Special Delivery
Copyright© 2010 by lordshipmayhem
Chapter 1
Lucinda Everest looked at her CAP card for the umpteenth time. Six point one. Her eyes welled up with tears.
Her eldest daughter Lacey came out from her bedroom. Lucinda glanced up at the clock: Ten PM. "What's wrong, Lacey?" she asked, hoping that it was something Mommy-curable.
"I heard you crying," Lacey replied, as her mother reddened. "Is something wrong?"
Is something wrong? How do you tell your ten-year-old, precocious though she might be, that Mommy is worried her three daughters' fate is to become Sa'arm chow?
"It's nothing," she lied, getting up and giving her daughter a hug. "I was just sorting out which bunnies to take to the rabbit show. Go back to sleep."
The Sa'arm were still expected to invade Earth in about another six years. Somehow, despite her having a CAP score of less than 6.5, she had to figure out some way of getting her and her brood off planet. For the umpteenth time she cursed the drunk driver who had demolished her husband's car so many years ago, leaving her alone to raise Lacey, Corrie, now eight, and six-year-old Kate.
She thought again of that day a little over a year ago when her friend James Rabb had taken some of her bunnies and left for the stars. She wondered if a hutch of rabbits was a suitable legacy to leave to future generations of humans, or just a patently ridiculous one.
Maybe she could get into some sort of pre-pack, she wondered? Tucking her eldest offspring in, she headed for her own bed and a restless night of worry.
Tri-County General Hospital was modern, efficient, clean and still well-staffed, despite this area of Georgia losing many high-CAP people to the Confederacy. Medical staff tended to be less aggressive, which led to lower CAP scores, which led to fewer chances to be picked up.
The uniforms were largely unchanged from before the days of the Average Joes TV series, despite society's adaptations to the new reality. The only exceptions were that hemlines had gone up and bras were now considered optional, and Doctor Victor Walden didn't want to make bet on how many of the comely female doctors and nurses around him weren't wearing panties either. He knew for a fact that in Emergency and other areas where scrubs were the order of the day that many ladies didn't bother wearing a thing under them, and they had frequently opined that it beat out having to throw out underwear soaked with patients' fluids. The males continued to dress largely as they had before.
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