Afterbirth (8 page)

The remains of two failed feeding attempts littered the small examination room. Formula and breast milk spilled on the counter, and the rubber feeding nipples were full of holes. The infant’s relentless crying pierced Reid’s throbbing head and filled his mind with a dozen ways to make it stop, all of which gave up his bargaining chip.

“I know! I hear you!”

Carlene’s naked body sat slumped against the wall where Reid had put her. Dark hair clung to her face and masked her lifeless expression. Black liquid and blood leaked from the jagged hole in her stomach, and her bowels had let go. Decomposition hadn’t fully set in, but it wouldn’t be long.

The smells made it hard for Reid to breathe. He took one of the remaining scalpels from his shirt pocket and opened the sterile envelope. Somehow, what he was about to do was harder and more disturbing than anything he’d done before. Reheating amputated parts had been one thing, harvesting them was entirely another. He assessed Carlene’s shape, noting the round curves of her hips and the thickness of her thighs, and decided on trimming the latter. He set his hand on her cold leg and nicked her skin with the scalpel’s sharp tip. Corpses bled differently, a fact he noted as he forced the scalpel into the muscle and extracted a small filet.

He set the chunk of flesh on the counter and macerated it to a fine pulp so that the boy wouldn’t choke, and when he was finished, he picked the boy up.

“Hang on.”

He cradled the boy in his left arm, bouncing and swaying as he pushed the meat into a pile. He turned the scalpel around and used the blunt end to feed him the first bits.

“Here you go.” He shushed the boy and pressed the blood-soaked mush to his lips. “See what I have for you.” He didn’t know how much more he could stand for the sake of clearing his debt to Nixon.

Blood stained the boy’s lips and he turned his face away, at first. Reid kept pressing and forced a small amount past his teeth. The infant coughed, and when he finally swallowed, became quiet.

“There you go. That’s good, right?”

The boy blinked and smacked his lips together, chewing as if by instinct. Shredded bits of flesh, too big to be from the feeding, stuck out from between his teeth, and Reid knew that they had to have been from his birth. Nixon had insisted on scheduled cesareans. Reid wondered if Nixon knew what happened to Carlene was a possibility.

He scooped up another small portion when the boy began to fuss.

“Hang on,” he said. “It’s coming.”

The boy’s pink tongue lapped at the pulp-covered metal, and he all but devoured the handle. He had a taste for flesh and cried, instantly, for more. Reid continued giving it to him until he was certain he’d had his fill. The boy fell off to sleep and a thought crossed Reid’s mind. When Carlene’s flesh inevitably went bad, what was he going to feed him?

The cold wind across the mountain top pierced the thin cotton of Ben’s blue lab coat. The lantern barely stayed lit and snot ran from his nose. He looked in the direction of Allison’s room and sniffled.

“What did I let you talk me into?”

Sooner or later, quitting the antiviral would catch up with her, and they had sustained her so long that Nixon would never believe something hadn’t been tampered with. Ben wondered if Allison knew what she’d become, if she’d still want to die. She deserved the choice. Having faced cancer, the virus, and almost a year of being Nixon’s lab rat, he owed her a way out. He picked up the hammer from on top of the coup and checked to make sure he was alone.

The guards laughed and joked inside the cabin where the woodstove kept them warm. He accounted for each of them by their voices.

A faint, yellow glow seeped from under the carriage-style doors of the makeshift lab where Nixon worked into the early morning hours, manipulating virus strains grown in the eggs he had harvested.

Allison was right. He would never let any of them go.

Ben pried at one of the nails holding Allison’s window shut, and when the head was far enough out of the wood, he hooked it with the claw and removed it. The old sill groaned as each nail was pulled in turn. Allison, barely visible through the dust and dirt, rolled over in bed. He waited for her to be still before releasing the last one.

“I hope this helps you find peace.”

He put the hammer back in its place and set to feeding the hens as if nothing happened. Despite the bitter cold, the muddy pen hadn’t iced over. He trudged to the grain barrel and scooped the feed with his good hand.

A dozen or so hens clucked from the shelter of the plywood coup. He scattered the food across the ground, hoping to draw them out.

“Come on, get out of there.” Ben ducked inside the cramped hut and waved his arms for them to leave. Only one nest had eggs, a bad sign on all accounts because the eggs that weren’t used for vaccines were their food.

“What’s the count?”

Ben stood up and hit the back of his head on the ceiling.

Nixon stood in the doorway, his white lab coat smeared with yolk, and his knee-high boots caked with mud and chicken shit.

“Two,” Ben answered, reluctantly. “They seem to be under some kind of stress.” It was the best answer he could come up with.

Nixon cocked his head. “You know which one made those two eggs?”

Ben shrugged. “That white one with the black tail, I think. Why?”

Nixon slogged through the mud toward a brownish-red hen pecking at feed. He snatched it up, and in one fluid motion, twisted its neck, killing it instantly. “Because I need to know who around here works well under pressure.” He walked through the gate with the limp hen dangling from his hand and looked over his shoulder. “You coming?”

Ben followed him into the cabin.

“Who’s sick of eggs?” Nixon slapped the dead hen on the butcher block and called Wayne’s attention. “Cook that up, would you?”

Wayne Quimby, the portly cook, nodded and his second and third chins became more pronounced as he did so. He shuffled to the wall of split, dried timber and grunted as he bent over and picked up several pieces from the stack. His round face turned red and he was out of breath by the time he unloaded them into the woodstove. Five guys in the room--Nixon, Ben, and two guards: Joe and Paul--and no one offered help. Wayne poured fresh water into a stock pot, and when he bent over to set down the oversized jug, his underwear peeked from the seam of his stained, checkered pants.

Joe Barnes, an imposing guard with military-short, dark hair and an all-black wardrobe, broke into a fit of laughter. The outburst was an unusual break of character.

Ben shook his head, unsure why Nixon would keep company with someone like Wayne unless the goal was to have someone around in case they had to eat each other.

Nixon checked the time on his watch, a useless habit as far as Ben was concerned, and changed into a clean lab coat. “How is Allison doing since we restarted treatment?”

It was a simple, but unsettling question. Paranoia had Ben wondering if Nixon somehow knew. Guilt had him reading too much into things. “I haven’t been in her room since earlier.”

Nixon hung his dirty lab coat on a peg in the wall and took the syringes from its pocket. One, tinted pink and different from the others, caught Ben’s eye. “It’s time for another treatment, anyway,” he said. “Why don’t you join me?”

Ben jumped when Wayne drew the cleaver down on the hen’s neck and spattered the butcher’s block with blood.

Joe crossed his muscular arms over his chest in a posture that drew his shoulder holster forward.

Ben had never been a fan of guns. Less so, now.

Nixon unlocked Allison’s door and went inside.

A sinking feeling set in as Ben crossed the threshold.

Joe followed him and closed the door behind them.

“Shouldn’t you be out there?” Ben challenged Joe’s unusual attendance.

A malicious grin spread across his face. “Not with fresh footprints in the mud outside of her window.”

Ben couldn’t account for a minute when anyone would’ve seen this, but they had.

Nixon sat down on the stool and jotted something in Allison’s voluminous chart. “Joe being here is a precaution, Ben. If someone’s trying to hurt the experiment, we need to keep tighter security.” He pulled a vial out of the supply cart and handed it to him. “Do the honors, would you?”

Allison, who had watched them with quiet suspicion, locked her gaze on Ben’s. Her desperate stare implored him not to go through with the treatment. He drew up the syringe, unable to refuse Nixon’s order.

He nodded and tried to convey, without speaking, that everything was going to be okay. He pulled on a pair of latex gloves and propped Allison’s arm up on a pillow. He opened an alcohol prep pad, swabbed her bicep, and rolled her arm toward him. Allison turned her head and he could see her disappointment. Ben drove the needle into the pillow as close to her arm as he could. The liquid seeped into the white cotton pillowcase and left a dark ring. Allison, realizing he had kept his word, sucked in a hissing breath and played along as if she were in pain as he depressed the plunger.

“I’m sorry,” he said and lowered her sleeve. “Let’s get you comfortable.” He fluffed the pillow and eased Allison forward to put it underneath her.

“Wait.” Nixon looked up from his note-taking. “Hand me those. I need her to lie flat so I can check her stomach. Ben hesitated. He took the pillows from under Allison’s head, and before he could lean them against the wall, Nixon had grabbed them. “I said give them here.”

Joe blocked the exit.

“What’s going on?” Allison asked.

Nixon looked at the silver dollar-sized wet spot on the pillow case, sniffed it, and lifted her sleeve. “Allison, can you please pinpoint for me where Ben gave you the injection? I’m having a hard time finding the hole.”

Allison ran her finger down to one of the older ones. “About here,” she said.

“That one’s healed over. Ben, something you want to tell me?”

Ben’s heart pounded and sweat poured down his sides. His mouth hung open. “I…”

Nixon shook his head. “That’s what I thought.”

Joe lunged and Ben darted left, narrowly avoiding being caught.

“Get away from me,” Ben shouted. He scanned the room, desperate for a way out.

Allison’s eyes went wide and she screamed for them to listen to her. “It’s my fault,” she said, tears streaming down her face. “Please, I asked him to stop.”

“Allison, don’t. I shouldn’t have listened.” Her taking the blame only ensured both of them meeting terrible fates.

“No, you should have,” she insisted.

Ben tried to shove Joe out of the way, but it was too late. Nixon grabbed Ben’s arm and a needle pierced Ben’s flesh. The liquid burned as it seeped into his muscle.

Ben screamed and pulled himself free, but it was too late.

Allison struggled to her hands and knees. “Ben, I’m sorry.”

Nixon threw her down onto the bed, and though she struggled, she was weak and forced to receive another of the terrible treatments.

“No!” She screamed and laced her fingers through her black hair.

Ben stumbled and nearly fell. Deep, throaty laughter and the sounds of Allison crying blended into a unified distraction. He steadied himself, fighting his disorganized thoughts and the feeling of his feet sinking in wet cement. He shoved Nixon aside and veered to the right of Joe, drunk on whatever Nixon injected into him. He dashed through the living room and miraculously made it out the front door, which was as far as he could possibly go. His chest burned as if he’d run a marathon. He bent over, hands on knees, and coughed. Droplets of blood peppered his pale palm, and his screams echoed down the mountainside. He collapsed to his knees on the leaf-covered dirt and gave himself over to bone-crushing shivers that gripped him like a full-body vice.

“God help me,” he whispered.

A pair of hands firmly gripped his biceps and his wrists were forced together behind his back. Joe’s evil cackle sent the hens into a frenzy. “Looks like more than a chicken’s being sacrificed tonight.”

The tree line rushed by in blurs of red, brown, yellow, and green. The setting sun painted the sky pink and the impending darkness had Miranda worried. Her back ached and her ankles were swollen to the point that her cowgirl boots cut off the circulation to her toes. With limited cab space inside the old truck and her enormous belly occupying most of her lap, they were impossible to take off.

Scott hadn’t said more than a few words since leaving their house, and ten years of experience with him said his expression meant he was hiding something. A fresh blood stain soaked through the cuff of his right sleeve.

“What aren’t you telling me?” she finally asked.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean whose blood is that?”

“It’s some straggler’s who got in because the front door was open.”

A sharp pinch shot down her groin and she let out an unintentional whimper. The day’s stress had increased the severity of her contractions and she was afraid they were more than Braxton-Hicks.

Scott glanced over. “Everything all right?”

“Just watch the road.” She breathed through the cramp and repositioned herself in the uncomfortable seat.

“You’d tell me if something was wrong, wouldn’t you?”

“And you’d tell me if you knew who broke into the house.” She could feel her blood pressure rising. “It was Nixon, wasn’t it?”

“No,” Scott said and left it at that.

“God, could you be any more vague?” She grunted when another crampy contraction hit. “Was it someone from the center?” Not knowing made it worse.

“It was Michael, okay?”

“Michael? Why would he break into our house?”

Scott shook his head. “I was trying to figure that out before I told you.”

Another jolt of pain came and a sudden dampness between her legs made her heart race. “Pull over.”

“What?”

“Pull over.”

“Why?”

“Just do it!”

Scott pulled to the side of the desolate road lined with a dense forest of pines. He rushed to open her door and looked her over as he helped her out.

“What’s the matter?”

“Bathroom emergency. I have to go.” She eased out of the passenger’s seat, terrified that her water was on the verge of breaking, and shielded his view of her seat in case it already had.

“Come on.” He tried to help her to where she could have some privacy and she pushed him away, keeping him from seeing her rear.

“I don’t need you to come with me.” Her legs shook, the boots rubbing her blistered feet.

“It’s almost dark, Miranda. I’m not letting you go alone.”

“Please, it’s hard enough squatting out here. I don’t need an audience.”

“Then at least let me stay where I can hear you in case.”

She was reminded of the infected pharmacist. “They don’t want me, remember?” Irritation kept her from curbing the bite in her tone. She walked away, pretending not to be terrified, or in pain.

The cold ground was stiff beneath her feet and she was careful not to twist her ankle in any of the lumpy holes left behind by moles or snakes as she moved out of Scott’s sight line. She reached under her maternity dress and a pinkish, blood-tinged slime coated her fingers. Her water hadn’t broken, but the early signs of labor were there. Her mucous plug had or was dislodging.

Shit.

“Miranda, you okay?”

She was, she just didn’t know for how long.