Afterbirth (6 page)

Allison lifted her gown and examined the painful site where a dozen tiny bruises and needle marks peppered her fair skin. Nixon’s most recent injection had been applied with such force and at such an unusual angle that it had left not only a hole, but a wound that was now at risk of becoming infected.

She should’ve known better than to fight him.

The side-effects she’d managed to avoid for the past ten days were slowly coming back. She pushed herself up on her elbows and twisted until her legs dropped over the side of the cot. She tried to sit up and nearly slid to the floor.

“You can beat this,” she said, lifting her left leg and then her right.
One, two…
Not even three repetitions. The muscle tone that took almost two weeks to build had been destroyed with a single, toxic dose of the mysterious “treatment”.

Keys jangled on the other side of the door and the lock opened with the usual
clunk
. Her mind raced with thoughts: check for the guard, get under the covers, try and play sick. But there was no playing. She felt awful.

The door closed and she looked over her shoulder at Ben.

“Allison, what are you doing up?” He lifted her legs onto the cot and coaxed her to lie down.

Ragdoll limp and in a state of mild, transient confusion, she complied. “I was getting better,” she whispered.

Ben put the digital thermometer under her tongue and she winced at the probing.

“101.” Ben handed her two pills and lifted her head so that she could take them. He held a cup of water to her lips and poured a sip she wasn’t ready for. She coughed and grabbed his injured wrist. He let out a howl and spilled the water all over the bed and himself.

“Shit.” He took off his blue lab coat and blood seeped through his bandage. He sat down at the supply tray and unwrapped the wet dressing.

“I’m sorry,” she said, her throat dry and her voice raspy.

She felt terrible about what happened, but by the time she realized what Nixon meant to do, how he was about to stick an enormous, antique needle into Ben’s artery and bleed him, it had been too late. Telling him that she was all right would have only pushed up her next treatment and would have made her look like a liar. She’d have never been able to postpone them again.

“Goddamned Nixon. This isn’t World War II.”

The realization hit her that Ben was, in some ways, as much Nixon’s victim as she was. He was opening up and she hoped it would get her some answers.

“I
was
getting better. Why did you let him do this to me again?”

“
Let
him? Do you think that if I could control Nixon, I would have let him do this to me?” He repaired the torn suture and put on a fresh dressing. “I need to see your stomach,” he said. “I don’t want to have to inject you where you’re already sore. There was a better way to handle that situation, but he was teaching you a lesson.”

“I’m better without the treatments,” she said.

Ben drew up the liquid from the familiar vial and avoided eye contact. His was the kind of expression that preceded bad news.

Allison smoothed the rough edge off of her sharp tone, hoping to coax out the truth. “What is it that you’re not telling me?” she asked. “Something’s wrong, more than the cancer.”

Ben shook his head.

“Please,” she said. “I can’t keep doing this. I’m in the dark about everything and I’m scared. Tell me what’s wrong.”

Ben sighed. “Have you ever seen someone dying? I mean, been around someone terminally ill for a long while before they pass.”

Allison recalled Zach’s mother who had been on Hospice for the last two months of her life. “Yes.” She nodded.

Ben sat on the edge of the cot, the syringe dangling from his right hand. “There’s a phenomenon, a surge of energy before someone dies. They’re happy, their memory is clear, they appear better. It’s the body’s last hoorah, Allison, the human brain firing on all cylinders before the big fade. Sometimes it lasts seconds or minutes. In your case it lasted days. Had you gone any longer without the treatment, you’d have died. Now please, can I see your stomach?”

Zach had called it a miracle when his mother rallied. He wanted so badly to believe he wasn’t losing her, that he had insisted she was getting better. Tears streamed down Allison’s cheeks as she remembered Zach screaming as his mother gasped her final breath. The memory was as vivid as if she had gone back in time and was, again, standing in that room.

“Dr. Nixon said the cancer was in remission.” Her words barely squeaked out between sobs.

“It is,” Ben said, “but it’s not cancer that’s killing you.”

Allison sniffled and wiped the tears from the corner of her eyes. “Then let whatever it is take me.”

Ben shook his head. “That’s not my call.”

“Please,” she whispered again. “No more.”

“You don’t know what you’re asking,” he said. “You can’t know…”

“Let me die,” she said, keeping to hushed tones.

“It’s not that simple.”

Ben was keeping something from her, but he was also giving in. His gentle gaze implied pity. The fact that he hadn’t injected her told her she’d already won.

He lifted her sleeve and she set her hand on his. “Stop the treatments. I’ll have my spark and then I’ll die, the way it was meant to be. I’m never getting out of here any other way. Neither are you.” She looked to his bandaged wrist. “Please,” she asked, a final time, “let me go.”

Ben emptied the syringe into a Styrofoam water cup and sighed. “I’ll do what I can.”

Blood stained the cream-colored guest bedroom carpet. Michael had laid Robert and what remained of Roy to rest behind his back fence. He covered their bodies with a thick cover of leaves and said a prayer. Both of them deserved better, but he didn’t have it in him to dig another hole.

He locked the bedroom door and slid the footlocker out of the closet.

A thud came at the side, followed by the feral, quick scratching of Adam trying to get out.

“Son, it’s daddy.”

The movement continued and there were several thuds that might have been Adam’s knees against the lid.

Michael readied a roll of duct tape and unbuttoned an extra-large dress shirt, which was big enough to wrap around Adam’s slight body twice.

“It’s going to be all right.” He cleared the air bubble from the syringe of sedative he prayed would be enough to hold Adam still while he examined him. He unlatched the trunk’s brass fasteners, lifted the lid, and for a split-second, allowed the crushing agony of his son’s condition to interfere.

“There isn’t time for this,” he said, steeling his nerves.

He bore down on Adam to keep him from attacking, pushed the tip of the needle into the side of his thin neck, and depressed the plunger.

Adam growled and went still. His blond hair had flattened against the side of his head.

Michael lifted him gently onto the bed. Rigor held his knees to his chest and it took some stretching him to overcome the stiffness. The joints cracked and popped as he forced the tiny limbs straight. Michael slipped the dress shirt over Adam’s arms so that it buttoned in the back. He criss-crossed the sleeves and knotted them to form a makeshift straight jacket before taping Adam’s ankles together. Michael had done things the past two days that he prayed he would never have to. Sealing his son’s mouth with duct tape was one of them, but it had to be done. He smoothed Adam’s wispy bangs back from his face and began his examination. He shined the beam of a penlight in Adam’s eyes and found no pupillary response beneath the thick, cataract-like covering over his corneas. The doctor in him needed the confirmation that his son was, in fact, dead or
undead
--an impossibility he couldn’t get used to. He leaned Adam forward, his pale skin ice-cold, and listened with his stethoscope for breath sounds or a heartbeat. Finding only silence, he held back the tears.

He was so used to knowing the right thing to do that faced with no set course of action, he felt crazed and useless.

Only one person in the world could help them and only Scott Penton might know where to find her.

He lowered Adam back into the trunk and sealed him safely away until he could find a solution. He had to think fast. It wouldn’t be long before decomposition took hold and he thought about how best to prevent that. The bitter cold seemed his only option.

He paced the room, running his hands over his short, blond hair, and stopped at the window overlooking the yard and Ashley’s burial site. He couldn’t go into the bathroom at the end of the hall without seeing her corpse in the tub. He’d set his hand against her handprint a dozen times and only washed it away when he was unable to leave it alone. She was quickly becoming an obsession and his memories of her only magnified his guilt. He packed a bag, slung it over his shoulder, and lifted the trunk with Adam inside.

“I’m going to save you.”

He just couldn’t do it there, where memories threatened to drive him crazy.

He headed out onto the front porch and locked the front door behind him.

Earl and Randy reluctantly left after they found Adam’s shirt and he checked to make sure they hadn’t come back. He wasn’t up to answering questions.

He lifted the garage door, grabbed the cargo carrier and hitched it up to the Yukon, refusing to let the emotional drag slow him down. The cold air would preserve Adam, but not for long. He tied the trunk down and secured it with a lock and chain to prevent someone from seeing it as easily lifted supplies.

He started the truck, fastened his seatbelt, and adjusted his mirror so that he could see the cargo rack. The idea of stowing Adam like baggage didn’t sit well with him, but as warm air came through the vents, he was thankful for the temporary comfort which would’ve only sped up the boy’s inevitable decay.

* * * * *

Though the list had recently become longer, few things weighed on Michael’s conscience the way giving Miranda up to Dr. Nixon had. The deal would have been hard with any of his patients, but that a friend was the first and only person to test positive as the deficient gene carrier made sending her to him that much harder.

Driving back to the Pentons’ home, a modest, two-story he’d been by dozens of times, but had never worked up the courage to walk up to, he considered his explanation to Scott. No partial truth was compelling enough for Scott to tell him where Miranda was, assuming he knew.

The house appeared quiet, the whole block having been abandoned. He parked at the curbside and thought about his apology. Climbing the front porch steps, it was hard to swallow. Tension threatened to make him turn around and he imagined that he might be killed on sight. Crisp as the air was, he was sweating.

He knocked and waited.

“Scott, are you in there?”

For all he knew, the virus could have already taken them both.

He knocked a second time and when no one answered, decided to force his way in. He braced himself against one of the porch columns and kicked as hard as he could. The wood cracked and the old door started to give. A second kick and the jamb splintered. By the third, Michael was inside.

“Hello?” Calling out was instinctive. If Scott were there, he didn’t want his head shot off by mistake. “Scott, are you here? It’s me, Michael.”

He walked into the kitchen and over to the strainer by the sink. He wiped his finger across the black mat underneath and dried it on his pants. The dishes had been recently washed. He opened the pantry and found it stocked with canned food. Several empties were in the garbage can off to the side.

“Scott? Are you here?”

He went upstairs into the master bedroom and looked at the neatly made bed. The furniture smelled of polish and had been recently cleaned. Two days without Ashley at his house and dust covered everything. This wasn’t a bachelor pad, and he tried not to be too hopeful as he theorized what had happened.

“Miranda?”

He went to the room across the hall.

The door creaked as it opened to a pink nursery which smelled of new things and plastic. Baby supplies covered the dresser: bottles which had never been opened, an emergency kit like one would carry in a diaper bag, and several bottles of baby lotion.

Michael sighed, and as he was about to leave, two bags, which looked to be packed for an emergency, caught his eye. The Collapse was long after Miranda lost her daughter and the only thing that made sense was that she had recently been there. She was either pregnant or had newly delivered. Either way, he’d wager she’d be back.

He set one of his business cards on the table next to the rocker and hoped it was enough to pique Scott or Miranda’s interest.

Adam’s life depended on it.

Carlene.

That was the woman’s name. Reid recognized her from having worked on the ward. However unlikely and irrational on her part, her return to the center was a blessing and her hybrid child, the first to survive as far as he knew, was his way back into Nixon’s good graces.

Reid lifted the squirming boy from the gaping hole in her womb. The coating of blood and inky amniotic fluid made his skin slippery and Reid struggled to hold onto him. The umbilical cord tugged and limited where he could place him. He unbuttoned his uniform shirt, laid it across Carlene’s legs, and set the boy in her lap where the last of her body heat kept him warm.

A white film covered the infant’s eyes, making the already smooth and extraterrestrial features more horrific. He was silent for a long moment, and when Reid suctioned his mouth and nose with a bulb syringe, he started to cry.

“There, there. It’s all right.”

Reid tucked the shirt around him, keeping only his abdomen exposed, and took a roll of gauze and a pair of scissors from a nearby drawer.  He knotted a length of the fabric in two places to mimic a clamp and waited for the cord to stop pulsing before closing the blades. It took several snips with the dull shears to cut through the gristle-like tissue and when he was done, the boy let out a shrill cry.

Reid feared him drawing a horde, or alerting whomever else Nixon had hunting him, and with no choice but to soothe him, he lifted him and held him close. Reid cradled and bounced the baby, careful to avoid his teeth, but he wouldn’t be consoled.

“What do you want?”

He tucked the swaddled boy inside a large cabinet drawer and closed it enough to muffle the sound of his crying. Babies cried for three reasons: they needed a diaper change, they were tired, or they needed food. The last seemed most likely and there was only one place that would have what he needed.

He drew his pistol and ran down the dimly lit hallway, careful not to slip on the trail of blood and black liquid from where Carlene had dragged herself to her grim final resting place. He hurried up two flights of stairs and entered Labor and Delivery for the first time in months. The wallpaper peeled from having been soaked by the sprinklers and the black mold smelled stale and musty.

Reid stifled a cough and lifted his pistol at the sound of shuffling feet.

“Shit.”

A naked, infected female shambled through the water-damaged unit. Her wobbly legs made her path crooked and her emaciated body bore the telltale signs of being postpartum. He wondered what had happened to her baby. Her sagging breasts hung flat above her stretch marked abdomen which formed a kind of fleshy smile. She held tight to a bloodstained, blue cap, the kind the nurses put on newborn infants, and focused her eyes on him. There was a sentient, pronounced sadness in her expression. Reid expected her to charge, but she barely walked toward him.

He aimed at her head, set his finger to the trigger, and took her down with one shot. Stagnant blood leaked from the hole in her skull, and when her body stopped twitching, he snatched the blue cap from her hand.

Cans of formula were stored in the nursery where the newborn infants had been kept. A dozen or so infected staff and patients had starved there and the bodies stunk. Skin shrank from bones as putrefaction dissolved the flesh. The dismembered bodies of several infants lay in the bassinettes of the nursery, and even as hardened as Reid had become, he couldn’t bear to look at them. He grabbed a garbage bag from an empty trash can and loaded it with formula, bottles, and a manual breast pump which reminded him of a life before becoming a killer. Back when a zombie apocalypse seemed like impossible science fiction and when he found out that Jess, the woman he loved, had given birth to a son that wasn’t his, but who had been fathered by Mitch, the closest thing he had to a friend.

He grabbed several sealed packs of diapers and wipes and headed back to the PAT room where the tiny boy cried in the drawer.

His clubbed hands shook and the pitch of his crying climbed higher the more hysterical he became.

Reid lifted him onto the examination table and stretched the blue cap over the top of his tiny head. He diapered and swaddled him, which calmed him down some. Enough to eat, he hoped.

“How about some food?”

He attached a rubber nipple to a premixed bottle of formula, lifted the boy’s head, and pressed the tip to his lips. A slow drip of formula spilled down the boy’s chin, but he had no inclination to suckle. The boy cried louder, showing the full rows of razor teeth that were the most menacing thing about him.

Reid lifted and rocked him, holding his face away from him in case he tried to bite.

“I don’t know what you want.”

His chest tightened with anxiety and his head throbbed.

No matter what he did, the infant could not be appeased.

He looked at the cooling corpse of the infant’s mother and set the boy back down. He had no idea if the milk would come, but he had to try. He pressed the cone-shaped end of the manual breast pump to Carlene’s engorged breast and worked the handle. The suction of the manual pump drew her nipple in. Reid blocked out the crying as he manually expressed the scant colostrum—sweet, yellow pre-milk he hoped would encourage the boy to eat. He put a clean nipple on the bottle and picked the boy back up.

“Here,” he said as calmly as he could despite his increasing irritation.

The infant bit through the rubber and spilled the liquid onto his mouth and face.

“Dammit.” Reid grunted, frustrated. “What do you want?”

He thought back on his work before The Collapse and suddenly he knew.