Out of Darkness

Chapter 11

Curtis woke up early as he always did. But he stayed. He was so glad to be back home, and he stretched as he sat up, got dressed.

Home wasn't the cave that they'd have to leave in the very near future. It wasn't the rocky terrain they'd occupied since Snowpiercer had crashed. It wasn't the spring that provided for them or the mountain that sheltered them.

Home was the people who'd survived the horrors of the train. The people, his people, who'd taken care of each other, protected one another through so many dark hours.

Home was the girl curled up in his bed. His girl.

As the morning light filtered in, casting a fiery glow around them, he stretched out on the bed next to her, watching her sleep. Her hair was splayed out across the bundles they used for pillows, her lashes not quite covering the deep shadows beneath her eyes. Pulling the covers up over her bare shoulder, he slid a hand up into her hair.

She looked smaller to him somehow since he'd returned, and it made him uneasy.

Pregnant.

The thought of her pregnancy and the dangers it could bring scared Curtis.

The conditions had been horrible in the tail section of the train. But it hadn't stopped life. There'd been pregnancies, intentional and otherwise, and just as many of them ended in tragedy as they did in joy. Curtis had wondered for the first several years why the front end even allowed them to procreate at all. It wasn't until the end he understood why.

The tail section provides a steady supply of kids.

There had been mothers who'd lost their babies before they were ever born along with babies born who never opened their eyes. Mothers had died of infection or childbirth, sometimes the child died with them. A few had made it and lived on like Tanya and Timmy. Little Andy had made it to childhood though his mother and Andrew's wife had died giving birth to him.

Andrew had been so lost in the days after that, sitting off in the corner and holding his baby. Curtis remembered the pain etched in the other man's face, knowing Andrew was blaming himself, wondering what he could have done to save her. Knowing how excited they'd been when she'd been expecting, even in the hell they lived in, only made the loss all the more tragic.

As Curtis slid his fingers carefully through the long locks of her hair, he tried to push down the fear.

I love you, Curtis.

Her whispered words from the night before echoed in his mind. They were burned into his heart, branding him hers. She'd given herself to him, trusted him. Now she carried part of him inside her.

How she could possibly love him? He didn't understand. He'd taken her for himself and now she was pregnant. The fear in her eyes when she'd asked if he were mad at her haunted him. That she was pregnant was on him. Anything that happened to her as a result? Was on him.

Curtis resolved then and there that he'd do everything he could to get her through this. The child too if at all possible. It wasn't that Curtis didn't like kids. He liked them well enough. But it wasn't ever something he'd envisioned for himself or even wanted.

His priority was her.

If the child survived, he was sure he'd love it. It was part of her. But he needed her to be okay. He needed her to survive.

Considering his earlier days on the train, Curtis knew he didn't even deserve a child. How did a monster like him deserve a tiny life when he'd taken it from others like a ravenous wolf? He'd been no better than an animal back then. It took Gilliam and others to shame him, to show him humanity before he'd become who he was now.