Coming Soon: Eye, Part II: Tiva

Chapter 1

“That’s impossible, I can’t be!” Tiva McFoley said to Beth Patterson as the nurse finished her examination and gave Tiva the surprising news: She was pregnant.

“I’m afraid so. Reverend Foley or Tim?” asked Beth, curious about the paternity. She knew she shouldn’t have asked such a question, it certainly wasn’t professional, but professional standards had become rather lax in the neighborhood in the seven months since Hurricane Camilla had taken away both the present and the future. Everyone knew everyone’s business nowadays. Or so it seemed.

Beth Patterson had turned her spare bedroom in the house she shared with her life partner Kathy Genry into an examination/infirmary room that she and Kathy, another RN, shared. Tiva sat on a trundle bed, her long legs firmly on the floor even if her mind was racing in the clouds. How could she be pregnant? She had had a tubal ligation in her “other life,” a year before Hurricane Camilla sent her and her neighborhood into another time. Tiva had taken to referring to her life before Hurricane Camilla as her “other life,” as had most of her neighbors. The developing fetus she carried had to be the late Jeffery Lundgren’s, she guessed, but she thought the deceased minister had fired blanks. The father certainly wasn’t estranged husband Tim—she hadn’t had sex with Tim since before she left him and moved in with the Reverend Jeffery Lundgren, and Beth believed she was a bit past three months pregnant.

Beth waved a hand in front of Tiva’s face. “Tiva? Are you here?” she asked.

“Huh?” a startled Tiva responded.

“Are you okay, Tiva?”

“No, I’m not “okay.” I’m friggin’ pregnant, for heaven’s sake. And I don’t know how?”

“The regular way, perhaps?” smiled Beth, trying to get Tiva to lighten up a bit. “At least you aren’t showing yet.”

“Beth, I had my tubes tied. This isn’t possible!” Tiva shouted.

The nurse gave Tiva a compassionate look. “Things have changed, Tiva. I don’t understand how or why, but many things seem to have changed since Hurricane Camilla. Betty Kane’s baby was born deformed. That shouldn’t have happened. Not so late in her pregnancy. So many women in the neighborhood are pregnant, two of whom swore they still had birth control pills. Seven women pregnant, do you see the correlation?”

“No,” Tiva said.

“Seven new souls to replace the ones who died. Jana Trapps and her baby. Jake Russo. Mack Morrison. Lundgren and his wife and Gus Stephenson. I thought there were only six, because one of the women miscarried in January, but with your pregnancy we are back at seven.”

“That’s only a coincidence, Beth.”

“A coincidence is God’s way of getting our attention, Tiva,” Beth smiled. “If you don’t want this child, I can abort it.”

Tiva felt a chill ripple through her body. The nurse said it so calmly and matter-of-factly that Tiva was taken aback. She hadn’t considered abortion; she’d only been pregnant for ten minutes…and three plus months, she reminded herself. Had she and Jeffery had sex the night before the Neanderthals caught them? Tiva searched her memory but couldn’t come up with an image. She’d escaped from the Neanderthals over three months ago, but of course it couldn’t be Igor, he was a different species. None of this made any sense; the only thing Tiva McFoley knew for sure was this fetus was not the result of Immaculate Conception. Suddenly in her mind she saw the face of the Alpha Male. Sweet Jesus! she thought. How was that possible? It wasn’t, she assured herself. It wasn’t possible.

Beth Patterson’s hand was in front of her face again. “Tiva, come back to me. Take some time and figure out what you want to do about the fetus, okay?”

“Okay,” she said and stood up from the bed.

How was she going to explain this to Tim or the children, Tiva wondered? Of course, Tim was sleeping with that tramp Melissa Russo now and sharing custody of the children with Tiva, but how would her own children react to a half brother or sister? Or should she just abort the child? She would certainly abort the fetus if she thought it had birth defects, but Beth indicated that she assumed it was healthy. Of course, there was no ultrasound, but Beth was an experienced midwife as well as a registered nurse, and Tiva liked her and trusted her. Beth hadn’t shunned her like so many of the other adults in the neighborhood. Beth and Betty Kane were the two women who still spoke to Tiva; the other women ostracized her. For what? Surviving? For becoming Lundgren’s acolyte? Hadn’t some of them followed Lundgren as blindly as she had? Or was she shunned for leaving her dipstick husband Tim? Was that it? Did the other women see Tiva as a threat to their marriages? The temptress? Or did she scare them with her independence? Good heavens, Tiva thought, she had made the mistake of survival. “Fallen women” were supposed to stay fallen and not be resurrected. The other women in the neighborhood acted like sheep waiting for their rams to lead them. If she had learned one thing in her captivity with the Neanderthals, it was that there was no room for submission in this new world of theirs. This new world required strong, independent men and women; in case of a fight, every adult would be necessary to defend the neighborhood—men and women. Namby pamby submissive women were useless in this environment. If the women of her generation were hopeless, the young schoolgirls were not. Tiva could begin an after school program for all children, boys and girls, ages 10 and up, that taught them how to fight and defend themselves. One day the neighborhood might run out of ammunition, and people would need to know how to handle a spear or make a bow and arrow. And the Neanderthals might not be dangerous now, but what about the future? Their children weren’t ready to take on the Neanderthals. She thought of her own kids, Timmy, Tina and Tory: They were certainly incapable of defending themselves, but that was one thing she could change. She imagined her daughters, Tina, 11, and Tory, 7, standing up to her Neanderthal nemesis Buffy, that incredibly “buff” subhuman who had given Tiva all that she could handle. The only thing that had let Tiva prevail against Buffy was her survival instinct. Did her own children have it? And if not, could she impart it? Certainly Tim wouldn’t teach his daughters to fight. He preferred that his girls fawn all over him, like twittering little twits. He didn’t want them to be strong independent women; hell, he hadn’t wanted a wife to be an independent woman, let alone daughters. And now what did he have? Melissa Russo, a recovering alcoholic who was co-dependent, the perfect spouse for Tim McFoley, Tiva thought: Someone he could intimidate and control.

On her way back to Lundgren’s house where her three children were waiting for her, Tiva kept thinking about the after school self-defense class. Hadn’t they put that old archery set of Timmy’s in the crawl space above the hallway in the house? Tiva would need that for her program. She could fashion a few spears. What about shields? They had enough material on CD-ROMs to give them ideas on the best shields, spears and arrows, among other weapons. Tiva appreciated the incongruity of modern technology in a world of Neanderthals. In one of the ironies of their situation, the neighborhood’s computers could call upon the entire Library of Congress on CDs on their solar powered hard drives. Tiva knew she needed to look up information on slings, for she had seen how well the Hobbits had managed those weapons; even the larger Neanderthals were intimidated by those small slings of the Hobbits. And that was such an odd thing, Tiva mused, thinking back to her time with the Neanderthals. Why were the little Hobbits such good friends of the Neanderthals? It made little sense to her. Some symbiotic relationship?

When Tiva thought of the Neanderthals, Igor’s visage never appeared in her mind—the Alpha Male’s did. Now that was a man, Tiva acknowledged, strong but gentle and understanding. Why couldn’t she have had a man like the Alpha Male? She smiled at the thought that the most attractive male she had met in years was not even of her own species. She smiled. It was rather amusing. She remembered their brief foray into passion. She exhaled at the thought. Breathless—he had made her breathless. She felt like the heroine in a romance novel. She giggled. But it wasn’t Fabio who made her tingle; it was a Neanderthal.

Tina and Tory were engaged in a game of hopscotch in the driveway of Lundgren’s house when Tiva arrived. Timmy was listlessly watching his sisters, sitting with his legs folded in the grass adjacent to the driveway.

“Why are you smiling, Mom?” Timmy asked her.

Tiva laughed. “Just daydreaming, Timmy,” she said. “Just daydreaming.”

Timmy needed a haircut, she thought, then corrected herself; why? He looked cute, androgynous even, and he had his father’s smile, that darn smile that had melted Tiva’s heart so long ago. For she had loved Tim once, she realized, but that love was long dead, and if by some remote chance Tim McFoley smiled at her these days, it only hardened her heart. But her sweet little boy? Tiva looked at him and realized, right then and there, that she would not abort the child that grew inside her, that she would have Jeffery Lundgren’s child. Why not? Every human life was truly precious now, Tiva thought. As far as she knew, the entire human race numbered less than a hundred people. Hadn’t the human race been reduced to a thousand or two in Africa a long long time ago? Just a handful of people repopulated the planet. One good virus and the human race might have been gone forever. Maybe the seventy some souls in the neighborhood were the last humans, and every one of the humans was precious. So why not have the child? It was not like it was going to ruin her career, and who cared what the other women thought. The other women already loathed her, why not bear a love child and really get their goat? A bastard child as a form of revenge on the other women? Tiva laughed and looked at her son, who had a questioning look on his face.

“I was just thinking of something funny again, Timmy,” Tiva said as a way of explanation. “Something really amusing.”

She was thinking of returning to the Neanderthals. The thought made her feel suddenly alive. Yes, after the baby was born she and the child of both worlds would return to…Alpha Male.