Prepper Central: A Prepper Fiction Novel (Prepping - Together we will Survive Book 1) (7 page)

‘Mom,’ I finally turned to look at her. She stood up, removed her hand from my crouched over back and looked me in the eyes.

‘Son,’ she replied.

‘I think I’m scared, mom. I don’t know if I’m ready for this. I mean, through her entire pregnancy, I was pretty sure this was a great thing. You know, I would dream about holding our baby in my arms and sometimes it felt as though I could smell his or her new skin but that was all a dream. Now, it’s actually happening. Marge is about to pop our baby out and I don’t know if I’m ready for that to happen.’

I looked around to see that the other men, who I’d forgotten about, had their eyes in mom and my direction. Not wanting them to see the dread in my eyes, I quickly turned away.

‘Jimmy, no one’s ever ready. That’s something I can guarantee you. Marge has gotten used to feeling the baby inside of her and I’m sure she’s panicked, not only about how much it will hurt when he’s coming out, but also about learning how to be a mom. You need each other and you have each other. Everything else will fall into place. Don’t worry about the baby crying when you have him or her in your arms, all babies do that. You for example, only stopped crying when your lips were latched onto my…’

‘I get it mom,’ I said quickly, not wanting enough information to create an imagi in my head. ‘How did she look?’

‘What do you mean, how did she look?’

‘Marge. Was she frightened? Was she happy? Did she look worried?’

‘All of them, I guess but mostly excited.’

‘Okay. Okay.’ I took a couple deep breaths like the one’s Cindy had instructed Marge to do when the contractions started. In fact, I felt like there was a part of me contracting. My heart was surely being twisted around, although the breathing seemed to help.

‘Jimmy, your wife’s waiting on you. Get back to her and then you can practice your breathing exercises.’

‘Mom,’ I met her eyes, ‘I think I’m having a panic attack or maybe it’s a heart attack. I dunno but it’s serious.’

‘Boy, you’re acting just like your father. Now, pull yourself together before I have to whip you in shape the way my mom did to him.’

‘Okay. Okay,’ I replied, steadying my breath, ‘just give me a minute.’

Mom and I walked up the long road to my house. The minutes that it took felt like hours and my panic ensured that I stopped and observed just about every ant, fly and mosquito that wandered close by. For the first time I understood the necessity of a nine month pregnancy. Opossums have a twelve to thirteen day gestation period and it was incredibly hard for me to fathom how both the mother and the father managed to prepare for such a life changing experience in so little time. Nine months did indeed seem long. However, now, it didn’t seem long enough. Marge’s stomach looked as though someone had inflated two full sized balloons in her and so, yes, another month or two would mean that her stomach would reach the floor. So I get that it was time for her to get rid of the load but how could she ever be ready? I stopped and watched as mom placed a lone hand on the handle of our hardwood door and my heart tightened as she pulled down and allowed the inside of the house to meet my eyes. The first person I saw was dad. His eyes were wide with panic, assuming a considerably uncomfortable position on the couch beside Marge.

‘Honey,’ I made my way over to her, squeezing past dad whose legs were blocking the path to her.

‘Jimmy,’ she smiled, ‘it hurts so badly.’

‘I know honey. I know. It’s going to be alright.’

‘I don’t know Jimmy. This is the worst pain I’ve ever felt in my…contraction. Contraction. Contraction,’ she wailed.

I placed my hand on her stomach, hoping it would help to ease the pain. ‘Breathe,’ I reminded her. My cue encouraged her to let out a long hard breath and it was then that I noticed she really had forgotten about her breathing exercises. ‘Should we call Cindy?’

‘No. It’s not time yet. She said I should wait until the contractions are about 6 minutes apart. So we’ve got some time to go.’

‘Okay. But you know. Maybe she has something for the pain. Wouldn’t you want something for the pain?’

Marge shook her head. ‘Now I feel okay. It’s just when this pain shoots through my stomach that it gets unbearable.’

‘Can I do anything for you?’ I asked, unsure of how I could possibly be helpful. 

‘Just you being here is enough, Jimmy.’

Hours went by. Marge’s screams occurred more frequently as her contractions occurred a shorter duration apart. We finally decided that it was time to get Cindy on bored and move closer to holding our baby in our arms. Though a huge part of me was still drenched in the fear of fathering a newborn child, a part of me just couldn’t wait to see the new life that I’d helped to create.

‘Dad,’ I dragged his attention away from the crossword puzzle he was pretending to do.

‘Yup.’

‘Do you think you can radio Cindy in and have her come over to us?’

‘Absolutely,’ he replied, hurrying to his feet and reaching for the handheld two way radio that was positioned in the center of the coffee table.

Dad fondled with the device a bit. ‘You’ve got to press that one.’

‘I know that Jimmy, just trying to hold it properly.’ He pressed the button. ‘Cindy. Cindy. It’s Chuck and Jimmy here.’

Cindy didn’t respond. We waited for a few second before dad tuned in again. ‘Cindy, are you there?’

A cold sweat of panic swept over me. ‘She’s probably in the shower,’ Marge replied calmly. ‘Why don’t you just run over there and get her.’

Because Cindy lived on the other side of the Cul De Sac and I wanted to be with Marge, I asked dad to contact Stewart and have him send someone to get her. Stewart picked up straightaway and shared in our excitement about the baby before letting us know that he’d have someone over to Cindy immediately. Now it was just about playing the waiting game, something that none of us wanted to do. Marge’s screams were becoming unbearable- not only because of her screaming directly into my ears but also because with each scream, I felt as though her pain became mine. About ten minutes after we had placed the phone call to Stewart, a hard pounding was to be heard on our front door.

‘Cindy’s here!’ I exclaimed. Finally happy that my wife would find some relief from her pain even though we knew that it may take a few more hours before it was really time for the baby to be delivered.

I was quick on my feet and to the door in a matter of seconds. I swung it open to see that the person I’d expected to see wasn’t the person standing in front of me.

‘Stewart,’ I said confused.

‘I’m sorry, Jimmy.’ A look of dread took hold of his face.

‘What is it?’ I asked. I was trying hard to push a worst case scenario so far back in my mind that there wouldn’t be a possibility for it to exist.

‘We can’t find Cindy,’ he whispered.

The look on Stewart’s face said more than I was willing to decipher. I froze for a minute, trying hard to figure out the smartest course of action. I knew it was only a matter of time before Marge would want to know what’s going on and rather than having her worry about her doctor not showing up, I needed to come up with a solution that wouldn’t have her blood pressure soaring through the roof.

‘Oh. I think I know where she might me,’ I said confidently enough for Marge to believe it. ‘I’ll be back in a short while sweetie.’

‘Jimmy, where do you think you’re going?’ She snapped.

‘It won’t take long, I promise,’ I reassured her before stepping through the door and taking Stewart with me.

This was potentially the worst thing that could have happened. If we didn’t find Cindy soon, either mom, dad, or I would have to deliver Marge’s baby. I couldn’t believe this was happening. It’s as though one unfortunate event just had to be accompanied by another.

‘What do you mean you can’t find her?’ I finally turned to Stewart. He couldn’t find the strength to look at me and instead, had his eyes focused on a random spot on the floor in front of him. ‘What do you mean you can’t find Cindy,’ I said, louder this time.

‘I mean that we’ve gone to her place and she’s not there.’

‘Then check somewhere else.’

‘Everyone in the neighborhood has been contacted and no one seems to know where she is, except,’ he paused.

‘Except,’ I prompted him to continue.

Stewart let out a sigh and focused his eyes on mine. ‘They heard some screaming this morning and now it seems as though it might have been coming from Cindy.’

‘No,’ I shook my head. ‘No, it wasn’t coming from Cindy. I asked Derrick and he said…’ Then I remembered that the only thing Derrick said was that the screaming wasn’t coming from a boy. I hadn’t even thought about the possibility of Cindy being the victim. Why would I?

‘Unfortunately, I think that really is the case. We’d checked out the screaming and it seemed as though it was coming from over the wall but I guess.’

My heart pounded faster and faster and I felt as though a panic attack- one worse than the one I felt when I heard that Marge was having contractions - was about to take control of my body. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Being able to blame someone for what had happened wouldn’t have helped and I knew that. But I couldn’t come to terms with the fact that no one bothered to look over the wall; the fact that no one seemed to have taken the screaming more seriously than it obviously was.

‘So what do we do now?’ I turned to Stewart whose anger and frustration was easy to see.

‘We get her back,’ he said matter-of-factly.

‘And how do we do that? Are we supposed to just trudge on into a community of people who can’t stand us? Are we just supposed to go over there expecting people to start talking? I guarantee you that no one’s going to say anything. You know just how many people we’ve turned away and the last thing we can expect is for them to help us.’

‘Well,’ Stewart answered boldly, ‘If they’re not willing to talk, we’re going to have to make them talk.’

‘That’ll just get us killed.’

‘We’re the ones with the guns Jimmy. They’ve all used up their ammo shooting each other and so I don’t think there’s much of a threat going over there.’

Guns or no guns, I knew that our presence outside of our walls wouldn’t be appreciated. These people were hooligans. They were hooligans who had nothing to lose and so, they’d give their lives to see us fall.

‘And what if it takes us hours? What if it takes us days?’

‘Then that’s just how long it will take.’

‘Stewart,’ the frustration in my voice grew, ‘my wife is about to pop and there’s no one to deliver her baby.’

‘This isn’t only about your wife,’ Stewart replied, sounding less concerned about my statement than I appreciated, ‘this is about all of us. We’ve got one doctor in the group and so, we need to make sure that we get her back here. If anything happens to any one of us, we need to make sure that there’s a doctor here to help out. So, I’m sorry if you think that heading out of our perfect little society isn’t a great idea, but it’s something that we just have to do.’

Understanding what Stewart was saying wasn’t hard. It was the tone of his voice made me feel as though I was being blamed for something.

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘But what should I tell her.’

‘I don’t know if anything you tell her will give her the comfort that we need at this time. I mean, being her husband, she’ll want you to stay with her.’

Just when I was getting ready to head inside and shell out a world of bad news to my wife, Derrick came running toward us. ‘Jimmy. Jimmy,’ he panted.

‘What it is?’ I asked coldly.

‘You know that guy that you guys caught the other night. Well, he’s here. He’s right by the wall on the other side and he’s asking for you.’

For a moment, my mind flashed back to the man who Edward had shot in the shoulder. Could it have been him who took Cindy? If so, he’d surely be in for no good. After all, it had been a member of our group that was responsible for the injuries he sustained. However, Cindy was the one who patched him up. She was the reason he didn’t bleed out right in front of us.

‘Why is he asking for me?’

‘I don’t know. Here,’ he reached out his hand which held a crumpled up piece of paper, ‘he said I should give you this.’

I retrieved the paper from Derricks arm. ‘What the hell is this supposed to be.’

‘I dunno,’ he answered.

 Stewart edged closer to me to get a good look at the paper as I opened it.

House Number 3 Collingswood

They took the nurse.

‘Derrick. What did you say this guy looked like?’

‘Well, he was short, like five foot four maybe five. I dunno. Young.’

‘That’s not a guy, Derrick,’ I snapped. ‘That’s a little boy. You mean that a little boy gave you this paper.’

‘Yeah, that’s what I mean,’ Derrick agreed. ‘The one you guys caught the other night.’

A sense of relief swept over me and it was then that I knew accompanying Stewart and the crew wasn’t an option, it was a must. I reached into my pants pocket and pulled out a pen. Then, I carefully ripped off a corner of the paper Derrick had handed to me and wrote:

 
I’ll be back in a few, don’t worry. I love you. Jimmy.

I folded the paper, making it thick enough to be secured underneath my front door without being blown away by the wind. There was no doubt in my mind that Marge would be upset about me not being there with her. But, if Thomas really was who had handed this paper to Derrick, then I needed to be the one to speak with him. Marge would forgive me. She had to forgive me.

‘Let’s go,’ I turned to Stewart.

I could tell that he was a little bit puzzled as I hadn’t fully shared my thoughts with him but there was no time to be wasted.

‘What’s that all about?’ Stewart latched his hand around my arm and pulled me back.

‘Come on Stewy. Let’s get the others. We’re gonna go retrieve our doctor now!’