Sophie
“Mark, stop.”
I glare at Jonesy, and his mouth drops open. “Baby, when you get all Mark on my ass, I know I've stepped in some serious woman shit.”
Damn straight.
Miracle worker over there, Dexter Tator Tot—or whatever the hell his name is—has outed me before I knew I could be. I had to find out I was pregnant from a complete stranger. Nice.
I hate that everyone figures I screwed Jonesy.
Even if it was magnificent.
And now I'm pregnant. Something I've wanted since the day I found out I couldn't be about a billion years ago.
But everything seems not-so-bad when you witness the subtle interplay between the Terrans. Seeing Tiff in some kind of state of happy (and let's face it, Tiff being happy is like a total eclipse of the sun) is worth all my bruised feelings and ego.
“However awkward all this is,” Mac begins, absently stroking his front pocket, “I would choose to ignore it all for later family discussion if I can lay eyes on Peanut.”
“I want to see my brother and Mia,” Tiff says in a subdued way.
Caleb gives an exhausted roundhouse stare at his two wild children and admits, “I hope Archer is okay.” He scrubs a hand over a face filled with two days of stubble.
I guess us girls did kinda hog the razors.
“Pfft,” Jonesy says, waving off Caleb's concern. “Archer'll just pick his ass outta here if the getting's good.”
Oh, Jones. My smile fades as I pick up the new appendage to my outfit.
And there's no way to make that look good. A flashing card stating you’re knocked up somehow isn't staying classy. But them there’s the rules.
Tate says I can go in shortly to the Government Advanced Pulse to Disc, and they'll have a way to integrate my card into my disc behind the ear. Then I'll have the message flashing across my forehead.
Won't that be a delish accessory. Not.
I blow a curl out from my face, and it plops back down.
And I have no fucking product. You'd think, in 2049, some dumb bunny would have figured that basic principle of good hair and perfected it. But oh-no. Can't have that.
We'll take the flashing forehead pregnancy instead.
Ass hats.
“You're wearing that hot frown,” Jonesy says.
Furious heat engulfs my head. And whatever frown I was wearing turns into a scowl.
“Thanks for alerting the media, Jonesy.”
“I like that name better than my first from ya.”
I roll my eyes.
“Yes, excellent,” Tate says. “Now that we have the offer out on the table, so to speak, and the women are aware of their new status, we should let you see your family and friends.”
“Like I mentioned...” Mac glances at his wristwatch, which looks a lot like the one Caleb wore all through school, and gives the circular crystal a solid tap. “About ten minutes ago.”
Tate walks to the door and raps loudly.
Another suit opens it, and they speak in quiet voices.
He turns to the group. “We're ready.”
“Thank God, I was getting dead ass sitting around here all day,” Tiff says.
Tate gives a tight smile.
Tiff snaps her gum, and he flinches.
Her grin broadens.
I snicker, hoping that this new alliance will not be stolen by yet unseen forces more powerful than we know.
*
I've gotten used to Ali over the years. Everyone gets older. Fact of life.
Then cancer sank its teeth into her, and the Ali I knew aged. Not normal aging, but the aging of illness.
Before, when Ali was busy dying in the End of Life ward, she'd looked like a corpse wrapped in parchment paper.
Only her eyes appeared alive, untouched by cancer's insidious progression.
When we walk into the hospital suite (because that's what it is; no damn hospital room I've ever been in looked this swank), I see Ali first off.
“Pop!” she cries and races to Mac, crashing into him as he snaps his arms around his daughter.
Kim stands awkwardly beside him, and I have fleeting pang of pity for bot girl.
Then I remember that she was part of that horrible world. I have a tough time plucking out that fact from the kindnesses she’s showed us while we survived that place.
Ali grins, her old spunk there. Along with bright slate-blue eyes, her smooth skin is a healthy color. Feels fine to see her this way.
None of us ever thought we would again.
“Mom,” Caleb says, and she opens one arm to wrap around her kid.
Caleb dwarfs her, but he carefully wraps an arm around her still-thin frame.
“It's so good to see you both.” Her eyes move restlessly between the two until she finds Pax standing quietly by the door.
“Come here, Pumpkin.”
Caleb and Mac step aside, and Pax enfolds her in a big hug.
“My healer,” she says to him.
He shakes his head. “Nah, it was mainly Jezebel. I followed her lead.”
Ali tilts her head back, and shoulder-length chestnut hair with a shot of silver falls around her like a cape. “Do you know how to cure this horrible cancer?”
Pax nods. “Yeah. She gave me a way to get into the body and see what needed cleaning up. It seemed simple once she showed me...” Pax shrugs.
Ali touches his jaw, mainly because that's all she can reach. The kid's taller than Caleb. “It's okay. You fixed me when I was beyond fixing.”
“Without making her a zombie,” Archer says from the corner.
Ali turns, including him in the looks she gives the others inside the room. “Yes. That wasn't an end I wished for myself.”
As she studies everyone, her brows come together. “Are those...?” Ali blinks. “Oh, my goodness—are those pregnancy badges?”
“Pulse informants, honey,” Kyle gently corrects, walking over to her and putting a reassuring arm around her shoulders.
“But... how?”
“I think we know how, Ali,” Kyle begins. Oh no. “How the process happens. Even with all our advancements, we haven't been able to replicate the results of just engaging in human sexual intercourse.”
Jonesy gives a low whistle, clutching his hands behind his back and inspecting his Converse sneakers.
“Thanks, Grandpa—I think,” Pax says.
Kyle grimaces. “I'm just saying that”—his eyes scan the room—“it appears as though all the women are pregnant.” His eyes narrow on Kim. “Except for this lady with whom I am not acquainted.”
I restrain slapping my forehead.
Kyle had to be cool once. I think Caleb claims he played really great basketball with him when we were in school.
Right now, he just looks like that guy, Mr. Rogers, from the old television show in the late twentieth.
He keeps the awkward verbal shit flowing.
At least Tiff knows what to do. Walking over to Kyle, she gives the old guy a slap on the shoulder. “Me and John here”—she flicks a thumb at John—“we're legal. The rest of these sluts just took advantage of opportunity.”
Oh. My. God.
Kyle narrows his eyes on Tiff, and she doesn't flinch. “ʻThese slutsʼ?” His eyes go to Deegan.
Her card is flashing the certified pregnancy news in a kaleidoscope of rainbow colors, in LED-powered glory about every three seconds. The thing's like a small strobe.
Crap.
He sort of does a heart clutch. “My granddaughter! Has-has,” he splutters.
“Cool your jets, Kyle,” Mac comments, extracting a cigarette and lighting up in the middle of a smoke-free zone.
With a grateful inhale and release, Mac sighs.
Come to think of it, the entire world is a smoke-free zone, except for those rare individuals (mostly dead now) who have a grandfathered holographic informant badge. Mac's isn't even a pulse informant—it's that ancient.
“Mac!” the women all cry. We're
pregnant—stop contaminating our air! The unspoken sentiment blares.
“Oh geez, ladies—sorry.” Mac puts the cigarette out on the thick tread of his boots.
“Pop,” Ali begins in a strained voice, “you're on lung transplant number two.” She holds up two fingers.
“Uh-huh. I see you're definitively back in the land of the living.” Mac rocks back on his heels, still holding the spent cigarette butt. “Let the haranguing begin.”
Ali gives a delicate frown, stepping out of her hug with Pax and crossing her arms. “Someone needs to.”
“Not now, Mom,” Caleb says. His eyes find who I've already spotted: Mia and Bry.
Thank God. And Bry doesn't look worse for wear. An easy miracle. Go Team.
“Weller, my man,” Jonesy says, three-striding to Bry then giving him a high-five.
Jonesy gives him a hard onceover. “Not a bruise on ya. How'd you manage not to get your ass kicked?”
“Well,” Bry says, spreading his arms and arching a brow, “would you believe my unique charms played a part?”
“Not for a second,” Tiff says in a bald voice.
Bry grins. “You're right. They”—he points to a silent Tator Tot by the door—"explained everything in a way that didn't freak me out. So Kyle, Ali, Archer, and the wife and I came with. Figured since they didn't gun us down in Mac's driveway, it was a good sign.
I guess that's one way to look at it.
“After all the HC shenanigans, I don't trust anyone,” Caleb says, sounding eerily like Mac. “But, I suppose, that Tate gave us a good turn. Didn't kill us, as Bry noted.” Caleb snorts. “And offered our two kids a job of sorts. It'd be a good change not to have chaos.” His eyes flick to Jade's flashing pulse informant.
I wonder what this kid will have in the old paranormal arsenal?
Jonesy's eyes meet mine, and he winks. At least one of us has a sense of humor.
Right now, I feel like crap's so uncertain, I can't get my bearings.
“You will still have to answer for the illegal zombies,” Tator Tot reminds us in a low voice.
I whip my head in his direction, heart pounding.
Caleb plants his feet wide, putting his hands on his hips. “What if I said zombies aren't here?”
Oh no—Mitchell. I force myself not to look at Deegan.
Tate spreads his arms. “Where there's no hard evidence...”
“There's no proof,” Archer finishes for him.
“Exactly,” Tate says, but his eyes land on Deegan.
She doesn't look away. If anything Deegan raises her chin in defiance. I love that girl.
But I know that Clyde and Mitchell are at Mac's. And father of her child or not, there's no room for him in our world. He's not Clyde—grandfathered status does not apply to him.
My heart goes out to Deegan.
She's never caught a break in her young life. And now she's got a legit offer for work. A big, important role. Making crap that's been poisoning our world, gone forever.
But what good is that on an individual level, if the man she loves, the father of her unborn child, is made into a Sanction slave?
Mitchell won't do it. And if he won't, they'll give him the flame, like they do with all non-compliant undead. No matter what.
Mitchell Rasmussen will be terminated.
That's really the only sure-fire way to kill a zombie.
All of us know it.
We've been hanging around Caleb for more than thirty years—and we've seen a few really dead zombies in our time.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Tara
I want to go home.
I want it so bad my teeth ache. I feel like Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz.
But I don't think if I click my heels three times, I'll get back there.
This messed up world is what I've got.
And Pax.
I risk a glance at him, and find his eyes are already on me. That dark, chocolate-colored hair is almost shoulder length, bangs cut at an angle and on the shaggy side. He has just as much stubble as the other guys.
It's his eyes that I drown in. I feel as though Pax can see down to my toenails. That's how intense he is.
We went after it last night as if it would be the only time we would have sex. As if. He was insatiable, and I wasn't any better. Pax might have had only a handful of times with a girl who was dying of cancer. A girl he’d promised to never raise from the dead. I swallow hard, trying to wrap my mind around being with a dude like Pax.
We made up for whatever lack of sexual experience he had last night.
Boy, did we.
Pax Hart is the only thing that makes this new nightmare less scary, even though he's sort of part of it. And the fact that I'm going to have his baby.
I place a hand over my flat belly.
It's selfish, I admit. I'm slowly getting the perspective here. Nobody's able to have kids on his earth—in his time. That's all he's been raised to understand.
But from my earth? There's a flood of girls spitting out kids because they can spread their legs and pop them out.
I shake my head. Talk about a willful carbon footprint.
But from what I hear about the “bot world,” humans will be gradually becoming extinct in the year 2049. That's the future of my earth. Basically, all the cyborgs are exterminating the humans. They're becoming self-sufficient. They don't need our over-consuming butts.
I shiver. The thought of my baby being forty years old in that time? My stomach turns, hands growing clammy with the thought.
Turning my head, I break eye contact with Pax and look at Kim and Ron, huddled together.
Kim is about ten years older than our kid would be in that time.
The sight of the two displaced future worlders has my dread increasing, not fading.
Pax and I laid together after we were too tired to make love anymore. And as he held me, Pax told me about my world, what it would become.
And what Kim did. How she lived.
It's a war zone, where humans don't do anything but exist and there's curfews and limits on family size.
And infanticide.
But that little detail doesn't matter to the bots. They're self-sufficient. Sentient enough.
Pax can blink there. That's how Deegan accidentally scooped up Mitchell in an apparent state of panic when the bots caught sight of her.
Pax told me that when he blinks, he can travel to another world, another earth. Or he can just hang around and have awesome vision while the worlds float all around him like funhouse mirrors, ones he can pass through.
I didn't see anything of what he was talking about. Of course, I was looking at other stuff. I feel my secret smile.
Then he's a pretty good Organic. I guess that's their term here for someone who can heal with their hands. But they can't heal everything. I glance at Ali, Pax's grandma. She was at the edge of death from breast cancer. But Pax saved her because he learned how from another Organic, from my world of the future.
That makes me want to hold my head together. It's all so brain-numbingly confusing.
Ron called Pax's other ability Super, for super-human. But they say he's a Body in this world.
And my God, does he have a body. Just the thought of it gives my barely-out-of-my-teens hormones a rush of “let's do it again.”
It only takes once, as the saying goes. My eyes narrow at the other women. I would think that everyone getting pregnant is against all odds. I'm not an idiot. I know getting pregnant isn't that simple.
I frown. Almost too good to be true. And I'll admit to myself that a part of me had to give up on going back to my time, my earth. And that if Pax got me pregnant, then maybe I would have a protector in this one.
The decision was sort of primal, without an ounce of the women's lib that is so popular in my time. We can do anything. We're female. Hear us roar.
Lots of women libbers are probably gnashing their teeth out at the moment, ears burning with my thoughts of relying on a m
an for survival. Hell with that—their ears are probably flaming.
Thankfully, that group probably doesn't have telepathy.
And they aren’t in my situation. On this earth, they protect women who are pregnant. I got pregnant by a guy that's got scary talents, so maybe that’s double protection.
Do I love Pax Hart? No. Could I? Yeah. Is he hot as hell? That's a definitive yes. Will my zombie brother want to murder his ass? Probably.
I bite my thumb nail. Absolutely.
Despite all these disturbing thoughts and self-reflection and my determination to survive this new environment, I miss my parents. And the familiarity of 2010.
Everywhere I look, there's all this silent communication. First, it was Brain Impulse Tech, now it's disc-to-disc. For those who want it.
Things are quiet on this earth because, from my perspective, nobody actually communicates that much with their mouths, with words.
Except for the mammoth that Pax's dad raised. That'd been pretty loud.
That scared the shit out of me. And if I don't ever have to see another zombie in my life, it'll be too soon. Especially the Sanction ones. They all stunk like rotting meat and kept looking at my head.
Still, I don't want to include my brother in the zombie tally. Reconciling all these conflicting thoughts is giving me a headache. I can't make all these things make sense and fit in the little boxes inside my head. There isn't any categorizing it all.
My stomach rumbles, and I put the flat of my hand over my belly again. How on earth can I be hungry after the five pounds of bacon Mac fried.
I smile a little. His house was kind of like my world. Like a little sanctuary from the storm of advancements all around me. Huge lawn, concrete driveway, picnic table piled high with food.
Once we got outside those gates and the hover cars were whizzing by about fifteen feet above our heads, missing us by an inch or so when we were finally riding, reality crashed in.
“Hey.” Pax startles me out of my thoughts, capturing my cold fingers. “Are you okay?”
I nod, then a traitorous tear squeezes out against my will, feeling hot as it slips down my face. “Yeah.”
He brushes away the wetness. “You don't look okay.”
Pax frowns, and I look into eyes that are a perfect blend of gray and blue. Like brilliant slate.
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