No Man's Land

by Jacqueline Druga

  “Even to healthy mothers,” the soldier said. “They’re coming out that way.”

  “No.” I shook my head. The soldier was wrong. He had to be mistaken.

  “Man, I heard that thing crying all night.” Was what the man in Marshal said when he tried to rob me.

  Then when Trent told me, “Diana told me about your dead tag along,” surely, he was talking about Leah. Or was he?

  No, was I blinded? Was I missing it?

  “Sir, you can come in. But you can’t bring that in here.”

  “Calvin,” Hannah said my name with a whimper. “We don’t need to stay. You love Edward.”

  “Sir, move it to the side and go through or—”

  “He don’t know!” Hannah shouted. “He doesn’t see. Leave him be a second!”

  “What do you mean I don’t know?” I asked. “See what? Hannah, you have been…” Every ounce of breath left me. She calmed him down… always. She made Edward quiet.

  “I… fed him for you.”

  “Boy, I have to tell you, Hannah, you have the magic touch with him.”

  “I know what I’m doing. Mom said it takes patience to feed a baby right and know what it wants.”

  I finally finished my own sentence, “…feeding him.” My eyes shifted to her bloody bandage and then to Edward. The pacifier dropped from his mouth; it was blood stained as was his mouth.

  “He didn’t touch the cut,” Hannah cried. “I just dripped some in his bottle. His pacifier…”

  “No.” The rain beat down, the lightning flashed and in that instance the fog was lifted. He hadn’t turned into it, he hadn’t died on the trip. Edward like every other baby, was born a Vee.

  His eyes shifted about, they were gray and lifeless. His skin was leathery and split in some places. His hand had rotted and several of his fingers were gone. “No. No.” I shook my head. “How… why didn’t I know?”

  “You weren’t ready to know,” Hannah said. “You lost your wife, you didn’t want to know. He’s all you had.”

  A deep ache filled my chest, I wanted to scream, to cry out, but all that emerged was a sob. I would have broken down had another soldier not approached.

  “What’s going on?” the second soldier asked.

  “We have a bit of a problem.”

  The second that other soldier saw Edward he pulled out his pistol.

  “No!” I shouted. “No! I’ll take him away. No.” I stepped from the cart, my feet splashed in the puddle when I touched the road.

  “Calvin, where are you going?” Hannah shouted.

  I began to sob as I cradled Edward in my arms and headed away from Sanctuary. My heart was broken. I had carried him, cared for him and worried about Edward the entire journey. I loved and needed him so badly. I was blinded by what he truly was.

  “Calvin, you can’t leave me!” Hannah yelled. “You promised! You promised me!”

  Her voice faded as I moved further down the road, the rain was loud as it fell around me drowning out the sound of everything. I knew where I was going and what I had to do. I knew she had to be there.

  She was.

  Leah stood in the middle of the road. Everything was clear. I wondered why she followed me so fervently. Maybe I was wrong, or still delusional, but it wasn’t me that she was following.

  I moved close to Leah and pressed my lips to Edward’s head. “Goodbye, I love you, little one.” Then I extended the baby to Leah.

  “Take him,” I said. “Take the baby.”

  I didn’t know what she would do, she stared at me for the longest time, hesitating before she grabbed Edward and brought the baby to her chest.

  When she did that, I knew it was time to leave. A searing pain radiated through my chest, it hurt to breathe and I took a few steps back.

  Leah turned, walked away and for the first time in the journey, she didn’t follow me. She just kept going.

  It was my cue to do the same. I said a final goodbye to my wife and I knew it was the last time I would see her. I bid farewell to my son, as well, but it wasn’t the last time I would be a father. Another child needed me.

  I would be there for her and I headed back to Sanctuary Sixteen.

  26

  Expire

  October 10

  Mama Mavis greeted us with open arms. In fact. She ran down the road to greet us and told us she was thrilled the second she saw it was us.

  As Hannah predicted, she was sad about Jason. However, she figured something had happened to him when he never returned.

  Her husband George had expired a week earlier.

  In fact, there was a lot of expiring.

  The night we had arrived at Sanctuary Sixteen, both Hannah and I were more physically and emotionally exhausted than we realized.

  I knew the second we stepped in there that we weren’t staying. Like we were told, we had to surrender our belongings. Because everyone knew Jason, and I vocalized that our stay was temporary, they didn’t claim our horse and cart. I was told it would be ours to have.

  We couldn’t leave though, until one week after the last city had been purged.

  The college town of Morehead was nothing but a massive tent city. They crammed people together, rows and rows of cots in each tent. Not a spot of grass could be seen.

  Dogs and cats were not permitted and food was distributed to tents once a week. Rations were meager and they tossed in a few items I suspected came from the belongings they seized from arrivals.

  I was scared that Hannah was infected with the virus. That somehow she had caught it from Edward. It wasn’t the case. Because she continuously opened her wound to give him blood, her cut just didn’t heal.

  Both she and I spent the first week in a medical tent. I was on some sort of watch because they weren’t certain of my mental state. I wasn’t either. I took ‘denial’ to the extreme.

  After that, we were given quarters where we shared a tent with an eighty-year-old couple. They were nice enough, both had lost everyone to the virus. The woman, Ernesta, prepared all our meals from our rations. She wouldn’t let me help at all.

  Staying with her, reminded us of Mavis and we couldn’t wait to return.

  While there I told Hannah about my boss Martin and how he had a survival place in Montana. She said it was a sign that his first name was Mavis’ last name, and that maybe we should go to Montana.

  I simply told her, “Maybe.”

  A rumor started around the camp that the fire bombings of the cities were a waste, that the Vee infected from the waves were expiring. That the ‘dead’ really only walked for a month.

  Many disputed those rumors, claiming that the older Vee were gone but the virus wasn’t. They’d always be there and be a threat.

  The old way of life was gone. It was a new world.

  One thing was certain, I was healed physically and emotionally.

  I was a new person, my family was Hannah now. However, not a day went by when I didn’t think of Leah or Edward.

  By the time we were able to leave Sanctuary, several of the soldiers confirmed the rumors of the expiring Vee and new Vee emerging, though not as many as in the beginning. People stayed behind the fences, needing the provisions and protection that Sanctuary offered. Sanctuary was their new home.

  I believe many more would have left, but there was no way to know truly what was going on in the world, except to go see.

  As the horse-drawn cart brought us down Old Sixty, I admittedly looked. I kept looking to see if I saw Leah or Edward, or even their remains. Alas, they were gone.

  I prayed they expired together, that Leah simply sat down with Edward in her arms and finally passed from this life, instead of being gunned down like animals.

  We did see the bodies of many expired. I wondered if they would be cleaned up one day or just left to turn to dust. My guess was it would be the latter.

  We made it to Mama Mavis’ place in three days after leaving Sanctuary. I never saw one person so happy to see me. It was the right deci
sion to go back there.

  Perhaps one day, for Hannah’s sake, she and I would brave another road trip, maybe to Montana or just to see the world and meet other people. We would wait though, it was still too dangerous. People made it dangerous and it would be up to people to make it better again.

  Life as we knew it was gone. No television, radio or internet. There were no new books to read, or songs to hear. Pockets of society thrived while others deteriorated. News traveled by word of mouth, and it was few and far between when we saw another person.

  One day the Vee would disappear. Each generation would grow smaller, and eventually there would be no more.

  Until the world was truly purged of the monsters, both living and dead, Hannah and I would stay put at that little farm on the border of West Virginia and Kentucky. We were given a chance not just to survive in a dying world, but to be alive.

  For the time being, we’d take it day by day, grieving our losses, grateful for the chance at life, and hopeful that somehow, someway, I’d live long enough to see the better world I knew was ahead for us all.