Book 2 Chapter 24: No Llamas Here

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I stretched out with a smile. My shoulder wasn’t killing me anymore, my foot barely hurt at all, and best of all I’d gone to sleep in a real bed. There were even sheets on the bed. Billy’s arm snaked around my waist and he began to walk to his fingers up my belly and towards my chest.

I lightly slapped his hand away with a laugh and said “Later Billy!” He laughed at me and settled for smacking my ass as I bent over at an awkward angle to pluck Annie from her laundry basket. Hmm. She was getting long!

“Hey, we need a real crib for her. She’s out growing the basket.” I laid her down on the bed and reached for a stack of neatly cut up towels that had become her diapers. Billy yelped and leapt out of bed like he’d been bitten.

“What?” I looked up at him, a little puzzled.

“Christ Liz! Do you have to do that on the bed?” He sounded rather aggrieved and shot me a dirty look when I laughed at him and mimed throwing a wet diaper at him.

“Oh Billy, do shut up and go round us up some breakfast. Jenny promised hot water by this morning, so I’m going to test the tub.” I picked up my little angel and nuzzled her head as I walked naked into the bathroom.

Jenny was as good as her word, there was hot water! Really hot! So without a trace of guilt I dumped half a tiny bottle of shampoo into the tub and ran some barely warm for Annie’s bath. After she was all clean and playing contentedly with a teddy bear that someone had left in her basket I added some more hot water and sank into the first bath I’d had in almost a year.

Electricity was being tightly rationed, so the dining room was rather dim, with weak late winter sun streaming in through cracks in the boards on the windows. But everyone was downstairs, and most people were in the dining room, feasting on eggs and freshly fried flat bread. I didn’t even mind that the eggs were powdered and the bread was flat. It was so much better than oatmeal that it didn’t matter.

“Hi, I’m Amy.” I looked up and was surprised to see a rather beautiful young woman hovering next me with a high chair.

“Do you mind if I join you two?” Amy nodded at Annie who I had in my lap. I was feeding a bottled of formula mixed with a tiny amount of oatmeal. We didn’t have baby cereal.

I nodded and glanced at the high chair. “Sure, where’d ya find that?”

“Oh, there’s a whole stack of them over there.” Amy pointed a long delicate finger at a dark corner of the dining room.

I couldn’t see into the corner, but that was where we had kept them before. So I shrugged and stood up, laid Annie against a shoulder and ignored her fussing until I got her settled in the chair. She looked a little startled and was immediately distracted from her fussy whines as she explored her new perch.

“She looks happy!” Amy giggled a little and plopped down beside me. We watched Annie batting her little fists against the chairs tray and trying to get to her toes.

“She likes to eat her own toes.” I explained, a little embarrassed. It seemed weird to me, and I had no idea if that was normal for a baby or not.

“Oh they all do at that age.” Amy couldn’t take her eyes off of my girl; she was ignoring her food so I ignored them both while I finished my own breakfast in hurry. I wanted to be done by the time Annie remembered that she was hungry.

Amy’s smile turned a little sad and she finally looked away and started poking around her own plate.

“I always wanted kids of my own. I used to baby sit as often as I could, until I got too sick.” Amy almost whispered, but I heard her any way. Stuffing a piece of bread in my mouth I asked “Sick?” heedless of proper manners. No one gave a damn about proper etiquette any more anyway.

“I had cancer. Leukemia, anyway, I went into remission officially about three days before…” Her voice trailed off and her mouth twisted into a bitter smile.

“But I survived that, I survived the first day, and months on my own, I survived those assholes raping me every day, and I’ll survive never having kids too.” She shrugged, her pretty face distant and hard.

“How…” I swallowed the lump of bread and tried again “How do you know you won’t?”

“The radiation. I’m sterile.”

“Oh.” I couldn’t think of a single thing to say to that and started looking for a way to change the subject, but she did it for me.

“So who the hell is that crazy tall kid? And why does he keep talking about llamas?!” She sounded rather amused again.

“Oh, his name is Peter and there’s this farm.” I spent the rest of breakfast explaining what had we had found out, and what we wanted to do. Amy seemed fascinated and asked dozens of questions. By the time I was done answering them Annie was done eating and she’d been burped and changed again and was ready for a nap.

Luckily enough for us she could sleep through nearly any type of noise, so I walked around with her sleeping on my shoulder and gave a tour of the Inn and its grounds to the few women who seemed capable of thinking straight. Most of them were just shy of catatonic.

When that was done, I bundled Annie up and trudged outside to one of the little cabins that Sarge had taken over as his own space. He was even more of a loner than I was.

He stared at the tiny bundle snoring rather loudly at my shoulder and walked me through the exchange plans he and Peter had come up with. Apparently they had been on the radio with someone from the farm.

And then he asked about those god-forsaken papers and my heart froze and sank all the way down to my shoes.