Beyond: Book Four of the State Series

by M. J. Kaestli

  “Would we need to kill all four of them?”

  “No.” She grabbed the binoculars and pointed. “You see how two of them are circling the perimeter while the other two are working in the center? Those big black things they have, those are their guns. We would either have to somehow sneak up on them from behind, or we need to create weapons of our own. The other two people there are just like me. I don’t think they would fight if someone was to overtake their guards. I think they would be so surprised to see people without a hazmat suit they would be more interested in trying to communicate than to fight.”

  “So it could be done though. With the right amount of time to plan—which we have—we could overtake those two guards and steel their carrier.”

  She rolled onto her back and covered her eyes with her hands as though she could force her mind to remember. “Those carriers.” She paused, pressing her eyelids tightly closed. “They run on solar power. They only drive out in the mornings and turn back by midday. The day of my accident, we ran into trouble almost the moment we got here. I was on the other side of the craft because I had to talk to people. They can communicate—like we do on our radio but I think they use something else—so they knew the second the device blew up. They had the time to send another carrier before sundown. But if we took them by surprise, I don’t think they would know anything was wrong until they didn’t return that night. They wouldn’t be able to send another carrier till the next day.”

  Joshua listened and nodded reflectively. “So we can either run to the mountain and be waiting for them when they come out, or we can find a way to make that carrier blow up when they get here.”

  Hope shrugged. “Yep. I think those are both worth exploring.”

  “What do we do with the people like you? Do we tie them up?”

  She winced. “If you have to. I don’t think you will. I think they should be moved into the community and kept out of harm’s way.”

  “What do we do with the men we gotta kill? Not that they deserve much, after they left your…”

  Hope flinched. She closed her eyes in both pain and recollection. “I know it wasn’t dignified, but I understand why they did it. I think they poured acid on their bodies to help them break down quickly. It was such a mess. I’m just not sure they could have done something different.” She blinked back the tears trying to force their way out. “But you know, those men guarding the scientists are just taking orders. I know we have to kill anyone willing to fight for the State, but we need to recognize most of them are innocent. I don’t know what to do with them and we don’t have to know that today. If there are only those two bodies to deal with, then we will handle it much differently than if we have many bodies with some of our own.”

  Josh took a sharp intake of breath. Hope reached out and placed her hand gently on his. “This isn’t happening tomorrow. We are simply gathering information, that’s all. We don’t know how long this will take or if they will need the men in our community to fight.”

  Josh nodded. “I know. And I’m gonna make sure you’re as far away from all this as possible. I’m not gonna lose you over this.”

  She leaned closer, kissing him gently. “No, you won’t”

  ***

  As Hope neared the trapdoor to their home, she heard elevated voices. She looked around bewildered, searching for the source of the argument as she was not accustomed to hearing her neighbors. She couldn’t see anyone in the distance, so she closed the gap between herself and her home. As she placed a hand on the warm handle of the trapdoor, she realized the argument was being conducted inside her own home.

  She reflexively pulled her hand away from the handle and leaned in closer to listen at the closed door.

  “I bet she’s using her witchcraft to keep from having your baby!”

  “Maw, she ain’t no witch! You know she ain’t. You’re just mad about her spending time with Ruben.”

  “Why the hell aren’t you mad? You saved that filthy harlots life, and how does she repay you? By whoring around with the first man she speaks to. There’s a reason God hasn’t sent no baby to your house. We’d have no way of telling who the father is. It’s divine intervention that’s kept her womb barren.”

  “Oh, is it? Because a second ago, you said it was witchcraft.”

  A deafening crack reverberated in her ears. She flung open the door and ran down the stairs.

  “How dare you speak to your mama like that! I got half a mind to beat you senseless, boy.”

  “Stop!” Hope stepped forward, putting herself between the two. She could see Joshua’s cheek pulsating and red where Adah struck him. She turned to Adah. “I don’t know what this is about, but that will be the last time you ever hit Joshua.” She took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. “I’m sure we can talk this out like proper adults.”

  Adah threw her head back in a mad cackle. “Who the hell do you think you are?” She took a step closer, leaning into Hope. “You think you’re better than me? You hardly known my boy a full season yet. I carried him in my womb, birthed him, and have devoted my life to raisin’ him right. You don’t get to tell me what’s good for him. If you knew what was good for him, you wouldn’t be off traipsing around with other men. You’d be here waiting for him when he got home, dinner cooked and sitting on the table. I thought getting baptized would fix you and make you a proper wife, but I was wrong. You’re not a decent enough human being to be saved. You turned your back on the Lord, now he gonna turn his back on you.”

  Josh stepped forward, placing his hand on his mother’s shoulder to ease her away from Hope. “Maw, that’s more than enough. It’s time for you to go on home.”

  Adah sneered at him. “That how it’s gonna be? You gonna take her side on this?” She leaned back on her heel, crossing her arms. “Because if you do, she’s gonna leave you with nothing. You turn your back on me, there ain’t no comin’ back from that. You’re throwing your life away on a woman whose soul is already damned. That’s gonna do nothing but bring you heartache.”

  Hope stepped back and slid a chair away from the table. “Adah, why don’t you take a seat. Let’s talk about this. This is all nothing more than a misunderstanding. We can work this out. This isn’t necessary.”

  “I’m not gonna sit here with the likes of you. When we tried to help you, and all you’ve done, all you will ever do is ruin my boy’s life.”

  Hope blinked rapidly. She scrambled to think of something to say to help defuse the situation but wasn’t quick enough.

  “It’s time for you to go, Maw. I don’t want you coming back here neither. Not till you can speak to my wife with the respect she deserves.”

  Adah threw her hands in the air. “Lord, I tried.” She leaned over the table and retrieved her basket. “I tried to help my boy see the light, and he’s decided to let Jezebel drag him on down to hell with her.” She wrenched open the inner door. “Goodbye forever.” She stomped upstairs.

  Joshua leaned his head around the corner and yelled at her back. “You ain’t welcome here no more! Not now, not when we have your grandbaby, neither. Our children are gonna grow up never knowing their grandma.”

  Hope sat down heavily in the chair she had been holding out for Adah. Her head fell into her hands and she focused on breathing. Josh paced the room.

  “I don’t know what to say.” She looked up at Josh, who was still pacing.

  “Nothing. There ain’t nothing to say. She’s gone from our lives now. We are gonna keep living our lives like we been doing but without her around.”

  Hope shook her head. She wished he would stop pacing, but her mind was spinning too ferociously for her to think of anything comforting to say. “I’m sure it’s just a silly fight. She will come around, eventually.”

  Josh abruptly stopped pacing and looked directly at her. “No, Hope, that’s where you’re wrong. This ain’t just some fight. You will never be like the other women in this town. You will never fit in. I got that. I can even accept it just fine
, but Maw can’t. It ain’t enough for you to sit around and gossip with the women in this community. You can’t just go to church and study the Bible and have babies and be content in that life. You need something more. That’s why you gotta get yourself involved with Ruben and that radio. That’s why you want me to go and watch the scientists to help with the war. It doesn’t matter how long you live here, you will never fit in. My Maw keeps waiting for you to be like the other women, but you won’t. And she’s the first one to get caught up in the gossip about what’s different about you. She thinks that coming over here and yelling at me will somehow make you different. She thinks I need to make you be different. She’s wrong. And she’ll never treat you better, especially if I go soft on her. We just ain’t gonna speak to her no more.”

  Hope shook her head. “How are we going to do that? Are we going to stop going to church? Or what about the Saturday market? How will we get our supplies?”

  Josh huffed and sat at the table. “I said, we ain’t gonna talk to her. I didn’t say we ain’t gonna see her.”

  Hope fought back the overwhelming urge to roll her eyes. She may not agree with his actions or ideals but she knew his heart was in the right place. He was doing this for her. She reached over and squeezed his hand. He immediately interlocked their fingers and lifted her hand to his lips. The gravity of what he had just done set in. Her eyes moistened in gratitude towards this man. She often forgot how difficult she must continually make his life. She would never be the kind of wife a man from this community desired. Despite their apparent incompatibilities, he seemed to love her as though she were giving him the life he had always dreamed of.

  “Why do you put up with all of this? You could have a better life with someone else?”

  He shook his head. “You’re my wife. This is the life I want.” He paused. “Besides, I think she’s wrong about you. I think the whole town is wrong about a lot of things.” He leaned back. “I originally got caught up in this situation with the dome and Clint because of you, but I’m not sure it’s about you anymore. Now that I know what I know about the other surviving villages wanting to start a war but this community being too chicken, I want change. I wanna be able to live above ground without being afraid. You could make stuff—like how you said you could make my cart work better. I want a better life for our children than I had as a kid.”

  She wiped a few tears from her cheeks. “I didn’t know you felt so strongly about it. I thought it was something I unwittingly dragged you into.”

  “Oh, it was.” He laughed. “Life with you sure ain’t boring. But no matter what, I can’t ever stop believing that the Lord brought you to me for a reason. I think this war is supposed to happen, and as your husband, I need to support you. Especially when it comes to my mother and the other women in this community.”

  She tried to dry her tears, but Josh simply stood and held his hand toward her. “Ah, come over here, you.”

  She got to her feet and flung herself into his arms. She may not have the same motivations or convictions as him. She couldn’t conceive of some external power leading her to him, but there was a part of her that liked the idea of it.

  Chapter 18

  Hope splashed water over her face and lathered soap in her hands. Just as she was leaning over to rinse the suds from her skin, a sudden tension gripped her stomach. She righted herself to try to get the sensation to stop. Her stomach seemed to churn even more until she leaned over and threw up into the toilet.

  Joshua was instantly in the bathroom beside her. “Are you alright?”

  She leaned over the sink to rinse her mouth and finish washing her face. “Yep, just a little upset stomach is all.”

  “Hope?”

  “What?”

  “You’re pregnant.”

  She shrugged. “It’s a little too soon to be certain.”

  “How many cycles have you missed? Your boobs are getting larger. You’re definitely pregnant.”

  “I’m in the middle of missing my second cycle.”

  A grin broke across his face that was so wide she could have hung their laundry on it. “Why didn’t you say something sooner?”

  She sighed. “Because you really don’t know until you miss three cycles. I’ve learned that from being a midwife. I see women miss one cycle and call us in, and then they cancel their follow up appointment. I don’t want to get too excited until we are certain there is a baby and it is safe.” He wrapped his arms around her and kissed her gently. She pulled back after a moment to look at him. “Besides, you seem to think the whole world should stop spinning for me just because I am pregnant. I’m not going to become bedridden unless Miriam tells me I have to.”

  “But doesn't workin’ and stuff increase your chance of something goin’ wrong?”

  She grabbed his hand and stepped out of the bathroom, taking a seat on the sofa with him.

  “It can in high-risk individuals, but that’s not me. I’m the ideal age to have a baby. Plus, I’m in perfect health. There is no reason to believe I will have any complications.”

  “What has your age got to do with it?”

  “Well, if a female is, say, seventeen or younger, she has the risk of the baby coming too soon because her body hasn’t developed enough to support the growth of a baby or to deliver safely. Or if a woman is more mature or had many children already, her risks go up once again.”

  “So, a baby will only come too soon if the mother is young?”

  She shook her head. “No, it can still happen to anyone, it is just more probable with a young mother.”

  “What happens if a baby comes too soon? Who else does it happen to? Can it happen to us?”

  Hope’s face fell. She didn’t want to tell him the truth because it would surely add to his paranoia about her pregnancy, but she also didn’t like the idea of lying to him either. If she lied to him and they lost their baby, it would be much harder for him to deal with or accept. She needed to be honest in educating him on the matter, but hold a firm ground with boundaries in regards to how she was going to spend her time while pregnant.

  “It won’t make it. It won’t be able to take its first breath because its lungs aren’t developed enough to breathe.”

  Joshua winced. “If God doesn’t give that baby its first breath, there ain’t nothing anyone of us can do about it.”

  An image flashed in her mind. She was looking down on a baby laying under yellow lights with tubes all over the place. Who was this baby? What was it hooked up to and why? Her head nearly throbbed as she tried to force the fog away from the image of the baby.

  “Hope? Where’d you go?”

  She shook her head. “I’m trying to remember something. There was a baby.”

  “Yeah, and you’re a midwife.”

  “No, it was from before my accident. I remember a baby that was hooked up to machines.”

  “You had a baby back in the dome?”

  She winced and tried to press harder. “No, it wasn’t mine. I was there with the mother when I was young.”

  Joshua breathed out a sigh of relief. “Was it your little brother or sister?”

  Her mind returned to the memory and somehow the fog lifted a little more. “No. I feel like she lived near me.”

  “So you went to see your neighbors baby? That seems normal enough.”

  The fog lifted more, and she remembered the baby a little older and the mother’s face. The memory suddenly flooded back to her in so much detail if felt as though a dam burst in her mind.

  “My parents’ genetics were considered superior, so they were forced to have a large family. We grew up in some weird complex set aside for people who don’t have to work because having children is their job. She was our neighbor and I was old enough to help her but not to go to school. I went over there to help her because she was too young to have a baby. She was sixteen, but we didn’t have that rule in the dome because they can save a baby who doesn’t breathe on their own.” She had to rest her head in her hands for
a moment to get her bearings. “That’s why I just remembered this. It is incredibly rare a baby was ever lost where I’m from. They have machines and medicines to help force their lungs to work and develop faster. That woman having a baby at sixteen was put on bed rest by her doctor. My mother sent me over to help her at each meal time and to keep her entertained.”

  “Her baby made it then?”

  Hope nodded. “I think she delivered about a month early and the baby was fine. They kept it hooked up to those machines and had to put it under some lights, but yes. They were fine.”

  Joshua started to twirl the hair on his mustache. “Maybe that’s why God sent you here and made you a midwife. Maybe when you get your memories back, you will be able to save some babies. Maybe we will end up needing to build more houses because of you.”