They might or might not bring their baby to get her shots. They might decide they had bigger problems than worrying about measles or whooping cough.
Dr. Dennis came down the aluminum steps and paced a moment, hands on hips, looking into the night air. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah. No trouble,” Kath said.
“Good. I want to get out of here as soon as we can.”
So he was on edge, too. The unfamiliar settlement, the warm thick night, might draw out people they didn’t want to talk to.
“You okay, Doctor?”
“Six months. I give that baby six months, based on the condition of the rest of the camp. It’s so goddamn pointless.”
Dennis and the other doctors at the clinic went over the statistics all the time. Without proper nutrition, clean water, medicine, without so many little necessities, infant mortality spiked. And there didn’t seem to be anything they could do about it. If they were in the area, maybe one of the doctors could come out to vaccinate. Or maybe the parents really would bring the baby to the clinic.
The man returned to the door and handed over a threadbare pillowcase, half-filled. “Here. It’s what we can spare. Thank you. Thank you for coming.”
Grimly, Dr. Dennis took the makeshift sack by its bunched-up neck. “You’re welcome. Just keep her as safe and healthy as you can, right?”
Dennis took a quick look in the sack, which Kath knew would be filled with canned goods, maybe some wire or screws, some glue. Odds and ends. Whatever salvage the parents thought worth the doctor’s attention. Barter. Dennis used to get paid thousands of dollars for delivering a baby.
He looked up. “Kind of a weird question. Do you have any golf balls?”
The man pursed his lips and shook his head. “No, I don’t think so.”
“Well if you find any, maybe save them for me?”
“Yeah. Yeah, sure.”
Two other women came to the doorway to look out. One of them was pregnant, maybe five months. She seemed worried, brow creased, lips tight, hands laced over belly. As if she could use her fingers to cage her unborn child to keep it safe. The other woman looked tired.
Dennis frowned at them. “You all aren’t using any birth control at all around here, are you?”
Both women cringed, and the man crossed his arms. “Not like we can pop into Walgreens for condoms.”
“It’s just… never mind.”
The man added, “I mean, so many people have died—don’t we need to think about repopulating—”
“Oh Jesus fuck, no! Look, repopulating the planet or whatever can take care of itself. You—you just worry about keeping the people you already have safe and healthy. Fed. Grow some fucking potatoes!”
For just a moment the man’s glowering gaze hardened. He was thinking of trouble, of taking the doctor down a notch for the outburst. Kath straightened, shifting the shotgun on her lap. To show she was watching.
He backed off. “We’re trying, here. We’re trying.”
Dennis sighed and came around to the other side of the car to wait for Melanie.
She emerged a moment later, shrugging the strap of an equipment bag over her shoulder and pushing a strand of black hair out of her eyes. She looked the most tired of all, even more than the mother, who at least was smiling when Kath glimpsed her.
Kath hopped off the car and opened the back door. “You okay?” she asked.
“I think so,” she said, sighing. “Doc made me handle the delivery on this one.”
“How was it?”
Melanie shook her head, her eyes widening in a look of half-panicked disbelief. “It’s a lot different when the baby is falling into your own hands. I just kept thinking, God, don’t drop it.” She closed her eyes and sucked in a breath. “I hope everything stays okay.”
Kath touched her shoulder. “Let’s get out of here.”
Melanie practically fell into the back seat, and Dennis started the motor and pulled away. Kath rode in the front passenger seat. Literally shotgun. That had stopped being clever a while back. She kept the window rolled halfway down and listened for the sound of approaching engines.
“You did great,” Dennis said, glancing at his assistant in the rearview mirror. “You should have asked them to name the baby after you.”
“No, that’s okay. What’d they give you?” She went through the bag, to the sound of cans knocking together. “Eh, not bad. A couple boxes of nails. We can always trade that back out. Canned peaches.” She paused, looked quizzical, and drew out a glass jar. “Capers. There’s a jar of capers in here. They’re organic.”
“Organic capers,” Dennis snorted. “We’re saved.”
Dennis kept the headlights dimmed to save the battery. If there’d been enough moonlight, he’d have shut off the lights entirely. But the roads had gotten too hazardous, full of potholes and debris, to risk going entirely dark. Still, the doctor didn’t see the three kids standing in their path.
“Stop!” Kath screamed when she realized those shapes weren’t odd shadows but children, one older gripping the hands of two little ones, there in the middle of the road, unmoving. Like they intended to get run over.
The car lurched to a stop, skidded a few feet. The bag of loot fell clattering to the floor, and Melanie braced herself on the seat. Kath was already out the door, with Dennis calling after her.
The kids stared back at her quietly. Their eyes were sunken, their cheeks hollow. It could have just been odd shadows cast by the dim headlights, but Kath didn’t think so. They were hungry, starving. She scanned around for an adult, maybe a caravan they might have wandered off from. But they seemed so purposeful, the way they looked back at her, their eyes round and shining. They didn’t seem lost.
“Hey, what’re you guys doing here? Are you okay?” She tucked the shotgun under her arm, muzzle down, and approached them.
The older child looked like a girl, stringy brown hair in a loose braid, her eyes big and unblinking. Kath thought she was around eight, then revised up—ten, and malnourished. The other two might have been anywhere from two to five. Upright, but still uncertain in their movements. They clung to the older girl, gripping each hand and hugging her legs. All three wore t-shirts and loose pants. Only the oldest had shoes, dirty sneakers, toes poking through holes.
Kath inched closer, trying to look friendly and harmless even with a gun under her arm, but she stopped short of reaching out. Both Dennis and Melanie had left the car as well.
“It’s okay,” Kath said softly. “We’re not going to hurt you, I just want to find out what’s wrong.”
The oldest child licked her lips. “She told us to stand here. She told us to wait for the doctor to come and then go with him to the clinic. She said you’d take care of us.”
“Who? Who said?”
Her lips pursed, the girl didn’t answer. Kath thought she was about to cry, but she just kept staring, any kind of emotion, any response, locked up.
Kath tried again. “Where’d you come from? From the camp back there? From somewhere else?” It had to be the camp, to know that they’d be driving back this way.
“She just said to wait here. She said you’d take care of us.”
How did they know that? How could they be sure? Could have been anyone that came along the road here, and the girl seemed to know it. She was trying to be firm, to be confident. But her lip trembled, and her grip on the little kids’ hands was white-knuckled. She might have known just how dangerous this was, trusting in the good will of strangers.