A Desperate Cure

Summary: An unnatural disaster prompts the government to engineer a serum. When a strange epidemic threatens a burned planet, three unlikely heroes will learn their own worth.

Disclaimer: All characters original and fictitious. May not be copied or borrowed.

I.

AT least once in every planet’s lifetime, there comes a point where the groans of man and beast align. The arduousness of existence becomes too much to bear for all animate creatures, and the cacophony of misery echoes in the caverns and eddies and swirls in the oceans, and the entire universe holds its breath. It is in those brief moments that heroes are recognized.

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Martin Caldwell hated his name. He had been born approximately six months prior to The Fires, and the British Assistance Cooperative had been the first to bring relief to his neighborhood. Every unattached child living within a fifteen block radius of the British embassy had received a certificate of citizenship. Older children were allowed to keep their names, but were given the family name of the rescuer who had found them. For about six weeks, the younger children were housed at central facilities, and effort was made by whatever means possible to contact living relatives. It was a huge undertaking, and anyone with training in the medical, child-care, or early education fields was conscripted to assist. At the end of the six-week-period, there remained close to sixteen hundred unclaimed babies. It was imperative that the children be placed with families, as many of them were learning to talk, and now had no names. First option was opened to the childcare workers within the facilities, but resources were limited in the wake of the destruction. Most families were unable to support themselves, let alone additional children. In the end, two of the facilities were turned into permanent orphanages.

Martin had been one of the lucky ones. Luck, of course, is relative.

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It was a cool day in October when Delia Alice Manhalter wore her mother’s dress and her grandmother’s veil and swore to be nurse, maid, laundress, seamstress, driver, valet, and chief cook and bottle-washer to Harold Bertrand Caldwell. Harold was twenty-four years old, and head cashier at the Waldbaum’s on Deane Street. He was the illegitimate son of a landowner in Glasgow, and had lived on his own in the States since he was 16. That was not to say that he’d ever lived with his father in Scotland. His mother raised him in a small, dingy flat in Manchester, her liver full of gin and her heart full of the anger of a jilted lover. Little Harry absorbed mean like a sponge.

He’d bounced around from Chicago to Miami to Kennebunkport, Maine; stopping in between in small towns over the eastern seaboard. By the time he settled in New York and looked into getting a legal job with real prospects, he’d made and lost bigger fortunes than ever his father had played with. He had six thousand four hundred thirty two dollars and seventy seven cents in his duffel bag, wrapped in a holey undershirt and shoved beneath two pairs of equally ratty underpants, a pair of socks, and a pristine white shirt when he stepped off the bus at Port Authority. Two days later, he had three hundred twelve dollars and forty two cents in the back of an empty drawer in a dirty room with linoleum floors above a used clothing store in the Lower East Side. He jumped the turnstile on a Monday afternoon during rush hour, picked up a wrinkled, torn newspaper from the seat of the train, and flipped it over, reading it back to front. He found the address of the Waldbaum’s in an advertisement, and walked bravely into the store. He told the manager he was an immigrant; that he’d work hard. He was very kind, truly deferential in the way of the calculating and heartless. The manager, Sy Klemens, had just lost his own son in a car accident, and his wife blamed him for not changing the bald tires. Tires were expensive, and how could he know it would rain the night of the school dance? Mr. Klemens was quite ready to accept a bit of a risk for the sake of a chance at redemption.

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Harold met Delia on a Friday evening. It was about six forty-five when Mr. Klemens asked him to come to the front, and Harold tossed a head of lettuce to Johnny, the retarded produce boy, and walked to the office. Johnny watched the lettuce as it approached, and when it hit him in the face, he fell backward, knocking over a display case of Pepperidge Farm croutons. The noise was considerable, as Johnny flailed his arms and flapped his legs, ineffectually trying to gather the boxes and his wits and stand on his own two feet. Harold never blinked, even when one of the boxes skittered across the floor and hit him in the boot. Arriving in the office, he assumed his subservient grin, and put on his best Scottish accent. Mr. Klemens didn’t leave a whole lot of room for responses. He was a tall man, not very big, but his flapping clothes hung on a large frame, a man who once had been paunchy and round and jolly but had simply wasted away as time and struggle and, most recently, grief, took the stuffing out of him. His voice, however, had retained its resonance, and his gentle requests were anyone else’s booming orders. Harold began working on the register at seven ten.

The Breeghen Street bus passed the corner of Deane Street at seven fifteen. Delia got off the bus in her threadbare coat and serviceable brown pumps, holding her hat on her head against a sudden gust of wind. She went straight to the produce department, stepped neatly over a stray box of Pepperidge Farm croutons, and began selecting tomatoes. Johnny walked over to her, and in his own clumsy way, offered to help. Delia looked at Johnny for a moment. She had had a long day, and honestly didn’t feel like being bothered today. But Johnny had been talking to vegetables all day, and something else about him was worn, tired, like a dishrag in the refrigerator door handle. Her face softened, and she said gently, “I will need some lettuce, Johnny. Could you get that for me?”

“Yes, ma’am, Miss Delia. Yes, ma’am.” He rocked off with his peculiar gait, one leg cocked at an angle as though he were not sure the ground would still be there by the time his foot connected with it again. “Lettuce, lettuce, lettuce for Miss Delia… Miss Delia’s lettuce…,” he muttered to himself.

Delia smiled to herself. Making Johnny happy was so easy, it almost made her sad. All he wanted to do was help. Holding bags of tomatoes, cucumbers, and a lone radish, she walked over to Johnny. “So what have you picked for me, Johnny?”

“I got two lettuces, Miss Delia. This one’s the greenest,” he said, holding a small head of lettuce in his left hand, “but this one’s the biggest. You didn’t say this time.”

Delia reached her hand out to the small lettuce. “You’re right, Johnny, I didn’t. I’m sorry. It’s only me eating it, so the small one is fine. I much prefer it green, anyway. “ She held the lettuce in the crook of her arm, then looked closer at Johnny’s face. “Are you hurt?”

Johnny’s face took on a shadow of fear. “No, no, Johnny’s fine. Johnny’s fine.” Delia didn’t want to push. “Ok, Johnny.” She turned to go, but she couldn’t resist… “Johnny, where’s your friend? Isn’t he working today?”

“He works in …th-th-the front now. The front.”

“Oh, all right. Well, good bye, Johnny. “

“G-g-good b-bye, Miss De-e-elia.”

Delia went to the butcher’s case and selected a pair of lamb chops, and then went to check out. Two registers were open, but one line was rapidly and grumblingly disintegrating and joining the other. Delia looked to see what was wrong, and realized that there was a new and very slow cashier at the register. Not minding the extra few minutes, she went intentionally to his line. She watched him as she waited behind the current customer. Strong, clean fingers deliberately turned each item to find its price tag, and piercing blue eyes focused on the register keys. Delia recognized the nametag on his apron, and wondered if Johnny missed the handsome foreigner. Maybe that accounted for his odd reaction.

The woman on line ahead of her wished Harold a good day in a most acidic tone and stalked off to the door.

“And t’ye as well,” Harold answered, his voice quiet, but modulated just too sweetly to be sincere.

“Hello,” Delia said. “I see you’re out of vegetables and on to money now.”

“I’m shorry, hav’we met?” Harold could really pour on the accent when it seemed it might get him something.

“Well, no, not personally. Johnny told me about you.”

“Johnny?” Harold’s face was blank.

“The young man in produce? He was stacking lettuce when I walked in.”

“Oh, Johnny! Yesh, yesh of co-urse.” Harold knew he was drowning, and quickly changed the subject. “I guess I’m a wee bit too shlow for ever’one’s taste here.”

“That’s all right, I’m not in any hurry. They’ll come round, they’re just busy.”

“Ah, well, we’re all done here. Sheven dollars and thirty sheven shents, please.”

“What? Oh, yes, of course.” She opened her purse, pulled out a neat leather wallet, and passed him a ten-dollar bill.

Harold made her change, and handed her the paper bag of groceries. “Enjoy your shalad.”

“Why thank you, Harold.”

“And what might your name be?”

She looked back. “Oh, excuse me! I’m Delia.” A sudden flush crept up her cheeks, and Delia bent her head, letting her hair swing forward to cover her blush. “Well, have a good night.”

“We’ll shee you again, then, Delia!” he called after her, watching the sway of her hips as she fairly ran through the door. Harold had decided by seven thirty-five that he would make Delia his wife.
Harold and Delia had a good life together, companionable and trustworthy, for about fifteen days. Harold was a con man from the start, but this was the longest he’d ever had to keep up his act, and the closest contact he’d ever had with his mark. Delia was a good target, willing even, but there came a point where even Harold’s assumed Scottish accent wouldn’t get him out of her disfavor and then he decided to try a new tactic. Harold decided to become violent.