at my watch. It is half past three. Kevin has been gone for nearly eight hours. I press my eye back against the telescope and slowly start moving it toward the foothills, toward what I think is the direction of the underground shelter. Slowly, methodically, I move it back and forth, scanning the area. A flash of movement catches my eye and I jump back from the shock of it. Pressing my eye once more to the scope, I brace myself and take a look.

My muscles relax as Kevin's camouflage ball cap and face bob into view, followed by Fo and the others. They're close, and
they're fine. I sigh with relief. And then it hits me. I'm supposed to be imprisoned down in the shelter, not rummaging through Kevin's underwear drawer and newspaper clippings. I turn from the scope and quietly hustle through the house, down two flights of stairs, and into the wine cellar. I pass from the wine cellar into the dark, musty food storage room, turn on my flashlight, and close and lock the wine room door behind me.

Digging my toes into the cement floor, I start running.

I sprint to the end of the underground room and lock the door behind me.

The cave is cold and clammy, and the air rushing past my face coats it with cool moisture. When I get to the spring, I leap over it and keep going. At the long cement hall, I increase my pace, pumping my arms, measuring each breath like I'm at home on the treadmill again. It feels just like running in place. Distance loses meaning as nothing around me changes, and I might as well
be
on a treadmill.

The end of the cement hall comes abruptly into view and I dig my shoes into the ground and skid, putting my arms up to absorb the impact with the wall. I crawl through the cupboard and into the shelter's kitchen. Without bothering to stand, I begin shoving cans of flour into the cupboard, one at a time. I've
put sixteen cans away when I hear the muffled sound of voices. My hands start to tremble. I stack the flour faster. When I hear the
thunk-thunk
of feet on a ladder, there are nine cans left. I cram them into the cupboard. The door in the other room opens as I slam the cupboard shut.

“Jack? Hello?”

I slide the table and chairs back into place and then lean against the counter with my arms folded over my chest. Kevin, brow furrowed, peers through the kitchen door at me.

“Hi there,” I say, and pretend to stifle a yawn. I am trying not to pant despite the fact that my body wants me to gasp for air. His face softens and a smile dances in his eyes. And then he looks me up and down, his gaze lingering on my pants—his pants. “I'm drying my clothes. I hope you don't mind that I borrowed something to wear,” I explain. I swipe a hand over my hot, sweaty forehead and wipe it on his pants.