After the End of the World

"I'd like to be, but the plane that's going to fly us back to Florida won't be available for a couple more days. Not to worry, though. She's in the base hospital and I'll be with them soon enough. And hey, I'm still taking part in a birth today."

"I hope," I say grimly. I'm so tired.

"Have faith. Now let's get to this. I have to warn you that for this to work, it's going to hurt."

"Hah. Everything hurts right now."

"Okay, but you've been warned. Let's see how this goes." He begins to palpate my belly, like I had earlier, trying to turn the baby, but he's being much firmer than I had dared be. I grit my teeth. Yeah, it hurts.

"What happens if this doesn't work?" I grunt.

"Next would normally be a C-section. There's someone at base camp that might be able to do the job in a pinch, but I don't think there's time to get him here. Besides, he wouldn't fit through the tunnel. And I don't think you'd fit either in your current condition."

He's right about that. I'd chipped out concrete in the bunkroom wall, cut a hole in the metal shell, then dug the tunnel during my first and second trimesters. The dirt from the dig now nearly fills the bunkroom. I'd felt like Steve McQueen in The Great Escape. Speaking of which, "how did you get down the tunnel in your suit?" He's thin, but he's a man, and his shoulders look like they're wider than my hips, which the tunnel was dimensioned for.

"I had to ditch it to make myself fit. It's waiting for me up top, along with a suit from the silo for you. And I brought a big, sealed bag for the baby."

My mouth must be hanging open. This stranger, who hadn't even met me, had endangered his own health by exposing himself to what must be a highly radioactive environment.

He can see my stricken expression. "Hey, we took precautions. We scraped away the snow, then six inches of soil, all around your broomstick. Then we set up a big tent over the top and sealed the edges before we dug out the last bit of your tunnel. I did make sure to wear a respirator mask the whole time and I've got one for you to wear on the way out."

"You didn't have to come."

"Oh yes I did. If it was Kara alone in this bunker with a breech baby, I'd hate to think that no one would come to her aid."

"Well, thank you, Caiden."

"You can thank me when you've got little Crystal in your arms. I think we're getting close, but this next part is really going to hurt. Are you ready?"

"Does it matter?"

"Fair point."

This time, I feel her really move inside me, actually turning, but fuck it hurts. I scream, but Caiden only bears down harder. I can feel his determination to get this done. We have no fallback, and we both know it's this or death.

Then, miraculously, it's done. I can feel that it's done. The elated grin on Caiden's face only confirms it for me.

"You did it!" I gasp.

"We did it," he says generously.

"So now what?"

"Now you have to do the rest of the work," he says.

"I'll do my best," I offer.

"No Lana," he says firmly, "you'll do the job that's required. I'm here with you, but only you can do it."

Suddenly, I feel a rush of wetness between my legs. Caiden reports that it's a straw-colored liquid. "Your water's broken," he says. Then he casually inserts a lubed and gloved hand up inside me and probes my cervix. By now I don't even blink at that.

"It feels like you're fully dilated, Lana, so you're on the clock now. Let's get to it."

I've been having contractions for so long that I have very little energy left. Between them, my mind wants to drift off to nothingness, but Caiden keeps me engaged through conversation.

"So tell me, how did a pretty girl like you end up in a joint like this?" he asks. I actually manage a smile at that. Little by little, between the seemingly endless contractions, he extracts my story. He's a good listener, and with my exhaustion loosening my inner filters, I end up telling him the story of my life, from growing up on Air Force bases all over the world, to our move to the ranch in Montana, to my infatuation with Greg, and then to a detailed account of what had happened in the bunker. I would never have imagined sharing that stuff with anyone, but with Caiden it feels safe.

Eventually, I've about told it all, so I ask Caiden to tell me his story. He shrugs. "It's boring."

"Oh no you don't," I say. "My mouth is worn out from talking. You're gonna tell me at least twice as much as I told you. You hear me, mister?"

He grins. "You asked for it, lady."

I suppose some might call his story boring, but not me. Amazingly, he was born about twenty miles south of here and lived on a ranch with his parents and four younger siblings. He'd loved the life, but the ranch had fallen on hard times and his dad had been forced to sell just before Caiden graduated high school.

He'd wanted to continue ranching, but knew the life of a hired hand just wasn't the same. He'd joined the Air Force instead, becoming an Aircraft Electrical and Environmental Systems specialist. He's spent the last four years at bases all over the world, including an earlier stint at this one, at his request, so he could be close to his family. I don't find his story boring at all.

Good conversation or not, though, I'm losing strength and my efforts are weaker with each contraction. I no longer have the energy to talk between them, and I become convinced that Crystal and I are going to die. Caiden's not having it, though, and he cheerleads, encourages, pushes, cajoles and finally even slaps my face and screams at me, bringing me back to consciousness and not letting me give up.

The pain? I realize that I've never known before what pain really is. The agony and exhaustion are seemingly never-ending, but at last I can feel Crystal's head crown. With one last weak but excruciating push, she squirts free. I feel no more.

When I wake, I'm partially propped up on a stack of pillows in the master bed. Caiden is standing next to me, rocking a small, wrapped bundle in his arms.

"Hey, you're back in the land of the living," he says, smiling. "How are you feeling?"

"Like I got hit by a truck, but I'll recover. How's Crystal?"

"Ten fingers, ten toes, and very healthy," he reports. "I think you've given birth to the perfect child."

I breathe a deep sigh of relief. "How long have I been out?"

"About an hour. I worried for a bit because your pulse and respiration dipped way down immediately postpartum. I thought I was going to have to start CPR, but then you bounced back and even passed your afterbirth just fine. Meanwhile, I got your little one cleaned up and checked out. Then I got you cleaned up a little and moved you in here where it's warm."

I feel around and find that I'm wearing an old set of my mother's long flannel pajamas, along with panties and a feminine pad. Caiden did it up right.

He nods down at Crystal. "The two of us have spent the last twenty minutes getting acquainted. Good kid you've got here."

"Can I hold her?"

He chuckles. "You're the mom. I should think so." He steps up to the head of the bed. "By the way, Lana, what would you have named your baby in the case that it had been a boy?"

Honestly, I'd been so certain that I was having a girl that I hadn't given it a thought, but there could have been only one answer. "Gregory."

He gives me a look, and I'm sure my eyes get huge. Caiden hands me the little bundle. "Say hello to Gregory Edwards Jr.," he beams.

Gregory sleeps in my arms while Caiden takes what he says is his first hot shower in three weeks. (I don't admit to him just how long it's been for me.) I gaze into my child's face, still having a hard time believing that this can be real. He's so beautiful, with his father's blue eyes and blond hair. And on him, my cleft chin looks good. I've fallen in love.

My rescuer's companions have set up housekeeping in silo 5340, so Caiden's used the terminal to relay the successful birth to his colleagues, who are reportedly thrilled for me. He's also told them (correctly) that I'm in no shape to make the climb out of the tunnel, and that they should wait to retrieve us until a few hours before the plane departs. Now we've all got some time to rest and recover.

When he comes out of the bathroom wearing a set of my dad's clothes (which hang loosely on him, even though my dad wasn't heavy), he plunks down contentedly, looking obscenely comfortable in the butter-soft recliner a few feet away. He's not as big and handsome as Greg, but he's got radiant blue eyes and I think he cleans up well.

"Caiden," I say, "I appreciate what you've done for us. Without your help, things would have ended up very differently. So, thank you from the bottom of my heart for saving our lives."

I think I've made him blush. "You're quite welcome. And I got to witness a miracle."

I smile and nod. "The miracle of birth."

"Well, yeah, but I mean a miracle beyond that. Lana, I don't know if you realize just how far gone you were by the time I got here. In any hospital, you would have been rushed in for an emergency C-section, and even then, you might have died. When we finally got the little guy turned, I wouldn't have given you a chance in a thousand that you'd actually be able to push him out of there. Part of me just wanted to face reality and let you die in peace, but you kept finding more strength and somehow, miraculously, you did it. It was my privilege to be here to witness it."

Wow. "Well, thank you for sticking with me. Without you being such a hard-ass coach, I would have given up myself. I think we made a good team."

He smiles. "Yeah, I do believe we did."

"You know, I was amazed that someone actually answered my message."

"Total blind luck. Silo 5340 was the last one on our list. We had the procedure down cold, so we weren't going to be there long. The missile crew had shut down everything neatly and evacuated right after they launched, so the generator fired up okay, but I didn't notice that old terminal until we were almost ready to leave.

"I hadn't seen anything like it in any of the other bunkers, so I turned it on out of curiosity, but it just sat there with a cursor on a blank screen. There wasn't going to be any useful intelligence on it, since it didn't have any memory capabilities, so we moved on. Then, about thirty seconds before we were going to shut the generator down, it beeped. You pretty much know the rest."

I shiver. It had been that close.

We both watch as my son sleeps. He's had a big day. Finally, I muster up my courage to ask. "Caiden, I haven't had any outside contact since the bombs dropped. How bad is it out there?"

Caiden suddenly looks guilty for being so comfortable. He sits up straight on the edge of the recliner. "Real bad," he says softly. "Do you know about electromagnetic pulse?"

"Yeah. It was our first warning that something was wrong."

He nods. "Well, the destruction of electronics from the EMP alone would have killed ninety to ninety-five percent of the US population from cold and starvation by now. That's bad, but when you throw in the direct deaths from the nukes that hit nearly every metropolitan area, the radioactive particles in the air, and the thick layers of dust and ash that darkened the sky and destroyed agriculture nearly nationwide, the April Fools War was a lot worse than that."

April Fools War. I'd wondered what people would call it.

"With the dust and radiation," he continues, "there was no growing season, and livestock were wiped out. There was almost no food left by midsummer and huge swaths of Americans started to die of actual starvation. Since then, we've had the coldest winter since the Mount Tambora volcano lit off back in 1815, and it's not even Christmas yet. The death toll must be close to ninety-eight percent by now, with most of the survivors huddled along the Gulf coast and south Florida. It's supposedly even worse across Europe and Asia."

My mind can't yet begin to process the meaning behind those words. "Is it that bad everywhere?"

"No. The further south you go, the lesser the effects. They still have electricity, and the worst of the radioactive particles fell out of the atmosphere before they crossed the equator. Unfortunately, ninety percent of the world's population lived north of the equator."

His use of the past-tense "lived" is chilling.

"Most of South America, southern Africa, Australia and New Zealand got off relatively easy," he continues, "but they're still hurting from the loss of their trading partners up north and the floods of refugees coming south."

I'm not really registering his words now, instead thinking about the deaths of nearly everybody I've ever known. Hell, the deaths of nearly everyone in my country, and maybe the world. Death on this scale is incomprehensible. How in the hell had something like this happened? What manner of complete, utter stupidity had seized our collective leaders?

After nine months in the bunker, I would have thought I was done with tears, but those had been for my own personal tragedies. Now, knowing how catastrophic this "April Fools War" had been for everyone else makes me realize that, in the larger scheme of things, those losses were as one of my tears in the ocean. Soon my body is heaving with great involuntary sobs of grief.

Hesitantly, Caiden sits down on the bed beside me, putting an arm around me and holding me to him. Even in my grief, I can appreciate that this must be awkward for him. I am most certainly not his wife. Still, his gesture is appreciated and the humanity of it is comforting.

My sobbing has woken Gregory, though, and he begins to cry as well. I look down. His mouth is making instinctive suckling motions. I unselfconsciously unbutton my pajama top and guide Gregory's mouth to my painfully full breast. After a few failed and frustrating attempts, he latches on and begins to suckle.

My tears end as I experience this minor miracle, feeding my child with my body. Yes, there has been death outside on a scale unimaginable, but here, buried in the earth and wrapped in a shell of steel and concrete, there is new life.

Caiden gives me a little squeeze of encouragement, and I look over at him. He's watching Gregory nurse, an expression of wonder on his face. Part of me starts to daydream about how amazing it would have been if Greg were here to witness this, but dwelling on those thoughts would just lead to more tears. I lecture myself to just appreciate that this wonderful stranger has arrived in time to save our lives and share in this moment.

I realize after a minute that I'm crying again. Damn, the hormones that come with childbirth and motherhood are doing a number on me. I'm a mess, but at least these are happy tears.

After a minute, Caiden moves back to the recliner and I discretely lift the edge of the sheet up over Gregory's head.

"Caiden," I eventually say, "can you tell me what that day was like for you?" He hadn't quite gotten to that earlier before we'd had to knock off the talking.

He nods. "Believe it or not, Kara and I were at Universal Studios in Orlando on our honeymoon, waiting in line to ride the Jurassic Park River Adventure. I was talking to my sister in Great Falls on my phone." He pauses for a long moment. He's stoic about it, but he'd obviously loved his sister like I'd loved mine.

Emotions now under control, he continues. "Then the power went out and everything stopped. The rides, the lights, the fountains, the music. Everything.

"Everyone else was waiting patiently for the power to come back on, but I had Kara by the hand, leading her out of there as quickly as I could without starting a panic. My phone had bricked."

"You knew about EMP even then?"

"Yeah. Early in my enlistment I spent eighteen months working in the missile silos here in Montana, doing maintenance on the systems. Knowing about EMP and how to mitigate it was part of the training."

"So what did you and Kara do?"

"Well, I knew it could have been just an EMP attack, but my gut told me it was more. We needed to get away from anything that could be considered a target, including Orlando. We didn't even go back to our hotel room.

"There was a bicycle rental place near the hotel, but the guy was turning people away, saying that he couldn't rent bikes until his computer came back up. I offered him all of my cash to buy a couple of them for twice what they'd been worth an hour before. He didn't yet comprehend that under these circumstances, they were literally priceless. We rode east as fast as we could."

"Why east?"

"I was stationed at Patrick Air Force Base, south of Cape Canaveral, and I knew I should report as soon as I could. I also figured that the best organization left would be among the military. The highways weren't clogged or anything, like in the movies when there's a major catastrophe, because all of the cars had stopped as soon as the burst had hit. I figured we could make it there by the next day.

"We'd ridden about ten miles when the sky lit up way out in front of us. I figured that the base or something real near it had been hit, so we turned around and headed west for MacDill Air Force base near Tampa. By then, people were starting to understand the score, and several tried to stop us to take our bikes. Luckily, a military convoy came up behind us right about then."

"Hardened electronics, I assume?"

"Yeah, but even so, they'd lost a couple of vehicles and most of their communications equipment was burned out. I waved my military ID and they let us and our bikes ride in the back of one of the trucks. They didn't know anything more about what was going on than we did.

"We'd been riding with them for maybe fifteen minutes when the sky lit up behind us. It was blinding, even from twenty miles away. I don't know what military value Orlando had, but nobody's going to enjoy the Jurassic Park River Adventure again."

"All those people," I murmur.

He nods. "The convoy was on its way to MacDill as well, but we stopped in the middle of nowhere for the night, thinking the base would be sure to get hit. We got going again in the morning and found that, amazingly, MacDill and the Tampa area had been spared. They got Kara and me into a room in the barracks at first, then a nice place in family housing a few months later. We've been there ever since."

"So what were you doing back here, then?"

"We were collecting the warheads that hadn't been launched and gathering what intelligence we could. This was our third and last of the ICBM bases. We did Cheyenne, Wyoming first, then Minot, North Dakota."

"What kind of intelligence are you looking for? That is, if you can tell me without then being duty-bound to kill me."

He smiles at the old joke. "Don't laugh, but the remaining brass are still trying to figure out why the April Fools War even happened. All of Command and Control, along with just about all of the national political apparatus, were destroyed within the first few minutes of the war. Apparently, that's true for all three sides."

"What? You mean no one even knows who started it?"

"Well, no one who survived to talk about it anyway. We like to think it was the Russians or the Chinese, and that's where I'd put my money, but there's no evidence I've seen that can prove anything. Hell, there are some serious and knowledgeable people who say they can prove that it was something like Skynet, from the Terminator movies."