Next morning, I get up early, grab a bucket of Kevin's lye, and leave the house to wash at the brook. The water is cold, but I clean myself thoroughly.

It's the first time for weeks that I don't feel filthy.

I let myself dry in the sunshine, its warmth on my limbs chasing away the tingling feeling that the water left there. I haven't felt so good for a long time.

Back in the house, I find Rose and Kevin preparing breakfast. They smile at me. Rose places her finger to her lips, pointing towards the room where Anna has spent the night.

"Is she still asleep?" I whisper.

She shrugs. "I don't know. But if she is, we should let her sleep. Getting some rest is good for her."

We sit down at the table, and I hungrily eye a loaf of bread that Rose has deposited before me. She hands me a jar, a wide grin on her face.

Seeing an amber mass in it, I take a suspicious sniff. "Honey!" I exclaim, forgetting to be quiet and remembering the ointment Rose prepared yesterday. "Do you keep bees now?"

"Nope," answers Kevin, his voice hushed. "We're way more primitive than that. We just found a beehive quite close to here.

"And how did you ... make the bees give you the honey?"

"Well, that's the primitive part of our ... beekeeping. I lit a fire below the hive, with lots of smoke. We literally smoked them out." He hesitates, then shrugs. "Yeah, I know, that's not really nice. But it's them or us ... or whatever."

I dip a knife into the jar and give the honey a try. It does have a smoky tang to it, but it's probably the sweetest thing I have eaten since we've been cast into this world. I spread it liberally on my piece of bread.

Rose's bread making techniques have definitely improved over the last few months. The watering in my mouth is almost painful.

We have nearly finished breakfast when Anna enters the kitchen. She looks pale, but she offers us a weak smile. Rose greets her warmly and leads her to the table, sitting her on one of the chairs. Then she begins feeding her, motherly and obviously enjoying her role as a host.

Kevin starts to ask some questions about the bunker and her life there, but Anna's answers are evasive and short. She seems reluctant to talk about it, so I give him a hard stare. He takes the hint and starts talking about the traps they have set around the house.

After breakfast, Rose checks on Anna's wound, and then sends her back to bed.

Rose, Kevin and I clean up the kitchen.

"We have to go back," I break the silence between us while I am washing the ancient porcelain plates we have eaten from. I scrub them with my hands in a large bowl of lye water that Kevin has placed on a cupboard in front of the window.

"Go back?" Rose takes the clean plate from me, drying it with a much too small towel that looks suspiciously like an old sock, a colorfully striped one.

"To the bunker, in the valley," I say, setting the next plate into the bowl. I turn and look at her.

Placing the plate in a cupboard, Rose glances at Kevin. Then she crosses her arms before her chest.

"Yeah..." Kevin starts, looking from her to me. "We should. But ... first, we need to know what ... we want to do there. We have to make a plan. This will take some time."

"I know," I agree. "We need weapons, provisions. This may take a week or two."

"What about Anna?" Rose asks. "She has to recover. She needs time."

He is right, Anna is an issue. I want to have her with us. Her knowledge of the bunker and its people is invaluable. It may be essential. And we will have to discuss plans with her. I wonder how well she'll take it. After all, she would be helping us against her own people. "Yeah," I agree. "I'll talk to her as soon as she gets better. Maybe in a day or two."

I briefly wonder if she will get better at all. But the urgency I feel inside makes me dismiss the thought quickly.

"Give her some slack," Rose says. "It took you weeks to recover from that bear attack."

"That was worse." I shake my head. "We'll start discussing plans with her as quickly as possible. We must not give up on Jenny and Steve. Maybe that chip can be ... removed. Maybe time is of importance ... maybe the chip needs to be removed quickly before it does permanent damage. And Jan and his people ... they have to be stopped. What they do, its ... an abomination."

Rose and Kevin look at each other again. Her forehead is furrowed while he makes a face as if in pain.

"Hey, what's going on?" I ask, feeling a flush of anger. They are hiding something.

"Nothing's going on!" Kevin's reply is immediate, his voice irritated.

I stare at him, and he stares back at me. Then he sighs and looks over at Rose. She lifts her arms then lets them fall again. "It's..."

A small smile appears on her face, and her stance relaxes. "You know ... I'm pregnant." She raises her eyebrows as if in an excuse, or as if beseeching me for approval.

Kevin walks over to her, placing his arm around her shoulders. "The baby's due in winter." He looks at her face, touching it with the back of a finger while wearing a boyish grin.

My irritation ebbs away. A baby. I go over and hug them both, in silence. For the thousandth time in the last few days, I feel tears welling up in my eyes, the sweet tears of happiness.

"That's so wonderful," I whisper with a failing voice.

Kevin takes a step back. "You'll understand then," he says, "that we need to prepare. We have to prepare for the child; for winter."

I nod.

"So we have to stay here," Rose adds. "We can't go to the valley now."

I sit at the lake's shore, watching its waves glittering in the sun. A duck trailing a ragged string of ducklings is making her way across the water.

Ducklings. The way of nature. Yes, nature does find her way, even here. Especially here. Give her a healthy male and a healthy female, and the inevitable happens. The normal. The necessary.

I throw a pebble at the animals. My aim is short, on purpose, but mother duck still gives me a misgiving stare and changes course to lead her offspring away from the sulking figure on the shore.

No, I'm not sulking. I'm happy for Kevin and Rose. They care for each other. They're looking forward to the miracle bound to happen. And they're afraid. They are still kids, after all. We all are. How can we, can they, suddenly be parents? In a world where we don't know if we'll make it through next winter.

Responsibility. One of my mother's favorites. She could go on about it for hours. How my brother and I would grow up and become responsible, and how things important would depend on us. And these things would take precedence over our own goals, and finally they would become our goals, our true goals.

And what's more important than a child to be born?

So they want to stay here. Prepare for the baby, prepare for winter. Build a home for their family. They don't want to go on a raid in some valley somewhere. A raid that may turn into a fight—and we know nothing about fighting people.

Mrs. Duck and her ducklings have disappeared in the reeds to my left. They have reached their home, and they'll stay there until the threat goes away.

I raise my gaze over the lake. The mountains are hazy in the distance. Somewhere over there, Steve and Jenny spend their days, vacantly tending the fields, the cattle or whatever. Feeding Jan and his vermin.

Steve, Jenny, and the others up there, they are important, too. But are they more important than the unborn child in Rose's womb? A child that may be the key to our future. A helpless child that will need all the support it can get.

I bury my face in my hands.

---

A/N

I am curious: What do you think about this chapter? What's the way to go from here, the right one? If you have a moment, please do let me know.

(But do note that fate has already written most of Leona's story, and you won't be able to sway her.)