The Pacifier
Somewhere in the distance, beyond the skeletal hulks of the buildings, the rumbling began. Jessie clutched Aaron a bit tighter as the reverberations quaked through the floor. Aaron quivered against the pillow of her breast, and he looked at her with bleary eyes. Six months old. He should have been waking up to the Laurie Berkner CDs that had been a baby shower gift. Instead, artillery and chanting were his alarm, and he screamed his displeasure.
“Shh, baby, shh,” she whispered, but it was too late. The man was there, glowering from the dim light of the doorway.
“Damn it, that brat chose a fine time to start that,” he said, spitting onto the floor. He edged towards the window and stared towards the east. “Invaders are moving again, closer than before. Bet they were creeping in the night.”
“The noise scared him, that’s all,” said Jessie as she fumbled her sweater up and tucked the baby beneath. The man stared, as if willing flesh to become visible, and Jessie trembled, trying to focus instead on the little fist that protruded from her torso like a third arm.
“No time to be scared.” He clutched a gun against his thigh. “Sounds like our guys are out there, too. But the others are closer, too damn close.”
Our guys. Jessie sucked in a breath. To her, all the cacophony blended and she couldn’t tell one gun from another. “The US Army? You think they are that close?” Please, please. Maybe they pulled Max back from Iraq. Maybe he lived. Maybe he was out there, so close, trying to salvage what human life remained on this scorched earth.
“Maybe. Maybe five miles or ten. It’s hard to tell.” A whistle pierced the air, closer, closer, howling louder as it neared. The man cursed, his eyes going wide, and he threw himself down beside her. On impact, the building danced and shivered. Somewhere, things fell, crumbling into the cloud of dust. The baby wrenched from its teat and cried as the gray cloud engulfed them.
Jessie smothered him against her chest even as he flailed, and clutched her eyes tight. As the debris fluttered earthward, the adults coughed, and Aaron resumed his cries. Cries that seemed louder than the missile.
Down the street, the chanting began. The torrent of words to an alien beat, wailing high. Jessie’s neck prickled. They were very close.
“Damn it.” The man brought his face up to hers. His fetid tobacco breath filled her senses and dazzled her with a taste other than ash. “You better shut him up.” He glanced toward the window. His grizzled features contorted in fear. “If they hear him, we’re dead. I’m not dying because of no freaking baby, not after all I gone through to make it this far.”
Jessie, shaking, tucked the baby back underneath her sweater, but this time he would have none of it. He wouldn’t latch. He jerked her sweater aside, exposing her. Jessie gasped at the cold, and pulled him out and onto her shoulder as she tugged her shirt back into place. Aaron continued to scream.
“Shut him up. Now.”
She tucked a filthy finger into the baby’s mouth, wincing as his gums bore down, but his cries choked past the makeshift pacifier. Her finger was too small.
The alien singers neared, thrumming like a thousand dark birds in chorus.
“Give him to me,” said the man, breath hissing at her ear.
She looked at the man, and at the sun’s feeble light on the concrete floor. She bent past her knees, past the boots she took from a dead man’s feet, and clutched the nearest shard of glass. Before the man could react, a thick line of blood dribbled from his neck and his eyes went wide in shock. He collapsed backwards with a groan.
“You’re not killing my baby,” she whispered. “And I know what you’d do to me once he was dead.” The man convulsed and stilled.
She lay down beside him, taking care to turn the dead man’s face away. She nestled the baby on the floor between them, and flipped the man’s hand upward. The thick forefinger slipped into the baby’s mouth and the child quieted, suckling.
Jessie felt the invaders’ feet marching their rhythm through the walls and the floor. She breathed through it like labor. When the shaking subsided, she leaned against the wall again and brought the baby to her other breast.
“We’re going to find your daddy,” she whispered to Aaron. “You and me together. Maybe we can see the sun tomorrow.”
Beth Cato resides near Phoenix, Arizona, and has had dreams about the end of the world since she was three-years-old. Yes, she was a rather odd child. She’s had her fiction published in The Shine Journal, and has a story in The Ultimate Cat Lover by HCI Books. For more about Beth and her writing, please visit http://www.BethCato.com
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I stopped breathing half-way through the story. It’s not often that I become that riveted. Really anticipating the sequel.