Adaptation: book I

by Pepper Pace

Carmella switched the safeties off the two nine-millimeters in her holsters and grabbed her rifle from the back seat. When she got out of the truck, she was pleased Bilal had wrapped Raj in a sheepskin blanket. Raj protested until his little face peeked out and he was able to see the world around him. Bilal wore a parka, knit hat, and gloves, his long hair flowing down his back. The wind periodically blew his hair into his face, and Carmella had to resist the urge to reach out and push it back.

  She adjusted her knit hat and scarf. The thin leather gloves she wore allowed her to pull the trigger easily, and the thick leather jacket she wore made her look like a badass. Thanks to whatever Bilal had done to her during the delivery, Carmella felt healthier than she ever had and nothing like a woman who had delivered a baby less than three months ago.

  “Let’s go shopping,” Carmella said, and Bilal and Raj followed her into the darkened store.

  Once they were inside, the looting became obvious. Overturned cash registers, mangled display racks, and several limbless mannequins made for slow going only a few feet into the store.

  “Turn on the flashlight.”

  Although he had no problems seeing in the dark, Bilal flashed the beam into the darkness of the store for Carmella. Raj seemed to know something important was happening because he watched everything wide-eyed.

  Carmella hung her rifle around her neck, rolled a cart to the center of the store, and grabbed two baby slings, tossing them into the cart. She frowned when she couldn’t find a baby swing.

  Bilal rolled up with Raj in the front seat of another cart. “I need shoes.”

  They found him two pairs of work boots, and he wore one pair immediately, leaving his tattered sneakers behind.

  “These feel wonderful,” Bilal said.

  Carmella collected all the baby clothes she could. She picked out some underwear and also chose a cute nightie, which she shoved into her jacket pocket when Bilal wasn’t looking. Bilal found several pairs of pants. While she grabbed all of the candles, Bilal collected tools. Because the canned and packaged foods had long expired, they still had a great deal of room left in one of the carts.

  “I guess it’s time to do some Christmas shopping,” Carmella said.

  Bilal knew little about the human holiday other than it involved people spending exorbitant amounts of money on things they really didn’t need. “Where do we begin?”

  “In the toy section.”

  They filled the second cart with toys.

  Raj especially liked gnawing on a plush, stuffed wolf.

  They packed their items into the back of the extended cab. After Carmella gave Raj his pacifier to replace the soggy wolf, she pulled out of the Target parking lot.

  “Maybe we should get you a truck for when you’re hauling those solar panels,” Carmella said.

  Bilal’s eyebrows rose. “My own truck? Yes, I would like that. A big diesel truck like this one.”

  “We’d have to get you something bigger to carry all those panels,” Carmella said, suppressing a smile. Bilal’s joy gave her a strange satisfaction that warmed her more than the heat barely flowing through the truck’s vents.

  “I would like a bigger truck,” Bilal said.

  “But a bigger truck requires more diesel fuel,” Carmella said. “We need to go across the Ohio River to Kentucky. There’s a truck stop I’ve used to get diesel. We can fill up the barrels and then go get your truck at a dealership somewhere. How’s that sound?”

  Bilal smiled broadly. “I would like that very much.”

  ~***~

  They decided to stop for a quick lunch before the exhausting work of siphoning diesel. Carmella had packed sandwiches spread with softened cheese she had made that morning. Homemade brownies and bottled iced tea rounded out the meal, and Raj enjoyed his mother’s breast.

  They sat on the back of the truck and watched the Ohio River from the Roebling Bridge. Bilal had never been more content in his life. This is what it is to be human, he thought.

  “Raj’s sensors haven’t come out again, have they?” Bilal asked.

  “No, thank God.”

  Bilal swallowed some tea. “I’m going to begin training him how to use them.”

  Carmella frowned. “So soon?”

  “Yes, he’s capable of understanding how to use them. Soon he will need to explore items with the sensors, so he needs to understand how to use them.”

  “How old were you when you learned to use yours?”

  “It is different for Centaurian infants. Parents keep a connection with their infants using their sensors almost constantly. Infants learn through that connection.”

  Her nipple slipped from Raj’s mouth as he slept, sucking his thumb and relaxing in slumber. She slipped her breast back into her bra and put the baby over her shoulder to burp.

  Bilal’s eyes lingered on her before he turned back to the river. He sighed in longing to be the one suckling there. He recounted the taste of her sweet milk and sighed again.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  His face turned a bright shade of yellow. “I’m sorry, I …” He was not good at lying. “I, uh …”

  Carmella stared at him. “Well?”

  Bilal sighed a third time. “Oh well.” He leaned over and kissed her.

  It was swift and chaste, but she thought it was sweet—even sexy.

  They both smiled, looking out to the water before them.

  “We should go,” she said.

  He cleared his throat. “Yes.”

  Four miles down I-71 Carmella pulled into a deserted truck stop in Florence, Kentucky.

  “Popeye’s,” Bilal said, reading a sign on the main building.

  “My chicken’s better,” Carmella said.

  She parked the truck close to what looked like a manhole cover set into the concrete. “You wouldn’t believe how long it took me to get that thing open with a crowbar,” she said, setting the parking brake. “Let’s fill ‘er up.”

  After Bilal removed the cover, Carmella fed one of the fuel hoses into the underground tank. She inserted the other hose into the truck’s gas tank. “Get to cranking.”

  Bilal cranked the pump.

  For the ten minutes.

  “My truck’s thirsty, huh?” Carmella said.

  Once the truck’s tank was full, Carmella snaked the hose into one of the metal barrels on the back of the truck. “I’m taking Raj inside to get away from these fumes, okay?”

  Bilal nodded and resumed cranking.

  To stay warm—and to keep from thinking about the feel of Bilal’s lips on hers—Carmella gave Raj a tour of Popeye’s. There wasn’t much left to see. Animals had cleaned out the walk-in freezer and refrigerator long ago, and the condiment packs that littered the floor looked chewed. “This was a fast food restaurant, Raj. This is where people came to eat delicious greasy food and gain weight. I wish I could have an ice-cold fountain Coke right now.” She looked out at Bilal, who was moving the hose to the last barrel. “Your daddy is working up an appetite, isn’t he? Look at his muscles! I know you’re going to grow up big and strong like your daddy. Or daddies. Centaurians would have to celebrate Fathers’ Day instead of Father’s Day, Raj.”

  Raj blinked.

  “I know those two words sounded the same,” Carmella said, “but you didn’t see where I put the apostrophe. An apostrophe is a flying comma.”

  Raj continued to blink.

  Carmella laughed. “As if the location of an apostrophe matters anymore.”

  When Bilal finished filling the last barrel, he wrapped the hoses around the hand pump and stowed them in the truck box.

  Carmella and Raj joined him, and she bounced nervously from one foot to the other. “Once we get you a truck from a Toyota place up the road, we can pick up more supplies from a Walmart about a mile from here,” Carmella said. “Then we can go home.” She chewed her lip.

  Bilal’s nostrils flared as he scented the air. Her heartbeat had sped up and her eyes were dilated. He licked his lips. “Yes
, we should be home by nightfall.”

  She nodded shyly.

  He smiled.

  She returned the smile. “Yes, by nightfall.”

  As she drove to Kerry Toyota, Carmella felt cocooned by feelings of warmth and love, and she couldn’t stop smiling.

  Bilal smiled because Carmella smiled.

  Raj smiled because he had gas.

  She parked near a gray Toyota Tundra Dually Diesel. “What do you think of that one?”

  “I like it,” Bilal said.

  “We’ll have to go inside to find the keys,” Carmella said. “That’s how I, um, purchased this truck.”

  Carmella decided to use one of the baby slings. She slipped off her jacket and holster as she fastened the straps around her neck.

  Bilal scanned the rows of cars and trucks around them, his eyes zeroing in on the front of the building. The windows were all intact. “The windows …”

  Carmella dropped Raj into the sling, and he immediately gripped her chest with his hands. “What about them?”

  “They’re … there.”

  “They must be bullet-resistant,” Carmella said, opening her door.

  “I don’t think so,” Bilal said. “I don’t think we’re alone.”

  “Nonsense,” Carmella said.

  Bilal pointed at the holster. “I would feel better if you wore that.”

  Carmella sighed, buckled the holster around her waist, and put on her jacket. “Are you happy?”

  “Yes,” Bilal said, but he still felt uneasy. “But I still sense … something.”

  Carmella opened her door and slid off the seat. “There’s no one here but us.” She stepped out into the parking lot and shut the door.

  Bilal got out of the truck, his eyes trained on the building as he followed Carmella. “Carmella, I sense other people.”

  Raj snapped his head around and cooed.

  “Raj does, too.”

  Carmella reached her right hand to her holster.

  “I wouldn’t do that if I was you!”

  Carmella looked up and saw a man on the roof of the building with a rifle trained on her and Raj. Her knees nearly buckled but she froze in place. “We’re only here to get a truck.”

  “Ain’t none for sale today, lady,” the man said. “Take off the holster, nice and slow, now.”

  Carmella unbuckled the holster and let it drop to the ground.

  The door to the dealership opened. She saw a man and a woman exit. The man had a rifle but wasn’t aiming it at anything. He appeared to be in his late fifties, and his belly protruded from his unbuttoned down jacket. White tufts of hair stood out in a clownish manner around his face. The woman was old and dressed in a coat much too big for her. She hobbled toward Carmella with a look of wonder on her face.

  “We don’t want any trouble,” Carmella said. “We only came to get another vehicle, that’s all.”

  “Is … is that a baby?” the woman asked. She looked at the man. “Oh, Sonny. I wants me a baby. Can I have it? Please, can I have it?”

  Sonny shrugged. “I ain’t seen a baby in ages. Yeah, Ma, we can keep it.”

  Carmella wrapped her arms around Raj. “No …”

  “Kill the man,” Sonny said.

  Two shots rang out from the roof, and Bilal fell to the ground.

  “Oh my God!” Carmella screamed. She reached for the holster, but something hard hit her in the side of the head. She cradled Raj as she fell.

  A moment later, something hard struck her again, and everything went black.

  Chapter 26

  ~Loss~

  Ma pulled Raj from his sling and cradled the crying baby lovingly in her arms. Earl, the shooter from the roof, came down and exited the building carrying a duffel bag filled with tools.

  Earl kicked the body of the man he had shot, careful not to step in the pool of blood around him. “What the fuck?”

  Sonny put on Carmella’s holster before lifting and dumping her into the back seat of the Ford. “Nice of them to get us some fuel, huh, Earl?”

  “Come on!” Ma urged while jiggling the crying baby in her arms. “Sonny, you drive this truck, and me and Earl will take Earl’s.”

  “Not yet,” Earl said. “Come over here. Look at this.” Earl nudged the man over onto his back.

  Sonny stood over the man. “What’s wrong with his face?”

  Ma sighed and joined them. “He’s completely … black. Why is he black like that?”

  Earl frowned. “I don’t know. I ain’t never seen nothing like that. Maybe when I shot him it did something, I don’t know.”

  “Maybe he got some type of disease,” Ma said.

  Earl looked at her. “He wasn’t black when he got out the truck.” He felt goose bumps crawling over his arms. “Let’s just get out of here.”

  Earl had done a number of terrible things over the years since the end of civilization. He’d lost much of is capacity for empathy once he no longer had to be accountable for his actions. But this thing, killing a man in cold blood and having him turn black afterwards, made him feel as if he had crossed some line that would keep him from gaining admittance through the pearly gates.

  While Earl and Ma followed behind them in a beat-up Chevy Silverado, Sonny looked into the backseat at the unmoving woman. He licked his lips. She would be his. Earl had Ma, and now he had someone and wouldn’t have to think about doing bad things to animals. She was pretty, too. He was already becoming hard. He wanted to pull the truck over and …

  He swerved the wheel, nearly running into an abandoned car.

  Focus.

  ~***~

  Carmella’s stomach turned before she was completely awake. She coughed back the bile that had risen in her throat and forced her eyes open. Pain stabbed through the back of her head as stars appeared before her eyes.

  “She’s awake!”

  Carmella forced her eyes to focus on the old woman.

  “See!” a man shouted. “I told you I didn’t hit her too hard.”

  Carmella tried to sit up but couldn’t move, her hands bound behind her.

  The old woman held Raj, whose eyes were red. He was hiccupping as he chomped on his pacifier. When he saw Carmella, he opened his mouth and began to wail, the pacifier falling to a carpeted floor.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake! Shut him up!”

  The old woman jiggled Raj on her hip. “I can’t! He wants his mother!”

  “Mamamamamama!!” Raj yelled while tears streamed down his face.

  Oh my God, Carmella thought. He just said Mama! Her heart nearly rose out of her chest. Carmella blinked her eyes rapidly in an attempt to see straight and clear her head. She tried to move again but couldn’t. Bilal. No … She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to think. Bilal was … gone. Raj was crying for her.

  “Give him to me,” Carmella said weakly. “Give me my baby.”

  The older woman pursed her lips and frowned. She backed away a step. “No, he’s mine now.”

  Carmella tried not to black out. “You can’t have my baby …”

  Raj reached for Carmella and wailed hysterically.

  “He needs to be nursed. I need to feed him.”

  “Give him to her,” another man said.

  Carmella looked at the man. He appeared to be in his late fifties but was more put together than the others. His short white hair was sheared into a military cut, and he wore camouflage khakis and combat boots. Carmella’s eyes narrowed and felt her breath freeze in her lungs. This was the man who had shot Bilal.

  “Well, untie her, Sonny,” the old woman grumbled.

  Sonny grunted and knelt behind her. He roughly yanked her arms and undid the ropes. “Don’t give us no shit now, or Earl will do you like he did your man.”

  Carmella rolled to her knees and focused on Raj.

  The old woman cooed, but Raj wanted nothing to do with her. “I don’t know why you’re making me give him to her. I’m gonna be his mother!”

  “You can’t feed him,” Carmella s
aid, reaching her arms toward Raj. “He’s only three months old.”

  “Three months?” the old woman screeched. “Who in the hell are you trying to fool? This baby’s nine months old if he’s a day!”

  Carmella shook her head. “He’s always been big. Please give him to me.”

  “Three-month-olds don’t say ‘Mama,’ Missy,” the old woman spat. “And he’s wearing nine-month baby clothes.”

  “Like I said,” Carmella said, “he’s always been big.”

  “Cuz you been overfeeding him,” the old woman said.

  Raj let out an ear-splitting bellow.

  “I told you to shut him up!” Earl shouted.

  The old woman handed Raj to Carmella. “Shut his ass up if you know what’s good for you.”

  Carmella hugged him tightly, burying her face into his sweet neck. She rocked and held her son, her heart breaking as she cried for the loss of Bilal.

  ~***~

  Carmella nursed Raj until he fell into a restless sleep.

  Everyone watched her until Ma pulled herself from her seat and reached for Raj. “Give him to me. I’ll lay him down.”

  Carmella bared her teeth. “No.”

  Earl cocked his rifle. “Give her the boy. We need to talk. When we’re done talking, then we might let you hold him again. If you don’t, this will be the last time you ever hold him.”

  She took a deep breath and saw her life moving before her eyes. She saw and relived the losses of Jody and Micah. She pictured Bilal being shot. “Okay.” She held Raj out in front of her.

  The old woman snatched Raj away. “You need to learn you some manners.”

  Carmella clenched her fists wanting badly to hit the woman in her wrinkled face. But I have to keep my shit together. Raj needs me. He already lost one parent today. She swallowed back her sadness. Now was not the time to give in to her hears. She unclenched her fists and slowed her breathing.

  The old woman kissed Raj’s curls and left the room.

  Carmella sat back on her knees and looked up at the men assessing every possibility that she could over-take them. But it always ended with Earl and the rifle he carried.

  Sonny’s tongue peeked from his lips. Now that he’d seen her titty, he intended to have her as soon as possible. He wanted to throw her on the floor and fuck her right there in front of everyone.