Come Whatever Storms

Chapter 2-3

Judging from the pregnant woman’s screams and curses, Court suspected the baby show was still warming up. He had no desire to snag a ringside seat, and grinned again at the image of Adam squatting between the woman’s raised knees. Hup, two, three, hike! With nothing else pressing to do, he followed Ronnie back to their tent and stretched out above his sleeping bag, which lay beside his friend’s. He picked up the radio he kept beside his pillow and turned it on. A burst of static filled the air, momentarily blotting out the birthing screams until he turned it down to a murmur of white noise.

Beside him, Ronnie sat Indian-style on his own sleeping bag and unrolled the length of chamois cloth in which he kept his cleaning kit. Though several of the men in their group had guns, most picked up without the hassle of a background check after the virus ran its course, Court thought maybe Ronnie was the only one who really knew how to use his. It was a handgun of some sort, Court didn’t know what kind, a .45 caliber maybe. He didn’t know, but that sounded about right. At least, that seemed to have been the most common gun on all the TV shows, back when there was something other than blind static on TV.

Speaking of static…

He smacked the side of his radio, then pulled the antenna out as far as it’d go, wiggled it a little, and turned it this way and that. Still nothing. Not even a hint of open air at the end of the AM dial, like he’d heard earlier. Like he thought he heard.

Sumter. That was in South Carolina, wasn’t it? He’d never been a fan of history in school, but growing up in Virginia, the only real history they’d learned stopped at the American Civil War. As if nothing else had happened after the surrender at Appomattox. Sumter had been where the first shot of the Civil War was fired, if he remembered correctly. It was a fort of some type, and he thought it might be on an island off the coast. Maybe near that lighthouse they moved a while back…or was he thinking of the Outer Banks?

Didn’t matter. Ronnie had heard the word, too, Court knew, because he’d asked Ronnie about it later that night, in the darkness and relative privacy of their tent. Ronnie wanted to head down that direction, see if maybe there were other survivors, and Court thought that was a good idea. Of course he did. If Ronnie said he wanted to visit Cape Canaveral instead, see if he couldn’t hotwire a rocket ship and fly them to Mars, Court would be the first in line.

From the corner of his vision, Court watched Ronnie unload and disassemble the gun he wore in a holster on his belt. A .45 definitely, shiny and deadly. Setting the parts out carefully on the chamois cloth, Ronnie began polishing them, a ritual that not only maintained the life of the weapon but seemed to soothe his mind, too.

Court fiddled with the radio’s dial a bit longer. “What I wouldn’t give to hear some of that crappy pop s**t they used to play on Q94 right about now, you know?”

Ronnie grunted, his eyes unfocused as he stared at his hands, lost in their work.

“What do you think we should name it?” Court asked.

The question dragged Ronnie from his thoughts. “Name what?”

“The baby.” As if they’d been talking about it all along. Well, in a way, hadn’t they?

Ronnie shrugged. “Don’t know, don’t care. It isn’t mine.”

“Maybe Adam,” Court suggested, “like in the Bible. First man and all that. Oh, wait, we already have an Adam. Maybe Eve.”

A faint line of consternation creased Ronnie’s brow. Ronnie hated idle chatter, and sometimes Court talked just to hear the sound of his own voice. “What if it’s a boy?”

Court thought a moment. “Adam version 2. No, Evel. How’s that? Like Evel Knievel.”

“Like evil as in bad,” Ronnie pointed out. “Somehow I don’t think the mother will go for that.”

But Court warmed to the idea. Evel, he liked it. “This is a new world now,” he said, twisting the radio dial and listening to the whine of static. “We’re no longer confined to the names we used to use before. No more Jennifers or Davids or Johns. We can reappropriate words and use them to describe ourselves instead. Like Evel—with two E’s—or, I don’t know, Pencil or Schoolbus or Sky.”

“Sounds like hippie names.” With a small cloth, Ronnie oiled the gun’s firing mechanism. “What’s wrong with John? I’ve always liked that.”

“You never call me it.” The only people who ever called Court John had been his mother—who had always saved his full name for when she was really mad at him over something—and his wife, Jeanine. Even then, it’d been a private thing between them; like everyone else, she called him Court in public. Now that both women were gone, the name didn’t seem to apply to him any longer. “I’m going to drop it. I’m just Court now. One word, like Cher.”

For a long moment, Ronnie concentrated on cleaning his weapon, and Court tried to think of something else to say. If not about names, then about a different subject, anything really, just to get Ronnie’s attention turned back onto him. Maybe ask about Sumter again, or make another remark about the baby, or mention the condoms tucked into his front pocket…

Before he could come up with something, though, Ronnie said softly, “I like John.”

A shiver ran through Court, and he pressed his lips together tightly to keep from grinning. He hoped he sounded nonchalant when he said, “Fine, call me John, if you want. I don’t care.”

Ronnie flapped the cleaning cloth in Court’s direction. “Nah, I’ve known you too long. I can’t just change how I think of you now.”