Chapter 45 Crossroads #2
We were speeding away from what was left of Turin.
We had parted there with the rest of our company; Einar, Dave, Kevin, and I were to head north through Annecy and Geneva towards Lausanne, whilst our companions were to carry on further west. Until Cyril and his group would leave the rest of them to drive south to his native France with Helga and Emma, whilst Russ, Julia, Laura, and Mickey would continue towards the French coast, hoping to board a ship to England.
The fresh memory of saying goodbye to them all was already sending heart-wrenching waves of sorrow through my whole body, and the view on our way did nothing to lift my spirits.
Almost two years after the Outbreak, desolation was still everywhere. It was an overcast, depressing kind of a day, clouds forever threatening rain without actually granting one the satisfaction of saying ‘There! It’s started to pour down finally!’
Turin had looked like a crater of rubble and ruin, the earth around it still blackened with its ashes.
Fields on its outskirts lay in waste, bare and uncultivated, weeds spreading over them.
Pastures and meadows were scattered with gleaming white skeletons of cattle, nothing remaining of them but bones.
We drove through small towns of long-abandoned dwellings, crumbling sadly in their solitude.
We passed through villages that must have been inhabited until quite recently, for they bore marks of having recently been flooded by death itself.
Corpses lay on the cracked roads through which weeds were beginning to grow.
Bodies often gnawed down to the bloodied bone.
Tell-tale dark puddles on the pale paving stones of the small square.
Stench that crept into the car and stayed in one’s nose for hours.
I shifted in the seat uncomfortably to ease the various cramps in the lower half of my body.
“I don’t suppose there’s a chance that we could stop to find a place to stay the night?” I asked tentatively, already knowing the answer
“Let’s get further up north, love,” Einar said firmly, but not without casting a worried look in my direction. “You heard the damn thing, there are bloody swarms all around us here and that’s just those that have been tagged. Why, do you not feel well?”
I grimaced, indicating that indeed I did not just as Kevin piped in from behind, “Speaking of which, isn’t it time to listen to the radio again?”
Annoyed by the continuous drawl of voices, we had turned the device off so as not to listen to its repeated reports of movements of swarms across this part of the continent. Five of them were fairly close to us, which was a deeply concerning number.
“Go on then.”
Kevin fiddled with it for a moment, turning knobs and pushing buttons as its static and high-pitched wheeze filled the car.
Then voices sounded, distorted but comprehensible.
German was first; the languages of the swarms’ forecasts were rotated to reach as many people as possible.
Einar pulled over at the side of the road to wait for the English portion, the manoeuvre driven by a force of habit rather than by necessity.
There was no traffic he would have inhibited had he simply stopped in the middle of the potholed road.
Finally, the voice changed, and the English segment came on.
“Annecy has fallen. New swarm warning, I repeat new swarm warning, Annecy overcome, new swarm Annecy area, has not been tagged. New swarm warning Annecy area. Swarm warning in Lyon ... Novara swarm warning ...”
The broadcast continued, detailing the precise coordinates of each swarm and their movement projection based on their current trajectory.
“FUCK!” In a moment of uncharacteristically uncontrolled frustration, Einar hit the steering wheel with the palms of his hands before wrenching the car door open, slamming it shut behind himself with a force that shook the whole vehicle.
Dave swore from his back seat, which, on the other hand, was nothing out of the ordinary.
Besides, there was a very good reason for it.
We had meant to drive through Annecy. And what was worse was that the Lyon and Novara swarms blocked almost all of our longer, alternative routes.
Now, according to Paoli’s research, only one remained, a much shorter one that cut directly across the Alps and separated southern Switzerland from northern Italy.
It was unmaintained and rarely used, the road surface icy and treacherous in the higher altitudes.
And worst of all, it boasted a 6-kilometre-long St Bernard tunnel through the mountainous area that we would have no way of bypassing.
Driving through an unmaintained tunnel with potential furies lurking inside was not a tempting proposition by any means.
Suddenly, the mountains that erupted from flat meadowlands in the distance, hazy like shadows in the dull light, seemed hostile and ominous. Overgrown weeds and foliage that had taken over the surrounding fields swayed side to side in the wind like fingers wagging in a forbidding motion.
Einar paced in between the potholes in the road, his hair dull in the reluctant sun, air currents whipping through it and pulling the fabric of his thin grey T-shirt tight around his frame so that every muscle on his torso stood firmly outlined against it.
In a familiar, and somewhat contradictory impulse, I wanted to console him and at the same time rile him up further, so that my body could then serve as an outlet for his rage.
Owing both to the fact that we were somewhat pressed for time and that I was almost six months into my perilous pregnancy, I had to settle on the first approach.
I opened the door and pushed it open with my leg, practically rolling out of the vehicle. As I walked towards my husband, I heard Dave and Kevin open and shut their doors.
“Hey,” I said to Einar.
He turned around. For an instant, his expression was terrifying, the clean-shaven features of his angular face hard-set and pale with what I knew would be murderous fury if only there were someone to murder for the inconvenience caused to us.
Impotent anger had carved hard lines into his face that mellowed out as soon as he saw me.
“Hey, trouble,” he said gently, managing a small, worried smile.
I couldn’t quite wrap my arms around him, not with my belly wedged firmly between us, and so I ran my hands soothingly over his face and chest as his own large hands settled contentedly on the small of my back.
He kissed my forehead and then rested his cheek against the top of my head. His breathing deepened and slowed down.
“You looked so handsome out here,” I murmured so that only he could hear me over the wind. “I just had to get my hands on you.”
He chuckled, but it was only a faint variety of laughter, much too fraught with worry.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw that Dave and Kevin had joined us.
I opened my mouth to say something and then froze.
Despite Einar’s warm embrace, goosebumps erupted all over my chilled flesh underneath my insufficient clothing, consisting of maternity overalls and a long-sleeved shirt that was too small and cut into my armpits.
And yet, cold as I was in the merciless wind, I suddenly felt hot, slick wetness between my legs.
“Ren, what’s going on?” Einar felt me stiffen and pulled away to look around wildly.
Ascertaining that there were no roamers around, he turned his sights on me again, a worried line appearing between his eyebrows.
“Are you not feeling well?”
“I ... I don’t know ... hold on.”
I walked away to hide behind the car for privacy, and there, concealed from sight, I pulled my overalls and underwear down with a grunt.
As I had suspected, a few spots of bright red blood bloomed on the white fabric.
I keep waiting for it to go wrong! Sometimes I almost wish it would already ...
The careless words were shoved back down my throat, wherein they turned into a ball of ice that slithered between my ribs and settled in my heart.
My head swam and I stumbled a few steps, thinking that I would faint.
Detecting my motion from afar, Einar rushed over to me to find me bare-assed, bent over as much as my stomach would allow, staring at my knickers.
Coming to stand next to me from behind, he patted my bottom very gently—life according to him was too short not to touch his woman’s naked rear whenever the opportunity arose—and he wrapped the offending hand around my waist firmly as he looked at the source of my distress. He gasped in horror.
“It may not be a cause for any concern,” I told him in a small, pleading voice. “Most times it isn’t. I bled all the time in the first few months, remember?”
His only answer was a look that conveyed plainly his scepticism as well as his unwillingness to question my assurances out loud.
“I’m bleeding,” I told Dave in a small voice once I emerged fully dressed from behind the car. “But only very lightly. That doesn’t have to mean anything, does it?”
“Any pain?”
I shook my head. Kevin gave me a reassuring smile, pushing his glasses higher up his nose.
“Good. Tell me right away if it gets worse.”
“I can feel them moving in their usual way,” I interrupted him. “Surely it can’t be bad if everything else feels the same?”
Dave bit his lip, the pragmatic, truthful doctor in him battling with the friend who wanted to comfort me.
“We won’t know more until we get to a hospital, Renny,” he told me gently. “It absolutely can be harmless. But darling, it also may not.”
“Any hospitals in these regions, Dave?” Einar asked, pacing around the three of us as he rubbed his lower jaw until it turned pink.
“A couple south of here, but ... they have to evacuate all the time due to the swarms,” Dave replied.
“And anyway, given what I’ve heard from Paoli I can’t say I’d recommend going there.
The situation is not urgent yet. Until it becomes so, I say let’s not settle for substandard care.
If we don’t push on to Lausanne now, we may not get another chance if Renny’s labour starts early . ..”
“I haven’t even reached the viability week yet,” I pointed out with no effort to rein in the hysteria that had crept into my voice. “If labour starts now, then there’s no hospital in the world that could help. I say we wait it out, let the swarms move out of our way before we continue.”
Before I even finished talking, all three interrupted me simultaneously.
“They may be able to prevent early labour,” Dave said calmly.
“It’s about your safety too, for fuck’s sake, Renata, not just the babies,” Einar roared with agitation.
“The swarms may block us out even worse.” Kevin’s voice was tense and apologetic. “It’s getting warmer, and they have little reason to head back south.”
“Right, enough of this.” Einar resumed his pacing.
“We’re going to have to try and take the St Bernard,” he announced uncompromisingly once he stopped, the biting tone only betraying his own apprehension.
“No!” I objected just as Dave said, “I was thinking the same thing, mate.”
“We’ll do no such thing,” I protested. “Six kilometres in a tunnel? High up in potentially freezing mountains? Have you gone insane?”
I stood facing Einar with as defiant an expression as I could muster, my hair flying madly around my face in resemblance to Medusa’s coiling snakes.
Dave tried saying something, but with hardness in his eyes, Einar spoke loudly over him, “Not up for a discussion, Ren.”
“What, will you drag me to the car by force and lock me in if I disagree?”
I crossed my arms on my chest, ignoring the protests of my breasts, growing more tender and swollen with each passing day.
“I think we both know the answer to that one, darling.” Einar smiled coldly at me, but some semblance of warmth re-emerged in his eyes.
“Please, I can’t let the three of you risk—”
“Our lives for the lives of two infants and their mother, whom we all love in our different ways?” Dave cut in, taking a step closer.
“And just what kind of men would we be if we didn’t?
I’m with Einar on this one, Renny. I’m sure he can manage on his own, but if he couldn’t, I’d help him with the dragging and locking up. ”
I closed my eyes briefly to compose myself.
“Alright, Dave, we'll split up then. You and Kev can wait it out. Einar will take me to Lausanne via St Bernard,” I suggested once I opened my eyes again.
All three opened their mouths to protest, but to my surprise, Kevin spoke first, “No, Renata. We owe our lives to you, and I for one would like to pay the debt. Einar may need a backup on the way, and you may need medical attention. We’re coming with you whether you like it or not.”
I looked him up and down like I was seeing him for the first time.
Slightly overweight, pasty, bespectacled Kevin with his mousy, prematurely receding hair, who always stayed quiet and did what others told him to.
Somehow, hearing him exert his authority over me, questionable as it always had been, finally broke me down.
My eyes stung as I choked with anger at being in no condition to do anything but obey those three men meekly and then let myself be rescued by them like a child with no faculty of her own, robbed of my own body by an affliction I had so readily brought upon myself.
“We’ll be very careful. We won’t go in unless we’re reasonably sure we can all get out,” Einar promised with renewed kindness, the harsh tension of his whole posture softening, the angry angle of his eyebrows mellowing out only to be replaced by an expression that was even more unbearable; a patronising benevolence that showed that while he regretted my tears, he would absolutely not let them sway him this time.