by Sylvia Ryan
“Uh oh, looks like you drew the short straw,” Julia said with a smile as Arden sat next to her.
He looked at Julia and took her hand. She was suddenly wary, knowing by the look on his face that whatever he was going to say to her was not good.
“We have to leave for another raiding trip.”
Julia was quiet for a long time, her mind working. “No. No, Arden. You can’t leave me here by myself. I’m having a baby.”
“We have to. We have to go now because of the baby.”
“No, you can’t leave me here alone. What if something happens to you? I’ll be here alone forever. You can’t both go!” Julia started to yell with her rising hysteria.
“Julia, you’ve been here alone before, and we will only be gone three or four days this time, promise.”
She stood. “No!” she screamed back at him, her hands clenched into fists.
Ben must have heard her from the kitchen because he exited the back door and joined them.
Julia looked from Arden then to Ben. She was devastated. “No! It was different then. If something happened to you guys, I only had to take care of myself. And if something happened to me, then it was just me that was hurt or dead. It wouldn’t have mattered much to anybody else.”
Arden took a step toward her, “It will be okay—”
“No!” she yelled and then turned to get away from them. She needed time to let this sink in. They were leaving her. They could be leaving her forever. “I trusted you. I trusted you guys.” Tears were welling up in her eyes. “I should have never trusted you!” she screamed, her face flush with anger.
In defeat, she sobbed, barely able to take in dragging breaths. They were going to leave her here. If they loved her, they wouldn’t do that. They wouldn’t leave her by herself. What if they didn’t come back? She and the baby, all by themselves…
She was hyperventilating. She couldn’t get enough air between sobs. She bent over and put her hand on her knees, alternately crying and sucking in big breaths of air.
Both men tried to approach her to hold her, but she twisted herself away from them.
Her body revolted against her. She vomited on the ground between large, racking sobs.
“Okay, that’s enough, dammit!” Ben stomped over to Julia, picked her up, brought her in the house, up the stairs, and lay her down on her bed. “Now calm down!” he said, pointing at her. Then turned around and left, slamming the door.
* * * *
“That woman’s going to be the end of me,” he mumbled as he stomped back down the stairs.
“What? You just left her up there?” Arden asked.
“She needed to calm down and us hovering around her wasn’t going to accomplish that.”
“What do you think?” Arden asked. “Should we still go? Stick with our original plan? She’s totally freaked.”
“We don’t have much of a choice, but we need to make it as quick and painless as possible for her.”
* * * *
Quite a while later, Julia reluctantly drug herself out of bed. She checked herself in a mirror. Her eyes were red and swollen. She probably would have stayed in that bedroom all night in protest of their leaving. But her body betrayed her. She had to pee.
She ignored the two men as she passed through the kitchen and walked outside to the outhouse. When she came back inside, Arden took Julia into his arms and whispered soft assurances to her. He told her sweet lies that he could not possibly promise her. The fact was, no matter how many times he told her it was going to be okay, he didn’t know that for sure. Nobody did.
When Arden released her, Julia looked at Ben. It dawned on her that this was what he was arguing with Arden about. He didn’t want to leave her. In fact, he looked absolutely miserable.
She went over and sat on his lap. “Sorry, I kinda lost it a little.”
He nodded but didn’t say anything.
After Julia had settled, they wasted no time compiling a list. It was mostly baby things, something to use as diapers, safety pins, baby bottles, and baby clothes. They also listed the staples that could always be of good use—candles, matches, salt, and canning supplies.
The men planned to head out the same direction they had last time, hoping to find much of the needed materials at the Salvation Army. This time they were bringing a crowbar with them, hoping they would be able to break open the metal gate secured in front of the entrance door.
By the time the men were well planned and packed to go, Julia had internally strengthened herself so as to not let them know that she was still upset. Before they left, they held her and told her how much they loved her and the baby. They held her gently in their arms for a long time. She stood stiff and dry-eyed, heartbroken.
She handled the good-byes with strength and grace. With last minute reminders about the pistol they’d left her and the hidden root cellar at Ben’s farm, they set out together. Julia watched, ironically noting that the woman who fearlessly commanded hundreds of inmates less than a year before was afraid to be alone.
Julia tried to keep busy by stitching a tiny shirt for the baby but was feeling fidgety. She thought about the root cellar at the next farm over. The doors lay flush to the ground, camouflaged by brush, wood chips, and kindling, as if that were the place the firewood had been cut and split. She wondered if she would be able to move the stuff hiding the doors or even lift the doors by herself.
She grabbed the pistol that was to be her constant companion over the next four days and headed over to Ben’s burnt-out homestead. She wasn’t just curious about being able to open the door. She also wanted to check out what was down there. She knew it was stocked, but stocked with what? Now that was an interesting question.
It was a hot day, and halfway there, Julia wished she’d made the trip a little later when the sun was lower in the sky. She was hot and thirsty by the time she got there. But she felt better just being away from the farm. In a weird way, Ben’s property was probably safer, with the main house being burned to the ground. People looking for food or supplies wouldn’t even bother to make the walk from the road.
When she got to the root cellar, she surveyed the area to find the handles that had been carefully concealed under some large pieces of bark and kindling wood. The dead brush used as camouflage was carefully positioned to cover only one of the two doors, so the brush wouldn’t have to be moved in order to make it down into the cellar.
She hefted the door open and guided it through its arc until it rested on the complete opposite side of its hinge. The cool air wafting up from the hole in the ground felt like standing in front of the refrigerator on a hot day—Mother Nature’s air-conditioning. Julia eyed the stairs that sank into the hole.
Being very careful, she took the first two stairs, steadying herself with her hands flush to the ground on both sides of the entry. She looked for a handrail but couldn’t see one.
With her good judgment getting the best of her, she decided that she wasn’t willing to risk walking into a pitch-dark hole in the ground for no reason. She turned around to walk back up the stairs.
Abruptly, the wood step beneath her feet snapped with a crack, instantly dropping her weight. Julia’s body fell backwards down the stairs at full force. Her head bounced off the edge of the bottom step. The sharp stabs of pain that shot through her head and leg as she landed was brutal, but mercifully, unconsciousness descended on her quickly.
Chapter 19
Julia regained consciousness in the dark. It was nighttime.
Shit, I’ve been here the whole day.
Her left foot was caught up on something near the top of the stairs. Her head lay on the edge of the last step. The regular beat of her heart pounded through it. She raised her arm to touch the area that hurt the most and felt a wide gash, a horizontal stair imprint across the back of her head. Her hair was wet and matted with blood.
She touched her belly as if to see if she was still pregnant.
Even if her body wanted to miscarry, she
doubted it would while she was hanging upside down.
Julia raised her head, attempting to see what her foot was caught up on. She couldn’t. It was too dark. She tried pulling it away and was met with excruciating pain in her ankle. She tried again, and the pain won the tug of war, pulling her into a deep blackness again.
It was daylight the next time she came to. She felt the back of her head again. It was drier and crusty in spots. Then, she raised her head to look at her caught foot. The top of her shoe was caught up behind the broken step. Julia turned her foot to the left so that the toe of her shoe could clear the back of the stair to release her. The pain hit her immediately, but she did not stop until the shoe was free from behind the step.
With nothing holding her in place, her body slithered toward the cool, hard-packed earth at the bottom of the stairs. It took a lot of effort to control the movement enough that she wouldn’t just fall in on herself. She carefully backed the top part of her body away from the stairs as the rest of her followed. With the movement, her stomach started rolling, and she heaved as if to vomit, but nothing came.
Julia rolled onto her side and balled herself up. She rested with her eyes closed and waited for her heartbeat to even and her breathing to steady. Her ears were ringing, and her skin was moist and clammy. When she opened her eyes, she got a good look at the blood pool from her head. It was sizeable, but she told herself it probably looked bigger than it really was because of her body’s slide away from the stairs. Julia tried to sit up. Her head swam, and she felt like she was going to pass out. She lay back down on her side. That felt much better.
She rubbed her belly for a while, and then she slid her hand inside the waistband of her pants and panties and felt around. It didn’t feel wet. She pulled her hand out and looked. No blood. With a sigh of relief, Julia closed her eyes again and rested. She knew that she shouldn’t fall asleep. Doctors on TV always said not to fall asleep to people with a head injuries.
Taking your medical advice from Grey’s Anatomy now, Julia?
To get a look at what was behind her, Julia rolled over to her other side. She groaned in pain. Her back hurt from top to bottom. Once she made it completely around, she opened her eyes. The room was stocked from floor to ceiling with canned food, hunting rifles, fishing poles, a kerosene generator, and some Rubbermaid totes.
No water.
Her mouth was dry. She needed something to drink. She scanned again. On a bottom shelf, farther toward the back of the room, were three mason jars of canned pears in water. No standing, no can opener needed. Yes.
Julia gathered her strength to move her body toward her goal. She was tired.
Rest for a minute.
As she lay there, she felt her baby whirl and kick inside of her. She smiled. Everything was going to be okay. She tried to move her body on her hands and knees toward the pears. Head pounding and spinning, stomach nauseated, she forced herself to get there. She grabbed a glass jar and collapsed down on her side, hugging the jar to her chest.
After a few minutes, Julia righted the jar and easily unscrewed the outside ring. But she couldn’t pry off the lid that was suctioned to the top of the jar. She tried several more times, then with a curse, set that jar aside. She grabbed another jar and did the same. This time the round seal released with a slight hiss-pop. Julia propped herself up on an elbow and drank the sweet syrup surrounding the pears, then stuck two fingers into the jar to grab one. Even though she wasn’t hungry, she knew she had to get some nutrition in her for the baby.
She lay back down and felt a lot better about her situation. She had already been down there for at least a day. Arden promised they would be gone no more than four days. Many, many times over the past months, they had told her to trust them. She hoped she could.
The roiling in her stomach increased after she drank and ate the pieces of pear, and she felt her mouth watering. She kept swallowing and swallowing, and took in long breaths of air through her nose, trying to hold down the food and liquid that was fighting its way back up.
Rolling over to her side and raising herself up on one elbow, she vomited the contents of her stomach next to the open jar of pears. She heaved again and again, even though the contents of her stomach had been emptied onto the floor in full.
A mist of sweat covered her body. It was cool down there. She shouldn’t be sweating. When, at last, her stomach stopped heaving, Julia lay back on her side, curled in a ball.
Julia was bombarded with emotions. She was pissed at herself. She was desperate for her baby, and she was scared that she had just made the biggest mistake of her life. How ironic that they all worried about somebody coming to the farm and hurting her. Shit, she didn’t need that. She’d just do it herself.
Somehow she knew, always knew, that this was too good to be true—being happy, in love, having a family. Subconsciously, she had been waiting for the other shoe to fall. Somehow she always thought it would be that her men would lose interest and not love her anymore. Or maybe they would just never come home. She never dreamed that she would do something stupid enough to hurt herself— that separation from her men would be due to her own big fuckup.
Julia started singing to herself as a way to stay awake and pass time. James Taylor’s “You’ve Got a Friend” was the only song her brain could grab onto. She couldn’t think of anything else. She just kept repeating, repeating, and repeating until she’d sung herself to sleep.
* * * *
Julia woke up with her teeth chattering. It was sort of half-light outside, and she couldn’t tell if it was dusk or dawn. She rolled onto her back slowly. She felt stiff, but maybe her ankle was feeling a little better.
She decided that she would eat some pears and drink the rest of the liquid in the jar. Then she would try to sit, and when sitting was okay, she would stand.
She slowly ate one piece of pear and drank the liquid, then waited. Her stomach seemed to hold onto it okay, but she couldn’t stop her teeth from chattering, and since she’d sat up, she was getting clammy again. She definitely felt better lying down. Julia forced another pear into her and decided she would try standing up. She rolled to her hands and knees and tried to climb her way to vertical, using the shelves on the walls to hold onto. She was dizzy and sick to her stomach but made it upright on her good ankle. She put more weight onto the hurt side and immediately knew she would not be able to walk back to the house with it, even if the rest of her body cooperated, which it wasn’t.
Since she was upright, she quickly looked around and saw a camouflage hunting jacket on a hook in the corner near all the guns and other hunting stuff. She got back on all fours and crawled to that corner, then pulled herself up again, unhooked the jacket and fell to the floor. Julia rolled back into a ball and covered herself with the jacket.
By the time she covered herself up, she realized that it was sunrise, and not sunset, that she woke up to. She thanked God that the temperature would probably go up once the sun was up. Was this day two or day three? She honestly couldn’t figure out how long she’d been there.
Trying to feel the baby, Julia lay still for a very long time
Nothing.
She began circling her stomach with her hand and started to sing again. As before, it was the same song over and over.
The words were her companion. She imagined Arden playing it on his guitar and singing to her.
But the baby did not move. She checked her panties for blood again. None.
She realized that she hadn’t had to go to the bathroom the entire time she had been down there. However long that was.
She needed to eat and drink more. She scooted over to the last glass jar of pears, opened it, and drank a few more swallows. She ate another piece of pear and lay back down.
Julia lay, rubbing her belly and begged the baby to move for her.
Move, please move. She felt so ashamed—guilty for the danger she had put her baby in
I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Move for me, please. Please.
&nb
sp; She fought to stay awake as long as she could, but lost the battle quickly.
Chapter 20
Arden and Ben were on their way back. Ben was satisfied. By the time they got to the farm, it would be within the three to four day schedule they had promised Julia. They’d been extremely lucky, finding much of what was on their list. That little strip mall where they’d raided the Salvation Army turned out to be a gold mine. They got plenty of baby clothes and plenty of adult items that could be cut down and made into diapers. They had broken into a day care center and hit the mother lode of nursery supplies, and one of the classrooms had a cache of instant coffee, powdered creamer, and sugar. The men filled a shopping cart to the brim. They were more than satisfied with their finds. All in all, they’d done well.
Even though the men were tired, they were only a few more hours away from home, and both wanted nothing more than to climb into bed with Julia and sleep tomorrow away. As they walked, they talked about the baby feeling more real now that they had some supplies for it. And both men confessed that they would probably prefer a son, but as long as it was healthy, it didn’t really matter that much.
“I’d like to have a lot more. But I’m not so sure Julia will be that thrilled about the idea,” Arden said with a snicker.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if she didn’t let us anywhere near her anymore.”
“We should have put condoms on the raid list,” Arden said.
“To be honest, I’m a little worried about the whole delivery and having a newborn baby with no medical backup,” Ben said as he locked eyes with Arden. The fear in both men’s hearts was confirmed, but the rest went unspoken.
It was the middle of the night when they finally reached home. They walked around the house and up the porch stairs. The screen door was closed, but the regular door was open. The men looked at each other. Julia would never leave herself that vulnerable while she was sleeping. She knew better. The men dropped their backpacks and palmed their guns. Ben went into the house first. Arden was right behind him. They quickly scanned the dark kitchen and family room. Nothing. They ran up the stairs to her bedroom. Nothing again.