Page 61 of What Blooms in Barren Lands
“Can ve go talk somewhere?” Monika suggested. “I need to do laundry. Ve can go to river.”
We collected our dirty clothes, two plastic tubs, and our ration of washing powder from the dusty utility room. Then we headed to the nearby stream, hidden from sight by the same trees that used to hold the infected I eliminated when we first arrived. The earth was covered by soft moss and rust-coloured ferns. The stream bubbled peacefully through a bed of rocks, and we knelt by it on the soft, dry pine needles to prepare our washing.
Monika and I talked for a long time. She estimated she was about three months gone. In a manner that had become almost instinctive over the years, the cogs and wheels of my tortured mind calculated that she must have gotten pregnant the very first month she got together with Albert. Jealousy and shame flooded me in equal measures. Only the genuine concern I felt for her enabled me to compose my face into a mask of compassionate neutrality. Women in Monika’s family had a long history of complicated births, most requiring a caesarean to deliver safely. Which made Monika’s prospects particularly dire.
“Vhen I realised, I knew I am dead,” she lamented, yet her eyes were dry and very wide, shining brightly with terror.
I beat Einar’s shirt on a rock to drain it of the last remains of water and filth, the slapping sound wet and satisfying. My fingers were numb with cold, their tips pasty, and the skin wrinkled and mushy.
“You don’t know that you’ll struggle.” I tried to console Monika, hoping that I managed to prevent my utter lack of conviction from creeping into my voice. “You’re so much younger than your mum or sisters were when they gave birth.”
She nodded reluctantly, my own scepticism reflected in her face.
“And besides, we still have six months. We might manage to clear our way to some hospital by then. And then there’s Doctor Martin and Doctor Rodriquez, not to mention Dave, Kevin, Josh, and Amit. When the time comes, you’ll have a huge medical team at your disposal.”
I deposited the shirt into a pile of more or less clean clothes and picked up another, mine this time, from the much larger dirty pile.
“Maybe I lose it.” Monika’s voice was no more than a whisper. “Maybe I lose it now vhen it’s still small. Oh god, please let me lose it.”
She turned pink with consternation, and her eyes swam with tears anew. I swallowed hard and, not looking at her, I plunged the shirt into the bitingly cold, soapy water in the tub, keeping my hands submerged for much longer than necessary.
“I’m so sorry, I know this is horrible to say. You must hate me. You vould be so glad to have a child born even if you risk dying, no?”
“When I was your age? No way.” I sighed heavily, blinking hard to dispel tears from forming in my own eyes. “And not even when Petr and I first started trying. But now, after everything? In a heartbeat.”
“Vell not me. I don’t vant to die. Oh, Renny, vhy is God burdening me vith this vhen it would have been the most great gift to you? Vhy? I know I must trust His plan, but I vish to understand.”
I wrung the shirt tightly, expelling water and dirt from it, my knuckles turning white with the effort.
“If there is a god,” I hissed through my clenched teeth, “then I think he hates us all.”
Monika had been wringing her own shirt in the soapy water, weakly and distractedly, but as I spoke, she stopped and looked in my direction. She froze, turning pale, blood draining from herface instantly. At first, I thought this was because of what I had said. But if it were, she would have argued with me or deflected to a different topic, as she had done countless times in the past. Which made me realise two things. Firstly, there was someone or something dangerous behind me. And secondly, distracted as I was, I hadn’t brought my bow.
The back of my neck tingled as if exposed to a gush of freezing air, every muscle in my body tensing.
“Well, hello there, pretty darlings.” A leering, male voice drifted towards me. “Stand up slowly, both of you.”
We did, and I turned around in doing so. There were two of them, two men in their late thirties with hair cropped short. They wore bikers’ clothes, all leather. They had hunting rifles pointed in our direction. I had never been held at gunpoint before and felt a ripple of dark excitement run through me. The end of everything, so comforting and mysterious, a mere pull of a finger away. My heart thrummed in my ears, and I had to fight off an unhinged desire to laugh.
“Woooow! You-are-A-beauty!” the slightly taller man drawled appreciatively as his eyes crawled over me.
Not quite knowing what compelled me to do so, I raised my eyebrows at him cockily, as if wanting to ask him to stop stating the obvious. In a disassociated manner, I noted that his English was accented. He was Dutch, perhaps, or somewhere from that region.
“And you’ll be mine! What a lucky man I am!”
He was broad-shouldered and strong. Still, I imagined Einar snapping that short, pudgy neck with ease just for its owner speaking those words. I felt a misplaced smile tug at the corners of my mouth, the swelling of pride when thinking about the only man who could rightfully claim what the Dutchman just had. With that, the synapses of my brain began to function in their proper order again and belatedly I realised that Einar wasn’tthere to save us and that, to put it simply, we were utterly screwed.
“Like hell I will,” I spat out angrily, and to my great surprise, my voice didn’t shake.
The man chuckled, revealing a set of large, yellowed teeth.
“Feisty. I like that.”
“The other one is cute as hell too,” his smaller, more rotund partner remarked. “And a lot meeker. I’ll be happy with her. Come here, darling, don’t be scared.” He stepped forward.
I tried to shelter Monika behind me, awkwardly so due to her lanky height. I raised my palms towards our assailants, gesturing for them to stop. To my surprise, they did.
“Look, how about this,” I spoke firmly in as commanding a way as I was able under the circumstances. “Let her go and then you can both have me, willingly. Or unwillingly. Whichever you prefer. You let her go and I’ll be whatever you want me to be.”