5

Remy

Knocking on the bedroom door startled me so badly that I barely bit back a scream. Then my eyes adjusted, and I realized that I was safe in my bedroom at the lakehouse.

I had only meant to kick off my shoes and sit a moment, while the afternoon light was bright, but now it was dark, and I was lying on my bed with all my clothes and shoes still on. Exhaustion was a real bitch.

"Remy?" Boden tentatively opened the door.

"Yeah, come in. Sorry. I didn't mean to pass out." I rubbed my eyes with the palm of my hand and sat on the edge of the bed.

"You were gone a long time, longer than normal, and the cat came back before you." Boden knelt down in front of me to help me take off my shoes.

"Lazlo never arrived at the farmhouse. I stayed around a couple extra days." I shook my head. "But he never showed up."

"Damn. I'm sorry." His hand was comforting on my leg, and he gave me a sympathetic frown. "Maybe he was just held up with something at his homestead."

"Yeah, maybe." I grimaced down at him. "Was that just a nightmare, or are Max and Stella really having a baby?"

"No, that unfortunately seems to be true," he admitted grimly .

"Ah, hell. We really fucked up, didn't we?"

"No, no. It's not that bad. We kept Max and Stella alive in a zombie apocalypse. That has to count for something."

"Ugh." I groaned. "What are we going to do? Pregnancy and labor are so difficult and dangerous in the best of situations, and this is definitely not that. How are we gonna keep a newborn baby alive?"

"We'll take it one step at a time, day by day, and we'll do what we can." He gently massaged my calf with his hands. "Right now, Max, Stella, and Serg are downstairs reading everything they can find in the house that even mentions pregnancy."

"Are there any home remedies that would cause an abortion?" I asked.

"Maybe, but I think they want to keep it. They were already talking about baby names," Boden explained.

I slumped because that meant that I had to pretend to be excited about this absolutely terrifying thing.

"I know this is scary, but it might not be the worst thing that's happened," Boden said.

"How can you even say that?" I asked incredulously.

"Because having children is what civilizations do."

"The six of us are not a civilization," I corrected him.

"Maybe we're at the very beginning of a civilization. This could be the early days of the world's next great dynasty," Boden said with a crooked smile.

"I suppose my last name is King. I should end up as a ruler eventually," I muttered, and he laughed. "But really, what do we do now?"

"Help Stella avoid stress and get plenty to eat for the next four months," he said.

" Four months?" I shook my head. "No. Babies take nine months to cook, maybe longer if they're really big."

"Stella kept track of her cycles in her journal, and based on the medical books, she thinks that she is about twenty weeks along."

" Twenty weeks?" I ran my hand across my face and took a deep breath. "How are Max and Stella doing?"

"It's hard. Everyone is in shock."

That was certainly true. The kids had always been more resilient than me, so I shouldn't have been surprised that they adapted to the news better than I had. By the next morning, Stella had already moved onto acceptance.

"The baby is the size of a small banana, according to the book I found about what to expect," Stella explained over her breakfast of mushy oats and berries, and she frowned as she did. "But I can't remember how big a banana is."

"About the same size as a carrot," Boden offered up.

Stella's brow furrowed. "That can't be right, because next week he is the size of a small carrot."

Now Serg looked confused. "Bananas are definitely bigger than carrots, right?"

"Why are they comparing a baby to fruits and vegetables anyway? They come in such a variety of sizes," Boden said.

"Were bananas all that common B.Z.?" Max asked, using his preferred term for life Before Zombies.

"Yeah, they were everywhere," I answered as I got up to rinse my bowl in the water basin. "You could get them at the gas station."

Everyone seemed so happy and excited, or at least nonchalant, about everything, and all I could think was that Max and Stella couldn't even remember bananas. What else had they forgotten? What else will they never even know about the world? What all has been lost that they will never have?

And now, they were bringing another helpless, innocent little thing into the world. How could I keep them safe and teach them about everything they need to know? How, when I have clearly overlooked some very important shit with Max and Stella?

"Hey," Max said, pulling me from my thoughts. He stood beside me, with his porridge bowl in his hands, and he smiled sheepishly up at me.

Intellectually, I knew that he was sixteen years old. It was impossible to ignore it in his physical appearance. His shoulders had broadened, his voice deepened, and he was even taller than me now. But the light dusting of freckles on his cheeks and the earnestness in his eyes made him appear even younger.

Really, the issue was that Max had been seven when our parents had died in the zombie apocalypse, and that was when I had become solely responsible for keeping him alive. Somehow, that became the age he was frozen in my mind, as this timid, sickly little boy who clung to me.

"It's going to be okay," Max told me encouragingly.

"I know," I lied, because it wouldn't help anything if he knew how terrified I really was.

A week later, Stella reminded us that the baby was the size of a carrot, and the week after that, the baby was a papaya. That devolved into another debate because none of us could really remember how large one was.

The week Stella announced it was the size of a butternut squash was when we realized that this pregnancy wouldn't be smooth.

Before then, of course, I was worried, the way we all were, and we watched with trepidation if she threw up or felt faint or seemed pale or tired. The turn into the third trimester had actually started out good. Stella had been more tired and had to let out her clothing for her growing belly, but her morning sickness had stopped and her mood had been good.

And then, when she was out in the garden one afternoon, she collapsed and shook violently as a seizure took over. I had been in the house, but I saw her fall. I raced down to her, and Max and Boden were already by her side. The moment before the seizure hit, Ripley had been mewling, and now she paced nearby and panted in distress.

By the time I reached her, Stella had already fallen still, and she blinked up at the blue sky.

Unfortunately, that turned out to only be the first seizure that she had.

After the third one, when she was sleeping it off the way she always did with Max and Ripley by her side, the rest of us sat around the table. By candlelight, we discussed what was to be done about Stella.

"It seems that it's likely preeclampsia or eclampsia," Serg said, since he'd been the one scouring the most books, outside of Stella.

"So how do we treat it?" I asked.

Serg shook his head dismally. "We don't. All of the books say she needs to go to a hospital immediately, so there are no suggested treatments beyond medical intervention."

"It's just high blood pressure, right?" Boden asked, as if he could bargain with a life-threatening illness. "Stella and I have been doing meditation in the morning. She's been resting more and drinking lots of water. We've been trying to get all the foods and vitamins she needs. Isn't that helping?"

"Sure, she would likely be worse without those things, but she is still having seizures, and she has two months left of this pregnancy," Serg reiterated. "I haven't spent a lot of time around pregnant people before. I don't know how to help her more than we already have been."

"Dammit," I muttered under my breath. Then I lifted my head and announced, "I have to go to the old farmhouse next week."

"To meet Lazlo?" Boden asked. "I thought he wasn't even there last time. And Stella's sick. You can't be gone for a week when she's like this."

"I have to go because Stella is sick," I argued. "Lazlo's partner gave birth, and both she and the baby survived. They have to know more than we do, and we are drowning here. Laz wasn't there last time, but I left a note saying I would return."

"And you said you'd return next week?" Boden asked.

"I didn't know Stella was pregnant then," I reminded him.

"What if something happens and you're not here?" he pressed.

"What if something happens, and I am here?" I countered. "I don't know what to do for her. I have to get help."