Fireside

by Brian Parker

  Early the next morning, everyone was ready to go. Ted went through the building that had been his home for almost ten months one final time, ensuring that he hadn’t left anything behind. He paid one final visit to his wife’s gravesite where he’d buried her in the grassy area of the business next door. The town didn’t even have a cemetery, but they had the damn football stadium. When Ted was satisfied, the group mounted their bicycles and began the long, slow journey back to San Angelo.

  The trip was seventy-five miles, only about a two-hour trip in the vehicles. However, the men and women riding their bikes expected to be on the road for at least six or seven hours—if nothing out of the ordinary happened. Aeric considered trying to avoid Sterling City by traveling through the desert and ultimately decided against it. They’d been through the town after they burned the convenience store and other than the strange feeling of being watched, he felt the route that they’d already cleared would be the safest bet.

  His estimate of the group’s travel time was off. Including breaks and being overly cautious as they went through Sterling City, it was nearing nightfall by the time they made it to San Angelo’s Western Gate. Aeric was surprised to see Lieutenant Griffith on duty. It was odd since she almost always worked the day shift. He greeted her warmly as his bike coasted to a stop near the barricade.

  “Hey, Lorelei! You’re a sight for sore eyes.” Aeric and the lieutenant had met each other only a few days after the war when he and Tyler were on the way to Missouri to find Aeric’s family. He’d been the one to tell her and her Army platoon about San Angelo. Her soldiers were given the mission of guarding the interstate entrance in Richland, Texas before the war started. It turned out to be a stroke of luck for them since their base at Fort Hood was hit with a small nuclear missile that devastated everything in the valley where the base sat.

  “Traxx! I’m glad that you’re back. You’ve got to come with me.”

  “What’s wrong?” he asked in alarm as Tyler’s bike skidded to a stop beside his.

  “Kate went into labor yesterday a few hours after you left.”

  Aeric did the math in his head, she was somewhere between seven and eight months pregnant. Not good. “Is she alright?”

  “No,” Lorelei stated. “She had the baby—a boy—and except for being small, he seems healthy. Kate isn’t doing well, though. When I left this morning to come here and pick you up, she was barely holding on.” Aeric appreciated that about her; she would tell it to him straight without trying to sugarcoat bad news. Information passed more efficiently that way.

  Aeric glanced at Tyler. His friend’s face showed concern for Kate. “I’m gonna go with Lorelei to the hospital.”

  “Don’t worry,” Tyler said. “I’ll get the trucks to the Provisions Warehouse and make sure everything is unloaded. We’ll send the trucks back to Goodfellow as soon as we’re done so we don’t burn that bridge if we need them again.”

  Traxx nodded and accepted his friend’s hand, “Thanks, brother. Come to the medical center as soon as you can.”

  Aeric sat heavily on the passenger seat of Lorelei’s tan Army Humvee. It was the same truck that she’d been in when he first met her over a year ago. They’d ripped out all the computers and the monitor that showed them where the other units were located. They were all alone now, there wasn’t anyone left to see. They’d left the military radios installed so they could talk across the city for rapid dissemination of information.

  The military equipment was designed with an EMP in mind, so it had been fine after the war. The lieutenant’s platoon initially thought that their radios were damaged in the attack, but realized that their gear was good. It had been the repeater towers that were wiped out from the blasts. Once they made it to where Fort Hood had been, they’d understood why nobody answered them at the base.

  Except for the low hum of static from the radio speakers, they rode in silence through the city towards the hospital. Aeric watched the houses fly by as Lorelei expertly maneuvered the big vehicle around obstacles in the streets, taking note of violators the entire time. Even though almost everyone was using bicycles and the occasional horse to move around town, the mayor still wanted the streets clear of debris so they could respond rapidly to emergency situations with the few working vehicles that they did have.

  They reached the San Angelo Community Medical Center in less than ten minutes. Early on, it had been decided to consolidate the multiple clinics across the city to the one, centralized location. The much smaller population didn’t need more than one facility and the medical center, while older than some of the others, it fit the bill perfectly. It had everything that a society living without electricity would need.

  Aeric mumbled, “Thank you,” to his friend and rushed inside. Stacey, one of the clinic’s nurses, was in the hallway when he went inside. Gone were the days of a dedicated greeter sitting behind a desk performing administrative duties.

  Stacey knew Aeric well from all the injuries to the Gathering Squad and the occasional death of one of his people. “I’m so sorry, Traxx. We tried everything we could do.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Exam room three. Follow me.”

  She led him down the hallway to a small room. Inside, a standard hospital bed sat, forever positioned where it had been when the EMP struck. A body rested under a sheet. Aeric knew it was Kate.

  “I’ll go get Doc Huerta,” Stacey said as an excuse to give him a moment of privacy.

  He pulled the sheet aside. Kate’s blonde hair fell over the edge of the bed. Her face was swollen in the effort of childbirth and her lips were blue with the loss of blood. He brushed the hair away and touched her cheek. Her skin wasn’t cold like they used to show in the movies. Instead, it was the same temperature as the room her body had sat in for an untold number of hours.

  Aeric reached down and touched her stomach. It gave and jiggled slightly, no longer holding Justin’s baby that she’d carried since he raped her repeatedly. He wondered if the baby had survived the ordeal. Lorelei said that it was healthy, but her information was hours old. Kate had also been alive when she left for the Western Gate. There was no telling what had happened since then.

  The doctor cleared his throat behind Aeric and he turned to see the older man standing in the doorway. “I’m sorry, Traxx. There was nothing that I could do for her. We couldn’t stop bleeding after she gave birth to the baby.”

  “Is it… I mean, is the baby alright?” Aeric asked.

  “Yes. The boy weighs four pounds thirteen ounces. He’s small, but it looks like he’s a fighter. He would have been put into the ICU before all this,” the doctor gestured in a circle towards the ceiling. “Now the only thing we can do is to keep him warm, keep him fed with formula and make sure that he doesn’t get dehydrated. That’s about all we can do medically.”

  Aeric nodded dumbly. He hadn’t expected to become a single father and was at a loss. The only baby he’d ever held had been Tyler’s stepdaughter Kayla. He wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do all by himself.

  Sensing Aeric’s apprehension, the doctor continued, “There is one thing that we could try, from the homeopathic standpoint. Now, keep in mind, it’s not medical science, but there’s plenty of observational evidence to back up the treatment.”

  “What is it, doc?” he asked. Aeric would try just about anything that the doctor told him. Katie had been the one with all the experience and who’d read the books, he’d always just planned on picking it up as it went, supporting her when she needed it.

  Doc Huerta shrugged and said, “The best thing for the baby is to have skin-to-skin contact with a woman.”

  “Huh?”

  “It helps a baby feel comforted, nurtured. That’s extremely important for a newborn’s development. Contact with the father is encouraged, but babies respond better to a woman for some reason. Kate was able to do it last night until she died. One of the nurses agreed to hold the baby for a little while this morning. Do you know anyone who�
�d be willing to help you for at least a few weeks, preferably a couple of months, until the baby has grown beyond the danger point?”

  “I… Uh…” Aeric stammered. His world had changed once again. He’d adapted his life to the new reality of post-nuclear war America, but the rules had changed once again. His pregnant girlfriend had been dead for a few hours and the doctor was suggesting that he find another woman before she was even in the ground?

  “I know it’s difficult, Traxx. Your initial response is to mourn your loss. Your tears need to get cried out now, in this room, and then you’ve got to move on. That little boy needs his father to be there for him. You’ve got to learn how to compartmentalize your emotions and do what’s best for the baby.”

  Aeric had learned to become a master at compartmentalizing his feelings while the Vultures held him in captivity. Every day they’d visit some new horror upon him, a favorite being the heated swing set chains that gave him the scars of his namesake. They resembled crisscrossing railroad tracks over almost every inch of his body. After a few weeks of the repetitive torture, he was able to suppress his body’s desire to scream out in pain, vowing to deny his captors’ the pleasure they sought. Yes, he certainly knew how to compartmentalize his feelings.

  He thought about the doctor’s words. There was only one person who came to mind when he thought about a woman who could help him with the baby. Veronica Delgado had been there for him from the beginning, even before he knew Kate was still alive. She’d certainly made it clear to him often enough that she would welcome a physical relationship with him, but did that offer extend to caring for an infant?

  “I know someone, Doc. I’m not sure how she’ll feel about a baby, though.”

  The doctor smiled, “Then convince her. Your son needs this.”

  Aeric nodded slowly. Would she agree to be a stand-in mother for the boy, just for a few weeks?

  FOUR

  “Oh, so that’s who our great grandmother is,” Tanya exclaimed.

  Aiden took a drink of the ersatz tea that the family brewed from various plants in the region, including mint, which helped to hide the bitterness. “Yes, child. Aeric Traxx went to Veronica with his request to help him raise Kendrick—the baby. She accepted and they fell in love, eventually getting married and starting a family of their own. Five years after Aeric’s trip to find Ted Winston, my father was born.”

  “Did he live?”

  “My father? Of course!”

  Tanya nudged his shoulder gently. “No, silly! Did Ken… Sorry, I forgot his name already. Did the baby live?”

  The old man’s brows furrowed deeply as he scowled. “Yes. Kendrick survived. He wasn’t an imposing figure, like Aeric, but he was very strong like his real father had been and he was as smart as any prewar scientist. In fact, he apprenticed to Ted when he was only a teenager, learning the skills needed to become an engineer himself. The community accepted him, but he never quite fit in. He ran away when he was a teenager without telling anyone where he was going. Aeric searched the wastes for days without luck. They never found his body and assumed that he’d become the victim of some creature in the wasteland that drug him off to its lair.

  “He returned to San Angelo almost twenty years later,” Aiden continued solemnly. “Using his knowledge of the town’s defenses, he sabotaged the walls and led an attack that destroyed our city.”

  “Was that when Aeric moved here?”

  Aiden’s eyes glazed over as he stared off into the room behind the girl. “No, Aeric didn’t survive the battle for the city. It was… You know what? Let me tell you the entire story, it will make more sense for you that way. I was ten when San Angelo’s wall fell and the Vultures burned it to the ground.”

  “You lived there?” she asked.

  “Yes. It was a beautiful city. Most of the buildings were just the way they were before the war, not the ruins that the other places had become. Then, one day, the Vultures arrived and changed everything.”

  *****

  “Ah, my back is at it again,” Aeric protested as he stood up from the table pressing both hands into his lower back.

  “You’ve spent your entire life working hard for our family. I’m surprised that you haven’t already fallen apart,” Veronica chided while she walked up behind him and slid her hand under his shirt. Her fingers curled playfully in the tangle of salt-and-pepper gray hair on his stomach. “You’ve got to take it easy, you’re not a young man anymore,”

  Aeric reached behind him and held her close while he turned gingerly to face her. “I’m still young,” he mumbled. “Go to the bedroom and I’ll show you!”

  She giggled like a teenager and snuggled into his embrace. Then the front door opened and their oldest son, Mason, came in.

  “Oh geez, are you two at it again? You have grandchildren for heaven’s sake.”

  “Good morning, son,” Aeric muttered forlornly as his wife separated from him, going over to embrace the man that their oldest child had become.

  “Morning, Dad. I thought we had an appointment to go inspect the walls this morning.”

  “We do. Just because we’re hugging each other doesn’t mean anything.”

  “Do you need me to come back in thirty minutes?”

  “Yes,” Aeric said.

  “No,” his wife overruled. “You two go out and make sure no more of those nasty animals get inside the perimeter.”

  The animals that she referred to were known as demonbrocs to the San Angelians. The first known sighting of one of them had been by Tyler Nordgren on the mission when they found the engineer, Ted Winston. He’d seen a large badger-like animal chasing a pack of dogs. The creatures had continued to mutate and evolve in the thirty-five years since then.

  Now, they more closely resembled some sick, twisted artist’s version of a hellspawn than what a badger looked like before the war. The radiation had been the catalyst for the mutations and then evolution took over to help the creatures become some of the meanest sonsabitches in the wastes. Lately, there’d been several incursions through the walls by the animals, and they’d killed a score of the city’s residents. No one knew how—or why—they were coming inside the walls. However, before they could go out into the wastes to investigate further, they needed to ensure that the walls were secure from any more incursions.

  “Fine,” Aeric said with a final peck on his wife’s cheek. Then he asked Mason, “How’s the ash today?”

  “It’s good. Sun’s already made an appearance.”

  The environment had slowly been making a comeback in the last twenty years. They were able to grow crops to sustain the five thousand remaining people in San Angelo. A rash of diseases had halved the population about a year after Kendrick was born. Then, malnutrition and a few other epidemics had further reduced the population over the years until the sun finally began to peek through the clouds of ash, allowing them to plant crops for food. There weren’t many people left anymore.

  “Good, the lighting will help us see if there are any holes or if the damn things are climbing the walls somehow.”

  “I know, Dad,” Mason replied. “You’ve taught me everything about wall maintenance.” He leaned in to kiss his mother as well and then headed back towards the front of the house.

  At thirty, Mason still acted like a teenager when he was around his father. Aeric snorted as he thought, Too bad the apocalypse couldn’t have taken away the snarky attitudes of young people. Mason had his own children for Christ’s sake; he should have been beyond the stage of not listening to his old man. Aeric had seen a lot of shit in his life and he needed to pass that information along to his family.

  Thinking of his grandkids made him smile. “How are Alex and Aiden doing this morning?” he asked as he put on a light jacket and strapped his old respirator to his belt. The masks were no longer used every day, but most people still kept them at hand in case a sand storm blew in. A storm could stir up the radioactive dust particles and nobody wanted to breathe in any more of that if they
could help it.

  “They’re doing well. I think Aiden’s grown half a foot since you saw him the other day. Seriously, Dad, that kid is growing like a weed.”

  The older man slapped his hand on his son’s back, “Good! That means he’s getting enough nutrition. I hope we can all say that.”

  Mason turned and looked at Aeric, “How is Uncle Tyler doing? I haven’t heard anything in about a week.”

  “I was over there last night. He doesn’t have long, the damn cancer has consumed him. Nicole said that he hasn’t eaten anything in a few days.”

  “How’s she holding up?”

  “She’s devastated. That damn woman loves him—hell, maybe more than I do.” Aeric had never truly understood Tyler and Nicole’s relationship. Neither of them married and they’d lived together since Kendrick was born and Veronica moved into Aeric’s home. Tyler still professed to be gay, and as far as he knew, they’d never been more than friends who’d developed a strong bond. Whatever it was, it worked for them and they’d always seemed truly happy in one another’s company.

  Aeric didn’t know what Nicole was going to do now, though. She was fifty years old and had a lot of good years left if she stayed healthy, maybe she’d be able to find someone and possibly even start a family—which was something that the community sorely needed now that they were able to grow crops again. He just hoped that she didn’t lose herself to despair like so many others had before her.

  “I hope she’s able to cope with it,” Mason remarked. “Lord knows we don’t need any more suicides.”

  “Yeah…” Aeric trailed off, surprised at Mason’s insight. “Alright, Son, you ready to get out to the perimeter?”

  “Sure. Let’s get to it,” he sighed as they walked out the front door to their waiting bicycles.