Through incessant doting, I finally convinced her to quit her job on the cleanup crew and stay home. I don’t think she really wanted to, she just wanted me to shut up about it.

By the seven-month mark, her belly had swollen noticeably, as had her ankles, a fact she bemoaned constantly. She also complained her joints felt loose in their sockets and the swelling in her stomach made her feel like she had to pee every ten minutes. I nodded in sympathy, made comforting noises, and fervently thanked whatever deities rule the universe that I was born male.

The concept of a baby and the very real fact I would soon be raising one finally jelled the first time I felt the baby move. It was past midnight on a Tuesday, no lamps burning, dark as the bottom of the ocean. The wind howled over the containers lining our street, vibrating the metal and making eerie keening sounds in the wintry night. A rustling like windblown sand grated against the steel walls, but I knew it was snow, not sand, torn from the high shoveled banks piled in the spaces between lots. Sophia was sleeping quietly, her breathing inaudible against the ruckus outside. I lay behind her on our new bed, the fabric of her shirt soft against my bare skin, the two of us nestled deep, deep beneath a comforter that had cost me a jar of unopened peanut butter and a roll of paper towels. Her hair smelled of floral-scented shampoo, a rare luxury item I had found on my last salvage run.

The roundness of her stomach was warm under my hand as sleep began to pull me under, the wisps of dreams dancing at the edges of consciousness. I had almost gone beneath the waves when I felt something press against my palm.

I snapped awake.

For a long space of heartbeats, I thought I had imagined it. But then I felt it again, a little bump, the impression of something sliding under skin and muscle, and then it was gone. Sophia mumbled something and stirred, but did not wake. I waited and waited, but nothing else happened. Finally, I let my head sink back onto the pillow and lay in the darkness, smiling.

Those were good months. I spent a lot of time away from home, but I did my best to make up for it when I was around. We lived better than most of our neighbors, a fact that rankled with more than a few of them, but I didn’t care. They knew who I ran with, and they knew to stay out of my way.

I thought we were cruising. I thought after all the universe had thrown at me, the pain and loss and bloodshed, things had finally balanced out. The lives of my old family were gone, but there was a new life on the way. Sophia and I would be our own family soon, and who knew, maybe we would not stop at one child. Maybe we would have two, or three, or however many we wanted. I thought about coming home from work to the smell of food cooking, and the patter of children’s feet running around the neighborhood, and going to sleep at night surrounded by my wife and kids, and I pulled Sophia closer to me.

My woman. My life. My world. Maybe it was God’s apology for taking Dad, Lauren, and Blake away from me. Maybe He wanted to fill the void with something new and bright and good. Maybe after all the suffering He had allowed to befall me, He was trying to set things right. If that were the case, then apology accepted.

It was arrogant thinking, of course. It is easy to bask in the warm glow of the things you value in life and think you are somehow special. That the rules do not apply to you, that you have something the others don’t, that you are smarter, tougher, more resilient than the rest. If you survive enough bad things, enough injuries and emotional trauma, it can make you dumb enough to think that nothing can knock you down.

We are all the heroes of our own stories. We all think we are the exception. And all too often, by the time we realize that there are no exceptions, it is too late.

God may give, and God may take away, but one thing He never does is apologize.

FIFTY-FOUR

Disasters always happen in threes.

I’m jumping ahead by stating that, but in this case, it’s warranted. The universe may be vicious and fickle, and life often seems like a random confluence of uncorrelated events, but there are some patterns too obvious to ignore.

When Sophia hit the seven-month mark, a few of the women from her old job conspired to throw her a baby shower. In keeping with tradition, my presence, while not expressly forbidden, was strongly discouraged. The platoon was not scheduled to go on another salvage run for two weeks, the baby shower falling squarely in the middle of this timeframe. So I stopped by Tyrel’s place a few days before and asked if he was up to a little freelance work. Being just as bored as I was, he readily agreed and suggested I see if Rojas wanted to come along.

Rojas and I had grown close during that time. We were LaGrange’s go-to point men, and after months of working together, had developed a kind of non-verbal shorthand that allowed us to operate quietly, efficiently, and most importantly, profitably.

I wrote a brief note on a wooden slat, wood being far cheaper to come by than paper, and paid a courier to deliver it to Rojas’ apartment. He sent it back that afternoon with a note on the back that read, succinctly, FUCK YEAH.

So the morning of the baby shower I woke up early, made myself a cup of instant coffee, and took a moment to admire my most recent purchase: the custom-forged spear I still carry to this day. Made from a length of hickory and a half-inch-thick piece of spring steel, it is sharp, perfectly balanced, and by that point in time, had already split the skulls of quite a few infected. It hung from a set of hooks over the fireplace, proudly displayed when not in use. I took it down, passed a stone across the blade even through it was not necessary, and slipped it into its harness.

“Where are you going,” Sophia asked sleepily. She sat halfway up in bed, her blonde hair falling across her eyes.

“Up into the mountains,” I replied. “Toward Woodland Park.”

“That’s pretty far. How are you getting there?”

“Tyrel hired a wagon to take us as far as Cascade. We’ll hike the rest of the way.”

“Isn’t Woodland Park still overrun?”

“Last I heard, yeah.”

She frowned. “Then why are you going there?”

“LaGrange knows a guy pretty high up in the Army. Feeds him info in exchange for a cut of our profits. His informant says they’re sending three whole companies to Woodland Park next month to clear the place out.”

“And you want to raid it before they get a chance?”

“Won’t be much salvage left if we don’t. I respect what the troops do, but they’re like fucking locusts. Take anything not nailed down and half the shit that is.”

“I thought they weren’t supposed to do that.”

I barked out a laugh. “They’re not. Doesn’t stop them.”

She put her head back on the pillow and sighed. “So when will you be back?”

“Tomorrow most likely. Maybe the day after.”

“I hate it when you leave. I like having you at home.”

I leaned down and kissed her. “I know. But the salvage isn’t going to come to me, and I’m not going back to being broke.”

“Be careful out there.”

“I love you, pretty lady. Enjoy the shower.”

She groaned and pulled the blanket over her head.

*****

Raiding Woodland Park was something we never would have attempted during the warmer months. There were just too many infected. However, by then we had learned how the cold slowed the infected down, and if the temperature got low enough, stopped them altogether. The icy chill and deep snowdrifts of winter made the raid feasible.

It was sunny and bright that morning, a cloudless blue sky stretching from horizon to horizon, the ambient temperature at just over thirty-two Fahrenheit. Not cold enough to freeze the ghouls, but enough to slow them to a crawl.