After the Cure - Deirdre Gould (best fantasy books to read txt) 📗

He held her arm gently so she would look at him. “Can we agree on that?” he asked quietly.

Nella nodded. Of course, he was right. What good could they do with an unverified piece of information? They'd have to wait until morning to find out more.

“Will Dr. Pazzo know where her lab is?”

“Possibly, but I'm going to call in a favor with a friend in the military police headquarters. They've been able to pull up old addresses and driver's licenses for a little while now. He won't ask questions and I don't want to wait until my client feels like telling us.” His face was grim. He got up from the table, but turned back toward her. “Listen, don't leave all right? I mean, you're free to go where and when you like of course- I just, that is, I would appreciate it if you wait for me. I don't like the idea of walking out onto that dark parking lot alone just now.” He pulled the disc from the television and placed it in his jacket pocket.

“Sure,” she said, grateful that he felt the same way she did, “I'll check on Ann and meet you at the entrance.”

She was done with Ann far sooner than she expected and waited nervously near the heavy glass entrance door. The combination of the aching pain in her bitten hand and impotent terror made Nella rock on her heels and fight not to cry. Mr. Courtlen came up behind her and she tried to pull herself together.

He looked out at the parking lot and sighed. “I don't know about you Dr. Rider, but I've never needed a drink more than I do right now.” He smiled down at her.

“Thank God,” she said, venturing a shaky grin, “I hate drinking alone.”

He laughed and opened the door.

“Come on,” she said, “I think I have a bottle or two stashed at my apartment. And if it's okay with you, I'd rather not be sneaking into bootleg clubs today.”

“Sure, but we're taking my car.”

Nella shook her head, confused. “Why? I'm not drunk yet.”

“No,” he said and reached into his pocket as they walked toward the cars. He pulled out a bottle of aspirin, “but you desperately need these and don't pretend you don't, I could see you wincing all afternoon.”

Nella's eyes went wide. “Where did you?”

“Relax, I didn't steal them. The apartment I was given, it must have been a hypochondriac's house. They didn't clean anything out before they assigned it to me. She had literally hundreds of bottles of various drugs and cleaning products. I carry around one of the bottles because they are so useful for trading.”

He shook out a dose into her hand. She stopped and looked at the smooth, gleaming aspirin in her hand, like tiny teeth. “I don't like to owe anyone,” she said doubtfully.

“Well, I think a bottle of something stashed in your apartment should cover it,” he laughed, “Don't worry about the car, I'll pick you up in the morning and drive you back. Besides, I want us both to be here as early as possible tomorrow. I don't like sitting on this secret. Not at all.”

“No, I'm not comfortable with it either. Is your friend going to get back to you soon?”

“He said the old address should be in the university's record, so he expects to have something for us tomorrow.” Mr. Courtlen opened the passenger side door for Nella. “No more about that today. Let's let the world take care of itself for one more day.” Nella swallowed the tiny tablets and slid into the dark car. It was cool after the warm prison and it smelled as clean as Mr. Courtlen had. Nella closed her eyes for a moment as Mr. Courtlen got in and started the car.

“You okay?” he asked, then quickly added, “I mean besides the obvious.”

She chuckled. “Sorry, I always do this for a second at the end of a long day.”

He smiled and took his hands off the wheel. He sat back and closed his eyes, crossing his long arms over his chest. She smiled and leaned back on the headrest, her face turned toward him. He took a deep breath and let it out.

“You're right,” he said, “That is much better.” He leaned forward and shifted into gear. “Now let's go get snookered. Don't fall asleep! You have to tell me how to get there.”

Nella laughed. She struggled to put the day out of her head and searched for something to distract them. “By the way,” she said, grinning, “We can't make rum out of pineapples and bananas. The best we can hope for is weak wine.”

“What? Not acceptable. One of us is going to have to switch our plans. We can't be wine runners after all.”

“You're going to want to turn here. We could be wine runners I suppose, but I think people would pay more for rum.” Her breath was light and easy again, and though she knew the aspirin couldn't have hit her that fast, her hand ached less.

Mr. Courtlen slowed to a crawl in front of a brightly lit mansion. “Woah, is that what I think it is?”

Nella was surprised. “You mean you've never been through here before? That's the house the government gave to Dr. Carton after he released the Cure.”

“Have you seen him?”

“No, no one has seen him. He's very private, never comes out at all.”

“I wonder what he does in there all day?”

Nella shook her head. “I don't know. It must be just as hard to be seen as the savior of humanity as it is to be seen as its destroyer.”

Mr. Courtlen let the car pick up speed. “I wonder where either of them thought they would be by now.”

“I thought I'd be doing research at a lovely, well funded facility by now.”

“And I thought I would be representing divorcees with deep pockets. I barely finished law school though.”

“I never quite finished med school. I still had a few months of residency left. But since there are so few doctors left, I guess no one thought it mattered so much.”

They were silent a while, rolling down the empty streets.

“Is there a lot of demand for lawyers now? Do you do other cases?”

“I know there are some for looting or when someone gets out of hand in a fight. But mostly people seem to forgive small things. And no one seems interested in committing the big crimes anymore. Besides, those cases are all taken by more experienced lawyers then me.”

“Did Dr. Pazzo ask for you to represent him?”

Mr. Courtlen shook his head. “No. I was the only one willing to represent him. I wasn't even practicing law when the preparations for the trial began.”

“What were you doing?”

“Actually, I was assigned to repair power lines as the City expanded. The labor department thought I couldn’t speak. I guess that it was a common thing with Cured, because they just threw me in the manual jobs pool without really worrying about it.”

“More common than you’d think,” Nella said grimly. “What made you decide to represent Dr. Pazzo?”

“I saw on the news that there was a long line of people vying for positions in the prosecution and that as of yet, Dr. Pazzo and Ann Connelly were not represented at all. I was very angry then, at what had happened. You have to remember that this trial has taken years to prepare for. I had just been Cured and I didn't think I could live much longer with what I had done. I was angry and I wanted to know why this had happened. I know enough about law to know that the prosecutor and the public were never going to know the whole truth. Never.” Mr. Courtlen held up one long finger. “But the defense would. As much as there was to be known, the defense lawyers would know. I thought if I knew why, then I could accept it. That it would make sense.”

“Some things are too terrible to make sense,” said Nella sadly, “Some things just are and have no reason or sense behind them.”

“So I am slowly discovering,” Mr. Courtlen sighed.

They were quiet until they arrived at Nella's apartment building. She led him up the narrow staircase past all the silent doors that she'd never even knocked on. She sighed with relief as they walked into her apartment. He stood a little self consciously just inside the doorway.

“Look,” she said smiling and turning on a few lamps, “We're both exhausted. Don't stand on ceremony, just get comfortable, because I'm not going to wait on you.”

He laughed and she immediately felt better. “Oh all right, I guess I'll make you dinner, but only because I'm hungry too.” She pulled a bottle of amaretto and a half bottle of rum down onto the counter. “Well, you look like a scotch man, but unfortunately, beggars at the end of the world can't be choosers.”

“It's better than anything I have,” he said, already opening cupboards in search of glasses, “I'll just close my eyes and pretend I'm taste testing in New Guinea.”

Nella pulled a box of produce from the refrigerator. The Farm had a good harvest week so she had plenty. She did pine for premade meals from time to time, and today was definitely one of those days.

Nella felt the stiff collar of her shirt scrape across her neck and realized how much the combination of pain and stress had made her sweat. “Uh- Mr. Courtlen, excuse me for a minute, I'll be back in a minute.”

“All right,” he said amiably, “but if we're going to be drinking buddies you might want to start calling me Frank.”

She flashed him a startled smile. “Well, then you'd better call me Nella. Enough with the Dr. Rider crap.”

“Well, especially since I now know you played hooky in med school.”

She laughed and went to change. When she returned, clean and refreshed, Frank was flipping pages in a cookbook. “How many of these do you have?” he asked.

Nella blushed. “It's kind of a hobby. I like to collect them.”

He looked up at her. “Books or cookbooks?”

“Cookbooks. It's rare to find a recipe I have all the ingredients for these days, but I like to remember when I used to.” She blushed more deeply. “I look through the recipes and imagine cooking a huge feast someday for my friends with exotic dishes.”

“Like tropical fruit.”

She smiled. “Like tropical fruit yes, but also things like chocolate and cake with finely milled flour instead of the stuff with pebbles in it like we have now.”

“It's so odd to think that just a few thousand survivors have run out of those things so quickly isn't it?”

“Oh,” she replied, “I think there is more out there, probably just a few miles away, but it is in the Infected zone and even the best scavenger teams aren't allowed past the military's cleared points.”

He looked steadily at her. “You