The Complex: (The Reanimates) (19 page)

             
“Cali? When you guys were at the pharmacy or maybe in another unit did you, well, uh, find a pregnancy test by chance?” Jody sighed, the weight of her question settled all around her. “Please, Cal, please don't say anything to anyone but I'm late. The only time I've ever been late in the past was when I was pregnant with my kids. I think that maybe I am but I can't run down to the corner store and get a test so I'm really hoping you have one.”

             
“OK hon, why don’t we go on over to the medical unit and I'll see what I have. Don’t worry though. I promise I won't tell a soul. It's not my business to. Come on sweetie.”

             
We walked quietly to the medical unit. I unlocked the door to let us in and flipped the light switch out of habit. I remembered that the switches didn't work anymore so instead I walked over to the blinds and cracked them open, letting the sunlight to spill in. I invited Jody to sit on the couch while I went to the cabinet that I had set up with testing supplies. Indeed I had grabbed a few pregnancy tests in our pharmacy run. I handed one to Jody and asked if she was ready to take the test.

             
“I don’t know if I'll ever be ready to take it. This is scaring the crap out of me. Before getting pregnant was an exciting thing. I looked forward to each one. I thought I was totally done with the baby making though when my husband died in Iraq, I never thought I would meet anyone that I would want to be intimate with. Then zombies took over and I got to meet Joey and everything changed.”

             
I handed her the box with the test in it. She sat turning it over in her hands, reading the back of it some. Her face held the worry deep into her facial muscles. “Is this a betrayal to my dead husband? Is having another man's baby a disgrace to his memory?”

             
“No, Jode, I don’t think it is. I think it's fine. You were widowed young. You told me that Abigail was right at a year old when he died. That was five years ago. You fell in love again. There's no betrayal in that. There is no disgrace. I think he'd probably have wanted you to be happy.”

             
Jody wiped the tears that were streaming down her cheeks. She took a steadying breath and stood up. “Let's get this here test over with. I'll be right back.” She went into the bathroom and emerged a minute or so later. She was looking at that plastic display in shock. There were two pink lines. Jody was definitely pregnant.

             
The idea of a pregnant woman in the complex scared me more than I let on. My words squealed with excitement, thrilled to death that it would seem life would find a way while inside I ran through all the possible complications of having to deal with a birth.

             
“Do you think Joey has any idea that you are pregnant?”

             
“Well, he was there at conception. I think he knows something about the birds and the bees and that sex is linked to pregnancy.” Her eyes had a bit of spark to them as she said this. A smile crept across her face.

             
“Funny, wise butt.” I started laughing and she quickly joined in. “Well, how are you going to break the news to him?”

             
“I think I'll put the test some place he is sure to notice. He was planning on having dinner at my place so I think that I could put it next to the dinner plate.” She was trying to picture his reaction. She thought it could be a positive response but really is there a positive reaction out there for having a baby in a zombie apocalypse?

             
I had a suggestion for her. “You might want to put the instructions on how to read the test right under it. I remember handing my test over to Trent when I got pregnant with Drew and Trent had no clue that the two lines were a positive. I wished they had the digital read out ones back then. Would have been nice to show him the word 'pregnant' instead of having him try to decipher the line system. Men.”

             
I went through the vitamin cupboard and found her a bottle of prenatal vitamins. We needed to do everything we could to make sure that baby came out healthy. I didn't have a clue what we were going to do if she delivered a sickly baby. Given that she thought that her last cycle was in the middle of May, we figured the baby would be due sometime in February. A valentine's baby would be very cool.

             
Jody had decided to forgo the mysterious object next to the dinner plate and instead took the test with her and went out to find him. I locked up the medical unit and sat on the stairs next to the unit that led up to my place. I watched her go over to where he was talking to the guys. She pulled Joey aside and showed him the test. You could see her nerves on edge as he looked at the test. When he raised his head I could see even in just his profile a huge smile across his face. He picked her up, arms around her waist, and spun her around a few times before he gently put her down.

             
It would seem that her worry about his reception of the news was for nothing. She was absolutely glowing over her upcoming baby.

Life finds a way is how the saying went. It had, and I couldn't think of a better couple for it to happen to. I felt a tad guilty though for thinking I was glad that it was her and not me to carry the first baby of the complex.

Return of the Marauders

             
Things fell into a nice routine. The garden was growing well and people got along. I kept an extra eye on Jody and her pregnancy and everything seemed to be going well. Alexus and Anna continued to seem to be fitting in fine. Alexus seemed to really enjoy spending time in the garden area and she worked really hard. The solitary work seemed to suit her. Anna continued to take in the kid's laundry and the mending.

             
The marauders came back around. They looked over our trench and how we were getting along. They didn't say anything, they just stared at the gate with their arms folded over their chest. It had been 20 days since the last time they came by. We thought they had moved on, that they had lost interest in our little group.

             
I was definitely more apprehensive with this maneuver. I would much rather them screaming obscenities at us. This standing in front like that felt calculating.

             
Joey, Trent, and I stood on our side of the gate, hands resting on our guns ready in case something fell apart. They stared at us for a bit longer then the one who did all the talking put two fingers on one hand, pointed them at his eyes and then pointed at us, in the 'we're watching you' gesture. He then put the two fingers at his chest level and shook his hand up and down indicating 'deuces'. That gesture was made popular by a Chris Brown song in which the singer was saying good bye to someone who he was breaking up with.  After that wordless exchange they walked off. The last one to leave looked past us to further in the complex. None of us broke visual contact to determine what he was looking at.

             
We decided that it was not in our best interest to leave that gate as something that was totally a window to the outside world. While the drawbridge was being finished we put up sheets to restrict visibility. I didn't like the idea that they could see what our routine was any time they wanted to.

             
We got together for dinner towards the end of the day, various projects throughout the complex were put aside, discarded until the morning. This was one of my favorite parts of complex life. After dinner it was family time. We ate together then went home and spent time with our loved ones. The only time that this was deviated from was during a direct attack. Since the trench went in the direct attack problem was happening less frequently. Tonight's dinner had Drew very happy, it was goulash. He scarfed it down as though it would be the last time he would ever eat that meal again and wanted safe in his belly.

             
Dinner conversation wasn't the usual banter of how are the projects going, nor was it a chat of how lovely the garden seemed to grow. It was focused on the marauder visit instead.

Anna was very distressed over the placing of sheets over the gates. "How will people know there are alive people in here!" She wailed. "How will survivors like my husband or the government know we are here?"

             
"The government!" Martha crowed, "The government is over, chickadee. The president himself has been dining on his voters, in the literal sense. The military was meals on wheels driving into the hard hit zones. And survivors? Child, they are why we put those sheets up. No one is going to just be walking down the road without an agenda. Alexus had her agenda in playing her kids as a meal ticket in here and..."

             
Martha's little tirade was cut short with a sound of a smack. Alexus was standing over her having just slapped Martha across the face, index finger now pointing at her, inches from Martha's nose. "Bitch. I know I'm supposed to be respecting my elders and all but you have gone too far. You and your wrinkled ass may not question my motives on getting here. So you can just shut the hell up." She turned and stalked off to the apartment she shared with Daniel.

             
I think many of us were struggling to not cheer over Alexus' response. Any concerns we had about her intentions here were settled. We heard Daniel's door shut and saw her stalk down the stairs, garden gloves in hand and go off to the gardens.

             
"Looks like she just needs some chill out time." Daniel said, looking like he knew that look on her face all too well, but at the same time was looking like he felt rather smug that Martha had gotten what she deserved. "Later I'll go and talk to her. Just want her to be able to chill for a bit."

             
"Hate to bring this back up but what about the government? It couldn't have totally collapsed. Heck when threshold hit the president was on TV. They would have put him in a bunker or something wouldn't they? They had to have protected him. He has a whole crew to keep him alive!" Anna was distressed over the idea.

             
"Well really, if you think about it, that would be the worst place you could be. You know your guys will lay down their lives for you so you think you're safe. Your guy gets bit and you don't know it. These guys go to great lengths to not show weakness. I've known guys that were sick with pneumonia and still ran six miles right alongside the healthy guys. Until they were on the ground having their conversion seizures they wouldn't have complained, especially over some little bite. So now your inner circle has a zombie. It would be no trick for the president to be bitten. I guess I'm getting at this, don't count on it." Joey was trying to be compassionate. He knew she needed to have faith in something working out but he also didn't want to feed in to a delusion that there was a rescue on its way. It was a lovely idea that there was someone out there and trying to get to us but it felt like an improbable hope. Why hold on to this when all it would bring was certain heartbreak and disappointment? Being self reliant was a much better option.

             
Anna really did have faith in the idea of the magic of the government to come and take us all where loved ones were waiting. She kept waiting for the world to come back online and be able to go shopping and exist again. I had resigned myself a while ago to this life. I was happy that this meant I could be a work at home mom now.

             
After a bit Alexus rejoined us. She looked calmer now. She walked up to Martha to apologize. “I am sorry for striking you, Martha. It was inappropriate. I am trying to teach my girls to use their words and not their hands and for that reason I am sorry.”

             
Martha waved her hand in a dismissive gesture. It had not been the first time she was slapped, probably not the last. “It was good to see you have a spark of passion. Those girls need a momma who has that. Good on you.”

             
Martha did not have anything else to say on the matter, nor did Alexus.

Water Woes

             
We knew that the water pressure would not last forever. We knew that one day the pressure would fail. We knew, but that didn't seem to make it easier. I had gone in to take a shower to find that the water was coming out in a near trickle. It was time to start thinking conservation. Go figure that the water was failing in the beginning of August when the heat was getting to be miserable. Most of us used the shower to get cooler since air conditioners were a thing of the past.

             
I called a meeting of the Council to discuss our latest development. When everyone collected in the school unit I began the meeting. “Well guys, as you all know the water is acting up. We need to come up on a plan to make what we have last. The SpringForth water truck will definitely help our drinking water situation but now we have to be mindful of our non-drinking water use, and that is going to be a big deal. Things like laundry and showering are going to be difficult. I'd like to hear ideas on how to handle this.”

             
Jody started with her suggestion. “I think that first we need to get together anything that can hold water for non-drinking purposes. If we fill up all the trash cans with water for laundry that is a start. We wont have to worry about making it drinkable so not having a lid will be fine. We should set a rule up about the laundry being run. One wash load a week for each unit. That way underwear, for an example, can be clean. Right now two loads have been the average for each unit. That would greatly reduce the water consumption. I know that Anna does three loads on Friday with the kids. If that gets dropped to one then that would also help.”