Page 33 of His to Take

17

Ann spentthe next week in a haze, she didn’t know when the alien would come for her, how long she had to prepare herself for it, mentally. She’d resigned herself to it the moment he announced his plans to marry her, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t worrying about it. Around the family and everyone else, she maintained a calm air, mainly to keep her mom from freaking out. But inside, she wanted to scream.

All of her life, she’d felt like a pawn, a piece in someone else’s game, and now, she felt that even more. She had no control over her life, but she did have hopes that the man wouldn’t be completely terrible to her. The dreams she had about him, oddly, reassured her. He wasn’t always gentle in those dreams, but he wasn’t cruel.

That helped to keep her terror at bay, anyway.

“What do you plan to do today, Ann?” her mother asked as they ate their breakfast by the pool. Some fruit, a couple of pancakes, and some juice were enough to fill her up.

“I don’t know. It’s hard to plan when I have no idea what this alien has in store for me.”

“Well, you can’t just hang around doing nothing. You’ll drive yourself crazy that way.” Mary smiled at her shocked daughter. “It does you no good if I’m distraught all the time, does it? Maybe we should go out into the city, have a look around at some of the places the aliens haven’t raided yet.”

“For what, Mom?” Ann was surprised at this new turn in her mother, and it made her uneasy. She had been the one in control, but now her mother had decided to stop panicking and just enjoy the time she had left with her daughter.

“I don’t know, Ann. For whatever we can find I suppose. I hadn’t really thought about what we could look for, I just thought it might be nice, like those times when you were little, and your dad would be with a client on the weekend.”

“Ah, those trips into places just out of the city. You’d always buy me ice cream or candy.” Ann smiled as memories flooded back. “I loved doing that. We’d always find the strangest places to go into.”

“I loved all of those old places, the pharmacies that had been there for generations that sold the oddest things. The antique shops.”

“Those hats from the 40s!” Ann’s smile grew bigger as she remembered picking up soft velvet and lace hats that hadn’t been worn in generations. “I loved those hats.”

“They were lovely. It’s such a shame we don’t wear those things anymore. Women used to be so… decorative.” Mary realized what she’d said and looked at Ann with an embarrassed laugh. “Well, I guess they were decorations, weren’t they?”

“Do you think that’s what this alien wants with me? Decoration?” It was a worry that she couldn’t shake. She wanted to participate in the rebuilding of the world, have a place in it. Not necessarily to be known throughout history for it, but she did want a place in the next chapter of Earth’s saga.

“I don’t know. I think they want babies, most definitely. Your father says their DNA is almost exactly the same as ours. So, it’s not like you’d be breeding with something with tentacles or anything.” Mary shuddered and stood up. “Let’s get dressed and head out, shall we?”

“Sure, I’ll meet you downstairs in ten minutes.” Ann ran up to her room, put on a pair of jeans, a long black blouse that came down to her hips, and a pair of hiking boots. If she was going to be climbing around old shops, good shoes would be needed.

She tied her hair up in a ponytail and met her mom downstairs a few moments later. “Ready?”

“Yes. Let’s go. Your father’s already left. He has a meeting with the aliens today and they sent a transporter.” They went out to their own transporter and Ann put her hand on the panel that would unlock the vehicle after her palm was scanned. It would work for her parents, or her, nobody else, which was better than any key and lock mechanism, she thought as she climbed in.

She drove in silence, her hand on the lever, as she looked for a place that hadn’t been picked over by the aliens and their crew of wolf servants, or by other humans. She’d been to most of the shops by the courthouse, so she headed out, to the outskirts of the city.

“Oh, these look good,” Mary said as Ann stopped the vehicle and they got out.

“Just think, Mom, it’s all ours for the taking. We can have whatever we want now, nobody will ask a dime for it.”

“Isn’t it odd?” Mary said as they walked in through an empty door, the place covered in dust, fallen timbers, and the smell of mildew. Still, it was a lingerie store and the women went inside. “We used to put so much value on everything. We could have it all, for a price.”

“Now, we can take whatever we want.” Ann spotted some bras wrapped in plastic and went to look them over. She found some in her size and took those, not that she needed them right now, but she might in the future. That’s what she told herself, but she knew she really just liked the look of black lace and sapphire blue ribbons on the things.

“You might want to look for things that you’ll need if you get pregnant, Ann.” Her mom told her, and Ann saw Mary was standing in front of a display for maternity underwear.

“Oh.” She looked at the panties, and nursing bras, bemused. “Do you think?”

“Yes. Just in case. We don’t know what will happen, do we?” But neither of them moved to pick up the garments. Doing that would have made it all too real, and both of them turned away.

Ann didn’t want to think about pregnancy in a time when there were no doctors, no medicine, and nobody to help if she needed it. The aliens might have the technology needed to make it all safe, but she didn’t know if they did. They had all kinds of great stuff, she knew that, but were there doctors?

“Let’s just, no, let’s not worry about that right now.” Ann walked away and went to find a bag to put her new bras in.

Suddenly, it was all more than she could handle, and she sobbed softly. Her mother was there in an instant, her arms around her daughter to block the world out. “I’m so sorry, baby. Maybe we should have stayed in the bunker.”

“No, Mom, it was what we needed to do. And this is what I need to do.” Ann pulled away, wiped at her face, and sniffed the tears away. “I just lost control for a second. I can do this, don’t worry.”