Page 2 of Say You'll Stay

‘Lucy,’she gasps on a painful breath.

Has to be the kid’s name, he assumes, watching her mother slump unconscious against the wall. He presses a careful finger to her pulse, surprised and relieved to find it still beating. That’s the best news he’s gotten all day because what would he have done alone with a baby?

A kid needs her mother. Not some random stranger that swooped in at the last second.

The scratching at the door starts up again, and he groans, trying and failing to shush the screaming child, who’s picked up another impressive chorus.

The woman in front of him is a mess. Her long dress isbunched up to mid-thigh, revealing blood from the birth coating her legs. The placenta lies a few feet away, half eaten by the man on the ground with a knife wound in his head.

Cole doesn’t try to clean her up. Not in the business of groping women he’s never met or even ones he has. If she wakes up,and god she better wake up, then she can do it herself and if she doesn’t, he’ll have a lot worse to worry about.

He does, however, grab a towel from his pack and bunch it up under her head. Can’t leave her passed out all crooked. Gonna cause a crick in her neck later.

“Shhhh. Shhh. You gotta quiet down,” he whispers to the baby, who’s got no intention of following instructions. She’s brand new and already fighting for her life right along with everyone else on this sorry planet.

“Your momma will wake up any second now. Feed you. Get you taken care of.” He does his best to clean the gunk off pink skin with paper towels from the dispenser and wraps her up in his only spare shirt dug from the bottom of his bag.

Looks healthy, like she took every ounce of nutrition her mother ate. The baby is chubby, but the woman on the floor is thin enough that he wouldn’t have known she was pregnant if he didn’t have the evidence in his arms.

“She’ll wake up and it’ll all be just fine,” he soothes. “Just fine. Lucy? That’s your name?”

She blinks up at him, her little brows already knit together like she can’t fucking believe the bullshit she’s been born into.

Cole likes babies. Kids. Animals. They’re kinder than adults. They don’t judge or dismiss and he’s always had an easier time with this group than he ever did with his own peers. At least he thought so, but Lucy isn’t having his attempts at calming her, continuing to fuss and yell and stirring up a commotionoutside.

Her tiny fist grabs his pinky finger and something idiotic comes out of his mouth a second later.

“I’ll take care of you. Don’t worry.”

Like hell he will. What the fuck is he thinking?

He doesn’t need the hassle.

It’s not his baby.

He’s never seen this woman before in his life.

He’s off the hook when it comes to keeping them safe. Yet here he is in a subway bathroom playing instant father anyway. Wade would have a field day with that. He’d laugh his ass off and then some.

Cole slides down to lean back against the sink cabinet in a lone spot not covered in gore, rocking this baby that’s not his while staring at that woman he doesn’t know.

Bruises ring her wrists in fingerprint indentations, crawling up her arms in angry purple dots. She’s got a busted lip and some sort of burn on her bare feet, and all of that could’ve come from anywhere these days. Plenty of ways to get hurt, with plenty of assholes still roaming the streets ready to do the hurting if the dead don’t get you first, but he suspects it’s not that.

Knows because he’s had similar injuries and it didn’t take an apocalypse to earn them.

He wonders if it’s that fucker in the corner who did it.

No one is sure yet if those who turn stillthink. If they do, then this one was a special kind of evil for his first thought to be how much he wanted to eat his family. He deserved that kitchen knife she shoved into him.

Finally, the baby begins to quiet, nestling into the curve of his bent arm with a yawn.

How is he going to feed this child if her mother doesn’t wake up? Baby formula was the first thing cleared out, along with toilet paper. There’s not a single store in a five-mile radius that hasn’t been looted clean, and he knows because he and Wade have been there already.

“Lucy. That’s a good name,” he says softly, but the tone is unpracticed and it comes out rough at the edges, threatening to wake her. “Bet your momma’s name is real pretty, too.”

The baby doesn’t reply, not that he expected one. She’s dozing now. For how long, who knows? If they’re lucky, the dead will move on once they lose interest, and getting out of here will be easier. He just wishes he had a clue what to do next. None of this feels like enough when he’s half certain someone is bleeding out right in front of him while he does nothing to stop it.

Blood pools crimson on the old tile floor between her legs, creeping slowly toward the drain. He’s not sure how much someone can lose, but she’s gotta be nearing the limit and it’s not like he can stuff a towel there and apply pressure like he could on a bullet wound. The problem isn’t on the outside. He paid enough attention in biology class and saw enough farm animals birthed in the backwoods to know that.

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