V.J. Chambers - Jason&Azazel Apocalypse 01 (8 page)

Chapter Five

The baby was sleeping. I’d found some diapers and changed him. He had a heck of a diaper rash.

(And that had been the grossest diaper I’d ever changed.) I was cradling him in my arms. His little mouth had gone slack against the bottle I was holding.

Kieran was watching me with interest. “You sure do know how to take care of babies,” he said.

“I helped with my niece a lot,” I said.

“Huh,” he said. Mercifully, he didn’t ask any more questions. There was nothing I wanted to tell him about little Jenna. I never wanted to talk about that. Ever.

We were sitting in the living room. The sun was going down. It was dark. God. It was always dark. I missed electricity. “I don’t want to stay in here with all these dead bodies,” I said.

“Okay,” said Kieran. “But what are we going to do about this baby?”

“Take him with us,” I said. “We’ll have to go back to camp. We can come back and look for the grimoire later.”

“But do we need to pack up baby supplies?”

He was right. We didn’t get our tent pitched until it was very dark outside. I let Kieran work on building a fire while I tried to get the baby supplies into the packs we’d brought with us. I was sure that there wasn’t anything we could use back at the church. I didn’t know if there were supplies to be raided in the nearby convenience store or not, but I knew that we needed to get all the formula, bottles, diapers, and baby clothes we could. Of everything, the diapers were the bulkiest. Kieran wanted to leave them behind, but I wouldn’t. He said that people used cloth diapers before the advent of disposable ones and considering there was a finite supply of them, we might as well get used to that. I told him that he could wash the cloth diapers if he felt that way. He caved and let me bring the disposables.

With a fire built, Kieran and I heated up some cans of chili and ate next to our tent. The baby was snoozing inside. I’d made him a little bed of blankets away from our own sleeping bags. The last thing I wanted to do was roll over on the baby and kill it. This happened more often than people thought.

I watched Kieran eat, the fire dancing on his face, lighting up his long hair. He was a good looking guy. He was nice, too. Decent. If I were really going to have a baby, he wasn’t the worst pick for a father ever. I didn’t think he’d run off or leave me in the lurch or anything. I thought he was a pretty stand-up guy. Still, the whole idea felt too foreign to really wrap my head around.

I couldn’t believe that there could actually be a tiny being growing inside my body.

Actually, it sounded kind of gross. If I were pregnant, wasn’t I supposed to be releasing hormones that would help me bond with the little creature? Maybe that came later. I stared down at my flat stomach and willed it to stay flat. I was only a week late. My period would come.

Maybe it was stress. Maybe I’d lost too much weight. There were lots of things that could be going on.

Inside the tent, the baby woke up and started fussing. I left my chili and went in to get him. I didn’t know if he needed another bottle already. It hadn’t been that long since I fed him. Sure enough, he quieted as soon as he was in my arms.

He was lonely, poor guy. How many days had he lain by himself in that house, his family rotting around him? It made me feel sick. I tickled his tummy, and he gave me a huge toothless grin.

Kieran came around the fire and sat next to me, peering at the baby.

“Did you see his name anywhere?” he asked me.

I shook my head. “Nope.”

“He’s very cute.”

“Yes,” I cooed to the baby, “this little guy is adorable.”

“Well, that’s what we’ll call him, then,” said Kieran.

“What?”

“Guy. You said he was a little guy. Guy’s a good name. It’s very masculine.”

I laughed. I brushed his nose with my forefinger. He grabbed at my finger with his tiny hand.

“You like that, Guy? Is that a good name?”

He gurgled and smiled.

Kieran reached in and tickled his chin. “I think he likes it.” Guy grasped Kieran’s finger. It was crazy, how big Kieran’s fingers looked next to Guy’s tiny ones. Kieran smiled at me over the baby. “He’s got quite a grip.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Babies go through a stage where they love to grab stuff.”

“Cool,” said Kieran, looking at Guy again. He gazed at the baby. “Very cool.” Guy and Kieran made gurgling noises at each other for a bit. The two of them were fun to watch, I had to admit.

“We could do this,” Kieran said.

He caught my eyes.

“Kieran, we don’t even know if—”

“We could, though, I mean, don’t you think?”

I sighed heavily. “There’s way more to babies than diapers and formula and finger grabbing.”

“Sure, I know that,” said Kieran. “Can I hold him?”

I handed the baby to Kieran, who look a little terrified at first. He wasn’t sure where to put his hands. After I assured him that he wasn’t going to break the baby, he relaxed a little bit. The warm light from the fire lit up the angles of his face and the swell of the muscles on his arms. He was a big guy, but he held Guy so tenderly. I had to admit that I kind of liked the way it looked, Kieran holding the baby by the fire like that. It was comforting. I hugged my knees to my chest and took the sight in. Kieran would be a good dad. Definitely.

“So,” said Kieran. “What else is there to babies?”

“Come on,” I said, “are you serious?”

“Totally. You have to feed them and change them, right? And once I get to be okay with washing dirty diapers, that’s not going to be much of a problem.”

“Feeding them,” I reminded.

“Well, not to be crass, but doesn’t nature sort of cover that part? I mean, you’re going to be equipped to feed the baby once it’s born with your—”

“Stop,” I said. I was not entirely comfortable with Kieran discussing my breasts as a food source.

Okay, sure, that’s what they were actually for and everything, but… “I guess you’re right, but that whole idea makes me feel sort of ooky.”

“How come? It’s totally natural.”

“Well, of course,
you
think it’s neat. You’re a guy.”

He shrugged. “Okay, then, we’ll find formula. We work for the government. Shouldn’t be a problem. What else?”

“That’s a problem,” I said. “The fact that we work for the government. How am I supposed to take care of a baby when I’m gallivanting all over the U.S. trying to gather up fuel?”

“I guess you’d have to take maternity leave.”

“Do you think they’d let the chick with the nifty magical powers take maternity leave? And besides, it’s not like the baby will be able to take care of itself right away. There aren’t schools anymore, exactly, or day care centers. This is a full time job for at least fifteen years.”

He laughed. “It’s not ideal. But we could do it.”

Another horrifying thought occurred to me. “There aren’t hospitals, anymore, Kieran. How would I have a baby without a hospital?”

“It seems to me that babies predate hospitals.” Kieran shifted Guy in his arms.

“Yeah, and there used to be a huge infant mortality rate,” I said.

“Whatever,” said Kieran. “I think the delivering mother is doing most of the work there.

Somebody just needs to be around to catch.”

“And to make sure the baby’s not breach and that there’s no umbilical cord wrapped around its neck and to administer the epidural—oh, God. There are no more epidurals. Or heart rate monitors. Or—” I broke off. God. I couldn’t be pregnant. I just couldn’t be.

Kieran was quiet for a few minutes, and then he said gently, “Azazel, if you’re pregnant, there’s nothing we can do about it.”

Right, I thought bitterly. No more abortions either.

“If we have to make it work, we will,” he said. “We can.”

I shook my head.

“I’m just saying, whatever you need from me, whatever I can do, I want to do.”

“Look, let’s just wait, because maybe it’s all a false alarm. Maybe I’m not pregnant.” Please, don’t let me be pregnant. Please.

Kieran looked into the fire. The dancing flames illuminated all the hollows in his face. He looked older and more serious than he usually did. “I lost my family right after the lights went out. After that happened, I was kind of destroyed, you know? I, um, I just didn’t want to ever care that much about other people again. It hurt too much.”

Should I touch him? To comfort him? Or would he think that meant something else? I knew how he felt. I’d lost my family too.

Kieran kept talking. “Back in Georgia, before we left, Thomas said something to me. He was teasing me because he said I was watching you a lot.”

“Kieran, you don’t have to—”

“No, I want to tell you this. If there’s a baby, that’s scary. It’s really scary. But, it might be nice to have someone to take care of. I kind of miss feeling that about another person.” He looked up at me. “I think I might feel that about you.”

“Kieran, I’m not—”

“Yeah, it’s okay,” he said. “I’m not pledging my everlasting love or something. And you don’t have to feel anything for me at all. I just wanted you to know that I’m here, and I’m going to try to take care of you. That’s it.”

I chewed on my lip and didn’t say anything. That was sweet, so why did it make me feel awful?

“We should sleep,” I said. “We’ve got to lug all this baby crap back to camp tomorrow.”

He handed me Guy. “I’ll be in a little bit,” he said.

I was asleep before he got into the tent.

* * *

I had a dream about talking flies. There were a bunch of them. They were all standing on a half-eaten piece of cantaloupe in a trash can. Abruptly from above, a human hand reached down and tied the trash can closed, leaving them in darkness. A few escaped but the others were trapped inside the bag.

There was panic. The flies flew against the stretched plastic, screaming.

But one of the flies nudged another fly. “This is it,” he said. The flies all had tinny little voices, like Alvin and the Chipmunks. “This is our chance.”

The other fly didn’t seem much interested in what the first fly was saying. “Go away,” she said.

“It’s the end of the world,” said the first fly. “We’re important. We are special flies with magical powers.”

The girl fly just laughed at him. “We’re flies,” she said. “Nothing we do matters.”

“Sure it does,” said the boy fly. “If it didn’t matter, then why would you be so interested in trying to stop me?”

The girl fly rubbed her two front legs together and didn’t answer.

“If it doesn’t matter,” said the boy fly, “then why won’t you join me? We can rule this trash bag together!”

The girl fly flew away from the boy fly.

Then the dream sped up, like time-lapse photography. The flies laid eggs. The eggs hatched. The trash bag was thrown in a landfill and covered with other trash bags and dirt. The flies all died.

I woke up and stared up at the top of our tent. Kieran was lying on his side, his eyes closed. Guy was twitching in his sleep. They both looked peaceful. I burrowed into my sleeping bag. Was it true? Did we matter at all? Were we nothing more than flies in a trash bag to the universe? The sun had wiped out our transformers and left us without power. We were a civilization forced to its knees. It was odd, I thought, because all the stories and predictions about the apocalypse involved humans doing something wrong. Nuclear bombs or pollution. It was weird that when it really came down to it, as destructive as we might have been or as powerful as we might have thought we were, it only took one overactive flare from the sun to cripple us. We were nothing.

* * *

I woke up the next morning to Kieran hovering over me with a hand over my mouth. My eyes opened wide and I tried to struggle away from him, but he held a finger to his lips, signifying me to be quiet. Cautiously, he moved his hand away from my mouth and gestured outside of the tent.

Now, I could hear footsteps and muffled voices. Who was it?

But it was pretty obvious who it must be. Our people wouldn’t be out here. It had to be Jason’s people. Perhaps this was how they’d captured the scouting team. They weren’t going to capture us. I got my gun out, which I always kept close while I was sleeping, and sat up. Kieran also had his gun drawn. Together, we softly crept to the door of the tent. Kieran mimed unzipping the tent quickly and jumping out with our guns drawn. I nodded. It was a good plan. With any luck, we’d get them by surprise.

But there was one thing we had forgotten to take into account with our little plan. Guy.

He woke up at that moment and started screaming.

Kieran and I both sat back from the door, exchanging a look. Whoever was outside knew we were inside at this point. And they knew we had a baby. I holstered my gun and picked up Guy.

He didn’t stop screaming.

Kieran glared at me.

Since I wasn’t sure why we were being quiet anymore, I just said, “Look, he’s hungry. He’s just going to keep crying.”

Kieran rolled his eyes.

“See?” I said. “This is why it would be hard to have a baby.”

Kieran unzipped the tent and got out. He had his gun in his hand, but he wasn’t pointing it at anybody. I climbed out after him, still holding Guy. There were two men outside the tent. I say men, but they were really teenage boys. Neither of them looked older than eighteen. They both had big guns, which they put away immediately when they saw the baby.

“What are you folks doing out here?” one of the boys asked, his eyes trained on Guy as if he hadn’t seen a baby in years. Strangely, the sound of the boy’s voice seemed to calm Guy down.

He swallowed one of his cries, hiccupped once, and was quiet.

Kieran started to say something, but I elbowed him.

“We’re just passing through,” I said. “I’m Ella, this here’s my man Jim, and our baby Guy.” I did my best to imitate the easy drawl the boy had. It wasn’t hard. I’d grown up in West Virginia.

Talking like I was from hickville only meant I needed to stop concentrating on pronouncing everything properly and talk the way that came most naturally.

“Passing through?” asked the other boy. “Why aren’t you just staying put where you live? There ain’t any real reason to go no place.”