After the End of the World

I just shake my head. The whole thing seems so pointless.

"We were expecting an invasion to follow the bombings," he continues, "but that never happened. There was evidently some fighting along the Russian-Chinese border, but that stopped really quick when the radiation levels spiked. There were no winners in this war."

I shake my head. "I don't know why anyone would have ever thought there would be."

There's still a little joy left in the world though. Just hours after Gregory's arrival, I celebrate with Caiden when word arrives that his Kara has given birth to a bouncing baby Amelia. I feel awful for him that he's missed it, but it's amazing, each of us having kids born the same day, if a couple of thousand miles apart. Life is a mysterious thing.

That evening, the question of where to put Caiden overnight comes up. I don't tell him, because it's so personal, but I've never actually slept in the master bedroom before. Until I went into labor, I always slept on one of the bunkroom mattresses, placed right up against the blast door. Call it morbid and creepifying, but I wanted to be close to Greg.

That mattress is now the one in the middle of the Rec room floor. It isn't sanitary in any way, and of course the bunkroom itself is full of tunnel-digging dirt, so I offer to let Caiden share the master bed with me, strictly platonically of course. If the man hasn't put a foot wrong with me so far, I think I can trust him to behave.

Out of a fullness of respect for his marriage, he politely declines, instead crashing on the couch in the Comm room. I admire him for that. He's a good man.

The next morning, Caiden carries in a big tray with a feast fit for a king. Since we'll be leaving soon, there's no need to ration anymore. I surprise myself by eating like a horse, but Caiden eats twice that.

"Hey," he says when I raise an eyebrow at him for snagging another plateful of the canned ham, "I've been on short rations for a long time. I used to be a marathoner, but even so, I'm down twenty-three pounds. And I'm one of the lucky ones, because MacDill gets occasional resupply from overseas. Even that's getting tough, though, because there's just not enough to go around."

"What about the people outside the base?"

"Well, there's a large refugee camp just to the north with maybe six or seven thousand people in it. Conditions there are nowhere near as good as on the base proper, but way better than outside the camp. The civilians that didn't get into the camp before they had to cut off new arrivals all headed north through the city and into the rural areas, looking for food.

"Still, though, it's only temporary. We're shipping people south as fast as we can. The radiation levels, even at Tampa's latitude, are getting higher than is healthy long term. Eventually, we're going to have to abandon the northern hemisphere entirely."

A sobering thought, that.

Caiden gets word after breakfast that the plane will be leaving late morning tomorrow. A Humvee will be here to pick us up at first light. Suddenly, with a deadline, I start thinking of everything that needs to be done before we leave. I throw off my covers and start to get up.

"What are you doing?" Caiden asks.

"I've got to get cleaned up and packed," I say.

"Hey, tell me what you need and I'll take care of it."

"Oh no you don't. You've done more than your share to take care of me. I think it's time for me to get busy."

I do so over Caiden's protests, at first with him hovering over me, ready to catch me if I fall. But I'm a ranching woman, and we're pretty tough. Soon he backs off after making me promise that, at least for Gregory's sake, I won't push too hard too soon. I know it's good advice, so I take frequent breaks, but by the time I serve up our evening meal, I've got everything in order.

Caiden stays busy himself, wearing his respirator mask while making seemingly countless trips up and down the tunnel, taking food up to the tent one duffle load at a time. I'd told him that I would be more than happy to donate it because it will just go to waste down here otherwise. He's making sure he gets all of it, even the little cans of that nasty "potted meat," which he seems to think is some kind of delicacy. That would be enough, right there, to tell me that things topside must be grim.

Our evacuation from the bunker the next morning goes with military precision. Caiden goes first, taking my duffle bag topside, sealed and taped in a heavy garbage bag. When he returns, I go next, wearing a heavy mask and long clothing duct taped at my wrists, waist and ankles. I slither painfully up the tunnel and am met by a radiation suit-clad medic who has me strip to my panties (breaking rules by allowing me even that much modesty). He has me wash my hands and face in a basin, then helps me into loose-fitting coveralls and a radiation suit of my own.

Caiden comes next, gently pushing a box with a sealed bag in it. The medic quickly wipes down the bag while Caiden does what I just did. Then we all rush to the waiting Humvee. Once sealed inside, I open the bag. Gregory is crying but unharmed. I hold him to me, and he calms quickly.

The landscape outside the windows is almost unrecognizable. There is a slight depression were the foundation of the house was, and it looks like parts of two of the sturdy steel uprights for my solar panels are still poking up out of the snow, but everything else is gone. This is no longer my beloved ranch, and I can't think of a reason why I would ever want to come back here, even if I could. Well, there is one reason, but he doesn't even have a marker.

"Goodbye Greg," I whisper. I'm leaving him behind, but I'm taking his legacy with me.

The C-130 is loaded to capacity, carrying all the personnel it had brought, thirty tall cones containing nuclear warheads, a tall pallet of canned food, the only live adult civilian within a fifty-mile radius, and an infant. The flight is long and noisy, and includes a nerve-wracking mid-air refueling. When we arrive over MacDill, it's after dark, but the base is lit up beneath us.

"Caiden," I say excitedly, "how did you guys get the power back on?"

He smiles. "EMP is still a bit of an unknown. No one realized it before the war, but the shape of the initial detonation seems to create a very uneven pattern in the pulse. In some places it was strong enough to spontaneously create fires wherever there were long wires, in other places the damage wasn't quite as bad. And in a small number of places, the damage was minimal. MacDill just got lucky."

"So everything works?"

"No, nobody was that lucky, but the generators and water treatment plant came through it just fine. The aircraft and older diesel trucks still operate, and most of the equipment in the metal hangers was untouched. All of the bigger buildings and most of the quarters, including mine, have power and water, though it's rationed. Fancier electronics didn't do as well though, so communications are still mostly by foot."

"Wow. I think I may like it here."

We're sitting in the office of the wing commander. As perhaps the only living human being to have witnessed the nuking of the Montana missile base from up close, I've been brought along as part of the mission debrief. I fill in the colonel on what I saw, including witnessing an ICBM in its boost phase being blasted out of the sky, but when the subject turns to what to do with me, things get a bit sticky. I've been assuming (perhaps naively) that I would stay on the base. The colonel has been assuming otherwise, and orders that I be driven to the refugee camp.

"Sir," Caiden says, "Mrs. Edwards has provided us with valuable intel and has a two-day-old infant with her. I think it's the least we can do to find her on-base accommodations. With the number of people being evacuated, there are quarters available."

"I'm sorry Staff Sargent, but we can't take in every civilian we find. This is a military installation."

"Colonel," I say, "I lived the first twelve years of my life on Air Force bases all over the world. My late father, Colonel Jonathan Erickson, wouldn't have appreciated having his only grandchild thrown to the wolves." It's probably a bit presumptuous of me to come at it from that angle, but the military likes to take care of its own, and I feel I have a bit of a claim to that.

The colonel appears to consider that for a long moment, but I can see that he's not being swayed.

Caiden can evidently see this too. "Sir," he says earnestly, "may I point out that Mrs. Edwards has cheerfully contributed five man-years worth of food to the commissary. What would it say about us if we accepted her donation, but sent her and her two-day-old son packing?"

Wow, he's laid it all on the line for me there, and I could imagine that it would be easy for a colonel to feel like he's being lectured. Whatever the outcome, I owe Caiden for being willing to stick his neck out for me.

At last the colonel smiles, but I see a bit of mischief in his expression. I get the feeling that Caiden is about to get some blowback for forcing the issue. "Very well, Staff Sargent. Mrs. Edwards and her child can stay, but with one stipulation. You will provide them housing out of your own allotment."

Caiden's eyes grow a little at that, and he looks at me. Wow, this would mean living in Caiden and Kara's home. I hate to intrude on the household of a woman I haven't even met, but what else am I going to do? I heard stories from several men aboard the plane about conditions in the camp, and I'd rather not subject Gregory to that. I give Caiden a nod.

He looks back at his superior officer. "Thank you, sir. We'll make that work."

Caiden had been hoping that Kara would be there when the plane landed (as the other spouses had been) but she hadn't shown, so she's caught by surprise when three of us arrive. I nearly do a double take when she opens the door. It takes me a second to be sure, but no, she's not Courtney, Greg's old girlfriend. She's got Courtney's big blond hair, blue eyes, cute little button nose, ample boobs and curvy butt though. Despite myself, it immediately makes me want to dislike her.

Regardless of her assets, Kara looks a bit frazzled at the moment. Her hair is uncombed, her feet are bare, and her T-shirt and shorts are looking a bit dingy. I carefully keep my expression pleasant. I'm not exactly fresh as a daisy either after our cross-country journey through a nuclear wasteland.

Caiden gives his wife a hug and kiss. "I missed you, sweetheart."

"I missed you too, hon," she says, but she looks distracted, which, considering that there's a woman and baby with him, I can understand. He introduces us and tells her that I'm going to be staying with them, per the wing commander.

"I hope it's okay?" I say, firmly setting aside my admittedly unfair first impressions. "I really hate to intrude."

"It's no trouble at all," she says, but while she may be trying to hide how much she doesn't want me here, she's not a great actor and her tone of voice gives her away. Caiden, over her shoulder, looks embarrassed, but wisely stays out of it.

"Well, I'm sure Caiden is eager to meet his daughter," I say, "so I'll get out of your way if you point me in the right direction."

Kara nods. "We use one of the bedrooms for storage, but I suppose we can move some stuff around. Come along and I'll point it out to you."

Their home is the right half of a two-story duplex unit (sitting atop nicely disguised ten-foot-tall stilts for hurricane reasons) with all three bedrooms on the uppermost level. When we hit the top of the stairs, she points out a closed door at the far end of the hall.

"My husband can move the bed in there from the nursery later," she says, subtly emphasizing husband. I'm pointedly not invited to come with them into the nursery to meet Amelia, and Kara has taken no apparent notice of the baby in my arms.

I know Kara doesn't want to see much of me, so it's a good thing she spends the time when Caiden's at work in the master bedroom with Amelia, watching DVD's on her miraculously still functional laptop. (I'm sure the Air Force would commandeer the precious device if they knew about it.)

When Caiden gets home, she's on him like white on rice. I stay away from him, as she's obviously intending. Gregory is now just about my only company, and while I find him endlessly fascinating and love him with every fiber of my being, he's not yet a great conversationalist.

I ask Caiden if I can get some sort of employment, but he apologetically tells me that with the limited ID I've been provided with, a job on the base is out of the question. So I ask about volunteering at the refugee camp, but evidently the need there is for more supplies. Labor they have in spades.

So I put my time to good use attacking the housework (quietly!) whenever Kara is holed up. With Caiden gone for weeks and Kara nearing her due date, it had been badly neglected. The house is filthy. My body is recovering quickly from the birthing ordeal and my energy has returned, so cleaning feels good.

The duplex has electricity and water, but it's a mixed bag on the appliances. The stove, oven, refrigerator, clothes dryer, hot water heater, and yes, Kara's laptop (left behind in a protective metal file cabinet by the previous occupants, who were among the first families to be evacuated to the south) survived. Unfortunately, the dishwasher, microwave, and much worse, the clothes washer, have packed it in for the duration.

From my time in the bunker, I'm used to washing my clothes by hand, and I find that Kara is willing(!) to allow me to wash clothes for everyone else in the house as well. Being able to use warm water in the big laundry sink almost feels like cheating, but only until I look at the useless washing machine sitting next to the dryer.

At my request, Caiden gives me the ration cards necessary to do the shopping for all of us at the commissary. (His lieutenant has jiggered the system a little to add a third adult to our household ration.) I start to do all of the cooking as well, except for the occasional dinner Caiden insists on putting together.

"I really appreciate you picking up some of the household duties," Kara eventually says to me by way of acknowledgement a couple of weeks later. Some? I do everything but change Amelia's diapers, and Caiden does those anytime he's home. "Caiden's been concerned with my doing too much physical labor so soon after having a baby," she finishes.

Yeah, as if I hadn't had a baby the same day, and I doubt Caiden's concerns are the cause of her idleness. "Oh, it's no trouble at all," I say instead.

"Well, I have been telling him we need a housekeeper."

Housekeeper? I'm sure she means it as a dig, but it's rather clarifying actually. "Anything I can do to earn my keep," I say.

Caiden and Kara's relationship is an enigma to me. If I'm present, she will put on a show of affection for him when he gets home, but on the occasions I've witnessed her after-work greeting when she thought I wasn't watching, she barely acknowledges his return. I occasionally see him treat her with something akin to affection, but she seems to only tolerate it, and certainly doesn't reciprocate. Other than being coparents of a child, I just don't see anything that looks like a bond between them.

What's worse for me, though, is that ever since we got here, he treats me with an almost painful formality. It's like Kara is going to slap him if he so much as smiles at me. And he goes to great lengths to make sure he's never alone with me, even for a minute. The camaraderie we shared in the bunker is now, sadly, a thing of the past.

As an escape for the hours when they're both home and I'm not allowed near them, I develop a walking route through the neighborhood. It takes me about two hours if I walk fast, and I've always been a fast walker. Gregory accompanies me, of course, bound comfortably and securely to my chest with a purpose-made stretchy wrap that I found at the commissary.

Soon, people get used to seeing me and I get smiles and waves. I even get to have occasional conversations with real adults. The walking, combined with the constant housework, quickly has me looking and feeling like my old self.

About six weeks after my arrival, I'm up late as usual, doing the dinner dishes after waiting for Kara to go to bed. Unexpectedly, Caiden joins me, grabbing a towel and proceeding to dry and put away the dishes as I wash them. This is highly irregular, but his quick, practiced movements around the kitchen immediately tell me that this used to be his job.

"Are you going to get in trouble for helping me?" I whisper. I soften that with a smile.

His smile in return is pained. "Lana, I am so sorry for how things have been for you here. This wasn't my intention." His voice is low, almost to the point of inaudibility. This tips me off that Kara may be listening from the top of the stairs.

"Then why do you allow it?" My voice is equally low.

His expression is a mixture of hurt and shame. "I hope that someday I'll be able to explain," he murmurs, "but for now the best I can tell you is that there are reasons beyond my control."

I really liked the man I met in the bunker, and for now that's enough that I can just purse my lips and nod.

"Lana," he says, his voice now at something closer to a normal volume, "we've got a really big ask for you."

It doesn't escape me that while he's said 'we,' it's just him doing the asking. He looks rather uncomfortable about it too.

"Sure. What's up?"

"Well, Kara's milk supply has been dwindling. We've been supplementing with formula from the commissary, but they're out now and don't know when they'll have more. Her pediatrician can write a prescription that will allow us to draw formula from the supply at the clinic, but he won't do that unless Kara tries around the clock breastfeeding first. That's supposed to stimulate milk production, but it would require her to feed directly from the breast at every feeding and she really doesn't want to do that."

"Why not? For me, it's one of the best parts about being a mother." And the bond that Gregory and I have through breastfeeding is as strong as life itself.

He sighs and his voice drops way down low again. If his wife is listening, she'll be hella suspicious by now. "She says it hurts and she's afraid it'll deform her nipples. She's been using a breast pump since the day after Amelia was born."

Yeah, some women can get away with pumping breastmilk for some or all feedings and still keep up production. Some can't. I don't know which I am and have no reason or inclination to find out.

Of course I know by now what their 'ask' is going to be. Whatever my problems with Kara, Caiden risked his life to save mine, so I don't even make him say it. "Caiden, I've got more milk than Gregory needs, and if I start feeding two babies, I should have even more. I'd be happy to nurse Amelia too."

Now he looks even more uncomfortable. "Uh, Kara would prefer that you use her breast pump so we can continue to feed Amelia with a bottle."

Part of me wants to say that's just petty, because it complicates everything, but then I try to imagine another woman nursing Gregory. Okay, fair enough.

"Sure, Caiden. I'd be happy to do it that way."

"Lana, you're an angel. Thank you." I can tell that he'd like to hug me (and I wouldn't mind), but there's no way he's going to let himself do that. I expect that since his mission is accomplished, he's going to leave and rejoin Kara, but he stays. We work in companionable silence for the few more minutes it takes to get the job done. Then he pecks my cheek and heads for the stairs.