There were days during which Jenn had to ask herself, just when did things go this wrong? Was it the original day when reality suddenly flipped its lid, the axle came off, and everything went off the rails or was that merely the first of many steps on the long, drawn-out path ultimately leading to the shitty situation she now found herself in?
Sure, that first day had been bad, when the world literally caught on fire and her only desire had been to get out of the suddenly burning house, her mind frantic with worry for her child with little comprehension of anything else. Nothing had mattered; it was just that tiny little life she needed to shelter, the one all too dependent on her for warmth, comfort, and sustenance.
They had managed, with more than a little luck, to survive and even find shelter, the group around them growing during those initial days as some of the braver people ventured out to collect food, holding out hope that somebody would come to rescue them.
And, to their luck, eventually, somebody actually came, though not the military or any sort of governmental authority as some had expected and hoped for, but a single, possibly insane woman with her dog and daughter. And what a serious mental challenge accepting that image had been, not just because those three had gone through the monsters quite literally scratching at their doors like threshers through grain but because the only somewhat normal-looking being of those three was the dog. Not the pale, blue woman, with her crazy, glowing eyes and sparkling highlights in her hair, and certainly not the inhumanely pale daughter, with eyes of solid crimson, looking as if somebody had put gems into the sockets of her eyes. Maybe to hide the fire burning within them, but at that point, as desperate as they all had been, nobody had really cared.
All anyone in their little group had cared about was that this insane woman was offering them a path to safety, a path she was willing and obviously able to deliver. When said insane woman even decided to adopt, for lack of a better word, one of the children sheltering with the adults as her second daughter, it only added to their acceptance.
Not that Jenn wasn’t faintly amused at the entire situation, especially after her husband recognised the insane woman as his former friend, gaming buddy and teammate from school, with whom he had reconnected just months earlier. Reconnected to the point that Jenn had met the woman, largely due to her own insistence, prodded by some shifty and shady behaviour of her husband, a few things that didn’t quite add up, or rather, a few things that added up to something she wasn’t happy with. So, meeting Samantha and getting to know her, only to realise that a few things Samantha admitted only added to her earlier calculus and made her husband look even worse.
Normally, she might have suspected some guile or trickery; after all, Chris was supposedly an excellent catch with everything a woman would want in a husband. Handsome, stable job, financial security and all the right ingredients, if not for that bit of infidelity rearing its ugly head in the whole Samantha situation. Still, from what she had been able to observe, Samantha was about as much of a danger to her relationship as the dog next door, though Chris might have been able to lure the dog with treats. Samantha, not so much, especially when Jenn realised that Sam was very much taken and very much interested in the female persuasion. So, she was not a threat, and their meeting only resulted in a fair bit of amusement for Jenn, especially when she handed Sam their baby; that look on the woman’s face was just such a joy to behold. A complete mix of flabbergasted, disgusted, confused and utterly lost; if she had been able to take a picture, she might have been able to sell it only as the face of ‘WTF’. Alas, any picture of Sam would also have had Sebastian, their baby in it, so no pictures could be taken or sold, as tragic as that was.
But while taking a picture of the moment was impossible, it was readily obvious that Samantha had about as much experience with children as she had with something outlandish as aeroplane mechanics or underwater basket weaving—that is, none at all.
And yet, that same woman who had just a few months prior looked at a baby as if she was holding a mix between a nuclear bomb and a bag of rotten fish, but now, just a little later, had a teenager calling her ‘mother’ and was making an obvious effort to in another child? Something didn’t quite add up, but at the end of the day, Jenn didn’t see a need to make waves. Instead, she simply accepted the safety offered by Samantha and those people she knew at that old apple orchard. Maybe that was the day she made the wrong choice; maybe she should have tried sticking with Samantha and her strange but growing family.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
Sadly, the safety and comfort hadn’t lasted all that long, and, to Jenn’s everlasting shame, she was cognizant of the part Chris had planned to end the precious haven for her child and her. How he had been part of a group trying to manage the farm and the people living there, how they had applied all the wonderful lessons of the time before the world had shifted to that thriving little community, only for the world to remind them that those lessons required certain preconditions to apply. Things like the import of cheap labour or the shifting of production abroad to keep up with the ever-rising demand for growth. Without those conditions, Apple Gate Farm, as the community continued to be called, didn’t thrive and grow as their models and prognostics suggested it should if people just listened to them. Instead, things quickly fell apart.
Amusingly, it wasn’t all that obvious when things started to go wrong. Maybe that was the biggest problem. Nobody had the means, experience, and will to make the people listen to them, unlike the people who spoke in a calm and measured voice, who only lacked the good suit and tie as symbols of their success and authority. Instead, those people who were listened to because people had grown accustomed to listening to them and people like them managed to chart a course, using a mix of fancy language, actual planning and their so-called statistical prognostics, not that those prognostics were worth the air needed to say them, let alone the paper to compute them. Statistical prognostics worked, obviously, with statistics, trying to see trends from history and use those trends to predict tomorrow. How was that supposed to work with the changed world, with people being able to work literal magic and strange zombies roaming the streets? Jenn wasn’t sure, but she had a feeling that neither was anyone else. But they managed to paint a wonderful picture with their words and convince a vast majority that their way was the only way real Americans would walk.
The few dissidents were the first to leave. Maybe she should have tried leaving with them, even if it would have meant serious hardship for her and Sebastian. Alas, she had decided to stay, maybe allowing herself to be convinced by Chris and his honeyed words.
Sadly, those dissidents weren’t just the dirty labourers Chris and his buddies portrayed them to be, they were, quite literally, the cogs keeping things running, their newly developed skills and magical abilities utterly pivotal to the entire community.
And yet, they managed to trudge on, one compromise, one sacrifice and one mistake at a time, until winter came and forced them to confront their situation head-on. They didn’t have the supplies, even with the strict rationing, not if they needed to survive until they could harvest new crops. There simply wasn’t enough food.
Starving people were desperate people and as desperation set in, what was left of their shared humanity was soon abandoned on the altar of compromise and survival. Things like the care of their young, of the mothers and children, died a cruel death alongside the wonderful notion of chivalry.
At that moment, when Jenn realised she had to choose between surviving on her own, with nobody but herself to rely on to keep herself and her precious toddler alive or staying with that group and being forced to see her child die, at that moment Jenn made a choice.
Even if she knew it, the only choice a mother could make was most likely a futile gesture of defiance. But, futile or not, she was not willing to remain in a world that sacrificed her baby. In leaving, she had taken what little she could, even knowing that it would force others to endure hunger; she needed to keep what little strength she had to protect her baby. Unbidden, old memories came to her: memories of her childhood and lessons about religion. Even songs played in her mind, speaking of finding oneself in times of trouble.
Without any other options, and knowing that it might just keep her mind occupied, she decided to pray, addressing her prayer to Mother Mary, hoping that she might keep a desperate mother and her child safe.
Strangely, the image playing in her mind as sleep started to take her wasn’t that of Mother Mary and her Son but that of Samantha, holding the little girl she had adopted while she was holding Sebastian. Finally, sleep took her, but somehow, in the embrace of the night and the Mother, Jenn was sleeping safely and soundly for the first time in many, many months.
