The Book of the Unnamed Midwife (10 page)

They stayed like that for a minute. It was all so absurd that she couldn’t comprehend it. She had just shot six men in a saloon. She was a cowboy. She felt nothing. Not remorse, not elation. She was a little sick, a little shocked, but didn’t really feel bad. Her ears hurt, her heart did not. She put her guns away and walked forward to yank the chains out of the dead man’s hand. Once they were loose, she thought the two of them might run. They didn’t. They stood there dumbly.

She turned to Roxanne. “Do you know which one had the keys?”

The leashed woman looked at her as though she had to translate what had been said. “Aaron,” she said after a minute. “On his belt.”

She walked back into the saloon and found Aaron crumpled up on the floor. She reached into the crumple and felt around for a key ring. She found it, but it took her a minute to work the carabiner free and get them out. She walked back into the sunlight. Melissa was still sitting on the ground, but she had started to cry. The cowboy walked over to her first. Melissa flinched away from her, but she got the key into the lock. The chains slid off the girl and she sat there, naked. She walked over to Roxanne and did the same. She immediately rubbed her neck. They stood there for a minute, deciding.

“If you guys want to come inside, I’ve got food. And I bet we can find some clothes.”

Roxanne looked at her sharply. “So, what? We’re yours now?”

The cowboy kicked the chains at her feet and they rattled a little. “No. You’re free. You can go wherever you want. I just thought you’d have a better chance of getting somewhere if you ate and put some clothes on.”

Melissa still sat on the ground, crying. She walked over to face her.

“Hey. You hungry?”

Melissa shook her head.

“You want a shirt?

She nodded, sniffling.

She sat them down with bottles of water and went to the nearest houses where she had been raiding. She came back with a bottle of olives, a can of peaches, and a pile of women’s clothes. The women were exactly where she had left them. The water was gone. She laid everything in front of them and went in for more. The idea of staying in the saloon that night had just about died. She wasn’t going to haul the bodies out, and they couldn’t sleep with the bodies in there. She grabbed her gear and a case of water. She emerged again to find they had both gotten dressed. Melissa was trying on shoes.

Roxanne was sitting up with her arms crossed.

“I found the best I could. Some of it probably doesn’t fit well, but you can hope for better if you raid a store or a mall.” She looked at her under the brim of her hat. Roxanne had a stony quality about her face.

“Have you got any cigarettes?”

She rummaged in the outer pockets in her bag. She knew she still had some. “They’re gonna be stale as hell.”

“I don’t care.”

She handed Roxanne a book of matches from the saloon and she lit up a menthol and inhaled deeply like a lifelong smoker. She watched the cowboy the whole time.

Melissa finally spoke up. “Where are we?”

“In Oregon, right on the border with Nevada.”

“Wow.”

“Where did you come from? How did you guys get here?”

Melissa answered first. “I’m from Michigan. I was traveling with my boyfriend, just outside of Detroit. Aaron and some other guys shot him and came and took me. We mostly drove here, but we walked some and rode bikes. I’ve been on a leash since Vegas.”

“That’s where they found me.” Roxanne was smoking hard and fast now, lighting up a second one. “I was with Nettie. Annette. We worked together. She got away.
 
I was tased and I woke up with the chains on and nothing else.”

“Are either one of you pregnant?”

The two freed women exchanged a glance. “No,” Roxanne said. “The other girl was. Shawna. She died during the birth and the baby didn’t make it. That was last winter.”

“Are you having regular periods?”

They both looked at her.

“You’re still gonna try and fuck one of us?” Melissa said it with utter disgust.

“Nope. I’m a doctor. I’m trying to help you out.”

“She said she had medical experience, Melissa, remember? When she was negotiating.” Roxanne looked at the other woman speculatively.

“Oh. You knew?”

Roxanne laughed a dry little laugh that was mostly smoke. “Working in Vegas I have seen every kind of impersonator on the planet, honey. I know a drag king when I see one. You’re good. I’m not surprised the guys bought it. But you don’t fool me.”

Her hat came off. Cowboy no longer. “Well, good. So, periods? Any infections? Injuries? Chance you’re pregnant now?”

Roxanne shook her head, inhaling. “Hysterectomy. It saved me a lot of trouble, back in the day. I got a constant UTI from that bunch of dicks that we were with. But I think that’s it.”

Melissa was thinking, with her brow scrunched up. “I think I had my period this month. Pretty recently. I’m all torn up, though. It burns when I pee. It aches all the time.”

After they ate, she dosed them both with antibiotics and painkillers. She explained the dosage to them and gave them each a full run.

“Whatever happens, where ever you go, make sure you take the whole run.” They finished off the night with a bottle of cranberry juice from the bar and laid down to sleep in an ugly tract house.

In the morning, she told them both to watch for a pack. Roxanne found hers right away, a high school kid’s backpack with a chest strap around the front. It spanned across her ridiculous implants, making them even more prominent.

Melissa searched listlessly, halfheartedly, before giving up.

When the three stopped to rest on an old porch swing and Roxanne had wandered away, she asked Melissa if she wanted a shot.

“Just in case you get… caught again. It’ll keep you from getting pregnant and going out like Shawna did.”

She stared with big dark eyes. They were empty.

“Have you got anything that will just kill me? Like a painless injection and I’ll go to sleep? Like a dog?”

“What?”

“I just want to die. I don’t want any more of this. I’ll just get caught by some other band of dicks who’ll use me as a human blowjob dispenser. Eventually they’ll kill me or I’ll starve to death. There’s no reason to continue with this. Like a lot of morphine, maybe? Something peaceful? I don’t want to be shot.”

“No… look… there’s no reason to die, either. You’re ok, in one piece, and you’re recovering from what was done to you. That won’t happen again.”

“It will. Yes it will. There are no women left. Maybe a handful of us. Eventually we’ll get used up. I’ll get captured again. It’s all men out there now.”

“Yeah, but they’re not all like that.”

“Maybe they didn’t used to be. What else is there, now?”

They sat in silence for a minute. “Look. I don’t want to kill you. I don’t want you to kill yourself. But it’s your choice. What I’m offering is a load off your mind, just in case… in case you meet a guy you like. Do you want it or not?”

“Sure,” she shrugged. She gave Melissa the shot, and a few morning after pills for her pack, when she found one.

Roxanne came back with a pack for Melissa. It was a hideous flowered backpack. Melissa put her pills in it, but wasn’t interested in gathering supplies. She ate diffidently and seemed eager to go to sleep.

* * * * *

Slept with my arms wrapped around my medkit. Could have killed herself with any number of things in it, but she didn’t. Morning = Melissa just gone. Now we are two. Swing swing bang bang drink poison = win the game.

* * * * *

Roxanne sat up, blinking. “Where the hell did she go?”

She had been up for a while, staring at Melissa’s abandoned pack and shoes. “I dunno, but I don’t think she’s coming back.” She didn’t want to look for Melissa. She didn’t want to find the girl hanging in a garage or slit open in a bathtub. Melissa had made her choice.

“So, do you want to come with me?”

Roxanne dragged on her cigarette. “Who the hell are you, drag king?”

“Call me Ishmael.”

“What?”

“Nothing. I’m Alex.”

“Where are you going, Alex?”

“North,” she said. “East. Away from where everyone else is heading.”

“They’re all following that radio broadcast.”

She looked up, her throat suddenly very tight. “What radio broadcast?”

“The one in Spanish. I didn’t understand it, but some of the guys did. You got a radio?”

She didn’t, but they found a car with enough battery left to turn one on. Roxanne sat in the passenger seat and tuned it in carefully, finding a very narrow signal.

“…of the Republic of Costa Rica. We have established a survivors colony in our sovereign nation where all those who lived through the plague may come to live in peace. Most of our women did not die, so it is safe to bring your women here. All women, come to the Republic of Costa Rica, where you will be cared for as the mothers of a new civilization.”

The message repeated.

Directions followed, complete with coordinates. Alex translated the Spanish Roxanne couldn’t make out.

Roxanne laughed her dry laugh. “Sure. Very safe. Bring all your women here. Heh.”

“Yeah.”

They sat for a little while, listening to the message loop. Roxanne left to pee after a while and Alex carefully dialed up and down the entire radio band, first AM then FM. The Costa Rican signal was the only thing she could find. She turned the car off. She thought about where they were.

* * * * *

No way that broadcast is from anywhere near Costa Rica. What would carry the signal? Somebody wants people to head south, especially women. She came back. Said she would go with me. Didn’t tell her what I thought about the radio, but couldn’t stop thinking it. Packed up and started off on bikes, to see where we could get.