by Tom Abrahams
It didn’t really matter whether she was in Atlanta or the Harbor. Life was life, plain and simple. For a moment, she considered turning herself in to the Pop Guard. What was the difference? If life was so awful, and death was everywhere, mocking every move, why not end it all?
No. She had one more mission and she wasn’t about to let her lasting legacy be that she bailed. After all the good she’d done, after what it had cost her, she’d be stupid to give up now.
Better to do what they were asking of her and then make that decision. Go out a hero. Then choose the next path. Take matters into her own hands again.
Sally figured she’d waited long enough and got up. She slid open the confessional door, and a rush of cooler air filled the cramped space. She stepped out into the cathedral and moved toward the aisle, which separated the two rows of wooden pews.
At the rear of the building, in a loft of sorts and open to the acoustically favorable space, was a huge pipe organ. Its console was fixed at the center, its metal pipes lining the walls on either side of it. Cobwebs draped the various-sized pipes, and dust danced in the light from above. Sally wondered what it sounded like, if it even worked anymore. It didn’t look like it.
The altar at the front of the cathedral was bathed in white light that shone onto the pulpit. A single floral stained-glass window was set into the wall beneath the steep arch that ran the length of the building’s high ceilings.
She stared at the blue light filtering through the stained glass despite the late hour, and studied the intricacies of its design. Sally wasn’t much for church, wasn’t Catholic, and hadn’t ever visited what was once Cathedral of Christ the King.
While it was still a church, it was as much a refuge for the growing homeless population and a place to escape the outside world.
She glanced at her feet and noticed the floor, chipped and unpolished, looked like a runway. Chevrons, all aimed toward the pulpit, decorated the length of the aisle. The pews were empty except for one man leaning on an elbow. Sally wasn’t sure if he was asleep or awake. Her eyes fell back to the chevrons, the arrows, pointing her toward the light at the front of the cavernous house.
Sally stuffed her hands into her pockets and marched toward the exit, every footstep echoing. Using her shoulder to open the heavy door, she pushed her way back out into the night and onto Peachtree Street.
The distant flutter of a helicopter thumped above her. She looked up, beyond the surrounding buildings, and toward the cloudless sky. She stepped to the crack-laden sidewalk that ran along Peachtree and turned left. Her holding cell, her detox bed, was waiting for her.
CHAPTER 15
APRIL 18, 2054, 1:30 AM
SCOURGE +21 YEARS, 7 MONTHS
NEW BOSTON, TEXAS
“She’s crowning! It’s close.”
“It’s been close for five hours,” Warner snapped.
It was more like nine hours since the woman had gone into labor in the middle of the dusty highway. They’d spent too much water on her, wasted too much time. Nine hours. They could be another twenty miles closer to their destination.
But no, they were stuck here in the middle of nowhere, and Warner was helping deliver a baby. Firelight cast a warm orange glow across them. It crackled off to the side of the road where the other women and children rested.
Blessing had built it with flint and tinder. Dead branches, cured from lack of water and the hot Texas sun, made for perfect kindling.
“He’s facedown,” said another voice. “That’s good.”
The expectant mother, leaning in the dirt on her elbows and doing her best to push, tried lifting her head. Bathed in sweat, her hair matted to her face, she whimpered. “Is it a boy?” she asked.
Andrea, at the woman’s head, answered, “We don’t know yet.”
Blessing had removed Andrea’s chains so she could help with the delivery. That, and Andrea had insisted. The only way to get her to shut up was to let her help.
Warner was between the woman’s legs, a sour look on his face. “Push,” he told her. “C’mon, lady.”
Andrea glared at him. “Help her,” she said, the firelight dancing on her face. “The faster she does this, the faster you get back on schedule.”
Warner rolled his eyes. “Push,” he said as sweetly as he could muster. “You can do it.”
The woman grunted, her legs trembling. More of the baby’s pink head, covered in dark hair, inched outward. The scene was primal: firelight, live birth, an audience.
He spun his John Deere ball cap backwards and put his hands on the woman’s knees and pushed them back. “C’mon,” he said. “Almost there.”
The woman grunted, moaned. The moan turned into a scream. The children, gathered together in a circle at the side of the road, were crying now. None of them understood what was happening. Their mothers were trying to keep them occupied. But young kids couldn’t play poker, and the deck of cards Blessing had loaned them only did so much to keep them occupied when they weren’t napping or snacking on dwindling rations.
Warner gagged. It wasn’t so much because of the sights and smells of childbirth, though those didn’t help. It was because of the memories they brought back to him. They were memories he’d pushed deep into the recesses of his mind. The memories that haunted him at night.
He wasn’t special. He knew that. Everyone in this world had demons.
Some rose above them, used them as motivation to do good. Warner wasn’t one of them. He wasn’t a hero.
Warner embraced the demons, invited them in, and partied with them. They were an excuse to lash out, to succumb to man’s basest instincts. They spoke to him, told him how best to survive in a world where most laws were guidelines as much as anything.
Warner clenched his jaw against the waft of odor threatening to overwhelm him. He’d heard once somewhere that smells were the strongest sense of memory. Whoever had told him that was right.
Before he was a black-market hustler, a human trafficker, Warner had been a dryland cotton farmer. He’d worked the fields as long as he could remember. It was what his father had done, and his father before that. They had a thousand acres east of the Pecos River in the Permian Basin.
They were north of Crockett County and west of the Rolling Plains. It was Heaven on Earth. Amongst the jack rigs and grain sorghum, their cotton season ran from mid-April to December. From planting to harvest, they could produce as much as three hundred pounds of lint per seeded acre.
When he wasn’t working the farm, he was playing football or baseball and staying out late with his first and last girlfriend. Her dad was a mechanic and owned a shop in town.
Both had plans to go to A&M, major in food science and technology, and raise a brood on one of their family farms. They were juniors in high school when the plague took his mother and two brothers and both of her parents. She was orphaned and an only child.
So she moved in with Warner and his dad. They slept in separate bedrooms, mostly, and spent their days working the farm with Warner’s dad. Then his dad dropped dead from a heart attack and they were alone. They were twenty years old.
Between what she’d learned from her mechanic father and what they both knew about farming, they managed to keep things running. Given that it was semi-desert there, they didn’t feel the drought as fast as other parts of the country.
They were far enough off the beaten path that the Cartel left them alone. A couple of times, Warner had to defend their home from stray patrols. But he was smart and crafty and good with a gun. Nobody took anything from them without Warner and his girl giving it to them of their own free will. Even without consistent power, they managed.
They married at sunset on her twenty-first birthday. They were already husband and wife, for all intents and purposes, but Warner wanted to make a proper woman of her. So they exchanged vows, he gave her his mother’s wedding ring, and they tied the knot.
At twenty-two, she was pregnant. He was ecstatic. The apocalypse seemed manageable with the
love of his life at his side and a child on the way.
Warner pampered her. Despite her protests, he demanded she stay off her feet as much as possible as the pregnancy progressed. She reluctantly complied.
“It ain’t long,” he told her, his dark eyes locked with hers, “and you’ll be the one doting. So you might as well enjoy it while you can.”
“You’re changing the diapers,” she’d said, “and you’re washing them too. Especially if it’s a boy.”
“That’s fine. I’ll change ’em and wash ’em. But you’re getting up in the middle of the night. I need my beauty sleep.”
Those were the salad days. Warner was happy. The bigger she got, the wider his smile.
And then, in the thirty-eighth week, the smile disappeared. She woke him before dawn. She was crying. There was blood everywhere.
Warner did his best. He tried. And for a moment he was the father of a baby boy. Then he wasn’t. He wasn’t a husband anymore either.
He was alone, in a soiled bed, the bodies of his wife and child in his arms. For a full day Warner didn’t move. He couldn’t. He wouldn’t.
Something snapped inside him. When he finally rose, cleaned himself of the blood in which this new Warner had been baptized, and buried his family, he knew what he had to do.
No longer would the world take from him. He would take from it. He would be the aggressor, the alpha male, the man who refused to push down the demons. He would seek their counsel, allow his quiet rage to fuel his existence.
If he couldn’t have a family, why should others? Especially those who broke the law? Why should they get to cheat the system and death when he hadn’t? They shouldn’t. He’d make sure of it.
When he met Blessing outside Abilene, the two had joined in purpose. They complemented each other. Neither had a soul worth saving anymore. These years later, Warner still didn’t know what had driven Blessing to their rogue existence. The man had never offered it up, and Warner never asked. But the man was a kindred spirit. Warner saw it in Blessing’s eyes, in the way he carried himself, heard it in his voice when he spoke.
“Help her,” said Andrea, snapping him into focus. “She needs your help.”
The woman, her skin cold and sweaty, screamed in pain. The baby’s head was out now. Its shoulders were almost there. The fire crackled and popped behind him. Waves of dim heat washed over him, carried in the soft breeze he didn’t even know was there.
The scent of burning wood in his nostrils, Warner leaned in, using his shoulders to keep the woman’s legs apart. He reached down and took the child by the shoulders. It was warm, hot almost, its skin slippery and smooth. The body was like a bird’s, strong but delicate.
He pulled. She pushed. He pulled. She pushed. And the child came free.
Warner slid his hand around the umbilical cord and loosened it from around the child’s waist as he flipped the baby over onto its back. He stuck a finger in the child’s mouth, clearing it, and cradled it.
He patted its back, tugging on the cord, and the baby coughed its first cry. The body trembled against him.
“Is it okay?” cried the mother, trying to see between her legs. Her chest heaved. “Is it breathing okay?”
Warner nodded. He put his hand on the back of the child’s head and, for an instant, felt human. His chest tightened. Before he allowed the emotion to swell, he lifted the baby and handed it to the mother.
“It’s a girl,” Andrea said to the mother and then to everyone, “It’s a girl!”
The tired crowd of mothers offered a smattering of weak applause and halfhearted congratulations.
Blessing crossed the road and offered Warner a knife. “Cut the cord.”
Warner took the knife and opened it, his wet hands slipping on its handle. He reached down and pressed the blade against the cord, folding the fleshy casing in half before sawing it apart. “You can close your legs,” he said to the mother. “I’ll give you a few minutes. Then we need to get going.”
Warner stood and motioned to Andrea. He pointed at the chain gang and waved her back to the group.
Andrea scowled at him. The fire cast shadows on her face that deepened the lines in her forehead and along the sides of her mouth. The new mother’s body was propped up, resting in her lap.
“You’re kidding me,” she said. “It’s the middle of the night.”
“Your job is done. Get back there with your kid. Get something to drink, to eat. We leave in thirty minutes.”
Andrea gently removed herself from the woman and stood. Fists balled, venom in her voice, she charged toward Warner. Blessing stepped between them and held out a hand to stop her.
Andrea stood on her tiptoes to yell at Warner over Blessing’s shoulder. “She can’t leave in thirty minutes! She just gave birth!”
Unfazed, Warner wiped his hands on his shirt and pulled off his ball cap. With his shirtsleeve, he wiped his forehead clean of sweat. Then he spun the ball cap and put it back on his head. He spent a few extra seconds getting the John Deere logo centered.
“How’s that look?” he asked Blessing.
Blessing glanced at the hat and shrugged.
Andrea’s face reddened and her glare blazed. “Did you hear me? She can’t travel.”
“Then she stays here,” said Warner. “It’s the child that matters, not the mother.”
Andrea exploded toward Warner. Blessing held her back. She fought against him, but the sharpshooter stood silent and strong, like the wall that separated Texas from the rest of the world.
“Get her back with the others,” said Warner. “I’m gonna help the little lady here with her new arrival.”
Andrea dragged her feet, struggled, trying to free herself from Blessing’s hold. It didn’t work. He had her back with the others and back in the chain gang within a couple of minutes, once she’d worn herself out like a petulant child.
Warner stepped to the mother, who was lying on her back, a pack under her head, the child on her chest. The baby whimpered softly. It was naked against her, her hands covering its back and bottom.
“You gonna name her?” he asked and squatted on his heels by her head.
Startled, her eyes popped open and struggled to focus.
Before she could answer, he scratched his chin and offered a suggestion. “I wouldn’t if it were me.”
Her brow furrowed with confusion. Her grip on the child tightened almost imperceptibly, but Warner saw it.
“Wouldn’t what?” she croaked, and cleared her throat.
“I wouldn’t name the kid,” Warner said. “It’s like naming a prized pig or a heifer. You wouldn’t do that now, would you?”
The woman inched away from him, her head as far from Warner as she could rest it without falling from the relative comfort of the pack underneath. She shifted the baby to the other side of her chest. Her spread fingers pushed into the child’s pink flesh, blanching it where she maintained her hold.
“I see from that look on your face you don’t quite catch my meaning,” said Warner.
She didn’t respond. Her expression tightened.
Warner rested his arms on his legs, like a baseball catcher would have done before the Scourge, and he used his hands as he spoke. A smile spread across his face. His black eyes almost sparkled within the shadow cast by the brim of the ball cap. He talked as if telling a magical bedtime story with a happy ending. It was anything but that.
“What most people are gonna do,” he said, “at least what they did before the damn drought, was they’d find a pig farmer and they’d buy a weaner. Right? You ever raise a pig?”
The woman shook her head.
“Right. A weaner’s a pig that’s maybe a couple of months old and don’t need its mother’s milk anymore. You could raise pigs from scratch, but then you gotta deal with stags and gilts, mating them at the right times, castrating the stags, caring for the sows. A sow is a pregnant girl pig.”
“I know what a sow is,” said the woman.
Warner reached
out and touched her arm. She recoiled. He kept his hand there.
“Good on you,” he said. “Good for knowing that. I never castrated a stag. Wouldn’t really have a desire to do that. But that’s beside the point. The point is, you buy a little pig. It’s cute and playful. Pigs are smart too. They know you. They recognize you. They greet you when you come calling to feed ’em.”
She pulled away from his hand again. Warner moved his elbow back to his own leg.
“My dad was a drylands cotton farmer,” he said. “We never had much use for pigs. But for FFA one year, I decided to raise one.”
Warner looked away and checked the chain gang. They were standing now. Blessing had them in a line and was checking their binds one at a time. The children were cranky, the mothers exhausted.
Too bad, thought Warner. We have time to make up.
He looked back at the new mother. He had her full attention. “I named my pig. Dad warned me not to do it. He told me I’d live to regret it while my pig wouldn’t. I was headstrong though, in the way that teenagers know everything and their parents are stupid. I ignored him. I named the pig.”
He sat there watching her. Waiting.
“What did you name it?” she asked. She couldn’t help herself.
The grin broadened on his face. “Old Major. Name mean anything to you?”
She shook her head. “No. Should it?”
“Probably not,” said Warner. “We were reading a book called Animal Farm at the time. It was a short book, so I actually read it.”
He chuckled. She didn’t. The baby shifted against her body and whimpered.
“A dude named Orwell wrote it. The book was about this farm where the animals become human. That’s an oversimplification of it. It’s really about government oppression and such. But anyhow, there’s this boar named Old Major.”
Warner adjusted the cap on his head. The crackling fire drew his attention for a split second before he continued his story. “Old Major has this meeting of the animals at the farm. He tells them about this dream he had. There were no people around, only animals, and the animals had to work together to create a perfect society where everyone was equal. Therein lies the rub. Of course, not everyone’s equal, even if they’re animals, you know? Anyhow, I liked the book. I liked Old Major. So I named my weaner. Bad idea.”
