To Be A Hero

Chapter 12: Does Your Mother Know

"Alright. Are you guys ready?"

"We were born ready, mate," Owen replies, before giving a half shrug. "Well, more accurately, we've been ready for about three minutes."

"Yeah. Yeah... yeah, sorry," Sam mumbles. "The Ministry sent out a general call for assistance. I was just letting them know that we'd take it."

"Yeah? And they're not worried about old Five-o here going all mind controlled again?"

I flinch.

"What happened last week wasn't mind control. It was a hypnotic trigger. Five's fine."

Sam sounds so confident as he says that. I wish I could believe him.

He nods, eyes glancing over at me. "Yeah. I don't really understand what you found, Five, but I know Ellie from New Canton practically fainted when they told her."

"Um... well..." I sigh and grab at my backpack strap. "It's kind of hard to-Sam, I'm having trouble finding the words."

"It's fine. I know you don't like to think about what happened. It's fine. I'll explain it to Owen as you go," He says, and I can't help but smile in thanks. "Anyway, the Ministry is pleased with us. Not that we care what the Ministry thinks, but still."

"So what is it today? Big deal assignment? Generators? Intel? Arms cache?" I ask.

"Baby."

Owen groans, and I see his face scrunch up in disgust. "Oh, mate. Not one of those zombie babies, right? Those things freak me the hell out!"

"No. No, no," Sam says quickly. "Real live baby. Ministry got an anonymous Roufflenet message from a farmhouse west of here saying there was a baby all by itself, left completely alone. Defenseless."

"Yeah, not many babies are great at self defense." He laughs. "Still, imagine if it was Rambo Baby."

I shake my head in only slight annoyance. "You're an idiot."

Six shoots me a look, which I ignore.

"Yeah, but babies don't come out like that, do they?" Sam asks with a sigh. "They need their dad and their mums, all three of them."

I bite the inside of my cheek as Owen and I bother share a look. Owen straightens.

"We'll get that baby, Sammo. Piece of cake. Let's go."

"Raise the gates! Covering fire!"

The gates raise, the alarm sounds, and bullets fly through the air. I breathe in the November air, my muscles teaming as I prepare to run.

"And go!"

We run.

"And look, be careful with it, okay?"

"We know," I say. "We will."

I feel kinda bad for Sam, seeing how he's running himself ragged with stress over the baby-his baby, that is. I think he's worried for a multitude of reasons, one of them being the fact that it's an apocalypse, another being that one of the parents of the baby is going to die soon, and another being the fact that he's not... as prepared. I think that's a good way to put it.

I mean, he's preparing really well, considering how limited baby supplies are now that the world's ended, but he only talked to Maxine about this for a few weeks before deciding to be a donor. Maxine and Paula had been discussing the do's and don't's on children for years. So the poor guy probably feels really unprepared even though he's doing pretty well for the most part.

But then again, I didn't want kids. I mean, I thought I did until the A.M.T.B., but that changed my mind real quick. But I didn't even get to decide whether I wanted kids. The kids decided for me, so I guess I can say I was really unprepared as well.