by Megan Hart
The voice from the throne was unmistakably male, though nothing else about the dark and hulking figure was clear. It shifted, one arm lifting and a hand pointing, but at what Elanna couldn’t tell. At once, blinding light filled the room and burned her eyes.
With a sharp cry, Elanna threw up her hands to shield her face. The light was pure white, so bright and harsh it seemed tinged with purple around the edges. Beneath it her hands looked sickly green. With tearing eyes Elanna looked for the source, and saw it came from a series of long, rectangular boxes set into the ceiling.
“How’s that?” Came the cold voice. “All the better to see you with, and all that shit?”
Blinking painfully, Elanna looked around her. The room was the largest she’d ever seen, even larger than the storerooms at home. Floor-to-ceiling shelving units divided it roughly in half. Boxes filled every shelf, so that she could see nothing that might be on the other side. Her side of the room was empty except for a raised platform of sort. On it was a chair unlike any she’d ever seen, and on the throne sat the man she thought must be the General.
“My, my,” he said. “You are a pretty thing, aren’t you?”
Elanna’s eyes no longer hurt, but the light was still too bright. It outlined everything in sharp detail, down to the dirty cracks on the floor and the frayed laces in the General’s boots. Even from this distance she could see the lines around his eyes.
“Cat got your tongue?” He looked bored. He beckoned her with one finger. “Come here.”
She didn’t have a choice, not really. Elanna did as he asked, glad to see that though the floor glittered damply in places there was nothing but water there. She stood in front of him, not daring to step up on the platform.
The General looked down at her from the throne. It had a high back, higher even than his head, and was covered in a smooth and gleaming sort of fabric that looked to her like the hide of some animal. Bright bullets of metal speckled the material, maybe to tack it to the wooden frame underneath. The arms were high, and the entire chair was on a circular base that rocked and swiveled as the General moved.
The chair was impressive, but the man sitting on it was even more so. Tobin had been the tallest man she’d seen, but this man, even seated, looked even taller. He sat with one long leg crossed nonchalantly over the other, leaning back in the chair, one arm crossed over his chest and the opposite hand supporting his chin. His finger, also long and finely formed, tapped a mouth that seemed made for smiling.
He wasn’t smiling. He was staring, eyes narrowed and brow furrowed. She couldn’t see the color of his eyes, but they glittered in the harsh light from above. His hair was the same color as the delicious stuff the Plain People called butter.
He could have been any age from eighteen to sixty, but Elanna guessed he was probably closer to forty. He wore the same green uniform as the other Gappers, but his was pressed and clean, and it fit him perfectly. A shiny row of medals marched across his broad chest, stopping at the gap in his jacket that showed a tight fitting tee shirt underneath.
He wasn’t handsome; his skin was too lined and his face too grim for that. But he was compelling, she thought with a shiver of distaste. Power oozed from him like a dank cloud.
“Like what you see?”
The question startled her. Elanna realized she’d been gaping. “I’m not sure.”
He quirked his eyebrow at her, leaning forward. “Really.”
Elanna swallowed, aware that any move she made and anything she said might go horribly wrong. She was walking on chipped concrete. Any step could be false, and she wouldn’t know it until she fell.
“Why did you bring me here?” She ventured, bravely she thought.
“Ah.” The General sat back in his chair and crossed his arms again. His finger tap-tapped on his mouth as he continued staring at her. “Well. Let’s see. Because you tried to breech our lines?”
“We didn’t!” Elanna protested.
He held up a hand, silencing her. “Because you came in a car loaded with stuff I’d like more of?”
“You can have it,” Elanna said. “You already do. Those teener girls took all of it.”
The General favored her with a smirk. “But there must be more.”
Tobin had told her this was what they wanted. For the first time, Elanna understood how he must have felt when Reb Ephraim asked him how to get to the warehouse. It hadn’t seemed wrong or bad when it benefited the Tribe, but it did now.
“I can tell you how to get there,” Elanna said. “And you can let me go. And Tobin, too.”
“Tobin? Is that his name?”
Elanna nodded. The General snorted. He uncrossed his legs and began to rock the chair slowly, back and forth. The motion began to annoy her.
“Pansy ass name, I’d say,” the General said, as though speaking to himself. “Pansy ass man, too. Though I must say our Kodak is quite a bruiser.”
A bloodcurdling scream interrupted his words. Elanna jumped, heart pounding. The General’s rich mouth thinned and he slammed both feet solidly to the floor, stopping the rocking.
“Shitdamnpissfucktits,” he swore softly. His hands clenched the arms of the chair.
Elanna noticed that his not-handsome face had gone white. “What’s that?”
“Nothing,” he said.
The scream came again, punctuated this time by short, sobbing breaths. Elanna wanted to cover her ears against the pain in the sound. She looked behind the chair, along the wall, and saw a door. The screaming was coming from in there.
“It doesn’t sound like nothing,” she said.
The screams continued, rising into a seemingly impossible crescendo. Elanna thought whoever was making the noise would surely have to stop, but the sound went on and on until she thought she might scream herself.
And yet, wasn’t there something familiar about the sound? She’d heard it before, hadn’t she? She’d made that same sound herself, many times.
“Get it out!” Came the cry, and Elanna knew what was happening.
“Someone’s having a baby,” she said, pointing to the door. “In there.”
The General put his head in his hands. “Shit. Yeah. I guess she is.”
“You guess?” Elanna asked, wincing each time one of the screams leaked out from the door. “You don’t know?”
“How could I know?” The General asked her, looking up with wet and weary eyes. “She didn’t tell me she was pregnant.
”
-42-
Samuel looked up at the sky, which had finally grown dark. “Time for you to go, naw vunst, ain’t?”
Tobin nodded. “Yeah. It’s time.”
“Directions, you have?”
“Yes.”
“Food? Water?”
“Yeah, thanks.”
Samuel sighed heavily. “Ill luck I never wished you, Tobin Vinter.”
“I know that, Samuel,” Tobin said, though until the old man said it he would have guessed otherwise. “I’m sorry we brought trouble to your people.”
Samuel snorted and waved his hand. “Go, naw. Get going. Elanna to save you must.”
Tobin bent and picked up the knapsack Rachel had packed for him and the lightweight water jug. He slung both over his back, waiting for the weight to cause him pain and pleased when it didn’t. At least not too much.
He’d changed back into his own jeans and shirt and the sneakers he’d found what seemed like years ago in the warehouse. Enoch had found an old baseball cap for him in the basement, instead of the straw one, and Tobin pulled it on his head. He turned back once as he left the yard, seeing the house behind him that had sheltered him for a while. The windows in the kitchen were alight, and several dark silhouettes stood shadowed there. Rachel and Enoch, with Samuel outlined in the doorway.
He raised a hand at them, and they returned the wave. Tobin stepped out through the neatly trimmed grass and in a few minutes reached the cracked and pitted pavement of the road. He didn’t turn back again.
&
nbsp; The directions were easy enough to follow. The road, though worn and sprung with weeds, took him back to the creek they’d jumped in the car. He didn’t stop to look and see if the car still crouched in the high weeds. He had to get to Elanna.
He crossed the creek, remembering how Maranian had tumbled in. He was more careful. He took off his shoes and socks and rolled his pants legs up. The short delay gnawed at him and he forced the anxiety away. He’d get there, and if he took the time to do things right it would be better in the long run.
Once past the creek he stopped to remember what Enoch had told him.
“Road on the left,” Tobin said aloud. Darkness swallowed his voice. “Past the burned building with the sign that says Harper’s Tavern.”
That was easy to see. There weren’t any other buildings, burned or standing, on this side of the creek. Tobin put on his socks and tied his shoes. He noticed his fingers trembling and he forced them to stop. When they were still, he stood again and started walking.
This road would take him all the way to the fence surrounding the Gapper’s territory. From there, Enoch had said, he’d be on his own. Tobin walked with only the night for company.
−
43-
The girl on the dirty pallet was young. Disgust rose in Elanna’s throat at the sight of the filthy floor and the grimy, bloodstained sheets. The girl was beyond caring, her face contorted with pain and sheened with sweat.
The scream that had been loud enough to make Elanna want to cover her ears in the outside room was deafening in this small space. The scream trailed off into a strangled cry and a whimper, and the girl appeared to pass out. Her eyes fluttered and her hands, which had been clutching at the dirty sheet covering the impossibly small mound of her belly, fell open.
Four, no five, other girls hovered around the low bed not doing much of anything, but when the girl screamed Elanna saw her pain reflected in their faces. One of them covered her eyes and moved away from the bed. One of them held the girl’s hand, her fingers turning red and then white as the screaming girl’s grip kept the blood from flowing. One of them, stationed at the foot of the bed, fussed with a basin half-filled with water gone pinkish from blood and a ragged, sopping rag. The other two stood one each side of the door like sentries, staring, their faces slack with shock.
“How long has she been like this?” Elanna asked, shouldering her way past the sentries and into the room. She moved to the girl’s side, touched her forehead and pulled back her hand at the heat there.
“Since last night,” the girl with the basin said. Dark circles shadowed her red and irritated eyes. “The pains started yesterday afternoon.”
“Since last night?” Elanna cried, shocked at the brutality of it. “And you’ve done nothing for her besides let her scream?”
The one holding the basin grew defensive. “What could we do?”
“Move out of the way,” said Elanna without preamble, moving to take the other girl’s place.
“Who the hell are you?” Said the Gapper she was replacing, refusing to move. “Who…?”
“Move your fucking ass!” Elanna roared and shoved the Gapper girl’s shoulder. The girl fell backward, spilling the dirty water all over the floor.
Elanna didn’t take the time to see what the other girl would do. She knelt at the foot of the bed and pulled away the sheet that had dropped down. What she saw encouraged her even as it enraged her. Between the laboring girl’s parted legs, Elanna glimpsed the pulsing skin of a newborn’s head.
“She’s crowning!” She yelled, just as the girl screamed again. Elanna watched as the girl’s muscles contracted, rippling, and the baby’s head grew more visible. The contraction ended along with the girl’s agonized scream, but the baby’s head had not moved any further. Blood trickled from a tear in the girl’s perineum, and Elanna used a corner of the sheet to blot it away.
She turned to the other girls, who were just standing there. “I need fresh water, boiled. And some clean sheets! Or towels, something to wrap the baby in! And something sharp and clean to cut the cord with!”
None of them had moved. Elanna’s throat convulsed with fear and rage. Their incompetence, their laziness, could kill this child and its mother. She’d seen too many births that had gone like this one, the mother too tired from hours of labor to push the child free of the womb. If she didn’t help, and soon, they both would likely die.
“Hummer, Smith, Brown! Do as she says,” came a male voice. The General. He’d entered the door behind her. His face looked pale and strained. He wiped fitfully at his mouth, as though trying to wipe away the taste of something bad. “Go! Now! Thomas and Charles! Go with them!”
The girls moved, scattering like leaves in the wind, leaving Elanna alone with the General and the girl on the bed. The man moved to the girl’s side, looking down on her with an expression Elanna couldn’t fathom. It was like he was watching with someone else’s eyes.
“Don’t just stand there,” Elanna ordered, as the girl’s body began another assault. “Help her!”
He looked at her blankly. “What?”
“Hold her hand,” Elanna said impatiently. “And help me prop her up. Put your hand under her knee and hold it up. She needs to push this baby out or it’s going to die.”
“Die!” The General’s mouth bent into a grimace.
“That’s what I said,” Elanna said cruelly, not sparing him. “Unless we help her. Now, move!”
The man crouched down beside the girl, who had become lucid after her last contraction. She looked up at him, eyes clearing as she recognized his face. The girl reached out and clutched his hand with a desperation Elanna remembered feeling herself.
“Adam!”
“C’mon now, soldier,” the General said sternly. “Get through this. Buck up.”
Elanna was busy pressing her fingers against the girl’s bulging flesh to prevent more tearing, but she glanced up anyway. “Use her name, for the sake of Ha-Shem.”
“What?”
His stupidity infuriated her. “Her name! She’s not a soldier, she’s a girl, and I’d bet she has a name! Use it!”
“Lansing,” the General said as the girl began to gasp with the onset of another contraction. “Come on, now, Lansing.”
“Is that the name you call her when you fuck her?” Elanna spat, focusing on the contraction ripping through Lansing’s uterus. “General?”
“Amy!” He cried, and she heard in his voice that he hated her. He turned back to the girl struggling below him, and his voice was more tender. “Amy, come on girl! You can do this, sweetheart!”
The baby’s head throbbed beneath Elanna’s fingers as it struggled to be born. The contraction was strong, but not strong enough. She felt the flutter of the baby’s pulse in its soft spot, and prayed she was only imagining that it was growing weaker.
“When the next contraction comes you have to push!”
The girl didn’t, or couldn’t hear. Or perhaps couldn’t understand. She lay back weakly, panting, though her grip on the General’s hand didn’t let go.
The next one started with no more than a few seconds rest. They were coming almost on top of each other now, pushing the baby out from the uterus and through the birth canal, but slowly. Too slowly.
“Push!” Elanna ordered.
“Push, Amy! That’s an order!” The General thundered.
Elanna risked another glance at him. His face was white. He looked terrified.
“I can’t!” Amy wailed.
“You have to!” Elanna watched the mound of the girl’s belly swell again. She stood up, moving to Amy’s side and placed both hands on her belly, feeling the outline of a small rump, legs and feet. “Now!”
“Fuck you!” Amy screamed, nearly lifting herself off the bed as the contraction tore through her.
“Fuck me if you have to,” Elanna said, bending down to the girl’s face. “But if you don’t push this baby out you’re both going to die. Now push!”
Amy scre
amed again but bore down. She’d been in labor too long and was too tired. Even with Elanna and the General each holding up a knee the pushing didn’t help. The baby was still stuck.
“I don’t know how!” Amy sobbed in exhaustion.
Elanna didn’t like the pallor of her skin or the deep, bruised half-moons under her eyes. Amy’s hair hung in lank, sweaty strands over her forehead. Elanna wished for a cloth to wipe the girl’s face, and cursed the slow moving soldiers who still hadn’t returned with what she needed.
“From your bottom,” she told the girl, telling her the same thing she’d been told herself. “Push from your bottom.”