by Megan Hart
“What? What the hell does that mean?” Amy gasped. “Ah, fuck, here comes another one!”
Elanna didn’t know what to tell her. Amy needed to push, and hard, and do it now. Inspiration struck. “Like you have to take a shit!”
Amy nodded suddenly and bore down, pushing. A gush of blood and birth fluid splattered from between her legs and the baby’s head popped free at last.
“Again!”
Amy pushed again, face purpling with the effort, too intent even to scream. As Amy pushed, Elanna pressed down on her belly, using her full weight. The baby slid a little further.
“Fuck, that hurts!” Amy gasped.
“You’re doing it, Amy,” Elanna told her. “Just a few more pushes.”
“You can do it,” The General said. He was watching the bottom of the bed with shocked intensity. “Push, Amy. Push hard, sweetheart.”
With a guttural moan, Amy did. Elanna left her side and knelt back between her legs. She reached up to cradle the infant’s head, easing it to the side and squeezing the nostrils to clear some of the birth fluid. As Amy pushed, Elanna tilted the shoulder, bringing it smoothly out. Once the shoulder passed, the rest of the child slid into her hands with amazing speed.
“God! God! God!” Amy cried as the child slipped out of her.
Elanna cradled the bloody infant with practiced hands, turning it onto its belly and clearing its mouth and throat with her finger. It coughed and then began to cry. “Where’s the stuff I need?”
It came none too soon. The other girls burst through the door, one tripping. The towels, a dingy white, fell on the floor.
“Pick them up!” Elanna cried, clutching the slippery baby to her chest as it wriggled and wailed. “And I need the water.”
They didn’t spill it, Baruch Ha-Shem. And it was clean, or fairly so, and still steaming. She jerked her head toward the closest girl.
“Get a towel. A clean one.”
The baby squirmed, its tiny fists flailing. The umbilical cord trailed from its belly back inside the mother.
“The knife!”
They handed her a knife as large as her hand, but it would do. Tucking the infant under one arm, she sliced the cord and clamped it with her fingers, rolling the edges in the way the other hopemothers had taught her to stop the bleeding.
“It’s a boy,” she said to Amy reverently and placed the naked child on the clean towel draped over her chest.
Amy reached up to hold the child, her face streaked by tears and sweat. The General looked stunned. The girls crowded around, silently. Elanna had never been to a birth so unheralded.
“You’re not done yet, Amy,” she said. “You need to push again.”
A few last contractions forced the placenta out, and Elanna caught it deftly in one of the towels that had fallen on the floor. She set it aside, uncertain what rituals these people might have for its disposal and prepared to clean Amy and the child.
She pressed a folded towel, soaked in the hot water, between Amy’s legs and stood to take the child and wipe it. She stopped, frightened, as the dingy white towel bloomed red with blood almost immediately.
“She’s hemorrhaging.” Elanna grabbed the rest of the towels and pressed them down. They, too, became wet with blood within seconds.
“Take the baby,” she ordered one of the girls, who did so fumblingly. “I need more towels. More water. Help me!”
Amy’s arm fell limply off the bed, hanging down toward the floor. Lifeless. No, Elanna thought. No, not now. Not this.
But she couldn’t stop the bleeding. It gushed out of the girl on the table, more blood than Elanna would have thought one person could have inside her. It covered the sheets, the bed, the towels, the floor. It covered Elanna herself as she worked to stanch it, rich and earthy smelling, the smell of birth and womanhood.
And finally, the smell of death.
−
44-
Once there’d been a high fence of metal links here, but time had done to it what it did to everything else. Now the fence sagged in more places than not, and Tobin had no trouble finding a place to crawl over. The moon gave him enough dim light to see by, but his dark clothes would make him a difficult target to spot. He kept walking, refusing to think about what might happen if he was going in the wrong direction.
He’d ache all over in the morning, but for now the constant movement kept him muscles warm and working. He’d gone beyond the pain, urging each foot forward with thoughts of finding Elanna.
The building loomed up before him almost before he realized it was there. His feet crunched on the rocks and he froze, waiting. Nothing. The windows, many of them glassless and gaping, were dark. At least here. The building itself was a huge, flat-walled box, marked only by the empty spaces of its windows. Not even a door.
Squinting, Tobin looked to left and right. More of the same buildings, so far as he could see. In the distance to his right was a line of smaller ones, whiter in the darkness. They looked more like houses than anything else. What had Enoch called them? Barracks.
He had no idea where he was going to find Elanna, but he didn’t have time to waste. He’d start with this building, the one in front of him, but first he’d have to find the door. One direction looked as good or bad as the other, but he chose to go right.
As he turned the corner, a smaller building loomed ahead. Though most of it was as dark as the others, in one or two of the windows he spotted faint, flickering glows. This is where the people were.
Not for the first time, he wished he had a weapon. Even a hoe or a stick with a spike on the end of it would make him feel better than walking into certain danger completely unarmed. Going up against a known enemy, Kodak and her troops, was better than going blind, but they had guns and he didn’t. Not a good match.
Not that he could have shot a gun, should he find one. His skills of derring-do were limited to what he’d read about James Bond. He’d have to rely on what he knew he had in abundance, his wits. He was counting on them being a weapon the Gappers didn’t know how to use.
Finding his way into the building was easy. The massive metal double doors both hung open, one off its hinges. Even in the dim light he could see deep scratches in the peeling paint where the silver metal glimmered through. Both doors were battered, dented and flaking with rust. More than just the passage of time had done this. Someone, sometime, had beaten these doors with something big and heavy.
Whoever it was had gotten in, too, he thought as he stepped through. And been met with a welcoming committee. He couldn’t see too far ahead into the dark hallway, but the floor just inside the doorway was stained dark with splatters of what he assumed was blood. Old blood that had never been cleaned up.
With a shudder, Tobin moved further into the darkness and paused. Without light, he had no chance of proceeding silently. Or seeing where he was going without being seen himself. The corridor stretched far in front of him, but he had no idea how long it was, or even if there were other doors and halls branching from it. It was just too damn dark.
Waiting for daylight would take too long and be too risky. Damnit, he had to act now! But what to do? He had no candles, no lantern, not even a match.
He didn’t have the chance to curse his indecision. A door he hadn’t seen directly behind him opened, and light poured out.
-*-
“No! NO!” The General fell to his knees beside Amy’s unresponsive body and gathered her into his arms. She lolled against him, arms flailing and head bending on her neck.
Elanna stood covered in blood, helpless to do anything but watch the man cradle the dead girl. She was wiped out, exhausted and close to tears herself, but she hadn’t known the girl. The General had not only known her, but it seemed he also might have loved her. Elanna’s heart went out to him.
“I’m sorry,” she ventured.
He turned on her, face contorted in pain and rage. He let Amy’s body slip to the bed with a thud that made Elanna jump. In a flash he was in front of
her, gripping her upper arms with fists like iron.
“Sorry?” He asked in a low, dangerous voice. His face was so close to hers she could see the broken blood vessels in his eyes and smell the sharpness of his sweat. “You’re more than sorry, bitch. You’re dead.”
The fear Elanna had dodged in the throne room hit her now. The man in front of her was dangerous, and he was nasty, but as she searched his eyes Elanna discovered one more thing. He was sane. Madness might have excused him, but no trace of it flickered in his eyes. Whatever he planned for her, it sprang from cold and calculating anger and not insanity.
“Why?” Was all she could ask, hating the whining sound in her own voice. She dared not struggle, even though his fingers were digging into her flesh.
“Because you killed her,” the General said.
“I didn’t kill her.” Elanna heard the baby crying, a sound that made her breasts tingle in memory. “I tried to help her.”
“You let her die,” the General said. “It’s the same thing.”
“Then you killed her just as much as I did,” Elanna hissed. “Because you’re the one who got her pregnant!”
He threw her to the ground. Elanna slid in the blood-mucked floor, scrambling to get away from him before he kicked her, or worse. The General didn’t come after her. He only stood, staring, fists clenched and stone-faced.
Elanna got to her feet. The baby was still wailing and she risked a glance at the girl who held it. She looked terrified, holding the squirming, red-faced infant out from her body as though it might scald her. Elanna hadn’t had time to properly swaddle the child, and its towel was sliding off. Soon, she could see, the girl would drop it.
Elanna didn’t care if the man grabbed her. She couldn’t let the baby hit the floor. She turned her back to the General, expecting to feel his hands on her again at any minute, and took the squalling infant out of the other girl’s hands. She wrapped the baby snugly again and held it to her chest. It quieted, rooting. Elanna looked at the dead girl and bent to press her cheek to the baby’s still-moist head.
“I didn’t kill her,” she repeated quietly. “And I didn’t let her die. I couldn’t stop it. Maybe if I’d been able to help her sooner--”
“Brown! Smith!” He was no longer looking at Amy’s corpse. In fact it was as though she’d disappeared, the way his eyes slid over her without seeing.
The two Gappers who’d brought the water and towels snapped to attention with identical cries of “Sir!” The General stood tall. His face was no longer so pale.
“Take the prisoner to the interrogation room,” he said flatly.
“Sir!”
“Yes, Brown?”
“What about the…the…thing, Sir? The baby?”
The General focused for a moment on the bundle in Elanna’s arms. “Throw it out the window.”
Elanna’s grip tightened on the now-quiet child. She’d made it through the blood and death without wavering, but at the General’s harsh words her gorge rose. She took a step back, bumping against the wall. She had no place else to go.
“You will not touch this baby,” she said.
The soldiers who’d been moving toward her hesitated, perhaps moved by something in her tone. Elanna shuddered but stood her ground. She locked eyes with the General, who looked at her without expression. He swallowed once, then twice and she watched the movement of his throat each time.
“Let her keep it, then, if she wants it,” he said. “For now, anyway.”
He jerked his head to the doorway and turned his back, dismissing them. Brown and Smith each took one of Elanna’s elbows. She let them lead her to the doorway, if only to protect the baby by not resisting them.
Before she let them push her through the door, she hung back. The entire night seemed like a dream, something she couldn’t quite comprehend. She spoke to the General’s back, unaware until she spoke that she would sound so pleading.
“This is your son,” she said. “Your son!”
“Get her out of here,” he replied, and Brown and Smith followed his orders.
−
45-
“What the fuck?” The girl who’d opened the door cried in regular Gapper style.
Tobin turned as she spoke, locking his arm around her neck and covering her mouth with his hand. Keeping her pressed against him, her arms held to her sides by his arms, he pulled her out into the hallway. She struggled against his chest, but without use of her arms she couldn’t do much more. She kicked out, but facing away from him her flailing legs connected only with the air. The lantern she’d been carrying fell to the ground but thankfully didn’t break.
He waited for someone to follow her, but she was alone. Without letting go of her, Tobin bent and hooked the lantern with one finger. She kicked out again as he straightened, but he managed to keep hold of it. Without its light, the place would be pitch black again.
He pushed the door open and pulled her through. The room was too vast for the lantern to fully illuminate, but from what he could see, it was filled with long shelving units laden with boxes and packages.
The girl, so far as he could tell, was unarmed. She wore the same dull green as all the others he’d seen, but this time a thin short-sleeved shirt and a pair of pants cut off at the leg. In the lantern light, her hair gleamed like silver. Because she was facing away from him, he couldn’t see her face.
He couldn’t risk her screaming. “I have a knife,” he said into her ear. “I’ll stick it in your head the second you open your mouth to do more than breathe. Got it?”
The girl, nodded. Tobin kept his grip on her arm and slowly turned her to face him as he let his hand slide away from her mouth. He tensed, waiting for the yell, but she must have believed him about the knife. As he saw her face, he realized with a pang of guilt how young she really was. Then he saw who she was.
“Dallas?”
The girl, eyes bright with tears, nodded. “You’re the man from town!”
“My name’s Tobin. Dallas, I need you to take me to Elanna.”
She coughed, as though she’d swallowed the wrong way. “I don’t know.”
But he’d seen the truth in her eyes and he stepped in before she could finish the lie. “Don’t waste my time. Where is she?”
He saw with another flash of guilt that his grip had begun to bruise her thin arms. Her head only came up to the top of his chest, if that, and she seemed to weigh no more than a feather pillow. He was using his strength against someone so much smaller than himself…and that was shameful.
Smaller, but not defenseless, he thought, thinking of Kodak and her crew. Even this young girl, whose eyes he now could see were deep, dark blue, was trained for combat. She had no gun, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t fight.
“Major Kodak brought her in,” Dallas said. “The General wanted to see her.”
“Is that where Elanna is now? With her?”
Dallas looked at him strangely. “The General isn’t a chick.”
Her sentence made no sense. Chicks were fuzzy yellow birds hatched from eggs. “What?”
“A chick,” Dallas said. “You know. A woman. He’s a dude. A man. He’s the General. Didn’t you know that?”
He didn’t bother to answer that. “And Elanna is with him?”
Dallas looked wary. “They took her and the baby to the interrogation room after she let Lansing die.”
Her words made a cold sweat break out on his skin. “What’s the interrogation room?”
But Dallas seemed to regret the information she’d already given him. She shook her head. “I’ve told you too much already. If Kodak found out -- ”
“If you tell me how to get to Elanna and promise not to alert anyone that I’m here,” Tobin said, “I’ll make sure Kodak never finds out who told me.”
Dallas shook her head again. “She’ll find out. She always knows.”
He felt sorry for this girl-child, who’d grown up with guns and curses rather than love. She didn’t have much futu
re, he thought. She was destined to become another Kodak.
“Dallas,” he said gently. “If you take me to Elanna, you can come with us when we leave.”
She wanted to believe him. He saw it in her eyes. But then she shook her head again, fiercely. “No! Why would I want to leave?”
“Take me to her,” Tobin urged. “Before it’s too late.”
“If she’s in the interrogation room with The General,” Dallas whispered with a shudder, “it’s already too late.”
−
46-
