The Cured by Deirdre Gould Page B

Henry lunged toward him, sliding across the plastic floor. Dave dropped the plate and stood up. He backed toward the door as Henry continued to yell.
    “I’ll come back when you calm down,” he said, pushing his glasses up with a shaky finger. One leg was already out the door and the cold air blasted through the small space and rattle the foil still sticking to the plate. “It’s all for your own good you know Henry. It’s just for a few weeks. Just till you’re better.” He tried to yell over Henry, but gave up at last, sliding out the door. A heavy scratching came from the outside as Dave locked Henry in.
    Henry just kept yelling, “Not safe!” and couldn’t seem to stop himself. This time, even though it was almost as dark as it had been the night before, Henry knew the damp on his skin was from crying. He couldn’t seem to stop that either. At last his shouts became one long roar, whether of warning or grief at his loss of control, or just rage at being left to die penned in the cold, even Henry couldn’t have decided. It lasted until he had worn himself out and he drifted into an aching, restless sleep.

Twelve
    Eight years later
     
     
    Henry could smell them even before he opened his eyes. The smell overrode any thoughts he might have had of dreaming it all. It was a putrid gassy mix of rotting meat and mildew that hung over him, pulsing, undeniable, and real.
    He tried to focus. What was the last thing he could remember before the reek? He had chased a man and a woman across a field. She was wounded. He had smelled the blood even over his own stench. Henry had been hungry. So hungry. He had ached with it, he still felt hollow, but the pain had subsided. He realized he could taste the rotting meat on his tongue as well as smell it and his stomach clenched, but there was nothing to vomit. When he thought of what he had meant to do to the woman, to the man too, if he caught them made his stomach cramp again, but whether it was from nausea or hunger he couldn’t tell. Have I shaken off my madness at last? He wondered.
    And what about the others? Henry had seen them from the corners of his eye as he ran across the field. They had been only competition then, and he would have eaten any one of them if they had been easier to catch. Were they still sick? Had he awakened only to be devoured by them instead? His muscles stiffened painfully as a weak splash of adrenaline hit them. Not enough energy to run now. If they didn’t eat him, he’d die of starvation anyway.
    Henry risked opening his eyes just a crack. A mountain of brown hair shuffled around about an arm’s length from him. He stopped breathing. It seemed to sway for a moment and then a thin brown arm reached out for something. The hand was missing its last two fingers and the arm was little more than a wrinkled stick. He opened his eyes a little more so he could see what it was trying to grab.
    Henry started to sit up as he saw the hand reaching for a pile of boxed food on a nearby table.
    “I wouldn’t do that,” growled a thick voice to his left. The hairy thing’s arm and Henry both froze. Relief wrestled with wariness in him. At least the man could talk and the mountain of hair could presumably understand. Not infected then. But what did they want with him? Why were they here? Henry turned his head. The man next to him was naked, except for the spackling of mud and grass on his skin. His gray hair tangled into his straggly beard and hid everything except one watery eye and a ragged socket where its mate ought to have been.
    “Oh please,” said the voice under the hill of brown hair, “I’m so hungry, I just want a little. Just a little. I’ll do whatever you want.”
    The hair began to sob and the gray man leapt out of his chair and knelt beside it, surprising Henry with his energy. “It’s not mine,” the gray man said, “I think it’s for all of us. I won’t try to keep it from you, but if you eat it, if we eat it, we’ll get