Afterbirth (5 page)

Michael rubbed his eyes, exhausted from a sleepless night of worries and what ifs. 

Earl and Randy waited downstairs, eager to resume the previous night’s search for Adam.

Michael wasn’t sure how much longer he could keep up the ruse. He walked to the bathroom to splash water on his face and stopped at the closed door. He set his hand against the bloody print on the jamb and lined his ring up with the void left by Ashley’s.

Earl called up from downstairs. “Did you sleep at all?”

Michael shook his head, grief-stricken.

“No sign of him?” Randy asked, loading his gun.

Michael shrugged. “No, and Rex is missing, too.”

“That could be a good thing,” Earl said. “Rex will keep him safe. At least today we have daylight.”

Randy holstered his pistol and unsheathed his knife, thumbing the blade to test its sharpness.

Michael started down the stairs and Earl held up his hand to stop him. “Maybe you should let Randy and I search a while.” He looked up at the bathroom door. “You should stay here in case he comes home, maybe tend to other things, you know?”

Michael did know, but burying Ashley meant accepting her death and though he needed that closure, he wasn’t ready to.

“We’ll bring Adam home.” Earl clapped his hand on Randy’s shoulder and ushered him out the door.

Michael sighed and considered his options. He couldn’t leave Ashley to rot in the house, no matter how badly the idea of her burial hurt him. He headed to the garage where the cold air grew even colder. A draft fluttered the weathered door seal, vibrating the cracked rubber. He took a shovel down from the wall and headed for the back yard through the side door.

Leaves rustled across the browning lawn and Michael gazed through the bare branches of the Magnolia tree. The pink and white flowers had been Ashley’s favorite and he couldn’t think of a better final resting place. He stepped on the shovel head and forced the spade into the dirt with his weight. The morning frost made the earth hard to dig and his tears magnified the already chafing windburn on his cheeks.

He thought of Ashley upstairs in the tub, the blood motionless in her veins.

Relegating her to the unforgiving cold of a particularly brisk fall felt like neglect. Acceptance was still too many steps away for any of this to feel right. He dug, harder and faster, pouring his frustration into the work. The cold air stiffened his hands and his palms burned as blisters formed where the wooden handle rubbed his soft skin.

The hole spread through the lawn, inches turning into feet and the cold becoming secondary. Sweat rolled down his back and armpits, soaking through two layers of clothing. He only stopped when the shovel hit an impassible boulder that sent a jarring pain into his elbows and shoulders. The ringing noise of the metal on rock hummed in his ears and he collapsed. A ridge of blisters tore open and blood covered his palms. Moist dirt caked his knees. He dropped the shovel and squeezed his eyes shut.

Why had any of this happened?

He secured the gate and never went out at night. He trained Rex as a guard dog and kept a vigilant watch. He’d done everything to keep his family safe, and still, he failed. It all came back to the front door, the one he’d been the last through and was too preoccupied to lock.

He pulled himself out of the hole and the sidewall caved slightly, filling his boots with dirt.

“I’m so sorry,” he said, looking up.

He walked to the house and stood with his hand on the sliding glass door handle.

Time wasn’t going to change circumstances and he forced himself to go inside. Each step felt like ten, an impossible climb toward a scene that if he lived a hundred years, couldn’t be erased from his memory. He opened the bathroom door and a shower curtain ring crunched beneath his foot. Dead leaves clung to the soles of Ashley’s shoes and clothespins hung from the waistband of her sweatshirt. He stared at the blank expression on her lifeless face. Blood dried around the bullet hole in her forehead. Her once radiant, green eyes had turned white.

Michael unfastened the remaining rings holding the curtain in place and wrapped the two layers of plastic and fabric around her. The smell of vanilla lotion radiated from her skin and he cradled her in his arms, breathing the scent in deeply. His eyes burned with tears. Her dead weight made her hard to manage and he carefully moved her through the door and downstairs. Walking through the sliding glass door, the thought came to mind that this would be the last time he’d ever hold her.

He moved across the lawn, shielding her as best he could from the wind, and knelt down. His muscles shook from the strain as he gently lowered her into the hole.

“I love you,” he said and slowly let go.

He said a brief prayer and shoveled in the first scoop of dirt, which was the hardest part yet. Each pass made her death seem that much more permanent. The tears came so hard and fast that he could barely see. He piled the dirt back into the hole and patted the mound flat, numb to everything around him.

Footsteps rustled the leaves on the other side of the fence and Earl called out to Randy.

“Hey, over here.”

The gate hinge creaked as Randy unlocked and opened it.

Adam’s blue shirt dangled from Earl’s weathered hand. He opened the small tee and showed Michael the bloodstains.

“I’m so sorry,” he said.

Michael couldn’t have been more distant. He blinked and tears spilled from his eyes.

Earl set his hand on his shoulder and tried to comfort him. “What can I do to help you?” he asked.

Unable to so much as speak, Michael didn’t answer. He pressed his lips together and broke down, sobbing.

At least now they’d stop looking.

Penny joined Foster in a large, two-floor Colonial which had belonged to Dr. Ralph Halstead, a Nixon Center employee who died the night of the escape. The infection took his wife and three children shortly after they had gone there to look for him. The news reported their deaths with the usual sterile verbiage, warning those not yet sick to steer clear.

The marble floor radiated cold through her feet. She toweled off and pushed her shoulder-length, black hair behind her ear. The cold shower barely took the edge off her exhaustion and she wondered if a single night would pass without nightmares of her parents’ deaths. She leaned in to the mirror and wiped the remains of her mascara from under her lids. Her bright blue eyes, now dull and gray, sank into the purple hollows beneath them. Sleep was sporadic even before the attack. She couldn’t remember her last uninterrupted night and, as she picked at the crusted corner of her right eye, she stopped trying.

She’d all but starved herself so that her parents, especially her mother, could eat. Her baby fat had melted away, leaving her with an unfamiliar body and a handful of stretch marks on her arms, belly, and thighs. She pulled on a pair of slim-fit white jeans and a navy blue button-down top made from the softest cotton she’d ever felt. She couldn’t help feeling like a thief for taking the clothes, even if their owner was never coming back for them. She opened the bathroom door and stared at the wall of photos across the hallway.

The Halstead children were almost exactly one head apart in height and photographed liked steps, shortest to tallest. She said a prayer for each of the smiling faces and comforted herself with thoughts of Heaven, a place free of infection and fear.

A tear rolled down her cheek and she bent down to pick up the pile of clothing covered in her mother’s blood.

Foster appeared at the top of the stairs with a plastic bag covering his hand. “Don’t touch them.” He scooped up the clothing, turned the bag inside out around them, and knotted the top. “We have to be careful.”

They hadn’t said more than a few words to each other since leaving her house and she wondered if she’d made a mistake agreeing to go with him. Her mouth bent into a frown and she cried, giving into another wave of unrelenting sadness.

Foster set the bag down and ran his hand through his reddish-blond hair. Faint, bloody cast-off speckled his glasses and he moved with the stiffness of an ax-wielding murderer.

She knew, in her heart, he was anything but.

“I am sorry,” Foster said, not for the first time. He reached out to hold her and she backed away, crossing her arms over her chest. “If there were any other way…” His eyes welled up with tears.

A long silence passed between them. She could sense his genuine remorse, but had to blame him to keep from blaming herself.

“They’re in a better place,” she said. “God looks after His own.”

She needed to believe it if she was ever going to forgive him.

The remains of the Nixon Center sent chills through Carlene as she staggered through the cluttered parking lot, holding her swollen stomach. Blood-stained gurneys stood as proof of the emergency site she had hoped was still running now that she was ready to deliver. Black liquid soaked her delicate pink dress, staining it in a monochromatic watercolor pattern. Another contraction came and she clenched her teeth, trying not to scream. Noise drew hordes, a fact that those who managed to survive The Collapse quickly learned. Her knees buckled, she grabbed the hood of an abandoned car, and waited for it to pass.

She hadn’t seen another living soul in months, though time wasn’t a thing exactly kept track of. Kurt, her father, had gone missing after a supply run, and though she presumed the worst, she waited for him as long as she could. Holed up on her small, ranch house, she watched the world fall apart, keeping company with the infant growing inside of her. The days passed, each growing closer to an uncertain deadline when being alone was no longer an option.

Deciding to go back to the Nixon Center after being forcibly impregnated and held captive there hadn’t been easy. Looking up at the mutilated bodies swinging from the lights, she knew she’d made a mistake.

“Keep out.”

The message was clear, but she had no choice.

She closed in on the burnt-out entrance and covered her mouth and nose. Her lungs protested, forcing out the dirty air with a deep coughing fit that expelled her water in bursts.

Fragments of pulverized bone crunched under the soles of her canvas sneakers and mixed with the dark fluid to form a grim, human mud. Mold grew on the walls, and what the fire hadn’t destroyed, water and weather had. The power was out and the elevator shaft had been propped open. An aluminum ladder peeked out at the top and a series of footprints stamped in the grey dust said someone had been, or was still there. She didn’t know whether to follow them or run away.

A sharp, gnawing pain radiated through her stomach and she knew leaving wasn’t a choice.  She dropped to her hands and knees and lowered herself until her forehead was nearly touching the floor. The burned smell intensified as she drew the deep, calming breaths she’d read about in her motherhood books. The mud stuck to her bare knees and scraped them as she crawled slowly forward.

“Help me,” she said, holding onto the hope that someone might be there to do so. “Can anyone hear me?” Tears rolled down her cheeks, mingling with the beads of sweat formed by intense, unrelenting pain. “
Please
.”

The pressure inside her increased her urge to push. She refused to give birth surrounded by the charred and dismembered dead.

“Hello? Can anyone hear me?”

Another sharp pain came, this time lasting longer and forcing a scream from her that echoed throughout the decimated facility. She wept as the baby moved frantically inside of her. Something was wrong. Nothing felt like the books had described. She rolled onto her side, her dark brown hair clinging to her moist cheek, and reached between her legs. The need to push was so strong now that she was certain she’d feel the baby’s head. She pulled her hand away and found her palm covered in blood.

“Somebody, anyone, help.”

She reached up, turned the doorknob to a room labeled Pre-Admission Testing, and crab-crawled inside, thankful for the cleaner, dryer space. The setting sun through the window warmed her as the contractions hit in rhythmic waves, barely seconds apart. Filthy and soaked, she slipped out of her soiled dress and gasped. The imprint of a face pressed from inside of her belly. The baby’s head should have been down, ready for birth. She convinced herself it was a hallucination brought on by the pain, but when the next cramp hit, it was there again, this time, accompanied by a pair of hands. Ten tiny bulges appeared and the blood flow between her legs increased to the point that she became dizzy.

The room spun, the blue specs on the wallpaper dancing to the pace of her quickening heartbeat.

“Someone, please help me.” She shivered, becoming cold as her life drained from her. She slumped against the far wall of the small examination room, wearing only a bra and canvas sneakers. The intense pain sent her into shock and all of her strength drifted away. Her stomach expanded and stretched until the tiny being broke through. A flood of black fluid and blood erupted from the opening. Tiny, disfigured hands reached for the sunlight as a set of needle-like teeth widened the opening.

The examination room door opened and the last thing she saw through a haze of prolonged death was a Nixon Center uniform and Max Reid lifting the grotesque infant from inside of her.