She heard water. On the edge of her consciousness, she was there again. The Day her world spun out of control. Her anchors never left, they were always there, keeping her from losing her grip.

“Daddy, did you see that?” Her daughter’s voice broke through the sound of wind rustling leaves. His distracted voice pulled her attention further into the blurry edges. He sounded so far away but she knew instinctively where he was. She always did.

“Yeah, honey that was awesome. Let’s go, buddy, that’s enough eating mud for one day.” He swung her son up into his arms and began walking back towards her. Her rational mind knew this couldn’t be real but her senses kept flooding with information. The feeling of the plaid picnic blanket under her elbows. The smell of the cheap paperback she was reading. The breeze drifting the sounds of an afternoon in Scranton to her ears.

No no no no no

She knew what was coming next and she willed it not to happen, slamming her eyes shut. It didn’t stop the sounds of metal bending, twisting and crashing, screams and shattering glass surrounding her. The sounds of everything she knew coming to a horrifying end. She dared to look just as the giant passenger jet fell from the sky.

Pam woke up gasping, eyelids flying open, the blurry shades of her nightmare, and the feeling of panicked falling beginning to subside. She laid frozen as she became more aware of her surroundings, piece by piece, element by element. The ticking clock. The white cotton curtain gently flapping in the morning sunlight spilling through the open window. The soft, cool feel of her sheets. Her heart was slowing and she took a deep, ragged breath. There was a stillness now, absent was the electric hum of Before and she closed her eyes, knowing now when and where she was. She reached blindly for the warmth of her husband’s body, needing his gravity to balance her universe, but found only a cold, empty indentation, long since abandoned. He had probably been up before the sun carrying an unreasonable amount of burden on his capable shoulders and that familiar knot of worry pulled in her stomach. She worried about a lot of things these days but she always felt his trouble deep in her bones being so inextricably bound to him. It was quiet, still, moments like this that she longed for the simpler time, so distant and far it almost seemed like the whisper of a dream. A dream when her worries consisted of what to make for dinner and his latest prank not if they will have enough food for winter and if the next supply run will leave her a widow.

Completely unrested, she pulled herself out of bed with a sigh and moved quietly across the room, feeling the smoothness of the hardwood under her bare feet. She reached the old antique dresser and quickly pulled on her jeans and a fresh tank top over her head. She sighed again as she noticed another hole in the tattered edge of her shirt. She would have to be more careful washing this one if it was going to last much longer. She turned to the oval, simply framed mirror to check her reflection, her gaze falling on her slimness borne of the hard work of living here, living now. Her hair reached well past her shoulder blades now and she pulled at a loose curl, considering for a moment that he always liked it down before deciding to pull it into a ponytail to relieve the humid heat already pricking at the back of her neck. Warm weather was short-lived anymore but when it came, it came with a vengeance. 

When she opened the old farmhouse door, sounds and smells drifted down the hall from the kitchen downstairs. She heard before she saw her children eating breakfast at the large round wooden table in the center of the room, loudly discussing a mountain lion sighting that had all the neighboring farms buzzing.

“That’s ridiculous. My dad told me once that there hasn’t been a mountain lion seen around here in a hundred years!” Phillip Schrute exclaimed as he shoved an entire pancake in his mouth, honey dripping off his chin.

“Well, my dad says they are getting braver and coming after the livestock,” Cece Halpert countered with a disgusted look in his direction. She grabbed the jar of milk mid-pour from her little brother’s unsteady hands, filling his glass without skipping a beat, “And, he says that old Roger Boon is not as crazy as everyone thinks he is.”

“Oh my God, your dad is-“

“Phillip Schrute, what did I say about that?” Angela scolded without even turning around from her task at the sink. Her blonde hair almost to her waist now but as always the single braid down her back was impeccably plaited. “Oh, how nice of you to join us, Pam. I was about to send room service to your room for you.” She turned to place a dish on the shelf, her familiar, dry tone greeting Pam. She ignored her, walking towards the table, reaching for a biscuit and her children.

“What’s room service?” Phillip leaned over in Cece's direction with a questioning whisper.

“Mom!” Phil Halpert turned in his chair, reaching for her.

“Good morning,” softly taking him into a hug at her waist, leaning over to kiss his hair and placing her other hand on Cece’s back.

She walked out into the dusty yard, the morning sun already bringing its suppressing heat down on everything it touched, her mission clear. She needed to ground herself with his presence after her nightmare. She spotted him in the doorway of the barn, rhythmically working back and forth over what looked to be a large tangle of rusted metal. Wordlessly, she moved in behind him, wrapping her arms around his waist, burying her face into his back and inhaling the scent of him that was like home to her.

“Mmm,” he hummed and sighed and she felt the vibration through his chest. She continued to hold him until he stopped his motion and wrapped one arm over hers, straightening slightly. He was but a ghost of the mild-mannered paper salesman she had fell in love with all those years ago. Still tall of course, but no longer lanky, the difficulties of their life now having made him more muscular and harder. His hair was not as long but he wore a short beard now claiming it was just easier that way but she preferred it and he knew that, so it stayed. Scars and quiet determination defined his countenance now. There were still times when the joking, lighthearted part of him would seep to the surface, usually in private moments shared between them, but now the responsibilities he carried so deeply covered any part of who he used to be.

Quietly she whispered into his back, “What time did you get up this morning?”

“Early,” came his reply as he set down his tool and turned in her arms to face her. “I wanted to let you sleep.” He gently kissed her forehead sealing the gesture with his own in the same place, letting his hands and eyes drift down to the small swell of her stomach, his thoughts as clear to her as if he had spoken them aloud.

She closed her eyes, feeling his worry roll off of him, “I’m fine, Jim, I promise,” leaning back placing her hands on either side of his face, her thumbs stroking his beard, willing him to hear her words. “We are both fine.” His eyes told her she had not succeeded and she sighed.

It had only been a couple of weeks since they determined she was pregnant, and she knew he was still reeling. He had always told her he wanted more kids with her, as many as she would give him, but having a baby now carried a whole new meaning. Another mouth to feed and protect was just the beginning. With no more hospitals, childbirth had reverted back two hundred years in its complication and danger. There was a doctor in their little community but there was no guarantee Jim could get her to him if something happened. There was no guarantee of anything in After. 

They had finally found a pregnancy test that worked on their most recent run but she knew. Of course, she knew. They both had always known it was a possibility. Birth control was non-existent now; pills lost their potency and latex weakened over time. Not that they had ever bothered. Even from their very first tremulous time together, he was her last and forever was the only word that described their intimacy. She had heard of some women in the trading centers like Tent City that were perpetually pregnant and by different men. There was something frighteningly hopeless about that existence, but she had Jim and he made sure that wasn't something she had to worry about. Many women were not so lucky and that thought sometimes pressed heavy on her chest. She was able to guess that she was about twelve weeks based on when Jim had been home from supply runs and her size so far. 

“I have to go find Pete,” he sighed as he moved away reluctantly and reached for his ever-present weapon holster to pull it on. “Erin is out of vitamins and there are some other things Larissa needs. We were going to try that pharmacy in Jamestown. It wasn’t too bad last time we passed through.”

She furrowed her brow and crossed her arms, missing his warmth instantly. “You just went last week. Can’t Brian go?”

“Brian’s working in the west field with Jeff. He’s more valuable there today. We need that wheat crop to get harvested if we want to have grain this winter.”

She knew he was right but that didn’t help the knots in her stomach every time he left. Leaving the sanctuary of the farm was always a risk. They had one of the only few remaining cars that worked in the entire area. An old farm truck that had been Dwight’s father’s, an old fashioned choke and valuable. That alone made them a target but also gave them an advantage. They could move from place to place faster than most now that had to travel on foot or rely on horses. The roads were full of gangs and desperate individuals, groups that roamed and took what they wanted. Without civilization, people reverted back to violence and savagery. The social order was simple in After: the strong had survived and the weak had not or became the possession of someone who was. The more scarce resources became, the more desperate people became. Sadly, it seemed women and children had suffered the most and been ruthlessly treated with the constraints of laws and morality eroded completely away. Jim’s friend Brian had once compared it to Wolves and Sheep and she felt the description was befitting.

“What does that make you two?” She had asked him over the flames of the campfire that night.

“The Sheepdog,” Jim quietly responded for him from next to her, his eyes on the fire.

Food was beginning to run out everywhere. It was getting colder and winters longer every year. They attributed it to whatever weapon was used to cause all this was slowly killing the planet. Farmers had become concerned that the growing season would begin to be too short. They had been immeasurably lucky that Dwight had a place to retreat to outside the city. He had offered for them to stay when everything started to fall apart and they had shown up on his and Angela’s doorstep, months on the road and near death. Those able to grow food every year were able to make it but those in the cities were beginning to starve and had begun to move West. 

The cities, if they still existed, had become too dangerous, overrun by gangs, or burned out from rioting. As far as they all knew, the large cities or population centers and all the people in them were gone. Communication only came from travelers that passed through and it was unreliable. She didn’t know if her mom and sister were alive. Jim had never reached his parents and brothers, knowing they were all at his brother’s house in Boston when It happened. But Boston was gone. Most of the Northeast was gone.

Jim’s sister, Larissa, was the only family they had left.

Of all the men in their group, she preferred Brian and Pete with Jim. Pete had turned out to be a talented fighter and marksman and Brian was former military, college buddy, and a loyal friend of Jim’s. Brian was almost always at Jim’s side and the two of them worked together seamlessly. 

“Hurry back,” her lips lingered softly over his. She yearned to tell him more, that if he left her alone she would cease to breathe, that her soul was bound to his forever, but the words wouldn’t come. With a quick kiss to her temple, he was gone.

_____________________

Jim found Pete easily. Usually, wherever Erin was, Pete wasn’t far. Pete also had a lot to fight for; Erin was six months pregnant. This morning she was hanging damp laundry on the corded laundry lines stretched between the corner of the main house and an outbuilding and he was helping her. There was always laundry flapping on those lines it seemed and was one of the best places to begin a search for an adult female in their group. Jim had heard Pam complain about it on many occasions. There’s always more laundry, she would groan. The washing of the laundry was done the old fashioned way now with a washboard and it was difficult. It was one of the many things he wished his pregnant wife didn't have to do.

Despite modern idealism, the division of labor had happened organically at the farm. Everyone pitched in where they could and some tasks naturally fell to certain people. Angela was surprisingly good with the kids and had taken on their schooling and care. Erin and Pam were the best cooks in the group and made sure the garden, canning, and food supplies were maintained. Meredith and her son worked mostly in the barn with the livestock. Descended from generations of farmers, Jeff with the help of old Henry, easily made sure the group had enough crops for the humans and animals. That left Jim, Brian and Pete in charge of security and scavenging. After Dwight was gone, they had stepped up to take on more of the farm work but during certain times of the year, when the food had to be harvested and stored, every single person on the farm helped, even the children.

They headed to the weapons storage room below the main house to load up with a few more guns. Years ago Dwight had built a room under the house with cement walls and a secure, locked door. They had an enviable supply of weapons, many of them military-grade, thanks mostly to Dwight’s preparedness from his tenacious insistence that the world was ending at any time. As Jim opened the heavy door, he smiled at the memory of his old friend. He often silently thanked him for his foresight that had helped keep his own family alive. He wished he could have told him so. 

It took them less than two hours to get to Jamestown. The trip was almost entirely two-lane road that had been mostly cleared of abandoned cars, which made for fast travel even though the beat-up old truck only topped out at about 50 mph. The few small towns they passed through were mostly uninhabited and picked over. If people did live there, they hid. Scavengers and road gangs were ruthless. Nature had begun to take over many structures, vines, and trees overgrown, debris, and trash littering once-pristine streets. Once the food ran out, people moved on or died off. Jamestown was a good distance from the interstate, wasn’t on the way to anywhere, and was one of the first to empty. They had scouted there once before. They had systematically checked and marked every small town on the map in a hundred mile radius, with only some worth returning to. Circles or x's.

This one had a pharmacy with a sign in the window with black sharpie written letters, ‘Take What You Need. God Bless’. This one had a circle.

Jim looked over his arm resting on the steering wheel in Pete’s direction. He wasn’t a talkative man really but he could tell something was on his mind. Circumstances of surviving and keeping the group alive had made them friends but beyond their shared lives, they had never had much in common.

“What’s up man, you haven’t said two words since we left the farm?”

“Eh, I don’t know, it’s nothing really.” He ran his hand down his face and stared back out the truck window.

Jim hadn’t planned on pressing the issue further but after a mile of broken asphalt Pete blurted out, “I want to marry Erin before the baby comes.”

“Well, what’s the problem then?”

“I don’t know. I don’t have a ring for one. Who would do it? I mean it’s not exactly what I envisioned when we were dating Before, you know. I had bigger plans, I guess.”

“Then the world had to end,” Jim said dryly.

“Yeah, then the world had to end.” Pete looked back out the window pensively.

“Good things are rare anymore. The most important thing is that you two have each other and are committed. The rest is just details. Besides, I bet we can find a ring of some sort for her if we look hard enough…if that sort of thing matters to her.” He glanced back at Pete.

Jim had never really understood Erin. She was nice but a little flighty and shrill. He appreciated that Pete loved her though and he certainly appreciated wanting to make the woman that you love happy.

“Oh, I think it does. She says it doesn’t but she’s just saying that to make me feel better. Do you mind if I ask you something?”

“Of course not.”

“Are you nervous about Pam having a baby? I mean now?”

“It’s terrifying. Honestly, it’s always been terrifying but Pam thinks it will be fine so,” he shrugged weakly, “there’s not much I can do. I just have to make it as easy for her as I can.”

“Yeah.” He was quiet for a minute, “I just feel so helpless. Like, I want to fix all this but there’s not a damn thing I can do.”

“Nope, there isn’t.” Jim rubbed his face, understanding the younger man’s meaning far too well. There were only so many things he had control of in After; keeping Pam and the kids safe and alive was the priority. Anything else he could manage was a bonus. 

Jim pulled the old truck slowly in front of the old pharmacy, the sign still in place in the window. As he killed the engine, he looked around at every vantage point and building he could see, pulled out the clip systematically on each of his guns to check them, pulling back to load a bullet into the chamber and flipping off the safety. He looked over at Pete who was doing the same.

“Let’s do this and get home.”

They cautiously stepped out not letting the truck doors slam, scanning the abandoned street as they walked. People that were left were often dangerous or desperate because desperate people made dangerous people, especially to strange men with guns. They made their way through what was left of the front door and into the store. Most of the shelves had been picked over and were almost empty, a dingy snapshot of an erased time. Leaves, dirt, and debris intermingled with dirty birthday cards and Christmas gift wrap. Pete made his way to the vitamin section and spotted what was left of the prenatal bottles on the bottom shelf, quickly swiping the last two as he made his way to the first aid aisle. There were no supplies left. There never were but he always checked out of habit. Jim hopped over the prescription counter, looking over the shelves with his torn piece of paper with scribbled names of several medicines on it. He found the first item quickly and stuffed it into his satchel before moving to the next row. The tip of his finger skimmed each bottle, searching the labels of long words for a match. Pete turned and began looking through the scattered items all over the floor of the store for anything of value. The sound of voices outside made him freeze and in the blink of an eye pull his gun. Out of his peripheral vision, he could see Pete had heard the same thing and had a gun trained at the front of the store. They caught each other’s eye and slowly navigated over the discarded items strewn all over the center aisle, moving toward the voices.

“Well, shit man look at this,” came disembodied through the fractured metal and glass. 

“Somebody’s here. They didn’t just leave this here, hood’s warm.”

The men rounded the corner and came face to face with Pete and Jim’s drawn weapons.

“Whoah, hey, we aren't looking for trouble,” both men put their hands up in unison, slow but tense. "We just saw the truck. You don’t see many of those anymore.”

Jim noticed that the talkative one was carrying a gun shoved in the front of his stained and torn pants. He was almost as tall as Jim, his dirty blond hair long and pulled together at the base of his neck. The second, skinner man, looked rougher with a greasy beard and ripped biker jacket. Not the kind of guys Jim would necessarily want to meet in a dark alley but then everyone sort of looked like that anymore. He slowly lowered his gun but didn’t change his grip and Pete followed his lead.

“It’s ours,” he said firmly.

“Ah, that’s a nice one. You best hold on to that.” His smile didn’t reach his eyes and Jim kept his face blank in response. “My name is Daniel Mackenzie. Most people just call me Mac. This here is Johnny or asshole as I like to call him.” The greasy man chuckled.

He looked expectantly at Jim.

“Jim.”

“Pete,” Pete responded in kind.

Mac focused in on Jim, “You have a last name, Jim?”

Jim eyed him suspiciously at the strange question, “Halpert.” 

“Halpert,” the blond man repeated as if committing it to memory. “Nice to meet you. Any good stuff in here?” He slowly walked past where they stood in the entryway, only breaking eye contact as he grabbed a tattered roll of paper towels off the shelf.

“It doesn’t look like much is left.” The cordial tone he carried belied the palatable tension in the room.

“Do you guys live around here?”

When neither man offered up a response he continued, “We came down from Jersey. Philly was burned out so we just kept on going west. Picked up people along the way. We have a group camped about a mile from here. Do you have a group?”

It was too many questions. No one still alive asked that many questions unless they wanted to do something. 

Jim stared hard before answering, “No. Just us.” He had learned long ago that in this new world, less information was better and a lie wasn't really a lie if the truth got you killed.

Mac studied him. “Well, you must have lost her then, in the aftermath?” He motioned at Jim’s left hand where his silver wedding band stood out against the deep black of the pistol he still gripped. Jim internally cursed his oversight and willed his face to convey no emotion. It was a card-less game of poker the two were playing and this man was calling his bluff.

“Huh.” A hint of a smile crossing his expression before clapping his hands together with a sudden flourish, “Let’s see what we can find in here Johnny boy!” The men began shuffling through the jars on the shelves haphazardly, moving further into the darkened depths of the store. 

Jim and Pete exchanged looks and edged toward the door slowly.

If they could just get out of here soon without any more talking, they would try and they nearly had before Mac noticed their retreat.

 “Hey Pete!” he shouted from the prescription counter. “You seem like a man who knows things. Do you know of any places around here we could stay at? Any empty places? We really would like to stop traveling but we just haven’t found the right place yet.”

“Uh, no… No.” Pete stammered slightly. Mac knowingly stared at the younger man, making him uncomfortable under his scrutiny. “If it’s just you two, why are you in a hurry? I heard there were some nice farms out here. Amish or some shit. They had it figured out, huh? Any of these places you know of? Food and a place to sleep is all we really need.”

“A piece of ass and some booze would be nice too,” Johnny added with a smirk. Mac shot him a look that didn't escape Jim's notice.

“We’re going now. Good luck with that.” Jim backed to the door pushing the broken frame open with his foot, letting Pete slip through the opening first, covering him.

Jim glanced back and noticed that all the pretense of pleasantness had left the man's face, “See you two some other time then.” 

They would take a different route home. Just in case.