26

Stella

Music was playing from the other room, something melodic but scratchy, and I sat up slowly in the bed. At some point, Max had pulled in a chair from another room, and he was engrossed in the copy of What to Expect When You're Expecting I had taken from the lakehouse.

"What time is it?" I asked with warm sunlight spilling in through the windows.

Max looked up, startled, and he immediately set aside the book and leaned closer to me. "Stella. How are you doing? Did the music wake you? I can have Jovie turn it down or off entirely."

"No, it's nice. Who is it?" I asked.

"Something called Mazzy Star." He shrugged. "Jovie thought you might find it relaxing."

"What time is it?" I asked him again since he still hadn't answered.

"A little after noon."

" Noon ?" Angry tears sprang in my eyes. "How could you let me sleep so late?"

"You were exhausted and needed rest," he reasoned, sounding bewildered and hurt.

"Max, I don't have time! I can't sleep the day away when I only have two days left!" I shouted at him.

He lowered his eyes, and his jaw tensed. "You don't have any symptoms. We don't know how much time you have left."

"That's my point exactly!"

"I'm sorry. I just wanted you to get better."

"I know. I'm not mad at you." I softened and took his hand in mine. "I'm just mad because this wasn't how any of this was supposed to go."

He was quiet a moment. "Are you hungry?"

"Yeah," I lied, because I knew the baby needed all the strength they could get.

"I'll go see what I can scrounge up in the kitchen."

"Thanks." I squeezed his hand as he stood. "Make sure you get something to eat for yourself."

He nodded and left, and when he was gone, I let myself cry. I didn't want him to know how scared and angry I truly was. I was utterly enraged that I had survived this long only to be bitten right before my baby was born. How unfair and cruel the world could be to take me away from my family the very moment that I create my own.

I wanted to cry and scream and burn the house down around me. But what I told Max had been true. I didn't have enough time. No time to cry or scream or wallow. Very, very soon, I would be gone, but the baby and Max would be here. I had to help them as much as I could before I left.

Ripley had been sleeping on the floor, and she nuzzled up to me when she heard me crying. I cuddled her a moment, because time with her was never wasted, but then I had to get to work.

I grabbed the What to Expect book off the nightstand, along with a pencil. There were a few blank pages in the back, where the previous owner of the book, Erin Tremblay, had made lists of possible names. The first one included Skyler, Piper, Mason, and Ryder, and the second one was Isolde, Avalyn, and Riley.

Beneath that, I wrote my own list of names. I had picked one for a boy and one for a girl, with Max's input, of course. But I didn't want him to change it to Stella or Stellan if I died. I didn't want grief or guilt to cause him to act differently than we planned.

I suddenly thought of Avalyn's room at the lakehouse and her crayon drawings on the wall, or the pictographs drawn by ancient people on the sand dunes. All of us just making little marks letting the world know that we were here, that we had lived and felt and thought.

I hadn't written much when Max returned carrying buttered toast for me, and Eden was following a step behind.

Jovie did most of my care, but when she wasn't able to, her assistant Eden Tambor helped out. Eden was a tall woman with olive skin and her black hair was cut in a short blunt bob with bangs.

When we met last night, Eden saw Ripley, and she told me about how she had worked as an animal wrangler B.Z. I asked her how she ended up as a nursing assistant here, and Eden had explained that she was a transgender woman.

After she'd first arrived in Emberwood, she had gone to Jovie because she needed certain treatment so she could live comfortably in her body. Over time, Eden had repaid Jovie for her help by working at the clinic, and she learned more and more about how to help Jovie's patients.

In my limited experience with her, she seemed quite knowledgeable, and her dark eyes were kind and clever.

"I don't mean to bother you," Eden said. "But there are a couple of your friends at the door. Samara and Castor. They stopped by because they know you've been sick. I can send them away if you want, or they can come in for a visit, if you're feeling up to it. "

"I would like to say goodbye to them," I said. I hadn't gotten to know them all that well over the short time we'd travelled together, but they were still among the few friends I had in this world.

"I'll bring them in but be sure to hide the chain and don't mention anything about being infected," Eden said, because Jovie had trusted her with my secret so she could help with my treatment. "You're not supposed to be inside the walls of the city if you were."

"I won't say a thing," I assured her. I didn't want to get kicked out, and I really didn't want to talk about zombies or dying anyway.

Eden went to fetch them, and Max set down my toast on the end table before hurriedly hiding my ankle chain underneath the blanket so no one could see it.

He sat down on the edge beside me, and Samara and Castor came in. They both looked much better than they had the last time I had seen them. Rest and security did wonders for people.

"Hey." I smiled up at them. "It's so nice of you to visit me. How are you doing? Are you getting settled in okay?"

"Yeah. Everyone's been really nice so far," Samara said. "How are you and the baby doing?"

"Oh we are…" I laughed so I wouldn't cry. "We're better now that we're here."

"It looks like you're getting the color back in your cheeks," Samara commented, and I didn't have the heart to tell her that was because I had a fever and my face was burning up.

"So, Max," Castor said, sounding perplexed. "Why is your sister sitting outside and not in here with you?"

"She likes the fresh air," Max answered flatly.

"Did you hear that your house is right down the road from ours?" Samara asked brightly, likely trying to cheer me up. "Once you're better and in your new place, we'll practically be neighbors. I'll even be able to help you babysit. I've always been really good with kids."

"That's so kind of you to offer." I looked to Max because I knew he'd be the one who needed the extra help when the baby was here and I wasn't. "Max and I will certainly be happy to call on you."

"Good." Samara smiled. "Emberwood really is a nice little town, and the houses for refugees are so cute."

"Refugees?" I asked.

"That's what Mayor Vaughn calls us," Castor clarified. "Refugees of the zombie apocalypse."

"Isn't that everyone?" I asked.

"Well, there are visitors who live elsewhere and only come here to trade, and there are citizens who have been here building it up for years," Castor elaborated. "The refugees are the people like us, who have moved here because we had nowhere safe to live."

"Oh," I said, because it made sense even if it sounded strange.

"When do you think you'll be well enough to move back to your house?" Samara absently toyed with her long hair, and the sunlight caught on the large face of her father's mechanical watch on her wrist. "Or are you staying in the clinic until the baby is born?"

"Um, I think I'm staying until I give birth," I said, and it was suddenly hard to talk around the lump in my throat.

I was hit by the realization that I would never actually see the house where Max and our baby would someday live. I would never see the bed our baby sleeps in, or know what the morning sunlight looks like through our bedroom window.

I would never even see our baby or know the color of their eyes.

"Stella's really exhausted and needs her rest," Max said, abruptly it seemed to me, but when I looked to Samara and Castor, they were blurry, and I realized that I was crying.

Max thanked them for the visit because I couldn't and he ushered them out of the room.

"What do you need from me? What can I do?" he asked when he returned.

"Stay with me and cry with me." I said, because that was the only thing that I could ask that he could actually give.

He climbed into bed beside me, the two of us clinging to one another, and we cried because this was awful and unfair and impossible.

It was so hard being fifteen and pregnant and dying in a zombie apocalypse.

Ripley and Max hardly left my side, and usually only with the prodding of someone else. Boden had to practically drag the lion out twice a day so she'd go to the bathroom, but otherwise she was nearby.

Serg came to visit, telling me all about the new house and his contributions to the town. He was cooking at the Public Cafeteria, which was where people could get a free meal once a day.

Emberwood really did sound like a nice place to live, and I tried to take comfort in knowing that I was leaving my family somewhere good, where they could thrive. And I tried not to get too jealous and angry, because I wouldn't get to see it, because I would never get my own chance to thrive here, too.

By the evening on the third day, it was indisputable that I was sick. My head hurt so badly, I threw up if I even looked at a glass of water, and I kept yelling at Max and Jovie, even though I wanted my last hours to be kind. I just couldn't help myself. I was so angry, and my head hurt so much, and I didn't want to be chained to a bed anymore.

I refused all visitors at that point, except for Max and Ripley, and that was only because they wouldn't leave if I tried. Jovie was here, too, because I needed her. She had to be here to take the baby before I died, and she was doing what she could to keep me comfortable until then. As comfortable as I could be while slowly succumbing to a virus without any real pain relief or medicine.

By then, I was too tired and too sick to fight it, and I was sleeping more than I was awake.

I woke up once, when it was dark outside the window, and my room was lit by a string of twinkling white lights. Max and Jovie wanted to make my last coherent moments beautiful, and they did appear magical with my hazy eyes. Jovie's Mazzy Star record was playing, and it was soothing, almost lulling me off.

There was a buzzing in the back of my head, a gnawing vibration, and I knew that I didn't have much time left.

"It's so strange, don't you think?" I asked, thinking aloud more than speaking to anyone directly, but Max stirred. He was lying beside me in the bed, his arm around me, and he lifted his head to look me in the face.

"What is?" he asked quietly.

"That the baby's life will begin when mine ends. We won't really ever live at the same time," I said.

"No, no, don't say that," Max insisted. "You'll be with me and the baby forever. I am made of you, and I'll never stop loving you."

"I love you," I said, because it was already too hard to talk, too hard to think, too hard to breathe.

I closed my eyes, and the last thing I heard before going dark was the sound of Ripley growling.