The Danger Family Apocalypse, Ch. 6 (Generation 2)

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Devomuffins:
This is great, can't wait to hear more!

steelguy:
Wow, cool. Things are moving for her.

AjiDivine:
I love how you are telling a story as well as doing the challenge. I am trying to this challenge myself, though my founder is still in college at this time.

zombiekim:
Chapter 3: Heating Up The Nuclear Winter




Ansly was at work, and George was trying yet again to make hot dogs marginally more edible. It was useless. Until there was a better supply of food to this region, there would be nothing but Twinkies and whatever semi-foods had survived the blast.
Mostly, though, he was just trying to keep his mind occupied until Ansly came home. It had been more than a month since he'd moved in with her, and he still couldn’t help but worry whenever she left for work. There were just too many zombies and thugs and God knew what others out there to get her.
Suddenly, he heard a knock at the door, and he answered without thinking. And he never would have imagined who he would find standing there.
“Natasha?”
“George.”




“Natasha, I thought—I thought—“
“I know.”
“You left for work and never came back!” he said, holding her tight. It had been months since he'd seen her. Natasha, his old friend—his old girlfriend.
“I know. The Kalahachee Dam broke, north of the city, and it was my day to scavenge in the city, remember? And I was conscripted, George. By an army caravan going by to repair the Dam.”
“And they had you this whole time?” he asked, trying to stave off the uncomfortable emotions he was slowly recognizing. He was happy she was safe, of course, but…something was missing.
“Yes. Well, they told me that if I stayed voluntarily, they would get me safe transport out of the city after a few months. I tried to get a message to you a hundred times. But none of that matters, anyway. I got us passage out! There’s a plane leaving today, and we’re on it.”




“Passage just for the two of us?”
“Two was all I could get,” she said, still breathless. “What’s wrong?”
“Well, she came back. I’m—I’m living with her now, Nat. I can’t leave her behind.”
And at that moment, the front door opened. “Natasha, is that you?”




“You!” Natasha snarled. “Thank you so much for coming back. You ruined my life!”
“I don’t know what—what did I do?”
“Oh, of course, sweet little Ansly has no idea what she did wrong. You never noticed the way he used to look at you, right, sweetie pie?”
“Lay off, Nat,” George warned.
“Sure, sure,” Natasha said, eyes locked on Ansly. “Do you know how long I had to wait for him after you—“
“I said lay off, Nat!” George barked. She seemed to snap out of it finally, and she gave George a hurt look that he felt he would remember for the rest of his days. But he couldn’t let her talk that way in front of Ansly, could he?
Natasha ran out, and George (having always been a bit rough around the edges, but kind) followed her helplessly. Ansly stood rooted to the spot, reeling.




“Nat, please, don’t cry. I’m so sorry.”
“How long did you wait after you thought I died, George?” she whimpered. “How long did you care about me before you fell for her again?”
“I never stopped caring, but I…”




“Save it,” she hissed. “I don’t want to hear your excuses. You have fun with her, Georgie. Play your end-of-the-world Adam and Eve games out here in this shack. You know where I’ll be? I’ll be in a penthouse in the city, living rich and not giving a damn about either of you. You see how long you last out here. You just see.”




After that, things were different. George was distracted, morose; their easy camaraderie had been replaced by silence. He did tell her a little, here and there, of his history with Natasha, and Ansly thought she knew what was bothering him—guilt. But after the things Natasha had said, Ansly needed him to want to talk to her. Was his ex-girlfriend telling the truth about his feelings, or was she just lashing out because he refused to leave Ansly, Ansly who was just a friend?
One morning, George came home from his overnight culinary job—preparing and distributing food with the Red Cross—to find Ansly waiting quietly. It was barely dawn, and she looked as though she’d been awake all night.
“Hey, are you okay?” he asked.
“Not really.” She shifted in her seat at the table, playing absently with a tarnished candlestick holder they’d “salvaged” from a burned-out house.
“What’s—did something happen, or…” he checked her over anxiously, wishing that he had medical training.
“No, it’s just…” She smiled down at the candle. “It’s my birthday.”
“Oh. Oh! I’m an idiot. I’ve been preoccupied, An, I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s fine, really. You can still get me a present, you know.”
“Anything. How about a zombie slave? Would that be good?”




She laughed. “No, easier than that.” Taking a deep breath, Ansly finally looked up at him. “George, for my birthday, I want you to tell me if she was telling the truth about…about how you feel about me.”
His eyes bulged and his breath came out in a strangled gasp. He felt a bit like he’d been punched.
“I guess I don’t have to explain what I mean. And if you’re reacting that way to what I think you’re reacting to…” she trailed off, turning red. He’d never seen her look this embarrassed (and he’d known her during puberty).
Rising slowly, Ansly made her way over to him—though exactly how, she wasn’t sure. Her entire body was trembling and electric as she came closer, closer, up to his chest. “George,” she whispered. “I hope I’m not ruining our friendship, but I have to know. I love you, George. Do you love me?”



Part 4

zombiekim:




It seemed that they were both eager to make up for lost time.
So eager, in fact, that they were very soon married. Not in the eyes of the state, maybe, but there wasn’t much of a state left. But certainly in the eyes of the new addition to their family that had, well, predated George’s proposal by more than a month.



“Oh, well. Who’s counting the days? We don’t even have a calendar,” George said, laughing.
“It’s not like there’s anyone around to call the kid a bastard,” Ansly said.
“Ansly!”
“Oh, come on. He can’t hear.”
“You think it’s a he?” he asked, mesmerized. In the midst of all the destruction and desperation, this miracle, this new fresh light, still had found a way into his life.
“I’ll say this, if it is a she, then she’s a fighter. Oof,” she said, “whoever it is, they’re kicking mommy’s bladder.”



In spite of her lighthearted teasing, Ansly was still worried. How could she not be? There was still barely enough food for her and George, and he was currently giving almost all of it to her. Clean water was a joke, and the cold was unending. All Ansly wanted was a safe delivery and a healthy baby, and then…Then they’d keep scraping by.



“GEORGE!”
“Wh—Oh, no, no, no, we have to get you to the hospital!”
“No, no hospital,” she moaned.
“Come on, sweetie, we have to go.“
“George,” she said, her voice deadly even through her panting. “I worked for the hospital.”
“I know—“
“Shut up. You listen to me. Most of the doctors there are sadists, half-rate mechanics, and whatever psychos just get off on playing with people’s organs.”
“They aren’t all bad, you know that, and I can’t deliver a baby!”
“You are going to," she said, "and if you don’t stop trying to get me in the car, than this baby is going to have two mommies by the time it’s born. You got that?”
“Uh. Yes.”



But in spite of George’s inexperience and Ansly’s threats to his manhood, their first home delivery went off with nary a hitch.
“You were wrong about a boy,” George said, smitten with his two beautiful girls.
“Yes, but she’s going to be a fighter, I can tell,” Ansly murmured.
“Good thing, too. What should we name her?”
“Rosalind.”
“You sound pretty sure of that.”
“It’s Shakespearean. From the play I was reading when you showed up at my door.”
He beamed at his baby daughter. “Rosalind.”



Rosalind was a fighter—rarely sick as a baby, she was walking precociously and teething her way through everything in the house. She seemed to grow faster than she should, but since George and Ansly were first-time parents, they couldn’t be sure. Anyway, if that was the worst effect of their living in a nuclear zone, then so be it. Ansly could sew her new clothes as quickly as she grew out of the old ones.
Like her mother, she had beautiful black hair and loved to play games. There weren’t many other children for her to play with, of course, but her parents usually let her win, so she liked them best, anyway.



Like her father, she had a bit of a grouchy streak, though it manifested more as tough playfulness than genuine ill-will.
“I like you, snowman. I shall call you Professor Stupid Face, and together we will fight the zombie hordes. What’s that, Professor Stupid Face? You say that you are afraid of zombies? Well, that’s too bad, because you are the front lines. I’m going inside to shave dolly’s head.”



“You’re pregnant?” George asked, dazed.
“Well, that is generally what happens, when, you know.”
“I know, I know. I just…Has it been that long already? It seems like just yesterday Rosie was born.”
“It does seem strange, doesn’t it? Time flies.”
“If only we had better food. I just worry about the food, Ans.”
“I know. I do, too.” She sighed. “But this is good news, right? Maybe I shouldn’t be, but I’m excited.”
“Yes. I am, too,” he said, and as the months went by, his words became truer. He was excited. How could he have ever known that he could love this much?



“Mommy! Can I play with him? I want to play cowboys and zombies. Please please please?”
“When he’s a little older, sweetie. He’s too small to play with.”
“Nuh-uuuuh. He would fit in the wooden car Daddy made me! I could push him around the house and outside and he’d really like it. I bet he’d even fit on my sled if I tied him on.”
“Babies are too fragile, Rosie.”
“I’ll tie him really good!”



“Mooom, I named the baby!”
“He has a name,” George said.
“Beckett’s a stupid name.”
“Rosie.”
“Sorry, Daddy.”
“What do you want to name him?” Ansly whispered.
“Umm. I have to remember…oh, yeah. Butt Face!” she giggled.
“Well, at least he won’t get picked on in school,” George murmured.



Rosalind, for all her teasing, helped out more around the house as she grew older. She had to. George was developing new food techniques that would hopefully make it possible for them to one day eat like real people again. Meanwhile, Ansly was pregnant. At night she lay awake, craving fruit and milk and fresh bread and salad—none of the junk they ate, food that somehow hadn’t perished in the dozen years since the blast. By day, she fought nausea. It was unfair.
“Rosalind, sweetie, I appreciate that you’re helping with Beckett—“
“Whee! Upsy-daisy!”
“—but could you please take him out of the room when I’m—oh, my stomach…”
“Uh, sorry, Mom. Gross."



Ansly gave birth to a healthy boy, Sacha Butt Face grew up, giving Rosalind a play mate. He was outgoing, though from a very early age, he showed a fondness for bugs and a propensity for science, a sort of curiosity for the world that was better sated by books than exploration. Or, as Rosalind put it,
“Nerd!”



George, meanwhile, finally reached his goal of becoming a culinary master. He’d invented new ways to preserve food, and better ways to cook the artificial food. This meant three things to the Danger family: one, delicious food, without risk of scurvy; two, Ansly would never have to cook again, which she hated after two many years of smelling hot dogs; and three, George looked so handsome in his new work clothes that she didn’t want him to leave the house in the morning.



It frightened her a little, sometimes. How much she’d changed. It truly seemed like only yesterday that she’d been a kid, fresh-faced and naively returning to her hometown in a disaster situation. It was a disaster that the region—the nation—hadn’t recovered from, even now, fifteen years later. Instead, she’d adapted, fallen in love, had three beautiful children (with another on the way—if it was a girl, Ansly wanted to name her ‘Portia’). Still, how was it possible that she had lived through this? Through the loneliness, the isolation; through the hunger that roared up in her stomach, the bone-deep coldness that made her forget what it was to be warm, the dirt and age of everything around her that made her long for something, anything new?
Maybe Jane, her long-lost friend whose home she’d taken as her own, had been right. Maybe Ansly was stronger than she’d thought.



And maybe it was because of the family she had, the family she’d made. Her children didn’t mind that they had to wear re-fitted hand-me-downs, or that they couldn’t leave home to even go to the park or make new friends. On cold nights, they all piled into Ansly and George’s big bed, and they would listen to their parents tell stories of their own childhoods—stories about sleepovers and sneaking into movies and first dances and baseball. But those things were from a world that they hadn’t been born into, and so they didn’t miss them.
And George still looked at her the way he had when they’d been teenagers in the orphanage. Or maybe with a little less awe, but more warmth, more real admiration. He didn’t mind the way her body had changed from her pregnancies, or the lines around her eyes, and she didn’t mind his gray hairs or softer body. She wouldn’t have given this up for the world—not even that glittering world that had been blasted apart.


Part 5

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