by Megan Hart
Who would help her this time? Her throat closed tight, hurting. She rubbed her belly, fingertips moving over her skin in a pattern that had become so familiar to her over the years. Her child swam inside her, growing. It would be born with an effort of sweat and blood, and she’d hold it warm from her womb, loving it even before she saw its face. But who would help her through the labor, through the pain? Who would catch the child, and who would cut the cord that tied it to her?
Fear, huge and relentless, pushed her to the bed. She sat, trembling, fist pressed to her mouth to stop from crying out loud. The hand not at her lips caressed her belly, soothing the baby even as she fought to calm herself.
She would get through this, she thought fiercely, shaking. Her knuckles broke against her teeth, and the taste of blood made her choke. She looked at her hand, seeing the wounds she’d caused herself. Blood. When the baby came, there’d be a lot more of it.
She would not think about it now. She could not. It would be too easy to let herself wallow in fear for the length of her pregnancy. She’d seen it happen, even to hopemothers who’d caught many times before.
She wiped the blood away with determined strokes. Tobin called her name from the hall, and she rose from the bed. She pulled the oversized t-shirt on and gathered the clothes she was taking for Tobin and herself.
“Coming!” Barefoot, she went to take her turn in the bath.
−
27-
There were only three other houses along the road. They went to each of them; Elanna checked the kitchen and Tobin checked the garage. None of the other houses had cars, batteries, or much of anything else.
“That’s about it,” Tobin said after they’d searched the third house and found nothing they wanted or needed to take along.
Elanna paused on the doorstep, mumbling. Her eyes were closed, her head bent. He leaned closer to hear her words, but didn’t understand them.
“Ah-mayn,” she concluded and opened her eyes.
“What were you doing?”
“It’s Hebrew. I was saying the Shehechyanu,” she said, her voice puzzled. “Why?”
“I couldn’t understand you.”
“You’re not one of us.”
He didn’t like the way that sounded. He didn’t want to remember that they’d come from places so different. She had a past and a history, now a language, that he could never experience.
He scowled. “You make that sound so bad.”
Elanna looked at him, her lovely eyes showing surprise. “It’s not bad. It’s not good. It just is.”
“Tell me what you said,” he asked.
He could tell she was just humoring him, but she spoke anyway. “Baruch ata adonai, eloheynu melech l’olam, shehechyanu, vechiamanu, vehigianu, lazman hazeh.”
“That sounds like a mouthful.”
He’d offended her. She turned and began to walk away, shoulders stiff and her head high. She moved fast, much faster than he’d expected. He almost had to run to catch up to her.
“Elanna, I’m sorry.”
“Didn’t you ever pray?” she demanded, turning. “I know you don’t have the same customs as we did, but didn’t you pray? Didn’t you ever give thanks to God?”
His experience with God was Old Pa saying “God damn it.” He’d read about God, and religion, and he knew that people had worshipped in churches and synagogues and mosques and temples, but he had no idea what any of those places were. The churches in Eastport hadn’t had a congregation since well before his grandparents’ birth.
“No,” he said humbly. “I guess I never did.”
She stared at him blankly. “Why not?”
“I don’t know. Nobody ever told me I should.”
That seemed to concern her. “Have you ever felt like something was leading you, or helping you, even though you couldn’t see it? Or have you ever wanted something, terribly, but you didn’t think you’d ever have it? And then you found it?”
He thought of his longing, fueled by the heroines in all his novels, to find someone with whom he could share his life. He thought about his dreams of finding other people. Having children. He looked at her face, so earnest.
“Yes. I have.”
“That was Adonai, watching over you,” she said. “That was Ha-Shem. God. Whatever you want to call it.”
He shook his head slowly. “I don’t know if I believe that.”
She sighed. “Then what do you think brought you to me?”
“We got lucky,” Tobin said
Elanna shook her head. “No. It wasn’t luck. It was Ha-Shem, watching out for us.”
He wanted to believe her, even though what she said sounded to him like the most fantastic of fairy tales. “All right.”
Her smile was worth his agreement.
-*-
Elanna was useless when it came to driving. Watching the gatherers drive by in a parade was no help when it came to actually doing it herself. She gladly gave over the duty to Tobin, who at least could figure out how to ignite the engine.
He was so proud of himself, she thought fondly, as he lectured her on just how far to turn the wheel so the car would go in the direction they wanted it to. She couldn’t really care less about the logistics. As long as he knew what he was doing, that was fine with her. But she humored him, because it made her happy to see him act so proud.
“That’s great, honey,” she said, and was surprised to see his cheeks flush. He was blushing? She’d made him blush, just by calling him a pet name?
Elanna looked out the window, watching the world flash by. He confused her. She’d never been with a man who wanted her but didn’t take her. She’d never met a man she wanted so badly.
“We’re going so fast!” Elanna marveled, rolling down the window to let the breeze in. Her hair flew back and she stuck her head out, laughing. “I never thought you could go so fast!”
“Twenty miles an hour isn’t so fast,” Tobin said, laughing with her. He pointed out the window to a battered and rusting metal sign as they passed it. Speed Limit. 65 Miles An Hour. “People used to go much faster.”
“People used to do a lot of things,” she told him. “That was once upon a time.”
He glanced at her, then quickly back to the road. She could tell he still wasn’t quite sure about driving. He never took his hands off the wheel. His knuckles were white. She wondered how long it would take for his hands to start hurting. She thought that probably he wouldn’t tell her if they did.
“Lots of stories start Once Upon A Time,” he told her.
“And they all end Happily Ever After,” Elanna said. “Do you think we will?”
He was quiet so long she thought he wasn’t going to answer. She began to wish she hadn’t asked, though she’d tried to make her voice sound light. She plucked at the oversized tee-shirt, not sure what to do.
“I hope so,” he said, finally. “I guess it’s why I started out on this trip.”
“Me too,” she said.
-*-
Each battery, they discovered, was good for twenty miles. Less, if they tried to push the little car into going too fast, but never more. They were meant to last a lot longer, but time had depleted them somehow. Tobin quickly learned to turn the car off whenever they made a stop to help conserve the power. They stopped often.
The roads were clear of vehicles, mostly, but they weren’t in good repair. Holes that they could’ve walked or ridden bikes around nearly junked the car. Several times he’d had to ride the shoulder to avoid huge potholes.
When they did come across another car or truck, they stopped to check its battery. They were usually dead. Some had extras in the trunk, and they took them. Once they came across a spot where three cars had collided. The driver of one had gone through the windshield. The elements had worn his bones away to nearly nothing, at least on the half that was exposed outside. The inside half was still there, preserved like leather. Tobin drove even more carefully after that.
They drove, off and on,
for a hundred miles. By the time the sun began to set, Tobin’s stomach was growling. He didn’t want to use more power by turning the headlights on, either. It was a good time to stop.
“How about we call it a night?” he asked, turning to look at Elanna.
She was staring at the road ahead, eyes wide in shock. “Look out!”
Turning back, he swerved to avoid hitting something massive. The tires squealed and the steering wheel rattled in his hands as, heart pounding, he twisted it. With stones and gravel pinging against the windshield, the little car came to a shuddering stop along the shoulder.
Breathing hard, Tobin looked back at what he’d nearly hit. It had loomed up out of the growing darkness like some fairytale beast. It was something else entirely.
He opened the car door to get out, but Elanna stopped him with a hand on his arm.
“Wait,” she whispered. She bent her head to peer out through the driver’s side window. “Maybe we should just turn around. Go back another way. I saw an exit a mile or so back.”
He looked out again at the huge pile blocking all four lanes of traffic. Nothing moved in it, not even a breeze. Everything was quiet.
“I think it’s okay,” he told her, squeezing her fingers.
Elanna bit her lip, then nodded. “You’re probably right. But you’re not going out there alone. If you go, I go.”
He knew better than to argue with her, but he did make her stand behind him. Dark was falling quickly, especially once the sun passed behind the hulking fortress of wood and debris. The moon hadn’t risen yet, but the stars were bright and clear. Tobin searched the length and height of the pile, but without proper light he couldn’t see much.
Elanna slipped her arm around his waist. “What is it?”
“Some kind of road block,” Tobin said. “I see some trees. Some posts. Lots of junk.”
She pointed a blob of white amongst the rest. “A mattress!”
For some reason, that made her laugh. Tobin chuckled with her, and they began pointing out other bits and pieces they could see sticking out from the pile, which not only stretched across the road but as far as they could see on either side. More than a roadblock…a wall. When Elanna spotted a toilet, still intact, resting under a group of metal street signs, neither one could control themselves.
“Stop!” she cried after a few minutes, holding her sides. “It hurts!”
He saw her wiping tears and clutching her stomach. His throat slammed shut. Tobin grabbed her, holding her close and forcing her to sit on the driver’s seat. He knelt before her, knees grinding into the gravel.
“What are you doing?” she asked him, puzzled as he chafed her wrists.
“You said it hurts,” he said. “And you were crying.”
She smiled and touched his face. “Toby, I’m fine.”
“But you said --”
“Didn’t you ever laugh so hard you cried?” Elanna asked him gently. “Or until your sides hurt?”
He sat back, too relieved that she was all right to be embarrassed at how he’d overreacted. Again.
“No,” he said. “I never have. Not until now.”
Elanna gathered two fistfuls of his shirt and bent down to press her forehead to his. They were nose to nose, her eyes searching his and her mouth so damned close he knew she wanted to kiss him.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “But things will be different for you from now on.”
“And for you, I hope,” he told her. With every word their lips brushed against each other. She tasted sweet.
Then she did kiss him, and her hands weren’t wrapped in his shirt any more. They were wrapped in his hair. She opened her mouth beneath his. He knew he should stop. Didn’t want to. Couldn’t try to. Every stroke of her fingers along his scalp, every touch of her tongue against his, sent waves of sensation rippling through his body. Straight down to his groin. Heat flooded him there, and pressure. He groaned, giving in to the demands of her mouth and her hands, and he clutched her like a drowning man.
“Elanna,” he heard himself say, but the voice didn’t sound like his.
“Yes,” she said.
He was touching her, holding her, and the kisses were going on and on. The sting of the gravel against his knees seemed far away and unimportant. He drew in her breath as she exhaled it. She was inside him, all over him, all around him. And then she was pushing him away.
He sprawled back on the gravel, feeling it bite his palms. He couldn’t think straight, not with the scent of her still in his nostrils and her taste swimming on his tongue. Elanna knelt next to him, helping him up. He shook his head to clear it.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have pushed you.”
His pants had grown suddenly too tight. The night air was chilly against his skin, where moments before hot sweat had coated him. A low, dull ache began to grow in the pit of his stomach.
“Damn it, Elanna!”
She shrank from him, just a glimmer in the dark. “I’m sorry.”
He ran his hands through his hair and scrubbed his face. He tried to shake off the effect she had on him. It didn’t work, not really.
“Do you think I’m made of stone?” Tobin asked her.
Without waiting for an answer, he stalked to the back of the car and opened the trunk. He pulled out one of the lanterns and flipped the switch. Light glared from it immediately, a strong hot blast of it that dimmed quickly. He hooked it to the trunk lid and began pulling out what they’d need for the night. If he kept his hands busy he wouldn’t be able to think about touching her.
“No, I don’t.” She followed him. “I said I was sorry!”
Ignoring her, he went back to unpacking. Blankets. The pillows she’d insisted on. A small box of canned goods and the jugs of water. Matches. Every item he tossed to the ground should have helped calm him. They didn’t.
“Don’t ignore me when I’m talking to you.” Elanna deliberately stepped in front of him, forcing him to look at her. “I’m sorry I pushed you. I guess I just wanted to be the one to break it off. Before you could.”
“What do you want me to say?” He bent to the pile of gear he’d thrown on the ground. Anything to not have to see how the lantern light painted shadows on her cheeks.
“I don’t know,” Elanna said. “But I want you to say something.”
“You don’t want to hear what I have to say,” Tobin said. He took a box of matches into the grass, just inside the ring of lantern light.
“If it’s the truth, I do.”
“No.” He shook his head, pulling up a patch of grass so he could build a fire there.
“Why not?”
“Because I’m angry,” Tobin replied, though his anger was fading now. He didn’t know why she’d kissed him the way she did, but his response was something he’d have to deal with on his own.
“Don’t you know how to fight?” The anger had gone out of her voice, too. She came next to where he was pulling the grass. “Sometimes people fight, Toby. Even people who like each other.”
She hadn’t said love. His heart twisted in his chest, defeated. “See if you can find some sticks for this fire. Please.”
She sighed. Her hand came out to touch his shoulder, but then she seemed to think better of it and pulled away. “All right. I can only say I’m sorry so many times.”
“Accepted,” he said and concentrated on his task.
It was another long night with her curled beside him. He managed sleep, if only because exhaustion overtook him, but the feel of her against him haunted his dreams. When the sun broke over them in the morning, he was all too happy to roll out of the blankets to stretch away his aches.
Elanna stirred but didn’t wake immediately. Watching her in the rosy light of early morning, Tobin couldn’t stay angry with her. They would need to talk, though, and soon. They had a long, long journey ahead of them. If they couldn’t come to terms with each other, it would be hell.
He stretched some more, wincing. The nights were stil
l chilly, and the ground had been hard. They’d have to figure out some other arrangement, because she wouldn’t be able to sleep on the ground much longer. He wouldn’t let her.
In the sunshine the roadblock looked even more ridiculous. Whoever had put it together, and for whatever reason, hadn’t cared about making it neat and presentable. It was an overgrown jumble of wood, metal and household odds and ends.
