Finding Shelter

7

Georgia had fallen asleep in the back of a pickup truck, with a sleeping bag draped over her.

Normally she slept in a lean-to structure. But sometimes lately she’d been wanting to sleep outdoors more. Not that the lean-to really felt like “indoors.”

She didn’t know why she’d felt like this, like she always wanted to be outside, no matter what. Maybe it had something to do with a feeling she’d been experiencing over the last few months.

It was the feeling of being trapped. Of not having any options. Of having to stay in the same place all the time.

Georgia had never been the type of woman to be content staying at home, cooking and doing the housework. That’s why she’d always had to take those hunting trips. That’s why she’d often had a gig of driving around, delivering one thing or another, either as a main job or just a side gig.

She’d always liked the feeling of being on the move. Of being out and about.

And since the EMP, she’d been constantly on the move. She’d often wished they’d had a safe haven, rather than running from one spot to the next.

And now that they had their safe haven? Now that the hordes had been killed off? Well, she was happy for the safety. For the security.

But she couldn’t shake the feeling that they were stuck. That they were sitting ducks. That sooner or later something would come along and get them.

When she slept in the night, she’d bolt awake at least once an hour, drenched in sweat, her heart pounding, reaching for her gun.

The first thing she thought of was: who’s there? What’s the threat?

The second thing she always thought of was: where are Sadie and James? Are they safe?

Waking up after a full night’s sleep was a little different. She’d managed to calm herself down each time she’d woken up in a cold sweat. By the time she woke up after about seven hours of sleep, she was tired, rather than well rested. But at least she was no longer sweating.

Georgia pushed the sleeping bag off her. It was still damp from the sweat from earlier that “night.”

The night, of course, had really been the daytime.

She was exhausted as she hauled herself out of the truck bed. Her muscles ached. Her joints ached. It seemed like her bones even ached, although she didn’t know if that was even possible.

Night was starting to settle. Dusk was falling.

Had she slept longer than she’d meant to?

There was movement around the camp. People coming and going from the various structures.

She glanced at her wrist, expecting to see the time on a watch.

Almost to her surprise, there was a watch, one that Max had found for her a week ago on a dead man’s wrist. (The man had apparently starved to death, out on the nearby highway, wasting away to almost literal skin and bone.) She’d gotten used to not having a watch that worked. She’d trashed her own watch right after the EMP, still keeping the habit of looking at her wrist.

Most watches from the pre-EMP world were quartz watches, which meant that they kept time by way of a vibrating quartz crystal. They were commonly known as “digital” watches, but even watches with an analog face were usually powered by quartz crystals.

It turned out that all the quartz watches had been destroyed from the EMP. Or at least all the quartz watches that they’d managed to find so far. Max had said that he’d expected to find some that had been shielded, either by their accidental placement somewhere, or intentionally, by their own case design.

But so far mechanical watches were the only timekeeping devices that seemed to still work. Georgia remembered seeing the inside of one when she was a kid. It had been her father’s watch, which had become too inaccurate, and he was cursing at it as he tried to adjust it himself. All he’d ended up doing was mangling the miniature gears inside of it, and it had never worked properly again.

Unfortunately, most mechanical watches, unless they were expensive, were not that accurate. The few that Max and the others had come across on dead men and women (mostly men) didn’t keep very good time.

It seemed that the one Georgia wore now had gone from keeping time very badly (at least a few minutes slow each day) to not working at all. The watch had stopped right at three o’clock, all three hands frozen.

She shook her wrist, thinking that the power reserve of the watch was weak, and that it needed to be moved around a little, to start it back up.

Unfortunately, nothing happened. The second hand remained motionless no matter how much she shook it.

Annoyed, Georgia took off the watch and tossed it aside, not caring where it fell.

It was just a piece of junk. Worthless.

Then she realized that someone might be able to get it working again. After all, John seemed to possess some strange knack for getting things going again, when no one else could. It was strange, because Max and Georgia were both much more mechanically minded than John was.

Better save the watch. It was a lesson they’d all had to learn at one point or another. Throw nothing away. Who knew when you’d get anything like it ever again?

She had to hunt for it, getting annoyed with herself for discarding it.

It was a huge, garish watch. Not to her taste at all. Neon colors all around it. Strange shapes for the hands. An astoundingly cluttered dial. Simply distasteful in all respects.

It had looked ridiculous on her wrist.

She’d hoped that it’d be at least easier to find among the dead leaves and weeds, due to its large size.

Georgia was getting madder by the minute now.

Where was that watch?

Her stomach was rumbling, and she remembered that she hadn’t eaten any dinner.

She’d been too exhausted at the end of her watch shift and had just hit the sack right away.

Suddenly, a cry of pain pierced the air. A female sound. Higher pitched than a sound a man would make. Probably, at least. No way to know for sure.

Georgia’s heart started to beat rapidly. Her head snapped around, towards the direction of the sound.

Her hand went to her handgun. Fingers wrapped around the grip. Flicked the safety off.

Sometimes, safety meant shooting the enemy dead as quickly as possible.

Her legs were already moving, and she sprinted her way towards the other end of camp, weaving through the scattered trees.

A noise to her right. Heavy footsteps. Panting.

Georgia’s head turned. Eyes shifting to the right, her gun reflexively followed her eyes.

“Georgia! It’s me!”

It was John. Running alongside her. Running for the same reason she was. Headed towards the source of the noise.

Georgia didn’t answer. Her gun went away from him.

They kept running.

“I think it’s Mandy,” John managed to say, breathless.

Georgia’s mind went right to the baby.

She could tell that John was already thinking along those lines.

Out of nowhere, Cynthia appeared. “Was it Mandy?” she said.

They’d almost reached her.

Max and Mandy shared a little hut that could almost be called cute. They’d worked hard on it together.

Now Mandy lived there alone, waiting for Max to return, getting ready for the birth of their baby.

Of course, no one had any idea what the sex of the baby would be. Those days were gone. And, more disconcertingly, no one knew if the baby would be healthy.

All they’d been able to do was to make sure that Mandy got as much food as she wanted. And that she got a good variety of food. That way she hopefully got the vitamins, minerals, not to mention calories that were so crucial for the development of another human.

Georgia could see the little hut up ahead. Mandy was nowhere to be seen. But her voice had definitely come from this direction. She was inside. That was the most likely scenario.

As Mandy had gotten farther along in her pregnancy, Georgia and the others had requested that she stop doing her normal duties. They’d wanted her to stop doing her watch shift, gathering firewood, and going on expeditions.

Mandy had been a tough sell, to say the least. It had been almost impossible to get her to give up even the watch shifts. And no one really liked taking a shift. Especially not the ones in the middle of the night.

But Mandy was tough. And she wanted to remain useful for as long as possible during the pregnancy. The way she told it; she was only trying to help the group. And helping the group was really selfish, because it wasn’t like her kid was going to live very long without the support of everyone else.

Another scream came. Definitely Mandy’s. And it definitely came from the little hut ahead.

Georgia’s long legs gave her a good advantage when running. She may have been older than John, but not by much. And she could still outrun him. Especially now that she’d recovered so well from her injuries.

She pulled ahead of John and reached the hut first.

There wasn’t really a door, so much as a blanket that had been hung up like a curtain.

Georgia didn’t bother to knock as she normally would. She just dove right in, crouching down so that she didn’t knock her head on the ceiling or the doorframe.

“Mandy!” she cried out.

There was no one else inside the hut.

Just Mandy.

Just Mandy with her back against the wall, sitting. Her knees were pulled up around her large belly.

There was an expression of pain on her face. Intense pain. Her mouth was puckered. It looked like she was breathing heavy.

Georgia tucked her gun away. There was no need for that which was good. She was glad someone wasn’t there, threatening pregnant Mandy.

But Mandy had screamed. Now that the other option was eliminated, what else was there?

Evidently the pregnancy itself. And it’d be an early one, if that were the case. Which meant that, without a hospital, the baby wasn’t likely to survive.

The other option was that it was some other complication of pregnancy.

It wasn’t a subject that Georgia knew much about. Or anything about at all. For her own pregnancies, she’d gone to the hospital, just like every other woman she’d known. There hadn’t been any complications, but the doctors and nurses had been there around the clock. They’d given her an epidural, and they’d been there to soothe her and tell her that everything was OK.

Georgia didn’t feel like she could do the same for Mandy. Because, here in the woods, there weren’t any machines or devices that would tell Georgia that everything was OK.

Georgia put her arms on Mandy’s shoulders.

“What is it, Mandy?”

John entered a moment later, ducking down. Cynthia followed him.

Both had their guns drawn, and both holstered them upon evaluating the situation.

“We thought you’d been attacked,” said John.

“You’re not going into labor, are you?” said Cynthia.

“Something’s wrong,” said Mandy. “Something’s not right…”

“Tell me what you’re feeling,” said Georgia.

Mentally, Georgia was anything but calm, but she made sure to keep her voice as calm as she possibly could.

If there was anything she’d learned from her own pregnancies, with James and Sadie, it was that having someone freaking out next to you did not help.

For a second, she had a flashback to her ex-husband. He’d been there for James’s birth, but not Sadie’s. By that point, he’d been long gone. A total loser. And she’d known it all along. She should have just left him from the beginning.

But, then again, she would not have been blessed with James and Sadie. She may have had a tougher exterior than just about anyone else, but inside, she could be a softie. At least when it came to her children.

If anything ever happened to them, she knew that she’d hurt too much. She knew that she’d have to bury the pain, and the only way she’d be able to do that would be with violence. Extreme violence directed at whoever was responsible.

Her ex-husband’s dumb obnoxious face seemed to hang in her mind’s eye for a moment.

Then she shook it off.

“I’m feeling weak,” said Mandy. “Really weak. Like I couldn’t stand up anymore.”

“You couldn’t stand up?” said John, his voice rising. His distress and worry were plainly evident in his tone.

Cynthia tugged on his arm, giving him a look to tell him to shut up. Georgia supposed that as a woman Cynthia understood more what pregnancy meant.

It was strange, she suddenly realized that she’d never talked to Cynthia about whether or not she’d had children. For all she knew, Cynthia did have kids, and understood well the process of childbirth.

If she did have kids, it seemed more polite not to ask about them. After all, who knew what could have happened to them. Georgia did remember that Cynthia had had a husband who’d died right after the EMP. But she’d only heard it secondhand from John one night.

“I’ll take care of this,” said Georgia, turning to address John. “Why don’t you wait outside. We’ll let you know if we need you. Plus, the others might want to know what happened, if they heard the screaming.”

Mandy suddenly let out another scream. Georgia saw the pain on her face. It was definitely real.

Cynthia muttered something under her breath.

There were beads of sweat on Mandy’s brow. Some of her hair had come loose from the bun she’d had it in, and it was plastered wet against her forehead.

John gave a nod and disappeared out the door.

The space was small, and fairly cluttered with odds and ends, things that Max had been tinkering with. Knives he’d been trying to get a good edge on again, or broken compasses he’d been trying to reassemble. Maps he’d been drawing routes on, or just studying.

“Take her pulse, would you?” said Georgia, noticing that Cynthia had on a watch. She hoped that hers worked.

Cynthia moved to Mandy’s side, taking her hand and putting her fingers on her wrist, while watching the dial on her watch.

“Now tell me where it hurts, Mandy,” said Georgia, taking Mandy’s other hand. It was her attempt at a comforting gesture. Not necessarily her strong suit.

Mandy said nothing. Instead, she pointed at her belly.

Cynthia looked over at Georgia, and they exchanged a look.

The meaning of the look was clear.

Neither of them knew what was going on.

But they both knew that it wasn’t good.