War Machines

23

     An hour later, I was sitting in Zeke's lap with his arms around me, the two of us staring at half a dozen home pregnancy tests resting on the table in front of us. Zeke had picked up multiple brands and we'd used all six. Now six versions of positive were staring back at us.

     "You," Zeke announced, "are pregnant."

     "Yes, thank you, Zeke, I can see that." I swallowed hard and clung to his arms. "I guess we've got a decision to make, don't we?"

     He tightened his arms around me. "If we do this now," he whispered, "if we carry out this mission? Even if our child survives, what we will be facing could result in disastrous birth defects. By doing this, we could take away our child's future."

     "If we don't do this?" I told him. "Our child won't have a future at all."

     He didn't respond. What could he say? We both knew it was the truth. I reached up and stroked his cheek with a trembling hand. "We don't have a choice. I'm sorry, but there's just too much at stake. It's worth more than the life of our child."

     "Sacrifice the one for the good of many?" Zeke whispered.

     "Yes," I told him. "Yes, Zeke."

     Zeke didn't seem to agree with me, but he didn't say anything. I'd never even considered having children, least of all with Zeke. My new freedom was still so unfamiliar that I had given little to no thought about what our future together could be, assuming we'd even survived. In truth, I hadn't really considered the possibility of survival. But Zeke's fatherhood instincts were surprisingly strong. He'd fallen in love with a child that was nothing more than a lump of cells. Even staring at six positive pregnancy tests, I still felt like this was a dream. I couldn't quite grasp the reality of my situation, that I was really pregnant, that I was carrying a child. Motherhood had never been a possibility for me, so I'd never given it even a passing thought. I had no idea how to be a mother. I doubted Zeke was any better prepared. So what would we do if we survived, and I did, in fact, give birth to a living, breathing child? A whole new person, a little stranger that was a part of us both and completely dependent upon the two most unfit parents alive?

     No, I could not think about that right now. "The mission, Zeke," I reminded him. "That's our priority. Everything else is tertiary, alright?"

     Zeke nodded. But I didn't miss the way his hand cupped protectively at my belly.

****

     Radiation is insidious. It's not something you can see or feel, not something you can pick up with your senses. It's a silent, invisible force. Resistance to radiation was a primary requirement for Terra Omega operatives. We were, after all, living in an atomic age and enough nukes had gone flying during the early stages of the creeper incursion that it was expected we'd run up against it. That's why we all had some resistance, as well as pills to take that helped. The damned creepers were close to immune, but not quite. Direct hits would kill pretty much anything, of course. If they were exposed too long to high levels of radiation, they died just like everything else. Still, creepers were tough by design. Zeke was no exception. He got tired quicker, and got a few small blisters in the thinnest areas of his wing membranes. That was it.

     I wasn't so lucky. Radiation sickness was more than my Alpha physiology could easily compensate for. My skin reddened, then blistered and peeled. My strength was drained. I was constantly sick, although I had no way to know if it was from the radiation sickness or my pregnancy. All I knew was that I was miserable. Zeke had to do most of the fighting, and that was taking its toll, too. By the time we finally made it to our destination, loaded the warhead on our ATV and drove it through, there was no chance of us being able to fight off an organized ambush.