April 12, 2004
My eyes flutter open as the smell of food fills my nose. Luke and Pete went out to hunt and gather supplies a while ago. They must have returned and started cooking while I dozed off, which is something I do rather often now.
I sit up from the couch I'd been sleeping on. We found several couches in the offices in the factory. Between the mattresses and the couches, we've been more comfortable than we have been in ages. I glance over the back of the couch to see the others standing around our stacks of supplies. I stand up and stretch and waddle over to them.
"Smells good. What's cookin?" I ask, slipping into the group and leaning against Nick who wraps his arm around me.
"Rabbit." Nick smirks. "It's funny; Several months ago this smell was making you puke and now it smells good."
I grimace thinking back to the months where I was sick almost every day. I definitely don't miss those days. I lightly smack his arm in a joking manner and he smiles down at me.
Luke is oddly quiet, his brow furrowed. He is intently sifting through our massive piles of supplies and counting each item by pointing his pencil at it. When he finishes, he writes down his findings on the clipboard he has in hand.
"Yep," he proudly announces, "We're doing great on medical supplies and bottled water, so no need to worry."
He's right. The pile of medical supplies is almost as tall as I am. From within it, I can spot bandages of all sizes, bottles that contain various pharmaceutical drugs, and enough hydrogen peroxide to fill a bathtub. The pile next to it contains fresh water contained in bottles and jugs. However, the food pile could be described as pitiful. It only houses a few cans of soup and boxes of crackers. The pile has been low in stock for a while, and it's only been dwindling more and more. Luke and Pete were out searching for more food today, so I can only hope that maybe they left the food they found in the van. Though I know that I am grasping at straws to explain our worrisome food situation.
"Hey, Luke. How are we on food?" I ask.
He stands, peering down at his clipboard. At my words, his face instantly drops, but he shakes it away before he looks at me with a reassuring smile. "We're fine on food, Bea."
Another week, another lie. They're always lying to me about anything that could be considered stressful. I'm flabbergasted to know that they actually think I'm dumb enough to believe their lies. I get it; They don't want to stress me out. But I'd much rather they just be blunt with me.
I pull away from Nick a bit frustrated, but I disguise my actions so that they don't suspect anything. I'm almost back to the couch when a loud thud sounds from the outside of the metal door. At first I think maybe it's a lurker that tripped or a delirious animal, but when the thud rings out again, I know that it is a human on the other side of the door. All of us freeze for a moment, wide-eyed and hoping that the noise will go away. It continues, and grows louder and more urgent with each thud. The door was likely once impenetrable, but over the long months with no care, it has become rusted and frail. In a few short moments, the person outside is going to make it inside.
Nick tries to push me behind him, but I grab my gun from my thigh holster anyway. The others ready their weapons as well. We stand, ready and weapons pointed at the door.
The door finally gives way. The rusty latch snaps and falls to the floor as the door wildly swings open to clash against the wall. Four people clammer into the room. They stop dead in their tracks when they see my group standing with our guns pointed directly at them.
"Woah, back up!" Luke shouts, stepping forward with a fierce grip on his gun.
The rest of my group keep their weapons at the ready, but I lower mine upon taking a better look at the group. Nick keeps me behind him, but even from back here I can see that they do not appear to be a threat at all. A man stands at the front of the group. He is shielding a young girl behind him, who I assume is his daughter. From what I can see, he has no visible weapons. Behind them is a man and a woman who are holding onto each other. I see no weapons on them either. Their clothes are torn and tattered, and they themselves don't look much better.
"We do not want any trouble," the man at the front of the group says, his voice deep and steady. "We were not aware this building was inhabited. We will just leave."
"But, Dad…" the young girl behind him tugs at his torn shirt sleeve and whines. "I'm tired and hungry. I don't want to leave."
The man shushes his daughter and begins to lead her outside. The other man behind him moves forward and begins speaking, "Hey, maybe we don't have to leave. Maybe we could stay."
"Alvin… come on. Let's go," the woman tries to pull him outside.
"No, Bec, I'm not going back out there." He stands his ground. "I mean, we could work together. We could be useful to each other! Carlos is a doctor, and the rest of us are useful too!"
The group stands behind the man as he talks, stoic and anxiously awaiting our response. It's brave of the man to speak up. For all he knows, we could be hostile.
Luke glances back at me before speaking. "You're a doctor? A real doctor?"
The man nods.
"My sister is pregnant. Could you help her?" Luke asks.
"Yes."
There's a moment where we look between each other, silently nodding to the notion that we vote for them to stay.
"Are you armed? Got any bad intentions?" Nick interrogates.
"We have no ill intentions," the first man answers. "We recently lost most of our weapons. All we have left is this." He unsheathes a dull, rusty knife. It's so old it looks like a relic from the second World War.
"Do you have bad intentions?" the woman asks.
"No." I insert myself into the conversation to stop letting everyone else answer for us. "Sorry for drawing our weapons. We've run into some scary situations before."
"Understandable," the man beside her says. He's a big guy, taller than Nick.
"I vote they stay," Nick says. We all nod in agreement.
There's some murmuring of 'thank you' amongst them. Then Pete jokes, "Wish you would've knocked. Now we've got a broken door."
"Oh, yeah… Sorry about that. I'm pretty handy. I could help fix it if you have some tools," the one man mutters.
"I've got some tools for us," Pete says. "Dinner's almost ready so we can eat afterward."
"My name is Carlos, and this is my daughter, Sarah," the doctor man introduces himself and his daughter to us.
"I'm Rebecca," the woman tells us. She has her arms sternly crossed. She may still be cautious of joining a new group, and I can't blame her. I have no idea what these people have gone through, and from their current appearance, it seems like they've been through a lot.
"And I'm Alvin," the tall man next to her says with a smile. "We're married," he adds as an afterthought.
Martha, Pete, Nick, Luke, and I all introduce ourselves. We mention our family dynamic, although I doubt we needed to. Pete, Martha, and Nick all look related, as do Luke and I. And Nick makes it pretty clear that him and I are a couple.
"Wow! Nice tools," Alvin says when Pete pulls out the fancy toolkit he found a while back. They head off together to work on fixing the door so that we don't invite any lurkers inside for dinner. I can tell that those two will get along swell.
Luke and Martha branch off to go finish dinner, while the remaining group members gather around the couches. Rebecca takes the seat that's furthest away from anyone else. She slumps over, her head in her heads. Whether this is a sign of fatigue, or grief, I'm not sure.
I sit down on the couch, with Nick on one side of me and Carlos on the other side. Sarah sits on the floor nearby with her legs folded, happily swaying side to side.
"How far along are you?" Carlos asks.
"Just about nine months."
His face falls a bit, portraying either confusion or concern or both, but he soon reverts it back to normal. But not before I notice.
"Is there something wrong?" I ask.
"No. I just would have thought that you were about five, maybe six months along from your appearance."
I look back and forth between him and Nick, my face managing to fall even more than it already had. "Is that a problem?"
He ponders for the slightest second, then answers, "It shouldn't be. You are a small individual, so it's likely that the baby is just small. Let me check the heartbeat."
I try to relax to portray to the others that I'm no longer worried. But the truth is that I am incredibly worried, and I have been this entire pregnancy. I have repeatedly told myself that I'm just carrying small. Carlos' facial expressions and tone did not at all put me at ease.
Carlos reaches into his tattered backpack and pulls a stethoscope from within it. From what I can see, it looks like it's about the only thing in his bag. His stethoscope also looks like it's their group's only possession that seems to be in decent condition. They really have been through hell.
Nick takes my hand and rubs his thumb tenderly across my skin. His skin on his palm and fingers is rough from years of farm work and now an apocalypse, but it's still incredibly comforting to me. Carlos moves the stethoscope all over my stomach for a few minutes, before he pulls the stethoscope from his ears.
Placing the stethoscope back in his bag, he says, "The heartbeat is definitely strong. Do you often feel the baby moving?"
Nick and I look at each other with a knowing look. "Almost constantly," he says.
"Great," Carlos says. "Have you experienced false labor contractions at all?"
"Yes," I say. I grimace at the memories of the horrible pains I had weeks ago. My Braxton-Hicks contractions have been present recently, but not nearly as bad as they were the day I had to walk through the herd.
"From what I can tell, I believe you are carrying a healthy baby. It's extremely likely that you will go into labor sometime very soon. We are obviously lacking modern medical equipment, which can complicate things. But from the looks of it, you are all well stocked and prepared with enough stuff that I believe it will go smoothly."
Gee, thanks, Doc. His words do little to soothe me, but I nod and smile at both him and Nick anyway. I feel like I'm terrible at hiding my true emotions, but apparently I do a well enough job to trick the others.
"Dinner's ready!" Martha yells out.
Nick helps me up and leads me to get my dinner before everyone else. I hate getting my food first, especially now that our group has grown. But I stopped fighting against it a long time ago. Everyone is adamant that I get the biggest portion and that I eat first. I get their reasoning of course, but I'm still going to mentally resent it. I'll be happy when I'm no longer pregnant and everyone stops treating me like a delicate little flower.
I get my plate full of cooked rabbit and return to my spot on the couch. I see everyone else get in line to get their serving. We're lucky that Luke and Pete were able to catch several rabbits earlier so that everyone can have something to eat. We were planning on cooking multiple rabbits so that we could all have a feast, but then our group nearly doubled. We still have enough for everyone to eat, but it's definitely not a feast.
By the time everyone else gathers around the couch, I'm nearly done with my food. From the looks of it, Pete and Alvin were able to fix the door. I relax into the soft fabric of the couch with a relatively full stomach. There's mostly silence while everyone eats. I use this time to examine the new members of our group. Alvin and Sarah are both eating very quickly and a bit messily, like they haven't eaten in a while. Carlos eats quickly too, but he restricts himself from scarfing down his food like Alvin and Sarah. I can tell he's starved, but he hides it well. Rebecca eats slowly, picking at her food. She put up a stern front when we first met, but I can tell that she is harboring sadness behind the hard exterior.
After everyone finishes, Nick and Luke get up to clean up the mess, but Rebecca stops them. "Let me do the clean up."
Nick and Luke look between each other. Luke asks, "You sure you don't want any help?"
She fakes a smile. "I got it. It's the least I can do to thank you for taking us in."
Something tells me that she wants to be left alone.
"Boy, that was quite the meal! Haven't had anything like that in a bit," Alvin says as his wife is walking away.
"It seems that you folks have had it rough," Martha says.
"Yeah…" Alvin says, somberly looking down and scratching the back of his neck.
"If you guys feel comfortable, maybe you could tell us something about yourselves," Luke says.
"Well, Bec and I had been married for a bit before all this. We escaped from the city and met up with a larger group shortly after things fell. That's where we met Sarah and Carlos. We stayed with the group for a long time until… Well, until shit happened. A big group ambushed us after we refused to trade with them. They came in guns-a-blazin' and they brought the dead with them too. We lost a lot of good people. Bec lost her sister. To my knowledge, we're the only ones that made it out. We've been wandering for a while with hardly any supplies or shelter. You can't understand how thankful I am to have found this place. And a mattress factory of all places! I haven't slept on a clean mattress in… nearly a year! Or however long it's been. Damn, I sure do miss knowing what day it is."
"It's April 12, 2004," Luke and I both say at nearly the exact time.
"You seriously have been able to keep track of the days?" Alvin asks incredulously.
"Hey, you guys said that at the same time!" Sarah quips.
"It helps keep me sane," I answer.
"Well… damn. I missed my birthday," Alvin adds.
"I'm terribly sorry that you folks had to go through that," Pete says. "I'm glad that you're here now. You seem like good people."
Now I know that Rebecca lost her sister, which is why she's so depressed. I couldn't even imagine losing Luke.
"How about you all? Got a story?" Alvin asks.
Luke looks toward me. "Go ahead, Miss Storyteller."
"We lived in the middle of nowhere in South Carolina. Luke and I lived with our parents on a farm, and for most of our lives, Nick, Martha, and Pete lived right across the street. We all worked together on the farm. When this started I had just moved into an apartment and was getting ready to start grad school at Clemson University. World went to shit and we lived and travelled in Pete's RV. Lost my parents. Lost my dog. Made a friend, lost her too. Now we're here. Oh, yeah, and Nick knocked me up, obviously."
The end of my story gets a little snort of laughter from both Alvin and Nick. I notice Luke tense a bit at my joke. He can swear up and down that he is used to it by now, but deep down I know it's still weird for him to hear jokes about it.
"Wait, were you not dating before the fall?" Alvin asks.
"Ha!" I retort. "We wanted to be. But no, we weren't together."
Alvin's eyes get big at the drama. "Wow… that must've been an interesting time. Well… I mean… with the dead and… everything."
He trips over his words as he realizes that what he is saying might not be the most polite thing to say. I don't blame the guy, though. Before all this, the average person was able to consume drama on the news, in their family, in their friend groups, and at work. Now, the average person's drama is, am I going to die today? But I'm glad that my life experiences can bring a little spunk to everyone's life. It's better than dwelling on all the bad shit that's happened. And Alvin's right- it was an interesting time, to put it nicely. But that's a story for another day.
"You're like, almost the same age as me!" Sarah exclaims from her spot on the floor. There's plenty of room on the couches, but I guess she prefers the floor. "That means we can be friends!"
I raise an eyebrow at her first statement. She's very obviously a child, so we aren't almost the same age. I can't imagine what she's going right now, growing up in this shit. My kid will have to grow up in this too, I just hope I can give her the best life possible.
"How old are you?" I ask.
"Thirteen, almost fourteen since you said it's April, and my birthday is in May!"
"I'm twenty-two… But we can still be friends!" I say. She seems like such a sweet kid. She's definitely sheltered, although I don't even know how that's possible in times like these.
"Oh." Her face falls into a mostly confused state. "You look younger than that. And I'm taller than you. But I'm excited to have a friend!"
Yes, a thirteen year old is taller than me. But, to be fair, she is exceptionally tall for her age.
"Your eyes are sooo pretty! What's wrong with them?"
"Sarah!" Carlos reprimands his daughter.
"Sorry, dad," she meekly says and retracts.
I have to give a little snort. Ahh, the bluntness of children. Although, technically, it was a compliment.
"It's okay," I answer. "I was born with something called heterochromia. It causes me to have one blue eye and one brown eye."
She smiles brightly at me. "Also, my dad said there's a baby in your stomach. How'd it get there?"
"Okay, that's it for the night!" I stand up abruptly from the couch with a laugh.
Sarah is sitting on the floor being reprimanded by her father, but I don't think she understands why. If it were me, I would just tell her. She's plenty old enough, but I won't try to tell Carlos how to parent.
Once the laughter dies down from everyone and Carlos stops reprimanding a pink cheeked Sarah, I announce that I'm going to bed. "I hate to be a party-pooper, but I'm exhausted and at least three of my body parts are aching. I'm gonna head to bed. It was so nice to meet you all!"
Nick gives me a kiss before bed, and I head into our room. Everyone else has to sleep out on the main floor of the factory, but Nick and I are fortunate enough to have a make-shift bedroom in what used to be an office. It's the one pregnancy accommodation that I don't feel bad about at all.
As I brush my teeth and freshen up at the clean bowl of water that we keep in our room, I glance at the crib that Pete and Nick made together. Any day now I will be holding my little baby. I just hope that everything goes accordingly.
I snuggle into the quilt on the mattress. It's still a bit drafty, but it beats how the temperature was a couple months back. I can hear the others getting the newcomers' sleeping quarters together as I fall asleep.
Sometime later I'm awoken. At first I think it's just Nick coming to bed, but then I realize that I can hear two voices speaking right outside the door. I easily identify them as Nick and Luke.
"Man, you heard that doctor… He said the baby's gonna be here at any minute. I really thought I was ready, but I'm scared honestly. Am I really ready to be a dad? I wish I had a goddamn drink right now."
"Seriously, man?!" Luke snaps. "I know you're nervous. Hell, I'm nervous to be an uncle. But think about Bea and how nervous she is. Don't let her know that you're nervous or it will only make her more nervous, and we don't need that. You're ready to be a dad, and you know that. You're just letting your self doubt get the best of you. And, no, you don't need a drink. You've gone this long sober."
I hear Nick chuckle. "Damn, who knew you were such a motivational speaker."
"Desperate times call for desperate measures…" Luke jokes, and I just know he has a cocky smirk on his face.
"Thank, man. I'll see you in the morning," Nick says as he enters our room, the door clicking shut behind him.
As Nick freshens up and strips out of his outerwear, I reflect on what he was saying. Nick has been acting for months like he's more than ready to be a dad. Now it's late in the game and he's just now revealing that he's nervous. It hurts me that he wouldn't confide in me, but Luke was right that it would only make me more nervous. Too late for that now.
Nick slides in beside me, and I try my best to fake sleep. He begins to lie down, but he stops in his tracks.
"Beatrix… don't lie to me. I know you're awake."
I roll over with a playfully guilty smile, but his face only portrays shame.
"So… you heard all that."
"Yeah."
"Damn." He falls onto his back and covers his face with his hand.
"Hey," I say pulling his hand away from his face and forcing him to look at me. "Luke was right you know. You are ready, but you're letting your self doubt get in the way. I'm not mad at all. I just wish you would've told me so I could've helped."
"I didn't want to worry you," he says. "But let's not act like you don't act like you aren't nervous. I know you are, but you never let everyone know what you're feeling."
"Got me there," I joke. "I will admit I'm terrified, but I'm also ready."
As I speak, a flurry of kicks erupt in my stomach. Nick leans off of the bed to turn the lantern off before wrapping his arms around me and my stomach.
"It will be okay. I love you," he says.
"I love you too," I say, and I drift off.