“I might have,” I said weakly, afraid to look her in the eye.
“You might have?!”
“I’m not sure. I’m still looking into it.”
“Oh, please, Kate!” she said, grabbing my hand. “I’m begging you! If you know something, tell me. Everybody thinks I’m crazy. I think I’m crazy. I have to know if what I saw was real.”
I looked her in the eye, feeling the full weight of my obligation bearing down on me. The poor girl was coming apart at the seams.
“It’s real,” I whispered through my teeth.
A look of ecstatic relief washed over Courtney’s face. She took a long, deep breath, like she was going to cry. I gripped her tightly by the hand, squeezing her fingers.
“Courtney — you can’t tell anyone I told you,” I whispered. “No one can know. Not yet. Do you understand? Stop talking about it. When I know more, I’ll let you know. But you have to promise me you won’t say anything. Not to anybody.”
Courtney looked at me, utterly bewildered. For a moment she just stared at me, then slowly an expression that I couldn’t identify dawned on her face. Her brows rose up sharply, and her mouth opened as if to speak, then abruptly she clamped it shut. It was as if she’d unraveled some tremendous secret.
“Don’t worry,” she whispered, clutching my hand in both of hers so hard it hurt. “I won’t tell anyone. I promise. But tell me more as soon as you know.”
I nodded.
“Courtney?!” came Gabby’s voice, rising shrilly above the din.
“I have to go,” said Courtney in a hushed voice. “But don’t worry, Kate. Your secret’s safe with me.” She gave me a hug, got up, snatched her coffeepot, and whooshed away.
“Is she still bugging you about that stupid Fish-Man?” said Chet, dropping casually back into his seat.
“It’s not impossible, you know,” I snapped, suddenly testy.
Chet looked taken aback. I immediately felt guilty.
“I’m just saying,” I said in a softer tone. “Theoretically, it’s possible. That doesn’t mean it’s real, of course, just that you shouldn’t call her crazy just because she saw something we can’t explain.”
“Yeah, sure. Whatever,” he said, looking offended. “You’re the scientist.”
I reached over and grabbed his hand.
“Chet...”
He looked at me, sullen.
“Sorry. I’m just ... hormonal,” I said, waving it off. “Just ignore me.”
Chet’s face lit up, and he smiled with relief. “Oh, right. Of course,” he said, as if that explained everything. “Is that why you need to go to the city?”
PMS. The ultimate Get Out of Jail Free card.
“Yeah. One reason,” I lied.
The rest of breakfast passed uneventfully and soon we were talking and laughing again as if nothing had happened. We’d never been able to stay mad at each other.
After paying the bill, we climbed back into the van and headed out to Tallahassee, only half an hour away. I picked up a new phone in the Best Buy off Apalachee Parkway and then we crossed over Magnolia Drive to visit the Walgreens.
“You want me to come in?” said Chet, looking somewhat nervous.
“To watch me buy tampons?”
Chet shuddered. “Maybe I’ll just stay in the van,” he said.
This is my chance, I thought as I walked across the parking lot. I could just go home, go back to my apartment. It’s a ten-minute drive. Henry won’t be there. He’s off somewhere in the Pacific. He has his own apartment now, in any case. If I had half the sense my dad thought I had, I would. I’d stay away from the cabin and the lagoon for a good long time. Going back is dangerous and foolish.
But the fact was ... I wanted to go back. I wasn’t really afraid of Jacques anymore. He’d had plenty of opportunities to hurt me if he’d wanted to and he hadn’t. He’d been incredibly gentle, all things considered. And he’d saved my life. Twice. More, he seemed as curious about my world as I was about his. He was even trying to communicate with me. Would it be fair to him to abandon him now? Objectively, the evidence was all pointing in the same direction: Jacques wanted me around, and he wanted me safe.
And I wanted Jacques around. Not only because he was amazing from a scientific and evolutionary perspective, but because, dammit, I was really starting to like him! I wanted Jacques to be safe, too, and I couldn’t do that if I wasn’t there to protect him.
I pushed through the door into the air-conditioned interior of Walgreens. Golden oldies were playing on the overhead speakers. I wandered down the aisles, letting my eyes drift over the rows of boxes and bottles and hard plastic packages.
I hadn’t really needed anything in the Walgreens. What I’d needed was time to think. Time to come to my decision. But now that I had, and I was in the store, I couldn’t very well leave empty-handed. I made my way over to the feminine hygiene products and grabbed a box of my usual tampons and then hesitated. One shelf over were the pregnancy test kits.
Why had Chet said I was ‘glowing’?
It couldn’t be possible. It was scientifically preposterous.
And yet ...
... the Fish-Man had been scientifically preposterous only a few days ago. I had to be sure.
I took a kit. Then grabbed a couple more. I wasn’t going to rely on the result of a single test.
“Pregnancy scare, eh?” said a man behind me.
I spun around with a start, dropping one of the kits. A scruffy, unkempt man in his thirties in a pit-stained t-shirt and a greasy red ball cap was staring down at me. His shirt had the Confederate flag printed on it.
“Can’t be too careful,” he continued, flashing his yellow teeth in a leer. “I’m an obstratricion. You want me to take a look-see down there and see if I sees anything?” He reached down to pat my belly.
I grabbed his thumb and twisted it with a snarl, catching him off-guard, and then slammed my knee into his groin. The man doubled over, moaning. A clerk came around the corner into the aisle.
“A-any problems?” stuttered the clerk, looking pale and anxious. He couldn’t have been more than eighteen.
“No problems at all? Right, Dick?” I said glaring at the man hunched over holding his balls.
“N-no problems,” he said, smiling at the clerk. “Just ... ah ... abdominal pains,” he gasped.
“Maybe you can help Dick find some laxatives. He appears to be full of shit,” I said, smiling brightly.
I walked over to the next aisle, still furious, and picked up a few other things to help make the trip appear justified. I stomped up to the cash register and dumped everything on the counter, making a mess. The cashier smiled snarkily when she saw all the pregnancy kits.
“Did you find everything you were looking for?” she said, tapping keys with the points of her fingernails.
“More than I wanted,” I said irritably.
I took out my credit card and tapped it impatiently on the countertop.
The cashier rang me through and started bagging everything. I took the kits out of her hands and stuffed them into the bottom of my purse with a brittle smile.
She handed me the bag and I pushed through the door, back into the sweltering heat of the parking lot. I peeled the cellophane from a pack of gum and stuck one in my mouth.
“Gum?” I said, climbing back into the van. I held the open package out to Chet.
“My breath stink or something?” said Chet.
“You want one or not?” I said, slamming the door behind me.
“Yeah.” Chet took one, furrowing his brow. “You okay?”
“Of course. Perfectly fine,” I said, grimacing.
Chet regarded me skeptically.
“You sure you don’t want to come back to our place?” he said, pulling out of the parking lot. “I’m not sure being stuck out at the cabin by yourself is the best thing for you right now.”
“Not tonight,” I said, looking out the window.
“Why? You got a big date
or something?”
“No!” I exploded.
Chet flinched.
“Sorry. It’s not you. Some jerk in Walgreens tried to grope me.”
“Grope you?!” Chet said, suddenly furious. “Where is he?” He grabbed the door handle and thrust it open.
“No, don’t,” I said, grabbing him and pulling him back in. “It’s fine. I kneed him in the nuts. Let’s just go.” I resumed looking out the window.
Chet hesitated, then reluctantly shut the door.
“Fine, suit yourself, professor. But one of these days, before you head back to the big shiny world of academia, you and me are going fishing, no ifs, ands or buts.”
Chet turned on the radio and we drove out of Tallahassee to the sound of the Beach Boys singing All I Want To Do.
Chapter Twenty-Six
“It’s not possible.”
I stared at the little screen on the stick. There was a single word displayed in black text on a gray background.
Pregnant.
“This can’t be happening,” I muttered, digging my fingers in my hair. “It has to be some kind of mistake.”
Three times in a row?
I looked at the two discarded pregnancy sticks sitting in the bin. I hadn’t believed it the first time. I hadn’t believed it the second time.
I didn’t want to believe it this time.
“You’re glowing.”
Chet had seen it. Had Courtney seen it, too? More importantly, had Courtney suspected who the father was?
“Your secret’s safe with me.”
I sat there, dumbstruck. The way she’d clutched my hand. The earnestness in her voice. What else could she have meant? She probably didn’t know enough about biology to know whether or not it was possible.
But it wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be.
I’d been off the Pill since Henry and I had split up. Negligence. Indifference. Resignation to a sexless existence. I didn’t know why I’d done it. It just hadn’t seemed important anymore. I’d taken them religiously when we were together, because he hadn’t wanted kids. It had been my duty. But when I found out he was sleeping with that bobble-headed skank ... taking the Pill had become odious to me. A reminder of how easily I’d surrendered to his demands and sacrificed my own deepest desires.
And I should have had my period by now. It was late. I’d known that it was, but I hadn’t acknowledged it. I’d dismissed it as a coincidence because I knew it was impossible for a creature like Jacques to impregnate me. We were different species. It was unthinkable. Like breeding a mouse and a canary.
And yet here you are.
The test still said: Pregnant.
One might have been a defective stick. Two might have been a incredible fluke. But the odds that three different kits all gave me the same result ... the odds were astronomically small. Pretending it wasn’t true would be living in denial.
With a snarl, I tossed the stick into the wastebasket with the others.
“What the fuck am I going to do?” I grumbled, holding my head in my hands.
This is a disaster. You’ve got an alien baby growing in your belly.
What was I supposed to do? Ask Chet for a ride to the abortion clinic? I’d have to make two separate visits. Chet would ask questions. And what if it got back to Henry?
And what would they make of the ultrasound? They were mandatory before an abortion in Florida. Surely it would be too small for them to tell it wasn’t human? It had only been a few days. But what if something unusual turned up? What if they suspected some kind of underlying health condition? More visits? More tests? More treatments?
I’ve been having sex with a creature that isn’t even human.
Who knew what their tests would reveal? An infection? Parasites? I felt fine, but I had no idea what I was dealing with. The risk that someone would figure out what was going on — or some even more distorted version of the truth — would grow higher with every visit.
I thought about the dreams that I’d had. Did my subconscious know? Had it been trying to tell me? Obviously it had. But why hadn’t those dreams frightened me? Why had they made me feel ... good? Why did my heart ache when I thought of them?
Can you do it? Can you kill your own baby? An innocent creature? And the most important organism on the planet right now. A true hybrid of human and ... Fish-Man. It would be a scientific atrocity, not to mention a moral atrocity. Could you live with yourself?
I rocked on the toilet, groaning. What a torturous dilemma!
Isn’t this what you wanted, Kate? A baby? Isn’t that the real reason Henry left you for another woman? Didn’t you drive him away with your incessant demands to start a family? And here you are, with a creature who wants to be a father so bad he forced you to do it. A creature who would risk life and limb to protect you. Are you really going to kill his baby? How will he feel about that? Will he know? Will he maybe be ... enraged? What will he do if he finds out you’ve killed his child?
I didn’t want to think about that. But was I any better? If I got rid of this baby, wasn’t I as much of a monster as Jacques would be for killing me? Maybe I was worse? Maybe humans were the real monsters on this planet? Maybe that’s why there were so few Fish-Men around? Had we wiped them out like the Neanderthals?
No, I’m not going to do it. I can’t do it. I can’t do that to Jacques. I can’t do that to my child. I can’t do it to myself.
Even if Jacques never knew, even if he never killed me, I knew I couldn’t live with the consequences. That child would haunt my dreams for the rest of my life.
But what are the risks of keeping the baby? Would it devour me from the inside out? Like a wasp larva? Like that monster springing out of that person’s chest in that movie Alien?
I shook my head.
No. He hadn’t implanted a parasite, he’d gotten me pregnant. They were two entirely different things. The fact that Jacques could get me pregnant at all had to mean that our species were highly compatible genetically. Even more compatible than humans and chimps. Despite the massive superficial differences, humans and Fish-Men had to be as close as horses and donkeys. That didn’t mean the pregnancy would be easy, of course, but it didn’t mean it would be impossible.
But how would I give birth? I couldn’t very well go to the hospital. I’d have to have it at home. By myself. Out of all the people in the world, the only one who might be able to help me was Courtney, and she was just a troubled youth, she wasn’t a midwife.
And Jacques.
It suddenly occurred to me that Jacques might very well know what to do. I knew he was smarter than an animal. Possibly as smart as a human. He might very well be smart enough to help me deliver the baby. And I was a scientist. I had time to study. Women in Africa gave birth to children in the fields, surely a trained Western scientist could do it in her own home with all the benefits of modern conveniences available. Perhaps I could even learn to communicate with Jacques early enough that he could give me some kind of reassurance. Help me make a decision, at least.
Jacques had been gone by the time I’d gotten back to the cabin. Before I’d come in to pee on the stick, I’d gone out to the lagoon to look for him, but there’d been no trace of him anywhere. Still, I knew he was watching the cabin. I knew he’d be back eventually. But it was late now, the sun was already on its way down, and I wished he were here. For some reason, I felt safer when Jacques was around. I needed to know I wasn’t in this alone.
Sorry, dad, but carrying an alien baby is too much for one person to handle.
I got up and flushed the toilet, then I went out to the living room.
Bill was standing in the middle of the room, along with two other men.
“Surprise!” he said, grinning.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
I turned and sprang toward the bedroom.
The man in the pit-stained Confederate flag t-shirt I’d kneed in the Walgreens emerged from the doorway, holding a shotgun.
“Well lookee here!” h
e said delightedly. “If it isn’t little Miss Baby Mama.”
I gasped, spinning around, and tried for the front door, but there was already another man blocking it, a grubby, long-haired man in a jean jacket with a scraggly goatee. He raised his rifle and pointed it at me, grinning.
“Where you goin’, gorgeous?” he said, licking his lips lasciviously. He was missing a tooth.
I flinched and backed toward the center of the living room. Everywhere I looked there were white trash rednecks, armed with rifles, shotguns, and pistols. The two men that were already in the room with Bill could have been brothers; a pair of slovenly dirtbags with shaved heads, beer guts, and tattoos. One of them was wearing a White Power t-shirt. Bill sure did keep ugly company.
“No escapes this time, darlin’,” Bill said, reaching for me.
I snarled, trying to scratch him, but he snatched my wrist. I tried to kick him but he twisted aside and jerked me around, yanking me off-balance and pinning my back against his chest. He wrapped his thick arm around my throat.
“Let me go!” I growled, struggling.
Bill tightened his grip, shaking me.
“Now, I would hate to break your pretty little neck,” he said, placing his lips close to my ear. “So I think it’s best if you settle down.”
I heard the click of a pistol being cocked and felt the barrel press against the side of my head.
I relented, still breathing hard. My heart was racing, torn between terror and seething, murderous rage. How had I not heard them come in? One of them must have known how to pick a lock. And where was Jacques? Had they killed him already? The very idea filled me with dread.
“We can do this the easy way, or the hard way,” said Bill. “Your choice.”
“Do what? What do you want?” I snapped.
“What do you think? Entertainment, baby!”
“Fuck you!”
Bill laughed.
“She’s a little spitfire, ain’t she?” he said to his companions, swinging me around to give everyone a view. “But then, she’d have to be to do the sick, twisted shit that she does.”
Tamed by the Creature from the Lagoon Page 17
