Read Online Afterbirth by Belinda Frisch - Free Book Online

wouldn’t be consoled.
    “What do you want?”
    He tucked the swaddled boy inside a large cabinet drawer and closed it enough to muffle the sound of his crying. Babies cried for three reasons: they needed a diaper change, they were tired, or they needed food. The last seemed most likely and there was only one place that would have what he needed.
    He drew his pistol and ran down the dimly lit hallway, careful not to slip on the trail of blood and black liquid from where Carlene had dragged herself to her grim final resting place. He hurried up two flights of stairs and entered Labor and Delivery for the first time in months. The wallpaper peeled from having been soaked by the sprinklers and the black mold smelled stale and musty.
    Reid stifled a cough and lifted his pistol at the sound of shuffling feet.
    “Shit.”
    A naked, infected female shambled through the water-damaged unit. Her wobbly legs made her path crooked and her emaciated body bore the telltale signs of being postpartum. He wondered what had happened to her baby. Her sagging breasts hung flat above her stretch marked abdomen which formed a kind of fleshy smile. She held tight to a bloodstained, blue cap, the kind the nurses put on newborn infants, and focused her eyes on him. There was a sentient, pronounced sadness in her expression. Reid expected her to charge, but she barely walked toward him.
    He aimed at her head, set his finger to the trigger, and took her down with one shot. Stagnant blood leaked from the hole in her skull, and when her body stopped twitching, he snatched the blue cap from her hand.
    Cans of formula were stored in the nursery where the newborn infants had been kept. A dozen or so infected staff and patients had starved there and the bodies stunk. Skin shrank from bones as putrefaction dissolved the flesh. The dismembered bodies of several infants lay in the bassinettes of the nursery, and even as hardened as Reid had become, he couldn’t bear to look at them. He grabbed a garbage bag from an empty trash can and loaded it with formula, bottles, and a manual breast pump which reminded him of a life before becoming a killer. Back when a zombie apocalypse seemed like impossible science fiction and when he found out that Jess, the woman he loved, had given birth to a son that wasn’t his, but who had been fathered by Mitch, the closest thing he had to a friend.
    He grabbed several sealed packs of diapers and wipes and headed back to the PAT room where the tiny boy cried in the drawer.
    His clubbed hands shook and the pitch of his crying climbed higher the more hysterical he became.
    Reid lifted him onto the examination table and stretched the blue cap over the top of his tiny head. He diapered and swaddled him, which calmed him down some. Enough to eat, he hoped.
    “How about some food?”
    He attached a rubber nipple to a premixed bottle of formula, lifted the boy’s head, and pressed the tip to his lips. A slow drip of formula spilled down the boy’s chin, but he had no inclination to suckle. The boy cried louder, showing the full rows of razor teeth that were the most menacing thing about him.
    Reid lifted and rocked him, holding his face away from him in case he tried to bite.
    “I don’t know what you want.”
    His chest tightened with anxiety and his head throbbed.
    No matter what he did, the infant could not be appeased.
    He looked at the cooling corpse of the infant’s mother and set the boy back down. He had no idea if the milk would come, but he had to try. He pressed the cone-shaped end of the manual breast pump to Carlene’s engorged breast and worked the handle. The suction of the manual pump drew her nipple in. Reid blocked out the crying as he manually expressed the scant colostrum—sweet, yellow pre-milk he hoped would encourage the boy to eat. He put a clean nipple on the bottle and picked the boy back up.
    “Here,” he said as calmly as he could despite his increasing irritation.
    The infant bit through the