32.
~ Three Weeks Later ~
~ Norma was dreaming about the baby again. The vivid nightmare that had been tormenting her almost every night since she found out she was pregnant. The dreams were always the same, more or less. She was at home, but the house was dark and strange; with sharp angles that seemed to become an unending maze.
She could hear the infant crying, it's cries suddenly growing further away just when she thought she'd found it. She was racing all over the house, turning closets upside-down and looking under beds. Always, always there was a hallway she hadn't looked into before; and always, always, that's where the baby's cries came from. Yet, when she rushed to find it, the cries moved again and sounded muffled and sometimes not even inside the house.
Norma couldn't escape from the house then to find it. The baby crying and she couldn't find her way to it or even out of the house. She couldn't seem to cry for help herself, she could only keep looking until her fear woke her up and she could banish the dream world away again.
~ There was a baby crying outside the motel. Norma lay in bed frozen in fear. It wasn't a baby. Maybe. It sounded more robust than a newborn and maybe belonged to some toddler.
"Alex?" she croaked weakly as more sounds from the motel down the hill floated into their room at the house.
Alex didn't stir at all. He was always a heavy sleeper and they had predictably gone to bed early that night. The noise from the motel was turning into shoutings now and Norma sighed. She was naked under the heavy bed covers and insictivlhy ran a hand between her legs to make sure everything felt right. A habit she'd started doing since her last visit to the doctor. She'd had to describe, in front of Alex the way she'd miscarried her last pregnancy and since then, she'd felt especially paranoid about it happening again.
Every night and day, every time she could, she always checked to make sure nothing felt painful or strange. No bleeding or water discharge, nothing at all that worried her. She and Alex were still enjoying a healthy sex life, and still everything felt fine.
She slipped out of bed and had the slight sea sickness feel again. She braced a hand to her stomach and it passed quickly. Her belly, like with her other pregnancies, showed next to no signs of itself. At past eleven weeks now, other women would show more signs. More growth in the abdomen perhaps; and swelling in the feet. Norma only had very sensitive breasts and her skin became as clear and luminous as if she were a teenager. Her stomach was becoming harder though. No longer the slender waist; now it looked as though she'd been doing sit ups for months on end and achieving large growth of abdominal muscle.
But it had been the same with Norman and especially Dylan. Her oldest son seeming to want to 'lay low' and never look obvious. Norma had hidden her pregnancy with Dylan right up until she was six months along and only because Dylan had decided to make her belly bulge out suddenly. At barely seventeen, and already so heavily pregnant, Norma had to go to the alternative school and there had been a hasty wedding to her then boyfriend John. A man who might have been Dylan's natural father, but Norma couldn't have been sure at the time.
Now this baby; he or she might not show any signs of growth until Norma was much further along.
"Alex?" she whispered again and pulled on the blue bathrobe she had beside the bed.
Her husband didn't stir at all. Sleeping peacefully on his stomach. Only a slight nasal snore coming out.
Norma rolled her eyes and went to the window to look out at the motel. People were there, just as she suspected. A line of cars backed up at the blockade and trying to get inside the town. There was shouting and a woman was holding a crying toddler in his arms.
As if on cue, Alex's phone rang it's angry ring and he jumped awake.
"What?" Alex barked before realizing his phone was ringing and that was what woke him up.
Norma knew better than to say anything so she looked down at the motel and watched the people. No doubt the deputies there were calling for backup and Sheriff Romero was an easy target as he was so close.
She heard him grumble and sit up on the edge of the bed.
"What?" he demanded calmly in the darkness of their bedroom.
Norma was watching the toddler as his mother held him. She looked as though she might be young enough to be his big sister, her face still round and wide from youth, and she slung the child carelessly on one hip as it wailed desperately for more comfort and attention.
The men were shouting and waving their arms. The deputies, their body language calm and stoic as Alex always was, allowed them to talk. To wave their arms towards the town. A convoy of cars wanting to get into White Pine Bay and not knowing about the barricade or quarantine.
"Alex?" Norma asked worriedly and tore her eyes away from the window.
Almost every night for the past week it had been like this. Alex being woken up in the middle of the night over something at the motel. Some domestic dispute among the twelve different families living together or someone trying to get into the village, not realizing there was a quarantine.
Norma could open her window and easily hear the arguments of the these people. Shouts about how they had the right to be in the town, and the law couldn't keep them out. The city had installed road spikes along the front of the motel and several times, people had tried to ram their way through, only to have their tires destroyed.
That was when the violence started and it was far more than the depleted police force could handle.
Norma roughly pulled up the window to hear the voices come in. The baby's cries were now screams and there was shouting that she couldn't make out from the child being so upset.
"Alex-" she started to say. She wanted to go down there to the motel and help that poor girl, who wasn't even holding her baby right.
"Shut the window." Alex ordered sharply and Norma gave him a hard look. He'd been quite during the phone call but now he was up and getting dressed. His thick, dark hair ruffled and he looked angry and put out to have his sleep disturbed.
"There's a line of cars-" Norma pointed to the scene down the hill.
"I know." Alex interrupted. "Shut the window and stay away from it."
Norma gave him an annoyed look. He was always cranky when he hadn't been able to sleep and it looked like his shift was going to start early.
"Alex?" she started to argue.
"Go down to the basement and lock yourself in." he told her casually. The normal drill whenever there was trouble at the motel. "I'll be home as soon as it's sorted out."
"Is Dylan coming?" she asked.
"He's already on his way." Alex nodded sleepily and didn't look back before saying louder.
"In the basement, Norma."
She knew why he wanted her in the basement. Three days ago, one of the groups that had tried to crash their way into the barrier had a gun and had gotten off a few rounds before he was subdued.
Norma had been at the library at the time, but she'd come home to a bullet hole in the window of her entryway. Since then, Alex made her stay in the basement incase the incident happened again. The basement being underground and unlikely to catch the attention of stray bullets.
"Fine." she grumbled.
~ Alex wasn't sure why there was a sudden influx of people coming to the village now. The riots in Portland and the extremists trying to take over capitol buildings all over the country had been months ago. Everyday, the FBI posted new arrests for extremists who were caught stock piling weapons and making threats to government officials.
Yet here, in his small part of the world, these radical people were washing up like plague rats. They weren't the poor and huddled masses either. The kind who needed help from the county and had no place to go.
Most of them were driving fancy new campers that cost more than Sheriff Romero earned in a year. Maybe two. Hell, for the price of the massive RV in the front of the convoy, you might as well have bought a house. The people, like their chosen mode of transportation, were equally audacious and unnecessary.
They were loud, violent and entitled. They had no fear or respect for law enforcement and it was upsetting the natural order of how the village was run.
"We're Americans!" a blond woman was shouting at Romero's deputy. Her rage seemed out of control and she was maskless as was everyone else that had stepped out of their RV's to shout and complain about the road block.
"We have a right to be here, you can't stop us!" another man shouted.
"This is America!" another woman whined.
"Davis?" Romero said glad that behind him two more police SUVs were pulling up to the motel parking lot. Carefully maneuvering from the road spikes.
Dylan flashed his lights as was protocol; and attention was diverted towards the fact that more help was there.
"Tell them about the road spikes." Romero told Davis.
"I did." David said out of the side of his mouth. "They just want to shout and scream."
"We have a right to be here! We have a right to camp where it's safe!" a man shouted from the convoy.
Alex looked up at the big house, but it was dark and blended perfectly with the night sky. The ironwork fence and large 'No Trespassing. Private Property' made the house look even more like an abandoned haunted house. Norma hadn't liked the idea of the unfriendly fence, but everyone was thankful for it now.
He thought about how Norma had been lying naked and defenseless next to him before the phone call. How her rapidly changing body was evidence and motivation to move them out of this place.
"Massett?" Alex nodded as Dylan walked confidently up to them. Dylan nodded, happy that Romero never treated differently than the other men in his service.
"Get these people back into their rooms." Romero ordered calmly waving to the motel and it's onlookers. "Williams? Make sure they stay there."
There was a teenage girl standing in the doorway of room ten holding a large toddler who looked uncomfortable and had been crying. His face flushed red from exhausted cries as the girl held him lazily and without looking at him. Her hips and arms weren't strong enough to support the child comfortably and Alex reasoned she had to be the older sister helping her mother with a pack of younger siblings.
He thought this, till he saw the girl take a long drag on a cigarette and look at the child with such a bored sort of loathing, it could only be her own baby she was holding. A baby she didn't want to have and now was saddled with. She didn't care what happened to it, and any way out was looking appealing to her right now.
Alex looked away quickly from the girl.
Norma hadn't spoken of an abortion since their first visit to the doctor about their own unplanned pregnancy. The sonogram hadn't told them any useful information then. Norma had asked about a CVS, but Dr. Gaddis told her they couldn't do one here in the village. There had been some talk about leaving White Pine Bay for more tests in Portland, but a few days later, all of this had started to happen.
Suddenly, Alex couldn't leave the town. Not when people were trying to hike in and there was always a problem with people wearing masks. Loud fights in places where masks were to be worn and cries of some injustice at having to wear a mask.
The argument was valid, and yet, it wasn't. There hadn't been a new case of the virus in over 3 weeks now. It was being suppressed, but it wasn't gone.
Alex worried constantly that Norma would catch the virus that might terminate the pregnancy if not kill her. Such a thing could happen and had been happening. He'd listened in horror as she casually described her miscarriage over a decade ago to Dr. Gaddis. Listing off the horrible symptoms as though they were lottery numbers.
They had had their last exam just a few days ago, the doctor saying her pregnancy was at a higher risk because of her age and stress of the pandemic. Telling her that things would be better once she was in her twelfth week and higher.
"That's when you're out of the endangerment zone." Doctor Gaddis had said taking Norma's blood pressure and smiling.
Still the sonogram couldn't reveal anything useful to him. Not any abnormalities or even the gender. He had to be patient when he wanted to know as soon as possible. Not that he wouldn't love a daughter any less than a son, but Norma had mentioned her nightmares of looking for a baby and the child being a 'him'. After that, he couldn't get the idea of a son out of his mind. So much so, that a daughter seemed impossible.
Alex was pulled away from his thoughts about Norma and the baby when there began a tirade of honking and the convoy was demanding to be allowed inside the city limits.
"Loud Speaker." Romero ordered and Davis quickly handed him the mic from inside his vehicle.
"Ladies and Gentlemen." Alex said after removing his mask and Davis had let out a loud panic siren from the cab of his own SUV to quite the mob.
"The city of White Pine Bay has installed tire spikes about four feet away. If you try and rush in, you'll have a lot of expensive damage and you'll be stranded on the road. If you try and swerve around the spikes, you'll tip over into a ditch and be stranded." He waited for everyone to stop shouting. Their angry voices becoming white noise. David obliged Romero's nod by blaring the panic siren again.
"Anyone who intentionally strands themselves here, or blacks traffic or endangers the lives of the people here will be arrested, their vehicle impounded and the offending party will be reported to the FBI for domestic terrorism." he said calmly. It was a speech he was getting used to. A threat he'd already made good on twice that week having arrested two hikers who were trying to trek their way in.
"I think you all know what it means to have the FBI come after you." Romero finished. "You need to leave now, back up the way you came and we won't report your license plates to the feds."
He nodded at Davis who nodded back. They had installed hunter cameras by the road that took quick infrared pictures of cars in the dark to capture plates.
He could see the headlights of the convoy move and of the vehicles, an SUV break formation and turn around. A camper, probably driven by a family member of the SUV, following it.
Romero stayed grounded as more yelling ensued, and watched a few more campers, large ones now, break out of line and circle around to leave. One RV was so large it almost tipped over from it's sheer broadness.
Romero looked at his watch and saw it was almost 3 am.
"Wait to see if anymore leave." Romero warned Davis. "Give it another 30 minutes and then arrests these two if they still haven't settled down."
He pointed at the first RV. The middle aged couple who were sitting in their grand camper that was far too expensive to go camping in.
"Jail house is looking a little full, Sheriff." Davis explained.
"Put them in the holding behind my office." Romero said. "Just arrest the first one and it will scare everyone off. No one wants to have those giant RV's impounded."
"Hate to see the lot fee for that one." Davis laughed and nodded to the first one.
As if they could hear them, the angry couple in their large RV backed up. The older man behind the wheel seeming to take forever to turn around on the narrow road. Every time his tires got close to the ditch, he couldn't move and he couldn't back up.
"Must be a bitch to parallel park." Davis laughed before the man was able to free himself enough to turn around.
The RV finally made it's slow progress of turning around and the older woman in the passenger side gave the two officers the finger.
"Woah!" Davis laughed and Romero smiled.
The other cars were departing now to.
"I thought we had block off the offramp." Romero said becoming serious again.
"We did. These people keep tearing it down saying they have the right to be here. They'e communicating with each other about this town; someone is telling them about us. Saying there's no virus and it's safe and we have camp grounds." Davis explained.
"What?" Alex asked.
"Someone is using the internet and conspiracy theories message boards to tell them we're here." David said. "It's in the report, I gave you a few days ago."
"Kinda been too busy to read anything but emergency texts." Alex sighed. "Any idea who has been doing it?"
"None." Davis said. "But the way it's written… my teenager texts the exact same way."
"Sure it's not your teenager?" Alex tried to tease but it came out shallow and hard.
Davis shook his head.
"My kids know better." he said. "They didn't complain about the shutdowns and having to do school online. But the whole family is scared of having people like that here in our town."
Romero nodded.
"It's hard enough to get food or see the doctor for my daughter and get her medication." Davis went on. "We can't have agitators in here."
"Doctor?" Alex asked.
"My daughter has type 1 diabetes. She was born with it. It's been hard this past year to get her medication. All the stress makes it worse and we don't need anymore." Davis explained.
Alex looked back at the house. His thoughts going to Norma and how she was handling the stress. Would her stress be bad enough to hurt the baby in some way they couldn't see till years later?
"Everything is good here?" Alex asked and Davis nodded. "Put the roadblocks back up on the offramp and keep the road spikes up. I'm going back to bed."
This chapter was hard to write. I wanted to write about them at the doctor's offie but it always spirled into a fight and I like the idea that WPB has to deal with extremists just like those assholes who attacked the capitol.
