Chapter Text
That night, it was screams and gunfire that woke us up. Ray ran to the window. He looked at me with wild eyes.
"Honey, it is here. Be quick!"
Take what we can and run. That was the mission.
"Not now... please, stay in there" i said to my pregnant belly that felt like exploding.
Ray gave me a quick worried look from the corner where he was loading his gun.
"We'll make it" i reassured him trough clenched teeth.
There was no time, we heard the raiders quickly approaching. Everybody in town has been ready for it. Since the power grid collapsed, it was only a matter of time. Me and Ray had, as everybody had, a suitcase at the door, ready to leave at any time. A few clothes, some medicine, canned food, few things for a baby, few sentimental things. My guitar. Books... Water was prepared in big barrels downstairs. Gasoline as well. Our old neighbors, professor Pete and Ava were included in our escape plan. I already heard them yelling outside. So it has come to this. A little apocalypse after apocalypse. Step two - end of the concept of 'home'.
I've said goodbye to our home so many times already. It was three months after the power shut down and things have gone crazy. People got crazy. I remembered back then, when the TV talked about the thread called the Nightrider, six months ago. Ray would turn it off and kiss me.
"Don't scare our little fella" he'd say.
*
We ride and ride. Where? I don't know. Shouting, tires squeeling, motors roaring, blood and dust in the air and in my lungs. World is spinning with me as adrenaline floods my body. The baby's kicking violently, it wants out desperately from the suffocating mayhem. As do we all.
Suddenly there's blood everywhere. A bullet flies like an angry bee, missing me an inch.
It did not miss Ray.
IT DID NOT MISS RAY.
The blood is his.
Time slows down.
Ray.
Professor Pete takes the wheel quickly, I hold my hands on Ray's head and watch the rivers of blood oozing from his temple. My crying blends into the roar of the war outside. Inside me, It's gone quiet.
The baby's an orphan. Ray's dead.
Apocalypse after apocalypse after apocalypse. End of the concept "family".
*
AFTER THE STORM
Sky' s dark blue again.
We have escaped the war parties and the sudden quiet seems unreal. The loss of Ray still hurts so much that I almost don't feel the labor pains. Ray's buried in the cold sand. The baby is born.
"It's a... boy" I can hear Ava say, with a weird undertone.
I am too tired, too empty to notice there's something wrong with the baby.
I only wish I was dead with Ray.
I wake up when the sun' s rising and we are riding on. Ava holds a little bundle of a bloodied rag and frowns. Tiny hand sticks out of that bundle, very still.
There's no way to call him a hope of a new life amongst death. Rather another morbid joke. Apocalypse after apocalypse after...
He does not cry and
his eyes
HIS EYES will never open.
Because there aren't any eyes. Hollowed eye sockets filled with moist wrinkled skin, deformed skull, misshapen mouth... and he is just so tiny and thin. Is he awake or sleeping?
Some of us are born to die.
"I wouldn't give him much chance, dear.." Says Ava.
So I´m not giving him a name.
*
CAVE NEAR THE BARTERTOWN.
He´s still alive. We settle in a cave in a mountain, the place looks quite safe. We improvise. Survive. I feed him, this strange silent baby.
One day, Pete and Ava don't return from a supply run from nearby settlement.
I am all alone with him.
I look at that tiny creature, whose life relies fully on me and I suddenly feel a purpose again. I must protect this unfortunate child.
My son, Ray's son.
I watch stars and satellites, glittering in the sky like diamonds, every night they're there, and I am gently rocking him in my arms. One night there's a comet flying by. Its tale, the beautiful luminescent cloud, blazes the sky like a trace of painter's brush. It's called a coma, i recall. Like unconsciousness. Deep sleep. Eternal sleep of an eyeless face. I name him Coma.
And I tell him how beautiful the sky is, how blue.