Chain Breakers (Nuclear Winter Book 3)

by Nathan Jones

  Deb didn't stir as light poured in through the door onto her face. Her skin was deathly pale, and at the sight Trev felt a stab of panic. He eased the door shut and crept over to her, gently resting the back of his hand against her cheek to be sure it was still warm, staring at her chest beneath the sheets to be sure it was still rising and falling with her breaths.

  She stirred slightly, gave a soft moan of pain, and went still again.

  The tears Trev couldn't find before finally came in a flood, and he sank to his knees beside the bed and gently pressed his forehead to his wife's shoulder.

  How he loved this woman. More than he'd ever thought possible, more than he could ever express. He'd give anything, anything, to spare her from the pain the world kept dumping on her. To take it on himself so she could be free of it. He felt like he'd failed her by not doing something to prevent this.

  It wasn't fair. She deserved all the joy life had to offer. A chance to leave behind all the terrible things she'd suffered and finally have peace and contentment, and most of all hope for the future.

  In spite of everything Trev finally drifted asleep, still on his knees beside the bed. It was early afternoon, but the weight of painful emotions pressing down on him with crushing weight had left him exhausted and wrung out. More than that, he embraced the chance to flee into unconsciousness.

  Maybe he'd wake up to discover this had all been a bad dream.

  * * * * *

  Trev jolted awake at the feel of Deb stirring on the bed. He cracked his eyes open to near darkness, with night outside the windows and no light spilling around the door to the main room of the house.

  “Trev?” his wife asked in a soft, quavering voice, equal parts pain and confusion. He heard the beginnings of panic as she spoke again. “Trev?”

  “Shh,” he whispered, gently resting an hand on her shoulder. “I'm right here.”

  She began crying softly in pain and grief, and Trev carefully pulled the blankets away to climb into bed beside her, pulling her into his arms. She clutched onto him and he rubbed her arms soothingly, then her back when she hunched over sobbing.

  “It's all right,” he whispered. He would've cried himself, but he had nothing left but a sort of numb, dull ache. He reached for the bedside table, where there were a couple water bottles, and handed her one. “It's going to be okay.”

  Deb quickly downed several gulps, gasping slightly at new pain in her stomach, then handed the bottle back. “Is it?” she asked in a broken voice. “I'm never going to have children, am I?”

  “Shh,” he said again, stroking her back. “We don't know that.”

  “I know.” She looked up at him, and in the darkness all he saw was the faint shimmer of eyes luminous with tears. “I can feel it, something torn and broken inside me.” She dissolved into sobs again.

  Trev held his wife for a long time, until she finally quieted, then reluctantly pulled away. “Dr. Maggy told me to get her when you woke up.”

  He was afraid she'd protest, beg him to stay, but she just nodded miserably. He reluctantly got out of bed and pulled on his boots, shooting Deb worried glances the whole time. But the moment he closed the door behind him he broke into a sprint, not wanting to leave her alone for any longer than he had to.

  In spite of the hour Dr. Maggy voiced no complaint, quietly gathering her things and joining him for the short walk back to his house. Trev could feel the weight of the bad news she had to tell them casting a pall in the air, and didn't try for small talk.

  The first thing the doctor did when Trev led her inside was shoo him back out so she could give Deb another examination. Since Linda would be asleep in the main room he waited outside, almost grateful for the chill night breeze. It didn't help clear his head, and it was more uncomfortable than bracing, but at least it was a distraction.

  Dr. Maggy didn't take long, and soon the door opened again and she invited Trev in. He sat down on the bed next to Deb, who huddled against him. They both waited silently for the OB/GYN to give them the news they knew was coming.

  The doctor hesitated, reluctant, before speaking. “At this time, at least until we have real medical equipment and can monitor you more closely, I don't think you should try for another child.”

  Trev felt himself deflate, and Deb huddled closer against him, weeping again. “Then it's possible we still could?” he asked.

  Dr. Maggy hesitated again, then shook her head. “I don't know. Miscarriages this severe have been known to render women infertile. But even if a successful pregnancy remains an option, as you know intimately the risks to the mother's life from a miscarriage are very real, and after recurrent miscarriages the risk of another miscarriage only goes up. I strongly recommend against trying, and more than that urge you to be cautious to avoid, ah, accidents.”

  Deb cried even harder at that. Trev held her closer. “How much does the risk increase?”

  The OB/GYN sighed. “Every individual case is different, of course, and statistics only tell us so much. But I think it's safe to say that after three miscarriages in a row the chance of another one is much, much high-”

  The older woman abruptly cut off, as if realizing she'd just said the wrong thing.

  “Three?” Trev asked, giving his wife a confused look. “She's only had two.” Deb had stiffened in his arms and wouldn't meet his gaze. Dr. Maggy cleared her throat awkwardly, and Trev's confusion turned to . . . something. He wasn't sure. “Haven't you?”

  His wife didn't answer. After almost a minute of agonizing silence the OB/GYN cleared her throat again. “I think we're finished here, so I'll give you some privacy,” she said gently. “Fetch me if there are any more complications, especially renewed bleeding.”

  Trev stood and showed Dr. Maggy to the door, thanking her quietly. Once she was gone he sat back down beside his wife, tentatively reaching out to take her hand. “Deb?” She flinched slightly. “You don't have to talk about it if you don't want. But if you do I'm here for you.”

  Tears were dripping down her cheeks again. “I didn't want you to have to know,” she whispered. “I was already enough of a burden on you.”

  He had an uncomfortable feeling he knew what she was talking about, and wasn't sure he wanted her to go on. Maybe he was wrong, and this was an experience that had happened to her before the Gulf burned, or during that winter afterwards.

  In any case he waited patiently, letting her decide whether she wanted to open up.

  After almost a minute Deb sucked in a shuddering breath. “I miscarried not long after we invited Dr. Maggy and the other refugees to Aspen Hill, and she helped me with it. It was awful and I didn't want to even think about it, let alone tell anyone. I still don't. I didn't want her to tell you, either, especially not right now.” Her voice dropped to barely above a whisper. “I wish she hadn't.”

  Trev closed his eyes, squeezing her hand. He could hardly imagine how that must've been for Deb. Still struggling to recover from her brutal mistreatment in the blockhead camp, only to make the awful discovery that she was pregnant from the rapes she'd suffered. It was probably a relief when she miscarried at that time, but what sort of emotional turmoil would've come with it?

  And she'd faced it all alone, with no one to talk to for comfort or support.

  Tears finally burned in his eyes. “You didn't have to go through that on your own. You could've come to me.”

  “How could I?” she said. “It was bad enough without knowing other people knew. Without having to deal with their pity and horror and disgust about the entire thing. I didn't even want to know myself, I just wanted it to go away. Then it did, and I was happy to do my best to forget about it.”

  Still tentative, he released her hand to put his arm around her, gently pulling her to him. She dissolved into sobs with her face buried in his chest, clutching him weakly. He couldn't think of anything to say, and anyway thought this was a situation where it was better not to say anything at all, so he just held her.

  After a long time his
wife finally looked up, brown-flecked green eyes swimming with tears. “I want to have your babies,” she said in a tiny voice. “And I want . . . I want to be with you. I don't want to lose what we've had because we're afraid of accidents.”

  “We'll figure it out,” he said, with more optimism than he felt. “With things getting back to normal there should be hospitals soon, and the right equipment for, uh, tests.”

  “But what if she's right and I'm barren now?” she asked, pleading to be reassured.

  Trev honestly didn't know. “There's adoption,” he offered.

  Deb looked away. “It's not the same.”

  “That doesn't mean it can't be a good thing.”

  She made a noncommittal noise. “Can you get me some more water?”

  Trev nodded dejectedly and took the bottles into the main room to refill them, trying to be quiet so he didn't wake Linda. As he filled them at the spigot of one of their 5-gallon jugs he noticed two plates of food warming on the stove for them, and brought them as well to see if Deb could manage to eat.

  His wife only shuddered at the sight of the food, growing paler for a second. She guzzled down some more water, then rolled over in bed and pulled the blankets tight around her. From the way her shoulders shook slightly it was obvious she was crying again.

  Trev took the food back out to put away for the night, then joined Deb in bed and tried to sleep. It wasn't easy, since he'd already slept for hours off his usual schedule, and he spent most of the night lying awake holding her and quietly doing his best to deal with his grief.

  He had a feeling she was awake for some of that time, too, but neither of them spoke.

  * * * * *

  The next day Deb was visited by what looked like half the women in town.

  Their comfort and support was certainly welcome, although Trev was a bit worried about them exhausting his wife. But with his mom and Aunt Eva hovering protectively over her he allowed himself to be chased out of the house.

  Not literally, of course; the visitors all had sympathy to offer him as well. But it was one of those situations where women dominated the space and made him feel kind of uncomfortable in his own home. His dad and Jim felt it too, and stayed hidden in their bedrooms. Which wasn't really an option for Trev.

  He didn't really mind, though. Deb was in good hands and seemed better off for the company, and it gave him a chance to have some time to himself to vent.

  Not chopping wood. It wasn't that it seemed, he didn't know, a bit on the nose, since he didn't really care what people thought. More that he had a feeling if friends saw him doing something like that they'd be interrupting him every five minutes to make sure he was all right. Then there was also the fact that tools were precious, and in his current state of mind he might end up accidentally splintering an axe handle or two.

  So he busied himself in the garden, doing work that probably didn't really need doing, far along as the plants were, but might be of some help. It was the sort of quiet work that people would be reluctant to interrupt him at, and it provided him an opportunity to empty his mind.

  It seemed to work; he saw a few friends hovering nearby, hesitant to approach, before blessedly leaving him to himself. Thanks to that he spent over an hour undisturbed only a stone's throw from the shelter group homes and all the activity surrounding them, free to bury himself in his mindless task.

  He was so focused on it, in fact, that after a while he looked up and jumped slightly in surprise to find that Lewis was quietly working only a few feet away. “Jeez, man,” he said, more off-balance than annoyed.

  His cousin looked up. “I can go.”

  “No. No, it's cool.”

  Lewis nodded and bent back to pulling weeds.

  They spent maybe fifteen minutes working side by side before Lewis cleared his throat. “I'm sorry.”

  Trev abruptly found tears swimming in his eyes. He settled back on his heels and dropped his trowel, since he couldn't see what he was doing anyway. “Yeah.”

  His cousin rested a hand on his shoulder, and they sat like that for a while. Then Trev wiped his eyes, picked up his trowel again, and they got back to work.

  Slowly, haltingly, Trev opened up. With what needed to be said, what he could bear to talk about. Through it all he had a silent, attentive, and sympathetic audience in the man who was like a brother to him.

  Once he was done Lewis quietly stood. “Give me a second,” he said, heading for his and Jane's room.

  Trev nodded listlessly and shifted around until he was sitting on the ground beside the garden. He hadn't been working for almost ten minutes now, mostly just poking around in the dirt. He realized he was done with whatever this was, and was considering whether to go for a walk, maybe even a run along the road for a few miles, when his cousin came back holding a small box and looking awkward.

  He pushed to his feet, and Lewis stepped forward and held the box out. “This is probably a horrible time to give you this, but, well . . .” His cousin shifted from foot to foot. “It's just that with all you and Deb are going through, if I can give you one less thing to worry about I want to.”

  Trev took it slowly. “Is this . . .?”

  “The rest of my store of birth control,” Lewis confirmed. “Enough to keep you going for a year with careful use.”

  This was a ridiculously valuable gift, although that wasn't Trev's main concern. “But what about you and Jane?” he protested.

  His cousin gave him a pained smile. “We've been talking it over for a while now. You know we were only holding off on having kids until we were in a stable enough position that if a child came along we could handle it. I'd say that with the way the town is going we're finally in that position, so we don't need these anymore.”

  Trev hefted the box, fighting another surge of emotion. Like Lewis said, it was one less thing to worry about. But a pretty significant thing. “Thank you,” he said quietly.

  Lewis rested a hand on his shoulder. “I'm sorry you and Deb have to go through this. Hopefully once you can get access to proper medical care again your options will open up, and you'll be able to try again; after everything you guys have been through you deserve a break.”

  Trev held the box, staring down at it as his cousin walked away. Deserve. If there was one thing he'd learned painfully since the Gulf burned, it was that the world didn't seem to care much what people thought they deserved. It gave them what it gave them, and if they wanted anything more they either had to earn it for themselves or hope for some generosity from others.

  He and Deb were blessed there, as he was keenly aware at the moment.

  With a sharp, painful suddenness he missed his wife. Comforting interlopers or not, he wanted to be with her. He wasn't sure if the time was right to tell her about Lewis's gift just yet, but at the moment he desperately needed to hold her in his arms and reassure himself that she was still there, that she wasn't going anywhere.

  Deb seemed to feel the same, because at the sight of him walking into their room she burst into tears and held her arms out for him. Alice, who'd been hugging her around the shoulders, backed away with embarrassment as Trev tossed Lewis's gift on the table and closed the distance to wrap his wife in his arms.

  They held each other like that for long enough that the gathered visitors got the hint and drifted out, closing the door to give them some privacy. “I know you weren't gone for long, and all my friends were dears and did the best they could, but I'm still glad you're back,” Deb finally said. “I missed you.”

  “Me too.” Trev kissed the top of her head. “I'm here. I'll always be here.”

  Whatever life handed them, at least they'd face it together.

  Chapter Eight

  Lafayette

  Pete carefully moved Kathleen's arm and slipped out of bed, bending down to kiss her lightly as she stirred.

  She didn't wake up, probably used to his restless habits by now. Instead she rolled to fill his spot on the makeshift bed and buried her face more deeply in the
pillow, pulling the blanket up to cover more of her face from the morning sunlight filtering through the canvas of her tent. He tried to be quiet as he dressed and pulled on his boots.

  Muggy air slapped him in the face as he ducked outside, the clammy feel of a night that hadn't cooled down much thanks to high humidity, with a morning that would quickly become warm. Not uncomfortably so even in this humidity, a fringe benefit of nuclear winter he supposed, but enough that everyone in camp was missing air conditioners.

  That “everyone” was a number that was growing by the day, as evidenced by the sprawling camp around him that was stirring even at this early hour.

  The base camp the 103rd and 51st companies had built on the spit of land between the Mississippi and Missouri had become a staging area after the CCZ's forces pulled back. In fact the new camp had largely taken precedence over Camp Pearson, which had become more of a refugee camp and mustering point for military forces.

  With the Canadian forces expanding and gaining a solid control of the area freed slaves felt safe landing in this camp after being rescued from CCZ territory in raids, to rest and regroup until they could be sent to a more permanent location. And civilians who worked in the camp, like Kathleen and Lily who'd moved from Pearson to be closer to Pete, were also safe living here on a more permanent basis.

  Captain Simard had dubbed the camp “Lafayette”. Pete hadn't heard an official reason why the man had named it that, but it didn't take a genius to figure it was a reference to the famous French General who'd aided the Colonials during the Revolutionary War.

  And to his cynical mind it seemed like an attempt by the captain, or maybe his superiors, to remind their American friends that all this territory in the United States that Canada had “liberated” was for a good cause, as staunch allies in another fight against an oppressive enemy.

  Pete was willing to let them have that one. Sure, he'd grown up in Utah so he wasn't exactly emotionally invested in the lost territory, aside from as a citizen of the country that had lost it. He knew many of the surviving US citizens in the eastern States who'd discovered they were now Canadians weren't terribly pleased about it, but they were practically dancing for joy compared to the alternative of being slaughtered or enslaved by blockhead occupiers.