After they had examined him thoroughly, and knowing what had happened to his mother after he had been born, the doctors weren’t sure what to make of Luke. That was what Holly had wanted him named. Luke. And we had granted her that last request.
After he was cleaned up, examined, fed, washed, warmed, vaccinated, and clothed, Luke looked normal. And he acted normal, too. They kept him under observation for several days, but he appeared to be healthy. He weighed 6 pounds, 11 ounces. He ate well. Everything was perfect. And they had no reason to hold him there.
After three days, Jacob and I walked out of St. Joseph’s, followed by Risa, Caitlyn and DeAndre. I cradled Luke in my arms as we walked out into a warm, sunny, normal day. It was surreal.
We stayed at a motel for a week, figuring out what to do, gathering baby stuff and equipping ourselves to take care of a newborn. Diapers, formula, little outfits, blankets. All the while Risa never stopped hopping from foot to foot in her excitement.
“A baby!” she kept exclaiming. We just smiled. We were all still so sad about Holly, but Luke distracted us all. He was a very good baby. He ate well, and slept most of the time and hardly cried at all. He brought a little joy into a sad world.
Mike had moved on to find his cousins. And we dropped the dogs off at a no kill shelter. It was, once again, us kids, on our own. We tried to find news of our families, who had supposedly been evacuated to this city, but they wouldn’t tell us anything. So we waited.
Eventually, we learned that most of the busloads of evacuees had come to a bad end. One or more of the passengers had turned, most on the trip here. The buses had either crashed or become entirely infected. Hardly anyone had survived. My mom and little brother, my grandparents: all gone. I never found out which bus they’d been on. But after searching for a month, making dozens of calls and visiting each evac site, I came to accept that I would probably never see them again.
It was much the same for Jacob, DeAndre and Caitlyn’s families, as well as Risa’s. We even tried to find Emily’s parents, but to no avail. The authorities were pretty tight-lipped about the whole thing, too. They presented us with lists of the surviving evacuees, but none had our relatives on them. It was a sad time, made happier only by the presence of Baby Luke.
We kept looking for signs of what they were going to do about the plague. After a while, the military stated they had the situation mostly under control. Two days later, however, there was another announcement that California was not under control, and that travel into the state had been halted. It seemed the infection had not only spread from Palo Alto to San Francisco and Fresno and Bakersfield, and to Los Angeles, but to San Diego as well. Mexico had sealed off their border and wasn’t allowing anyone into their country. The Mexican army had stationed guards along the border for a hundred miles.
We stayed in the motel for that first week, trying to prepare ourselves for what we knew was coming. And come, it did. But in a form we weren’t expecting.
“Alyssa, come here,” said Caitlyn. She had been feeding baby Luke with a bottle in a chair. Jacob and I had been talking quietly nearby. Okay, we had been mostly gazing into each other’s eyes. But there had been a few words. I think. When Caitlyn called me over, Jacob and I both got up and went to her.
“What’s up, Caitlyn?” Jacob asked.
“How’s our perfect baby doing with his breakfast today?” I asked, smiling.
“Look at Luke’s face,” Caitlyn said quietly.
We looked down and both of us went silent. DeAndre came in then, from the outside hallway. He had been changing the oil on the van and he wiped his hands with a rag as he walked in.
“What’s up, guys?” he asked, walking up to us all. We were silent. He looked down at baby Luke, held in Caitlyn’s arms. Luke gurgled quietly and let out a gentle burp.
We all looked down at Luke. We were struck with silence. We looked at that baby, disbelieving.
Luke’s face was light grey.
Acknowledgement
A huge thank you to Steve Provost for his support and editing expertise.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Samaire Provost lives in California with her husband and son.
Her love of paranormal stories, odd plots, and unique tales as well as the works of Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett, Susan Cooper, Madeleine L’Engle and Stephen King has deeply influenced her writing.
This is her first novel.
Table of Contents
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Mad World (Book 1): Epidemic Page 14