Burke just looked at her.
"You're pregnant?"
She saw the disbelief on his face and she almost regretted telling him. But she might need his help when it came time to deliver her son or daughter.
"Yes…not that far along," she said, "but the world's changed and I don't know what to do now."
Fear crept in her voice along with sadness because more had changed in the past few months than access to medical expertise and technology. After all, women gave birth without medical intervention in all kinds of conditions for milieus but what that part of her that longed for what had been threatened to overwhelm her now.
She couldn't let that happen. She couldn't let the man she barely knew in front of her see that struggle inside of her. After all, if it hadn't been for the apes, the plague, for the man who fathered her baby, the two of them wouldn't have ever met.
"I see…well I guess we're going to have to figure out how to bring it into this new world."
Had she heard him right, was he going to help her with her baby…her last piece of the man she'd loved and lost? She felt her eyes sting but the thought of lowering her defenses even a little bit…no she couldn't let that happen or it'd all come crashing down around her.
Grief, terror and a sense of futility that her baby would be born to a dying world where humanity fought for its last whispers.
"Its father is dead isn't he?"
She looked at him speechless for a long moment and then nodded.
"He was killed before the plague started…back where it all started."
He processed that with a simple nod.
"By the apes…?"
She hesitated, not wanting to reveal the truth that it had been humans that had killed him and why. So she just sighed and pulled her hair out of her ponytail allowing it to fall around her shoulders. He just watched her, his jaw clenched and she knew he was deep in thought about what she'd shared with him.
Her bombshell so she allowed him plenty of time.
"How far along are you?"
"Three and a half months I think," she said, dating it back to the last night she and Will had spent together before all hell broke loose.
Her last night of normality in the arms of her lover…
"It wasn't planned or supposed to happen," she said, "We used protection but it just did…"
She saw a slight smile pass over Burke's lips.
"That's often how it happens," he said, "but it's going to be damn difficult for you to handle all this by yourself."
She lifted her chin up.
"I can handle it…and I won't be a burden…"
His eyes turned serious.
"You're definitely not that," he said, "You've been working harder than most anyone but you're going to have to start taking it easier."
Her eyes widened.
"I can't…I don't want to slow us down," she said, "I don't…"
She didn't want to be left behind which is what nearly happened when she took ill with the more normal flu. If it hadn't been for Burke…she might have died along with her baby. Before the flu, she'd wondered if that's what she needed to wait for, death to deliver her from this nightmare. She missed Will so much she ached, she never got to say goodbye to him when he ran into the forest that last time to try to avert the revolution.
She just told him to go…thinking he'd return and they'd have all the time in the world. Only he died and the world had just started its own wave of death.
"I'm not going to leave you," he said, "and no one else will either."
Damn, he'd read right into where her fears lived. Back to when she'd been lying drenched in sweat on a cot and dimly aware of what had been happening around her. But her hearing had been sharp enough to hear Burke argue for her life.
"Thank you but I can't ask you to do that."
"Then don't…just accept the offer," he said, "We've all got to depend on each other and your medical skills and bad ass work ethic is what we need now."
She bit her lip because she'd worked hard in part to prove that he'd been right to fight for her life.
"But I can't take it easy Burke…"
He took a step closer to her.
"You will take it easy…starting with a good night's sleep because you're about to drop off your feet."
She did feel exhausted but they still had much work to do so she had to get back out there and…
"I mean it Reese," she said, "You had a hard day and you need plenty of sleep and so does your baby."
"But…"
He shook his head.
"In the bedroom now…"
This time she listened and walked into the room where the bed looked so inviting after months sleeping on the ground, in tents or even standing up. She crawled on top of it and he helped pull a sheet over her.
"I'll see you in the morning…"
Then he left the room and she closed her eyes trying so hard to keep the memories away but she knew as soon as she fell asleep she'd be right back in the middle of them.
Caesar had made up his mind and after a brief signing conversation with Alisa, she had agreed that when the situation settled down and was more organized in Seattle, that he would leave the city to further explore his own destiny.
He pecked her on the lips and then headed back to eat a bowl of fruit that she had prepared for him. She looked after him like that in little ways even as she stood by him when his leadership had been challenged by different factions in more recent days. Life had become more complicated than he thought possible. He thought when the apes won and the earth became there, the freedom of life would replace the struggle to get there. But instead he realized the real work had just begun.
It'd been much simpler when he'd been a baby living with Will and his father who had loved and raised him. Then there had been the female doctor who had become a focus in Will's life. The relationship between the two of them had baffled Caesar because it had been his introduction to human partnerships. But when he'd been shipped to the hell hole called a sanctuary, he had felt abandoned by the humans in his life, something he had never gotten over.
Which he knew now along with the cruelty he'd faced there had shaped his desire to lead the revolution, to unite all the other oppressed apes regardless of subspecies into a single unbeatable army. And they'd held their own against the humans until they had all started to die.
Will had already been dead and Caesar still carried that inside of him but he couldn't show the other apes that he had once known love from the species that had oppressed them. He hadn't known what had happened to the lady doctor who he had first met in his bedroom up in the attic of Will's house. Had she died too, most likely and did that mean that she and Will were together again? Caesar had some grasp of the concept of the human's belief in an afterlife and God but if the religion they followed allowed them to be lord and master of the apes then he didn't embrace it.
Not that it had done the humans much good because they'd killed themselves off into that afterlife.
Alisa returned with some beverage made out of juice and seeds that she'd made for him. He thought he had found the mate he'd share his life with including a family. But he still felt restless even after the battles had been fought and won. He needed that time to go find himself…he wasn't quite ape, definitely not human but somewhere in between.
And he had to go find out where that medium lie.
She slept and she dreamed of her old life. She and Will holding hands walking through a park with Caesar alongside them while Will answered his questions about his own origins. About the mother who had birthed him in secret and had been put to death simply for protecting her newborn.
Will hadn't been able to answer questions about his father, only to say that he must have been living in the African region where Caesar's mother had been captured while pregnant with him.
Chimpanzees carried their pregnancies in ways that kept them hidden, had been the scientific explanation provided by her. But for ever answer; Caesar just signed more questions for them. The answers became more painful and they finally left and went back home.
She knew and often told Will that Caesar had struggled with his identity, to determine where he fit in a world. It had been her suggestion to send him to the sanctuary to be with his own kind rather than have him stripped away after he'd attacked the neighbor. A decision she regretted more than any other, if she'd known that a duo of cruel sadists had been running it…but like Will, she'd believed the decisions she'd made for him had been with the best of intentions.
But good intentions had ended the world as she knew it…it had taken the man she loved away from her. She had no idea where Caesar lived now but she often thought of him, the fates of the remaining humans were interwoven with his kind.
What kind of world would be left for her baby?
She had to build some sort of future for him or her, from what had been left. Maybe Burke had meant it when he said he'd help her, that she wouldn't be left to face it alone. She had forever been robbed of sharing the news of her pregnancy with Will in what should have been an entirely different setting with the most complicated issue being how to furnish the nursery.
Not about being forced to fight for its survival by herself but as she started drifting off, she remembered happier times.
She heard someone knock on the doorway.
"Come in…"
It opened and Burke entered, having changed his own clothes and cleaned up. She still needed to do that but she'd been so exhausted last night.
"It's morning already?"
She stretched her arms as Burke leaned against the doorway.
"Sure is…how'd you sleep?"
She smiled at him.
"Really good…I feel much better."
"You up to some breakfast," he said, "They've got eggs in the mess. Powered but until we run into some hens…"
"It's fine…just let me get cleaned up," she said, getting out of bed, "I'm pretty hungry actually."
"Good because there's going to be a strategic meeting after breakfast…about how to fortify this place better."
She nodded gravely. They had to be prepared in case the apes did foray up into Canada. The softness left her face and she became all about business.
"We'd better get going then…"
And so they did.