An hour later, they all gathered in Maria’s dining room and marveled at the food she had prepared. There was chili, cornbread, and a salad with the freshest of vegetables. After everyone sat down, she asked where they were all from.
Charlie explained how he and Morgan were from England and had met Andy in Bermuda.
After a spoonful of chili, Maria turned to Jim and Ben. “What about you two?”
Andy watched the cousins carefully as Jim answered for both of them. Unfortunately, he revealed nothing more than what she already knew: that they had been living in Virginia at the time.
“Virginia’s near Washington DC, right?” Maria asked. “I was always terrible at geography.”
“Yeah, DC sits at the north of the state,” Ben answered.
Maria turned to her brother. “Julio, do you remember those three boys who passed through here about a year ago? They were a little older than you. I think they were from somewhere near DC, right?”
Julio shook his head. “It was Philadelphia.”
“That’s right, Philadelphia. I think they were on their way to Phoenix to find old friends or something. They didn’t say much about where they came from. It seemed like it was something they didn’t want to talk about.”
“How did you learn English?” Charlie asked.
“My father sent us to a private school that taught in English half of the day,” she replied, and Andy noted an edge in her voice.
Sitting at the end of the table, Morgan was the first to excuse herself. She had been quiet all evening and now looked tired and pale. After thanking Maria for the meal, she asked Andy for her pistol before returning to their house a few blocks away.
After she left, Jim turned to Andy with a look of concern. “Is she okay?”
Andy forced a smile. “She’s fine, just a little tired.”
***
Andy woke up to the sound of Morgan crying and crept quietly into her room to avoid waking Charlie across the hall. “Morgan?” she whispered softly as she tiptoed toward the bed, moonlight streaming in through the window. With Morgan’s back to her, she could see her body shaking. She sat down on the edge of the bed and gently stroked Morgan’s hair. It was something her mother used to do when she was upset. Morgan made no effort to sit up or move but continued to cry. It broke her heart to see her friend in such a state.
“Andy…how can I raise a child in this world? A child that I don’t even want.”
She didn’t say anything. She just remained still and let Morgan speak through her sobs. “I’m so tired…so tired of feeling like there’s no end to it all. Every day is such a struggle. Food…water… petrol. Even going to the bathroom is an effort. Will things ever get easier?”
“We’ll do what we’ve always done,” Andy said. “We’ll adapt and we’ll get through it together.” She knew she was trying to reassure herself as much as Morgan.
“But where are we going to go? We can’t stay here. This town is empty and there’s no food. No ocean to fish, no garden to grow. It’s dry and dead here. And hot. I can’t sleep at night. All I do is sweat, and the bigger I get, the more I’ll sweat…”
“…Shh…It will be okay. We don’t have to stay here. It’s just temporary until we come up with something better.”
Morgan rubbed her moist eyes and looked up at Andy. “I’m so sorry I’m such a burden. All of this is my fault. If I hadn’t…if those boys had never—”
Andy abruptly stopped her. “Don’t you
ever
say that. You’re not a burden, and none of this is your fault.”
“But if it weren’t for me, we’d still be happy in Bermuda.”
“Morgan, I never wanted to stay in Bermuda forever. I wanted to come home. I’d wanted to return for a while, but I was only going to leave if you and Charlie wanted to. You two are my family, and you always will be. The only good thing that goddamned virus ever did was bring us together.”
Morgan’s face broke into quiet laughter. “You should curse more. It suits you.”
“Maybe I will,” she replied, smiling. “But seriously, you’ll be okay. And your baby will be okay. I promise.”
“But where else can we go?”
“I don’t know, but I’ll talk to Maria tomorrow. Maybe she has some ideas.”
“What about Jim and Ben?”
Andy shrugged. “They’ll do whatever’s best for them, I guess.”
“Will you ask them to come with us?”
“You want me to?”
Morgan hesitated a moment before nodding. “It’s nice having other people around to talk to. Not that you and my brother aren’t enough, but you know what I mean.”
Andy smiled faintly. “Yeah, I do.”
“So you’ll ask them, then?”
“Sure, but why don’t you ask them?”
“I don’t want them to think I’m asking for help because I’m pregnant and I need them to take care of me.”
“But they don’t know you’re pregnant.
You
don’t even know for sure.”
“I’m pretty sure.” Morgan reached beneath her bed and retrieved a small plastic stick. A pregnancy test. “I got it from the drugstore yesterday. It’s positive.”
Andy frowned at the stick. “Ok, I’ll ask them. But if they don’t come, you’ll still have Charlie and me, okay? No matter what.”
Morgan grabbed her hand and gave it a squeeze. “I know. Thank God for both of you.”
Chapter VII
A
ndy didn’t sleep much that night.
Things had been easier in Bermuda. There was never any apprehension about the future. It just came, day by day, and they’d survived—they’d adapted.
But this was different. Morgan was right. There was no ocean to fish and no garden to grow; only dry, desert soil and heat. She wondered if they would’ve been better off staying back east in some beach town in North Carolina or Virginia. But it was too late to go back. They had been seduced by the offer of help from Jim and Ben when they had never needed help before. Now that they had accepted it, they seemed more off-track than ever.
Worries consumed her all night, and by five in the morning, she’d had enough. She needed to clear her head. In the darkness of her room, she fished around for her clothes and shoes. After tiptoeing out of the house, she wandered toward Maria’s home.
Upon reaching their home, she was surprised to see Maria standing at the end of the driveway. More surprising was the presence of a mid-sized trailer truck with its engine running. There were two young men inside and Maria was speaking in Spanish to someone in the passenger’s seat. When the truck drove off moments later, she still hadn’t noticed Andy.
“Maria?”
She whirled around, startled. “Andy! God, you scared me! What are you doing here?”
“Sorry. I couldn’t sleep, so I went for a walk and just kinda ended up here.” After an awkward pause, she added, “Mind if I ask what that was about? The truck, I mean.”
“I’m just trying to help out some friends from Juarez. Things are still very bad there.”
“It seems like things are bad everywhere.”
“True. It’s either living in the middle of nowhere, like here, or in the middle of chaos with all the other survivors.”
“So you chose the middle of nowhere?”
Maria’s jaw hardened. “We had no choice. Julio and Carmen were so young when everything happened, and they depended entirely on me. I became their mother. When Carmen was shot, I had to make a choice.”
“That’s a lot to ask of a thirteen-year-old.”
Her eyes narrowed as she gazed off toward the horizon. “They’re my brother and sister. I’d do anything for them. Even come to a dead town like this. I don’t want to be here, but there were no other options. And I have friends depending on me.”
“Will you ever leave here?”
“Someday, if things get better in Juarez. But I’ve decided that if things aren’t better by my twentieth birthday, we’ll go somewhere else. That’s a year and a half from now. I can make it here until then.”
“Where would you go?”
“Colorado. I’ve heard rumors from people travelling through here that some of those ski towns managed to become pretty organized in the past year or two. I’ve even heard that they have power and electricity in most of the homes again, and water too. But you also have to be invited by its residents to live in those towns.”
“Invited? How?”
Maria shrugged. “I don’t know exactly, but like everything these days, if you have certain skills or things that people want, you have a better chance.”
Andy wondered how valuable her skills as an amateur doctor would be. “Which ski towns did you hear about?”
Maria frowned. “Why, you all thinking of leaving already? We were hoping you would stay awhile.”
“Well, we would stay longer, but Morgan…well, it’s complicated.”
“She’s pregnant, right?”
Andy looked at her with surprise. “Probably. How did you know?”
“Actually, it was just a guess, but last night before she left, I noticed her touching her stomach a lot. I thought maybe she wasn’t used to my spicy chili but then thought it could be something else.”
“Pretty observant.”
“Well, that’s what happens when you’re the daughter of a man who constantly got death threats. You learn to watch your back and watch others.”
Andy wondered about the people in the truck that had just departed.
Were they somehow involved with drugs? Was that a ‘thing’ that people still wanted? Is that how Maria got access to the kind of food she had served last night?
“Do you miss your father?” she asked, keeping these other questions to herself.
“I miss my mother,” Maria replied easily. “And if Julio and Carmen were around, I’d say I miss my father too. But in reality, it’s hard to miss someone who was friends with violent drug dealers and killers. My brother and sister were too young to know what he was really like, but I remember. I keep my feelings to myself, though. It’s not worth ruining their memories.”
“Memories are all we have now,” Andy muttered before turning the conversation back to Morgan. “Please don’t say anything to the others about her being pregnant. Even Charlie doesn’t know. I’m the only one she’s told.”
“Of course. So when will you all leave?”
“I don’t know, but probably in a few days. I’ll talk with the others first.”
“Well, let me know when you decide.” Maria put her hands on her hips and looked off toward the east. The sun was just about to appear. “Another day,” she said with a heavy sigh.
***
Morgan awoke to the now-familiar sensation of nausea and hurried outside to vomit since the bathrooms had no water to flush. When she finished, she saw Andy walking toward the house. “You’re awake?”
“Couldn’t sleep.” Andy noticed Morgan holding her stomach. “You okay?”
“Just morning sickness.”
She nodded with a look of sympathy before glancing at the house across the street where Ben and Jim were sleeping. “Any sign of them this morning?”
“No, but I just woke up.”
“I ran into Maria while walking. She was already awake.” She didn’t mention anything about the mysterious truck or Morgan’s pregnancy but recalled the rest of their conversation.
“Do you think she’s right about those ski towns in Colorado?” Morgan asked.
“Maybe. She said it was all just rumors, but why couldn’t it be true? It’s not impossible to imagine that some survivors actually managed to get a whole town up and running again.”
“It sounds like a bloody miracle to me. But if it’s true, then sign me up.”
Laughing, Andy turned to head across the street. “I’ll get the map from them and figure out the route we’ll take north.”
“You’ll ask them now?”
Andy looked back.
“To come with us, I mean?”
“Might as well.”
After crossing the street, she knocked on the door once, twice, then three times. After the third knock, she suddenly realized how early it still was, but it was too late. Ben answered, his eyes half-open and wearing only his jeans.
“Oh, sorry,” Andy blurted. She averted her gaze from his bare chest. “Forgot how early it was.”
“Didn’t sleep?” He rubbed his eyes with one hand and backed away from the door to let her inside. She hesitated a moment before entering.
“Not really. I woke up a while ago and went for a walk.”
He walked toward the kitchen and took a seat at the tiny dining table. Andy followed but didn’t sit down. Instead, she stood in between the kitchen sink and the refrigerator, neither of which were operational. Stuck to the front of the fridge with magnets were pictures of some family who had once inhabited the house. Children possibly long gone and parents long dead.
“Where did you walk?” Ben asked.
“More like ‘wander,’ but I ended up at Maria’s.”
After Andy recounted her discussion with Maria, he said, “So you want to go to Colorado.”
It was a statement, not a question, but she responded as though he were asking. “Maybe…yes. It’s worth checking. If it doesn’t work out, we can always come back here.”