They’d swarmed so fast. In the middle of the night, their rotting fingers pressed between the boards of the windows, knowing what meaty prize sat inside the bookstore’s belly. They’d gotten in, shuffling through the rows of books until they came upon the three of them, sleeping together for safety. They’d been too tired. Too comfortable. Lucky Claire had screamed John awake and knew how to use a gun. Lucky John was strong enough to physically pry Mary from the decaying hands of the dead. It tore her sweater. Her favorite one, and it was left in a puddle of blood as they dashed out the door, leaving everything they had behind.
Only a few days left. Charles was coming. Charles was going to drive down that road with Eli waving from the passenger seat window, and she wouldn’t be there to see them. She wouldn’t be there to run up to the most unlikely of lovers. She wasn’t ever going to wrap her arms around his neck. She would never litter him with kisses and tell him every little thing she did while he was away. She could never even show him the boots she’d managed to snag him on a quiet and successful scavenge run in town. She’d never see the pride on his face as she told him she was useful now. She’d never even look into those blue, blue eyes ever again. The following nine months were hard. Harder than anything Mary had ever known. Worse than the compound and what fates might’ve been hers. Worse than being alone in her old house without knowing how to use a gun.
The nausea was just the start. She vomited one to three times a day for two months. Mary might’ve cried as she suffered the constant urge to empty her stomach had the pain of missing Charles not been worse. But it was. Far worse. At night, she curled up into herself and wailed.
She wept and wept until Claire wrapped her in her arms and rocked her like Margaret used to. During the day, she sat there, numb and miserable. There was no golden glow that expecting mothers seemed to get. Instead, Mary was pale. What little food they got was spent entirely on the baby growing inside her. She lost weight when she ought to gain it, growing sickly thin except for around the middle where she swelled up like a balloon. A little balloon, but one none the less. And they never had to talk about it. What was there to say that they already know? Of course Eli wasn’t the father.; it was Charles’ name she woke up crying. But it was John who eventually pet her hair and told her it was going to be okay. It was Claire who kissed her sweaty forehead and tucked her back into bed. It was John and Claire who did everything for Mary. Both Mary and Emily owed them their lives.
Emily. Mary’s favorite name. One that Charles knew. One he would’ve let her pick. If it’d been a boy, he would’ve been Charles. Mary had been happy when Claire told her it was a little girl.
After nine hours of excruciating pain and begging to be put down like a cancer-ridden dog (for what little pain medication they found did nothing for the pain of giving birth); after nine hours of holding onto John’s hand and telling him she couldn’t do it, wasn’t brave enough, wasn’t strong enough; after nine hours of white-hot torture…
She smiled at a tiny, quiet, baby girl. A baby girl that was half her and half Charles Vane. It was a blessing how well-behaved Emily was. Though, Mary had also been a very quiet baby. Sickly too. Despite the fact that Emily often ran fevers so high that Mary sat awake praying by her daughter’s side, Emily’s natural disposition kept them from being too noticed by the walkers. And when Emily did cry, it was brief and quickly remedied.
Mary cried less. She spent her energy on Emily Vane (John had suggested Montgomery was a far better surname than Vane, but was quickly shut down). It’d be a hard life for Mary, and for Claire and John, yet not as hard as it could’ve been. The world was changing. They found people. Good people, mostly, who’d organized communications with other communities. Society was forming. Sections of small towns were being cleaned up. Farms sprouted. Clean water was protected. Great walls kept them safe for another few years, and then those too came down, for the dead walked no more. All gone. Cure finally found for those who managed to survive. No more gore. No more blood. There was possibility for a future again. A real one.
And Charles would never get to see it, at least with her. Mary liked to imagine him alive. She liked to think of him conquering the chaos. She liked to think of him looking for her. She liked to think he was out there, able to enjoy his second chance at being a real decent member of society. He didn’t get that chance the first time, but now… now he could be the man Mary knew he was. Only, John discouraged that kind of thinking. As gently as he could, with a kiss to her head, he reminded her to stay in the moment. Reality was the best place to spend time, he said, where thoughts could be made into real progress. Dreaming only made the heart ache more. John might’ve been right, but Mary still dreamed. The world was normal. The era of survivors had come, and useless girls like Mary weren’t so useless anymore.
She worked at a small cafe where the owners allowed Emily (five years old and half a foot shorter than the other girls her age, though sadly there weren’t many) to run around and simply be a little girl. Of course, that meant Mary had two jobs at once. Being a mother and running the cafe. Mary was taking an order for a woman her own age when Emily wandered out of the shop toward a man with long hair and a beard. Emily was too friendly for her own good. She was curious, too. By the time Mary handed over a small coffee and muffin to the customer, Emily was tugging on the man’s sleeve.
“Shit- Sorry, excuse me one second!” Mary dashed toward the glass windows and was about to exit the glass door when the w o r l d turned on its head. Tears came to her eyes. Shock. It couldn’t be real. It couldn’t be him. Despite her dreaming, did she ever expect them to be true?
Her heart fluttered. Her hands shook as they lifted toward the glass. “Charles…” she whispered, still not quite believing what it was - who it was - she was looking at. “How…” And then she remembered. Emily. The little girl with light brown hair and bright blue eyes was talking to him as if they were old friends. “Yeah, I like blue. And purple. Your hair is long. I like it.” Children’s talk. About nothing and everything. And she had no idea that the man she made her little confessions to was the man that brought her into the world. Tears ran down her cheeks and she pushed the glass door open. She stumbled outside in her cafe uniform, five years older than when she last said goodbye. Her hair was a little different, but she was otherwise the same young woman. The same that had loved him and never stopped.
“Charles,” she pushed out, “Charles, she’s yours.” As if he might disappear before ever knowing, Mary told him. Emily was suddenly distraught. Her mother was crying and she was closing the six feet or so of distance until her arms flung around the stranger’s neck and held tight. A wail, long and strangled muffled against his neck. Mary cried and cried. She kept pulling away just to hold his face and shake her head. She was looking at the man she never got to welcome home. Her lips crashed against his, fingers almost too tight on his stubbled cheeks. But Emily’s cries drove the kiss apart and Mary sank slow to grab up her girl and cry into her hair too. She was dizzy. She was going to faint. At the commotion, a crowd gathered. The patrons from the shop emptied out onto the sidewalk to watch. Mary saw none of them. There was only Charles and Emily.
“The location seems alright,” Charles grumbled into the phone, squinting as he peered around the street he’d parked on. It had become force of habit, even all this time later, to constantly scan and survey his surroundings as if expecting something horribly wretched to come crawling from the shadows. The disease had been purged, the survivors cleansed, the rotted flesh burned… but an unease still settled deep in Charles’ gut. “We’ll get fair enough business, I think. Probably a few –” interrupted in midsentence, Charles felt a little tug on his jacket sleeve. He glanced down, surprised to see a little girl beside him.
“I’ll… call you back.” He said in a distracted tone, pulling the phone from his ear and clicking to hang up without looking at it. “Where are your parents?” He asked the little girl, not noticing how the blue of their eyes matched so perfectly well. Charles glanced up, but not behind them, not toward the café. He’d looked instead down the street as if expecting to see a couple rushing up with apologies. In the past he might have figured a little child had no business being near him – and maybe now, after he’d committed a few more sins to survive, she shouldn’t be close to him either.
But the little girl was unperturbed about her rough-looking company, holding to the innocence only a child could have. Charles quirked his brow as she talked, again looking down the street and again surprised to see no one was rushing to grab her up. He’d knelt down in front of her so he wouldn’t be so tall and he smiled in spite of himself when the little girl talked about his long hair. He reached and grabbed a few locks, waving it a bit between them. “Yeah?” He hadn’t really bothered to cut it since everything went down – nor had he gotten rid of the thick beard which had grown over his jaw, chin, and upper lip. He’d only trimmed it down because he was on business, making it less wild than it’d been days before. “I’m partial to blue too.” He said, deciding he’d pick the girl up in a minute and go around looking for her parents. They couldn’t have gotten far.
His eyes moved away from the little girl quickly, but it could have been as if they’d taken forever with how slow the world suddenly seemed to go around them. Everything was sluggish, too simple a pace to catch up to what was actually happening. His heartbeat was a roar in his chest. He’d lost her. Mary was gone. He’d clutched his fingers tight around that sweater and it was the only thing he had of her. He’d said goodbye to her memory, but never lost her in his heart.
And there she was. Coming toward him. Charles didn’t believe in happy endings and couldn’t get his mind to catch up to what exactly was happening. Surely this was some… strange dream? Surely the moment they touched, her skin would rot away and the peaceful little town around them would crumble and he’d be caught in yet another nightmare he’d awaken from with sweat-sticky skin and a panicked ache in his chest.
But her arms came around him and, automatically, his arms wrapped fiercely tight around her. He closed his eyes against the tears which came unashamedly, streaking down his cheeks and into the thick, course hair of his beard. He shuddered, this great, big, mountain of a man. He trembled as he held her. He couldn’t find the words, for the ache burning in his chest crawled like fire in his lungs, up his throat and held them prisoner. Charles only cried as she did, holding to her as if he never wanted to let her go. Holding to her as he would have if he would have found her as he was supposed to.
Mary pulled away and he looked at her, eyes red-rimmed and watery, caught between a smile and an expression of disbelief, and sank into her kiss as she pressed her mouth against his. The world was still spinning a little too fast and it only slowed as their lips met, as Mary was pressed against him again and he tasted a mixture of her and the salt from their tears. He couldn’t be ashamed of his open heartache, even as people began to gather. Charles couldn’t think of anything but Mary…
And then the little girl’s cries were heard and Mary broke away from him so she could pick her up. Charles inhaled a sharp, burning breath and looked from Mary to the girl.
His eyes widened as it clicked. The shock of Mary being alive was triumphed by the shock of learning he was a father. Guilt would come to him later to be sure, realizing all which Mary had to face alone being pregnant during the fall of the world, but in this moment of purity he could think of nothing but being blessed.
“She’s ours?” His voice croaked, hoarse with emotion. Stripped was the hard expression he wore which scared most from even approaching him. Charles was filled with awe and with love, looking at this little girl as his heart stammered its beat in his chest and he barely caught his breath, realizing what he was looking at – Mary holding their little girl – was the most beautiful sight he’d ever seen and likely would. “Mary,” he barely exhaled, looking from her to the girl, the world still spinning beneath him. “She’s beautiful,” he said, his voice catching as a fresh wave of tears pricked hot at his eyes.
“I’m so sorry,” he said and came near, putting one large hand as tenderly as he could against Mary’s cheek and looking down at her. His thumb brushed gently over her skin. “I should have never stopped looking for you. I should have known you weren’t gone…” The guilt reached with a black, skeletal hand into the light and glee which was this moment, staining it with the first touch of inky black.
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