by Toby Neal
Avital nodded and sank into a chair.
She ate the breakfast he made for her. It was delicious and satisfied her hunger, but she felt hollow. Dolf thought of her child as Nando’s baby. Could he ever understand what he meant to her, that as far as she was concerned, she’d said goodbye to Nando, let him go? How could she explain how certain she was that the baby was Dolf’s?
Avital hardly understood it herself. She stood and ran water to wash the dishes, but Dolf stopped her. “You were up all night, working hard with them. Go up and get some sleep. Please.”
“Okay.” Avital turned. Dolf’s hand moved toward her waist but stopped. She looked at it. So different from Nando’s, and yet so alike. More calloused, a little darker and harder…like him.
She reached out and took his wrist, placing his palm against the slight swelling of her womb. The warmth of his hand on her belly felt incredibly good. “It’s real.” She glanced up and saw tears in Dolf’s eyes.
He opened his mouth to speak, but the children’s footsteps running down the staircase stopped him. The four kids tumbled through the door, laughing, carrying Butch and Slash, who’d clearly spent the night with them.
Dolf didn’t remove his hand, though. He bent and kissed the top of her head. The touch was exquisite and yet not nearly enough. The tips of his fingers squeezed slightly before he stepped away. “Go get some sleep. I’ve got omelets to make.”
Avital collapsed in one of the bedrooms and slept for hours. When she woke, she immediately went to check on Penny.
Penny was sitting up in bed, nursing her daughter. The baby’s small hand rested on Penny’s breast and the child suckled enthusiastically, making appreciative noises as she drew nourishment. Penny looked up and gave Avital a huge smile.
“How are you feeling?” Avital asked, getting out her stethoscope.
“We’re perfect.”
Perfect. That word had come up a lot in the last day. Avital was surprised by how perfect life could be despite all that had happened. The baby Penny held was proof that life went on. Even as they lost those they loved, new loves arrived.
Avital sat on the edge of the bed and checked Penny’s blood pressure. Then she looked over the baby for any signs of distress. They both were, indeed, perfect.
Penny’s hand landed on Avital’s arm. “You okay?”
Avital swiped at tears. “I’m pregnant.” She covered her mouth with her hand.
“Congratulations! Dolf seems like a very good man. Fred says he’s been great with the kids.”
“I’m a widow. Dolf is my brother-in-law.”
Penny raised her eyebrows. “Oh, I misread that. You seem like a couple.”
Avital shook her head. “No, you didn’t misread it. I’m in love with him.”
Avital couldn’t believe she’d just said that. She had not even fully realized it until this moment. The tears came, big and warm as tropical rain. Penny squeezed her hand.
“Oh honey, can’t you see he’s in love with you, too?”
Avital shook her head. “Maybe. Probably. Nando died not long ago, and—they were identical twins. It’s just—I don’t know where to go from here. Dolf thinks it’s Nando’s baby.”
“Does it matter, if they’re identical?”
“It matters to me that Dolf’s the baby’s father, and that he wants us. Both of us.” Avital looked up at the other woman. Penny smiled so serenely. Her skin was glowing, her breasts large and full of life-giving sustenance. The baby slept on a pillow, her mouth parted, pink lips opening and closing reflexively.
“You were meant to be here so you could help me deliver this little girl.” Penny looked down at the child. “We’re naming her Avital. After you.”
Avital stifled a sob. “That means a lot to me.”
“I think you are meant to help me, and I was meant to help you. I think that’s the way the world works.”
Avital didn’t respond. She was used to helping people, and letting others help her wasn’t her way. Or at least it hadn’t been.
“I’ve meant to tell you that it’s okay for you to love him. The world has changed, and the rules are different now. Life is short, and precious.”
Avital shook her head. “But there’s so much wrong about it.”
“There’s nothing wrong about love. That baby growing inside you is pure love. That’s why we cry so much when we’re pregnant, it’s just love oozing out all over.”
Avital thought of all the hormones and scientific reasons that caused emotional upheaval during pregnancy, but didn’t mention them to Penny. Being so filled with love that it was making her overflow was a beautiful thought.
“Listen to me.” Penny squeezed Avital’s hand, using that same strength she’d shown while laboring. She held Avital’s gaze with crystal clear blue eyes. “If you love him, you should tell him. And you two should be together.”
Avital wanted to hug Penny. She’d come to feel like a sister in their short, intense time together. Avital nodded and swiped at the tears on her face.
“I don’t think you heard me,” Penny’s voice turned sharp, like a mother scolding her child. “Don’t waste love, not in this new world. You know how bad it is. The Scorching has changed the planet. It’s taken so many lives, but it’s also brought truth to the forefront—the true nature of human beings. Fred would tell you that the true nature is violence—the roving gangs and dangerous people are coming out of the woodwork, and that’s his proof. But Avital, I tell you—love is also the true nature of human beings.” She looked down at her daughter. “This little girl is my proof of that.”
Avital drew a deep breath and placed her hand over her stomach. Penny was right. She had to tell Dolf how she felt about him. She had to give them a chance. She owed it to herself, to Dolf, and to the baby.
Chapter Twenty-One
Dolf
Two days later, Fred Stuckie sat at the battered dining room table with Dolf and a map, and they took a look at the route he and Avital needed to take to the Haven.
“I wish I could drive you the whole way,” Fred said. “You two have done so much for us the last few days.”
The past forty-eight hours had been a welcome rest for them, too, after the rigors of the road. Dolf was surprised at how satisfying he found the work on the farm—feeding the cattle, finishing the hay baling, and helping Fred repair fences.
All the while, the knowledge of Avital’s pregnancy pulsed in the back of his mind. The sight of Penny nursing her new baby brought up a strange sort of longing. He couldn’t help but imagine Avital growing round with his brother’s child. He couldn’t wait to see Nando’s baby at Avital’s breast—it was a sweet and sexy thought that he mentally shied away from, plaguing him more than he wanted to admit.
Every now and then, he let himself imagine that it was his baby in her womb, his child at her breast. The protective, possessive, intensely loving feelings that arose whenever he entertained that fantasy were so powerful that he withdrew from Avital even further, continuing to sleep in the barn and stay busy and as far away from her as he could.
He’d kept the kids out in the barn throughout Penny’s afternoon and night of labor, building an obstacle course and playing with them, then setting up beds for them as a treat to “camp out” in the sweet hay of the loft—but when he’d returned to the house to get food for dinner and their bedding, he’d been able to hear Penny’s deep moans, Fred’s reassuring rumble. Elemental terror swamped him at the thought of Avital going through that pain.
But Avital was strong. It was a miracle that they’d have this reminder of Nando.
Fred brought him back to the present, tracing a small, squiggly line of road. “If you want to stay off the main roads, you’ll have to go around the Targhee National Forest and Yellowstone. There’s no way to get through that without a vehicle because it’s nothing but wilderness for miles, and steep elevation.”
“Yeah, going through the wilderness there is out of the question.”
“You’d do best to cont
inue on this road, Highway 39, until you reach 94, the freeway, then try to hitchhike from there,” Fred said. “Hardly any roads and a helluva lot of wilderness in this part of Montana, as you can see.” Even the colored ridges on the map showing the mountains looked intimidating. Maybe it was time to steal a car. “I’ll take you as far as I can, toward the nearest town from here, Colstrip. But I can’t be away from the farm long.” Fred set his jaw. “I have to protect….”
“You don’t have to explain that to me. I know what you have here.” Dolf met the other man’s eyes squarely. “Not all travelers who come this way are going to be doctors and handymen.”
Fred snorted a laugh at that. “Not to mention, damn good babysitters.”
Fred drove them, after many tearful hugs and goodbyes, to the outskirts of Colstrip an hour away. “Don’t want to come into the town proper. I heard it’s bad there, so be careful,” he said, letting them out of the truck and handing them their packs. Butch and Slash both jumped down from the bed of the pickup, like experienced travelers.
Dolf shook the man’s hand and smacked his back in goodbye. “Take care of that family of yours. And if you ever need help, the place we’re heading to can accommodate you. It’s a fortified farm, self-sustaining. So, if you ever have a need….” He told him the location near North Fork, Idaho.
“Hope it never comes to that, but even so, we can’t thank you enough.” Fred reversed the truck with the wave, and practically burned rubber heading back to his homestead. Dolf could hardly imagine the man’s burden of responsibility without feeling his own shoulders bow under the weight.
“I wish we could take them with us now,” Avital said, as they set out at a brisk walk on the country road.
“I wish he had another man to help protect the place. I worry about them. The farm is isolated, a plum target for desperate people.”
“You were so great with the kids. I can’t believe we ever called you ‘tin man.’” Avital took his hand, rubbing the calluses across the top of his palm with her thumb. Since the revelation of her pregnancy, she had been reaching out to him more and more physically, even as he drew further away. It was so hard not to want more from her, and impossible to ask. Now that they were finally alone, he didn’t have the willpower to remove his hand from hers. Her touch felt so good, so loving.
Not that it was loving. She was being friendly. Close. Like a sister.
Everything in his being rose up to protest that thought. There was nothing sisterly about the feelings he had for her. Her scent was even more intoxicating to him now. He wondered if pregnancy had something to do with that, because she smelled different—sweeter, riper.
The companionable feeling between them prior to their days on the farm had given way to something new–and he couldn’t put a name to it.
“I don’t think I need to do any doctoring today,” Avital said as they walked into the outskirts of the Colstrip, hardly more than a village with a main street and a warren of residences behind a row of false-fronted shops and businesses with a funky Western feel. “Penny and Fred gave us a lot of good food.”
Dolf smiled down at her. “Passing on doctoring?” He touched the back of his hand playfully to her forehead, as if taking her temperature.
She didn’t smile. She gazed up at him, serious, her wide brown eyes the color of dark honey. “I just want to get to the Haven as quickly as we can. And—get on with whatever our life will be there.”
A twinge of regret, anticipating their separation, skewered Dolf—but he’d begun to feel the same urgency, especially with the nights getting colder. “Your wish is my command.”
He enjoyed the sensation of her hand in his, that tiny rub of her thumb. It shouldn’t mean so much, but it did.
The streets were silent, the businesses shuttered. Dolf glimpsed buzzards circling just outside the town, and his skin crawled. He didn’t want to see whatever was there.
Avital looked around, brows scrunched. “This place is…something’s wrong.”
The door of a nearby house, a modest older home, opened with a sudden bang. Dolf wheeled toward the threat, whipping the Colt out of his belt, as a teenaged girl, all long legs, big knees, and a cloud of tangled auburn hair, stumbled out of the house. Her cheeks were bright red, her eyes glassy, and her mouth was open wide, trying to drag air into drowning lungs.
She stumbled toward them, arms outstretched, as Butch barked a hysterical warning. Dolf caught her as she collapsed onto him and lowered her to the grass. Avital fumbled open her doctor’s bag and listened to the girl’s rattling breaths with her stethoscope. Her eyes met Dolf’s over the girl’s head. She gave a brief headshake.
Dolf couldn’t bear to leave the girl there, sprawled on the front lawn to die alone and be picked over by buzzards. He scooped the slender body, burning with fever, into his arms and carried her into the house.
The smell of death was thick and cloying from the other rooms as Dolf placed the girl on the couch, propping her head on a pillow, and fetching a glass of water. By the time he returned, she was unconscious. The water dribbled from her slack mouth when he held the glass to her lips. Slash hopped up on the couch, purring, but Butch wouldn’t enter the house, instead whining anxiously outside on the porch.
Avital frowned. She’d donned her mask and a pair of gloves. “Even with the vaccination Elizabeth gave us, you shouldn’t be handling her without protection.”
“If I was going to get sick, it would have happened by now.” Dolf fetched a spoon, and, kneeling beside the girl, fed sips of water into her unresponsive mouth, tipping her head back so it was able to run down her throat. Eventually she swallowed, and it seemed to ease her as the shivers that racked her abated.
An hour later, the girl was gone, her sleep permanent and struggle over. Avital touched Dolf’s arm. “Come. She doesn’t need us anymore.”
Dolf stumbled after Avital. The screen door banged behind him, echoing a death knell in the house as they hurried away, the animals in their wake.
The crisp smell of fall leaves lingered in the cool air of the afternoon as they walked the two-lane road out of town. Fields surrounded them, bordered by barbed wire fenced pastureland. A house just off the road was marked by the swirling flight of vultures.
“I guess they weren’t able to bury or burn the bodies,” Dolf said. “Probably piled them there until they couldn’t anymore.”
His heart was full and bruised. He couldn’t have said why that girl, of all the many dying and dead he’d seen, had touched something in him. Maybe it was her red hair, so like Avital’s at her age, or her coltish legs, giving promise of a woman that would now never manifest.
The grief that swamped him wasn’t about Nando anymore—it was for the plague, and all it had stolen. He walked on, dashing tears off his cheeks with one hand as Avital held the other. Dolf was grateful for her silence.
Night rolled around and they arrived at another farm. The house was set a long way back from the road, on an ill-maintained dirt track. A grove of fruit trees screened the buildings.
Dolf felt oddly light-headed and shaky. “I think we should see if these folks have a barn we can crash in tonight. I’m bushed.”
Avital nodded. She was pale and drawn. Dolf’s backpack felt like a bag of boulders as he struggled to put one foot in front of the other, heading towards the homestead.
The small white clapboard farmhouse had an empty lean-to garage. Butch and Slash nosed around the outbuildings, looking for edibles, but the barn and the fields were bare. No livestock livened the chicken coops or nearby pasture. This family had fled.
Dolf and Avital walked up to the front porch and Dolf knocked on the front door for form’s sake. No one answered.
Dolf broke the window above the door handle with a rock. He reached in, unlocked it, and turned the knob. He sagged, clinging to the doorway, and unslung the backpack, dropping it to the floor. “I’m really tired. Need to rest.”
Avital helped him to the couch of a small, musty-smelli
ng front parlor. “Maybe you picked up a little bug from the kids.” Avital’s voice was pinched with tension as she felt his head. “You’ve got a fever.”
He tried to reassure her. “I’m fine. I just need a little shut-eye.”
Avital knelt beside him as he collapsed on the couch, and the posture reminded him unpleasantly of how he’d knelt beside the dying girl. She dug in her black bag, her movements jerky and swift. The animals seemed to sense something wrong and set up a racket until Avital let them in, and she applied a handheld electronic thermometer to his ear.
“A hundred and four. How long have you been feeling sick?” Her voice had taken on that professional calm that he’d heard so often in the past few weeks, applied to other people. Other situations. Never him. He shrugged. The question seemed irrelevant.
“Take off your clothes.”
“You don’t know how long I’ve been waiting to hear you say that,” he teased. The fever seemed to be removing his verbal filters.
Her eyes were stark when they met his. “This is not a joking matter. It looks like you might have the flu.”
Dolf’s lungs constricted, as if by pronouncing that sentence she had shut off his air. He turned to the side, the tightness increasing in his chest. He couldn’t even cough as Avital helped him take off his clothes down to his boxers.
“We have to cool you down,” she said. “I need to see if the water is still running in this house.”
She hurried away. Dolf sank into the cushions.
He couldn’t be sick with Scorch Flu. He’d been inoculated. But maybe it was, maybe it had morphed, like Elizabeth said it did, and he’d caught a new strain from that girl. Damn his impulse to help!
A sense of futility closed over his head. He was going to die here, and leave Avital without a protector or helper.
No. He had to fight this thing. He couldn’t let her go through what she had been through with Nando. His heart squeezed at the thought of her, alone, pregnant, trying to make it to the Haven and leaving his useless corpse for the buzzards.
