The Woodlands (31 page)

“
Aw, well, isn’t that sweet,” Deshi cooed, shaking his head from side to side, slowly. I shot him a dark look.

Alexei stuttered as he patted me on the bac
k, “I’m sure they’ll be back tomorrow, try and get some sleep, dear.”

We
curled up around the fire. The cabin was warm and felt secure and safe. Surprisingly, I fell asleep quickly, the stress of the last two days stripping me of the will to keep my eyes open.

I dreamed I was in the ruins of the city again. I felt different. Looking down at my
stomach, it was smooth and flat. I touched it, panicked. My hands coasting over a tight blue top and shiny pants. I was screaming. ‘Where’s my baby? Where’s my baby?’ as I searched frantically, overturning whatever was in my way. Hearing a cry, I changed direction. I kept searching as yellow eyes closed in on me. Laughing as their tails curled and whipped. In the distance, I could see Joseph holding a child. He looked at me for a second, smiling, then returned his gaze to the baby in his arms and walked away. The yellow eyes pounced on me, tearing my flesh with their claws as I kept screaming, ‘My baby, my baby,’ over and over again. One of them cupped its hand over my mouth, speaking. ‘You can’t scream, no one screams here’.

I woke up sweating and cold. It was still dark and the fire
was out. I heard birds calling and knew it must not be far from morning. I dragged myself up and brought my knees to my chest, well, as close as I could anyway. My dream was echoing in my head. Something was wrong and, for the first time, I was fearful for my baby.

I put a dry log on the fire
, watching the coals brighten and begin the dance of sparks to flames. I leaned down and blew, anxious to feel the heat. “Joseph, come home.” I wished into the coals. I sat there and waited for the others to wake. They were taking too long, so I grabbed a blanket and made my way outside in the darkness. I scrambled up the hill. It was much harder without Joseph’s hands on my back but I got to the top in time to see the sunrise.

It was grey and then suddenly a flourish of
color. The blood red sending shivers down my spine. It spread over the hills like a great hand. Lighting the darkness and stirring the wildlife.

I sent my love out over the hills and through the valley, willing it to reach him and pull him back to me. I prayed he would burst through the trees at any second. I sat and stared at the place where I thought he would return. Nothing. Soon the others would be wondering where I was, so I made my way down the hill, slipping several times on the dewy grass.

No one ate breakfast. Everyone kept staring off in the distance waiting, watching. If they came back now it would be miraculously fast but logic had no place in our thoughts. Like it or not we had created a little family and right now two of its members were missing. None of us would feel right until they returned.

The
cabin was about two-hundred meters from the edge of the forest. None of us wanted to go far, so we all sat outside, trying to keep busy by packing extra mud into the cabin walls or playing with Hessa, all of us watching the edge of the forest diligently. I started fashioning a broom to sweep the floor with. Initially, we thought we wouldn’t have time to make a proper floor, but now it seemed we could lay some stones. I spoke to Deshi and we spent some time finding nice flat ones we could use. By lunchtime, we had a decent-sized pile. Time was passing so slowly it was painful.

We stacked the
stones inside and I crouched down and started digging holes to match their shapes. It was therapeutic, assessing their shape, size, and thickness and fitting them together like a jigsaw puzzle. We didn’t talk, both too anxious to make conversation, so we worked silently. We’d laid about five stones when Deshi picked one up to hand to me and then stopped, smiling as he glanced out the window. He put the stone down and held out his hand, pulling me to my feet.

There he was, walking casually out of the woods. He moved slowly and deliberately.
Almost mechanically. I ran outside. He was less than one hundred and fifty meters away. I ran towards him, the joy coursing through my veins, the gold running over me like rain. I would have skipped if I could.

Where was Careen?

He put his hand up as if to wave and then stopped, clutching his chest. Something was wrong. I started running, gold turning to slick black oil. If I could get there, maybe I could stop it. My face stung with tears, as I ran as fast as my body would allow, feeling the weight of the baby pulling me down.

One-hundred
meters.

He looked at me
, confused, and he fell to his knees. His hands braced his body for a second before they crumpled under his weight and he was lying face first in the dirt. Careen appeared from the forest, running as fast as she could. Her face fierce and concentrated. She didn’t even stop as she passed Joseph and headed for the cabin.

“
They’re coming!” she screamed.

I didn
’t listen. I was nearly there. I could hear the others running towards us. Frantic footfalls sounding like a stampede.

Twenty
meters.

I approached him slowly. When I reached his twisted body I lean
ed down, afraid to touch him. I reached out a trembling hand and stroked his blond curls. I whispered, “Joseph?”

He moaned. I ease
d him onto his side. His right arm was soaked in blood. I carefully peeled back his shirtsleeve. What I saw was beyond description. The red rawness was replaced with a gaping wound, blood and pus mangling his perfect skin. Tiny blue veins tracked up his arm. I followed them and pulled open his shirt, buttons diving from his chest like crickets. Tiny spider web veins spun their way grotesquely towards his heart.

He looked at me but right through me. He blinked once and then he exhaled slowly. I watched his parted
lips, waiting for him to inhale. One second, two seconds, three seconds…Hysteria rising, my own breathing fast and uneven. I shook him. He lay limp. The others had reached me.

“
No!” I screamed. “Do something. Help him!” My voice was alien, panicked and high pitched.

I thr
ew myself across his body and wailed. I kept screaming, “Wake up, wake up. I can’t do this without you. Wake up.”

The pain was
immense, like someone had stuck a live wire to my body and jolted me with electricity. My skin prickled and vibrated, tiny needles jabbing me all over. I put my head down to kiss his cold lips, shaking uncontrollably, hardly able to connect. This wasn’t happening. It had to be a dream. “Wake up!” I screamed again. His eyes were vacant and terrifying.

Wind whipped
my hair around, like a tornado had come from nowhere to pluck me from this place. I held onto him tightly. They would have to tear me from him.

M
ore pain. It started in my back and crept around to the front of my stomach, hardening as it went. Like fingers reaching around me from behind, it clasped tightly around my belly and locked like a stone vault. Wind and buzzing filled my ears. Careen screamed over the noise, “They’re here!”

Arms dragged
me backwards. Someone whispered, “Let go,” impatiently as they wrenched me from Joseph. My eyes focused on the crescent-shaped wounds on Joseph’s good arm, filling with blood from where my fingernails had been digging into his flesh.

“
No, no, no, no!” I screamed, until I was suddenly rendered silent as more pain shot through me, making my legs spasm and my head cloudy. I watched my deadened feet plowing the ground. Leaving a path of dug-up dirt back to where my heart lay.

Apella was kneeling over Joseph, pumping his chest with her folded hands. Leaning down and blowing into his mouth. I craned my head, waiting for his hand to move. Wait
ing for him to sit up and laugh, telling Apella to stop kissing him, he was spoken for.

Nothing.

Above her a chopper was hovering, a man climbed down a ladder a rope ladder that was swinging uncontrollably. Shots rang out, splitting the air like a whip crack. The man fell dead from the ladder but another was descending after him. More shots, this time ringing out from two different locations. Joseph and the others were getting farther and farther away. I couldn’t put the two scenarios together. It was a jumble of images. Was he dead?

I heard a massive explosion, booming thunder. The ground shook. Alexei and Apella
were running, dragging Joseph across the ground, slipping and struggling under his weight. Deshi was running with Hessa, towards me, covering the baby’s face with his hand. Then a mass of people seemed to come out of nowhere, surrounding us. The burning helicopter, blades still turning slowly, whipped up the dirt behind them. I couldn’t make sense of anything I was seeing.

The dragging stopped. People
ran past me. Two men had Joseph under the arms and someone was holding his feet. He was grey and lifeless. His body didn’t respond to being jerked up and down as they carried him.

He was dead.

I felt myself spinning out of control. I was trying to breath but I couldn’t suck in any air, it was too painful, it burned, crushing me under an invisible weight. I was drowning. The despair was more than I could stand.

I heard voices but the words were nonsensical.

“The monkeys must have turned it on.”

“
They followed the signal.”

“
Yes, six of them.”

“
One fatality.”

Was I going mad? I clawed my way out but the pain was dragging me back under, working
its way into my ribs, trying to part them and pry me open like a can of beans. Where was Joseph? I needed to see him now. I grasped at imaginary fingers, craving his touch like it was the only thing that would stop me from sinking into the dark forever.

“
Joseph!” I shrieked one last time as a door shut in my face. The green of the hills disappeared. The smell of damp dirt filled my nostrils. There was no air here.

I was underground.

How can I do this alone? Everything has been turned around and I no longer know where I am or what I am supposed to be d
oing. The guiding light is gone. The gold has turned to lead. I’m sinking and I have no will to fight it. I hate you for leaving me here. I hate you both.

The impatient voice was speaking to me. Less impatient and more irritated. Asking me to get up, could I walk? I didn’t want to walk. I didn’t want to move. The ground was hard and cool. It felt like as good a place as any to give up. I lay with my cheek pressed to it, waiting for the next onslaught of pain to attack me. Hoping it would tear me open and kill me right there.

But it wouldn
’t leave me alone. I wanted to sink under water, drown in my grief, but it wouldn’t let me. It pulled me to sitting and tore at my arms.
Get up
! It rumbled and tightened until I couldn’t stand to lie there anymore.
Get up
!

Apella approached me,
her perfect face shadowed with concern. She seemed far away, turning her head and muttering quietly to these strange people dressed in greens and browns. “We need to move her; she’ll be safer further underground.”

No.

“No!” I cried. “I’m not going anywhere.”

I tried to stand but my legs strained and
more pain hit me like a sledgehammer. My body vibrated, as if struck like a bell.

They whispered to each other and then Apella nodded minutely.

Strange, covered feet were in my vision, white canvas shoes with dark stars on them, muddy and worn, one lace untied. The wearer leaned down, a dark shadow of a face, and squeezed my neck between his thumb and forefinger. Everything went dim, muffled voices, a sharp intake of breath, and then it was black.

I half-hoped I was dead, but the intensity of the pain that woke me was so strong I actually started scrambling backwards to escape it. I hit my head on the back of a bed. Apella and Deshi were both there, looking at me with pity or fear, I wasn
’t sure. Apella placed a cool hand on my forehead.

“
You’re in labor, Rosa, it won’t be long now,” she said calmly.

I hated her. I focused all my anger on her
tiny, pale face. Willing it to crack and crumble like a shattered plate. How could she be so calm? Joseph was dead. We were captured. I surveyed the room quickly. There were things I recognized, like the hospital bed and the white sheets but there were other things I didn’t get, like the roof of the room was carved rock. And why was Deshi allowed to be in here with me? There was one other person in the room, a tall man with blondish hair. He walked over to me and held my wrist. He was wearing tan pants and a colorful check shirt with the familiar white coat over the top. He looked to be in his late thirties. He smiled at me. I just stared blankly back. Things didn’t fit. Where the hell was I?

I was about to ask when the pain and hardening began again. I held my stomach as it rippled across my body and cried softly.
A small whimper. Closing my eyes, I tried to dig right inside the pain. Any distraction to stop me from thinking about Joseph’s lifeless body, or kissing his cold, cold lips.

Someone took my hand. It was cool and damp. I didn
’t open my eyes. I clenched them closed. I would pretend it was him. If I didn’t look, I could hold onto him for just a little bit longer. I gripped onto the hand tightly. I can do this, I’ll get it out, and then I can leave.

“
You’re doing great, Rosa, keep going. I know it’s hard...But Joseph...” Deshi couldn’t finish his sentence. I could hear him sniffling.

“
No one speak, please,” I ordered, waving my hand around the room threateningly.

I imagined he was next to me, r
ubbing my back and pulling my hair out of my face. ‘You’re a mess,’ he would whisper, grinning. Sweat dripped over my brow and into my eyes, I swiped it away. If he was here, I could do this. If he was here, I could do this better.

Trembling, I could feel
it coming on stronger now. So close together, I couldn’t breathe between them. Like an assault, with no way to counter. It felt like I was being stretched, a crowbar between every bone in my spine pulling me open, breaking me apart, piece by piece.

I screamed. An
unnatural howling scream that came from deep within, carrying with it the physical and emotional suffering I was enduring at that moment. I heard glass shattering, metal trays hitting the ground, and people crying out, close by. “Stop, wait!” a woman yelled.

Something was telling me I had to get up. Get up. Move, now.

Eyes still closed, I dragged myself off the bed, stopping to bow over every thirty seconds, as the contractions hit and then passed. I opened my eyes and steadied myself against the wall, inching myself slowly towards the door.

The man with the tan pants walked towards me. I put my
hands up, ready to push him away, “Don’t touch me. Please, I need to…” I pleaded through quivering lips. I didn’t know what I needed to do but I had to move. He didn’t try and stop me, he didn’t speak, he just gently pulled my arm around his neck and supported me as I walked. Apella walked next to me, “There’s not much time,” she whispered, telling me, or him I wasn’t sure. He nodded. I ignored her. I wasn’t sure where I was going, but I pushed through my pain, breathing and timing my steps between. I was propelled forward by an invisible force and, with nothing left to lead me, no hope to hold onto to, I abandoned myself to it. I got to the door and Deshi pushed it open for me.

A metal bar came straight at my face and I
fell backwards onto the floor, blood gushing from a cut across my cheek. The pain of the cut was barely noticeable compared to the contractions. A sticky, cold, liquid spilled all over my front. My legs buckled, I knew that was it, I could go no further. I closed my eyes.

“
Oh God, I’m sorry. Rosa, Rosa, are you all right?” Someone was shaking me.

A hand was at my face, warm and familiar. Was I dead?

I daren’t open my eyes. I kept them shut as the hand attached to a strong arm pulled me into a lap.

Unfortunately, I couldn
’t be dead as the sudden and acute need to push was upon me. Someone steadied me as I pulled my legs up and pushed for all I was worth. I opened my eyes narrowly. Apella was facing me. Her eyes were focused as she looked into mine and said, “Rosa, try not to push.” Something was wrong.

“
What? What is it?” A frantic voice whispered as I held my breath.

“
The cord is wrapped around the baby’s neck.”

It hit me and the urge to push again was so strong I wasn
’t sure I could fight it, it felt wrong. Then that voice uttered deep and low in my ear. “Hold on. Just hold on.” If I was imagining it, I didn’t want to know. I just closed my eyes and listened. Letting the words wash over me, sprinkling gold dust over my eyelashes. Panting and clenching my fists, I kept fighting. I was always fighting.

After what see
med like forever, Apella said, “Ok, next one you can push.”

I couldn
’t keep going. If this ended, would my delusion disappear? I would be alone again. My energy was gone.
Let it kill me
, I thought.

“
I can’t,” I replied, listless, I let my arms fall to the floor. My legs relaxed. I gave up. “He’s gone,” I said and I wanted to go with him.

“
What’s wrong with her?” I heard Deshi say, confused.

“
She’s under too much stress,” Apella replied.

I felt warm hands take up my bleeding face.

“Open your eyes,” he said

I shook my head,
“No.”

“
You are so stubborn,” he said with a weak laugh. I felt warm breath on my face and anticipated his lips touching mine. The kiss was unlike anything I had felt before, intense and sweet, painful and almost frightening. The lips pulled away. “Open your eyes,” he asked again.

I opened one eye briefly. I saw a flash of blond curls
. His scruffy face was as grey as breakfast but the smile on his face was real and full of smashing color.

“
One more push, Rosa, then it’s over,” the man in the white coat said kindly, but urgently.

Joseph put his arms under my own and entwined his fingers with mine. I summoned what I could, sure it would not be enough, and pushed.

It was out.

Finally.

The release was tangible. The flood of relief overwhelming.

I waited to hear a cry. With Clara, Hessa had cried almost immediately. Apella was holding it in her
arms, rubbing its body down fervently with a towel. We were all silent, watching, waiting. She concentrated her fingers on its chest, rubbing gently in small, circular motions.

“
Waaaaa!” it cried and announced itself to the world. An unearthly caterwaul that hurt my ears. I turned away.

I
shivered, feeling cold, my body retreating from the trauma. They covered us both in a thick, fur-lined blanket. I lay there in his arms on the corridor floor.

“
You did it,” he whispered, his chin resting on my shoulder. I turned. He looked sick, his face pasty and pale, but he was alive. My brain gave up trying to understand how this was possible. Questions could be answered in time. “You look beautiful,” he said, not taking his eyes off me, despite the commotion going on around us.

He was attached to several machines that he had dragged down the corridor with him. The metal bar that had hit my face was lying next to us, a stand for a fluid bag.

“Ha, I was sure you would tell me I was a mess!” I laughed.

“
You are,” he said, “but a beautiful one.”

I rolled my eyes
, looking over to the others, all smiling down on us. Apella held a child swaddled in cotton. I raised my eyebrows, questioning.

She understood.
“He’s fine.”

The leech was a boy.