Eupocalypse Box Set

by Peri Dwyer Worrell

  “DD, you can’t know that!

  “I do know!”

  “Well, anyway, he still doesn’t deserve to be beaten up by a gang. Hopefully it’s not the police chasing him and those four can handle it.”

  Down the trail came a canvas-tired bicycle. Riding the bicycle was, yes, Tim Schneider. But DD would have been hard-pressed to recognize him if she hadn’t recognized his voice on the radio. His once-delicate, aristocratic nose was a twisted lump in the center of his face. His formerly clean-shaven face was covered by an unkempt beard. He wore a grimy wool pea coat and stocking cap and canvas cargo pants with wood-soled canvas shoes. Two pairs of Sukotakans on ATVs, LaDwon riding with Jesse, and George and Heidi, followed behind him at an idle; Jesse was riding as rear passenger and he held the radio Tim had been using, a small walkie-talkie model, which explained its limited range. It was covered with amoxicillin powder.

  Tim stopped when he saw Akisni and DD, straddling the bike, and the defenders pulled up to flank him. DD stepped forward. She saw him startle broadly as he recognized her. Fake reaction. But I’ll bet the others don’t realize it's fake. At that moment, DD knew beyond the shadow of a doubt he wasn’t here by coincidence, but she also knew that she couldn’t prove it. Given her past with Tim, she couldn’t even assert that truth without compromising her own credibility. She realized her hand was on the butt of her holstered sidearm and forced herself to release it.

  “Tim Schneider.” She named him like she’d name a species of poisonous snake, striving to conceal all the fury she felt inside the words.

  “Dr. Davis?” Tim responded, apparently ingenuous. “What are you doing here? How? Why?”

  “Wow, what a coincidence.” DD did her best to keep the irony out of her voice. One of the patrols, George, glanced at her sharply but she kept her features impassive.

  “Who was chasing you?” Asked Akisni sympathetically.

  “Just some of those kids who set up camp under the overpass,” Darwin said. “They stopped at the turnoff by the windbreak and then drove off when they saw us coming. No real threat.” The others nodded.

  “They’re riding gas-powered bikes. Don’t know where they scavenged the sterile gas from, but they won’t be going anywhere, soon enough,” said LaDwon from the other ATV.

  “Can I camp here for the night?” Asked Tim, looking around. Yes, camp here and be gone tomorrow.

  “No, of course we wouldn’t dream of letting you sleep outside! Come inside and have a hot shower and a proper meal and tell us everything that you’ve seen,” insisted Akisni, turning to lead the way.

  “A hot shower!” exclaimed Tim. “I'd love to! It's been months!”

  This is not good. Not good at all.

  Tim swung his leg up over the seat to dismount and followed, walking his bike to the porch.

  LVII.

  Would I Lie to You?

  Tim was in the shower, the time of day, mid-afternoon, meaning he could take his time because of lack of demand on the hot water supply.

  “Look, Akisni. This guy is poison. I’m telling you, you do NOT want him here. Feed him and send him on his way!”

  “DD, just because you have a personal issue with him...”

  “This isn’t just a personal issue. He’s a criminal. He’s a thief. But I worked side by side with him for years. You know what made him such a great assistant? He manipulated everyone into giving him whatever it was he wanted. He was a door dragon against interruptions when I was working on deadline. He took no shit from bureaucrats or committees, didn’t even bother me with most of their bullshit, just made it go away, like that!” She snapped her fingers. “Nobody liked him. I didn’t like him. But I did trust him. Wrongly.”

  “DD, I know how you feel. You don’t want to be the one solely responsible for the machine sickness, but that doesn’t mean he did what you're so convinced he did.”

  Akisni’d hit her sorest point. DD lost her cool, and as she heard the crack in her own voice she knew she’d all but lost the argument. “This isn’t about my guilt! This is about taking a serpent to your breast! He’s a psychopath! This is a huge mistake!” Her eyes began to well with tears. She heard the shower shut off and the curtain pulled back. She turned on her heel and walked abruptly outside into the spring sunshine to compose herself.

  When she returned, Tim and Akisni were talking. Tim was seated in the same chair where DD’d sat on the day when they’d first arrived. DD silently took a seat a few chairs distant, resolved to be a silent listener, a fly on the wall, as Tim told his tale.

  “I was at my mom’s in Miami when everything started shutting down. FEMA came to her retirement community and insisted on evacuating everyone to safety. They took the sickest ones from the assisted living side first. They even had nurses and medical equipment to take care of them. Later on, they evacuated the ones like my mom, who were just old but basically okay by themselves. I wanted to go with her but they wouldn’t let me. They said she needed a different level of care.” Akisni nodded. They’d heard, from other visitors, about the mass round-ups in the cities, sorting people by age and gender, abilities, disabilities, and special skills, sending them to different protection camps, but Tim was the only person they’d met who claimed to have come back from one.

  “They took me to a different place, a protection camp. It was like a giant military installation, but there was nothing for anyone to do, and all kinds of people there. Homeless people. Ghetto trash.” His lip curled in contempt. “I was the only white person in my barracks! Anyway, someone had dug a tunnel under the fence and I found it. I snuck out at night. The guards were pretty lax. Most of the people there didn’t try to get out. They felt safer inside than outside.” This wasn’t what others had said. They’d said the camps were basically prisons and that people who tried to escape were punished, or just disappeared. But is it possible that the regimes in different camps, in different areas, vary? DD considered that possibility while Tim and Akisni continued their conversation.

  “Where was this camp they took you to?” Akisni asked.

  “Just west of Rainesville. I remembered DD talking about this place here, Sutokata, and so once I got out, I decided to make my way here.”

  “How did you get here?” Akisni probed.

  “I rode my bike.”

  “No, I mean how did you find it? It's not on any map.”

  “I knew it was in central Indiana. I asked everyone I met if they’d heard of it.” Bullshit. I should call him on that, question him more.

  “Can I go to the bathroom?” Tim nodded at the big glass of clear, pure water, now empty, at his elbow, before she could formulate a question. Missed my chance. She took a breath to say something more to Akisni, but before she could form words, Akisni stood up and walked out of the room, returning with a notepad and pencil.

  After Tim came back, Akisni resumed the interview.

  “What roads did you take?”

  “I-75 all the way to Cincinnati and I-74 into Illinois.” Akisni nodded. Plausible.

  “Let me take some notes.” She flipped open the notepad on her lap. “Tell me about the condition of the interstates to the East of us.”

  “The few people who were on the road, were all headed North. The oceans are boiling. Everyone wants to get away from the Gulf before next year’s hurricane season.” Tim went on at some length about the degree to which the highways were compromised at different points along the way. He described towns in which the uniformed police had erected barricades which they used as toll gates to extort goods from travelers passing through. “Sometimes they claimed they were redistributing them to those who needed them more. Sometimes they just blatantly took your stuff and kept it for themselves. I lost my metal thermos, all but one pair of shoes,” he nodded at the wood-soled canvas shoes bound to his feet, “all but one of my cotton shirts, a nice wool coat and socks. I got beat up a few times trying to resist.”

  DD couldn’t contain herself any longer. She blurted out, “What’s your g
ame, Tim?”

  Tim tossed his hair back. “I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.” He tried a lighthearted tone, “I was delighted to see you. I thought you’d be happy to see me too!”

  “Cut the crap. I saw your purchase orders. I know you were stealing!”

  “What? Stealing? You’re crazy! I was never anything but a loyal and dedicated assistant to you! What's wrong with you?”

  “Really? Then why did you order three or four times more cultures than we could possibly use? And why didn’t the ID numbers on the cultures match the ID numbers on the purchase orders?”

  He furrowed his brow. “Can you show me what you mean? Everything always added up.”

  So brazen! “No, of course not! I don’t have the printouts here! What do you think, I carried them all the way from Texas?”

  “Well, then, perhaps you’d better stop making unfounded accusations, because I know a lot of things about you that you might not want repeated in front of your friends here.” What? What is he talking about? DD thought, momentarily taken aback, before realizing in a split second that it didn’t matter; since he was unhampered by the truth, he’d just make things up. Then, she realized that her silence could be taken by Akisni for guilt. She was off-balance, instantly on her back foot. She was casting about desperately for something to say that wouldn’t make her look defensive. So, this is how it felt to be on the other side of his attacks when he was running interference, for me, all those years.

  DD looked at Akisni with a silent pleading. She shook her head “No,” abjectly. Please don’t.

  But she saw nothing yielding in Akisni’s obdurate gaze.

  “I’m sure you must be hungry,” Akisni beamed at Tim. “Let’s go in the kitchen and get you fed, then Suzie will get you settled in to a guest room.” She led him that way without a backward glance at DD.

  He said the ocean was boiling. Boiling? Surely not. He’s lying. Boiling!

  LVIII.

  Can’t Quit Now

  “Jesus Christ! What the hell do you want from me?” Yelled Josh, his usual equanimity completely disrupted.

  “I just want you to do it right!” screamed Jessica back. “If you don’t get this joint welded perfectly, it’s the weak link in the whole project. This has to be perfect! Perfect!” She pounded the arm of her Adirondack chair in frustration, obviously restrained from surging out of the chair only by an act of will. And gravidity mingled with gravity, of course.

  “I’m doing the best I can! You’ve made me start over four times since breakfast, and the last three were just fine. This isn’t rocket surgery, it’s just a still!”

  “Listen!” began Jessica. Then she sharply gasped, and Josh’s attitude instantly changed.

  “Jessica? Is it time?”

  “Don’t change the subject!” Jessica snapped. “I’ve been having Braxton-Hicks contractions for days, and even if this is labor, Akisni says the first baby is slow. I’ve got hours yet. Bring me that pipe and let me inspect the weld again.”

  Josh complied, realizing she needed him to humor her now, more than he needed to be right. He continued working on building the distillery for several more hours. During that time, Jessica reacted to a few more random jolts from her distended belly. “They’re more like squeezes,” she said around lunchtime.

  The mealtime bell rang and Josh took her hand and leaned back to pull her out of the chair. He held himself back from his normal loping gait and walked protectively behind her. She waddled, spraddle-legged, ahead of him to the picnic tables. She tried to swing her leg over the attached bench and couldn’t get her foot high enough, and Josh bent over to help. This caught the attention of Suzanne, standing by the staging table, and Suzanne pointed it out to Deborah with a jerk of her chin.

  Deborah said, “Josh? I know, but a bit young for you, don’t you think?”

  Suzanne said, “Oh, I don’t know…twenty goes into sixty a lot more than sixty goes into twenty… No, silly! I mean Jessica. Look at how her hip is sprung!”

  The two matrons quickly made their way over to Jessica, the elderly Augusta shuffling slowly behind them.

  “Let me help you, dear,” said Deborah.

  “Thanks,” said Jessica, leaning on the table and breathing a little harder.

  “You in labor.” Augusta caught up, and she sounded quite certain. “You shouldn’t eat nothing,” she croaked.

  “No, it’s just another Braxton-Hicks.” Jessica tried to wave them off.

  “I’ll get Akisni,” Suzanne trotted towards the kitchen and the two other women fussed over Jessica, who went from annoyed to mildly alarmed as the reality of what was about to happen sunk in. She gave up trying to swing her leg over the bench and sat down on the wood facing away from the table instead. Deborah stood with her hand reassuringly on Jessica's upper back, and Augusta sat down on the bench next to her.

  Soon Akisni was by her side. “Come on inside, let’s check this out.” Jessica allowed Akisni to help her up and began following her into the house, flanked by Deborah and Augusta, with Suzanne at her back. Halfway there, Jessica put her hand on Deborah’s shoulder and paused for a moment, bent forward slightly with her hand on her belly. “12:21,” Akisni noted, flipping her grandfather’s pocket watch shut. “We’ll see how far apart they are.”

  DD met them in the infirmary, where Akisni’d curtained off an area to make a birthing room. She'd done her best to make it cozy-looking with quilts and pillows. A tray of exam instruments and sutures was on a table in a corner, next to a green metal oxygen tank. Akisni had everyone wash their hands. She examined Jessica's belly with her on her back, on her side, and on her hands and knees, and she listened to the baby’s heart with a conical stethoscope which she called a fetoscope. “The baby’s head-down,” she assured her. “And the head isn’t engaged yet. That’s pretty common with the first baby. You’ve got a while to go. You can rock in the rocking chair, lie down and try to get some rest, or take a short walk if you like.”

  Jessica plopped into the rocker. “I’d love some tea,” she said, putting her puffy feet on the cushioned footrest.

  “Should she be eating or drinking?” Deborah frowned disapprovingly.

  “It’s okay. She can have a little fruit or a light snack if she gets hungry, too. She’s got a long ways to go and she doesn’t need to get dehydrated or hypoglycemic.” The trio of crones headed for the kitchen to make tea. DD sat on the floor and began rubbing Jessica’s feet gently.

  “Oh, mom! You have no idea how good that feels!” She groaned ecstatically.

  “Oh, yes I do!” DD smiled. “I was working long days as a graduate assistant in the lab when I was pregnant with you! Support stockings and maternity girdles were my best friends!”

  “And you worked right up until you went into labor. I know, mom. You’ve told me the story a hundred times.”

  “I was always a workaholic. But when you came along it was like I was torn in two between wanting to be with you and wanting to be in the lab. You’re lucky, in a way, that you won’t have to go through that.”

  “Yeah, mom, but what if something goes wrong? There’s no way of doing a transfusion, much less a C-section!”

  “I know, honey. I know.” DD’s brow furrowed.

  “We’ll do the best we can here,” Akisni put in. “Even though a third of births were C-sections before the machine sickness hit, most of those weren’t strictly necessary. Maybe one in 20 births really, truly needs to be a C-section to save the mother’s or the baby’s life or health. And for a young, healthy mom like you, with a baby in the head-down position like this, the chances are much lower.”

  A contraction hit. This one was plainly a little bit stronger, going by her facial expression. Jessica leaned forward, and DD stood up and hugged her head.

  “Twelve minutes apart.” Akisni smiled once it was over. “And a thirty-second contraction. You need to rest and save your strength. This baby might not be born until tomorrow. We’ll let it take its time.”


  So, the day went, DD and Akisni sitting with Jessica as the contractions gradually got stronger and more frequent. Different residents popped by to visit after their day’s work ended. Jessica ate a peach and a few bites of dirty rice around dinnertime and sipped sweetened herb tea and water.

  As twilight fell, the contractions seemed to change in quality as well as intensity. Jessica began to pant and gasp and dig her heels into the floor, breaking a little sweat, with each one. Juni came to the door for a visit, and Akisni turned her away. “And tell everyone else not to come anymore. It’s getting close now and she doesn’t need any distractions.”

  DD watched her child, her little girl, sink deeper into the endorphin trance of labor. She thought back to the day—it seemed like just yesterday—that it was her in this state.

  “Mooooom!” Jessica groaned, “I don’t want to do this. This is starting to really hurt. I’m so tired. I can’t do it! I just can’t!”

  “You’re doing it, sweetheart!” encouraged DD. “You’re doing beautifully. Just let it go. It will be over before you know it,” she lied, as generations of mothers before her had lied to their daughters.

  Akisni checked Jessica’s belly again and happily pronounced her fetus fully engaged and face down. “OK, I need to check you from the inside. We’ll keep this to a minimum to prevent infection, but I need to know what station you are and make sure you’re dilating properly.” She was at the sink, lathering her hands to the elbows with soap three times, and then drenching them with alcohol from a bottle beside her on the counter. Jessica lay back and Akisni checked her. “Four centimeters and plus-one station. Coming right along.”

  Jessica swung her legs off the bed to walk into the bathroom, and halfway there her water broke with a gush, producing a spreading puddle on the wooden floor. Akisni grabbed a towel, from a stack of white towels neatly folded and smelling of bleach and laid it down on the puddle while Jessica went to the loo. Jessica came back and sat on the bed, and as she swung her legs up she began to gag and heave. Miraculously agile for a split second, Deborah managed to get a basin under her face just in time to catch to vomit.