“It wouldn’t be right,” he said.
“Like hell it wouldn’t.”
He kissed her neck.
“I don’t want to,” he said. “But what choice do we have? How many times have we nearly starved? Think of how bleak a future we’d give him. Or her. You remember the rapes? The riots?”
He quieted.
“I’ve forgiven you,” she whispered.
“I haven’t,” he said. “Nine men, and one woman. That’s how many I’ve killed to keep us together. To keep us alive. To bring a child into this godforsaken world would be cruel. Damn it all, there’s sick fucks out there that would eat our baby if they had the chance.”
She shivered in his arms, and he quieted when he realized she was crying. Feeling like an ass, he held her tight and kissed her neck.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
For many long moments they lay silent, him grinding his teeth because he was upset and nervous, her sniffling and struggling to get her wild emotions under control. Susan had always considered herself a tough, logical woman. Being pregnant had taken that part of her and flung it into a blender, then pounded it with a thousand tons of ash.
“Is that what you really want?” she asked.
He bit down his initial response and gave it a moment of honest thought.
“No,” he finally said. “I don’t. But I’m scared to death of what could happen to our child. I don’t see any reason for hope. None. How do I give life up to that?”
“But I can feel it move,” she whispered. “You have, too. You’ve felt it kick.”
This time it was his turn to fight the sniffles.
“I hate this,” he said. “I fucking hate this.”
It took several hours before they fell asleep, light and restless and without dreams.
When John awoke, his wife was gone. He bolted to his feet, staggering about the room collecting his coat and hat. Faye stirred, then covered her face as a slice of light met her eye from him opening the door.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“Susan,” he said, as if that explained everything.
“She’s probably out taking a piss,” Faye said.
John shook his head and left the warmth for the frozen outside. He had a feeling in his gut, too strong to ignore. Something was wrong. Susan had left him, but why? As he climbed down the stairs, he shook his head. No, that was a dumb question to ask himself. He knew why. Of course he knew why. The better question now was where?
Out from the cover of the building he felt the first touches of a snow falling lightly against his cheek. The touch immediately sent shivers up his shoulders and across his neck. He hated snow, had for months now. It reminded him too much of that first blizzard of ash. They’d piled into their car, just him and Susan, and fled their Kentucky home. He thought of all the horrors he’d seen, driven through, even driver over…
“Susan?” he called out, trying to break himself free of his own thoughts. “Susan, where are you babe?”
The apartment complex had been built on the edge of town, and stretching out across it was a long field, fenced in with barbed wire. The snow was light, but he could see feint depressions that might have been footsteps. Pulling his gloves tighter against his fingers, he ducked underneath and followed. The further he followed her into the field, the more certain he became of her passing. Worse, though, was how he also saw the field stretching on and on for seemingly endless miles, yet no sign of his wife.
Suddenly this was no temper tantrum, no whim of a pregnant lady enslaved to her hormones. This wasn’t a marital spat. The wind was biting, the snow gradually thickening in ferocity. Feeling a moment of panic, he looked back to ensure the apartment remained, still visible in the white. Snow and ash had buried half the world, but at least Faye and her warm shelter were still there, still standing. He almost thought he could see the yellow glow of a fire.
“Susan!” he shouted. “Where are you?”
He trudged on, following the footprints. At first he thought he might lose sight of them completely, but then Susan must have reached a place of thicker snow, the depressions too thick to be buried just yet. John’s pace quickened, first to a brisk pace, then a jog. His breath burst out of him in white wisps of frost. He quit yelling. His mind was too occupied with horrific images of his wife lying in the snow, her limbs frozen, her eyes waxy and unblinking.
And then he did find her, hidden behind a small drift built up against a row of bushes. She sat with her legs to her chest, her face pressed against her knees. To John’s horror, she’d cast off both her coats.
“Please, no, go away,” she sobbed as he flung his arms around her. She shrieked and flailed against his touch, and so shocked was he that when her fingernails drew blood from his cheek, he didn’t even feel it.
“Susan, babe… what’s wrong. What’s going…”
Her coats were already covered in snow, their heat long gone. Braving her fury, he opened his own coats and tried to envelop her again. Her face was a frightening shade of gray, her lips quivering and blue. She moved to fight him, but he only shushed her with a kiss against her forehead. She broke down sobbing in his arms, curling into him to share his warmth.
As she cried, he surveyed the area. He could think of only one reason she’d come out into the middle of nowhere and cast off both her coats. Just one reason. And it scared him more than he’d ever been since that first storm of ash.
“Why?” he asked once her sobs had settled down to sniffles. “Why’d you do this? How could you?”
“Because you’re right,” she said through chattering teeth. “You’re right, but I can’t do it. You’d convince me. You always do. But I’d rather die than lose our child. Either way, our baby’s dead. At least she’d die in me. She’d die warm and whole, and I wouldn’t have to try sleeping at night thinking of…thinking of…”
And then she was crying again. John felt tears trying to build in his own eyes, but the sharp wind stole them away.
“Never,” he said. “I could never live without you. You’re all I have. Can’t you see that? You’re why I’ve survived since this whole shitstorm started.”
He chuckled, forced and bitter.
“You can’t imagine how many horrible thoughts went through my head. What I was worried I might find. If you were…you know…I think I’d have laid down right there next to you. All I’ve got is my love for you, and no matter what, I can’t let go of that.”
He kissed her forehead and sniffed. She looked up at him, her eyes red and puffy.
“And that’s what I feel for our baby. That’s what I was doing. You love me? Then let it continue. Let it grow.”
They stood, her wrapping an arm around his waist as he kept his coats tight about her. Together they made the march back toward the complex even as the snow and wind and cold did its best to slow them.
They stepped into the apartment room, Susan still pale from the chill. Faye stirred from her rest beside the fire.
“She all right?” Faye asked.
John nodded.
“Faye,” he said. “We have our decision.”
“And what is that?”
Susan clutched her husband as if afraid she’d lose him.
“It has to continue,” she said. “Life. Love. It can’t stop. It’s all we have. It’s all we’ve ever had.”
Faye ran a hand through her hair.
“You’re sure?” she asked.
They nodded, both of them. Faye smiled.
“All right, then,” she said. “We’ll let it continue.”
Note from the Author:
Anyone who has read anything by me knows this collection is a rather large departure from what I normally write. Usually I’m in a world of elves, orcs, and magic. Yet with Land of Ash, I wanted to test myself, see if I could honestly write beyond my comfort zone. I’d recently read much of Ray Bradbury, and there was a story in there in which the whole world is told in their dreams that life would end that night, yet no one rioted. No one panicked. It was hopeful, calm, and beautiful. With such ideals in mind, I wrote what became the first story, One Last Dinner Party.