Anna screamed again, her nails raking down my arms as I crouched between her legs, the last of our clean towels under her hips. I was sweating and crying and begging her to be quiet. She pushed again, stomach rippling. The tiny foot poking out of her womb twitched and was turning blue. There was so much blood that it was up to my ankles and rising fast. I could feel it, hot and sticky, rapidly filling up the entire warehouse. And then Anne died and she was one of those things, but I still had to try and deliver the baby while Anne tried to eat my face. Air raid sirens wailed in the distance and I tried to shut out the sound of millions of the dead pounding on the thin metal walls of our sanctuary. Cracks began to appear in the walls. I knew it, I could see it somehow, even though my eyes were focused on the second tiny little foot that had appeared. The ocean of blood seeped through the cracks, widening them. But somehow the blood was suddenly up to my neck and I was trying to swim to the baby but the blood was thick and coppery smelling, it was sticky and hot. I was tired and I just wanted to cry…
I woke up with a muffled gasp. I had taken to sleeping with a bandanna tied around my mouth. I knew it was kinda crazy, but the nightmares weren’t going away. The dead were attracted to sound and any middle-of-the-night screaming I did always brought them here. The incessant pounding always made the nightmares worse.
A soft noise turned my attention to the laundry basket on the floor beside my makeshift bed of couch cushions. I reached up and untied my gag. “Hey baby, are you hungry?” I picked up the baby rather gingerly. She seemed so fragile. The diaper I had stolen from the daycare was soggy and falling off.
While I changed her diaper I thought about the dead people I had killed (again) and I wondered if we were the last two people left alive on the whole planet. The ugly purplish-black withered stump of her umbilical cord was still there, but the book said if I left it alone it would fall off on it’s own.
“What should we call you, hmm?” I asked, looking down into the infant’s dark eyes. Were they blue, or brown like her mother’s? “I think maybe we should name you Anna after your mother. I don’t know what your last name is. Your Mommy told me that your Daddy was a doctor, did you know that? Your Daddy saved lives. And your Mommy was really brave too.” I continued to talk to her while I puttered around the living area Sarge and the others had cobbled together out of old shipping crates and things looted from nearby houses. I needed the sound of a human voice, even if mine was the only one left.
After feeding the baby I walked around trying to get her to burp while singing to her. Nickleback probably wasn’t appropriate for a newborn baby, but I didn’t know any lullabies. I had just gotten to the part about having a drug dealer on a speed dial when there was a thump on the roof. I jumped and almost dropped little Annie.
The sound of quick, purposeful footsteps made my skin break out in goose bumps and the hair on the back of my neck stood up. I put Annie back down in her basket and picked up the gun that I now knew was a Browning High Power 9mm. The only clip I had was at least half empty. I didn’t know how to count the bullets still in the clip.
The footsteps above our heads were already at the door to the roof access so I went to the bottom of the stairs that led from the catwalks and offices that formed the second story of the warehouse. I hid under the metal stares with my breath held and my heart in my throat. There were no risers so I knew I could just reach through and trip whoever it was. But I didn’t want to kill a living person. Sarge had warned me that there would be people who would try to kill us for our supplies, and I knew he was right, but I knew I couldn’t pull the trigger on a person with a heartbeat.
“Liz?” A soft, unfamiliar voice whispered. “Liz, Sarge sent me, are you still here?” The voice sounded young. It definitely wasn’t Sarge, Sarge had a grey, gravely voice that sounded like rocks grating together. The voice sounded like a young man. Maybe in his 20′s? I didn’t know how to tell just by a voice.
Rather large black booted feet started to descend the stairs, hesitating and careful. A crackle of static sounded above my head. “Well. Is she ok you ijit? What the fuck is going on over there?” Sarge’s gravely voice sounded tinny and far away. The feet stopped and I craned my neck trying to get a better look at whoever was standing on the stairs.
“Sarge, I think she was here recently but I don’t see her. Are you sure she didn’t go somewhere else?” The unseen man whispered but it was a little louder than his voice had been at first. Annie chose that moment to let out an ear piercing wail. She could put out a tremendous amount of noise for such tiny lungs!
“FUCK!” The man above me jumped almost 6 inches in the air and nearly fell down the stairs. He gave up on stealth and came pounding the metal stairs. As he grabbed the rail with his left hand and turned to run toward the baby in the laundry basket I stepped out from behind the stairs and put the gun to his head.
“Drop the guns.” I spoke very slowly because I wasn’t sure if I could stop my voice from shaking otherwise. The man in front of me was tall, a little more than 6 feet, he had dark hair almost hidden under a black knitted hat. I couldn’t see his face from the angle I was at, but I could see the two rifles and two handguns he was wearing. He was also wearing some sort of black military looking uniform.
“Who are you?” I had to raise my voice to be heard over Annie’s crying.
“I’m Batman!” The man replied in a stage whisper. I cocked the gun. I was fairly sure I didn’t need to cock it, but the movies always made that look so intimidating.
“Ok, ok. I’m Jason. I met your friend Sarge about a week ago. He has a broken hip. He asked me to come here and check up on you.” Jason very slowly and carefully lifted the rifles on their straps up over his head and laid them on the cold concrete floor. He then took the 9mms he had stuck in his belt out one at a time. I kept the gun to his head throughout every movement.
With his hands raised Jason turned to look at me. He was mostly average looking, but he had really pretty eyes. Jason’s money colored eyes met mine and said, sotto vocce
“We have a problem.”