The Book of the Unnamed Midwife

Chapter Eight

The story of Duke and Roxanne was never written. The night the midwife started reading Honus’ missionary diary, Duke and Roxanne were riding fast down an open expanse of the I-5 just north of Los Angeles. They had climbed the pass and were enjoying the easy feel of the long glide downhill. Roxanne had let her hair grow out and had tied a red bandana in a kerchief to keep it out of her eyes. Duke wore a balaclava to keep his beard from whipping his face but he never knew his hair hit Roxanne as she rode behind. She never brought it up.

They had taken their time moving down the inland of California. The abandoned farms on either side of the road supplied fruits and nuts. They stopped and raided the small roadside outfits. They slept in their tent until it started to get cold, then switched to a series of motel rooms along the highway. They talked long into the night, almost every night. Duke told the kind of stories gathered from a life on the road. Roxanne told stories from a life in casinos. They could make each other laugh. They were a match of convenience, but a good match still.

They talked each other through the plague again and again. Roxanne suggested they hunt for newspapers while they raided, but they never found any. They started fires with gossip and fashion magazines. Roxanne looked at the faces of the women in the flames and wondered if any of them made it.

Duke, for his part, tried to play the hero. He was a good hunter and a good shot. He told Roxanne over and over that he would kill, that he would do anything to protect her. She knew that he was telling the truth, his conviction was all over him. She also knew that there might be nothing he could do, and she accepted that.

He taught her to use the Magnum. It was too big for her, and she was never ready for the kick. But she could aim it, and she could shoot it. When they rode, she wore it. When they walked, he did.

The radio on the bike worked. When they were in hills and canyons, they lost track of the broadcast about Costa Rica. Sometimes the broadcast quit for days. The loop changed. The Spanish version disappeared, and the voice of the announcer was different. One day the voice had said Nicaragua instead of Costa Rica. Duke and Roxanne weren’t sure what it meant, but they hadn’t seen anyone in a long time. They moved toward any sign of humanity they could find.

All around them lay the ruins of the Central Valley. The farming basin of California had depended upon water from other states brought in by electric power. When the power shut off, the valley had dried up quickly, precipitously. More than a few people had died when the bottled water ran out. They had climbed into cars and on to bikes, and they had given in and drank roadside farm runoff water, soaked in pesticides and fertilizer. In some cities, people died of mayhem and mishap. People who could not live without constant care ran out of medicine, ran out of luck, ran out of time. Public works failed and disaster followed but no disaster is faster, more assured, or crueler than a lack of water. Of the fraction that were left, thousands died of thirst.

The night that Honus’ diary lost its privacy, Duke and Roxanne had stayed up late in order to make it into LA. They thought that on the outskirts of the city, their odds of foraging would be better and their accommodations might be nicer.

Roxanne had to shout into Duke’s ear for him to hear as they rode, but she talked to him sometimes anyway.

“I hope we can find an empty room. That last place looked like the plague had hit during a convention or something.”

He nodded and slowed down to take the first exit on the north end of Los Angeles. As he expected, the exit and the roads around it were choked with cars. He putted slowly through, the sound of the motorcycle chopping the night. He pulled into a gas station and began the tiresome process of hunting for and prying open the hatch. He was kneeling on the ground with his tubing and gas can out when the shot went off.

Roxanne was surprised, but sprang from where she leaned against the bike and drew her gun. Duke looked up but did not move.

They seemed to come from everywhere. All of them were men. Some wore uniforms or pieces of uniforms that had once identified them as National Guard, LAPD, and FEMA. The rest were in street clothes but almost all had the opaque and rigid bearing of military men. The one who had fired wore military garb. He pulled back his pistol and holstered it again. He stepped forward and addressed Duke.

“The gasoline in this station is property of the military garrison of Los Angeles, under the command of General Hertz. I’m placing you under arrest for stealing.”

Duke rose slowly, his hands out. “Look, I didn’t know. We can just go. I’m sorry.”

“I’m afraid that won’t work.” A tall Mexican man in an LAPD uniform in good condition stepped forward. “The theft has already taken place, you’ll have to appear before the general.”

Roxanne didn’t speak. She watched. Nearly every man spread out around the gas station was staring at her, except for the ones who were speaking to Duke. Guys in charge, she thought. She was right.

Military man was a short, square, career sort. He wore chevrons on his shoulders and mirrored sunglasses over his eyes, even at night. “Those are the rules.”

Duke looked at Roxanne. She did not look back. She watched the army they faced.

Chevrons finally looked at her, seeming to follow Duke’s gaze as if he hadn’t noticed her before. “Ma’am. We have a female barracks back at our base. We’d be happy to put you up there while your man here stands trial.”

Roxanne drilled him hard with her eyes. She couldn’t see past his asshole glasses, but she was pretty sure he was lying.

She looked back and forth between him and the cop, deciding. Eventually, she turned her eyes back to the glasses, seeing only her own blazing black ghost in the diffuse light.

“If you let him go without hurting him, I’ll go back with you.”

Chevrons flinched. The cop next to him shifted uneasily and the ripple went through the ranks. She could hear some whispering and a few low laughs.

“Now what makes you think that’s how we do things? We’re just trying to keep law and order, ma’am.”

Roxanne lifted her chin a little. “So, since I didn’t steal any gas, I’ll just be on my way then. You can take Duke to the general alone.”

He grinned beneath his glasses and she saw his sadism in it.

“Well I don’t know about that.”

“Accomplice,” muttered the cop negligently, looking away. “You’ll have to come in for questioning, too.”

She tried the cop this time. “How many women in your “female barracks?” One? Two maybe?”

One of the ones in a FEMA suit came forward. “No, ma’am. Lots of women survived the fever with proper care. There are thousands of women alive in LA, and about a hundred live in our barracks.”

Roxanne watched the crowd. That was a lie, too. She wasn’t sure by how much, but it wasn’t right.

“That’s great! Where I was in Vegas there were hardly any girls at all who came through. My best friend even got sick.” She spoke up loud, so the crowd could hear her. “I bet a lot of you fellows saw your wives and girlfriends though the fever too, right? Daughters? Mothers? Wasn’t that fever a bitch, though?”

A few of them looked away.

The cop came forward, pulling the cuffs off his belt. He came to Duke’s elbow.

“Sir, you’re under arrest for stealing from the garrison. You and your female are ordered to come in for questioning.”

He snicked one cuff around Duke’s wrist, then the other. Duke had been arrested before. He looked around and knew himself outnumbered. He thought if he went along, the two of them might come through this. He trusted. He did not resist.

Roxanne felt her heart in her eyes and throat, beating in all the wrong places and too hard. She still had her gun in her hand. They walked Duke away and as he passed he wouldn’t look at her. There had been no fight. There was no try-anything last minute bravado. He had obediently bent to a symbol of authority and left her on her own.

Chevrons walked toward her slowly. “You’ll like it in the barracks. You and the other girls can paint each other’s toenails and catch up on all that girl talk. Haven’t you missed that?”

Her eyes were hot and she could feel angry tears coming.

He kept his eyes on hers and walked toward her slowly, slowly. She knew he was coming in to disarm her. It was time to make a decision.

“How many?” She asked it again, strangling. “How many? I’ve seen three women in six months. How many are there?”

“Too many to count.” He kept advancing.

“What are their names? The ones you know. Your friends. The ones you like.” She wanted him to be telling the truth. Even if it meant living in a military harem, she wanted there to be a bunch of women laughing together somewhere. Someone to read romance novels aloud to, to not be the last one on earth. She could survive that. She could survive anything and come out alright. She thought of the drag king midwife. And of Nettie. She smashed her eyes closed to squeeze the tears out.

“Terri. Mary. Sherry. Carrie. Snow White and Cinderella are there, too. Don’t worry about it. You’ll see them soon. Come on now.”

His voice was low, sweet, cozening. It was the voice she had heard a thousand times before. Come on and do it now. Come on and just give me a little. Come on now. Come on.

She didn’t trust herself to bring the gun up. She shot it where it was at with her elbow locked and the bullet hit him in the thigh. He gripped it with both hands and went down. His leg was rigid and he was braying through clenched teeth.

“Fuck you,” she said clearly. Some of them started toward her, the others just stared. She has a split second to make the decision, but everything seemed to move very slowly.

Under my chin or into the pumps. Under my chin or into the pumps.

A young-looking guy was almost upon her. She decided there was time for both. She took a shot at the pump furthest from her. She hit it dead on but it had been too long since it had been in service. It flamed, but it didn’t explode. The action-movie BOOM never came. She stared at failure a beat too long and the kid tackled her. They both slammed into the bike and they went down on top of it. He pinned her and another guy walked up and calmly kicked in her in the side of the head. She blacked out. Duke separated his shoulder struggling against the men that held him. It was the last thing she saw.

Roxanne woke up in the garrison two days later. Her vision was doubled and the only other person there was a girl. The kid was young and developmentally disabled. She couldn’t speak so Roxanne never learned her name. The kid signed constantly, frantically, but the only sign language Roxanne had ever learned was ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ and a few obscenities.

The deaf girl was dead in a year. Roxanne lived a long time, but she never saw Duke again. The garrison’s radio broadcast kept people coming down the I-5, but it didn’t always work. When she died she was still the only woman there.

* * * * *

Dusty woke up a few mornings after she had taken the diary to the sound of Jodi and Honus arguing in the kitchen.

“I don’t care! It’s too long.”

“Sweetheart, I’ll be fine. I promise.”

“It’s two days! Like two whole days! No way!”

Dusty walked out of her bedroom, rubbing her head. They turned to face her when she made it into the kitchen.

“Breakfast is almost ready,” Jodi said, turning away.

“Dusty.” Honus pulled a kitchen chair around backward and sat facing the table, his legs split around it.

“Mhmm.” Dusty opened the window to fill a pan with snow to make coffee.

“I want to go on a two-day raid. Into Ogden. I can make it there and back in two days. There’s some stuff we need that I’m not going to find in houses here in Eden. It has to be done.”

Jodi did not turn from the stove. “Anything could happen to you. You could crash your snowmobile. Or get lost. Or like murdered by crazy people.”

Honus sighed. Jodi walked over and laid a plate in front of Dusty. More powdered eggs. Dusty sighed, then dug in anyway. She got up when the pot on the fire steamed. She made a cup of coffee and sat back down, sipping.

Jodi laid breakfast for herself and Honus. Honus said a blessing and they began to eat in terse silence.

After a little while, Dusty spoke up. “I could go with you.”

Honus looked up. Jodi looked at Honus.

“It’d be safer than you going alone. We could look out for each other. I need to try to find another binder, if I can. And there are some things I’d like to have for the birth that we don’t have here.” She sipped her coffee.

Honus argued first. “We’d have to leave Jodi alone. What if something happened to her? What if the baby…”

Jodi stared at him. “I don’t want you to go. I don’t want to be alone.”

“Would you feel better if Dusty went with me?”

Jodi bit her lower lip and the effect of it was devastating.

“You’d have to stay pretty quiet. And I’ve been meaning to teach you to use a rifle, anyway. It’s only two days.” Dusty watched them both. She had cabin fever pretty bad but hadn’t considered going that far away.

“Two days at the most. How about it, honey?”

Jodi looked back and forth between the two of them. “Not today, right?”

“No,” Honus said brightly. “Maybe in a day or two.”

Dusty did show Jodi how to fire a rifle, but she doubted the girl would ever do it. She was too awkward with it, too afraid. Her heart wasn’t in it. Dusty thought that if her life were in danger, she might get used to it, but mostly she gave up.

For his part, Honus was very loving toward Jodi before their departure. She ate it up like a lifelong daddy’s girl and Dusty tried to spend her time chopping wood or reading in her bedroom. At night, she waited to see if the Obermeyers would share a bedroom, but they didn’t.

On the day they had chosen to depart, they got up before dawn. Jodi had drawn all the shutters and shades, as she had been instructed. She would only light the fire at night, and she would sleep with a rifle in her bedroom. She trembled and cried as Honus hugged her goodbye. He tried to kiss her with a little more passion than usual but she pushed him away after a brushing of lips. Dusty ran through symptoms for Jodi to watch for, and told her to take it easy as much as possible.

“There’s no one to cook for and the place is spotless. Relax.”

Jodi pouted. “But there’s nothing to dooooo,” she whined.

“Read a book.”

Jodi made a face.

She locked the door behind them and they took off just as the day started to turn light. Dusty rode behind Honus, with her hands planted behind her on the block of the seat. When that got uncomfortable, she wrapped her arms around his middle. She tried not to think about their contact and focus on the road. She did not entirely succeed.

The snowmobile was the best possible method of travel. No plows had been out and the road was all but invisible. An equal blanket of snow covered everything and they cut across yards and intersections and fields. They vaguely followed highway signs. Ogden was not far away, and the snowmobile was fast. They made it in no time at all.

They pulled up beside the Ogden mall, and Dusty dismounted. “Why did you tell Jodi it would be two days? We could be back tonight.”

Honus grinned at her. “I’m working on a project. Also there’s a lot here we can load up. Come on, I have so much to show you!”

As Honus slogged through the snow to the main mall entrance, Dusty realized he must have been here before. Recently.

Honus had made a list. He didn’t show Dusty, but they talked about it. He thought she should get her own snowmobile. She didn’t think they would find any, but Honus said there were some inside that no one had been able to drag out.

“They’re really heavy, but I think we can do it together,” he told her excitedly.

He led her forward. The inside of the mall was dark except the middle, where a huge skylight had fallen in under the weight of the snow. Grey daylight shone on the inert escalators.

Dusty shivered a little, both from the cold and from the memory of another mall. “I don’t like this,” she said.

Honus looked back at her. “Why not?”

“We’re trapped inside. And this is a good place to raid. Anyone might come in. Or already be in.”

He grinned. “But the missionaries brought everyone who was left in Ogden back to Huntsville.”

“Anyone might have come along since.”

“Did you see any tracks in the snow at the entrance?”

Snow just keeps coming down. They’d be covered by now. Probably fine. I hope.

She looked behind her, uneasily. “I see your point. I still don’t like this.” She touched both guns in her waistband.

They walked up the escalators together.

Honus had been right about the snowmobiles. The dealer was upstairs, and had two floor models in the store. He told her that anyone who bought one there would have had it shipped to them from the stockyard and these were just for show.

“Still, they’re all here. They’ll run. And I’ve got extra gas in my can outside.” The thing was a beast. They pushed it, grunting, onto a wide plastic sled they had gotten at a kid’s store. When it finally thumped off its display pedestal, they both lay down on the floor, panting.

The shoved it out on to the main concourse of the upper floor and wheezed while pushing it to the escalator.

“We don’t want to push it too hard,” Honus said as it slid away from them, down the escalator on its plastic sled. Only a moment and it banged noisily to the floor. Honus gritted his teeth.

“Well, shit.” Dusty was disgusted and very tired. The snowmobile lay on its side.

“Let’s come back to that,” Honus said amiably. “I’m going to go and find some things I wanted for Jodi and for the baby. Will you be ok? Stay on this floor.”

“Yeah, I’m ok”

“Yell if you need me.” He was already jogging away.

Dusty wandered a little before getting down to business. She missed San Francisco. Everything in this mall and in Utah had a broad, plain-folk feeling. The consumer goods she saw were like the decorations in the house in Eden: folksy, kitschy, cute. She felt stupid missing the big city, but most of what made up the weird heart of her town was the people now missing from it.

She thought of Jack and the places they had gone on dates. She thought of dark absinthe bars and museums and galleries. She thought about restaurants in the city and her stomach cramped on itself though she wasn’t hungry. She remembered the rarified tastes, the roasted bone marrow and local vegetables. The artisan cocktails and small-batch cheeses. It all came back in a rush of her former privileged, moneyed life. She remembered how they’d talk about literature and music and hospital politics. They guessed at when their friends would start having kids and disappear from their lives.

She stared at a male mannequin wearing a flannel shirt turned back at the elbows and a low-slung pair of jeans.

“Jack.”

She didn’t know she had spoken out loud.

More than food or drink, more than hot showers springing miraculously from the wall in the bathroom, more than television and internet and the buzz of strangers; almost more than the feeling of safety and not having to constantly be on guard, she missed conversation. That moment of connection, of being understood that passed easily between equals. She felt her eyes pricking at the thought.

Books in, books out. Read novels, write a diary. Paper in your hands and silence in your mouth. It’s not enough.

She turned the corner and found a big corporate bookstore. The gate was down.

Honus whistled a short, high note some time later that startled her. She poked her head out of the game store she was in.

“You ok?”

“I’m good. You good?”

“Yeah.”

Dusty looked back at the shelf in front of her and chose two wooden games she thought might be fun. She moved on to the next store. She really didn’t need anything. She had plenty of clothes, they had raided a lot of food. She might try finding some tools at one of the anchor stores downstairs to open or cut a hole in the bookstore gate. Mostly she browsed morosely, feeling an aching nostalgia for a world that seemed very long ago, and utterly absurd in its existence.

In the late afternoon, Honus found her.

“There’s a Hickory Farms downstairs that still has a bunch of food. And I think I know where we can sleep.” He was grinning broadly.

“What are you so happy about?”

“I found some really neat things for Jodi. But don’t tell her! I’m working on a surprise.”

On the lower level, Honus had found a store that sold enormous beanbag chairs, big enough to sleep on. They took comforters from a linen store and set up their nests for the night. Then they had dinner at Hickory Farms. Everything was deadly salty, but delicious. Dusty sliced summer sausage with her pocket knife and Honus cut through cheese logs with a piece of string. They put all of it on crackers and watched snow drift in through the hole in the ceiling.

“So how many people do you think are left?” he asked her.

“I’m not sure. I’ve seen so few it’s hard to extrapolate a number. Not many.”

“When you were working at the hospital, did you guys know what it was?”

“Not really. We knew what it did, and that we couldn’t stop it. Jack, my partner, he had some ideas. He was working in the lab. But nothing they tried worked and a lot of people died.”

Honus was quiet for a minute. “A lot of women died in childbirth, didn’t they?”

“Yes,” she said cautiously. “A lot did.”

“Were they already sick?”

She sighed. “Some were. Some seemed to get sick all of a sudden. What I remember of that time is horror, and I don’t know if the plague is even still active anywhere.”

Honus ate another cracker. Dusty cracked open a soda.

“So, your partner. Like your partner at the hospital, or…?

“My boyfriend, but that word always made me feel like I was in high school again. We lived together, we were partners.”

“Oh. Was he a doctor?”

“Clinical pathologist. More of a lab guy than a sawbones. But yes, a doctor.”

“Wow. He must have been smart.”

“He was. He is. If he’s still alive, he is.”

“How did you guys lose each other?”

“I got sick. When I got better, he was gone. He probably thought I would die, I thought I was dying. I don’t blame him for taking off. I hope he made it to somewhere better.”

“Don’t you think of finding him? Don’t you miss him?”

“Of course I miss him!” She said it a little too sharply. She softened. “I miss him a lot. I miss a lot of people. I had to leave the city, and there’s almost no way to find anyone. I don’t know how I would even begin to try. What we have now is living, and a way to keep on living. That’s it.”

“We have more than that. We have the future. Like my son.”

He’s talking to himself. Repeating his catechism. Not my job to confirm him. Still.

She couldn’t look at him. “I really hope you do. For both of you. I really want this birth to go smoothly and the baby to be ok. But you have to be prepared for the possibility that it won’t.”

“Have you delivered a baby since…”

“Not since the hospital, no. But I heard from a woman who did. It wasn’t a good day.”

Honus did not ask for details.

Dusty got up and went to a counter on the other side and brought back a couple of Cokes.

“So how did you know you wanted to marry Jodi?”

Honus grinned. “She was just so cute. She was always hanging around, going to my games. I knew she liked me.”

Dusty tried not to sound disappointed. “So, do you guys have much in common?”

“Dusty, I know what you’re getting at. My dad asked me the same question. Jodi is very childlike. She’s simple. But she’s really kind and sweet. And she’ll make a great mother.”

Dusty nodded and drank her coke.

“Did you ever want to marry Jack?”

She shook her head. “We weren’t big fans of the institution. I found it oppressive, he found it archaic. Plus, so many of our friends couldn’t get married until the laws changed that for a long time it just felt like a farce.”

“Oh. Oh. But don’t you want to have kids?”

Dusty shrugged. “I caught kids for a living. I got the miracle of life on a daily basis. That was enough.”

“But it’s not the same as having kids of your own,” he protested.

“No, it isn’t.”

“Do you ever want to have kids?”

She looked at him levelly. He did not intend to be cruel. No one who presses this question does, it’s just something they desperately need to nail down about you. To know, and put you down as normal or abnormal.

He waited.

“Let’s wait and see how Jodi’s birth goes. Let’s see if anyone survives childbirth ever again. OK?”

Honus looked at his lap. After a while, he spoke again.

“Is your name really Dusty?”

That surprised her.

“You told the ward that your name was Dusty, because you were pretending to be a man. But Dusty can be a girl’s name. I just… I don’t think it’s your real name. Am I right?”

“No. Yes, I mean you’re right. Dusty’s not my name.”

“So what is your name?”

She felt it again, that same tug of meaning, of power attached to her real name. She could give him another fake, but that would only complicate things with Jodi. She looked at him and felt drawn in, felt the ghost of their bodies pressed together on the ride into town.

“Dusty is fine for now.”

He smiled. “I bet I can guess it.”

“I bet you can’t. Help me cut open this gate.”

They dusted the crumbs off their hands and she showed him the bookstore that had locked down. They searched for bolt cutters but didn’t find them. He was sorry, she was disappointed. They laid down in their huge beanbags to sleep.

They pulled their bags close, but not close enough to touch.

“Dusty?”

“Yeah.”

“What do you miss most?”

She thought for a minute. “People or stuff?”

“People are the obvious answer. What stuff do you miss?”

“The internet. I was a junkie. The sound of traffic. The feeling of safety. What do you miss?”

“Ice cream. I want to find and ice cream maker. Also my mom’s dryer, with warm soft clothes to put on. Jodi does her best, but…”

“Yeah, it’s not the same. You know what I’ve been thinking about?”

“What?”

“In a few years, we’ll use up all the gas. And the coffee. And the pineapple and chocolate and coconut and all the other shit we brought in from other countries. I’ll probably never eat a banana again.”

“Jeez, no bananas.” He sounded mournful.

“Yeah. I’m gonna miss that.”

“Baby food bananas are pretty good. You guys will have to raid it. Might as well give the kid a taste of the lost world before it’s gone forever.”

Honus didn’t say anymore. Dusty reached out, but her fingers found nothing. They slept.

* * * * *

Out in the lost world were hundreds of soldiers who had been sent abroad before the end of it all and could not be brought home. In the wilds of Afghanistan and the ancient cities of Iraq, they were making their way. At bases in Europe, they were holding their ground against the locals only by firepower. When that ran out, they would be taken. Peace corps kids in Africa realized they could not swim home, would never see home again. Tourists all over Asia, the Caribbean, stranded in airports, forgotten in consulates lived long enough to face the terror of permanence in strange lands. Cruise ships drifted full of plague dead, a few unlucky souls left alive on some.

Choices made in the final months and weeks of the lost world determined where so many would be marooned. Unfamiliar surroundings contributed to the body count, and the number of people on Earth got smaller and smaller.

In the morning, they tackled the snowmobile again. They got it righted and brought the gas in so they could drive it out the door. It was a newer model than Honus’ with all the bells and whistles that the store wanted to show off. Dusty thought she’d have to get used to it, but that it would probably be pretty fun after that.

They had found everything they wanted and more before noon. They sat and ate jerky and salty snacks and dried fruit, sitting on their beanbags.

“So, can I ask you something kind of personal?”

“Sure,” Honus said. His face was like an open book.

“Why aren’t you and Jodi sharing a bedroom?”

“Oh, that.” He reddened. “I was wanting to ask you about that anyway. Jodi thinks that us being… together might hurt the baby.”

“Oh is that all? I can tell her that it won’t. It’s totally ok.”

“Ok, that might help. But still…”

“Still what?”

“Jodi’s… she’s not very… she’s never really… enjoyed…” Honus’ face was nearly purple.

“She’s not into sex? It’s ok, Honus. I’ve been a nurse for a long time, mostly in women’s health. There might be an issue that makes it painful for her. Or maybe she’s just shy about it because of her upbringing.”

“The church teaches us that it’s a beautiful, sacred part of marriage and it brings us closer even as it brings us children. I don’t think it’s that.”

“Ok,” Dusty said doubtfully. “Does she complain that it’s painful?”

“No, not since the first couple of times. I was really gentle, but…” He trailed off.

“Right. And since then?”

“She says she just doesn’t feel anything. She’s not very… enthusiastic.”

Dusty could see that his embarrassment about this was going to be the main barrier to understanding.

“Have you two tried changing positions, or trying… alternate sex acts?”

“Like what?”

She took a deep breath. “Have you tried stimulating your wife orally? Or with your fingers? Women’s orgasms are very different from men’s. Do you know how she masturbates?”

“Oh, she’s never done that.”

“Don’t be too sure.”

“No, I asked her. I wanted to know how I could… you know, make her happy. She said she had no idea, because she had never had one before.”

“So maybe you should offer to help her.” Dusty felt a small smile starting at the corners of her lips. His face read that this was all very naughty, very far past the line of propriety.

“I… I already kind of suggested that. She was pretty grossed out. I don’t know if it’s just the pregnancy, but… yeah. She’s just not interested.”

“Well, she might just not have much of a sex drive. That happens sometimes, and it’s normal. But I think it’s more likely that she just hasn’t discovered what turns her on. You might have to seduce her.”

“What? How do I seduce her? She’s already my wife.”

“Lots of foreplay, lots of touching. Deep kissing. Nipple play. If she’s not comfortable with you touching her clitoris, maybe you could find a small battery-powered vibrator. Now there’s an endangered species. But it might be enough to get her started. There’s a store upstairs that has them.”

He got up suddenly, thrashing his way out of the huge beanbag.

“You ok?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.” He walked out of the store and stood on the concourse a while. When he turned to walk away, she saw the outline of his erection by the dim light of day.

Clinically, she diagnosed it as long celibacy coupled with talking more explicitly about sex than he probably ever had before. In the part of her that was not clinical, she clenched up and throbbed for just a second, everything hot and aching inside her.

Winter in the Mall

Can barely stand them. Either one of them. Honus = almost interesting. Right on the edge. Sometimes I can get a whole conversation with him, like tonight. Mostly = goofy about his wife and such an optimist I could vomit. Jodi = so dumb I can hardly stand it. If she wasn’t pregnant I’d have dropped her ass off back in Huntsville by now.

But my dreams = fucking them both. Hasn’t been that long. But fuck. FUCK.

Going to get my own vibrator before we leave.

* * * * *

They drove back on separate snowmobiles and Dusty was relieved. She got used to it pretty quickly and found that it was capable of terrifying speeds. They stopped at a house near theirs and Honus dropped off one of his bags there.

“To surprise Jodi later. If I bring it in the house, I’ll totally give it to her now.”

Dusty smiled.

They arrived back home and Jodi had hot soup waiting for them. She was anxious and worried, but they told her the trip had been fine.

Winter, every day is exactly the same

Tension = ridiculous. Pretty sure Honus feels it too, but Jodi doesn’t have a clue. Every time she’s out of earshot, we’re talking about sex. How to touch her, how to talk to her, how to turn her on. He says he’s not jacking off because it’s wrong but I doubt it. Think I’m doing a good job of hiding it, but I’m down. As down as I’ve ever been. Shit. Trauma, loss, assault, afraid for my life, and yet. Compulsion to fuck is so strong in our species. In all circumstances, always. Remember what it was like when I was with my first girlfriend in college. Was head-over-heels wanting to fuck her all the time. We barely went to class until we both flunked that anatomy test. Ironic. This feels like that. Stir-crazy inevitable come-and-fuck-me crazies. Probably crazy for nothing.

Not Jack not Jack no one is. Hope you’re out there, hope you made it. Somewhere. Never find you never find me find me. This is not that.

* * * * *

In the time before time ran out, everyone at UCSF who wasn’t sick had been taken by medevac helicopter to the airport and then flown to a CDC-FEMA camp established at a base in the Ozark Mountains. Dr. John Eberhard (Jack to everyone but his mother) was among them. He showed no sign of fever. He had to be sedated. He would not leave his lab voluntarily. He awoke as the plane landed bumpily in Missouri. They replaced his equipment. They did not replace her. For days he worked at convincing himself that she was dead. She must be dead. There were four women in the camp. Fifty five men. No children. He was the only medical professional who had been evacuated from the west coast. Everyone he met was from the south, a few from New York. They worked together with the samples that the CDC provided them. Quarantine was absolute. In a month, they isolated it. They knew its DNA and thought they knew its origin. They developed a vaccine and a FEMA crew flew it into St. Louis to find infected persons on whom to test it. The crew did not return.

Jack intentionally infected himself without telling a soul. He did not develop symptoms. He confessed his breach to Dr. Austin Calhoun, a man from Atlanta who had seen three daughters into death. Calhoun nodded without judgment. He later did the same. Both men were immune.

It was nearly summer before they found an infected young girl in St. Louis. She was pregnant. She would not speak. They took every possible precaution and administered the vaccine. When she died, they took the baby by C-section. A small girl, born grey. DOA. They debated whether the two of them had already been too far gone before the test began. They debated whether the vaccine had killed them. Mother and child were autopsied and no conclusions could be agreed upon.

The day after he sliced the infant’s brain to be pressed between glass, Jack calmly administered a fatal overdose of morphine to himself.

His last thought was that to die in such peace in a world like this was the most privileged and selfish act he had ever committed.