The Cure

The Cure for every disease had finally been found. Any sickness, all pain, every injury. It all vanished. But the price for the Cure had been heavy. Avery blinked slowly as she leaned against a filthy hospital bed. Through half-closed eyes she stared at the dead bodies around her, wondering when she’d be next. If you asked Avery, the Cure wasn’t worth it.

Avery ran her forearm over her damp, warm forehead. Her thin, pale blue hospital gown hung loosely around her skinny figure. Sweat beaded her clenched fists as she gripped the bed rail. Feeling dizzy and too weak to hold herself up, she eased herself down and laid on the ground. The coolness was a breath of relief, and a simultaneous agony. As she touched the floor, Avery’s skin burned, and a stinging pain covered her whole body.

Suddenly a coughing fit seized her. She was slammed against the floor, unable to breathe as she hacked up mounds of pink, bubbling foam. Soon, this sickness would kill her, just as it had killed almost everyone else in the quarantine building. She scooted away from the mess on the floor, then wiped the slime from her lips. Exhausted, she laid the side of her head against the floor and studied the brown package at the other end of the room.

The sooner she got to the package, the better. She didn't know exactly what was inside, but she knew it had been left here for a purpose.

Avery didn't even know a box could even be delivered to the abandoned quarantine hospital. The white building was so far out, it would be impossible to sneak anything in or out. For a package to be delivered directly to her, it had to be important. This left her with an important question. Why would anyone send a box to the people who would be dead within hours?

The first reason Avery came up with was to deliver medicine. Perhaps the doctors had found a cure for the Cure. Medical technology had discovered the Cure, would it be bad to hope that they had successfully found a treatment to reverse it? Did she dare to wish that they had jumped every hoop in order to deliver medicine to her, and the others who were dying around her? Was it at least plausible that they were trying to reverse their mistake, even if they would only be able to save a few people?

Though the Cure had been designed to help people, no one could deny that the intentions of the drug were not wholly pure. From the beginning, the drug had been worth trillions of dollars. People were way too greedy to let that amount of money slip through their fingers. If anyone learned that if the Cure could turn on people, and kill them instead of helping them, it would probably tick some people off.

Avery coughed again, foam oozing from between her cracked lips. Everything stank. It stank of flesh rot and blood and infection and sweat. The floors, ceilings and walls that were once a perfect white had become greasy and discolored from it all. She placed her forearm in front of her, horizontal to her body, and with the other hand planted at her side, she shakily tried to lift herself from the floor.

Determined, she shoved her knee forward, her hair swinging past her ears. Avery knew she didn't have enough strength to walk. Instead, she began to crawl, breathing heavily as she pushed her body forward. Her limbs felt like they were being dissolved by acid, turned to goo from the inside. Her thin-skinned knuckles began to bleed as she crawled across the floor.

As far as Avery knew, the Cure had been designed to target the blood, the life in every human body. Ever since the Cure turned, whenever she accidentally cut herself, she bled the pinkish-white liquid. She was fairly sure that was literally her blood now, the junk her heart pumped into the rest of her body. Now her traitorous lungs filled to put air into her blood, and her heart beat to pump toxins through the rest of her body. It was too easy to wish that her heart would just stop beating. Then her pain would finally end.

In agony, she crawled to the package. Avery wouldn’t put it past anyone to send her to her death. Or rather, send her death to her. There had been no survivors since the Cure turned, and it became apparent that once the Cure took hold of the heart, the victims were already dead. In all honesty, she could imagine it would be much easier to exterminate the infected area, killing both the people and diseases. The disease wouldn’t spread, and the people inside would no longer suffer. Avery had no doubt that there were people cruel and powerful enough to make that happen. She suddenly felt guilty of the dead that surrounded her. No one had come to save them. She winced and looked away.

But perhaps people would not be that cruel. The Cure had originally been designed to help people, to cure everything from a bee sting to cancer. So maybe it was possible that whatever was in the package was something that would help her.

She was seized by another coughing fit, chest jerking, she hacked up piles of foam. After an eternity, the coughing fit slowed, she realized she was running out of time. If she didn't get to the package, she would die. She probably only had a few more hours. If she got to the package, she still had a chance. Avery crawled towards it, and her whole body was burning.

Avery dragged herself a little further towards the package. When she finally reached the box, she pulled it towards her. Clumsily she dug her fingers under a flap of cardboard and tugged, trying to ease the flap out of the box.

She pushed the box on its side so that she could pull the wings out more easily. Her nails, brittle and chipped, scratched at the cardboard. She laid there for what felt like hours, picking at the box, her strength waning. At last the box came undone, and she pushed the wings back, tipping the box toward her to empty the contents. Finally, she was able to pull out a bundle, wrapped in paper to keep the contents from breaking. The paper rustled as she rubbed her thumb into the paper, feeling a smooth, round surface inside.

As Avery peeled the paper away, she found a small glass bottle, and stared into a blurry reflection of herself. Inside the bottle was a thin, clear liquid. Was it a cure, or a poison? What if it did nothing at all?

To calm herself, she tried to take a deep breath, and ended up choking and coughing instead. The coughing fit was the worst she had ever experienced. Mercilessly, it held her down.

The fit did not stop. Between gasps, she managed to unscrew the bottle. Her chest felt as if she was being stabbed every second. She rolled onto her back, shaking, coughs growing worse as her vision went black. She shook violently as she brought the bottle to her lips.

Still unable to breath, Avery fumbled with the bottle until she finally managed to swallow some of the liquid. She continued to gasp as she lay on the white floor, shaking, waiting for something to happen. After a moment, the terrible cough slowed and the pressure on her chest faded. Eventually, she felt all her pain slip away, and vanish. Then she stared up, seeing only white, as her coughs finally ended.