Kingdom of Monsters by John Schneider (microsoft ebook reader .TXT) 📗

Rosa had been a doctor in her previous life – Doctor Rosa Holland, MD – and she had met this then-expectant mother on KT-day.

Allison was her name, and Rosa remembered assessing her with a tiredly jaded-eye – body-art and pole-dancer, just showing pregnant – a type Rosa had seen many times – usually druggies – often the sort that delivered meth-addicted babies.

Then there was the man with her – 'Bud' – just a bit older – another animal Rosa had known before – the doting, low-rent sucker, who Allison would settle for in place of a sugar-daddy, now that she was knocked-up.  Rosa had never asked if Bud was the father, although she suspected his wallet would be acting like he was.

This snap-judgment had been within thirty seconds of meeting them.  Since the world ended, Allison and Bud had saved her life half-a-dozen times.

They had all survived together on the road for the past year.

For her part, during that time, Rosa had helped deliver Allison's young son – possibly the first birth in the new world.  In the months since, Allison watched over him like a mother bear.

And now the blasts of gunfire, and the cold grab of wind were terrifying.

Allison, herself, was in tears as she tried to calm her crying infant.  Bud lay a protective arm helplessly over her shoulder, as the chopper rocked around them.

One of the other passengers, however, rose from her seat – the one woman out of the group of four the transport had picked up on their last stop, only an hour before.

Rosa didn't know what to make of her yet.

The young woman had caught Rosa's eye as they'd boarded and taken the seats opposite the cabin.  She was strikingly beautiful, although in the manner of an athlete rather than a supermodel – she moved like a performance artist in a ballet, as she rose from her seat as casually as a passenger on a commercial flight.  Her eyes were bright and unguarded, and as she caught Rosa's eye, she smiled gently with the comfortable familiarity of an old friend.

Her companions called her Shanna, and now she knelt easily at Allison's knee, balanced with that dancer's grace, amid ringing gunshots at her ear, the whistling wind, and the chopper's abrupt back-and-forth lurches.

“Shhhh,” Shanna said, as she first set a soft hand on Allison's shoulder, and then touched her wailing little bundle on one tear-streaked cheek.

Like a passing squall, the cries faded away.

The little eyes blinking out of the wrapped blankets matched those of his mother as Allison smiled shyly back.

Shanna nodded to Rosa as she sat back down, clutching the side of the rocking aircraft like a carnival ride.

Rosa was frankly amazed.  She had known Allison nearly a year, and while perhaps unfairly judging her character, the scars Rosa had recognized in that cynical first appraisal were very real.

Happenstance placed them together on KT-day, trapped among the wreckage, along with a handful of other survivors.  But even huddling among the cracks, in the days and weeks that followed, as the apocalypse erupted all around them, Allison had sat away from the rest.  Only Bud would sometimes sit apart with her.

But today, when Shanna had bent at her knee, Allison had leaned close, as if huddling by a fire – although, her eyes still blinked away, as if not to stare directly at the burning embers, not quite ready to step fully into the light.

Whatever happened to her in the old world scarred her deep.  The most common vices always did.  It was possible the apocalypse had saved her life – even the life of her baby, if it happened to have dried her out.

Speculations, of course.  These were all questions Rosa had never asked.

None of it mattered after KT-day.

And none of it would have mattered at all but for a swaggering fly-jockey, who just happened to crash his jet almost on top of their huddled group of survivors, and had somehow managed to sheer alpha-male them out of the devastated city, all the way to his base.

Lieutenant Lucas Walker – call-sign 'Skywalker' – a chiseled specimen, who represented everything Rosa considered primitive and animal-like about the human male – made worse by the keen, wry mind that piloted his not-inconsiderable physique.

Rosa, an anti-war pacifist, who loathed everything he stood for, had nonetheless found herself swept back to the primitive, and by the time she'd seen the last of him, she was pretty sure she had been in love with him – a married man, no less, who was himself waiting on word of his missing wife.

When he'd left them that last day, Rosa had kissed him goodbye.  Then he had gone on to save them all, one last time – and she had never seen him again.

He had told Rosa it was for his wife – that was why he fought – every time.

Rosa wondered if at least some of it, that last time, was for her.

Allison had named her child Lucas.

From Rosa's end, Lieutenant 'Skywalker's' ultimate fate remained inconclusive.  She had waited for any of the pilots to return, but none did.  The base that had been their sanctuary had been destroyed.  And the original group of eight Lucas had trafficked across the apocalyptic tundra had been pared down to just the three of them.

Bud had approached her on the third day after.  They couldn't just sit camped out forever.

It was a special cruelty that she would never know.

Rosa realized she should simply be grateful and accept the gift of the life he had saved for her, and not to look the gift-horse in the mouth for not providing her closure.

Still, once they set on the road, she had taken to hailing military lines, ostensibly because that seemed the most likely route to some semblance of civilization – but, truthfully, she had been looking for some word of Lucas.

Now, for her troubles, it seemed they had essentially voluntarily consented to what felt more and more like capture.

She found herself not liking the