The End of All Things

by Lissa Bryan

  “You’re doing just fine, just fine.” Justin’s voice was soft and lulling, though she could see how his hands shook. After he checked her, he laid down beside her, propped up on her pillows. “Only about four centimeters—early stages yet. Have you had any more contractions?”

  Carly thought about it. “They’re more like cramps, so I don’t know if that’s a contraction or not.”

  “How far apart?”

  “I . . . um . . . I forgot to time them.” Carly felt like smacking her forehead. Reading all of those baby books and then forgetting the most basic thing.

  “Just tell me when you’re having them, and I’ll take care of it.” He tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and stroked her cheek with the back of his fingers. “I love you, Carly.”

  “I love you, too, Justin. Please don’t worry. I’m fine. Healthy as a horse.” She snuggled against his side and tried to reassure him with a smile. “And speaking of horses, you already have experience with delivering babies, right?”

  He gave a faint smile at her attempt at teasing, though his eyes were still worried.

  “There’s another one.”

  He checked the mantle clock, which he’d brought up from the living room for the purpose of timing contractions.

  If this was what having a baby was like, Carly thought, she was going to handle it well. She even dozed for a while between contractions. The contractions grew worse over the afternoon, but it wasn’t until early evening they actually became painful. She tried to be brave, tried to be tough so she wouldn’t worry Justin any worse than he already was, but by nightfall, she couldn’t help crying out when they seized her. Every time, he would wince like he felt it, too.

  “Did you get any drugs?” she asked when the pain became more or less continuous. “An epidural, heroin, anything?”

  “I’m sorry, Carly,” Justin’s eyes pleaded for understanding. “It could be dangerous. God, you don’t know how much I wish I could—”

  It was a risk she was willing to take at that point. She’d been prepared for pain and intended to be as stoic as possible when enduring it, but it hurt. She panted and tried to force herself into the breathing pattern they’d practiced, but whenever a fresh wave of pain hit her, she’d forget to breathe entirely. And just when she thought it couldn’t get any worse, it did. A scream wrenched from her throat, and her head fell back against her pillows. “Justin, I can’t . . . I can’t do this!” she babbled, though she knew it was stupid, even as she said it. She didn’t have much of a choice in the matter.

  Justin leaned up and kissed her. “Yes, you can. You’re tougher than I could ever hope to be, Carly. You can do this.”

  “It hurts!”

  “I know, honey. I know. We’re going to get through this, Carly. You’re doing great.” His hair stood up in all directions from the number of times he’d run his hands through it, and his eyes were wide in his haggard face, but he smiled at her, or at least he tried to. It looked more like a grimace, and she wasn’t sure if it was just his stress at seeing her in pain or if there was something wrong.

  “I need to push,” she said as she panted.

  “Not yet, honey.”

  “I can’t . . . I have to . . .”

  He locked his eyes on hers. “Soon, honey. Come on. Take my hand.”

  She gripped it, hard. Her teeth were clenched so tightly, she worried she might break one. She tried to remind herself to remain calm for his sake, but the thought was blown away like a leaf on the wind when another wave of pain tore through her. “Justin . . . I . . .” She groaned and tossed her head.

  “I know, honey, it’s okay. I promise everything is okay.” She could tell from the too-relaxed tone of his voice he was trying not to worry her, as well. Her laugh turned into a moan she couldn’t hold back.

  It seemed like forever before he told her she could push. She did, groaning and straining. Tears leaked from her eyes, and sweat popped out on her forehead.

  “Everything is just fine. I can see the head, Carly. Come on, honey, you can do this.”

  Why is it taking so long? In movies, the baby was born just moments after the head emerged. Time lost its meaning. She was gone in a sea of pain, drowning in it. She could hear Justin’s voice, but it seemed far away and dim, and the words had little meaning.

  Suddenly, there was a strange sliding sensation, and Justin cried out as the baby slid into his waiting hands. “Carly, it’s a girl!” A high-pitched wail filled the room.

  Carly sobbed—in relief, in joy. “Give her to me!”

  “Let me check her, honey.” Justin laid the baby down on a clean towel, cleared her nostrils with a little blue bulb syringe, tied and then cut the cord. He handed Carly their daughter—a tiny, squirming, squalling bundle, wrapped snugly in the towel. Carly wept as she examined her, counting the tiny fingers, then checking her fat little feet while Justin helped her to deliver the afterbirth and cleaned her up. Carly barely noticed because she was so entranced with her tiny daughter.

  “Carly? Can I have her back for a moment?” Justin smiled at her, his eyes tender and warm. “I want to clean her up a bit, and you probably want to get changed.”

  Carly hadn’t even noticed the baby was still gooey. She laughed softly and handed the baby to her father, and he used a bowl of warm water to sponge her clean. He’d found an old-fashioned food scale at one of the stores in town and he wrapped the baby in another clean towel and put her into the scoop. “Seven pounds, nine ounces,” he announced, sounding very proud of that fact. “Perfect!”

  “She is perfect,” Carly said as she wriggled into a fresh nightgown. Her body ached all over, and she was trembling with exhaustion, but she was the happiest she had ever been. She saw Justin press a gentle kiss to the top of their baby’s head and thought her heart would burst from the love it held for the two of them. “She’s the most beautiful baby I’ve ever seen.” And it didn’t occur to her she might be a tiny bit biased.

  Justin handed the baby back to Carly and stripped the bed of its soiled linen. When he had it remade, they both climbed into it, leaning up against the headboard. The baby blinked her bleary eyes at them, and they exchanged a smile. Justin put his arm around Carly’s shoulder and drew her close. His eyes were shining, and a huge, goofy grin stretched across his face. They both stared down in wonder at this tiny, beautiful person they had created together.

  Carly untied the neck of her nightgown, put the baby up to her breast, and waited. Nothing. Carly frowned, turned the baby a bit, and pushed her nipple into the baby’s mouth. Nothing. Carly looked up at Justin in alarm.

  “Don’t worry, honey,” he said. “We read about this, remember? It’s all right if she doesn’t latch on right away. She might not even be hungry yet.”

  Her brain knew that, but her heart was panicking as if she’d failed her baby already. What if she never learns to latch on? What if—?

  “Carly, stop. No reason to worry yet. Just hold her there, where she can listen to your heart. It will relax you both. Why don’t you sing to her? She loves that.”

  When the baby had seemed to be using her liver as a soccer ball, Carly used to sing, and the baby would go still, as if enraptured by the sound of her voice. She sang a lullaby she remembered her mother used to sing to her when she was little. The baby fell asleep, and Carly faltered, her eyes filling with tears. But they were tears of joy, and Justin smiled as he handed her a tissue.

  “Have you decided what you want to name her?”

  They had discussed and debated many names and had narrowed the list down to around half a dozen for both sexes. She had prayed Justin was joking when he said he wanted to name a son Elvis. “I think I want to name her ‘Dagny.’ It means ‘a new day’ according to the book on baby names you gave me. And that’s what she is. She’s a new day, a new beginning for the human race.”

  “I like it,” Justin said. “ ‘Dagny,’ it is.”

  They snuggled together with their baby, their new beginning.

&
nbsp; Justin came home for lunch, and Carly was grateful for the distraction. She laid Dagny in her crib and went into Justin’s arms for a hug.

  “You seem upset,” he said. He bent and kissed her, and she tried to smile, but it was a wobbly effort at best.

  “Breastfeeding woes.” That morning, Dagny had latched on just fine and Carly had felt like shouting in victory, but during her second feeding, the baby had turned away and whimpered until Carly surrendered and fed her a bottle of her pumped breast milk.

  “Give it time, Carly. She’s not even a month old yet, and she’s not starving. She’s gaining weight just like she should be.”

  Carly nodded. She knew all of that, but she still felt like a failure, deep within her secret heart.

  “Where’s my little Daggers?” Justin cooed and lifted the baby out of her crib.

  “Her name is Dagny,” Carly said, and he gave her a mischievous grin that lightened her spirits a little. “Dag-nee. Remember? You were there when I named her.”

  “Oh, I remember. I never forget a name.” He rubbed his nose against the baby’s and smiled down at her. Dagny gurgled and patted one of her plump little hands against his cheek.

  Carly snorted. “You forgot mine the whole first week I knew you.”

  “No, I didn’t. That was . . . Well, I needed you to get comfortable with me. If you started off every conversation by correcting me and asserting your identity, you would feel a bit more comfortable, at least subconsciously.”

  Carly shook her head with a smile. “I was right about you. You are a tricksy hobbit.” She opened a can of Spam, diced it up into tiny squares, and tossed it into the skillet with some shredded potatoes.

  Justin laid Dagny back into her crib and wound up the mobile dangling above it. “Need any help?”

  “No, I’ve got it. It’ll be ready soon.” Carly’s cooking had improved over the winter, and she was rather proud of her culinary efforts. She sprinkled in some spices and pepper.

  “Smells great,” Justin said. “And I’m starving.”

  “Did you find anything else in town?” Carly hadn’t been happy about his decision to go back into town, but their stores of food were getting low, and he wanted to see if other looters had overlooked anything and maybe check in places they might not have thought to search, like office vending machines. She’d been surprised by how fast it all went, actually. There weren’t even many more potatoes in the cellar.

  “There wasn’t much left,” Justin said. “I have a feeling we’re going to run into the same problem when we start moving again.”

  It was the first time in a while he’d mentioned continuing their travels. “We haven’t discussed that yet. I wasn’t sure if you were . . .” Carly paused. “I’d be happy staying here.” It had been a thought which occurred to her frequently over the last few weeks. She could see them building a life there with their daughter.

  Justin shook his head. “We can’t stay, Carly. It was a wonderful home for us over the winter, but I can’t grow enough food and collect enough firewood to see us through another winter.”

  “I can help.” Carly pointed this out, feeling a bit miffed he hadn’t included her.

  “We’re not farmers, honey. Farming by hand is brutally hard work, and we could lose everything if there was a cold snap, or an insect infestation . . . any number of things. Storing it all would be difficult as well. We’ve never canned before, and if we didn’t get it right, we could get a severe case of food poisoning. I’m sorry, Carly, but I won’t risk your life or Dagny’s just because we liked a place.”

  She couldn’t argue with his logic. “When?”

  “At the end of this month.”

  So soon? Carly scraped the finished Spam hash onto two plates. Justin smiled and thanked her when she handed it to him.

  “I’d hoped to wait until Dagny was a little older, but we can’t. We have to get started soon, or we run the risk of being stuck somewhere over winter again with inadequate food supplies.”

  “What are we going to do?” Carly took her seat, but leaned over to check on Dagny before she picked up her fork. “We don’t have enough food to make it to Florida.”

  “I’m hoping if we stay off the main routes and take the back roads, we may find stores along the way that haven’t been looted to the bare walls yet.” Justin took a bite and patted his lips with a napkin before he continued. “All of the survivors are in the same position we are, Carly. For the time being, we all have to live off what food remains from the old world. Few of us are prepared to live as farmers, especially not in a northern climate.”

  “Won’t there be a lot of people down South?”

  “More than here,” he said.

  She looked down at her plate. She knew what he meant. Many trapped up here by the snows probably hadn’t survived. She thought of Reverend Davis, the preacher who had married them, and hoped he and his wife were among those who had made it through the winter.

  “We’re going to have to loot houses along the way. We may find more food there than in stores.” He saw the grim set of her face. “Cheer up, honey. We have a lot of trade goods, and besides, Sam will keep us in rabbits. We’ll be fine, I promise. I won’t let you or Dagny go hungry.”

  “Won’t we find any towns?”

  “What do you mean?” His gaze sharpened, and he laid down his fork.

  “People living together. Communities. You said it once yourself, humans evolved to survive through cooperative society, not alone.”

  Justin’s expression went carefully blank, and whenever that happened, Carly knew something had bothered him. “Is that what you want, ultimately? To live in a community?”

  She bit her lip and considered her answer before she spoke. “Wouldn’t our chances be better? More people to grow food and guard us from danger. Trying to survive alone . . . As you said, there are so many things that could go wrong, but with others helping us, we would have more options.”

  He went back to eating, but that blank expression stayed in place. “If that’s what you want.”

  “You don’t like the idea.”

  Carly could tell he was considering something disingenuous to say, but he chose honesty, and she was grateful. “No, Carly, I don’t. You’re right that more people mean more hands to do the work and to defend what’s ours, but with people come problems and conflicts. You’re putting your fate into their hands, trusting them with our lives, with our daughter’s life. And that level of trust doesn’t come as easily for me as it does for you.”

  “You sound as if you think I’m gullible.” She made a little face at him in an attempt to lighten the mood, but Justin didn’t smile.

  He shook his head. “That’s not what I meant. I mean you’re more . . . socially orientated than I am. I’ll admit, I’d be content with just you and Dagny for the rest of my life, but if you want a community, that’s what we’ll search for. Or we could build one of our own. That way, we could handpick the residents.”

  Who would we pick and who would we reject? Who would we leave to die in the wilderness?

  Sometimes, it seemed as though Justin could read her mind. “We don’t have a moral obligation to try to save everyone in the wasteland, honey. Our job is to survive, and maybe we can rebuild a world that someday has the luxury of charity.”

  “Charity is not a luxury,” Carly retorted. “We can’t let the best part of us die out with the old world.”

  Justin reached across the table and took her hand in his. “If we find a community and I tell you we should move on, will you trust me?”

  She didn’t know whether she should be insulted or not as he seemed to be implying his instincts were sharper than her own, but she knew he was just worried and probably didn’t mean it the way it sounded. “You know I trust you, Justin.”

  He finished his last bite and took his plate over to the sink. “We might have some trouble getting people to accept Sam.”

  “Why? He stays right by my side wherever I go. It’s not like he’
d be running around, tearing into people’s trash bags. He doesn’t even bark.”

  “He’s a wolf, Carly.”

  “That’s not his fault. And he’s very nice. Surely, if people meet him . . .”

  Justin shook his head. “He’s still a wolf. It’s like the tale of the viper and the farmer.”

  “I’ve never heard that one.”

  “It’s in Aesop’s Fables. A farmer finds a snake freezing in the snow and takes pity on it. He puts the snake inside his coat to keep it warm. The snake revives and bites him.”

  She waited for the punch line, but he said nothing further. “That’s it?”

  Justin gave her a small smile. “It was the snake’s nature. Likewise, Sam has some things that are part of his nature. He’ll always be a wolf, even if he sleeps on the foot of our bed and carries that damn cat wherever he goes. People will be afraid he might hurt them or their children.”

  “He’s not like that, and you know it.”

  Justin met her eyes levelly. “I never leave him alone with Dagny.”

  Carly was startled. She thought back over the last month and realized it was true. She started to say she left Dagny alone with Sam all the time, but that didn’t seem prudent. Sam lay beneath her crib—as though guarding her—with Tigger curled at his side. She remembered her own concerns about Tigger, having heard stories of cats accidentally smothering babies. She supposed they all had their preconceptions.

  “It’s not that I think he would hurt her intentionally,” Justin said.

  Carly nodded. She understood what he meant. Sam might not understand how fragile human babies were and could hurt Dagny without meaning to. But caution with any animal was sensible. It would be unfair for someone to think Sam was especially dangerous just because of his species. “Well, if they won’t accept Sam, I don’t want to live with them.”

  Justin nodded gravely. “I’ll respect your decision.”

  She hid a smile. Of course he would. He didn’t want to live with other people anyway.

  A week before they were set to leave, Justin altered their horse-drawn wagon somewhat by replacing the wheels with thick, wide tires and installing springs to make the ride smoother. He brought it into the barn and began to load it, using every inch of space as efficiently as possible, even though their load of supplies was smaller than it had been before and the wagon was larger. Perhaps he was expecting to find a lot of stuff, Carly thought.