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“June or July,” he confirms, letting me go. He looks pointedly at Rev, who slings an arm around my shoulders. “You’ll take care of my sister?”
“Always,” Rev says.
“All seven of us,” Jud says. Since finding out I’m pregnant—Holy cow! I’m pregnant!—he’s always near me, and I don’t mind the attention one bit.
The soldiers send us off with gifts. Shep gets a male goat for Mabel and Henrietta, and he’s been invited to trailer the youngest of our milking cows to breed with one of their bulls once spring comes next year. Bessy’s trailer is filled with hay, chicken feed, hops for brewing beer, and baskets full of apples, oranges, grapes, and peaches from the orchard.
Target gave the vaporizer gun to Grim to commemorate the victory over Lazarus, and Sarge managed to scavenge a blind-man’s cane, which I learned is called a white cane, for Jud. Even though it’s an extra-long model, it folds up to fit in his cargo-pants pocket when he doesn’t want to use it.
I don’t leave empty-handed, either. The soldiers send me home with an entire pallet of diapers in all sizes and five hamper-sized storage bins filled with baby supplies and clothing, including plenty of onesies and bibs boasting Texas red, white, and blue, and lone-star decorations. X-Ray gifts me with a white pelican feather he found on the ranch. I show it to Shep, and he promises to make me a necklace out of it so we can always remember how Bernard helped us overcome the evil in New Orleans.
When we roll out, I get a serious case of the sniffles. Jud sits in the passenger seat of the Humvee, and I’m in the middle with a gearshift between my knees. On my other side, Rev mans the wheel.
Jud unbuckles my seatbelt and drags me onto his lap. His arms band around me as the tires crunch gravel, and I know I’m completely safe.
The drive is long and quiet. There are no radio stations to listen to, and Scrap didn’t wire this vehicle for one of his custom playlists, like he did with Bessy. But I’m content to watch the landscape change and to snuggle against Jud. Most of the time, he cups my lower abdomen with his big hand, reminding me that there aren’t just three of us in this truck. There’s a fourth, precious soul making his or her way home with us, a soul that represents a new generation in the post-Virus world.
On the drive, I let my mind conjure up fantasies of motherhood the likes of which I never would have entertained before falling in love with my men. I wonder if our baby will grow up to have blond hair like Doc or dark hair like Grim and Jud. I wonder if he or she will be tall and lanky like Rev or a smart-mouthed flirt like Scrap.
One thing I do know for sure is that nothing and no one will ever hurt our child. Not with seven burly fathers and one tough survivor of a mother on watch.
Rev
“You sure about this?”Doc asks. He’s standing at my side on the lip of a crater the two of us dug today with the help of a backhoe and a bulldozer.
“I’m sure.” Smoke from my minicig curls into the crisp air. We made it home three days ago, and we finally finished the cleanup. Two of Raptor’s cronies—or, rather, Lazarus’s cronies, since he usurped Raptor’s position—tore through our home, looking for Cora. When they didn’t find her in the lodge, they followed the breadcrumbs we left to the mines. There, they met with the boobytraps we armed before leaving, and by the time we got home, the birds and forest animals had picked their carcasses clean.
Fortunately, they left Cora’s cabin alone, so she’s had a comfortable, clean place to stay while we made repairs. Now, Eagle Peak Settlement is set to rights, and preparations are underway for a ceremony. Instead of our usual campfire sermon tonight, I’ll be officiating a wedding.
It started with Jud deciding he wanted to marry Cora as soon as possible, making her his wife, good and proper. What it turned into is an exchange of vows between each one of us and Cora. She’ll be the first woman in the New World to be legally married to seven men. Because as far as the northwest territory goes, Jud is the law, and what he says goes.
I can’t think of a better man to act as all three branches of the former United States government while we figure out a new society. Eventually, when we have more people to work with, we’ll institute checks and balances, but for now, it’s my pleasure to be second in command and advisor to the Judge. As a team of eight, we will press forward into the unknown and trust the Working to guide us.
I relish the last drag of my minicig, blow out the smoke, slow and easy, and I toss the butt into the pit. Doc does the same with his cigarette.
He squeezes the pack in his hand to inspect the few sticks remaining. “We could save a pack each. Smoke one to celebrate when the baby comes.”
“And the next baby, and the next,” I say, grinning.
“Maybe we should save a few packs. We can smoke on special occasions.”
I shake my head. “Cold turkey’s best.” I have three minicigs left in the pack in my breast pocket. It’s with no small amount of anxiety that I fling the pack into the pit to land with a slap on top of the cases and cases of smokes Doc and I dumped there today. “Tonight, we’re getting hitched. Cora’s in a new phase of her life. It’s a new start all around.”
Doc sighs. “Goddammit. I hate when you’re right.” His last pack of cigarettes gets tossed in the pit.
“Look on the bright side,” I say. “You can heal nicotine cravings.”
“Yeah, but I can’t make a man forget how good that first drag tastes after a hard day of work.”
“Or after a good fuck,” I say, thinking of Cora. And Scrap and Brawn.
“Exactly.”
“But we’re going to be fathers, now. Got to set a good example.”
“Yeah, yeah. Let’s just bury this shit before I change my mind.”
I cuff the back of his neck. “You won’t. You might be pretty on the outside, but inside, you’re all grit. You can handle this.”
