The Mechanic had only been gone for ten minutes before the baby began to cry. KC’s smile soon faded into maternal concern.

“What’s wrong, baby?” She asked. “Are you hungry?”

But the baby yielded no verbal response apart from the hollering cries. It was so loud KC thought that this poor baby was going to kill his lungs.

First she tried holding him close; rubbing his head, repeating the mantra, ‘its okay… its okay…’, but that did nothing. Jonathan kept crying.

Then she tried rocking him, making funny faces whenever he looked at her. This also did nothing. Jonathan just kept crying.

Finally she removed her shirt, pushing her breast to the baby’s mouth. This did not do anything. Jonathan would not stop crying.

“Are you thirsty? Do you need water?” She asked, expecting no response. She looked around and realized that their water supply was at the other side of the camp. Given her constant bleeding and the fact that she could not walk, the only option she could see was to crawl to the other side. It was that or she would endure the baby’s crying for another two hours.

She took some bloody blankets, flipping them around to a side not soaked in blood, and set them on the dirt. She took baby Jonathan, who was still hollering his little lungs out, and placed him inside the blanket. She turned and looked at their water tank, and began crawling herself over to the other side.

Each time she dragged her hips across the dirt floor the several pebbles and rocks that would scrape them grew to an excruciating pain. This didn’t include the blood leaking behind her like a snail. Sweat flowed down her face in bursts, running down in front of her eyes, blinding her.

She used her sense of direction to push her towards the water cooler, the sounds of her crying child growing quieter the farther she got. After making to what she believed to be the halfway point she stopped to rub the sweat from her eyes. It was then she realized she was no more than fifteen feet away from Jonathan; not even a quarter of the way there. She groaned, and continued crawling. She looked forward as she inched her way forward, each second bringing her unendurable pain. She began to curse and scream and cry with each drag she made. Once she actually made it to the halfway point she was forced to give up, not by her own accord but by the unwillingness of her body to agree with her. She collapsed onto the dirt floor, breathing heavy, her heart feeling as if it were to beat outside of her chest. She looked down, towards her baby. He was still screaming, and now he was too far away. She threw her head down. Her body was finished, she could feel the blood pooling around her like a warm bath. She stared into the sun, pleading to any higher power for her own survival. But there was no use. She was making an audition of immortality to an audience of no one. She closed her eyes, letting the cold air and her warm blood consume her.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

***

The Mechanic returned to the camp in an old Ford Bronco. It was making a terrible knocking sound as it entered the campsite. As the engine died, The Mechanic exited the car and opened the back door, reaching inside and pulling out a large plastic bag. He was smiling, but looked drained.

“I found us some loot, KC, you’ll really enjoy this.” He said as he walked into camp, but then he heard Jonathan crying and screaming. He started to run.

He caught up to Jonathan, lying on a bloodied blanket, crying. And no more than thirty feet away from him, right in the middle of the campsite was KC Homstov. A trail of blood leading from her blanket blood rags to her body. The Mechanic dropped the large plastic bag and headed for KC, kneeling over her body. It was cold and white as a ghost. He felt her pulse, KC Homstov was dead.

“No… No…” The Mechanic said, breathing faster and face growing red. “You can’t die. You couldn’t die. You’re not dead. No, you’re not dead.” He said, knowing full well what had happened. He’d seen it too many times before to ignore it. He had seen hundreds killed before his eyes, and even more dead bodies, but never were they mothers of newborn children.

And with that, he looked at Jonathan. He was still crying.

The Mechanic ran to the water tank, putting some water in a baby bottle, mixed it with some old formula powder, and brought the bottle to Jonathan. He helped the baby hold it, and soon the baby had stopped crying, soon falling asleep in the bloodied blanket.

Returning to KC, The Mechanic took a while to examine her body before he knew what to do. He went into the bus, retrieving a rusty old shovel. There he headed twenty feet out of camp and began to dig a six foot grave. He even took two pieces of flat wood, taped them together like a cross, and wrote “Katherine Christian Homstov, age 32, ‘we need to try.’”.

The Mechanic wrapped KC in a clean blanket, placing her in the grave carefully, and spending the rest of the day burying her. On occasion Jonathan would start crying again, in those cases he had to feed the baby old formula milk or rock him back to sleep, but he always came back to burying KC. He finally finished by the time the sun went down. Jonathan was fast asleep, and The Mechanic sat by the fire staring at the bundled up baby in his lap.