The Cured Read Online Free PDF Page B

like to bite.”
    Henry looked into the dark woods for a moment. He decided the television told the girl far worse things than he might. “Yeah, Marnie, I think they’re arguing about the sick people.” He looked down at her, the ebbing light turning everything sepia. She was an old photograph, a memory wrapped up on a different day and hidden for decades. “Don’t worry. The sick people won’t come here. We’re safe in the lodge.”
    Marnie banged her boots together for a moment, the snow curling off her toes. She looked up at him again. “I’m not worried. No one can find us in the deep, dark woods. But Henry, what if we get sick too?”
    Henry picked splinters off the back of his gloves. “We aren’t going to get sick Marnie.”
    “How do you know?”
    “Because you only get sick by being around other people. And we’re by ourselves, so we can’t get sick, right?”
    Marnie thought for a while. Henry stared at the dark woodshed as the sun sank behind the tall trees and the night hunched around the edge of the backyard. The little girl beside him tugged on his jacket sleeve.
    “But if I get sick– or Mom and Dad, you’ll take care of us, right Henry?”
    Henry smiled. “Sure, if you’ll take care of me if I get sick. Deal?” Henry stuck out his hand. Marnie shook it with a wet mitten.
    “Deal,” she said.

Six
    The news blared through the lodge’s thin glass as Henry stapled plastic over them. He’d been both surprised and relieved to find the large roll of plastic in the back of the wood shed with an old metal toolbox. However it ended up there, in a summer cabin, Henry was grateful. Elizabeth had tacked spare blankets around the inside of the frames, but he knew that wasn’t going to be enough. It was only late December and it was already uncomfortable inside. Dave insisted that Henry was wasting his time, that they’d all be back in the city before the month was out. But for all the time Dave and Elizabeth spent in front of the television, they didn’t see what Henry and Marnie saw.
    The little girl might not have noticed all the subtle clues that Henry had, but she was sensitive to the tones of the anchors and to the increasing amount of violent footage that reeled over the screen. Henry had asked Dave to shut it off for Marnie’s sake, but he hadn’t listened. Henry watched as the anchors became less and less varied. The channel had been sticking with one camera for a few days now, and Henry wondered if only one cameraman were left, or if it were simply stationary and unmanned. Interviews with doctors, police, even military happened less and less. Most of the footage was from viewers’ cell phones now, rough, unedited. The stories looped over and over, the same bits of information. And still Dave sat in a chair shushing his daughter and Elizabeth lay crying on the couch, hour after hour, day upon day.
    Henry tried to distract Marnie, feeling ashamed of his friends for neglecting their daughter. He tried to take her with him on his home improvement errands, but it was too cold today. She watched him from the other side of the blurred plastic. Henry flashed her a smile and then went on hammering a thin slat of wood over the plastic sheet. The news blared out at him. Henry pretended not to hear, but it seeped into his brain anyway.
    “ . . . symptoms include a lack of coordination when walking, slurred speech, low-grade fever and inability to focus. Those infected become highly irritable and eventually violent as their ability to communicate decreases. While this violence seems to be randomly directed at any other living thing in the area, the real danger is limited as the Infected don’t seem to use weapons, but will attack with their bare hands and–”
    Marnie’s face was pale and turned toward the screen and she had stopped coloring under the window. Henry whistled loudly to get her attention. Dave looked irritated but Marnie reluctantly turned away from the television to face