Seeking Eden Read online

  “What? What the hell does that mean?” Amy gasped. “Ah, fuck, here comes another one!”

  Elanna didn’t know what to tell her. Amy needed to push, and hard, and do it now. Inspiration struck. “Like you have to take a shit!”

  Amy nodded suddenly and bore down, pushing. A gush of blood and birth fluid splattered from between her legs and the baby’s head popped free at last.

  “Again!”

  Amy pushed again, face purpling with the effort, too intent even to scream. As Amy pushed, Elanna pressed down on her belly, using her full weight. The baby slid a little further.

  “Fuck, that hurts!” Amy gasped.

  “You’re doing it, Amy,” Elanna told her. “Just a few more pushes.”

  “You can do it,” The General said. He was watching the bottom of the bed with shocked intensity. “Push, Amy. Push hard, sweetheart.”

  With a guttural moan, Amy did. Elanna left her side and knelt back between her legs. She reached up to cradle the infant’s head, easing it to the side and squeezing the nostrils to clear some of the birth fluid. As Amy pushed, Elanna tilted the shoulder, bringing it smoothly out. Once the shoulder passed, the rest of the child slid into her hands with amazing speed.

  “God! God! God!” Amy cried as the child slipped out of her.

  Elanna cradled the bloody infant with practiced hands, turning it onto its belly and clearing its mouth and throat with her finger. It coughed and then began to cry. “Where’s the stuff I need?”

  It came none too soon. The other girls burst through the door, one tripping. The towels, a dingy white, fell on the floor.

  “Pick them up!” Elanna cried, clutching the slippery baby to her chest as it wriggled and wailed. “And I need the water.”

  They didn’t spill it, Baruch Ha-Shem. And it was clean, or fairly so, and still steaming. She jerked her head toward the closest girl.

  “Get a towel. A clean one.”

  The baby squirmed, its tiny fists flailing. The umbilical cord trailed from its belly back inside the mother.

  “The knife!”

  They handed her a knife as large as her hand, but it would do. Tucking the infant under one arm, she sliced the cord and clamped it with her fingers, rolling the edges in the way the other hopemothers had taught her to stop the bleeding.

  “It’s a boy,” she said to Amy reverently and placed the naked child on the clean towel draped over her chest.

  Amy reached up to hold the child, her face streaked by tears and sweat. The General looked stunned. The girls crowded around, silently. Elanna had never been to a birth so unheralded.

  “You’re not done yet, Amy,” she said. “You need to push again.”

  A few last contractions forced the placenta out, and Elanna caught it deftly in one of the towels that had fallen on the floor. She set it aside, uncertain what rituals these people might have for its disposal and prepared to clean Amy and the child.

  She pressed a folded towel, soaked in the hot water, between Amy’s legs and stood to take the child and wipe it. She stopped, frightened, as the dingy white towel bloomed red with blood almost immediately.

  “She’s hemorrhaging.” Elanna grabbed the rest of the towels and pressed them down. They, too, became wet with blood within seconds.

  “Take the baby,” she ordered one of the girls, who did so fumblingly. “I need more towels. More water. Help me!”

  Amy’s arm fell limply off the bed, hanging down toward the floor. Lifeless. No, Elanna thought. No, not now. Not this.

  But she couldn’t stop the bleeding. It gushed out of the girl on the table, more blood than Elanna would have thought one person could have inside her. It covered the sheets, the bed, the towels, the floor. It covered Elanna herself as she worked to stanch it, rich and earthy smelling, the smell of birth and womanhood.

  And finally, the smell of death.

  −

  44-

  Once there’d been a high fence of metal links here, but time had done to it what it did to everything else. Now the fence sagged in more places than not, and Tobin had no trouble finding a place to crawl over. The moon gave him enough dim light to see by, but his dark clothes would make him a difficult target to spot. He kept walking, refusing to think about what might happen if he was going in the wrong direction.

  He’d ache all over in the morning, but for now the constant movement kept him muscles warm and working. He’d gone beyond the pain, urging each foot forward with thoughts of finding Elanna.

  The building loomed up before him almost before he realized it was there. His feet crunched on the rocks and he froze, waiting. Nothing. The windows, many of them glassless and gaping, were dark. At least here. The building itself was a huge, flat-walled box, marked only by the empty spaces of its windows. Not even a door.

  Squinting, Tobin looked to left and right. More of the same buildings, so far as he could see. In the distance to his right was a line of smaller ones, whiter in the darkness. They looked more like houses than anything else. What had Enoch called them? Barracks.

  He had no idea where he was going to find Elanna, but he didn’t have time to waste. He’d start with this building, the one in front of him, but first he’d have to find the door. One direction looked as good or bad as the other, but he chose to go right.

  As he turned the corner, a smaller building loomed ahead. Though most of it was as dark as the others, in one or two of the windows he spotted faint, flickering glows. This is where the people were.

  Not for the first time, he wished he had a weapon. Even a hoe or a stick with a spike on the end of it would make him feel better than walking into certain danger completely unarmed. Going up against a known enemy, Kodak and her troops, was better than going blind, but they had guns and he didn’t. Not a good match.

  Not that he could have shot a gun, should he find one. His skills of derring-do were limited to what he’d read about James Bond. He’d have to rely on what he knew he had in abundance, his wits. He was counting on them being a weapon the Gappers didn’t know how to use.

  Finding his way into the building was easy. The massive metal double doors both hung open, one off its hinges. Even in the dim light he could see deep scratches in the peeling paint where the silver metal glimmered through. Both doors were battered, dented and flaking with rust. More than just the passage of time had done this. Someone, sometime, had beaten these doors with something big and heavy.

  Whoever it was had gotten in, too, he thought as he stepped through. And been met with a welcoming committee. He couldn’t see too far ahead into the dark hallway, but the floor just inside the doorway was stained dark with splatters of what he assumed was blood. Old blood that had never been cleaned up.

  With a shudder, Tobin moved further into the darkness and paused. Without light, he had no chance of proceeding silently. Or seeing where he was going without being seen himself. The corridor stretched far in front of him, but he had no idea how long it was, or even if there were other doors and halls branching from it. It was just too damn dark.

  Waiting for daylight would take too long and be too risky. Damnit, he had to act now! But what to do? He had no candles, no lantern, not even a match.

  He didn’t have the chance to curse his indecision. A door he hadn’t seen directly behind him opened, and light poured out.

  -*-

  “No! NO!” The General fell to his knees beside Amy’s unresponsive body and gathered her into his arms. She lolled against him, arms flailing and head bending on her neck.

  Elanna stood covered in blood, helpless to do anything but watch the man cradle the dead girl. She was wiped out, exhausted and close to tears herself, but she hadn’t known the girl. The General had not only known her, but it seemed he also might have loved her. Elanna’s heart went out to him.

  “I’m sorry,” she ventured.

  He turned on her, face contorted in pain and rage. He let Amy’s body slip to the bed with a thud that made Elanna jump. In a flash he was in front of