Forever After (Post Apocalyptic Romance Boxed Set)

by Rose Francis

  Christine ignored David and looked back at her love. She had no idea what to do. She’d never put much thought into the idea of giving birth, and had never been present during labor. She didn’t know what to look for, or whether the blood staining Ilsa’s pants was normal. She couldn’t even say how much of it there really was, because the colors distorted and shifted as she breathed. She hoped Ilsa was on less of a Hal than her, or maybe more, if it would help her through the pain. She wanted to wipe the tears off Ilsa’s cheeks, pull her past this ugly moment into some sort of a future that could only exist in dreams.

  * * *

  Ilsa shifted again, trying to find a position that eased the progression of burning, stabbing, stretching, and tearing that permeated her sanity. A tree near her sprouted a mouth to laugh at her and shout at her. The leaves were made of dolls’ hands, broken, cracked heads hanging from the branches like fruit. They sang and cooed at her reprovingly. After a moment, she realized it wasn’t the tree talking—it was Tyson yelling over her, telling her to breathe.

  Dimly, she heard swearing as an explosive roar stole her breath.

  Tyson face shifted until it became Benito’s. He held a saw over her and smiled, ready to cut her up like the rat they’d diced up for food. No—those long, thin, bony arms weren’t Benito’s. His face shifted, and she saw the eyeless face and fangs of a carnideer. She should have felt fear—the carnideer was going to carve her up and eat her baby—but it laughed with Benito’s voice. Ilsa screamed at him for all she was worth.

  Twenty-Three

  Christine stared at the blood pouring down Ilsa’s legs, visible even over the scummy natural shade of her pants. Tyson shouted something to Christine, but she couldn’t focus on his words. She watched the moisture on Ilsa’s legs grow tendrils to embrace the air, threatening tentacles that might choke the woman she had fought so hard to protect.

  He repeated the words until they seemed to lose meaning to him, as though he understood he may not have said anything aloud. Finally, the words sank in. They had to protect the baby, had to have materials ready to swaddle him from the harsh moisture, and staunch Ilsa’s bleeding. His words glowed in the air and formed sharp, jagged red shapes. She read them slowly. They hurt her eyes, but they were trying to help. She wrestled her shirt over her head, removed her undershirt, and began hacking it into bandages. She dug the spare shirt out of her pack when she finished.

  Christine grimaced at the feel of the acidic mist on her skin as she and Tyson cut as many layers away from their clothing as they could, to swaddle the baby and improvise a cloth mask. She wondered what a Hal might feel like for a baby, with no other point of reference, and how quickly the air down here might poison him. Worry for Ilsa made Christine dizzy, but she focused on each swipe of knife on fabric; it wasn't going to help anyone if she cut herself now. It seemed as though each individual thread was visible, tearing like the strings of the universe. She didn’t know what the word meant, but she sensed it anyway. A Sharon-Poca-bird crooned a lullaby as Christine cut each vast string of fate.

  * * *

  Ilsa was terrified to feel her stomach moving unintentionally, and with each spasm, the pain worsened. She hoped her cries would lure a deer to her, to stamp its speared legs through her chest and put her out of her misery. She didn’t recognize the cadence of her voice; it morphed and shifted into a child’s, and her words didn’t feel like her own, either.

  “Fucking cut it out of me.” Benito stood next to her, an electric power in his fingers, waiting for her to finish so he could hurt her again. “Fucking slit my throat for all I care.” She howled at him, feeling powerless to him, his seed, his world. For the first time, she understood why Christine would choose to risk painless death alone rather than submit to the assault that passed as the natural order of things.

  She remembered her feelings for the father of her child, the beautiful things he did with his hands, and mouth, the ideas he expressed, the beauty in the world he saw. She remembered her adoration of him, and how she had given herself to him without reserve. The memories pattered like flower petals, the kind she’d heard Poca girls scattered on their sheets for the wedding night. As he sneered at her, she threw herself at him, attempting to seize the knife from his hands to plunge it into him.

  * * *

  Christine swore in surprise as Ilsa lunged at her, and Tyson pulled the woman back, forcing her to the ground. He was struggling, despite Ilsa’s unwieldy center of gravity. Ilsa moaned and bucked, her stomach rippling even through the clothes.

  “Help me,” Tyson said. “She can’t give birth in those.”

  Christine forced down a sense of revulsion and violation as she helped him remove the boots from Ilsa’s feet and the breeches from her hips. The sweet secrets that Ilsa had guarded so closely, yet shared with her, were now exposed to Tyson and the unfriendly environment. The air seemed to lick her thighs and tickle them, and she heard the Poca-birds singing their laughter.

  She imagined the mist burning Ilsa’s tender flesh, compounding the violence of birth. Without a second thought, she stripped off her own shirt and slid it under Ilsa’s hips. Ilsa kicked her for the trouble, and a toenail caught on Christine’s breast, tugging the flesh in a way that was surprisingly sensual, in a primal sort of way. The pain bloomed in Christine’s head, a blossom unfurling quickly, and wilting just as fast. Christine cried in helplessness, seeing the mist gather around her lover, a thousand tiny motes charging forward with blades drawn.

  * * *

  For a moment Ilsa’s vision cleared, and she saw Christine’s face above her, withered forward in shame, one eye already bruising. Tyson pleaded with her to breathe. Dimly, she began to achieve some comprehension. “Just breathe; you're taking in too much contamination.” He raised his eyes to Christine, forcing her to look at him before he continued. “We all are. We all need to breathe.”

  Christine's face was swollen, already beginning to bruise. The bruise grew and grew, occupying Ilsa’s focus completely, as Christine’s eyelashes turned to teeth that scraped to consume her eyeball as she blinked. She screamed and clenched every muscle as she tried to pull herself away.

  A sharp pain tore into her, reminding her of the pain and pleasure Benito had given her, only tenfold. She swore it was tearing her in half. She looked between her legs, saw her sex splitting in two, jagged edges of flesh reaching towards each other like family members seeking an embrace. If she could just get her hands free, she could push the pieces of herself back together, force herself closed and whole.

  Tyson stared between her legs, and she swore at him. He must see it too, but why wasn’t he helping her? His very gaze felt like an attack. Who the fuck was he to look at her body like it was so wrong, even if she was being vivisected to death?

  Some of the pressure let up from the bottom of her ribcage, and she drew a deep breath, the first in days. Christine’s eyes widened at Ilsa’s hips, and Ilsa felt gentle hands stroking her legs, her side, straying closer to her center to catch the fragile body that poured from Ilsa. Ilsa felt herself flow back together like a pool of water, the pain seeping iridescent and cooling over her flesh as it spilled. As the worst of the pressure subsided, Ilsa watched Christine’s hands shake, holding her child. A tiny, barely-formed boy.

  Twenty-Four

  Tyson snapped into action, taking the child before Christine could drop him, and resting him against Ilsa’s limp torso. He began to sponge blood and fluid off Ilsa’s legs. Christine watched, but Ilsa’s pain kept threading up over her. The birds had flown away, but every time she looked at the blood, it turned into what had once been called a river, the gorge swallowing her gaze. She could barely move.

  Her discomfort grew as the blood fell away from Ilsa’s skin in diluted streams, but still could never be cleaned. She couldn’t see any visible tears on her abused flesh, but Ilsa was still bleeding. She fought to keep her suspicions to himself as Tyson soothed Ilsa. A cluster of floating petals whirled and she saw Ilsa gesturing for her att
ention.

  “He's beautiful, right?” Ilsa asked.

  “I, I don't know,” Christine said, and laughed. “Right now he's kind of a puddle of pudding, I think. A puddling.” Both women laughed.

  “I know. It wasn't rhetorical. He looks like a nymph to me, or is it a fawn, that has little goat legs?” She grinned, but abruptly the grin turned to consternation. “We're going to have to name him now, aren't we?”

  “Traditionally children are given names, you know, so you have something to yell out when they whiz on your floor.”

  “I think you're thinking of pets.”

  “I'm not sure I've ever really got the distinction.” They laughed, but something in Ilsa's expression was thoughtful.

  “When was the last time you saw your reflection?” she asked Christine.

  Christine took her hand and squeezed it. “The day we met, not five minutes before.”

  “Did you know your left eye is blue? Not the whole thing. It wasn't, then. I didn't notice it until the Mercury, after you woke back up. I think you changed it, just one shock of blue through your eye. I think you did it in your sleep.”

  “I did?” she asked.

  Ilsa nodded. “Was that its original color?” she asked.

  Christine nodded.

  “I couldn't stop staring at it. I, I don't mean to put any pressure. I know this is all still young, and new, and fragile. But you've been part of a huge shift in my life, and even if... regardless, I want a part of that to be a part of my son, Azure.”

  “It's a pretty name.”

  “Only as pretty as his mother's eye,” Ilsa said as stroked her cheek.

  “There should be afterbirth, a placenta, right? More of one than this?” Tyson looked at Christine, entirely too much vulnerability in his face, as he held up the pieces of tissue that had been expelled after the baby. Christine didn’t think she’d ever seen him look that unsure.

  “How the fuck should I know. I’ve never attended a birth.” Christine wiped Ilsa’s forehead with some filthy water, seeking to comfort her.

  * * *

  The world swam before Ilsa. Not the vibrant and disjointed shift of a Hal, but a fuzziness that unfurled in rhythm with her heartbeat. She tried to reassure Christine, but she was no more articulate than the babe in her arms, who squalled as her grip slackened and dropped him away from her breast. She fought to tighten her arm, but the muscles wouldn’t flex. Christine noticed, and jerked her chin towards the trees ten feet away. She propped Ilsa up and stepped away, trusting Tyson to follow.

  “Shit, look how much blood she’s lost,” Christine conferred with Tyson.

  “I don’t think it should have taken that long to stop,” he finally admitted.

  “We have to get her to the port,” she said.

  “They aren't equipped,” he said. “The odd gunshot wound or impacted tooth, maybe, but there aren't a lot of pregnant women scavengers—not a lot of call for this kind of care at the port.”

  “Then we have to go to the City.”

  “the City you leapt out of a building to escape?” he asked.

  “We don't have a choice,” she said.

  She felt less certain than she sounded, but as they backtracked to the foot of the Block, looming tall over them even at this distance, it sounded better and better.

  Christine and Tyson hadn’t realized how far they’d strayed from the City. The foot of the Blocks always stood above them, but without an end to it, it was impossible to tell where it began. They traveled with hardly any pause for a day, walking in the vague direction of the columns. Ilsa couldn’t walk without support, and even though they took turns swapping between carrying her and little Azure, Tyson could tell she was weakening.

  Ilsa’s body fought, spasmed as though she was still in labor. Soft colors melted from her as though she’d lost a little of herself along with the blood.

  As the time stretched on, the colors of her face distorted, too. Her skin sunk into her bones, and Christine could not persuade her to eat, no matter how hard she fought. Ilsa’s flesh grew unusually warm, and Christine found it harder and harder to look into her glassy eyes, even when they were a human shape, rather than the swollen red of the giant rat she killed.

  Seeing as they wouldn't make it inside, they stopped for the night and built a fire.

  “Can your power help her?” Tyson whispered to Christine over their tiny fire.

  “No, not unless I know exactly what to do to fix it. Do I force her body to make more blood? Do I tell it to clean the blood that’s there? Do I command it to cease the fever? I don’t know which to push for. Without that, I could kill her, or myself, just as easily. What do you think is wrong with her?”

  She tried to keep a stoic face, since she knew Ilsa didn’t need the additional fear.

  Tyson listed things off in a low voice. Every day, he saw the changes in Ilsa. She argued with him less over where his hand supported her weight. She didn’t complain about the pain. Most of the time, she hardly seemed conscious, though from her whispers, the Hal was protecting her from the worst of it. The clothes they’d cut to pad her with were soaked in her blood, and Christine insisted on being the one to check the color, see whether it was old or new gore. He’d seen people injured, seen them die from similar in less than a week. He didn’t want to assume the worst, but he’d seen it happen, and he couldn’t bear to see either strained woman suffer.

  Christine said nothing, only nodded thoughtfully, and he put out his hand, brushing the air past Christine's cheek. As he turned away, she heard him mutter that he wondered if she’d heard and understood him at all. “Can't tell nothing past the rabbit-face twitching.”

  They prepared to set out shortly after dawn the next day. A helpful wind blew the cloud back, and Christine saw the base of the block in front of him, rather than more squat tenements or broken-down slabs of concrete. She could barely contain her relief. She adjusted Ilsa’s weight and stepped forward with renewed strength.

  Twenty-Five

  The entry to the Foundation was comforting to Christine. Thick, thick walls designed to support the weight of thousands of people and millions of pounds of cement and steel, protecting them from the ravages of the earth. For a moment, she saw carvings and inscriptions shift in the walls, and speculated that they were magical protections for the inhabitants. She cursed her own stupidity for separating Ilsa from that safety. Even the birds hadn’t followed them.

  They were quiet, the silence broken mainly by the sound of the baby crying and a drip somewhere in the structure. Ilsa paused, gasping, her face bloodless and sallow. Christine tried not to acknowledge her concern. She took the baby from Ilsa, hoping that the lessening of the weight might help her recover her breath.

  Tyson stepped onto a decaying staircase. It groaned under his weight when he turned back to help Ilsa forward. His eyes widened as he felt the ground buck, and Christine swore, attempting to protect the child as the ground fell out from under her. She and Ilsa crashed through the flooring below the stairs, landing roughly in a pile of rubble and rotted wood. Two floors above them, Tyson leaned forward to see where they’d fallen. His flashlight hit Christine’s eyes, and she saw glowing figures dancing in the edges of her vision. The baby squalled at the light, but was otherwise unharmed. Christine gently held one of his arms away from her as he sought to push against her. It hurt to breathe, and she wondered if she’d cracked a rib.

  “We’re all right. Do you know another way up?” She looked at Ilsa, realizing she may have spoken too soon. Ilsa was crawling towards her, eager to comfort Azure and make sure he was not hurt. Christine sat up slowly as Ilsa took the child.

  “Stairway’s fucked. Wait there a little.”

  Ilsa removed the makeshift mask from Azure’s face and shifted her clothes to let him feed while they waited. Christine touched Ilsa’s hair, and Ilsa buried her face against Christine’s neck. Even though the mask hurt Christine’s skin, she held her close. The glowing shapes and inscriptions in the wa
lls writhed around them.

  Ilsa had dozed against Christine’s neck by the time Tyson called down again. She sat up with a start, and Azure stirred, his fingers caught in her hair and tugged by her motion. “No luck—I don’t see any other entries, so much here is blocked in. The climbing equipment is in your pack, right? Best chance is to climb up, belay Ilsa and Azure. You’ll have to come up free solo, to set the anchor point.” Christine’s heart raced, thinking of the last time she ventured out a window, and how she’d nearly died the time before that, too.

  “You don’t have to do this—we can think of something else…” Ilsa tried to reassure Christine. But Christine trusted Tyson’s reconnaissance, and with how severely Ilsa had weakened, she couldn’t see any other option. Christine schooled her breathing into evenness. She thought of the birds. Maybe they’d help for once.

  “Where is the anchor point?” Tyson pointed, and Christine hurried to the window in that direction. She stared up until she saw his head above her, pointing at the pipe. She tried to tell herself she could do this, so long as she didn’t look down.

  Christine was grateful for the rope and grapple in their equipment, but gratitude only went so far—she didn’t feel confident she could use them, despite their similarity to her old tools. There couldn’t be any more pressure than this. No brushing herself off and hiding in an alley after missing a handhold. She cast one last look at Ilsa’s tired form, and the child she held, and knew she had to try. “Once I’ve climbed up, I’ll find somewhere to attach this thing, and I can pull you and Azure up.” She moved the rubble blockage, leaned out over the broken glass, and put her stomach to the building, so she could inch along the edge of a fragile ledge.

  The wind buffeted her and sent acid drizzles into her, but the remains of her clothes stopped it from doing harm. She focused on finding a secure grip for her gloved hand and another for her foot. She struggled not to look down. A flight of birds flew around her, pecking at her with beaks thickened from millennia of exposure to the biting acids that her clothes only barely shielded her from. She yelled, fighting to keep her grip, and reassuring herself that her goggles protected her eyes, at the least. A dull thunk echoed on her left, and then another above her head. She realized Ilsa was throwing pieces of rubble at the creatures.