Alice just shrugged. “We’re going to get you through this. No one is going to let anything happen to you or to the baby.”  Catherine climbed out of one of the other jeeps, from behind the driver’s side, and nodded to a woman from her former crew, one of the other doctors, who sat with Helena and talked soothingly to her while Catherine walked ahead to talk to Bette.

“Hey, Bette, I’m wondering if you have some kind of plan for Helena here?” Catherine’s face was incredulous.

Bette grinned, knowing that Catherine had every reason to be annoyed with her—but they had found the place where Helena would give birth. Bette had led them astray on a hunch and on memory. Bette gestured toward the house and then toward Kit.

“Catherine, this is my cousin, Kit.” The women smiled at one another tersely. Bette was the only one of the group who seemed happy or hopeful in any way. She just had a feeling that things were working out for the best.

Kit shook her head at her little cousin. “How did you find me, Bette? This is a crazy motherfucking coincidence.”

Bette just shrugged, totally giddy. “I remembered that you lived somewhere around here. We were just on route to go further south, but I changed our course, hoping that this thing you call a house would still be here. I’m even happier to see that you’re here with it. We’ve been traveling for probably 24 hours straight.”  Bette looked past Kit, scanning the fields and woods around the thick walled ‘earth hut’ which was dug into a hill and reinforced with walls that were at least a meter thick. The walls were made of compacted tires and mud. They could easily build a network of them, and stay here for awhile. Sure enough, Kit had also built a huge barbed wire fence, always thinking ahead for times like these. Bette remembered her cousin as a slightly crazy survivalist, always talking about government conspiracies to use bio-weapons against their own people.  The wire fencing had certainly kept the infected at bay, and the house was so reinforced that nothing could break in if it did get that far. The grounds were not big enough for all of them over a sustained period, but they could stay here for at least a week or two.