NOWHERE
Childhood’s End
Jennifer Reynolds
Copyright © 2019
All Rights Reserved
Cover Copyright © 2019
Lynn Lamb @ Books Banners Etc.
All Rights Reserved.
Jennifer Reynolds asserts the moral and legal right to be identified as the author of this work. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the owner. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding other than that which it is published and without a similar condition, including this requirement being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Author’s Note
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or real places or events is purely coincidental.
***WARNING: ADULT CONTENT AND STRONG LANGUAGE***
NOWHERE
Jennifer Reynolds
Dedication
I’m dedicating all the Shore Haven short stories to those who love the novel so much. If you all hadn’t been so excited about Shore Haven’s world, I wouldn’t have had the inspiration to dive back into it so many times. I love you all.
Table of Contents
chapter1
chapter2
chapter3
chapter4
chapter5
chapter6
chapter7
1.
“You look like shit. Are you sure you want to go to work today?” I asked my best friend as I helped her carry one of her twins into my house from her car.
Both kids had fallen asleep during the short ride from Kim’s house to mine. We carried the three-year-olds to my back bedroom and put them in the twin toddler bed I had for them for when they stayed with me five days a week while Kim worked.
“I feel worse than I look, but I have to go in,” she said, breathing heavy from the exertion. “We’re still paying for their birth. I have to work until those bills are paid off.”
Her tone of voice didn’t suggest she regretted the decision to have her babies, but I could tell by the look of her she wished she didn’t have the bills, so she could miss work.
I didn’t say anything. I loved the twins with all my heart. I was their Godmother. I’d been their babysitter since they were six months old and Kim had to go back to work, but I had cautioned Kim and Wayne about going into that much debt just to have a child.
Conceiving in our world wasn’t easy. Most couples had a single child. Some had two. Very few had three, and almost none had twins, triplets, and the like. Carl and I had been lucky. We hadn’t had any issues having Jerimiah, but we were a rarity. We also hadn’t tried for a second. The average couple spent the first five to ten years of their marriage trying to conceive with the help of countless fertility drugs. I hadn’t wanted to put my body through that and had happily accepted my baby boy. That had been one of the many reasons for Carl and I’s divorce some ten years after Jeremiah’s birth, not that Carl had ever remarried or had another child.
Kim and Wayne had married at twenty, and when they turned thirty and hadn’t had a baby, the government stopped assisting them financially. The couple had to start taking out loans to pay for the shots and meds they took for another five years that eventually led to the birth of Eva and Aiden. If it hadn’t been for the fact that the money they’d borrowed was to help them conceive and for the fact that it had actually paid off in the end, the two would have lost everything they owned. Loan companies and banks eagerly handed them money with low monthly payments that did add up after a while and would take them until the twins were grandparents themselves before they ever paid them back.
I’m not saying it was a waste of money. I’m just saying that I don’t know if I would have done it. Kim and Wayne worked so much that they didn’t get to spend a lot of time with the babies they so desperately wanted.
“I don’t know,” I said, leading Kim to my kitchen table and handing her a cup of coffee. “I think your students could do without you for a day.”
I placed the back of my hand on her forehead to feel the fever I knew she had.
“I’m sure they’d love the time off, but the end of the semester exams are coming up, and I still have a lot of ground to cover. They’ll just have to suffer through me.”
I could only shake my head at her.
“Do you want breakfast before you go?” I asked.
“No, this coffee is all I need to wake me.”
We sat and drank. I watched Kim’s skin color leak away, and her energy drain.
“Seriously, Kim, you look like you’re going to collapse,” I said after a while.
“I’ll be all right. I just have to get through today and tomorrow, and then I’ll have the rest of the week off. I’ve already canceled my Thursday and Friday classes so we can take the twins to Liberty for their yearly checkups,” she said, setting her cup down and getting up to head to the door.
“Okay, well, if you’re still sick and need me to watch the kids overnight, just let me know. I can come to your house and watch them if you’d rather do that, too.”
“I might have to take you up on that offer.”
She all but stumbled out of the house and to her car. I really should have taken her keys from her. Had she been drunk, I would have. Instead, as soon as she pulled out of my driveway, I called Wayne.
“She didn’t seem that bad when I left the house, but I’ll call the university in a few minutes to check on her. Many people are out sick here today, so there might be a bug going around. I think I heard some news reports about a flu epidemic on my way in this morning. How are the twins?” he asked.
“Good. Still sleeping. The two usually won’t wake for another hour to an hour and a half. I’ll keep an eye on them though, and let one of you know the second one of them starts to look sickly.”
“Thanks. I have another call coming through. I’ll talk to you later.”
“All right. Bye.”
As I hung up, my brain latched onto what he said about people at his firm being out sick.
“I wonder if the news has anything to say about this,” I said to no one, which was typical for me since most days it was just the twins and me in the house. Carl and I shared custody of Jeremiah, so he was only with me every other week.
I flipped on the television, but before I could find a channel with any kind of information on a flu or pneumonia outbreak, Aiden started crying.
My day went along as usual: meals, potty breaks, keeping the babies out of things they didn’t need to get into, reading the two of them stories—that sort of thing.
The kids kept me so busy that I hardly realized when four o’clock rolled around, then five.
If she’s lucky, Kim was able to leave campus by three-thirty or so and had the kids by four. She was never any later than five-thirty. Neither was Wayne considering he got off work at five.
I tried their cell phones first but didn’t get an answer. I called Kim’s office and then the English department’s number. No one answered either line. Next, I called their home phone and then Wayne’s office. Still, no one.
By that point, Eva and Aiden were getting fussy. They wanted their parents and their home. They loved me, no doubt, but I wasn’t their mom. They also knew the routine, knew that by that time of day t
hey were supposed to be home.
I called a few more times with no answer before giving up and making the kids supper, hoping that would calm them down and maybe make them sleepy.
The food and the bath that I gave them shortly afterward did eventually put them to sleep.
Finally, around nine that night, Wayne called. He sounded utterly exhausted.
“Is Kim all right?” was the first thing out of my mouth.
“For now. I had to leave work around one to take her to the emergency room. We haven’t been home long. She’s sick. Throwing up, diarrhea, high fever. The hospital gave her I.V. fluids and some meds, but they think it’s just a bad stomach bug and that it’ll be over by tomorrow or Thursday. I’m sorry, I couldn’t call you earlier, but for some reason, I couldn’t get service anywhere in the hospital. I even walked outside once, but I couldn’t get a call through. No one seemed to be able to. Tera, do you mind keeping the kids overnight?”
“No, I don’t mind. They’re asleep anyway. I’ll call you first thing. Keep me posted if anything changes through the night.”
“I will. Thank you for everything.”
“No problem.”
As soon as I hung up with Wayne, I called Jeremiah. I talked to my son for nearly two hours; the longest he and I have ever spoken on the phone. He told me about how sick everyone was at his school and about how the news says that the school board was canceling classes for the next day. He informed me of what the internet was saying was happening on Liberty Island and the towns around it.
I couldn’t believe what he was telling me. None of the news channels I’d come across had said a word about people killing each other. They’d talked about a mass sickness, and I’d assumed it was the same sickness Kim had.
When I finally hung up with him, I did a bit of research on my own.
“Holy shit,” I said. Again, to no one. I could do nothing but stare at the images on my computer screen.
Surely, that wasn’t going to happen to Kim. I couldn’t believe that it would happen to anyone period let alone my best friend.
2.
I barely slept that night. The twins were up a few times, but not for long. They weren’t happy about finding themselves still at my house, but they seemed satisfied that they weren’t in unfamiliar surroundings and went back to sleep quickly enough.
The images I saw on the internet coming out of Liberty Island and the surrounding cities had been what kept me awake most of the night. I couldn’t close my eyes without seeing them. The logical side of my brain kept telling me that it was all a hoax.
Who was playing the joke and why? I couldn’t figure that part out. No way could what I saw be real. Creatures like that only existed in fiction. They’d fascinated the people of the old world. I’d never understood it. Maybe it was because I was living in the aftermath of a post-apocalyptic world. I’d seen destruction and sickness. I’d heard stories of how people had tried to take advantage of those they saw as weaker than themselves. I’d heard about the murders, the starvation, the rapes, the abuse, the horror that had surfaced. I knew too well what kind of monsters we humans were without laws and structure. I didn’t look forward to suffering in that kind of world.
I was born after the country had started to rebuild, and people had come to their senses again. My family hadn’t forgotten what their ancestors had been through. My family had passed the stories down from generation to generation. I’m sure some people altered or exaggerated the stories over time, but not by much. The stories were horrible enough on their own. They didn’t need anyone making them worse.
As soon as my alarm went off the next morning, I started calling Kim and Wayne. Not once did they answer. The calls went straight to voice mail. That wasn’t like either of them…not when I had their kids.
The twins felt my fear and anxiety when I woke them and began readying them for the day. They were fussy and hard to deal with. They didn’t want to change out of their p.j.s. They didn’t want breakfast. They didn’t want to get into my car even after I told them we were going to find mommy and daddy.
By the time I pulled out of my driveway, I was beyond haggard. No, I wasn’t annoyed with the kids. Well, okay, I was, but it wasn’t as if their mood was their fault. They were feeding off my emotions. My best friend, my sister, was sick. She’d been at the hospital the day before, and now, I couldn’t get on the phone. I had her kids, and she hadn’t called me once since dropping them off at my house yesterday to check on them. That wasn’t right.
Something was wrong. Very wrong. I had to know what it was. I probably shouldn’t have brought the kids with me to find out what that something was, but I didn’t know what else to do with them. Both Kim and Wayne’s family lived about an hour away. I wasn’t wasting time taking the babies to their grandparents until I knew what was going on.
The short drive from my house to Kim’s was unnaturally quiet. No one was on the road. I could hear more cars off in the distance, but I didn’t pass anyone. I didn’t see anyone stepping out to get the morning paper or loading their kids in the car to carry them to school.
Kim’s house looked empty when I pulled into the driveway. I waited in my car for a full minute to see if anyone would come out to greet me, but no one did. I spent another minute trying to decide if I should leave the kids in the car or take them with me. They’d recognized the house when we pulled up, but during my wait for someone to come out, they’d grown bored and fallen asleep. Hoping they stayed that way, I slipped from the car and approached the house.
I used my cell to call Kim’s number, not wanting to knock on the front door. I could hear her phone ringing from inside the house, but no one picked it up. I tapped lightly on the door and called Wayne and Kim’s name. No one answered. I knocked louder. Still nothing.
I refused to bang on the door, so I tried the knob, hoping the door was unlocked. That was my only stroke of luck. I glanced back at the still sleeping babies before entering.
The front door opened into the living room, which was a mess.
“Wayne. Kim,” I called in a tone a bit higher than a whisper.
I was used to no one answering me by then.
I went from the living room to the kitchen, calling for my friends. I heard nothing until I started up the stairs to the bedrooms. A toilet flushing broke the silence.
Someone was home. Why weren’t the two answering me, though?
I bounded up the steps and to the hall bathroom. The door was partially open. Kim was kneeling in front of the toilet. Her cheek lay on the seat. She looked awful.
I started to go to her, but Wayne came out of their bedroom, holding a shirt.
“Tera? What are you doing here?” he asked. He looked and sounded as if he hadn’t slept in days. He also looked as if he had a touch of the bug that Kim had. He had on sweats and a t-shirt that was sticking to him.
“I came to check on you guys. I’ve been calling you all morning.”
“Morning? It’s morning already?”
“Yeah.”
“Where are the twins?”
“In the car. I’ll take them back home with me until you two start feeling better,” I said.
“I want my babies,” Kim called from the bathroom.
I turned to see that she’d gotten up from the toilet and was trying to make her way toward us.
“You guys are sick,” I said. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. If they catch this too, you won’t be able to care for them and yourselves.”
“I feel okay,” Wayne said. “I’ll take care of them. Go ahead and bring them inside. Kim’s almost past the twenty-four-hour mark with her bug anyway. She’ll be feeling better any time now.”
“I don’t mind keeping them a little bit longer,” I said, taking a few steps toward the stairs. “Just until we know you won’t make them sick.”
“They’re my babies,” Kim said, stumbling out of the bathroom. “Not yours. Mine.”
“I know that.”
“Then give
them to me.”
“Kim,” was all I could say. She wasn’t behaving like herself. She would’ve never jeopardized her kids’ health, which was why they stayed with me and not at the daycare the university provided. She sends them to stay with her parents any time one of them even thinks they were getting the sniffles.
I looked to Wayne for help, but he’d disappeared into the bathroom, and I could hear retching sounds coming from the open door.
“I. Want. My. Babies,” Kim said, coming closer, not at all phased by her husband’s vomiting.
“You’re okay with them catching this virus? Both of you are obviously running a fever.”
She wouldn’t be talking to me this way if she weren’t.
“You’re both throwing up,” I added. “Whatever you have appears to be highly contagious. I don’t think you’re thinking clearly.”
“I’m thinking just fine,” she snarled. “Bring my kids to me.”
“Wayne?”
“Bring them inside, Tera. We’ll take care of them,” he said from the bathroom.
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
“Wayne, have you seen the news reports from Liberty Island? Do you know…”
“I have a good idea of what’s going on there, yes,” he said, coming out of the bathroom while wiping his mouth with the clean shirt I’d assumed he’d been taking to Kim.
“Then…”
“Just go get my kids,” he said.
I headed down the stairs. I didn’t know what I was going to do, but I left the house and went to the car. I was standing at the back, driver’s side door, trying to decide if I should drive away with the twins or not when I heard a shotgun cock behind me.
I froze.
I didn’t turn around.
Wayne went to the other side of the car and got Aiden out of the car seat. I tried protesting. I tried pleading. I tried asking if I could stay to help care for the babies until they were better, but my best friend, who held a gun to my head, was having none of it. I don’t know if the virus made people crazy before killing them and turning them into zombies or if the fever she’d ran burned so hot that it fried her brain, but she’d snapped. She wanted her kids, and there wasn’t anything I could do about it.
Shore Haven (Short Story 3): Nowhere Page 1