Page 37

They haven’t moved from this spot in a darkened room, on a dusty old bed for hours.

Following Lucy’s every breath, Olivia’s hand lays splayed across the rise and fall of her belly. She has to feel the inhales and exhales for herself to know they’re real.

Cole’s been silent and stoic, cocooning the baby from the other side as if that’ll somehow stop the inevitable.

He hasn’t cried, but Olivia has. She sobbed until dry heaving was the only option and snot stuffed up her nose.

She couldn’t produce another tear even if she was paid, yet her effort remains strong.

She’s mourning a loss that hasn’t happened yet and nothing can soothe her.

It’s hard to watch someone cry and not try to stop it.

To lay quietly beside them and just be here, but he’s got that skill down to a science.

The occasional brush of his hand over her knuckles is a tether that keeps her grounded and his acceptance of her tears is the best reaction he could offer.

When he thinks she’s not watching, Cole’s eyes well up as he gazes at the baby, who, despite not being his own, has quickly become his daughter in such a short time.

They haven’t said it out loud to each other, but it’s a truth impossible to deny.

He’s keeping it together for her while a piece of her dies along with her child and once it’s over, she fears there won’t be anything left.

“I can’t do it.” The eerie silence is broken with a request as awful as it is necessary. “When it happens I can’t…please help me? Please, Cole? It should be someone who loves her, but I can’t.”

Fuck. Turns out she can cry again and all it took was asking him to put down Lucy when the time comes because she’s too weak to do it herself.

Takes him a moment to understand and then he’s stricken like she smacked him across the face.

She’s never felt so guilty, but if he says no, she’ll curl up and never move again, and then whatever happens after won’t matter anymore.

“I love her,” he replies finally, placing a hand over hers where it rests atop that kitten onesie. “I’ll handle it.”

He’s saving her again, just as he has countless times before.

Willing to carry that burden for the rest of his life to spare her from it and she hates how wrong it feels to accept so much of someone who keeps giving and giving.

The longer the fever rages, the closer they get to a fate that short-circuits her brain to dwell on.

So, she focuses on those tiny little breaths instead of how Lucy’s begun to sweat.

“When I was pregnant, I used to talk to her all the time.” Olivia smiles through her tears. “I’d tell her about all the places we’d go and things we’d see. How much fun she’d have out here in the world. Adventures we’d take.”

“Like what?”

“Silly things. Going to Paris to see the Eiffel Tower. Have s’mores by a campfire.

Ride roller coasters and play fetch with our dog.

We didn’t have a dog. Things I knew we could never do, but I promised her that I’d be braver.

That I’d protect her…and look what happened.

I couldn’t keep her safe. I couldn’t do the bare minimum as a parent. ”

“What you did back there was amazing. This wasn’t your fau—”

“Cole, don’t.”

“No, I’m gonna say it ‘cause it’s true. You did that all by your damn self. You set that place on fire and got her back. Didn’t need me or anyone else to rescue you. No one coulda done better. No one. You saved us both.”

With her breath hitching and her heart squeezing, she only wants to settle into his lap and stay in the shelter of his arms, where tragedies like this can’t touch her.

At any other time, she’d soak his words up like a sponge, but right now, nothing can reach any part of her that hears it. “You’ll stay, right? The whole time?”

A deep-seated fear of abandonment forces a question she already knows the answer to.

There’s no chance she could do this alone.

Can’t do it at all, but without him to keep her going she’d lay down and die, too.

It’s too much responsibility to put on any one person, but she lays it on his broad shoulders anyway, wishing she didn’t have to.

“I’m staying. Don’t give up yet, we still don’t know if she’s immune. It’s possible.”

“A lot of things are possible, but that doesn’t make it likely and I can’t let myself hope.”

“I’ll keep hoping for both of us, then,” he whispers.

She has no doubt he will.

Even the cat knows something is wrong. Curled in a ball at the foot of the bed, Flower no longer seeks attention or purrs like a Harley motor.

She is quiet and sullen and Olivia tries not to take that as a sign.

Animals have a sixth sense about these things, she worries, and it’s difficult not to read into the reaction.

The four of them settle in for a long night, fearing what the morning will bring.

* * *

They’ve got a washcloth soaked in cool water from a stream on Lucy’s forehead, treating the fever despite knowing it might be futile. Unable to watch her baby suffer, they’ve done their best to keep her comfortable.

It’s not enough, but it keeps Olivia from feeling entirely helpless.

She hasn’t gotten worse but isn’t better either. She hovers in limbo, hot and sweaty and too miserable to do much more than sleep. Hasn’t cried after her fit at the lab when Olivia found her. She’d give anything to hear a scream right about now.

Still, twenty-four hours later, her daughter is alive, and that has to mean something they’ve both been too afraid to voice.

Eventually, Olivia lifts her head from the pillow, propping up on an elbow to look over the baby at Cole.

“How long does it usually take after a bite? Do you know? The news reports were all over the place.”

It’s like she flipped a switch, giving him permission to speak what he’s been mulling over. “Not sure, but once the fever sets in, it’s quick.”

“Quicker than this?”

“Saw someone once get bit and turn all within a few hours.”

“That’s fast.”

There it is. That thing she’s afraid to consider.

Hope sneaks in and makes a home in this room, moving like an electric current between the two of them until it can’t be snuffed out.

If they’re wrong, the crash will be even harder, but if they’re right, everything is about to change in more ways than she thought possible.

* * *

One day blurs into two, and before long, the fever becomes a far greater concern than the typical outcome.

Lucy is still hot and that can’t last forever, but they’re woefully under-supplied and lacking ways to treat it. She has to fight this on her own. It’s even harder to watch when body heat makes holding her for comfort forbidden.

As a last resort, they improvise a bath by filling the sink with creek water and plugging the drain. Lucy’s cry of protest when they lower her in is both a welcome thing because it means she’s strong enough to do it, and heartbreaking because they’ve made her more miserable.

“It’s for her own good.” Cole wraps an arm around Olivia’s shoulders while she props the baby up.

“I know. Still hurts.”

They let her soak until the water turns warm and then wrap her up in a clean towel to doze on her mother’s chest. Nestled together on the sofa, while rain pelts the rooftop, she indulges in holding her child close, despite the risk of worsening the fever.

Olivia hasn’t slept much since this began.

She only dozed off due to exhaustion, but now it catches up to her and pulls her under, leading to the best dream of her baby laughing.

It’s bright and musical, a sweet smile lifting those chubby cheeks.

It’s not until Cole calling her name pulls her back to reality that the overwhelming sadness encompasses her again and the tears begin anew.

It wasn’t real. She may never hear that sound again.

“No, look. Look at her,” he says, crinkling a bag of chips he must have found somewhere in this house. And just like that, everything is right with the world again when Lucy laughs from her spot on Olivia’s chest, watching Cole as he makes noise with the paper.

“She isn’t hot anymore, either. Check.” He’s unable to keep the smile off his face and sure enough, when she holds a hand to her daughter’s forehead, the fever has broken.

“Does this mean what I think it means?”

“Has to. It’s been too long. If she was gonna turn, it would have happened. Fever’s gone. She’s laughing.”

“ Oh my god. How?” she whispers. “ It can’t be immunity or she wouldn’t have gotten the fever, right?”

“Whatever she’s got, it’s enough to fight it off.”

Lucy, unimpressed with her own abilities, is focused on the bag that Cole allows her to squeeze, causing it to drop onto the sofa moments later, eliciting another round of laughter as if it is the most hilarious thing.

Not only does Olivia want to smother the baby with affection, but she also wants to do the same to Cole, whose support has quite literally kept her from falling apart.

She wraps a hand around the back of his neck, tugging him closer until their lips press together in a salty kiss.

His tears mingle with hers as that facade falls away and his emotions betray him.

“We can’t tell anyone,” Olivia breathes into the space between them. “Not Wade when we find him. Not anyone we meet, not even her until she’s old enough to understand. Promise me.”

They both know how easily the wrong people would take advantage of her for their own benefit. She’s safe from the virus, but the remaining threat is everyone else. Her blood may as well be liquid gold and they’d stop at nothing to get at her.

“Never,” he agrees. “I promise.”

All this time she worried she’d brought a child into this world predestined to succumb to the virus, but it turns out she delivered a miracle. The first generation to develop resistance begins here.

* * *