Supervolcano All Fall Down(13)

You could have pets here. Some people had brought in big, mean dogs. Those mostly didn’t last long. They either had sad accidents or they started starving and had to be released outside the camp or put down. There were no kibble distributions here. You fed pets from your own rations. A cat? No problem. A Rottweiler? That was a different story.

A little dog might be okay. Cats could like you pretty well, but they were also in the deal for what they could get out of it. Dogs loved you whether you deserved it or not. That kind of slavish devotion had always grated on Vanessa. The longer she had anything to do with Micah Husak, though, the less attractive feline expediency looked.

“A puppy?” she said, and nodded to herself. “A puppy.” They wouldn’t be hard to find. And something that wouldn’t care for her just on account of what she did for it seemed especially wonderful right after she’d visited the administration building.

* * *

Louise Ferguson glanced at the clock on the wall across from her desk. She stood up. She’d forgotten how much effort that took when you were pregnant out to here. The bowling ball in your belly messed up your balance, too, just at the time when falling would be most disastrous.

She stuck her head into Mr. Nobashi’s inner office. Her boss was on the phone, yelling in Japanese mixed with occasional English swearwords. The ramen company’s corporate headquarters were in Hiroshima. The San Atanasio building was only a colonial outpost.

Mr. Nobashi raised a questioning eyebrow. “Please excuse me,” Louise said, “but I have a doctor’s appointment at eleven o’clock.” She patted her bulging belly to show what kind of appointment it was.

“Oh, Jesus Christ!” Her boss covered the phone’s mouthpiece with the palm of one hand. “Okay. You go. I see you after lunch, yes?” His English was telegraphic and heavily accented, but Louise rarely had trouble figuring out what he meant.

“Thank you. Yes,” Louise answered. The baby kicked or stretched or did whatever the hell he did. People talked about the miracle of life. What that amounted to for a woman was, stuff was going on inside you, but it wasn’t stuff you were doing. It was wonderful, sure. But this was the fourth time Louise had gone through it, and it still weirded her out.

She walked out to the parking lot. The ramen works’ American center had been on Braxton Bragg Boulevard since the 1970s. The neighborhood was a lot rougher now than it had been back in the day. A fence of stout steel palings topped by razor wire surrounded the lot. Despite the fence, an armed guard stayed on duty 24/7.

The Hispanic guy out there now nodded to Louise and touched an index finger to the brim of his dark blue Smokey the Bear hat in what was almost but not quite a salute. He remained watchful and alert. He’d probably done a tour or two in Iraq or Afghanistan. How much easier was this? He didn’t have to worry about IEDs in San Atanasio, anyhow.

He kept an eye on her till she’d left the lot. She didn’t know where the ramen company hired its guards, but they were all solid.

She flicked on her headlights. The morning fog had thinned, but it was still there. The lights wouldn’t do anything to help her see. They’d help other people see her, though, which also counted. The South Bay could get some real pea-soupers, but at this time of year? She shook her head. Not before the supervolcano erupted. Not a chance.

Her OB-GYN’s office was only about ten minutes away. The doc she’d gone to when Rob, Vanessa, and Marshall were born had long since retired. Dr. Travis Suzuki was one of the new breed: younger than she was, brusque, and efficient. He thought she was nutso for having the baby. He didn’t come right out and say so, but she also didn’t need a magnifying glass to read between the lines.

When she walked into the waiting room, two other pregnant women were sitting there. They were both in their twenties. The blonde chewed gum while she listened to her iPod. The Asian gal was leafing through a copy of People. They both gaped at her stomach as if they couldn’t believe their eyes. They probably couldn’t. She was about as old as the two of them put together.

She grabbed the first magazine in the rack and sat down to look at it. It was Vegetarian Times, hardly something she would have chosen if she’d been paying attention. Teo had talked about not eating meat any more—an aerobics instructor feared fat even more than he feared the IRS. But he’d never done more than talk. He needed protein to stay strong. And, just as much to the point, meat tasted so good.

Well, she didn’t need to worry about Teo any more. Except, of course, for the small detail he’d given her to remember him by, the detail that was getting bigger by the day and would pop pretty soon. Yeah, except for that, she thought.