“Look. . . . We’ve both been hurt. You need to see a rape crisis counselor. I’d recommend some, but they were all in the county.”
“Don’t worry. Dealing with rape victims is my job. I know how to find a counselor.”
“All right. And while you’re at it, you need to come back and see me to get those fibroids removed.”
“They’re curable?”
“Of course.”
“What about my stress illness? You seemed to understand that.”
“It’s not a stress illness, although stress can be one of its causes. Others are too much caffeine consumption and fatty foods.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No. Lay off the coffee and doughnuts.”
“So? What is it?”
“Your condition is called ‘estrogen dominance.’”
“What?”
“You have too much estrogen in your body relative to your level of progesterone.”
“Isn’t estrogen the female hormone?”
“They’re both hormones. They counteract each other. When your estrogen’s high, like during the first two weeks of your cycle, your progesterone is low. Then after you ovulate, your progesterone is high to nourish the thickened lining of your uterus.”
“Okay, and you’re saying that mine is, what, not doing that?”
“Yes. Your estrogen levels are high all of the time. It’s become toxic to you. One side effect is your fibroids. Other symptoms are what you described to me: allergies, headaches, breast tenderness, mood swings, fatigue, you name it. I’m menopausal, so I essentially have the same problem. My estrogen is higher than my progesterone, so I have hot flashes—although both hormones are steadily reducing in me.”
“Oh my god. So you’re saying I just have a hormone problem? That’s it? And I’m not pregnant.”
“You’re not pregnant. At least, I don’t think so.”
“All right! I can’t tell you—oh my god, I can’t tell you how relieved I am.”
“I’m happy for you. My daughter’s still dead.”
“Margaret, I . . .”
“No, I’m sorry. That was unfair. Look, just go get treatment. If you don’t, your symptoms will get worse. We’re talking osteoporosis, immune disorders, endometriosis. Even breast cancer.”
“Oh.”
“Okay?”
“Yes. I’ll get it taken care of. Now I have a question for you, Doctor.”
“Shoot.”
“Why did the bigfoot rape me when I wasn’t ovulating?”
✽ ✽ ✽
Randall dressed, and they returned to Nick Schaefer’s office to continue their talk. She wasn’t hungry anymore; she was too excited to eat.
As they settled into Schaefer’s chairs, Randall explained what she’d learned about the rape victims in the hospital. “They all told me they had their last period two weeks before the rape. Even your daughter. I’m the only one they’ve ever raped who wasn’t ovulating.”
Margaret sat in the visitor’s chair and pulled her white coat tighter around her. “I remember a TV report where they said the bigfoots’ initial bites are a form a taste-testing to see who’s fertile. That would make sense. Leutinizing hormone spikes in your blood during ovulation.”
“Yes. That’s exactly what the feds thought they’ve been tasting for. A friend of mine—he’s dead now—he said scientists aerosolized that hormone into gas grenades. They tried to use them as lures.”
“Did it work?”
“No. The bigfoots didn’t give a shit.”
Randall stood at Schaefer’s window and looked out. The sun hadn’t set yet, and she could clearly see the rising columns of smoke from several building fires. A military helicopter hovered in the distance, its underbelly flashing with gunfire.
She sighed. “It’s all hopeless. This is going to spread out of the quarantine, and then the whole world’s going to be in trouble.”
“I don’t know,” Margaret said. “LH isn’t the only thing that spikes in your blood at ovulation. Obviously, whatever they taste for, you had it in yours.”
Randall faced her. “Don’t tell me it’s estrogen.”
Margaret shrugged. “Estrogen isn’t just one hormone. It’s a class of hormones. There are artificial and organic types. Humans have three types of estrogen: estradiol, estrone, and estriol.”
“And?”
“Estradiol spikes in your blood the day before ovulation.”
Randall felt numb as the implications swept over her. “They thought I was fertile because my estrogen was high. My estradiol.”
“Could be. I bet they’re tasting for a specific level of estradiol—like that of a woman in her peak childbearing years. That’s why after they bit me they left me alone. I’m almost sixty years old.”
Randall licked her lips, almost afraid to ask the next question. “Did you say there’s artificial types of estrogen?”
“That’s right.”
“Like what?”
“They’re called xenoestrogens. You find them in manmade substances all the time like detergents, nail polishes, crop pesticides . . .”
Randall remembered the reports she’d heard about raids on a laundromat and nail salon, and what she found in the Asian Grocery-Mart’s produce aisle.
“ . . . Sometimes they can show up in sewage, especially from women who’ve been using birth control.”
The raid on the sewage treatment plant in DC.
“Holy shit.” Randall shook her head. “That explains a lot. You know what? The army could easily make a new gas grenade to lure them out—and it would work this time.” Randall reached for the phone. “We need to call this in.”
At that moment, a tall figure appeared in the doorway over Margaret’s shoulder.
Randall knew even before she looked up that it was Nick Schaefer, and yet—
No. It had white chest hair.
It was the bigfoot who’d raped her that morning.
Randall screamed as the creature leapt over Margaret into the room.
✽ ✽ ✽
Randall’s reflexes made her duck out of the way—just barely. A swiping claw caught in the neck of her shirt as the monster sailed past her. It hit the window, producing a thud and crack of glass.
She screamed and heard Margaret screaming. It’s all she had time to do before the bigfoot rebounded off the window and landed on her. It pinned her shoulders to the floor with two pile-driver paws. When she knocked its arms away, it caught her wrists and pinned them over her head. Its teeth filled her vision as it spread her legs apart.
She heard a thump and gasp as something hit Margaret and knocked her from her chair.
“There now. Isn’t this cozy?”
The voice belonged to the person who had just punched Margaret. Nick Schaefer.
The bigfoot wasn’t moving, just pinning her in place. Its enormous penis grew hard and pressed against Randall’s crotch. Thank God she’d put her jeans back on.
Schaefer stepped over them. “I won’t be long.”
“Come back for your security tape?” Randall strained against the bigfoot’s grip.
Schaefer just laughed. The CD-ROM containing the video wasn’t in its hiding place anymore, but he easily found it where Margaret had left it on his desk. He dropped it into his Neiman Marcus shopping bag. He also went to his bookshelf and retrieved the paperweight shaped like an Egyptian pyramid.
“Ta ta. You three have fun now.” He stepped back over them and left the room.
“Schaefer!” Randall yelled. “Come back here! Nicolae!”
The bigfoot’s drool fell onto her face.
✽ ✽ ✽
The monster who raped her that morning released one hand so it could clamp her throat. Its paw was enormous. Stars appeared in her vision when it squeezed.
It wants to break my neck.
She remembered being choked by this same creature at Eric Gensler’s house. Digging into the webbed space between its fingers didn’t help before, and i
t didn’t help now.
So she hooked a thumb into its right eye.
The creature squealed and let up off of her—just enough so she could breathe. She kept digging at its eye, feeling the wet squishiness under her thumb. It released her throat completely so it could push her hand away from its face. Randall took advantage of the distraction and twisted her body away.
The bigfoot refocused on her, its eye squeezed shut. It still held her right wrist. Randall kept twisting and bent one leg, winding up—
The monster raised its free hand, fanning its claws—
—And she had the foot in position now, kicking out—
“Hi-yah!”
She smashed it against its huge genitals.
A howl of pain. The creature fell back onto its haunches. Randall didn’t have time to get up. She drew Officer Heager’s gun from her hip holster.
The bigfoot knocked it away. Sharp claws sliced through the back of her right hand. Randall screamed. She turned and scrambled to her feet. She stumbled over Margaret, still sprawled across the floor.
Don’t look back.
She left the room and turned right, toward the exit. The moment she cleared the threshold of Schaefer’s doorway, the bigfoot came leaping through. It missed her and hit the opposing wall.
Grab something—anything—to throw in its way.
The door of a supply closet pulled outward. She yanked it into the monster’s face as it leapt. But it kept coming.
Out into the main hallway, then, toward the stairs. Thank God she didn’t need the blue keycard to get back out.
She slammed the door shut on the bigfoot’s arm. She fought to keep it closed, but the monster used both hands to leverage it open. Too strong. It hissed like an alley cat.
Randall darted for the stairs.
Don’t let me die!
She didn’t make it. The bigfoot tackled into her from behind.
Their momentum carried them into the open elevator shaft.
✽ ✽ ✽
She screamed as they fell in.
She reached out with her left hand—caught it on the lip of the elevator door. She hung there as the bigfoot fell down the shaft below her.
It didn’t fall far. It snarled as it caught the cables and slid to a stop. Randall cast one glance downward at the hanging shadow—only a floor or two below.
It began to climb.
Randall grabbed the edge of the door with both hands. Her right one was almost useless with agony. Blood gushed from behind her knuckles, where the skin lay open in flaps. She grunted and cried out as she found purchase for her feet on the interior ladder from before. She caught it with her right hand to pull herself up a step. The hand wanted to let go and lay limp.
More snarls. The cable clunked against the shaft’s walls behind her.
She got a knee onto the floor. Pulled the doorframe with her left arm and sprawled back into the hallway. She turned in time to see the bigfoot crest the opening behind her, hauling itself up the cable hand over hand. Its white chest reflected the dim light, glowing like a lamp.
“Randall! Your gun!”
It was Margaret, standing by the gray door to the CalPark Research Department. Her eye was swollen shut. She held the gun Randall had dropped in Schaefer’s office.
“Slide it here!”
Margaret stooped and slid the gun across the tiled floor. It missed Randall and arrowed straight at the open elevator shaft. Randall grabbed, grabbed again, then smacked down on it with her bad hand.
The bigfoot was now level with the opening. Its tentacle-like tail thrashed in the air.
Randall took aim with her left hand. It wasn’t her usual shooting hand, so her first shot missed its chest.
And hit its balls.
The bigfoot squealed and hissed. It sounded like a cat with its tail caught in something. Two more bullets splattered the rest of its genitals across its thighs.
The creature howled and let go of the cable.
Randall dropped onto her chest and hung her head into the shaft. “Fuck you, motherfucker!”
It screeched and yowled the whole way down. The noise ended in the darkness ten stories below when it smashed into the top of the elevator car.
Part IV: Postpartum
Oh, you wise men take up the burden,
And make this your loudest creed,
Sterilize the misfits promptly—
All not fit to breed!
—Dr. Joseph DeJarnette, “Mendel’s Law”
Chapter 22
One Week Later
Washington, DC, and its surrounding counties remained under quarantine, the vast acreage slowly smothering under the great candlesnuffer of the federal government.
Whatever metaphor you preferred, however—and the talking heads were certainly fond of them these days—the comparisons were all taking a hopeful turn. The candleflame, for instance, had not escaped the candlesnuffer to ignite the surrounding regions. At least, they didn’t think so. And although the baby (or babies) were thrown out with the bathwater and the patient killed in order to cure the disease, the tourniquet had successfully stopped the bleeding—although the limb was now livid with death. The wound was cauterized.
Metaphors were all anyone had left to understand the incomprehensible. The unspeakable.
Someone had heated up an iron rod until it glowed and then impaled the heart of the nation. And that someone would pay if he—or they—were ever found. But if the responsible parties were never identified, then scapegoats would be made in the form of officials who’d allegedly mishandled the crisis. The hyenas of public opinion were already circling folks like Lucien Gastineau of the Department of Homeland Security.
The sleeping giant had been awakened, and until it was lulled back to sleep, woe to all innocents who stood in its mighty path. Beware the Congressional inquisitions. Beware the gladiators of class-action lawsuits. Beware the fact-finding commissions and the mismanaged reparation funds and the after-the-fact regulation and the security build-ups and the finger pointing and the opportunistic bitches and bastards already penning their fecal ideologies to blame the crisis on this person or that movement or on divine punishment for sexual orientation.
And through it all, no one had the slightest fucking idea what had really happened—except maybe for two women who were now refugees in the Tidewater area of Virginia.
✽ ✽ ✽
What was irrefutable, at least, once you cleared away the fog of chaos and focused on the activities of a beleaguered Department of Homeland Security—and God, were they in for some reactionary changes in the coming year—was that the bigfoot crisis was being contained. That they knew of.
Thanks to an insightful intelligence breakthrough from the federal tactical commander of the McLean district, the DHS laboratory network had fabricated a brand new aerosol lure derived from environmental xenoestrogens. (According to one source, this intelligence report was attributed to the field activities of a civilian police detective and her doctor-advisor friend, but this matter was classified and therefore impossible to verify.) In the parlance of military press briefings, the new lure’s utilization was succeeding in effectuating useful behavioral control of the Unidentified Primate Animals, thus resulting in increased nullification of threat levels throughout the operational theater.
CNN filled the airwaves with barely sanitized footage of wholesale animal slaughter: of elaborate traps set by the military, with xenoestrogen gas clouds as bait. Despite how much this reminded some older folks of bygone scenes of Nazis rounding up Jews and shooting them like fish in a barrel, the world cheered. Death to the rapists. Death to the monsters. Death to the aberrations of nature. We didn’t understand them, but we didn’t need to. They were an infection and a cause of anarchy, so we’re just glad it’s over. Hell, if the government keeps some of those things alive in a secret underground laboratory in Nevada—a credible rumor—then so be it. After all, the creatures might be a useful weapon one day. I’ll be damned, though, if I’
m gonna let my representative vote any more money toward those godless stem cell researchers or them homosexual treehuggers daring to suggest wildlife preservation of any kind is still a noble cause after what happened, goddamn them. Get me my shotgun; I’m getting me a fuckin’ hunting license. Aw hell, forget it—I’ll just go out and shoot me some stray dogs and cats. No one will mind, especially not with the cats.
Cleanup was still messy, though. The DC population was expected to remain scattered in shelters throughout the country for at least another month. In the meantime, the president set up shop at Camp David, from where he promptly fired the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. He also rejected all offers of foreign aid and assistance. The Supreme Court went into indefinite recess, while Congress conducted debates and votes by videoconference from its many district offices. The Federal Reserve and the Treasury went to New York City to count money. And entitlement programs instituted a two-month hold on all benefits.
The DC mayor took a taxpayer-funded trip to Key West so he could “contemplate the current situation.” The DC Council renewed calls for the city to become a state.
The Society for the Study of Sasquatch in Utah abruptly disbanded. However, registration for the five-day International Symposium on Cryptozoology, held annually in Melbourne, Australia, sold out in just two hours.
Sales of Fate Magazine: True Reports of the Strange and Unknown increased a thousandfold, and the Fortean tabloid Weekly World News returned to print.
Reverend Pat Williams’s screed against the evils of genetic engineering jumped back to number one on the New York Times bestseller list. Williams denied any endorsement of recent hate-crime attacks on biologists or of arsons at three university laboratories connected with genetic research. Stock values across the entire biotechnology industry plummeted forty percent.
Sales of pharmaceutical birth control increased one thousand percent.
CalPark Holdings & Co., Inc., temporarily diverted resources from its subsidiaries CalPark Biotech and CalPark Fertility Clinic toward its other subsidiaries CalPark Strategic Defense Systems, Inc., and CalPark Properties LLC, a real estate firm. CalPark Investment Management Services somehow exploited the crisis to make a killing in the areas of stock brokerage and consumer debt management. Its lucrative legal division, which included ownership interests in the law firms CPB P.C. and Larson & Pack, was swamped with new business in plaintiff personal injury and disability claims, plus lobbying dollars from the panicked biotechnology and insurance industries. Philip Duke, Chairman and CEO of CalPark, celebrated by purchasing a four hundred acre winery in the Napa Valley. So far, there was no indication CalPark was connected with the bigfoot epidemic in any way.
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