Cured (27 page)

I turned the ladle upside down over a bowl, and the beans and rice slopped into it
.

“No. You don't understand me,” Dean said. Mrs. Tarsis sniffled and looked at him. The doctor sat up tall and locked his bright, hopeful gaze on my brother. “That's Lissa's mom. I don't think I can walk to the edge of town with her and then leave her to fend for herself. I'll take her somewhere safe. And then I'll come home.”

Dad stood up. “You don't know what you're saying,” he whispered,
walking to Dean's side. “We don't know anyone who has survived out there and lived to tell about it. The raiders rule! It's suicide!”

“That's my point. I can't let her walk into that! She will not survive alone!”

“But what if you
both
die?”
Dad argued
.

Dean pounded his fist on the counter. “I don't care! I am so sick of sitting here, doing nothing but
surviving
while all around, people are being massacred by the raiders! I am sick of standing by when I might be able to make a difference—sick of being part of the disease when I could be part of the cure. I'm strong! I'm healthy! What if I save just one life? That would be worth it to me! I would rather die knowing I did something right, than live knowing I am such a coward that I have to hide in my house for the rest of my life! That is no way to live.”

The house fell utterly silent. The doctor wiped his damp cheeks and leaned back in his chair. I looked from Dean to Dad to my mom, still sitting at the table. She had stopped crying. A tiny smile curved up the edges of her mouth, and her eyes shone with something I hadn't seen for a long time. They used to get that look in them when Dean made a good play in football or when I won first place at a 4-H competition. I hadn't seen my mother beam with pride in so long that I'd almost forgotten what it looked like
.

She stood from the table, walked around the counter, and threw her arms around her son. “Thank you,” she whispered in his ear. “I knew I raised you right.”

One hour later, I stood in the front yard and watched Dean walk away from my house for the last time. He turned back once, right before he and Mrs. Tarsis came to the bend in the road, and raised his hand in farewell. A smile danced on his face despite the fact that he might be walking to
his death, but that smile warmed me from the inside out. I raised my hand back at him and held it high until he was gone from view
.

I am staring at a face I have known since the day I was born. But I don't know it anymore, with its hard, cold expression and emotionless eyes. Who I am looking at is not my missing brother, Dean, but the man he has become. My throat tightens. I guess I've finally found out what happened to him. And now, more than ever, I wish I had never tried to find him.

“What's going on, Hastings?” someone yells.

My brother looks away from me, up to the roof. “I'm about to tell you,” he calls, his voice so familiar it stabs at my heart. “It seems there has been a small change in our scheduled event.” Men groan.

Perched in perfect stillness, I stare at my brother and wait for him to continue. Wait for him to say the change in the schedule is that he's going to set me free.

Dean's eyes lock on mine again, and he lifts his arm and points at me. “Someone helped this boy escape today.” His face hardens, and he takes a step closer. I can't help but wonder if he doesn't recognize me. Have I changed so much since he left? Does he not realize that it is his little
sister
hanging from a tree out here?

Slowly, eyes boring into me, he walks forward, black boots making small squelching noises in the wet grass.
Please recognize me
, I silently beg. If he recognizes me, he will find a way to let me go. I know that without a doubt. I know it deep down in my heart.

He walks to the middle of the courtyard. Stripes of light and shadow cover his face where the sun shines through the bare tree branches. He stops in front of me and I open my mouth to speak, but don't know what to say—he is staring at me like he has never seen me before, like I am a stranger.

“Dean,” I whisper. “Help m—”

“Shut up!” He yells it so loud my ears start to ring.

“But Dean—”

His shoulder muscles bulge beneath scarred skin and his hand flies into my face, crunching against my mouth before I can finish speaking. I spin in a fast circle, the rope biting into my wrists, my shoulders straining.

As I come full circle, I stare at Dean's retreating back, the way his shoulders roll with every step. Even his walk is familiar. Tears fill my eyes and I bite my tongue, trying to keep the tears from falling. Boys don't cry.

“This boy,” Dean yells, stopping just beyond the tree's broken shadow, “will not be fed to the dogs today.”

My head falls forward and I sigh with relief. I knew it. I knew he wouldn't let them kill me.

The raiders start screaming their protest and I look up, waiting to see what my brother does. Dean pulls a gun from his belt and shoots the sky, and the raiders quiet down. “We are
postponing the fight and spreading the word to all our brothers to come and see the event. Even our illustrious former leader is going to come,” Dean explains.

Wait.
Postpone?
I don't understand.

A name is spoken in quiet voices, but whether the raiders speak it in reverence or fear, I can't tell. The name makes my skin crawl.
Flint
.

“Flint will be here tomorrow, so we will postpone the feeding of this boy to the dogs until then. Unless . . .”

The raiders lean closer to Dean, their eyes intent on him. I hold my breath. “Unless what,” someone calls.

Dean looks at me and grins, but it isn't the same grin that used to light up his face. His mouth turns up at the corners, but his eyes darken and close to mere slits. “Unless someone would like to volunteer to take his place.” Behind Dean, Soneschen nods and his eyes sweep over the raiders on the roof.

Utter silence settles over the men. They look at each other like they have suddenly lost the ability to speak English and need someone to translate what my brother just said. And then, one by one, they start laughing. The sound grows, like a wave rolling in to shore, until it reaches an overwhelming pitch.

I look up at the roof and my eyes are instantly drawn to one person. He stands as still as stone in the midst of the laughing raiders. His mouth moves, two simple words I can't hear, and the raiders around him stop laughing. And then the raiders around them stop laughing. It spreads, this non-laughing, until all the raiders on the roof are silent once again, and all are looking at one person. Kevin.

Soneschen walks out into the courtyard until he is standing in the grass below Kevin, looking up at him. “Did you say something?”

Kevin nods. “I said, ‘I will.'”

“You will what?”

“I will take the kid's place,” he answers, head held high and shoulders firm.

Soneschen nods and looks at my brother, then me. I wonder if he is blind to the family resemblance. “It seems,” he says, his eyes locking on mine, “that Solomon has weeded out the one who loves you most.”

Ten minutes later, I stand in an empty room with a broken and barred window. It overlooks the courtyard. I have been told to watch. Told to see the fate that has been taken from me and given to Kevin. He won't die today, Soneschen assured me before he locked me in here. He is just giving Kevin a preview of tomorrow's death, so he can think about it and decide whether or not he
really
wants to take my place. If Kevin does, he dies tomorrow. For me. In my place. And if he doesn't, I will die tomorrow.

“Jack. Come to the window.” It is Soneschen's voice. My feet hardly work, dragging against the ground as I go to the broken window. Kevin is in the courtyard, walking beside Dean toward the tree. Walking beside my brother.

At the tree, Dean takes the rope I was bound with, which is still tied to the branch, and begins tying the dangling end to
Kevin's wrists. Kevin doesn't fight it, doesn't even look upset as he willingly holds his wrists out. While my brother binds Kevin, his lips barely move. After a minute, the rope is pulled taut and Kevin's stretched so tight he can barely stand on his tiptoes. Dean, with a quick glance at me, jogs to the glass doors leading into the building and goes inside.

Kevin hangs there, spinning in a slow arc, and nothing happens. My heart starts to pound as I stare at him, because I know I am waiting for something awful.

A dog howls and then barks. A man screams from somewhere inside the building. Kevin just dangles in sunlight slotted with shadow. Another dog starts barking, and I hear the sound of a door slamming.

Nothing happens.

I stare out the window at Kevin, waiting. And each second that passes, the air seems to get heavier, until I want to start screaming and kicking and punching. When I think I am going to die from waiting, the door Dean left through is opened and I see my brother look out. He props the door open and pushes a cage out—a huge kennel. The kennel is jumping and jolting from whatever is being contained inside.

Dean's muscles bulge as he takes a chain thicker than my wrist from the top of the kennel. He hefts a few feet of it back inside the building and attaches it to something. The other end of the chain leads inside the kennel.

Dean goes back into the building and then shuts the doors as much as he can, with only a few inches open where the chain comes out. And then the front of the kennel slowly begins to
rise up, like a miniature automatic garage door. Before the door has risen six inches, the animal inside shoves its head out, its white teeth snapping.

When the door is a little more than halfway up, the animal drags itself out and, without so much as sniffing the air, tears across the courtyard, dead grass flying from its hind paws, to the prey hanging from the tree. Kevin screams and flinches as the dog lunges for him. When the beast is mere inches from Kevin, the chain pulls taut with an audible clang, and the creature is jerked backward by its own momentum. I gasp and clutch the metal bars blocking the window, pressing my face between two of them.

The dog is a German shepherd with matted fur. It is the biggest German shepherd I have ever seen, with massive muscles in its neck and hind legs. It rolls to its feet, snarls, and walks toward Kevin until the chain is pulled tight again. It stands there for a minute, and I forget to breathe as I watch. When it lunges for Kevin a second time, I jump away from the window. It tries a third time to get to him, and then a fourth, scraping a hole into the ground where it digs its claws into the earth, but the chain holds it back every time. When it realizes it can't reach its prey that way, the creature sits and watches Kevin, as if trying to decide what to do next. Kevin, poised on the tips of his boots, loses his balance and starts spinning.

The movement is the invitation the dog needs. It lunges again, at the exact moment Kevin swings his legs to try and turn so that he can face the dog. The dog's teeth latch onto the hem of Kevin's pant leg and it yanks.

Kevin's arms and shoulders bulge and strain as he tries to pull away. The dog starts whipping its head from side to side. It digs its paws into the ground and gives one huge, hard heave. The pant leg tears, the dog tumbles backward, and Kevin screams.

He starts spinning again, and only one of his feet is on the ground. Something about the way he's hanging looks wrong. His left shoulder appears too narrow, and he's moaning.

I cover my mouth with my hand. And then I step away from the window. A wave of emotions thunders through me, knocking me to my hands and knees. If Kevin agrees to take my place, I will be set free, Soneschen said, and made to watch Kevin die. With that thought, my throat tightens and my eyes start to burn. A small circle of black seems to open inside of my stomach and slowly spread through me, until I am filled with so much darkness that I can hardly breathe. I press my forehead to the cold, gritty tile floor and start to sob.

No matter what happens tomorrow, I will lose something precious.

The door opens and someone is shoved inside. His feet tangle and he falls to the ground. I stare across the room at Kevin for half a minute, so shocked to see him that I don't know what to do. And then I whimper, crawl across the floor, and wrap my arms around him.

His bleary eyes focus on my face. “Jack.” His voice is a hoarse whisper. With the hem of my shirt, I wipe a smear of blood from his lip, and his right hand covers mine. “I'm cold,” he says, burrowing closer to me. He feels like a rock—cold and hard. A sheen of icy sweat coats his entire body and has soaked through his hoodie. He convulses once and then his jaw starts to rattle because his teeth are chattering. “My left shoulder's dislocated,” he whispers.

As gently as I can, I roll him onto his back and take his left
hand in mine. My throat constricts. Just below the sleeve of his sweatshirt, thick, bloody grooves are gouged into his wrist where the rope was tied. My gaze travels up his arm, to his shoulder.