Chương 173: Day One Hundred And Seventy-One

Dear Diary, Sometimes, when it really counts, people surprise you. Once in a while, they even do it in a good way. So, with nothing else for my brain to do, I worked out the math. About three hundred Senior Cadets, all of whom can Cure now.

Apparently Hero training works the old Mana muscles, because unlike Sister Siobhan, who can cure one an hour if she pushes herself, and Doc DeLeon, who can do two a day, our Senior Cadets can cure an average of five before they're tapped, and only need an average of an hour to recover enough to do another five. The hundred or so Freshman Cadets we've got can manage about half that many, and take twice as long to recover. Call it one an hour.

Most of them really can't go more than twelve hours of doing that before they need to have twelve hours of down time. We learned that the hard way. Carruthers, of all people, turned out to have a stupid amount of Mana and recovered it pretty quick, too. His team was doing a bang-up job of clearing out Market Street, the one in Philly. His team told me he'd been looking a little ragged and woozy after pushing down the street all the way around the clock. Then, right in the middle of a Cure, he collapsed.

Sister Siobhan tells me he's still in a Healing Coma. If he's still there when we get past this, I'll have to do something about that. At any rate, that's about nineteen thousand Cures in a day. Round it up to twenty thousand a day, because late yesterday one of the Universities on the far side of the Schuylkill sent over a gaggle of Healers and Trainees who can Cure.

Not a lot of them, and each one only adds a bit, but between the lot of them they can do a thousand a day; the Marshall shuffled things around so they were on teams with Heroes and Cadets, since folks were more willing to open doors when they see the red jackets. The Marshall approved of my treatment of Peter. There's half a dozen folks in stocks where I can see them in the park in the middle of the Boulevard. I'd say Peter has the same amount who joined him, but that would be a lie. He's dead.

The Drivers made sure he didn't die of exposure or starvation, but some time after dark last night someone snuck over and slit his throat. Just another death I'm ultimately responsible for. McCann posted some Cured Teamsters around the stocks this morning. Turns out running this kind of massive operation has more in common with keeping all the commerce in a City moving than it does with running an army.

His house got cleared late last night, and he's been working with the Marshall since then, letting duBois take a break without us losing our coordination. For what its worth, every Teamster we've cleared since then has Volunteered. So we've got an endless supply of muscle, for what that's worth. They're the ones that caught the guys breaking quarantine to make a quick profit. The ones in the park in front of me don't have Teamsters watching them. They don't need it. I'm here and can see them, after all.

So, all told the rest of the City's Healers are Curing about twenty thousand a day now. I only can do around seventy five hundred a day myself; if I try to go faster I screw up the Cure. It's a little complex. I've stopped Assessing the Volunteers, though. Almost all of them are infected, and reading the results of Assess is just too much for me at the moment. Around noon, I heard Sister Siobhan come out after her lunch break.

"Tabitha?" Cure, Heal, Cure, wave.

"What's up, Sister?" She took my right hand, since my left moved more or less constantly through the motions of Cure and Heal. Pressed something into it.

"Eat." Cure, Heal, Cure, wave. Looked down to see a foot-long loaf of dark Dining Hall bread with a chunk carved out, some stuff shoved into it, and the bread crust slapped back over the top to keep the stuff inside.

"Thank you." Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site. She stepped past me, pulled the next pair out of line to work on herself. When she finished she looked over to me.

"It doesn't eat itself, Tabitha." Cure, Heal, Cure, wave. Something related to smile stretched across my face.

"That's what she said." Most people were too far away to hear me, I guess, especially with the wind kicking up and blowing snow around, but a few of the Volunteers in the line chuckled. The next Infected in line actually laughed, until they doubled over coughing. Cure. Heal. Cure. wave. Laughing woman hugged me, laughing, more than a bit of Hysteria laced through it.

"Please go to the desk, ma'am, there are others waiting in line." Cure, Heal, Cure, wave. The Sister scooped another pair out of line.

"Tabitha, you really ought to eat it before it gets cold." Hell, it worked before.

"That's what she said." More snickers, although the Infected didn't laugh this time. Too out of it, his Volunteer was just carrying him. Cure, Heal, Cure, wave. The guy started coughing up phlegm, and his Volunteer guided him off to the side where he could clear the crap out of his lungs without getting it on anybody else or holding up the line.

"Tabitha, Isnomi helped make that. If you don't eat it this instant, I'm going to go tell her, and she'll cry because her Mama won't eat the food she worked so hard to make." Lacking any kind of coherent response to that, my right arm moved on it's own to shove the sandwich in my mouth before I could come up with another snappy comeback. Not half bad. Turkey, or chicken, or some kind of bird. Salt. Some kind of vegetable. Cheese, lots of cheese holding the whole thing together.

I suspected it had started out melted, but by now it had frozen kinda solid. Cure, Heal, Cure, wave. I masticated it until I could swallow, curing the next few sets of Infected and Volunteer while working my way through the rest of it. Someone in line down by the park fell.

"Stop." Step, Cure, Heal, Cure, Step, "Go." Something tore deep inside me, but I didn't have time for that. It would heal, it always did. Cure, Heal, Cure, wave. The Sister walked over to stand beside me, opposite where the cured would pass by to head to the Marshall, or McCann, or whoever was manning the volunteer desk at the moment. I'd told them to move it inside last night, but they didn't listen to me. Stubborn fuckers.

"Tabitha, you realize that man had just slipped and fallen on the ice?" Cure, Heal, Cure, wave. I shrugged.

"Takes longer to check." I realized something.

"Did you just Cure four people in a row?" She made some weird sound somewhere between a gasp and a hiccup before answering.

"No. The Volunteers weren't infected. I did Cure both of the ones they escorted, though." I could hear the blush in her voice.

"It seems that all this practice has paid off. Not only has my Cure skill apparently increased, but I've more Mana to spend now too." Cure, Heal, Cure, wave. I loosed something between a bark and a laugh.

"Good training." A warm weight settled over my back, one I recognized without looking.

"Hey, Kitten. Taking a break?" She shook her head, her hair tickling my ass a little where the long pony tail she'd taken to wearing brushed against it.

"I thought you might need one?" Cure, Heal, Cure, wave. I sighed.

"Sorry, Kitten." I nodded to the line.

"Can't take a break until the line's empty." She sighed, worked her way around my right side, careful not to jostle my right arm; I'd explained how I could get a little more range, a little more speed, if I wove my hand through the shape, and she remembered. Of course she did, my Kitten was smarter than ten of me put together. Nicer, too. She slipped her arms around me and just stood there. Cure. Heal, Cure, wave.

"I thought you weren't taking a break?" The warmth of her breath against my breast felt like fire. I think I'd forgotten to move long enough that the wind had mostly chilled my skin down to room temperature. Well, 'not quite blizzard outdoors' temperature. Couldn't hurt me, but couldn't be comfortable either. Then again, all but her face was covered by a black floor length fur cloak. The hood dangled behind her, letting her pony tail fall free.

"I'm supposed to be doing so. I guess this is where I'll take it." Cure, Heal, Cure, wave. I reached around behind her and pulled her hood up, then put my right arm around her and pulled her to me. Cure, Heal, Cure, wave. She felt nice tucked under my arm like that. We stood there just like that for a while, me curing, her just leaning against me. Eventually she sighed and pushed away.

"Gotta go?" Cure, Heal, Cure, wave.

"In more ways than one, I'm afraid, and I'll need to take care of one before I head back." She waited until I finished my current set, then pulled me down, pulled herself up. Her lips met mine, our eyes slid closed, and for a few seconds all that existed was lips of fire and the smell of her. She dropped back away and, as I cured the next pair, said, "when you're done recovering from this, I look forward to warming you up again, Goof." Cure, Heal, Cure, wave. I smiled down at her.

"Me too, Kitten." She stepped away, leaving me alone with the line of people to be cured. Cure. Heal. Cure. Wave.