The Storm: War's End, #1 Page 14

  Thunder rolled ominously, and Tina trotted to keep up until they reached the pipe. In the distance they could hear the chatter of machine guns, the troops were close, too close, and David wished he could just run back to the hidey-hole and forget about getting water or waiting for the baby to be born. He wondered if Jess would die, didn’t having a baby sometimes kill the moms?

  Back in the old days, back when there were covered wagons and no cars, women and babies died in childbirth. He’d read about it in a book, so it had to be true. It didn’t seem right, having a baby here without a doctor. You were supposed to go to hospitals for things like that. He remembered when Mom had Tina just over three years ago. She was gone for days to the hospital; he had visited with his dad every day. His mom had looked so tired, but smiling and happy too. He had even held the squalling red bundle that was his sister. But the hospital was gone, nothing but a bombed out shell. Besides, even if it hadn’t been bombed, there weren’t any doctors there. They had run away, died, or been captured long ago.

  Tina tugged on his shirt and David jumped in surprise. He’d been standing there staring off into space while the bucket filled to the top, dribbled over and trickled onto his shoe. He hadn’t even noticed he was so lost in thought. He hoisted the bucket, making his way back to Erin and Jess, slower now, the bucket heavy and sloshing from side to side.

  As they neared the old shed, the rain began to fall, fat large drops that turned into a downpour the last twenty feet to the shed door. They could hear Jess’s groans of pain as they pulled the door open. David hoped no one would come close enough to the shed to hear or find them, and again he wished he and Tina were in their hidey-hole.

  Hours passed. The night had long descended along with the storm. The branches of the trees whipped in the wind outside the small structure, flailing themselves on the roof like grief-stricken mourners, despairing at what the world had become. A small leak was dripping in one corner, and the door rattled with each gust of wind.

  Lightning flashed, lighting up the two small windows of the shed and the accompanying thunder shook the small building in tandem with Jess’s screams. David and Tina were huddled in a corner, terrified, eyes big as saucers. The children were torn between wanting desperately to be back in their hidey-hole and staying with these two girls who had fed them and befriended them. And the screams were ear-splitting. If it weren’t for the furious storm outside David would have pulled his sister to her feet and fled back to the only home he had known.

  Instead he and Tina watched in horrified fascination, his sister rocking herself back and forth in his lap, sucking on her thumb and fully attached to his shirt like a small monkey to its mother. It wouldn’t be long now.

  “Oh God! Erin! It hurts, it hurts! Oh god, get this thing out of me!” Jess was sobbing in fear between the screams.

  The baby was almost there, and the pressure and pain were unbearable. Surely she was being ripped apart. She felt mind-numbing terror at the thought of bleeding to death and could only envision this creature inside her as some awful alien clawing its way out of her. Jess was losing her grip while Erin tried to make wordless sounds of support as she held Jess’s hand and peered down between her friend’s legs. A lightning flash lit up the shed and she saw...she saw...

  “Jess! I can see it! I can see its head! Hold on sweetie! It’s almost here!”

  She reached for the cleanest sheet she could find; ready to catch the damn thing when it shot out. She imagined it would be rocket-powered by the sheer force of Jess’s pushes. Jess hunched forward, her face screwed up and her mouth opened to let out the loudest scream yet.

  Her body convulsed and the baby’s head pushed out, hesitated for a short moment at the shoulders and then slowly slid out. It was all rather boneless and anticlimactic as Erin lifted it with shaking hands.

  Blood and amniotic fluid had gushed out with it, and there was this weird white paste all over the thing. It didn’t move, not a twitch. What was this nasty white shit all over the kid? It was...wait...she looked at the naked infant closely in the darkness...and aided by another flash of lightning she saw...a boy...it was a boy!

  "It's a boy, Jess, you had a boy,” she grinned, “Told ya you were carrying him low.”

  “Is it, is it...dead?” Jess asked with an almost hopeful tone to her voice.

  It seemed for a moment to be the epitome of how awful life was, this creature who had occupied her, a product of the horror she and Erin had endured at the hands of the soldiers.

  The noise of the storm seemed to subside, and there were several long seconds of silence. The baby didn’t move. The door to the shed swung open and all four of the occupants looked up to see the deadly black nose of an AK-47 pointed directly at them.

  The soldier swung his rifle at each in turn. The baby who had been so silent, so surely dead, let out a liquid gurgle, a burbling cough, and then...a thin wail of dissatisfaction. But no one looked at the baby; their eyes were riveted on this creature of death, with his deadly weapon pointed at them, standing stock-still in the doorway. Tall, blond, and as the lightning lit his face, rather good-looking. He stood for a moment, taking in the scene before him.

  There were two young children huddled in a corner and two teenage girls frozen in fear at his feet. In the red-haired girl’s arms was a tiny, squirming newborn. Another flash of lightning showed he was a boy.

  The baby had obviously been born mere seconds ago; his umbilical cord was still attached. They all looked at him with undisguised terror.

  Corporal Jacob Daniels, Sr. turned his gun to each in turn. A rifle was propped in the far corner of the shed. He stared at the newborn, and remembered the day his son had been born. The nurse had handed him his tiny son, wiped clean and wrapped in a soft blanket, and he had stood there in the Army hospital in Fort Hood, stunned at how tiny and fragile the child was.

  Jacob Junior, in that happier time and place they had named him, later they called him JJ for short. A thousand images of his smiling face flickered through the Corporal’s memories like a home movie. He had grown so quickly from a tiny infant to smiling toddler and finally into that precocious four-year-old who insisted he was going to grow up and be just like Daddy.

  But Nancy hadn’t wanted to be a military wife. She’d wanted more. She’d wanted to finish her Master’s in Art History and who was he to hold her back? When the end had come, she had already moved to Austin and served him papers. He’d managed to come and visit and see them as often as he could on furlough. But it wasn’t enough for little Jacob who would cry and beg his father not to leave at the end of the visit.

  No one had ever been able to tell him exactly what happened to Nancy and JJ, but they had been too close, probably still asleep on that beautiful Saturday morning, when a small tactical nuke blew a crater into the northeast section of the city and annihilated anything within a twelve block radius of the Arts District and the University of Texas where Nancy was a student. He wanted to believe it had been quick, that his boy hadn’t suffered, and that he hadn’t died screaming like the scores of others they had showed on the enormous viewscreens in the Fort Hood Commons.

  The children at his feet were holding their breaths, eyes wide, terrified.

  They were all children, even the older two, who couldn’t be out of their teens yet. What in the hell was he doing here? As if losing JJ wasn’t enough. This war, it was killing them all, taking apart families and destroying lives. He could hear his men moving closer, calling over the radio for his status. Soon they would be close enough to see the shed and its occupants.

  Inexplicably, almost unbelievably, he lowered his gun. His body sagged slightly, revealed exhaustion and...pain?

  In a voice that was surprisingly soft, barely heard above the thunder and wind he said, “I had a son once. It seems...so...long ago. His name was Jacob.” Then, without another word, he turned away, softly shutting the door behind him and disappeared into the raging storm.

  The baby was still crying softly, as if h
e were politely asking to be put back in the warm world, and next to the steady heartbeat, that he had been evicted so rudely from. Erin sat numbly, as the baby wiggled, his umbilical cord still attached, looking at this alien creature in her arms that had somehow just saved them from certain death.

  Tears began to stream from Jess’s eyes and she held out her arms, “I want to see him.”

  Suddenly this thing was a child, a boy, something that was a part of her, not a piece of the monster who had raped her and put his seed in her. And as Erin gently passed the baby to her, she felt her heart stretch, as if the holes of so much loss were knitting together. Mom was gone. Dad was gone. Christopher was gone. Their memories, the loss she felt at their absence in her life were overwhelming. Gone, so many people she had loved and needed.

  But this one, this small little crying, naked boy child, somehow he filled those gaping holes and she felt her heart expanding in her chest.

  She pulled him up closer to her, softly touching the baby beneath all the sticky paste and blood. His heart beat was strong; his face wrinkled and red. She barely noticed Erin pull out the small knife and sever the umbilical cord, or take a soft piece of cloth, dip it in water and begin to clean off the sticky paste and the blood that covered them both. When they were relatively clean, she set a blanket around Jess’s shoulders and covered the infant with another.

  Jess just looked in the baby’s bright blue eyes and smiled. “Hi,” she hesitated for a moment, “I guess I’m your mommy.”

  The baby’s soft cries stilled, as he blinked once at her, his small hand fisted and waved as if to say hello back. They stared into each other’s eyes for a long moment. Jess’s mind raced with images of those long dead. Mom, Dad, Chris, Allen, people she had depended on and been devastated when they were torn from her. This child, this little baby needed her, he needed her.

  And then, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, she pulled open her shirt and offered one breast to the tiny little mouth. And all four of them stared in fascination as the baby began to nurse.

  Outside the storm raged on as a corporal called to his men, “Move north. There’s nothing here but the dead.”

  And the troops marched on, with Corporal Jacob Daniels, Sr. leading them. He marched through the mud, past a row of bombed out houses. He barely noticed the crude grave markers, or the bodies lying in ditches far north of the small town. Instead he remembered the laughter of a blond-haired little boy who had died far too young.

  After the Storm

  “I only knew Erin for a short time. At the time she seemed so much older, I guess I thought of her as an adult. Looking back I realize that both Erin and Jess were barely five years older than me, still teenagers, essentially still kids themselves. War and loss took away so much of our childhood. Yet, somehow, Jess and Erin didn’t just save Tina and me, they saved our childhood too. We still had to take on responsibilities and tasks that many adults hadn’t had just a decade earlier, but they were both young and they knew how important it was to have fun. I remember smiling more in just a few weeks than I had in nearly a year.” – David’s journal

  Erin closed the tattered, water-stained book with a thump; she had found it in the remains of the town’s library. “Says here he’s got jaundice, that’s why he’s all yellow.”

  Jess rubbed her eyes, yawned until her jaw cracked and jiggled the baby against her. He was asleep, and had been asleep for well over five hours now, but she was so worried about his lack of appetite and the further yellowing of his skin that she had not been able to sleep.

  “Great,” she could hear herself snapping, “So what the hell do we do?”

  Erin’s satisfied grin turned down at the edges. “Well, it says here he needs ultraviolet light. Some kind of incubator thingie that they have in hospitals...but the hospital is in ruins. And it probably needs electricity to run it, which we also don’t have.”

  Jess felt a wave of despair wash over her. It felt like the whole world was aligned against her. Quincy whined and laid her head on Jess’s leg.

  She had come back before daybreak the morning after the storm a long scratch on her muzzle, a tiny limp, dead rabbit in her mouth. She seemed abjectly apologetic for running off the day before. She had barely left Jess’s side in the two days since and was fascinated by the tiny human her mistress held so close.

  Jess jiggled Jacob a little more forcefully; desperate to wake him and be sure he ate. It seemed he hadn’t eaten much at all since he was born and she was beginning to be afraid he would just fade away. The sun was out and it was a beautiful day outside the shed. Tina had fallen asleep in the sun, her half-eaten peach in one hand and David had returned a few minutes before with fresh water to wash their dishes in.

  “Great, just great! So what do we do now?” The lack of sleep was making her nuts, so was the heat, and the kids and the...

  “Just put him in the sun.” David stood behind them, a bucket of water rested on the ground near his left foot, water still sloshing over one side. Somewhere in the wreckage of his house he had found shorts and they were ripped on one side of the waistband. He had also taken off his shoes and his bare feet were caked with mud.

  Both of the girls turned and looked at the boy. They looked so confused he thought maybe they hadn’t heard him the first time. “Just put him in the sun. Not for long, just a little while, a few minutes.” They still stared at him and said nothing. “You said he needed ultraviolet light right?”

  Erin nodded slowly, “Yes...but...”

  “But what? The sun has ultraviolet light. I read it in a book.” He looked at them with the disdainful expression only an eleven-year-old child can pull off successfully. Erin and Jess continued to gape at him as he shrugged and took the tiny baby from Jess carefully. “Like this,” he said speaking to the baby, “out here in the sun where it’s nice and warm.”

  He gently laid the sleeping baby down and pulled the covers away from the baby’s skin. The infant squirmed slightly in his sleep and was still again.

  “But won’t he get sunburned?” Jess felt stupid asking this of David, who was little more than a small boy in her eyes.

  David rolled his eyes at her, “Of course he will...if you leave him out too long! Just a few minutes at a time. Thataways he won’t get too much sun, but at least he’ll be less yellow.”

  Jess and Erin both looked at each other and then Erin shrugged, “Aw hell, what can it hurt?”

  And so they tried it, laying the infant out just a few minutes in the sun, wrapping him back up, and then doing it again twice more later in the day. By the end of the next day he seemed a little more alert, a lot hungrier and far less yellow. Sunlight seemed to have done the trick nicely.

  But now they found themselves faced with another problem—diapers.

  Every house they searched came up empty for them. They all felt far from safe in the town so a fire was out of the question. No fire meant no hot water and no way to clean themselves or their clothes.

  Currently the infant was swaddled in strips of a sheet that had been relatively clean. Erin knew they would need to move on soon—and that meant supplies and diapers if they could find them.

  She took David and headed back to the ruined library on the other side of town. It was located in a strip mall near some stores. It looked like Ground Zero for the firefight they had heard several days ago.

  The bodies had been left to rot in the hot summer sun. The stench was overpowering as they approached the Big Lots store. Fifty yards from that was the collapsed west wall of the library. Erin pointed David towards the library, “I’ll meet you there, but I need to check this out first, okay?”

  David just nodded and backed away to the safety of the ruined books. Whenever a breeze blew over the bodies his stomach roiled in protest. He tried to breathe through his mouth so he didn’t lose his breakfast.

  Erin wrapped a cloth around her mouth and nose, took a few deep breaths and then entered the Big Lots. She avoided looking down as she
stepped over one, two, and then a third body near the entrance. She brushed away the flies that swarmed around her and managed to make it down a main aisle before retching into a bin of throw rugs.

  “Baby section, baby section,” she murmured to herself trying desperately to not think about the smell or the bodies. She turned right and passed through the clothing and accessories section and took a sharp left.

  Success! Many of the hooks were empty, but there were layette sets, onesies, tiny socks and hats, a lone pink blanket, and...diapers. Holy cow, actual diapers! Erin forgot about the awful smell from the corpses, ran back to the previous aisle and grabbed large bags to stuff the diapers into. She grabbed every package of diapers. They were all different sizes, but who cared, at least they were better than rags!

  It took two trips to retrieve all of the baby-related items and she and David lugged the mess back to Jess with triumphant grins. At least now they had something to dress Jacob in. He was tiny, even the newborn sizes hung off of him with room to spare.

  The next morning Erin and David returned to the ruined library. There they rummaged through the collapsed building, tossing books into two piles—ones that would help and ones that wouldn’t. The system seemed to work pretty well. Many of the books were water-damaged and unusable, others had no bearing on their hopes for survival. Danielle Steele was definitely on the larger ‘not helpful’ pile.

  Erin was at one end of the building, looking through what remained of home and garden topics, such as vegetable gardening and a book on how to raise chickens. David had burrowed into one corner and found some books on trails and wilderness camping and survival skills.

  When the sun was directly overhead they stopped, exhausted by the heat, found a tree and sat in the shade of it and Erin opened a can of beets she had been avoiding eating until she absolutely had to. David didn’t look too impressed with the lunch menu, but he reached in and took a slice of the reddish purple vegetable. A moment of silence passed and their hands connected as they both reached into the can at the same moment.