The day after: An apocalyptic morning (177 page)

              "The leg bothering you?" Bonnie asked, noting how he was carefully keeping his weight on the right one.

              "You could say that," he agreed. "Renee cut me loose some pills for it. I want to see if I can sleep it off."

              "Sure," she said after receiving no dissent from the other members. "Take the rest of the day off. You're not the first one being bothered by the barometer today."

              "It really is spiking, isn't it?" said Paul, whose job it was to keep an eye on such things.

              "It really is," he agreed. "I'll catch you later. If you see Jack when he comes back, will you have him stop by my house on his way home? We need to go over the lifting procedures for the Huey some more so we can get that fuel lift figured out."

              "I'll tell him," Paul said, "but that might be kind of late. He stays here until almost 9:00 some nights working on those maps."

              "Well, I'll probably be up," Skip said. "The baby, you know."

              "Oh, we know," they all echoed. All of them were living in houses with infants.

              He bade them farewell and headed back downstairs, exiting the school by the side door and limping his way out to the street in front. Fortunately, the house he shared with his three wives was relatively close by, less than three blocks in fact. The streets were damp as he made his way home but the precipitation was non-existent, not even a mist was falling. The wind was icy and moving at a fairly good clip from the west. It seemed almost dry outside, though very cold. Skip pulled his coat a little tighter and soon he was home.

              The house that he and his family had been assigned was a two-story, four bedroom that had probably been pretty expensive before the comet. He entered through the unlocked door and stepped into the formal living room, where the previous day's laundry was hanging amid dry linen placed there to absorb the excess moisture. He wound his way through all of this and into the family room, which was modestly, though tastefully decorated with its original, pre-comet furnishings. Christine was sitting in the recliner, a paperback book folded open in front of her. Her walkie-talkie sat next to her on the end table. In her arms was three-month-old Laura - named for her maternal grandmother who had been shot to death a year ago. It had become somewhat traditional in town to name children after parents that had died in the impact. The boys were generally named after the father's father and the girls after the mother's mother. Christine had her shirt unbuttoned and her bra pulled up. Laura was suckling contentedly at her right nipple, drawing the life-giving milk from her mother's body into her own.

              "Hey, babe," Skip hailed, walking over and kissing her lightly on the mouth. He then leaned over and kissed the infant's head as well. Laura stopped sucking long enough to give him a toothless smile and then she went right back to work on the engorged nipple. "What're you doing home? Just feeding or are you here for the day?"

              "Just feeding Laura," she said. "I still have tomorrow's roster to do and a training rotation to schedule for." She gave a crooked grin. "It'll be nice when Shellie pops out her little package and gets her milk. Then I won't have to keep coming home every four hours to feed the machine here."

              "I heard that," said Paula, emerging from the bathroom. Like roughly three-quarters of the childbearing age women in town, she was well knocked up. Nearly six months along now, her stomach had gotten huge. "And if you think I'm gonna stick a baby on each of my tits, you're out of your freakin mind. They'll suck me dry."

              "I love it when you talk like that," Skip said, kissing her.

              Paula was currently pulling a shift as the mother of the family. Since Christine's position was much more important than Paula's - who was a mere guard supervisor - Paula was allowed to stay home each day and take care of Laura. She offset these duties with Maggie, who was one of the guards and who was three months pregnant herself, on a rotating basis. It was somewhat of an unconventional arrangement but it was a somewhat unconventional world these days.

              Paula plopped herself down on the sofa next to Skip and immediately snuggled up to him. After the routine questions about why he was home so early and how his day had gone, she began nibbling on his neck, giving soft sucks and kisses that soon had him to a full erection.

              "You guys," Christine said, feigning exasperation. "Don't do that in front of the baby. Go in the bedroom for Christ's sake."

              "I think she's got a good idea," Paula said, nibbling a little on his clavicle. "Care to join me, Skip?"

              "We already did it this morning," he reminded her, playing hard to get.

              "And we'll probably do it tonight too," she said, giving his erection a squeeze through his pants. "Now I know why Christine was such an animal while she was pregnant. Now let's do it."

              "If I must," he said, faking a sigh.

              They retired to the bedroom and did it. It was up to its usual standards of excellence.

              After, as he lay curled up next to Paula's swollen body, feeling the perspiration drying on his skin, he was just starting to drift off to sleep, the combination of Vicodin and sex putting him under. Just as the last plugs of consciousness were being pulled free, just as his breathing took on the slow, regular patterns of slumber, a commotion from outside jerked him back upward.

              "What the hell?" asked Paula, who had heard it as well.

              It was the sound of voices raised in excitement. Many of them. They were loud enough to be heard even through the double-paned glass of the house's windows. This particular part of town was densely populated, with no unoccupied houses on the street at all. It sounded like all of their neighbors were standing outside and babbling. Individual words could not be made out due to the glass and the sheer number of speakers, but something had obviously riled up everyone.

              "I'd better see what's up," Skip said, pulling himself free of the covers and rolling out of bed. His knee was only throbbing distantly now, thanks to the pain medicine, but his mind was a little groggy. He picked up his jeans and sat down to put them on. As he was doing this, a loud knock came on their front door.

              "Who is it?" he heard Christine call from the living room. A voice muttered something excitedly in return. This was followed by the sound of the door opening and a faint, female voice telling Christine that she had to come outside. She had to see, and quickly.

              "Oh my God!" he heard Christine exclaim. "I have to get Skip and Shellie! They have to see this!"

              Skip and Paula shared a look, wondering if there was some kind of trouble. Obviously something strange was going on out there. But what? They both continued to dress. Skip made sure that his gun was strapped on to his waist.

              The door to the bedroom was ripped open a moment later and Christine stood there, her face flushed and excited, Laura dozing in her arms. "You have to come see this," she said. "Hurry, come outside."

              "What is it?" Skip asked.

              "Just come on!" she said. "You have to see it for yourself. Hurry, before it goes away!" With that she rushed out of the room once again, heading for the front door.

              Skip and Paula exchanged one more look and then threw on the rest of their clothing. They hurried through the house and out the front door.

              The first thing they saw were the neighbors. They were gathered in the street outside, everyone from every house up and down the block, nearly sixty people in all. They were looking skyward and pointing. The next thing they noticed was that the light was brighter than normal. It was almost as if...

              "Look at it," Christine said, laughing delightfully. "Isn't it beautiful? Isn't it the most wonderful thing you've ever seen?"

              Skip and Paula looked skyward, off to the southwest. There, about midway in the sky, a break in the clouds had magically opened, a brief rip caused by the intersection of two weather patterns perhaps. Visible in that small break, which encompassed less than a single degree of the sky, was the sun. The big, bright, orange ball that gave life to the planet hung there in the hole, shining in all of its glory; a sight no one had seen now in more than a year.

              "The sun," Skip whispered, staring at it in awe. It really was a beautiful thing. He could feel its warmth upon his face, could feel the way his eyes tried to avert from its brightness. Surrounding it was the brilliant blue of the sky.

              "It really is still there," Paula said beside him. "It really is."

              "And maybe things really will be all right," Skip replied, still staring.

              The break in the clouds would last for less than ten minutes before the curtains of cloud cover closed it back up again. But later that day there would be another opening, and the next day there would be yet another.