Ellie stared down at the baby in her arms, which was shrieking loudly. The Cordyceps infection was already consuming her child's form in a disturbing way; the baby's flesh was scaly and tinged purple and gray with greenish patches of fungus. Threads of the twining Cordyceps emerged from the baby's nostrils and from out of its loudly screaming mouth - searching, twisting hideously.

'It's okay,' Ellie cooed. 'You can't hurt me. I'm immune.'

'Ellie,' snapped Joel from behind her, 'you have to end it now. The baby can't go on like that; it's only going to get worse.'

Ellie shook her head calmly, even as the infected infant screamed and writhed in her arms. She turned and looked at Joel, and she reminded him, 'You told me yourself that everything was going to be fine, Joel.'

But Joel took a few steps toward Ellie and said, 'Hand over the baby, Ellie, so I can take care of things now.'

'Step back, Joel.' Ellie shifted the weight of the shrieking, purple-scaled baby to her left arms, ignoring the way fresh strands of Cordyceps emerged from its mouth and the way it was trying to grasp at her and bite her with its gummy mouth. She reached into the holster at her right hip and pulled out her trusty old Colt 1911, which she raised, aiming it straight at Joel. Her right hand didn't shake, not even a little bit, as she threatened him again, 'Stay back. Last warning.'

Joel put his hands up and tipped his head, eyeing the tumbling, vicious infected baby Ellie was holding. He flicked his dark eyes back up to Ellie and visibly gulped, and then he finally whispered,

'I did everything I could.'

'I know,' Ellie nodded, and then she fired her gun.

Ellie gasped and jolted awake, panting and sobbing as she wheezed and tried to calibrate that the hideous nightmare she'd had was just that - a dream, an awful, wretched dream, and not reality.

"It wasn't real. It wasn't fucking real," she muttered aloud. She glanced to the bed beside her, but of course, Joel was long gone. She remembered him waking early this morning and kissing her forehead as he'd clamored to get downstairs. He was so busy these days; the ewes were lambing, and every day Joel would wake to go find that overnight a lamb or two had been born and was being cleaned or was nursing in the barn, or, occasionally, was stillborn. Once already a ewe had died trying to deliver, and Joel had had to drag the corpse out back and bury it. But, he'd proudly been telling Ellie, things were going well; he'd learned well from her how to help with tricky deliveries here and there, but most of Mr. Roscoe's ewes were good, stocky Rambouillets who were more than capable of delivering on their own.

Still, lambing season meant long days for Joel on the farm, which meant long days alone in the farmhouse for Ellie, which was miserable given the fact that now, at thirty-six weeks along, it was all she could do to heave herself out of bed and clutch her huge belly, which felt like it swallowed her body whole, as she waddled to the bathroom a million times a day to pee. She was ravenously hungry, and she ate everything Joel brought to her, and she scowled every time she saw her reflection in the bathroom mirror and noticed how puffy and inflamed her face had become in these last few weeks.

Now Ellie lay on her side in bed, heaving with sobs as she recovered from her nightmare, rubbing anxiously at the now-enormous, hard swell of her abdomen, and she whispered fervently,

"It's okay. It was just a stupid dream. Wasn't real. Just a dream. Stupid fucking dream."

Suddenly Ellie realized that the sweatpants she was lying in were soaked, and she winced as she thought that she'd urinated in the bed during her sleep. She scrunched her face up, disgusted with herself as she grunted in irritation and huffed an angry breath, pushing herself up and heaving her ungainly form out of the bed. The bedroom felt stiflingly hot in the first days of April, which were unseasonably warm.

Just the night before, Willa had come by with a big meal, because Joel barely had time to come to the diner anymore with the ewes lambing. Bryce had cooked up a few big beef sandwiches for Ellie and Joel, and Willa had brought some of the homemade potato chips both Joel and Ellie loved. There was more of the food downstairs, Ellie knew, and her stomach grumbled loudly with hunger now as she waddled a step away from the bed. But then she turned back and gasped, because she saw just how wet the sheets were where she'd been lying, and her mouth fell open in shock. Her eyebrows flew up, and she mumbled to herself,

"Okay… um… that's a lot of pee."

Ellie frowned and touched at the sopping wet sheets curiously, and when she brought her fingers to her nostrils. It didn't smell like pee, Ellie thought; it didn't smell like anything. Suddenly she gulped hard and thought of the ewes outside that Joel was working with. Ellie had plenty of experience with lambing seasons. It had been a while now since she'd seen ewes in labor, but when they'd been in Wyoming, she'd witnessed plenty of ewes have their water break. She'd felt amniotic fluid gush out of ewes and stream over her own hand and arm. She knew what always came after that. Shortly after the ewes' water broke, strong contractions would begin, and after that, they'd squeeze out their lambs, and -

"Shit." Ellie started to shake where she stood, her wet fingers trembling against her lips. Tears boiled up in her eyes and immediately streamed down her cheeks, because Ellie very quickly calibrated precisely what was happening. Everything was happening. It was all coming to a head, all of it, right now.

She felt sheer panic wash over her, and for some bizarre reason, she didn't run out of the house to get Joel, because she wasn't having contractions yet. Those would come, she knew, and soon, but for some very strange reason, the immediate threat seemed to be Ellie's soaked sweatpants and the drenched bed sheets. Ellie would need a clean bed to birth in, wouldn't she?

Ellie moved as quickly as her cumbersome and ungraceful body would allow out to the linen closet in the hallway, and with trembling fingers, she pawed through the folded, clean sheets that Charlie and Judy Roscoe had been keeping in the closet. She chose a set of hunter-green fitted and flat sheets, and as she went back into the bedroom, she started to seethe through her clenched teeth, blinking quickly and swallowing hard.

"Oh, my fucking God, I'm gonna have a motherfucking baby," she mumbled, and the tears just kept streaming down her cheeks. She swiped roughly at them with one hand and tried to clear her blurred vision. She shook her head rapidly and let out a low keen, a frenzied and distressed sound. Her breath was jittery as she peeled back the homespun quilts on the bed and began ripping off the badly soiled, soaked sheets, her mind suddenly feeling a bit hysterical.

She balled the sheets up, her hands wet from the amniotic fluid that had gushed out of her in her sleep. She stuffed the wad of sheets into the half-full hamper at the edge of the bedroom, and she dug her hands into her eye sockets as she tried not to hyperventilate.

"Oh, my fucking God," she sobbed, her breath quivering like shaking leaves. "Oh, God… oh, my motherfucking God. No. I can't. I can't. I can't."

She whirled over her shoulder and rushed over to the bed, and it took everything she had to make it up with clean sheets. She felt stupid, leaning around the bed with her giant belly that hung in front of her, a round, heavy reminder of what was about to happen to her. She managed, somehow, even lacking any real flexibility or mobility, to drag the corners of the fitted sheet around the edges of the mattress, though she winced at the fact that her broken water had soaked deeply into the mattress itself and not just the sheets. Ellie made the made as neatly as she could, quilts and all, and when she stepped back and stared at it, she just cried for a long moment, holding her fingers to her lips and vibrating with the most profound anxiety and deepest fear she'd ever felt in her life.

Pain. There would be horrific pain. She could die. The baby - Charlie - could die. Ellie wrenched her eyes shut, her mind thudding with her own thoughts as she desperately tried to reassure herself. She'd made it thirty-six weeks. Babies could live at thirty-six weeks. They could send for Dr. Emerson, and he would care for Ellie through all of this. Joel would hold her hand and he would smile and cradle their baby at the end of it all, and he'd sing Charlie a song, and Ellie would nurse the baby to sleep, and…

It would be fine. Joel had promised her that. He'd promised her that everything was going to be fine. He'd said it over and over and over. Ellie had to believe him.

Suddenly she was jerked from her thoughts, because Ellie felt a very abrupt tightening in her lower abdomen, like the absolute worst period cramp she'd ever had in her life, but spread over a larger area. She collapsed down onto her knees at once and groaned at the feel, her hands flying to clutch at her belly, her fingers curling around the bottom of the curve. The pain continued, somehow, to get stronger, to get worse. Ellie cried out, falling down onto the floor, her hands hitting the pine floorboards as her head dropped down and drool started to drizzle from between her lips. This was the strongest cramp she'd ever felt, a distant part of her brain said. No. Worse. So much worse. It wasn't just in her abdomen; it was radiating into her lower back, into her thighs. She had a headache. It was absolutely overwhelming, how badly it hurt. She wanted to throw up.

After what felt like an eternity, but was probably about a minute and a half, Ellie was able to catch her breath a little bit, and the hideous pain started to subside just a little bit. Eventually, a strange buzzing feeling took over Ellie's consciousness, and though her heart hammered badly, she was able to grasp the edge of the quilted bed and slowly hoist herself up to stand, growling with the effort as she staggered across the bedroom to the dresser. She leaned against the dresser for a moment and shut her eyes, mumbling to herself,

"Pull yourself together, Ellie. Jesus. Come on." She slapped the dresser hard with her palm and put her lips into a line. "Come on, Ellie. Come on!"

She roughly yanked open a dresser drawer and pulled out a fresh pair of underwear and some clean sweatpants, and she struggled to change out of the ones that had been sullied by her water breaking. She slammed the dresser door shut and hauled the dirty clothes over to the hamper, tossing them in with the sheets she'd changed. Ellie realized then, with a racing mind, that Dr. Emerson would need towels. There would be a big mess, Ellie thought. An enormous mess.

She managed to maneuver her clumsy and lumbering form to the bathroom closet and to pull out every single clean towel inside, and she hauled them all into the bedroom, setting them down on the ground beside the bed. Then she thought she was out of time, and she went over to the staircase and slid down the steps on her bottom, unwilling to feel another contraction come on halfway down and go careening down the stairs.

Sure enough, with four steps left, she had to freeze, because another intolerably painful rip of squeezing, miserable pain started in a strip around the base of Ellie's abdomen. She folded her arms atop her huge belly and seethed through clenched teeth as the pain got worse and worse, but she couldn't stay quiet. She let out a feral, animalistic groan as she buried her face into her folded arms and felt the pain get sharp and steady, as it spread around her back and down her thighs, and she felt it wind up tighter and tighter until she thought she would snap. But then it very slowly faded and abated, and finally Ellie gulped and sighed, and she managed to make it down the rest of the steps and then to slide on her work boots near the front door. She shoved the front door of the farmhouse open, and before the door had even closed behind her, Ellie heard herself screaming at the top of her lungs,

"Joel! JOEL!"

She waddled as quickly as she could down the front steps of the farmhouse and hurried across the grassy area in front of the house, walking toward the area where she could see a few paddocks with several dozen ewes who had already lambed milling about. Ellie walked as quickly as her awkward body would allow her toward the big gray barn where Joel was keeping the ewes who were actively giving birth.

"Joel!" she yelled, her voice hoarse from screaming. She clutched at her abdomen and screamed again, desperately, "Joel, please!"

Suddenly he was sprinting out of the barn, as if he'd heard her calling him and had come running out of the back of the building at full speed. She'd never seen him moving so fast, his legs pumping and his face twisted with evident fear. She knew immediately that he didn't need an explanation; he could tell at once what was going on. He ran straight up to Ellie, and he said nothing at all; he just wrapped an arm around her shoulders and pressed his lips to her forehead. He was breathless from coming running as he mumbled in a low voice,

"Okay. It's gonna be okay. You're gonna be okay. Let's get you inside. I have to go straight to town and get Dr. Emerson. I have to go right now, okay, so lemme get you back upstairs and we'll get you comfortable, okay? It's gonna be okay. I promise. You're gonna be okay."

Ellie felt another sharp clench, a distinct pinching pain that radiated around her abdomen. Ellie bent over a little and whined softly, leaning against Joel and complaining,

"Oh, fuck, Joel… it hurts. It fucking hurts."

"I know, baby girl." Joel rubbed at her shoulders. He kissed her head again. "You're gonna do great. It's gonna be okay."

Ellie raised her eyes to him and whispered frantically, "I'm so fucking scared, Joel."

"No, no, no." He shook his head. "You're so strong, Ellie. But I gotta get you inside, okay?"

She seethed through the pain and struggled to choke out to him, "I… I changed the… the sheets… my water broke…"

"Jesus. Okay. Let's go."

Suddenly she felt him sweeping her off her feet, and though she knew was much heavier now than she'd been the previous times he'd carried her in his arms, he didn't seem affected by that fact. He moved with almost alarming speed as he rushed toward the farmhouse with Ellie cradled in his arms, and Ellie was dizzy as she felt him hauling her up the staircase, his boots stomping quickly until he burst into the bedroom. Ellie felt Joel putting her in the bed, felt him pulling the quilts away and folding them and setting them aside. She felt him gently pulling off her work boots, felt him arranging pillows beneath her, felt him dragging off her sweatpants and her underwear and pulling the flat sheet up around her. All the while she just lay there and let out cries and gnarling, gnashing complaints when another rush of too-tight pain worked its way through her belly and then around her back and thighs. She tossed her head back and clutched at the fitted sheet, and her voice repeated softly,

"Joel… please don't leave me… I'm scared. I can't do it. Joel…"

"Baby girl, I have to go get Dr. Emerson. You're gonna be fine. You're so fucking strong, okay? I'll be back really soon. Really, really soon. I love you. Ellie, I love you so goddamn much."

Ellie cracked her eyes open and stared up at Joel and panted a little, and when Joel bent down and touched his lips to hers, he felt the kiss between them tremble as their breath shook and their mouths hesitated to part. But finally, Joel pulled back, and just as he rushed from the room, he insisted,

"I'll be back very soon."

"I love you, Joel," Ellie cried after him, hearing his footsteps hurrying down the staircase. Ellie let out a guttural sound once he'd gone, feeling terrified and trying to steel herself. Finally she put her hands on her abdomen and took a very deep breath, and she mumbled,

"Okay, Charlie. Okay. Let's fucking do this."

Joel's ride to Dr. Emerson's house on the far side of Yampa wouldn't have taken very long - maybe twenty-five minutes on a day like today - and then Dr. Emerson would have to gather his supplies and get his horse, and then he and Joel would have to ride back. So Ellie knew that she would have somewhere around an hour to labor alone at home before Joel returned with Dr. Emerson.

She'd expected, for some reason, that she'd spend that time propped up in bed having contractions and whining to herself about the pain. Maybe, she thought, thinking about what had happened with birthing ewes, the contractions would gradually get closer together as Joel and Dr. Emerson approached. Maybe they'd get more intense. After all, she knew her cervix would be dilating. She knew that much, intellectually.

But all of this seemed to be progressing very quickly, much, much more quickly than Ellie had anticipated. Joel had talked to her a few weeks earlier, during a long and honest conversation about Erica giving birth to Sarah, about the fact that Erica had been in labor for over twenty hours before she'd finally started pushing, and how she'd had to push for two hours, and how she'd been so exhausted by the time Sarah was born that she'd barely been able to stay awake at all. And, Joel had pointed out, that had all been with the help of a painkilling epidural, and with intravenous fluids, and delivering in a hospital bed. Erica hadn't had preterm labor, either; in fact, she'd gone past her due date with Sarah. It had all been very, very different, Joel had said, than what Ellie was experiencing.

So now Ellie didn't know what the fuck to do about the fact that Joel and Dr. Emerson were nowhere to be seen and she felt a very strong desire to push. She couldn't push, she thought; the fucking doctor wasn't here. It wasn't time. She lay on her back with her knees bent, having kicked the sheet down past her ankles, and she dragged a wrist over her sweat-sheened forehead and mumbled,

"Oh, fuck, fuck, fuck. What do I do? What the fuck do I do?"

She flicked her eyes to the old clock on the wall. Joel had only been gone for maybe forty minutes. She couldn't wait, she thought; there was a very strong and insistent pressure deep in her pelvis and in her bottom, and her body was screaming at her to push, to push now. Ellie wrenched her eyes shut and cinched her fingers on the fitted sheet, thinking, fuck it. She had no choice, she thought. She had to do this. There were no fucking options.

Suddenly Ellie felt a massive pain between her legs, a fiery burn that she'd never experienced before, and a feral scream ripped itself from her throat and filled the bedroom. She reached down and pressed her fingers behind her entrance and gasped in shock when she felt something solid there, and she spluttered aloud,

"Oh, my God, it's a fucking head. It's a fucking head; oh, my God."

Ellie's eyes welled heavily, and then she wrenched them shut and tossed her head back against the pillow that had become soaked with her sweat. She arched her back a little and bore down like she was having the most intense bowel movement imaginable, like she was constipated and determined not to be. She huffed through the push, holding it, letting out a long breath through teeth that she thought she might grind straight out of her skull. Her jaw hurt from clenching it so tightly, and she realized she was tensing her legs so badly that her thigh muscles had cramped as though she'd run ten miles.

She took a little break, catching her breath. But the searing, awful, scorching pain surrounding the large rounded entrance between her legs only intensified, somehow. Ellie let her head fall to the side on the pillow, and she whined,

"Oh, fuck, Joel… please come back."

She steadied herself and took another few breaths, and then she bore down hard again, pushing for all she was worth. She growled like a bear, holding her own hips so hard that she felt her fingernails sink into her flesh and worried a little that she'd draw blood. That didn't really matter right now, she thought distantly. She kept pushing, harder and harder, so hard that she felt something slick and too large to believe sliding, making some sort of progress. At the feel of that, Ellie reached down and started to pull, and she gasped again and started to sob uncontrollably when she realized she was pulling a fucking baby out of her own body.

"Oh, my God," she choked out, her voice a shaking whisper then, and something compelled her to push again, harder than she'd thought herself capable of doing. She buckled herself up against herself and cried out loudly, burrowing her chin against her chest and scrunching up her face as she used her hands to pull out the baby.

Then, all of sudden, she heard it.

The most beautiful sound in the entire world.

She heard crying. Screaming. Shrieking.

Ellie gasped for air, panting and sobbing herself as she grabbed the baby from between her legs. Very much on instinct, she cradled the baby up against her and collapsed almost lifelessly back against the pillows, and as she studied the writhing child. A waxy, white substance covered the newborn; Ellie recognized it once as the same vernix that new lambs needed their mothers to clean off them after birth. The baby had a fair bit of fine dark hair atop its head, and its scrunched-up little face did not appear very happy about having just been born. But it seemed like it was breathing just fine, and under the vernix, the baby was pink and seemed to have all the right parts. Ellie curled the baby against her chest and examined it closely enough to quickly ascertain that it was a girl.

A girl Charlie, then, she thought.

Something told her the baby would be cold, so she leaned over the side of the bed and snatched one of the clean towels from the pile on the ground where she'd brought them from the bathroom. Her breath was still shallow and shaking and her body was shivering badly as she peeled up her shirt and sports bra. She moved entirely on instinct then, shrouding the new baby in a green towel and cradling her against her own chest, humming with a little satisfaction when Charlie nuzzled up against Ellie's left breast. Charlie snuggled her small mouth onto Ellie's chest, and though she didn't latch at first, her crying quieted, and she seemed deeply comforted just by lying against her mother's skin, if nothing else. Ellie dragged her fingers around Charlie's tiny cheek and felt herself begin to cry a steady stream of tears. She was still shivering, suddenly craving a fire in the fireplace and lots of quilts and maybe even a hot mug of sagebrush tea. But she just sat there, and finally, she whispered,

"We fucking did it, Charlie, huh?"

She startled then at the sound of the farmhouse door opening and slamming shut, at the sound of two sets of boots clamoring up the staircase. Ellie smirked and shook her head, and she turned her face and shrugged a little at Joel when he and Dr. Emerson came leaping into the bedroom. Joel looked flushed and frantic, but when he saw Ellie cradling Charlie against her chest, his mouth fell open in complete and utter shock. He let out a choked noise, and he clapped both hands to his mouth, and he staggered forward toward the bed, collapsing onto his knees before Ellie. He stared at her, and as his eyes rimmed red and then boiled over, he whispered,

"Oh, I am so proud of you… I am so goddamn proud of you, Ellie. And… Charlie…"

"Girl. Charlie's a girl. You can hold her as soon we cut the cord," Ellie nodded, and Joel sniffed heavily and murmured,

"Yeah, I'd like that."

A lot of things happened over the next twenty minutes or so. Dr. Emerson used a clean scalpel from his medical bag to cut the cord and helped deliver Ellie's placenta, which was the bloodiest and most disgusting thing Ellie had ever seen (and she'd seen a lot in her life), and then he and Joel took Charlie into the bathroom to carefully and gently wash the baby. Dr. Emerson helped clean Ellie up with a wet rag and helped her put on one of Joel's big t-shirts, and he told her to stay in bed for a few hours at least. He talked to her about feeding Charlie on demand, about talking to some of the older women in town if she was having trouble. Joel disappeared with Charlie while Dr. Emerson took care of Ellie, and she was confused until he reappeared with the newborn perfectly dressed in one of the warm sets of gray flannel pajamas that Hazel Mason had gifted them at the baby shower. Then Dr. Emerson told Joel he was going to give him and Ellie some peace, and to come get him immediately if there were any signs of trouble. He walked over to the bed where Ellie was, and he touched gently at her shoulder, and he said seriously,

"You know, Rhea Campbell's right about you, Mrs. Miller."

Ellie pulled the quilt she had around her more tightly, still feeling chilled. "Yeah?"

Dr. Emerson gave her a little smiled. "You… are a very strong young woman. Get some rest. You did exceptionally well. That's a beautiful little girl you've got there. Charlie Miller… congratulations."

Ellie nodded. She waited until she heard Dr. Emerson's footsteps descend the stairs and go out the door, and once he'd gone, she just stared, because Joel was standing by the window, illuminated by sunlight, and suddenly Ellie couldn't breathe.

He wasn't a young father, she thought. Not like he'd been with Sarah. No. His hair and beard had gone almost entirely gray. And he wasn't a contractor in Austin who bought groceries at a store and watched DVDs on his TV to relax. That wasn't his life. He was a shepherd in a ruined world. He was married to Ellie. But he was a father again. He had a future. Maybe they could have peace here… here in Yampa.

She gazed at him, looking like it was the most natural thing in the entire world for him to cradle his brand-new daughter in his arms, like staring down into her tiny little face was the most organic and unbleached experience for a man like Joel. His lips curled up and he tipped his head as he gave a very affectionate little look down to Charlie, and then he brought her tiny body up a little and touched his lips to her forehead. Ellie's throat felt thick at the sight of that, and her vision blurred a little. She sniffed, and Joel looked up, and he nodded as he said again to Ellie,

"I am so proud of you."

"I love you, Joel." Ellie gnawed her lip, and he let out a long breath as he looked back down at Charlie and said,

"The rest is for the two of you."

Then he took a few steps toward the bed where Ellie lay, and he swayed just a little with Charlie in his arms, and he looked right at Ellie as he began to sing, his voice low and lovely,

"Out in the West Texas town of El Paso, I fell in love with a Mexican girl. Nighttime would find me in Rosa's cantina. Music would play and Felina would whirl…"

Author's Note: Are we all okay? Yeah? No? Maybe? Haha.

I took a few days' hiatus from this story because the last chapter didn't get much feedback at all, so I wasn't too sure if people didn't like it and I needed to take a breather, or what, but I figured it couldn't hurt. So I used the time off to write a slightly Dead Dove Joel/Ellie one-shot entitled We Could Be Dead Tomorrow, which you can feel free to check out if you're interested in that!

I am leaving on Thursday for a 2.5 week trip to Disney World ("I'm going to Disney World!") but especially since I go there all the time, I'm going to be bringing my laptop and will continue very regular updates on my trip. Just wanted to give a heads-up that update times may be wonky owing to that. Thanks! As always, feedback is *very* much appreciated.