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“I’ll find out. I got a book on horses at the library.”
“Smart thinking,” he said and her cheeks pinked a little at his praise. “What we have to think about is the fact we’ll be essentially snowed in until the spring thaw. There won’t be any snowplows to come and clear the roads. We won’t be able to move on until early summer, once we’re sure there won’t be any surprise blizzards that could catch us in the open.”
Carly thought of the Laura Ingalls Wilder books she’d loved so much as a child. The Long Winter had told of the family’s suffering during a South Dakota winter, when the whole town starved because they couldn’t get trains through to deliver supplies. The idea was terrifying.
“Isn’t there any way we could get a vehicle and hook up a horse trailer for Shadowfax? So maybe we could get farther?”
Justin shook his head. “We don’t know if she’s ever been inside a trailer before. If she gets scared, she could thrash around and hurt herself. Secondly, we’d have to stop every few miles and find a new vehicle as we encounter pile-ups and traffic jams. It wouldn’t help us. And that’s even assuming we can find a vehicle that still works after sitting unused for so long.”
“You said something about that before. What do you mean? Does gas actually go bad?” She’d never thought of gas having an expiration date like a gallon of milk.
“It can. Sitting in a car like that, the biggest concern would be water contamination. The tank could gather condensation from heating up during the day and cooling off at night. If the tank isn’t airtight, part of the liquid can evaporate off, making the fuel thick and gunky.” Justin paused for a long moment and she was surprised to see him blush a little. “Speaking of dependability, how would you feel about going on the pill? I’m still going to use condoms, but it would be wise to have a backup.”
“I can’t,” Carly said. “It makes me really sick. I tried when I was with Noah. My doctor even tried me on some of the low-hormone types, but it didn’t help. They make me nauseated and moody.”
“All right. We’ll use a spermicide. I’ll just have to stop at a pharmacy the next town we visit.”
Carly had always wanted to have kids of her own. She liked children. To her, they represented the best humanity had to offer with their curiosity, their potential, and their simple joy in life. That had been one area of contention between her and Noah. His emphatic insistence he never wanted kids was one of the reasons she finally came to the conclusion they just weren’t compatible. “Do you ever want to have kids, Justin?”
Justin’s jaw tightened. “I never did; I didn’t think I’d make much of a father. Now, it seems almost criminal to bring a child into this world.”
She hated to admit it, but he was right. But knowing it didn’t ease the ache in her heart. It would be wrong to bring a baby into this uncertain life, where danger lurked around every corner and there was no guarantee of surviving to see the next day.
Carly realized suddenly that all of the old child killers, like disease and infections, would return due to the lack of vaccinations and antibiotics. Diaper rash would no longer be a minor irritation; it could turn fatal. Tooth infections, ear infections, allergies. Even something as minor as a stomach upset could kill if there wasn’t a medication to stop diarrhea.
Carly realized she might be witnessing the sunset of humanity. They weren’t prepared to care for the next generation without their modern conveniences and medicines. The percentage of children who didn’t live long enough to have children of their own could be too high to sustain their species.
And what of childbirth itself? A woman dying while giving birth had been a rarity in the United States, but without skilled obstetrics, that number could rise to what it was back in the old days, or that of undeveloped nations. Carly’s own mother probably would have died without modern medicine. She’d needed a cesarean to deliver Carly. Carly felt a cold shiver of unease creep down her spine. What if she had the same problem her mother had? How would she know? She didn’t even know what the problem had been; she’d only been told about her difficult delivery when she’d asked about the scar on her mother’s abdomen.
Justin watched the expressions flicker over Carly’s face. “What are you thinking?”
“That you’re right. We need a backup.”
“I’m sorry,” Justin said, correctly interpreting the wistful sadness that had lingered in her eyes for a moment.
“It’s not that big of a deal,” Carly replied, but didn’t meet his eyes. “I probably liked the idea of kids more than I would have liked the reality.”
“I think you would have made a wonderful mother.”
“And you would have made a great dad.”
Justin snorted. “What do I know about raising kids? You’re set. You had a great family and know what good parents are supposed to be like. I would have no idea what I was doing.”
“That’s the way most new parents are, actually. At least, my girlfriends who were married and were starting their families used to say that. They were always scared to death they were going to do something that would mess up the kids or hurt them. My friend Michelle was on the phone to her mom constantly, asking for advice or afraid because the baby was crying and wouldn’t stop. She must have taken that baby to the emergency room at least a dozen times in his first year, certain he was dying because she’d heard him cough.” Carly chuckled and shook her head. “Noah was friends with one of the nurses, and he said they’d always chorus, ‘Here comes Michelle!’ when they saw her burst through the doors. The doctor was patient with her, at least.”
“If the animals following you around are any indication, you would have done a damn fine job,” Justin said. He laughed, and Carly knew he was thinking of the moose that had followed them for a few miles back near Saskatoon. Justin had sighed with relief when it finally wandered off. He’d told her later he had terrible visions of the creature trying to crawl into the tent with them that night.
“We’re not going to make it, are we?” Carly asked. “Humans, I mean. As a species.”
“I don’t know. We’ve seen enough people along the way to make me think there’s a large enough breeding population, but whether the children survive or not, that’s another story. We don’t know if they’d be immune to the Infection or not.”
Carly’s eyes widened in horror. She hadn’t even thought of that possibility.
“That family back near White Pass—they all survived because they isolated themselves. As more travelers pass by, or they decide to move back to town when they’re out of supplies, they’ll all be exposed. There probably aren’t very many intact families, and we don’t know how the immunity is passed on. Both of your parents died, even though you were immune, so you didn’t get it from them.”
It made no sense immunity would just be random, especially, as Justin had noted, since it wasn’t a natural virus to which people would have built up a genetic resistance. “All of us who were immune must have something in common. We just have to figure out what it is.”
Justin cast her an amused look. “Are you going to start polling people?”
