But before they did this thing, Dev insisted on going back to get a gun, which he said had been his policy for going beyond the wall ever since there’d been a wall to go beyond. “Just in case,” he said, dipping his head through the gun’s strap, letting it hang over his shoulder, business end pointed skyward.
Lucy didn’t bother asking, “In case of what?” Whether it was packs of wild dogs, or rabid unicorns, or Judgment Day itself, ever since whatever happened, happened, she refused to be surprised by surprises anymore. Instead, she held out hope that whatever the next surprise was, it would be a happy one for a change.
Dev pulled back the SUV blocking the exit just far enough for them to pass through with Marcus’s body and left the engine running. Hopping down, he headed for the body’s shoulders just as Lucy grabbed his feet.
“Should we take his clothes off?” she asked, holding on by his pant legs, which had grown far too slack, once he’d stopped eating.
Dev began lifting but stopped. “Why?”
“To,” she said, moving her head in a complicated way that meant nothing to her audience.
“Use words,” Dev suggested.
“Make it easier,” Lucy said finally, “for the animals.”
Without meaning them to, Dev’s thoughts drifted in a pornographic direction he’d later blame on having met Lucy and Marcus, a couple his own age who’d indisputably done it. “Is that really the reason?”
Lucy shook her head, seemingly confused. “What other reason would there be?”
Dev didn’t know how to put it politely, so he put it the other way. “To get a last look.”
“One last look at what?” she asked.
“At a naked guy,” Dev said, going there. “At his sex . . . stuff.”
Lucy dropped her end, letting Dev hold up all of Marcus’s dead weight. Emotion stained her cheeks a bright red.
“Well?” Dev prompted.
But Lucy remained silent. She picked up her share of the corpse, shoving a little as if to indicate her desire to get this over with, in silence preferably. Which was fine by Dev. For him, the silence between them was as welcome as it was golden.
Much later, while Dev was readying the couch and Lucy had closed what was now the door to her room, she opened it again and walked right up behind him. She stood there, radiating, until he turned and she said what she had to say: “So you’ve decided already?”
“Decided what?” Dev asked, fluffing a pillow.
“The future,” Lucy said. “That there isn’t going to be an ‘us.’”
“We’re already an ‘us,’” Dev said, borrowing her tone. “You’re not going anywhere, are you?”
Lucy blushed again while blaming Dev for his selective opacity. Though she couldn’t tell for sure from that blank face of his, she’d swear he was enjoying this: forcing her to say things that were too embarrassing to say out loud—and wouldn’t have to be, with a normal person.
“You know what I mean,” she bluffed, and blushed harder.
But Dev just shrugged. “Not a clue.”
The words marshaled themselves on her tongue, awaiting instructions from her brain. They kept waiting. Her brain, unfortunately, was busy sending more blood to her cheeks and forehead. Her mouth opened, but nothing came out.
“Trying to catch flies?” Dev asked.
Lucy’s mouth closed. Her face felt incandescent. Trying to get through to him suddenly felt as unlikely as the atoms in a wall getting out of her way just by her shouting at them. “Never mind,” she said, taking her and her crimsonness back to the bedroom that was now hers and hers alone.
47
It wasn’t fair—that was the gist of what she wanted to say. It was the gristle of what followed that made things so hard. Because what followed was about sex, their obligation to have it, and what it meant that Dev had preemptively decided they wouldn’t. That’s what his comments about “last looks” and “sex stuff” had been about. But the ramifications went beyond just him and her, especially if that’s all there was: just him and her. She’d had a lot of hope when it came to finding others—hope that had been punctured again and again, each time she found another survivor who’d stopped surviving. Marcus had been the solitary bright light in that search, until they found Dev. But it was like the world couldn’t handle more than one last man on earth. So Marcus had to die. And now his replacement wasn’t willing to help her reboot the species . . .
Of course, even with his cooperation, the biological math wasn’t very promising. It seemed some degree of incest or incest lite was bound to be involved. Which got her thinking about that part of the Bible that had driven her nuts ever since she’d realized she hadn’t been delivered by stork—the way Adam and Eve had two sons and (magically) then there were more.
How did that work? Even if Eve had a few daughters the Bible didn’t bother mentioning, how was it not incest? Did God pluck a few more bones from Adam’s rib cage? Or maybe one each from Cain and Abel? When exactly did people stop reproducing via ribectomies? And if Eve really came from Adam’s rib, how was she not the genetic equivalent of his daughter or, really, a female clone? No wonder she couldn’t follow the simplest shall-not: the woman was an inbred idiot! And the sad generations that followed were just her idiot children . . .
Lucy felt a kick from inside, as if in protest to this particular line of thought. “Not you, my little snowflake,” she whispered. “We’ve got big plans for you . . .”
But what were those plans? Restarting the human race? How did that work? If she was carrying a boy, they’d need a girl for him—and not his own mother. Lucy had no interest in starring in some Oedipus/Chinatown mash-up. Plus, she’d be in her thirties by the time that was even biologically possible, which was practically menopausal—not to mention way too young to be a grandmother. Or whatever a woman doing double duty like that was called.
The thing was, unless she happened to be carrying fraternal twins—which was too messed up and mythological to even contemplate—she and Dev needed to have a kid or two if humanity was going to survive based upon the available evidence. Regardless of what she had this time, the species needed another of the opposite sort to hook up with her firstborn. The fact that they wouldn’t have the same father helped take a little of the incestuous stink off it, but just barely.
Or if her firstborn was a girl, then it wouldn’t have to be incest at all—just really creepy in a Woody Allen/Soon-Yi Previn kind of way. Sure, that was just kicking the incest can down the road. The point being, if humanity’s family tree was going to be anything but all trunk, she and Dev still needed to have kids.
Which didn’t mean they had to have sex, she assured the Dev she imagined objecting in her head. If he didn’t want to or couldn’t get past his aversion to being touched, turkey baster in vitro was an option. But . . .
But what if Dev was attracted to her?
What if he was just too shy—or too Aspergery—to make a move? Did Lucy want him to? She’d saved his picture for a reason—and not as more proof if Marcus demanded it. It just got complicated once he shot Marcus and turned out to be, you know, Dev. There was potential—she’d admit that—had been, at least, back when she tucked that photo away. And if she was being honest with herself, she had to admit, his not wanting to be hugged triggered an equal and opposite reaction in her. The more he resisted, the more she wanted to just grab him. It was like being told to not think about elephants. Every time she saw him, a part of her wanted to wrap him in her arms and rock him back and forth while he flinched and trembled. And the harder he did, the harder she’d hold him, until he cried out and began sobbing great, racking sobs . . .
. . . and still she’d hold him, rocking him back and forth while he cried all the Asperger’s away. And that’s when the crying would stop, turned down like a light on a dimmer switch. That’s when the knot of muscles pressed to her breast would let go, his shoulders settling back down to where shoulders belonged. That’s when Dev would look up, his face still we
t with tears, but looking her straight in the eye—her Pinocchio, a real boy at last.
Or . . .
Once they fixed the flat on the ice cream truck, there was nothing stopping them from picking up where she and Marcus left off, looking for others. If there was even half a chance of not having to play genetic roulette to reboot the species, they owed it to the future to try. Right?
“I said, right?” Lucy repeated.
“But I don’t want to,” Dev said. “I like it here.”
“You’re stuck here,” she said. “You’ve settled for the familiar and the path of least resistance. But there’s a whole world you haven’t seen. A whole world that might still have some people in it.”
“Have you met people?” Dev asked. “I have; they suck.”
“They suck—sucked—because there were so many of them they took each other for granted,” Lucy said. “You may have noticed, things have changed.”
“Don’t care.”
“What’s wrong with checking? We can always turn around and come back.”
“The number-one mistake everyone makes during a zombie apocalypse,” Dev said, making it sound like he was carving the words into stone as he spoke, “is giving up the home-field advantage.”
“You’re just scared.”
“Yes,” he agreed, adding a nod for good measure. “Exactly.”
Lucy blinked, speechless. What was she supposed to do with that? Every boy she’d ever accused of being scared rose to the challenge to prove her wrong. It was kind of fun, being able to manipulate someone bigger than she so easily.
Not that guys didn’t know how to push her buttons in return. It was just that her buttons were more like sliders on a soundboard, leaving it to the individual guy to figure out the right balance of sexual objectification versus intellectual seriousness. The thing was, when they got it right, they got her, whether she wanted them to or not. She’d wondered before if boys resented their programming as much as she hated hers. Now she missed the ease with which a guy’s emotions could be hacked, leaving her feeling as unarmed as the Venus de Milo when it came to convincing Dev they needed to move on.
And she did need to convince him—and before his “home-field advantage” took advantage of her weaker moments when just settling seemed the easiest way to go. Because Dev wasn’t wrong; it could be dangerous out there. Not that there were zombies lumbering around, but hordes of hybrid pigs and Zika-carrying mosquitoes were nothing to sneeze at. Well, maybe the latter was, but . . .
The point was, the chances of a mother and nursing baby making it out there without some backup were grim. At the very least, she needed Dev to kill stuff while she was busy taking care of the miracle of life.
“Shite,” she said, exasperated at how quickly her options came down to getting an autistic to do something he didn’t want to do. “Shite and onions . . .”
“You okay?” the source of her exasperation asked, confused by the tonal shift after they’d just come to an agreement on the fact that he was scared.
“Baby,” Lucy lied, wincing, a hand on her belly. “Guess nobody ever told her about the home-field advantage.”
Dev blinked.
“I mean she wants out,” Lucy explained.
“Marcus said it was going to be a boy,” Dev observed—stating a fact, not necessarily trying to start another argument.
But Lucy gritted her teeth anyway. “Then I guess Marcus should have stuck around,” she said, waddling away before he could raise another quibble she wasn’t in the mood for.
It wasn’t that Lucy wanted them to leave the safety of Devonshire right away. That’s not what she was suggesting. She was just thinking about the future. That was a side effect of being pregnant, she’d found—right up there with throwing up and weird cravings. And the future as she saw it—the immediate future—was this: she’d have the baby; she’d nurse the baby; she’d wait until the baby could walk, talk, and follow directions . . .
Lucy found herself smirking at her own train of thought. That last criterion—good luck with that. If she waited that long, they wouldn’t be leaving Devonshire until her kid was older than she was when she had it. So she clarified—old enough to understand directions—and crossed her fingers about the rest.
According to her watch—the LCD one with the month and day—she had about a month to go before meeting her baby. What remained of the baby’s father would have traveled through the guts of assorted wildlife by then, giving back to the earth in the form of fertilizer. With any luck, he’d wind up with a tree growing out of him anyway: score a point for Lucy.
The original plan had been for Marcus to be there when the time came. Dev hadn’t had a problem with that plan. “Whatever,” he’d said, “just keep it down.” It was exactly the same position he’d taken on the prospect of their having sex in his parents’ bedroom: he was okay with anything, just so long as he didn’t have to hear it.
Circumstances had changed since his original acquiescence to the miracle of birth happening right there in Devonshire. Surely he knew the plans had changed now that Marcus wasn’t around. He did know that, right? They’d not discussed it in so many words, but . . .
Okay, they’d not discussed it in any words, but he had to realize . . . right?
“You know I’m going to need you there,” Lucy said, broaching the subject she’d assumed didn’t need broaching—until she remembered whom she hadn’t broached it with.
“Where?” Dev asked. “I already told you I’m not leaving. We both agreed; I’m scared.”
“The there I mean is really not a place so much as a time,” Lucy tried.
“You mean like Einstein?”
Lucy looked puzzled, but then got it. “No, not the space-time continuum,” she said. “Though it is about relatives.”
It was Dev’s turn to look puzzled.
“My baby,” she explained. “My kid. We’ll be related. You know, like relatives?” She paused. “Get it?”
And slowly—painfully it seemed—Dev did. “You want me,” he said, “to be in the same place as you when you’re having the baby?”
“Yes,” Lucy said, exhaling the word with a sigh.
“Um,” he said, “can I think about it?”
“What’s there to think about?”
“Lots,” Dev said, bolting away as if from a bomb ready to explode.
Trying to explain how Dev chose his topiques was like trying to explain love at first sight. Something he’d seen and ignored a thousand times before would suddenly grow sticky in his imagination. He could try brushing it off on a pant leg or passing it from finger to finger, trying to flick it away like a stubborn bit of snot, but eventually he had to admit it—like a Band-Aid, it was stuck on him, and he was stuck on it.
Take vacuum cleaners, for instance.
One day it was just another plugged-in thing he had to avoid tripping over on his way to and from his room. But the next day, he saw the way the light from the window fell along the curve of its handle, as sensuous in its way as the neck of an upright bass. He’d noticed—suddenly—how thought-out the thing was: the way the handle fit into a hose and could be removed from it, making room for attachments, each for some specific, vacuum-related task—a tool for sucking crumbs from along the piping around a couch cushion, another to remove the same from deep-buttoned upholstery. There were hooks top and bottom, placed there for winding the cord back up, and which his mother never used, preferring to gather the long wire in a sloppy loop she draped over the handle and dust canister. There was a lever at foot level you stepped on to release the handle, dropping it until it was nearly horizontal, the better to vacuum under tables and beds. The canister was made of clear plastic, like a cloud chamber for creating lab-sized tornadoes he could study now for hours, learning about vectors, wind shears, the cyclonic force behind dust devils and spiral galaxies . . .
Vacuum cleaners were his last, pure topique since before everything changed. After that, he’d tackled what needed tackling to
stay alive until he ran out of things to tackle. And then he started looking for something new to fall in love with. And there it was, the old stickiness, heralding his next obsession, the words in the air, coalescing around it:
. . . I’ll need you there . . .
. . . when the time comes . . .
. . . the baby . . . the baby . . . the baby . . .
Delivering babies, obstetrics, parenthood: these would be his latest and most pressing topiques. And unlike the others—except maybe the survival ones—the clock was ticking.
Loudly.
And so Dev ran. Of course he did. He had a lot to learn and not a lot of time to do it. Unfortunately, while his neighbors’ porn collections had provided an amateur’s understanding of gynecology, he’d found only one DVD of a live delivery preserved by a couple that had been middle-aged by the time Dev knew them. Judging from the clamshell, the DVD was actually a transfer from a videocassette shot sometime in the 1980s, judging from the chunkiness of the doctor’s wristwatch and the hefty videographic gear the dad was shouldering when he took an old-school selfie by shooting himself in the mirror before swinging around for the money shot. The good news for those long-dead parents was the delivery went smoothly; the bad news for Dev was the delivery went smoothly.
Smoothly was not what he was looking for. He wanted to know what could go wrong. The complications. The avoidable mistakes. The things one might do just before, just during, or just after that would misshape a life, or cut it short. These were not new questions. The mysterious ways that birth and early life could go wrong had been the subject of much debate in the Brinkman home, all coming back to the same, extremely personal themes:
What happened to make Dev Dev? And whose fault was it?
If he’d had an e-reader and the infrastructure to make it work, he’d have searched online, read reviews, zeroed in on exactly what he needed and been reading a minute or two later. As it was, Dev had already collected all the books worth collecting in Devonshire. If it wasn’t in his just-in-case library, it was fiction and untrustworthy on its face. That was the situation inside the wall. Outside, however, there was an actual public library a few miles away. Dev hadn’t been there since—well, ever. Didn’t need to. The internet had been enough to get him through grade school and as much of high school as he’d had before class was dismissed forever. But what choice did he have now?
Happy Doomsday: A Novel Page 34