Page 6 of Hollow Child

Max returned first, hurrying over to sit on the arm of the couch next to my head, and he looked down at me with worry darkening his eyes.

“What is going on?” Boden asked, and his gaze was on Remy as he and Serg entered the living room.

“Um. So… there is no point in dancing around it.” Remy took a deep breath and rested her hands on her hips. “I think that Stella’s illness is… because she’s pregnant.”

“What?” Boden and Serg shouted in unison, immediately followed by Boden growling, “Who’s the father?”

But I barely even noticed them. All I could see was Max, and the tears already forming in his eyes. In a trembling voice, he asked me, “We’re having a baby?”

“I think maybe, yeah,” I admitted with an uneasy laugh.

“Holy shit.” He smiled and wiped roughly at his eyes. “This is amazing.” He dropped to his knees beside me, and he touched my belly next to Ripley’s big lion paw.

“I’ve been walking for days, and I need a minute,” Remy abruptly announced and went upstairs.

Boden collapsed back in the chair, looking as though he might be sick. “You’re both so young,” he said, and he spoke like stating the facts aloud could somehow change them. “How did this happen?”

“We were trying to be careful,” Max insisted. He squeezed my hand but kept his eyes downcast, afraid to meet anyone’s gaze.

“What does ‘careful’ mean in this context?” Boden asked.

“I think I’m going to the library to see if there are any books on pregnancy,” Serg excused himself and left down the hall.

“We only ever made love,” Max said.

“Making love and having sex are the same thing, according to Remy,” I whispered to Max.

“What?” he asked, then looked to Boden in confusion. “How come you and Remy don’t have kids? If sex and making love are the same thing, what are you two doing?”

“We…” Boden looked down and tapped the arm of the chair with his fingers. “Your sister and I… need to come up with a much better plan for your sex education.” He exhaled roughly. “And she never … Remy can’t get pregnant.”

“Oh.” Max’s face fell in understanding. “From the experiments back at the government quarantine?”

Neither Max nor Remy talked about it much, but I knew that they had both spent some time as medical experiments in a military quarantine zone. They had what Max called “special blood” because it attacked and successfully warded off the lyssavirus genotype-8.Meaning they were immune to becoming a zombie.

Max and I shared almost everything with me, and even he didn’t like talking about it. All I really know was that doctors had tortured them, leaving them covered in scars, and the quarantine zone fell before they found a cure or a vaccine for the zombie virus.

Boden was quiet, staring off into space, and then finally, almost to himself, he said, “Maybe that’s why we had such a blind spot. You’re only kids, and we didn’t think pregnancy was an option for anyone.”

Then he looked over at us. “How long has this been going on?”

Max shrugged one shoulder. “Always.”

“Always?” Boden raised his eyebrows in disbelief.

Then, realizing his mistake, Max’s face turned crimson and he hurried to amend, “The physical part like… only a year, maybe. Less, I think.”

Boden settled back in the chair. “Well… this is a shock. I am in shock. But people have been having babies for thousands of years, even young ones like you, and it will be okay. We’ll figure this out together. I mean, raising a baby can’t be harder than surviving a zombie apocalypse, right?”

5

Remy

Knocking on the bedroom door startled me so badly that I barely bit back a scream. Then my eyes adjusted, and I realized that I was safe in my bedroom at the lakehouse.

I had only meant to kick off my shoes and sit a moment, while the afternoon light was bright, but now it was dark, and I was lying on my bed with all my clothes and shoes still on. Exhaustion was a real bitch.

“Remy?” Boden tentatively opened the door.

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