before it becomes available on amazon's new 'vella' platform - in fact, before it's even finished, let alone edited - you can read the first 80-odd pages of my latest book, rest stop. it's a love story and a botched alien invasion all rolled up in one, with not one, but two serial killers, spies, monsters in toilets, and political intrigue. 

here you go:

ALWAYS OPEN WITH A JOKE

A drunk gets up from the bar and staggers to the men’s room. A few minutes later, a blood-curdling scream is heard. A few minutes after that, another horrific shriek. The bartender marches over to the men’s room door and pounds on it three times.

"Cut that shit out!” he yells through the door. "You're scaring my customers!"

"I'm just sittin’ here on the crapper!” says the voice on the other side of the door. “An’ every time I try to flush, somethin’ up and squeezes the hell out of my balls!"

The bartender opens the door.

"You moron!” he says. “You're shittin’ in the mop bucket!”

 

A NOTE ABOUT ‘STORIES’

Some extremely intelligent men and women - much brighter than you or me - have concluded that the universe is infinite. Not only that: They say that there may be an infinite number of universes, in which our own little dollop of space-time is less important than whether ants prefer briefs or boxers.

In this infinite number of infinite universes, anything that we can imagine (and everything that we can't), no matter how unlikely, has already happened. That being the case, this story is true, as all stories are true.

How do we know that the universe of this particular story is not our own?

We don't.

 

PROLOGUE

A summer afternoon in Michigan, on the stretch of I-94 that runs between PoHo and Marysville. Eighty-six degrees and raining. It has rained for eleven days in a row - enough rain to guarantee flooded basements, overflowing storm drains, and cabin-fevered kids.

Big semis and countless cars hiss by. In good times and bad, the road saw a lot of traffic. Like all highways, it also saw its share of roadkill. In order of frequency: raccoons, cats, dogs, socks, the occasional possum or deer and, every once in a great while, a squirrel.

Squirrels avoid highways. It’s difficult to say if this is because there’s nothing of interest on the other side (surely one acorn is as good as another), or possibly some form of rodent race memory is at work, reminding them that any hard, flat surface leads to an even flatter future.

Which was why the sight of a lone grey squirrel running along the side of I-94 was so odd. It ran along the top of the curb that began just outside of town, above the ankle-deep runoff that swept the gutters and poured into the black drains.

If you examined the squirrel more closely, you might notice that all of the blood vessels in its eyes have burst. It looks like the morning after, and moves like it, too. You might also notice its bloody front paws. It has chewed on them for most of the night. In the case of some digits, down to the bone.

Every ten yards or so it stops and stares down at the water rushing by. Dry flecks of foam decorate its bloody teeth. It is almost mad with thirst, but something in its brain forbids it to drink. It needs to find a large, still body of water. A pond will do, but a marsh would be better.

As it runs, pelted by the rain, it slows like a wind-up toy running down, down, down.

Slower. Slower. Slower still.

Stop.

The squirrel stands motionless, eyes dull, staring at the rain-slicked highway. The road is shiny and, to the squirrel, it suddenly resembles a large, dark pond. Surely it can drink now, with water - big water - so maddeningly close.

It listens, tuned in to a voice that it alone can hear.

The squirrel begins to shudder. First mildly, then wildly, like Wile E. Coyote after swallowing earthquake pills. Then it slumps forward, dead, looking for all the world like a partially deflated balloon made of fur.

Cars hiss by and pay no mind. Rain falls. Thunder walks and talks. Then:

A dozen black, toothpick-sized stalks burst from every surface of the corpse. They bloom into tiny pink and black flowers that wave stiffly in the rain, each no wider than a dime.

There is a sudden, violent movement under the squirrel’s skin.

Its corpse rolls to the side, into the rain-flooded gutter, where it is pushed along by the current and down the nearest drain.

Time passed. 

LEWIS

"Motherfucker!"

On impulse, Lewis smacked the clock radio off the nightstand, its punishment for being the bearer of bad news. He had heard that the state was running out of money, but who knew the governor would suddenly sprout balls and decide not to sign the budget extension?

The radio rattled off the list of government agencies and services that were shutting down as a result: libraries, unemployment offices, the license bureaus, and - most importantly to Lewis - summer grounds-keeping services. That meant no cutting the grass in the parks and the highway rest areas. That meant no paycheck. And that meant it was time to sell some weed.

Mother-fucker.

He rolled out of bed and snatched his phone off the nightstand, speed-dialing. Busy. He swore and hit redial. When Gary, his boss, picked up, it was obvious from his tone that he'd been repeating himself all morning.

"... so we got to lock up the rest areas and the parks. Fisher, d’you hear me?"

"Yeah. So when do we go back?" Lewis fished a cigarette out of the pack on the dresser.

"Nobody knows. Just make sure you lock up by five and put up the signs. Then turn in the truck."

"Man! Do I hafta? My ride's busted." Lewis didn't mention that this had been the case all summer - using a state truck for personal transportation was verboten.

"Herb can drop you home, if you’re back to the garage by six. After that, you're on your own."

Mother. Fucker.

"Yeah, okay. See ya when I see ya." Lewis thumbed the button and speed-dialed his folks' house. His mother answered.

“Hello?”

"Hey, ma - you know that couch you guys never use?"

"Hello, Lewis.” A pause. “What?”

Lewis repeated himself. He did a lot of that with his folks.

“What do you mean?” said his mother. “The one in the family room? We use that couch sometimes."

"Ma, when was the last time you sat on it? Christmas, right?"

"I sit on it, sometimes. When I’m reading."

"Can I have it?" He spoke quickly, before she could say no. "Mine's a wreck, and dad's always saying how he's going to buy you guys another one, but he never does it. If you gave me the old one, he'd have to."

"Oh, honey, I don't know..."

"I can't afford decent furniture for this place. Did you hear the news? Thanks to that dick you voted for, I just got laid off."

"Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. What are you going to do?"

"They'll probably call us back in a few days. But in the meantime, I'm really short on cash."

"Do you need some money? I could mail you a check..."

"That’ll be great, ma, thanks. So what do you say about the couch? I could pick it up this afternoon."

"I think you should ask your father..."

He had her. Any time she deferred to the old man, she was throwing in the towel.

"Ma, you know what he's gonna say. Is he even around?"

"He went to get some charcoal..."

Set the hook.

"I could have it out of there before he gets back. Then he won't wreck his back trying to help me."

"How would you get it out?"

Take up the slack in the line. Get the net ready.

"I've got my truck from work. I'll back it up to the sliding door and take it out through there. Take me ten minutes. Then you can give me the check, too. Save yourself a stamp."

"Honey, I wish you'd wait until your father’s home..."

Into the boat. Raise the club.

"Fine, ma," he spat. "Only I've got to turn in my truck tonight. How am I gonna get the couch then? I thought I’d do you guys a favor. You know what? Just forget it."

She sighed into his ear. Thwack! went the club.

"Just don't mark up the walls," she muttered.

"I promise I'll be really careful. See ya in a bit."

Lewis smiled as he hung up. The day was turning out better than expected.

Lewis had a simple philosophy about work: When possible, avoid it entirely. When that wasn't practical, get someone else to do as much of it as possible. If that failed, put off doing it as long as possible, because sometimes they forgot that they'd told you to do it.

That explained why there were still four bags of sidewalk salt in the bed of the truck in the middle of July. It also explained why it was 5:30 before Lewis got out to his first work stop, the rest area on I-94. He had let the grass get a bit long - it was shin-high, out under the trees - but he was a busy guy, and besides, the layoff would cover that.

He put the chain up across the entrance drive so some moron didn't pull in while he was visiting his stash, anticipating the night to come. A layoff meant he didn't have to get up for work tomorrow. He could pick up a couple of 40’s after closing down the shitter and snag the couch and his mother’s check on the way home. Between that and what he could get for the couch and the weed, he could even afford to roll a few blunts for himself.

Not too shabby.

Lewis spotted the first fish fly as he was locking up the Women's. It spiraled out of the air and bounced off his head and onto the sidewalk. He stomped on it in disgust. The pop it made was surprisingly loud.

He sighted a few more on the wing. By dark, there would be a million of them, covering everything in sight and stinking up the place. Already, he could see the spiders busy in their corners, getting their webs ready for the night's harvest. It reminded him of some nature special he'd seen about spawning salmon. Bears, wolves, raccoons, seagulls, all lined up for the movable feast. Everybody got a taste.

Overhead, the big oaks nodded and hissed in the wind. Weather was coming, probably rain. He had to hurry - no one would want a drowned couch.

Lewis remembered the bags of salt just as he finished locking up the Men’s. The couch would never fit in the truck with those back there, and he'd catch hell if he parked at the municipal garage and Gary saw them.

The bags were heavy. Lewis overbalanced and dropped the first one in the parking lot. It burst and spewed its contents in every direction.

Great.

He snatched the next bag, determined to show it who was boss. It promptly caught on something in the bed of the truck and tore in half, filling the bed with chunks of salt. The sound set his teeth on edge.

Lewis gave the next bag some respect, hoisting it up on one shoulder for the hike to the supply shed, his back complaining all the way. As he unlocked the door, he smiled, as he did every time he visited the weed.

His weed, soon to be someone else's. That was what having weed was all about. That, and getting high when life dropped a shit-bomb on you. And what was losing your job, if not a gigantic turd?

In the back of the supply shed, a three-foot wide, prison-grey pipe cap stuck out of the concrete floor. It was used to access the bathrooms' sewer outlet and the huge rain culvert that it joined up with, a relic of 1960's city planning. It was only fitting that Lewis' pot, another relic of the 60's, shared space here, where no one else was going to look for it.

Lewis took the idiot wrench down off the shelf behind the water main and started working on the cap's eight bolts. Each was as thick as his thumb but, as a result of some WD-40 applied during his last visit (and which he could still smell), they turned easily.

Lewis had used the pipe cap to hide his stash for almost five months now, ever since his deadbeat-and-departed roommate cleaned him out. It was the safest place he could think of. Even if he got pulled over, it was unlikely that he'd be carrying more than a joint or two, since he could stop here and reload at will.

For Lewis, this bordered on genius.

He stepped back as he slid the heavy metal pipe cap aside, having learned the hard way that pipe-stench could burn your eyes and vaporize nose hairs. As hot as it was in the shed, he could still see a heat ripple rise out of the pipe, the result of composting shit and God only knew what else.

Hanging just inside the pipe on wire coat hangers were quart-sized baggies of the good stuff.

Thanks to the magic of Ziploc, the stench didn't penetrate the baggies - who wanted to smoke weed that tasted like ass? - but the humidity made the bags slippery. You had to handle them carefully or ...

Shiiiiit!

"Motherfucker! What is your major malfunction?" he yelled, staring down into the darkness that had swallowed his weed.

Lewis looked to the shed's ceiling for support, but found only spider webs. He counted the remaining baggies. If he took one to smoke and sold two, plus his mom's money… Hmmm. He could get by for a month or so, but the governor didn't give a shit about how much pot Lewis had left. And Lewis would certainly want to smoke more, eventually. The question was, how much more?

He stared down the pipe again. Jesus, it was stanky.

So hold your fuckin' breath, bro’, the weed called up to him, safe and dry in Ziploc land. Nobody been shittin’ ‘round here for at least an hour. And it’s lonely down here in the dark.

"I'm comin', I'm comin'," he sighed. "Jesus, the things I do for weed."

There was a flashlight next to the wrench - one of those long, cast-steel jobs that you never saw any more. It was beat to hell but still worked just fine, thank you very much.

Lewis shone it down the pipe. It was a little bit wet down there, but that was all - no deep water, no rats, no shit. It wasn't even that much of a drop. He climbed up on the lip of the pipe and swung one leg over, blocking the light above and his view below.

Something caught on his boot.

At first, he thought it must be one of the wire baggie holders or a tree root or something. When he tried to pull his leg out, though, something pulled back, hard, slamming his nuts against the edge of the pipe. Lewis doubled up, sick to his stomach and thinking of nothing but

my balls o god my balls i'm gonna puke

as he lost his footing and fell into the pipe, cracking his teeth on the opposite edge on the way down.

The bag of weed that his head landed on was all that saved him from splitting his head wide open. As it was, the baggie exploded herbal confetti and Lewis got the wind knocked out of him, hard enough to keep him down for a few moments.

Which was, in the end, all it took.

As soon as the cartoon stars went away and his probing tongue verified that he had lost two of his fucking front teeth, Lewis opened his eyes. The flashlight lay next to him, its lens cracked but otherwise unscathed, shining down the length of the tunnel.

Lewis blinked. Something was moving out there, fast, just beyond the flashlight's beam. He couldn't quite see it in the glare, but a hungry boss sewer rat was not something he wanted to think about right now.

He stuck his hand in front of the light to block the glare. There was a loud crack, like the sound a matador’s bullwhip made in the arena, followed by a protracted scream that rose and fell, eventually ending in a wet gurgle. Then silence.

As the sun fell out of the sky in the world above, a belt buckle jingled quietly down in the dark. By sheer coincidence, it kept perfect time with the first two bars of the Christmas song, Up on the Housetop.

When Lewis Fisher failed to turn in the truck at 6:00, Gary locked up the garage and swore about it all the way home. Lewis was lazy as hell. It had been a waste of time to wait. Oh well… at least he could go fishing tomorrow.

Lewis's mom and dad were used to their son’s frequent no-shows. Since he only called when he wanted money, it was something of a relief not to hear from him. Not least of all because they both liked the couch in the basement, because there weren’t any windows down there, and sometimes they liked to play dress up – a fact that would have creeped Lewis out if he had known about it.

Not for the first time, Mr. and Mrs. Fisher regretted not taking the more difficult road with their son when he was growing up, and actually saying "No" once in a while.

Next time, promised Lewis's mother to herself, putting on her Catwoman outfit. Next time.

The net result was that no one bothered to call, no one bothered to check up, on, in, or around.

Why mess with a good thing?

The summer sun crawled over the horizon, nursing one hell of a hangover. Fishflies gathered around the streetlights, their numbers growing with each passing moment.

Down in the dark, jingle bells played on.

Two weeks went by.

TODD

2:30 in the morning at Qwik-R Mart. Todd made the subs - 13 meat & cheese, 10 Italian, 5 roast beef. After that, sweep the store and take out the trash. After that, restock the beer in the cooler and forget thee not the cigarette rack. If there was time, rotate the canned goods. Then wait on the early risers – in summer, usually assembly line workers and fishermen - until Beth came in at 7. After that...

Don't think. Don't. Baby?

Todd’s phone, linked to the public radio station in Bemuth, droned on from the back counter about the ongoing state budget crisis. Essential state services hung in limbo, according to the pudding-voiced reporter. The police and the postal workers toiled on, but the rest of the civil servants were on a forced summer vacation, their offices deserted, with no indication when it would end. The reporter speculated that it might even mean a delay in the start of the school year.

It also meant no lifeguards at the beach. Karyn was a lifeguard. That meant she was stuck home for the foreseeable future. Todd wondered if and when he might get a phone call.

Don't think. Think… baby.

By now, most of the ancient, wrinkled rummies and high school kids that came to refresh their buzz were passed out or possibly even dead somewhere. You saw a lot of alkies, working the night shift.

Todd refused to sell to anyone without a valid ID, no matter what they told him someone on another shift did. Most tried to pretend - even if only to themselves - that their case-or-two-a-night habit was nothing out of the ordinary. And for their crowd, maybe it wasn’t.

Todd could always smell them coming - their skin sweated poison, and the older ones had a doughy, translucent quality, as if decades of drinking had partially dissolved from the inside out, digested by decades of yeast.

They all seemed to smoke, too. That made it even better.

What can make THIS better?

Todd wasn't ready to be a dad. Until yesterday, the thought had never entered his mind. His dad was a dad, and look how well that had gone. Years of swing shifts had made the old man a stranger, and his sullen silence created an unbreachable wall even when he was home.

The closest Todd ever felt to his father any more was when he came home late and found his old man asleep on the living room floor in front of the TV. He looked almost human then. Vulnerable. Sometimes Todd would cover him with a blanket, if he didn't think it would wake him and bring the smoldering stare down, and the questions that were traps waiting to spring.

Nineteen. His dad had been nineteen when Todd was born, the same age that Todd was now. Maybe that was why things had turned out this way - the new generation repeating the mistakes of the last, and with the same result.

What Karyn had told him only confirmed what he’d already known in the pit of his stomach: She was pregnant, it was his, and life was going to be very different from here on.

Different? More like over. College? Forget it. He would be stuck at Quik-Mart until he died. And his old man - oh, God…

How could I have been so stupid? he thought. I knew the condom was slipping off, I could feel it happening, but Karyn was too far gone to stop and then so was I.

Afterward, there was the incredibly awkward time Karyn spent fishing it out of her vagina, then the silent drive home, neither of them knowing what to say. That was followed by a quick kiss at the door, and guilty eye contact that felt like a blow on his way back to his car.

Todd couldn't remember what he’d said that first night. Something stupidly brave, for Karyn’s sake. He got her to smile, just as she ducked in the kitchen door, rubbing the tears away in case her mom or dad saw her coming in. He wondered how her folks would take it, and felt sick when he thought about facing them.

In the weeks that followed, there were conversations that felt like someone else was having them. Tears. Hugs. Promises.

How could I have been so stupid? Why couldn't I have waited? Or at least pulled out?

Karyn wouldn't have an abortion - he was sure of that. Adoption was probably out, too, unless her parents forced her into it. What did that leave? Marriage? What kind of marriage would that be, and what kind of answer to give a son or daughter?

"Well, honey, we had you because Daddy's rubber came off at the worst possible time, but that doesn't mean we don't love you just as much as if we’d actually planned to have you. In fact, we don’t resent giving up all of our hopes and dreams at all. Really we don’t."

God, what have I done? thought Todd. Nineteen, and my life is over, and Karyn’s only 17. Please God, I’ll do anything if you’ll just let me take it back, if not for my sake, then for hers. Please…

The radio started into a Chrome Bones song, one that Karyn had sung to him as they danced at her prom. It was too much; without a thought, Todd slapped the radio off the counter, yanking its cord out of the wall and sending a dozen plastic pieces scattering across the floor on impact.

Which was when the Stench walked in.

It was wrapped in an army surplus coat and the dirtiest pair of jeans that Todd had ever seen. It clenched a bulging plastic garbage bag in each fist. They dripped onto the floor.

"You take Shtroths?" said the Stench, revealing gums almost entirely free of teeth. A wet-looking cigarette hung from the corner of its mouth, ringed by at least a month's worth of dirty grey stubble, topped by a huge pair of greasy glasses and comically enlarged eyes.

"Pardon me?"

"Shtroths. You take Shtroths?" It shook the bags at him. They rattled and drip, drip, dripped onto the floor.

"Strohs? Yeah, we take Strohs. But you can't smoke in here."

The man nodded, pushed the door open with his foot and flung the butt out into the parking lot.

"Got a ton more. Where you want'em?"

I don't, thought Todd. The thought of sorting bottles and cans touched by those hands - let alone the ditches where the bottles and cans had probably come from - was almost as bad as the man's smell.

Has he ever had a bath in his life? How can anyone live like this?

"You can put'em in there," Todd nodded to the side room. The man nodded and disappeared. He was gone long enough that Todd almost followed him. Then he popped back out, the Stench preceding him like a wave.

"Use your potty?" he asked.

Potty? What is he, five?

"We're not supposed to let anyone. Sorry."

The man grimaced. "I really gotta go. Squirts, me."

"Sorry. I'd get in a lot of trouble. But the gas station on the corner has one you can use."

The man's face was as open as a child's. Incomprehension flew across it, then frustration, then acceptance. 

"How 'bout you help me get the rest outta my car, then?" he asked. "Get me outta your hair quicker."

Todd hesitated.

"I really gotta go."

The man bobbed up and down for emphasis, like a kindergartener.

"Okay," he said. "But if anybody drives up, I've got to wait on them."

"Sure, sure." The man fairly danced to the door, held it open for Todd and waved him through as if he were a prom date.

The car was about what Todd expected - a decrepit Olds Delta '88 that might once have been some shade of blue. The windows, thankfully, were too dirty to see through, but the crowded shadows inside suggested that the car might be both transportation and accommodation.

The man watched him in a funny way as he unlocked the car’s trunk, as if afraid that Todd might change his mind. The trunk came open, and the reek that had been waiting inside filled the world. It was beyond words, sickly sweet and foul and inescapable.

Todd saw what was in the trunk. Doubled over and heaving on his shoes, he tried to back away, his eyes wide with terror.

The man appeared puzzled, watching him. Then he looked in the trunk, too. The expression of surprise on his face would have done credit to a cartoon character. He blushed, red as an apple, and Todd realized that the reason that the Stench didn't bother the man was because he lived in it, night and day. He had simply forgotten about it, as he had also apparently forgotten about the long-dead little boy in his trunk.

What the fishflies saw next:

Clouds of other fishflies swirling around the lights, circling the two men as they move, as if the scene was underwater, winged plankton in the current.

Todd backs away, retching up everything, and when there is nothing left, dry heaves. Fishflies alight on his clothing, arms and face. He turns toward the store. Stench-Man runs to his car’s driver door, fishflies breaking like a surf before him. He throws the door wide, grabs a red bandana and something else from the front seat.

Todd reaches the store entrance just as Stench-man grabs him from behind and shoves the red bandana violently into Todd’s mouth and nose. Todd falls to his knees, blinded, one hand on the door handle. He pulls the door open, trying to shake the man off. A swirl of fishflies flies past him into the store.

Stench-Man won't let go.

The two fall sideways, Todd reaching back to push weakly at the other man, but the bandana is clamped over his face like an iron band. Todd's hand slips. His eyes roll up into his head. Both men fall to the pavement.

Stench-Man maintains his hold a few moments more, then rolls over and stands, looking at the hand that has been bloodied in the struggle. He kicks Todd once, hard. Then he looks around quickly, his hair and beard so coated with fishflies that he looks like a child's nightmare of Santa Claus. He slings Todd awkwardly over one shoulder and duck-walks him back to the trunk, where Stench-man dumps him like a bag of laundry. He slams the trunk, takes one last look around, then climbs into the driver seat.

Like a big boat, the Olds rolls out of the driveway, fishflies popping like bubble-pack beneath its tires. The fishflies don't mind. Like many creatures in the summer night, their brains are too small to hold more than one thought at a time.

This is what's on their mind tonight:

Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck…

HARVEY LEE

High summer on the highway, night, the fecund perfume of new-mown suburban grass and the whirring choir of insects eating and being eaten. Cigarette smoke snaked out the window, the radio tuned to something country. Cough syrup tang of Southern Comfort, a half pint lying on the passenger seat.

O, for a cheerleader to make it all complete, with short white socks and short, curly hairs. But I've got an even sweeter treat in the trunk.

Such are the thoughts of Harvey Lee Osborne as the big Oldsmobile eats up the road. He is careful not to weave, nor to go even one mile over the speed limit. Harvey Lee has no license and no wish to spend more time in jail. Bad men were in the jail, men who wanted to do bad things to Harvey Lee, men who wanted Harvey Lee to do bad things to them.

Careful, careful, number nine, don't you cross that yellow line.

His eyes were drawn to the rearview for the umpty-umpth time, but squinting didn't help. It might be the same car. It might, and then again it might not be the same car that had followed him since Ohio. Following Harvey Lee, who is doing exactly the speed limit on a summer nighted highway, with not a smokey bear in sight.

Right. Right right right right right…

Harvey Lee slowed down to ten below the limit, waited a beat, then looked again. The other car was in the same spot, fifty yards back, and showed no sign of wanting to pass.

Following. Waiting.

Harvey Lee didn't read the papers or watch the news, but that morning he had overheard some guy at a McDonald's talking about the most recent round of car-jackings. What they did was, one bunch got behind you and called their buddies in another car up the road. When the time was right, the guys up ahead pulled out in front of you and the guys behind boxed you in. Then it was all over.

The Olds lurched forward under Harvey Lee's right boot. He passed the legal limit and left it behind in a thunderhead of blue exhaust. Harvey Lee gritted bad teeth against the fear. He is running like the rabbit runs, knowing it is dead, but running just the same.

He looked over his shoulder, not trusting the rear view any more. The other car was fading into the distance.

Going... going...

Harvey Lee stared ahead but saw no other traffic, and the treat in the trunk wasn't making any noise, either. Good. Harvey Lee's heart had almost stopped when his latest crush saw the meat in the trunk. He remembered getting it, vaguely, but sometimes things had a way of bunching up in his mind, like jeans in a dryer, tumbling. He didn't think that he had been in the trunk since getting the meat, so maybe it had just died in there. It had been dead awhile, anyway.

He would explain to the Quik-R Mart boy that the meat didn't matter. It wasn't as if he'd been caught with a live boy in his closet, after all. The meat was probably too far gone to be salvageable, anyway, which was a shame - especially since Harvey Lee could remember so little about it. It had pretty hair - flaxen hair, like his own when he was a boy.

Back when mama was around. Mama and her boyfriends.

He had watched them, sometimes, through the crack beside his door. It always made him want to do the pee-pee thing, so he did until his mama heard him and came and smacked him, calling him ‘dirty little animal’ and pulling his hair and sometimes hitting his pee-pee with her hair brush to teach him better, only it never seemed to work because a few days later there'd be another boyfriend and another bottle and more noises through the door.

A wave of cold slapped through Harvey Lee, a sharp reminder that he still had the squirts and needed to find someplace to shit now. He couldn't stop at the gas station next to the Quik-R Mart - someone there might have seen what happened - and he was fearful of stopping at a Mickey D's in case the trunk didn't stay quiet.

A green sign loomed, and Harvey Lee nodded, because when your luck was in, it was in, mama, and sure as shit your luck was in when you had to shit and a Rest Area 3 Miles sign showed up.

He almost missed the turn-off, because all of the lights were off. That was also why the Olds hit the chain before Harvey Lee saw it. The impact slammed his chest against the steering column and smacked his head on the windshield.

"Fuck me!"

The Olds immediately died, rolling into the parking lot on inertia alone. When that was gone, it coasted to a stop.

Harvey Lee rubbed his head and chest. They burned with the force of impact.

When the hell did they chain the entrance to a rest area? 

He barely had time to think about it before a wet brown fart made him clench his butt cheeks. He popped the door before he could have another, running with his legs as tight together as he could manage without tripping.

There was one other vehicle in the dark parking lot, a pickup truck with a county emblem on the door. Although the big streetlights in the lot were turned off, lights glowed reassuringly in the bathroom windows. The reek of fishflies was everywhere; they popped like popcorn under his worn-out boots.

Harvey Lee made for the restroom door, doing the tight, short step known to all sufferers of the trots, and got his first wave of chills. Diarrhea was one thing - nothing to wish for, but still no big deal. But when you got the chills, too, you knew it was going to be B-A-D. It was all he could do to tighten up in time, stopped dead in his tracks, a horrible grimace on his face.

Oh, God, Harvey Lee prayed, sweat standing out on his brow even as ice water ran down his back. Please, God, just let me get to the toilet – please oh please…

Hm, his brain ticked, trying very hard not to think about anything else and failing. That’s weird. I ain’t seen nobody since I got here. There's a county truck, there's a chain across the drive, and the lights are off. What’s going on?

When the next wave hit him, a low, low cramp with teeth, the thought fled. Getting on a toilet seat NOW was all that mattered. Anything else could wait until successful shitting had been accomplished, forever and ever, amen.

The mayflies were godawful around the low building, attracted in vast, fluttering rains by the yellow sodium lights hung under its low, sloping roof. There were literally drifts of them piled against the doors, like sex-obsessed snow, and every step sounded like setting off dozens of small firecrackers. The worst thing, though, was the smell – mayflies stank like nothing else in the world.

The door opened easily. Harvey Lee quick-peeked around the corner. The tiled room appeared empty, so he said one more silent prayer and bent down - just a bit, Lord - to look under the stalls.

A pair of hiking boots occupied the farthest stall. Beside them, leaning against the wall, a faded green backpack.

Harvey Lee paused, thinking. This didn't come easy for him. He had to go, he really had to go, but someone was in there, with a chain across the drive and the parking lot lights off. Maybe this guy was some kind of county worker, or a hitchhiker who didn’t want to do his business in the bushes along the highway. Who knew?

His backside made the decision for him. He reached around and took out the snub-nosed .38 he kept tucked into the back of his pants and whistled loudly as he side-stepped to the closest stall. He thought there might be someone standing on the seat to fool him, but it was empty. He listened carefully as he quickly dropped his drawers and sank onto the clammy seat, the .38 pointed in the direction of the occupied stall.

"Ahh..." he groaned, finally letting go, the discharge like a firehose. What the hell had he eaten, anyway? That big, black bitch at Nacho Mama’s must have put something nasty in his burrito. He didn't like the way that she looked at him, like she knew every thought in his head. Maybe tomorrow night he would go back, catch her on the way to her car and suck her accusing eyes right out of her head.

…Oh God, here comes another...

Harvey Lee grunted with the ferocity of the deluge. It was as if everything he ate in his entire life was reduced to swamp water, set on fire, and shot out his ass. Wave after wave, it clenched his belly and screwed his eyes shut.

How can there be so much? 

Harvey Lee had butchered a whole family of campers, once, and even that good work hadn't been as wet as this. He braced his arms against the walls of the stall, pushed against them, lest the torrent carry him away.

In the stall next to him, the empty bag of skin and clothing draped across the toilet shuddered, spilling maggots onto the floor and fledgling flies into the air. The corpse’s backpack, which was leaning against the wall of Harvey Lee’s stall, fell over as he pushed. The corpse itself, little more than dry, corroded skin, sank into the bowl in a series of gurgles.

Six feet below the concrete floor, something stirred.

Above it, the light disappeared, indicating the presence of food. Instinctively, it extended its sides to feel the wet piping around it, sensitive to every vibration, as if the ground was a drum. The volume and character of the thuds from above indicated that the prey was alone, and similar in size to its last two meals.

It filled its prey hooks with tenderizer. Blind but for the ability to detect light or dark - the organ that it 'saw' with and was now retracting from the bottom of the toilet’s bowl could barely be classified as an eye - it rose up through the pipes, compressing its boneless body to fit the smaller diameter. It snaked its mouthparts up into the bowl, where they opened like the petals of a flower. It hesitated only long enough to be sure that it had not been detected.

"Ow!" squealed Harvey Lee. How bad could one night get? He was keeping a juicy piece waiting, he had the trots, and now a goddamned bee had up and stung him on the ass.

"There's a goddamned bee in here," he said loudly, for the benefit of his neighbor, in case he was wondering why Harvey Lee had squealed like a little girl. "Bastard stung me right on the ass."

He shifted a bit on the seat, but his legs had gone to sleep. They felt as heavy as lead pipes. He lifted a foot to stomp the pins and needles out, but a sense of pressure made him look down. He was rewarded with the sight of his foot turning in a slow, impossible arc, until it was facing the opposite direction as his knee, pointed at the toilet bowl.

Somehow he had managed to break his ankle, too. How in the fuck had he managed to do that? He hadn't tripped or anything on the way in. It didn't hurt at all.

Prob'ly I'm in shock or something, he thought. This can't be right - this has to be some weird kind of muscle thing. My legs are asleep, and the muscles have all gone soft, somehow.

Then his right shoe fell off, and he saw what was going on with his feet. That was when he tried to stand up.

"Shit!"

Something yanked him violently down, banging his elbows against the walls of the stall, the strength of it overwhelming.

Some animal part of Harvey Lee's brain, older than words, yowled in terror.

He braced himself, breath ragged, hanging on for dear life. Something was trying to pull him down into the toilet. He didn't know or care what it was. All he cared about was that his legs weren't working, weren't right, and if there was one place he didn't want to go, it was into that bowl.

"Help!" he cried, as his sweaty palms fought for purchase.

Fighting the pull was like trying to lift a panel truck. Harvey Lee was strong - he had to be, given his often combative love life - but this was strength of an entirely different order. 

The metal toilet paper holder under his left arm popped off the wall of the stall, its screws sheared off. He scrabbled for a handhold on the smooth metal stall. Whatever it was instantly took up the slack - his ass was most of the way into the bowl, now.

As he gritted his teeth and pushed against the bowl, his knees softened like melting butter, their bony points becoming rounded and flat. His legs were no more than bags of meat, big sausages sticking out of denim casings. He didn't understand how or why, but his thighs had become a sickly yellow-red, as if the skin was becoming translucent.

Looks like soup, he thought. Tomato soup with milk poured in it to cool it down.

It was getting hard to breathe, as if he had a sudden cold.

My insides. They're melting, too. Probably faster, since they’re softer than my legs.

If he didn't do something right now - something smart - he was going into the bowl for sure.

Will I stop there? Soft as I'm gettin’, maybe I'll just keep on goin’. Into whatever comes next. Wherever Mama went.

The thought terrified him more than anything ever had. He scrambled to get hold of the bottom edge of the stall, biting his lip until it popped like an overripe strawberry and he tasted blood. He couldn't feel it - he was numb, and the room was starting to look foggy, too.

What happens to eyes when they melt? Do they pop, too, or just slide backwards into your head?

Harvey Lee pulled with everything that was left in his arms, away from the bowl, toward the floor, and he felt the hold of whatever it was slipping as the meat of his ass tore away, dripping, and he pulled again, crying, as he got a good grip and then really pulled, pulled for his life, an inch closer to the floor, an inch further from death.

Yards away, under the wet ground of the old septic field, the Catonine felt the food escaping. It wasn't a matter of strength, but of having hold of the wrong end. It was designed to attack animals that came to drink, its prey hooks and mouth parts gently wrapping around chins and throats as they dipped into muddy water. This had the advantage of letting the tenderizer go to work on the brain right away, turning it into cottage cheese, so that the food didn't fight or try to get away before it could be ingested. The food's heart did the rest, pumping the tenderizer into the rest of the body until it, too, was mush, at which point the food could be turned and the prey hooks used here and there to soften what was left.

Although boneless, the Catonine’s mouth parts and the long whip that attached them to its body had limits to their elasticity. The food's movement had stretched them to their limits, and its prey hooks were at an uncomfortable angle, too. Like most predators, it was only successful a relatively small percentage of the time. It was hungry, but the risk of damage was not worth the meal.

It let the food go.

The release was so sudden that Harvey Lee banged his head on the wall before falling to the floor. He spat fishflies away from his mouth, gasping wetly, using his arms to pull his legs and jeans away from the bowl. He couldn't move his legs at all; they had turned an angry blue-black in splotches. The rest was a sickly yellow, like a banana left too long in the sun. His skin seemed to be stretching - it felt doughy. He pulled himself a little farther into the next stall, watching the bowl he had just escaped.

That was how he saw the black flower that rose out of it, smelling of used burrito. It rose a good foot above the bowl, on a glistening, snaky stalk, then bloomed. Inside, it was a bright pink, with short, fleshy tentacles and hooked barbs spread around the edges. Instinctively, he pushed himself away from it.

It went straight for his face.

The Catonine had nothing that could be called an eye, but it did have, immediately above and behind its mouth, an organ that could tell dark from light (although not movement). A shadow meant that there was food within striking distance. Light meant there was no food or it was too far away to reach.

It could feel the food above it move, though. The concrete floor of the bathroom was like a drum. But the bathroom itself was confusing – too much light, too many shadows. This food, though, presented a dark shadow against the institutional grey door - the contrast was high.

Harvey Lee became a bull’s eye.

When it struck at his face, Harvey Lee thought for sure he was a goner. Everything was blurry, with white snow he guessed must be mayflies, but his highly-evolved eyes caught the movement and he squealed like a pig when he felt the droplets of shit hit his face.

It didn't touch him, though. He could almost hear the twang as the tentacle reached its limit and snapped back. Frustrated, it whipped around the edge of the bowl like an octopus arm, slapping wetly against the side, trying to snag anything it could.

Harvey Lee made a break under the door of the next stall, his legs dragging, useless. His bare ass shone like a yellow moon under the fluorescents, and a gentle snow of mayflies settled on it as he pushed his way through them. The place where the lethal flower had grabbed him was a round, oozing hole, expanding rapidly as he strained across the floor. Even worse, his face felt funny and his tongue had swollen to fill his entire mouth.

By the time he got to the outside door he couldn’t raise himself up high enough to reach the handle, so he tried hooking his fingers under the door. His fingernails slid off, leaving red meat behind, but he didn't care. All that mattered was getting out.

After carefully feeling around the bowl as far as it could reach, the Catonine realized that the food had escaped. Its hunger was profound. Since tunneling into the rest stop’s septic field it had only fed once. It needed to conserve its remaining energy for more likely prey.

It pulled its mouthparts back, simultaneously expanding its body to fill the pipe so it could better sense fresh prey.

Death attracted more food. When a prey animal died, other things came to eat it, only to become meals themselves. Once established near water, life for a Catonine was an all-you-can-eat buffet.

All it had to do was wait.

It stopped moving, except for the slow expansion and contraction of its respiration process. When nothing further happened, its metabolism automatically slowed. Trucks and cars rumbled by out on the highway, too distant and quick to register as food.

Suddenly there was movement out in the parking lot, near the edge of its sensory range. The vibrations were heavy and frantic, food in trouble, food on the run.

Excited, the Catonine slipped down out of the pipes and into the black maze of its slime-coated tunnels.

 

Harvey Lee was having trouble. That was how he thought of it, deep inside his cottage cheesifying brain:

Havin’ some trouble, Ma.

He pulled himself along with elbows and hands, the tips of his fingers bursting like overripe grapes. He couldn't raise himself much off the cement - he couldn't trust his arms - but it hurt his chest to lie too flat, hurt bad.

Fishflies covered him in a moving blanket of clear wings and wriggling bodies, but he didn't mind. In fact, he couldn't even see them anymore, except as vague blurs. His mind called them fairies - not the bad kind, the kind that his Ma had taught him did bad things to you, but the kind he'd believed in when he was small.

He laughed a little as he crawled, the laugh ending in a deep, wet cough and a bubble of blood that popped in his eye. It stung a bit, but Harvey Lee didn't mind that, either. He had a goal in mind, a goal the fairies were escorting him to, because he couldn't quite see it in all this snow. If he could just make it back to the Olds, he could get away from this scary place, away from whatever had tried to get him. If he could just get into the Olds, he would be safe. Everything would be okay then.

His nose felt stuffy. He blew through his nostrils, trying to clear the greenies out. A sledgehammer hit him in the back of the head, and everything swam for a minute. He laid his cheek on the sidewalk, wondering why it was painted red. Then he remembered he had a date waiting in the car.

What did the boy look like? Was he a towhead? Ginger? Harvey Lee used to keep fingers, to help him remember what each boy had been like, but eventually those mementoes dried up and turned the same dark, greasy color as spoiled bananas.

Can’t remember, he decided.

Well, that was easily solved. He would just open the trunk and take a look. He wasn't quite up to lovemaking at the moment - this damned cold and the shits had certainly laid him low - but he might be persuaded. Yeah, he might.

The thought pushed him along, and he half-fell off the curb into the parking lot, landing heavily and clipping his two front teeth. They popped loose easily, and he swallowed them before he was even aware what had happened.

His forehead bumped something. It was a ... what was it? A tire. That seemed important, somehow. Why had he wanted a tire? He lay down on the warm asphalt to think about it, the fairies dancing across his fluttering eyelids. Harvey Lee felt hot all over - prickly heat, his mama had called it. Then he remembered he had a boy in the trunk.

"Need my danshin' pardner," he burbled, his swollen tongue gliding over the puckered spot where his front teeth had been. "Jush a sheck."

Harvey Lee held up one finger to show the fairies how long a sec was. It was as swollen as a Ballpark frank, plump when you cook'em.

He waved the fairies away from his face so he could see if he was near the front or the back of the Olds. The blue license plate swam into view. The back, then. That was lucky - as sick as he felt, he had almost crawled right past it. He reached back for his keys, then remembered that his pants were still around his ankles. Oh well - there was no one to see but the fairies, and they didn't mind.

He couldn't make his legs move, so he curled up as best he could to reach his pocket. It didn't occur to him that he shouldn't be able to bend backward so far - what drew his attention was that he was somehow seeing his own ass. It looked huge and angry, and jiggled like jello when he moved. His pants were sticky with blood. It seemed to be coming from underneath him. Well, there would be time to figure that out later. Right now, he was having enough trouble trying to make his cucumber fingers fit into his pants pocket, thank you very much.

Ah - success.

It took him a moment to find the right key in the crowd. Many were trophies with increasingly vague memories attached, mementos of boys long dead.

He looked up at the Olds, then at the keys. What had he wanted them for again?

A loud thump came from the trunk, startling him. Then there was a muffled scream. It sounded far away. He lifted the key to the trunk. It was hard - his arm didn't want to move right, and it felt as heavy as a tree. The key pinged off the lock, then again, scratching the paint. He couldn't seem to make his hand do what he wanted, either, even with the fairies' help.

A racking cough made him drop the keys. They landed on his right eye, which popped softly. The mush inside was mostly grey. Harvey Lee blinked. He didn't feel any pain, but half the world had suddenly gone away, and he was curious where it had gotten to. He felt around for the keys, managed to raise them above his head again. By now, most of him was natural casing sausage, but he was stubborn - his ma had always said so, and damned if he was going to let a little cold keep him from opening his own goddamned trunk.

He finally managed to get the key in the keyhole, but turning it was difficult - the bones in his fingers kept moving around, the muscles too soft to confine them any more. He seemed to be sinking, but in reality it was more a matter of spreading out, like a pat of melting butter. It took six attempts to make the key turn. All the while, the trunk was silent, and Harvey Lee forgot that he had heard anything. This wasn't entirely his fault. By now, some of his brain was sloshing out his nose. The rest was sitting in a clot at the base of his skull, looking for a way out.

The key turned, the lock popped, and the trunk opened like Dracula's coffin. A face, looking down at him. Harvey Lee smiled, or tried to. His face wouldn't cooperate - it was trying to slide off his chin.

"Hi," he gasped, always pleased to meet someone new.

 

TODD WAKES UP

Todd woke and sat up at the same time, slamming his head hard enough against the trunk lid to see stars, just like in a cartoon. Then he smelled the stench, felt the bloated, greasy thing under him, and remembered.

That was when he screamed.

What are you doing? said the voice in his head. Trying to be next? Shut up! Shut up!

Todd tried to reason with it. But there's this dead kid in here, very very dead, and my hand is in the middle of something and I don't want to think about what so please can't we get out of here?

Listen, said the other voice, clear as a bell.

So Todd did, wondering if he was going a little crazy, because he had never heard voices before, and here he was arguing with one. Then he thought about where he was, and decided it was okay to go a little crazy. Especially if it got him the fuck out of Dodge.

He heard something scratching to his left, keys, and quickly felt around for something to fight with. He tried to avoid the corpse, then just dug, desperate. Maybe it was Stench-Man. Maybe someone else, someone who had heard him.

Please let it be someone else, he prayed.

Find a weapon just in case, advised the other voice. He nodded, flailing, feeling, but there were only empty cans and the… other thing.

He found the tire iron.

Holding his breath, he heard something below him. It sounded like a washing machine, or the world's worst chain smoker. Why was it coming from the ground? Did the…

stranger danger

…guy know somehow that he was waiting in here to - to what?

Bash his head in, if you want to live, said the other voice. Todd nodded. That was what he would have to do. The thought was oddly exciting. Provided he lived through it.

Ah, Karyn. I was wrong. Things can always get worse.

He heard the key ram home, and took a deep breath, tire iron at the ready. He would have to swing as soon as he could see what he was swinging at, or he was dead meat…

just like junior, here

…just like junior here.

The trunk popped open. There was no one there. And there was no one there. And, finally, there was no one there. His minds fought over what to do…

swing! swing! he's hiding right below the lip of the trunk!

…but it was the breathing that decided him. No one that sounded like that was going to live long. Maybe someone had shot him. Maybe he'd had a traffic accident, and was lying on the road, bleeding to death. Happy thoughts, all. It took courage, more than Todd thought he had, at this juncture, but he finally just made himself lean over and look.

What's that sound? he wondered, as he sat back down. Oh, it's me. So I guess I was right; he's not going to live long. Because no one that looks like that should be alive, not even guys that...

his face is falling off, it’s falling right off, oh God

...killed little boys.

It was just too horrible, the most horrible thing in the world.

He was wrong, of course; feeling the thing's mushy hand close around his ankle was much, much worse.

Harvey Lee was having trouble. Trouble breathing, trouble seeing, trouble thinking, trouble moving, trouble trouble trouble. He needed some help, someone friendly to make it all better and help him remember his name. He heard someone, a familiar sound, reached out blindly. Something deeper than his conscious mind made him hold on for dear life. Harvey Lee’s hands knew he was dying, even if he didn't.

When Todd pulled back, Harvey Lee came, too. Everything in his upper half sloshed inside his skin. His legs and ass, strained to bursting, finally did just that, spraying milky tomato soup across the asphalt.

"L'il hep," he gasped, staring with blind eyes at Todd, who scrambled back into the trunk as far as he could go, pulling Harvey Lee with him. The man's face dripped onto the leg of his jeans like skin off a pudding.

"Li' heh."

Harvey Lee’s eyes leaked back into his skull, leaving empty sockets. It was this that drove Todd over the edge, and he struck Harvey Lee full in the face with the tire iron. It was like hitting a bag of oatmeal; there was no resistance at all, and Harvey Lee's head folded around the tire iron like an oven mitt grasping a cookie sheet.

Todd kicked, and the thing tumbled back onto the parking lot with a wet smack. He was having a bad dream. Bad dream. The way to wake up was to run away as fast as he could, only the other part of him wouldn't let him move. Cold as milk in the cooler, it cut through his terror like a knife.

What could do that to a man? it wondered. If we get out of this trunk, will whatever did that to him do it to us, too?

He sat and whimpered, hugging his knees, smelling the reek of the little boy and wanting it to be a bad dream, knowing it was real, and he had to listen to that other part of his brain if he wanted to live.

Let's take another look, it suggested. Get the lay of the land.

No no no, whimpered Todd, hugging his knees tighter. Please don't make me, please please please don't make me look at it again.

The other voice was not persuaded.

If we stay here, we're going to die, it said. We need to run away from here, and we need to know where to run, so we need to know where ‘here’ is first. And we need to know what happened so it doesn't happen to us.

That made sense. Todd nodded. Made good sense. He shifted forward, but the other wasn't quite ready yet.

Listen first, it said, so Todd listened, and heard trucks, and insects whirring, but no breathing at all.

Todd felt around for anything else that might be useful, trying hard not to look at the naked, blackened thing that had once been someone's son, but it was like not thinking about pink rhinos; he couldn't not look.

That was someone's kid, he thought. He used to play with Lego's, fart in the bathtub, maybe threw a ball around with his dad. And that... monster... took all of that away from him, and everything that his parents looked forward to for him.

What if he was my kid?

He thought about the boy's parents. Knowing would be a terrible thing, but not as bad as not knowing.

I’d want to know, if he were mine.

The tire iron was gory. Todd wiped it off on one of the trash bags and rooted around for anything else that he could find. Trash, all of it. Small articles of clothing, all filthy, crusted with blood. Trash bags full of cans and plastic bottles. The dead boy. Nothing else.

Time to go.

He looked over the edge again, to be sure not to step on what was left of the man. The shirt and pants were the only thing that made it possible to tell it had ever been a man. What hadn't leaked out across the parking lot had flattened almost completely, like a deflated balloon. There was a smell that cut through even the stench of the man's body and the horrors in the trunk, a chemical smell.

When Todd was a kid, he and his buddies used to catch praying mantises in coffee cans in the field behind their houses and feed them grasshoppers, marveling at the way the grasshoppers stayed alive, even with most of their heads devoured. Sometimes they forgot to add grasshoppers and there would be fewer, fatter mantises the next day. The smell inside the coffee can, the smell of concentrated praying mantis - this was like that, only stronger.

He looked around. The lights were off in the parking lot, but he could tell it was the rest area out on the highway. There was a truck about twenty yards away, but no other vehicles. He wondered why it was dark, and why there was only one other vehicle. Whenever he had stopped here, there had never been less than a dozen other cars, plus a few big rigs.

Something's not right. But what?

Out on the highway, traffic whizzed by. That was comforting, the prospect of rescue only a few dozen yards away. Whatever was wrong, it was localized. He tried to puzzle it out. It was like someone had dumped a big tub of acid on the guy, and he just melted. Acid from where? And were they defending themselves, or was it one of the guy's friends that did it to him?

Another killer. One that drove the truck, maybe. So maybe still here, somewhere. Watching him right now.

Tire iron in hand, Todd rolled out of the trunk just like James Bond. Then he beat feet for the highway, watching and listening for pursuit all the way.

THE DEATH OF HARVEY LEE

For the benefit of those who believe in near-death experiences, Harvey Lee Osborne's final moments:

The tire iron was a surprise. He didn't actually feel it, but he felt off-balance, somehow. His breathing stopped. What was left of his heart gave up the ghost.

It was very quiet and very dark.

He felt hot - prickly heat, his mama used to call it - as the tenderizer continued its work. Normally, prey animals were taken by the throat as they drank; the prey hooks injected their chemical cocktail straight into the arteries and brain before the food could fight back. Once the meal was immobilized, its heart did the work of pumping the tenderizer through the rest of the body.

As Harvey Lee's brain dissolved, the darkness gave way to a bright tunnel, just like the TV preachers sometimes said. And there was his mama, coming to greet him, a big smile on her face.

Mama! cried Harvey Lee, glad to see her after so long. Now that he was dying, he would finally have her all to himself, just like he had always wanted.

Then Harvey Lee remembered how his mama had died, and what he had done to her afterward.

Her smile spread past her ears as she came to do what he had always known she someday would, lifting her dress so the thing between her legs could eat him, screaming.

 

THE CATONINE

It lay curled in on itself in the cool wet, dozing as all predators do, most of the time. It was mindless in these in-between times, and little more than that at any other time. After killing the hiker it had been great with food, its skin stretched as tight as a drumhead left out in the rain. Now, it resembled an empty trash bag. 

It was hermaphroditic, so no part of its life needed to be wasted on the pursuit, acquisition, or defense of a mate. It had been designed to be cannibalistic, too – indeed, it had consumed most of its brood-mates before leaving the egg case – so it had no need of communication or the ability to differentiate among family members.

Nature could be creative, but it could also be conservative. When it found something that worked, it left well enough alone. Sharks had been sharks for more than one hundred million years. 

Those who engineered the Catonines built a creature that was adaptive but simple. Its function was to consume and reproduce, spewing microscopic offspring into water supplies, where they were taken into the bodies of animals who drank. Others fed on free swimmers until they were large enough to take on larger prey, and spread by forcing eggs into prey animals and turning them loose to find another water source, as the squirrel had done, and propagate that way.

It had limited ability to move on land, but withered in the sun. It was meant to be a covert killer, keeping to the dark, the unseen, the wet, until everything that drank had been eaten.

The Catonine was a broom, sent to cleanse the world, but it was early. It was meant to be released by the billions, not by the dozen, so that an entire planet could be vacated in a year or less.

It knew none of this, of course. It knew nothing but dark, light, and food. But the hammer always finds the nail. 

 

TODD ON THE RUN

Todd almost immediately slipped on the puke on his shoes and tore the knees out of his jeans and the skin off his knees hitting the parking lot. He risked a look back toward the car as he got up, saw that it was empty, and put everything he had into sprinting across the asphalt toward the highway, spitting fishflies as he went.

God, it’s dark.

There was no sound except for the cars on the highway, the insects, and his shoes slapping asphalt. Running felt good, felt right. He looked back, but couldn't see anyone following. Maybe they hadn't known he was there.

Maybe they’re all dead, too.

He thought of Karyn again, and put on a burst of speed as his feet left the pavement for the grass. The highway was maybe sixty feet away. He could flag down a car or, if no one would stop, run along the road the mile or two to the next exit, and call his folks from the gas station there. What a story he would have to tell.

He risked one more look back. He was just at the edge of the light from the streetlight on the highway, a clear target, and he wanted to be sure no one was going to take a shot at him.

The ground giving way under his feet was completely unexpected. He went down hard, the wind knocked out of him, biting his tongue in a white flash of pain, hard enough to taste blood.

Shit! he thought, as he slid backward into the hole. And then panicked as he realized it was a very deep hole, ladies and gentlemen, and he was gone, gone, gone.

He lay in mud and worse. It was dark, except for the little bit of light spilling down into the hole from the highway. The edge of the hole high above his head, impossibly far away.

I'm in a fucking sewer pipe.

The pipe was one of the big capacity ceramic jobs, designed to carry rainwater and sewage to the water treatment plant up in Port Huron. Unfortunately, it was cracked and crumbling from age, stress, and earthquakes, for all Todd knew. It was also easily nine feet across, which meant the hole was well above Todd's head when he was standing up, which he intended to do right now, thank you very much.

What the hell is that?

Ten feet away in the murk lay a garbage bag. It was maybe four feet long, pear-shaped, and…

Todd jumped when the end of it closest to him stretched out, wormlike and tumescent. Like a cartoon cat pushed through a drainpipe, the mouthparts bloomed at the tip, like a flower opening.

Oh my God. Is that a giant leech?

Its skin was a mottled gray-brown, with big black pores that expanded and contracted rhythmically. It was slightly transparent, too, like a tadpole's belly. Todd could see things moving inside.

Todd was too shit-scared to move. The four transparent hooks at the corners of the thing’s mouth spread wide, the tiny pink tentacles between them fanned out in pulsing waves. The hooks were wicked-looking, each as long as Todd's fingers.

It obviously knew he was there but, as far as Todd could see, it didn't have any eyes.

Waiting for me to move. Maybe it can feel the air movement, or it can sense my body heat, like the alien in that movie. Only if that was true, wouldn't it have attacked before now?

Todd pressed himself down into the muck. He watched it, and waited, and wondered how quickly it could move.

The questing mouth parts waved back and forth, stretching up, its photosensitive organ seeking patches of dark against the light from above. Fully extended, it almost touched the top of the pipe.

It paused, mouth parts and tip retracting, then reached out again just above the surface of the mud, sweeping broadly from side to side like a snake, seeking.

Slowly, Todd pulled the tire iron toward himself with his left hand. The head (the end with the mouth must be the head, right?) ducked down to inspect his hand. He froze again. It was almost touching him. And then it did, delicately brushing the back of his left hand.

The reaction on both sides was instant.

Instantly, the soft cilia wrapped around his hand, cool and wet to the touch. Todd saw the prey hooks arch back like the hammer in a pistol, their pointed tips oozing clear liquid.

Todd yanked his hand back, but the tendrils were stronger than they looked, and the tube that they were attached to stretched to accommodate his movement.

He shook his hand frantically, not wanting it to get a good enough grip that it could bite him, and splashed around for the tire iron with his right hand. He closed on it and brought it around in one motion, aiming for the tube, to knock it away. It hit and rebounded as if it had struck a taut rubber band, but the grip only tightened and little jets of fluid squirted from the four fangs.

Where do I hit it? Where can I kill it?

Anywhere, anywhere! said a second voice in his head.

Todd swung.

It was not as graceful as the first swing, but it had the advantage of connecting with the sharp end of the crowbar. A tear opened up in the thing's side.

Something spilled out, intestines or some other organs, and it let go of him and recoiled, writhing against the floor of the pipe. It rolled and rolled and, when it was done rolling, it rolled some more.

Todd didn't wait. He ran like hell. The wrong way.

The part of the sewer system that ran alongside the highway and into which Todd ran was the spillway into which feeder tubes from homes, businesses, and rain gutters flowed. Even at noon, it was almost completely black down there, because rain and sewage don't need nightlights.

After running into his first wall, Todd remembered the tiny light on his keychain, intended for nothing more than making sure you got the key in the keyhole. He fished it out, listening for movement, but heard only water.

The light it provided was a mere pinprick, but in the blackness it stood out like a flare. At least it was enough to keep his feet under him and spot branching tunnels.

What if there isn't any other way out?

Now THERE’S a happy thought, answered the other voice. Are you always this cheerful?

He pointed the light behind him, but couldn’t see far enough to tell if the thing was following or not. Maybe it was dead.

Maybe it’s waiting, just beyond the light, and it’ll get you the minute your back is turned.

Fuck you. Fuck. You.

Todd turned, staring into the darkness that ran under the road. Sewer guys needed to get in and out, right? So it had to come out somewhere. It was just a matter of following a straight line, as straight as the pipes allowed, until he found an exit. Because no matter what, he wasn’t going anywhere near that thing again.

But even after all that, the elephant caught him completely by surprise.

KARYN

In her bed in her parents' house, eight miles away, Karyn had a vivid dream. In it, Todd was climbing into a cigar tube. She tried to tell him how silly that was, because cigar tubes only opened on one end.

"So do condoms," he replied, which was true, but what did that have to do with anything?

"If you go in there, I'm not coming in after you," she warned him, but he brushed her aside, now wearing a motorcycle helmet and a jumpsuit Elvis would have envied. As he climbed into the tube, he shrank like Alice, and dwindled away to nothing.

"He's right, you know," said the giant worm at her side. It leered, displaying teeth like sharpened icicles. "You have to go in to get out."

"You're the whole reason we're in this mess," she reminded it, whereupon it climbed into the tube, too, and pulled the cap closed after it.

In her sleep, Karyn moaned and woke herself up. She lay there for a moment, thinking…

this is the last night before they'll know, the last night when everything is still okay

…but that wasn't true, because things had already changed - she had already changed - and they were going to change a lot more in the coming months.

She suddenly felt so lonesome for Todd that she began to cry, muffling her sobs with a pillow, lest her mother hear.

The sun was just climbing the horizon when she wiped her eyes and got up to pee, the robins already hard at their morning choir practice. No one else was stirring yet, not even her little brothers.

Karyn went back to bed and waited for the house to wake up, savoring every sound, counting down the hours and the minutes until Todd arrived and they told her family the secret that would change their lives forever.

BILL

One of the downsides of living in Michigan, thought Bill Higgins as he loaded his fishing gear into his Boston Whaler, is the weather. He had lived in the Thumb all his life, but Lake Huron could still surprise him by throwing up hail one minute and sunshine the next, with temperature swings of as much as forty degrees just to keep you on your toes.

Case in point: this morning.

Oh, it had dawned all things bright and beautiful, the heat already radiating up from the ground as he bent down to get the paper off the porch. But by the time he’d had breakfast and gotten dressed, the wind had shifted to the north, the sky had darkened and the temp had to be mid-fifties now at best.

None of which would keep him from going fishing, of course. Ever since retirement from teaching - science at the middle school, then biology at the high school - not even snow could do that. But it meant an extra six-pack was required (purely for insulation, you understand) and, if it rained, probably no smokes.

“You’re not taking any cigarettes with you, right?” asked his wife Maureen, as she handed him the plastic bag full of sandwiches.

“Woman, didn’t you hear what the doctor said?” he grumbled.

She looked him dead in the eye. “The question is, did you hear what he said? You’ve got to last me.”

“How can I smoke when it’s gonna rain cats and dogs?”

His wife hugged herself against the chill. “Isn’t it supposed to clear up?”

Bill shrugged. He put the bag in the boat, covered it with the all-weather tarp, and tied it down against the rising wind.

Maureen grabbed his hat on each side of his head and pulled him in for a kiss. It was a long one, something else that had changed since retirement.

“Be careful,” she said. “Come home if it gets bad. No sense getting sick over a few sunfish.”

“Prob’ly won’t get any,” he said, and that was true – he hadn’t caught a thing all week. He normally did his fishing in Black River under the I-94 bridge. Maybe it was time to investigate the canals and see if he had any better luck there.

“What time do you think you’ll be home?” asked Maureen, heading for the screen door.

“Late enough for you and the milkman to do your business,” he said. “But probably not to squeeze in the mail man, too.”

“They don’t have milk men anymore,” Maureen reminded him for the umpteenth time. She never got the joke, or maybe she did and didn’t find it funny. Not after thirty years of marriage, anyway.

“I know,” he sighed, climbing into his old Tercel. “I know, I know, I know.”

He pulled the door shut. It squealed in protest.

“I know just how you feel,” he said.

 

HAYDEN

Hayden Green was watching a dog sack.

He had made up the term ‘dog sack’ himself, because that’s what it looked like to him and, being eleven, he tended toward the literal.

The dog sack smelled. Bad.

During summer break, his parents kicked him out of the house when they went to work and didn’t expect him back before dusk, a rare thing in these electronic times. Hayden didn’t mind, even though all the other kids were playing video games at home or at camp or whatever other kids did. He was used to solitude. In fact, he preferred it.

He liked to ride his bike down to the woods near Black River. It was quiet there. Sometimes he brought a banana and a book, sometimes a sandwich, but he always brought his magnifying glass.

Carpenter ants looked like monsters under it, covered with hairs you couldn’t otherwise see. And when he discovered how to focus the light through the lens to burn stuff, he would pretend that he was Superman using his heat vision to burn messages into green leaves or kill the monster ants before they could overrun Metropolis.

Burned ants smelled just like burned popcorn, curiously enough, and they wouldn’t stand still to die - you had to cripple them first. Then, under the blinding light, they would suddenly stop moving, smoke, and pop.

Frogs moved too much, he found, and they died if you tried to stun them with a board, but you could get them to hold a firecracker or a small smoke bomb in their mouths if you were patient enough, a trick that worked with garter snakes, too. He would blow them up or burn them, meticulously inspect the damage, and come back the next day to watch the crows eat whatever was left. It was the circle of life in action.

But he had never seen a dog sack before.

There it lay, at the edge of the river, a bag of skin and fur with a collar where he guessed its neck must have been, but the bag seemed curiously empty. For one thing, it was flat as a pancake. Even if the dog somehow got run over, it was Hayden’s experience that the bones tended to shoot out through the skin. They didn’t magically disappear. And there was obviously no meat in the sack; despite the fact that it reeked, the crows wouldn’t touch it.

What could do that? he wondered. Would Drano do that? He wondered if his parents would let him get a dog.

He hunted around along the bank until he found a good solid stick, and used it to gently poke what was left of the dog. The corpse wasn’t all dried out, like he expected; the skin was supple and gave in an odd way. He got the stick under the edge of the collar and used it to flip the dead animal’s tag so he could see the name. It read Riley in capital letters.

Something under the skin, or inside it, moved.

Hayden stepped back, stick upraised. There were rats all along the river, living off dead fish and sewage and whatever else they could find, and he had learned that they had no fear of him. He slid the stick under the edge of the dog sack, ready to run, and flipped the skin over.

The back side of the skin was soaking wet, and smelled worse, if that was even possible, but there was no rat. Instead, there was what he first thought was a fist-sized black rock, until it flattened out like a bloodworm, trying to flee to the water.

“Wicked,” said Hayden. He used the stick as a barrier, blocking its path. The front of it reached out and touched his stick, tried to go over it, so he raised the stick and it tried to go under it, so he stopped it from doing that, too.

Suddenly, the end of it squeezed out a long tube capped by something that looked like a flower, black on the outside and pink inside, which waved back and forth like a cobra. When he moved his stick, the flower whipped out and grabbed the stick right out of his hand. For something so small, it had a hell of a grip.

“Fuckin’ wicked,” said Hayden, who stood up and backed away a few steps as it wormed its way back into the water. It had to be some kind of leech, right? Some kind he hadn’t seen before. That meant scientific study was called for, under controlled conditions. If he could catch it and put it in his fish tank at home, he could observe how it hunted and stuff.

I’ll need my jar, he thought, trotting back to his bike. My jar and my fish net. Didn’t leeches carry some kind of disease? He would need the rubber gloves that he’d taken from under the sink, too.

Who needed video games when there was science to do?

BILL GOES FISHING

“I’ve really gotta quit smokin’”, coughed Bill, drawing the sweet nicotine deep inside his bubbling lungs.

It was true, of course. What would Maureen do without him? Worse, what if all she remembered of him was of his final years spent dying a slow death from lung cancer, throat cancer, or worse? She drove him crazy, but she deserved better than that.

The rain clouds had walked and talked all around the sky, but so far not a drop had fallen. Unfortunately, not a single fish had taken his bait, either, and he was running dangerously low on beer. There weren’t even any ducks for company.

Maybe he’d have better luck by the crick mouth.

He reeled in his line, stowed his pole, pulled up the cement block that he used as an anchor, and dropped his oars. The crick was upstream and the current near the highway bridge was a bitch, so it took Bill the better part of an hour to get his boat over to the crick’s entrance.

It didn’t exactly do his lungs any favors. In fact, when he finally got out of the current, he coughed so long and hard that he wound up in the weeds, retching grey bits of what he hoped wasn’t lung tissue into the brown water.

When it was over, he spat, then spat again to get the taste out of his mouth. That was when he spotted it, nestled in the greenery just at the water’s edge. Something golden.

At first he thought that it was a beer can, It was about the same size and shape, but the ends were rounded and the symbols etched into the side didn’t look like any logo he recognized.

Curious, he leaned over to pluck it from the bottom, but the shift in weight caused the whaler to swing back out into the crick. He had to push the boat back over with one oar, and then he couldn’t see whatever it was for all the mud that his paddling stirred up.

Bill stuck an oar into the bottom to keep the whaler in place and waited for the mud to settle. It was probably just a thermos or something that fell overboard from one of the pleasure boats that docked along the river, but every once in a while you came across interesting stuff. His workbench at home held all manner of odds and ends from the old paper mill and other businesses that lined the river’s banks, including a cow skull from the slaughterhouse that used to be a stone’s throw from this very crick.

Finally, the water settled enough that he spotted the flash of gold again, and ducked his arm in to grab it. It was heavier than he expected, certainly heavier than a lost thermos.

He held it up in the fading light and studied the markings along its sides. They were embossed into the metal, but if they were words, they weren’t in English or any other alphabet that he knew. There also didn’t seem to be any way to open the container, or seams of any kind. It was cold to the touch, too - much colder than the water - which again made him think of a Thermos but, if it had just been dropped recently enough to still be cold, why hadn’t he seen the boat that dropped it? Nothing much larger than his whaler could navigate the crick - it was too narrow.

Pleased with his find and suddenly tired of being on the water, Bill set the gold canister in the bottom of the whaler and pushed off with an oar. It meant no fish for supper, but he could probably talk Maureen into pizza. He reached into his vest pocket for a stick of gum. Maureen tolerated beer, but it would be best if she didn’t smell the cigarettes on his breath.

In a few moments he was back out in the current, letting it push his little boat back toward the bridge and his Toyota. The golden canister rolled a bit in the bottom of the boat. He could hardly wait to get it home and fiddle with it.

KARYN GETS SOME NEWS

Numb. So this is what that felt like.

Todd ran away. She knew it was hard, and scary; nobody knew that better than her. But of all the things that she had thought about, all the possible scenarios that had played out in her mind since the drugstore test confirmed her worst fears, the thought that he might just head for the hills had never entered her mind.

Maybe he just needs more time to take it all in.

She was still taking it in, and she had known for longer than he had. But it wasn’t like him not to call or write or… or something. That conscientiousness was part of what had drawn her to him in the first place. He always looked out for her feelings, and treated them as if they were the most precious thing in the world.

So why no word? And where in the world could he have gone?

She had called his house first, hesitating until the afternoon because she kept expecting him to call her first. It was weird talking to his mom; they had been close from the beginning. For a moment, Karyn almost almost came right out and told her, but when she heard that Todd hadn’t come home from work, the words froze on her tongue. It was all she could do to ask Mrs. Armstrong to have him call her when he got home.

“Is anything wrong?” Mrs. Armstrong said, sensing something.

“No,” Karyn lied. “No, just have him call me, please.”

After that, she called the party store, but Todd wasn’t there and they seemed to be either really busy or really angry, so she hung up, the phone dangling in her hand.

Next came Greg, his best friend, whose number she got from the class directory, and when he had no idea where Todd was she made her way through all of the other friends that she knew about, leaving messages everywhere and receiving none in return.

Bit by bit, the day worn on. Dinner with her family was quiet, with her two younger brothers, Joel and Josh, going on and on about how they should be permitted to take the family boat out on the lake by themselves. They were fifteen and sixteen, after all, and all of their friends were doing it.

“Has that argument ever worked in the history of the world?” she said, which earned her glares from both of them, but part of her was glad. She hadn’t been allowed to take the boat out by herself until she was seventeen. At least one rule seemed to hold true from one sibling to the next.

After dinner she took a bath, rather than her usual shower, and spent most of it staring at her still-flat belly.

“That won’t last long,” she told it. She patted it gently, wondering how long it would be before she began to show. Even now, it was weird to think that there was another person in there, a new person, and that she was somehow involved. She wondered if all new mothers felt that way. If so, her mom had never mentioned it.

That was when she realized that she was crying.

Later, after the boys had gone to bed, she knocked on her parents’ bedroom door and, when her father’s deep voice said, “Yes?”, she went in and told them.

Her mother asked if she was sure. Karyn nodded.

“Where is Todd?” said her father. He seemed more upset that Todd wasn’t there than anything.

“I don’t know,” she said. “He didn’t…”

That was when the phone rang. Who would call so late? Her mother picked it up, said “Hello?” and listened for a moment, then held the handset out to Karyn.

”It’s for you.”

“Who is it?” said her father. “Is it Todd?”

“No,” said her mother. “It’s Valerie - Todd’s mother.”

Karyn put the phone up to her ear. “Hello? This is Karyn.”

Karyn listened. The words coming out of the phone didn’t make any sense, so she asked Todd’s mother to say them again. When she was done, Karyn said, “Yes, I will,” and Todd’s mother hung up. After awhile, the phone beeped at her, so Karyn handed it back to her mother.

She looked at her parents.

“What is it, honey?” her mom said.

“What did she say?” her father said.

“She said Todd’s missing,” said Karyn. “She said the police say he’s… that he was kidnapped at work. They… he…” She fell onto her butt, dropping the phone in the process. Her parents were out of bed in a moment, on their knees with her, but she still couldn’t make the words make sense.

Todd’s mother had said that a serial killer had taken Todd, and that the police thought it likely that Todd was dead. In a remarkably calm voice, like some kind of machine, she told Karyn to prepare for the worst.

The worst? How can I prepare for the worst? It’s already here.

HAYDEN’S LABORATORY

Hayden’s latest test subject was better than any video game, ever. That was what he called the insects and animals that came his way: Test subjects. His first test subjects had been toys, but he soon lost interest in those. They just sat there; they didn’t move or try to get away. When he blew them up or burned them, they were just junk. But when you did that with living things, they became… 

Holy. Sacrifices to the great god Science.

Like his fish. The moment he dumped the leech-thing in the tank with them, the tetras and the guppies headed for the opposite side of the tank. Not that it had helped them, in the end.

He sat on the edge of his bed and watched. The whatever-it-was swam like a snake, stretching and undulating. It was fast, too, and ruthlessly efficient: When a fish got within striking distance of its crazy tentacle or tongue or whatever it was, it snapped out like a whip, struck, and the fish shuddered a while, harpooned.

The fish would swell up after that, becoming almost translucent, and the thing would reel it in and slurp the fish down like a shake through a straw. Then the empty skin would be cast aside and the next fish pursued.

It seemed to be hungry all the time.

Hayden pictured what must have happened to the dog sack, back when it was still a dog. Maybe it had gone to the river to drink, the leech-thing had stung it, and was pulled out of the water as the dog died. He wished he had been there to see it.

He Googled every kind of leech, but nothing that he saw looked much like it, except in a general wormy kind of way. No leech that he saw had a tongue like that, anyway, or that flowery head part. When he posted his videos online, he got hundreds of likes, but no answers.

Maybe it was like the zebra mussels - something that came over in one of the big carrier ships’ bilge tanks. Or maybe it was something new. Either way, it was cool as hell. And maybe tomorrow he would catch a frog, something closer to its size, and see who ate who.

The possibilities were almost endless, and summer vacation had barely begun.

TODD IN THE DARK

Todd could do without the dark. He really could. Didn’t anyone who worked for the water department believe in lights? Or signs? Or… something?

It wasn’t that he couldn’t find ways up - they were all over the place. The problem was, to prevent scrap metal thieves from stealing them and selling them to China, the manhole covers were all bolted down.

He had tried standing under one at what sounded like a busy intersection, hanging on to the ladder and shouting, but it was all car traffic; no one could hear him. Even if someone walked by, which they didn’t, they would be past him in two strides and never notice a thing.

So he kept moving in what he thought was a fairly straight line, hoping for an exit. Because there had to be one eventually, right?

Too bad they don’t teach sewer survival skills at the community college, said the voice in his head.

“It’s amazing how little you know about such a common thing,” he agreed.

At least you’ve had ‘An Introduction to Giant Leeches’.

Todd laughed. “You’re right.” Oh my God I’m talking to myself. How long have I been down here?

You’re probably just still in shock. I would be, too, after everything that’s happened. I’m sure you’ll be fine, once we get out of here, maybe spend a little time with a therapist or ten.

Now I’m talking to myself about talking to myself.

“Karyn, I’m sorry!” he said, to no one but her. “I should have been there. I should be there.” What would she have done, when he didn’t show? What must she think?

Nothing that isn’t true.

“She probably called my house. And then the store,” he said, playing it out, step by step. “Work would’ve called my house, too, when they found the store empty. My folks would say I didn’t come home, so they probably watched the video recorders and…”

Someone knew he had been kidnapped. By now, maybe several someones. And he hoped to God that one of them was Karyn. That had to be better than abandoning her, right?

Six of one…

“The first thing I’m going to do when I get out of here is put a cork in you.”

Promises, promises.

CURTIS

On the far north side of town, where Black River was little more than a brook with ambition, there were dozens of family farms. Some grew sugar beets, many grew corn, and one, in particular, raised a few heifers for the farmer’s market crowd: CowTown Ranch.

Bad joke, thought Curtis for the umpteenth time as he lugged the big bale of alfalfa up to the fence. Joke or not, the lake dwellers would pay half again as much for pasture-fed beef as they would for what grocery store stocked. Sure, it was hot, sweaty work, but it beat pumpin’ gas.

Moo!

Holy christ,did that cow just say moo?

He had literally never before in his life ever heard a cow moo. Cattle made all kinds of noises, most of’em farts, but ‘moo’ was a storybook word.

Moooo! said the cow, emphatically. It was over by the pond, and it seemed to be caught up on something. Cows were incredibly stupid. Give them a basketball and they’d find some way to break their legs on it. That’s just the way beef was.

Curtis pushed the bale up and over the fence, and the other cows immediately began to wander over. At least they were smart enough to eat. He climbed over the fence before they got in the way and strode toward the pond.

The cow at the water’s edge turned and looked at him, its eyes rolling white. That meant fear. As he got closer, Curtis could see that it was holding one leg up off the ground. Could it have gotten tangled in some barbed wire somewhere?

“Hey, there, girl,” said Curtis, looking under the cow to see what it was caught up on. He reached out with one gloved hand to pat her reassuringly on the back.

Something shot around from behind the cow and pulled him right off his feet and over it. He landed hard on his back in the mud at the edge of the pond, the wind knocked right out of him.

Jesus! What - ?

He looked up. There were three or four shiny black things on the cow’s belly, each about the size of a football. A bright pink ropy thing had hold of his arm, and it led to one of the black things. As he watched, the black thing dropped off the cow and used its pink rope to pull itself toward him.

“What the actual fuck?” said Curtis.

He tried to shake it off, the ropey thing already cutting off the circulation in his arm. He reached into his pocket with his other hand and brought out his flick-knife. He popped the blade and cut the pink ropey thing. It stank like dead catfish, and the black thing it belonged to reeled in the stump, which squirted blood like something out of a cheesy horror movie.

Flap!

Curtis turned. Another black thing had dropped off the cow’s belly, its ropy tentacle already reaching for him.

He got to his knees, yanking the amputated tentacle off his arm, which tingled. He stood up and staggered toward the fence, keeping an eye on the things on the ground and the cow, which suddenly seemed to be trying to cut him off.

“Whoa, Bessie,” Curtis said.

The cow didn’t pay any attention; it was definitely herding him toward the pond.

Quick as he could, Curtis swung himself over the fence. When the cow tried to follow, he backed away. The things on the ground seemed to have given up; they were inch-worming toward the pond.

The cow stopped and stared at him.

“What the fuck?” said Curtis.

Moo! the cow said.

“Moo yourself.”

Wait a minute - weren’t there three of… ?

The tentacle was in his mouth and attached to the back of his throat before he could yell. It burned, it gagged, it tasted as nasty as nasty could be, and just as he reached up to pull it out, it thrummed in his hands and the body of it was flying toward him like a bullet.

It struck Curtis in the forehead and knocked him down, and before he could catch his breath it elongated and the ball part pushed its way into his mouth.

Curtis gagged. He couldn’t breathe, and the damned thing was too slippery to get hold of. It slid down his throat and he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t BREATHE! His heart began to pound like a marching band bass drum, and was this how he was going to die, choking to death on a slimy football with a whip?

Curtis passed out.

Inside the human’s belly, the Catonine pilot was busy. First, it released hormones to calm its host and return normal function to the heart and lungs. Then it tapped his stomach lining to get at the rich blood supply it carried, enough to sustain itself, but no more. It was a pilot; killing its host would be counterproductive, at least at this early stage.

Once this was successfully accomplished and the human’s heart had resumed a slow but steady beat, the pilot reached up through his digestive tract in search of his limbic system and, after that, his brain.

JELP

There were definitely advantages to being the most advanced species in the galaxy, Jelp reckoned. Millions of years of experience, of course, and a terrific public health system. But e-drive - e-drive was what built the Slarek empire.

It was a simple idea, really, once your species evolved the brain power required to harness quantum entanglement. From there, it was one small step to understanding that it could be applied not only to particles, but to waves and - most importantly - energy.

Once you entangled energy, it became possible to build engines on the Slarek homeworld that powered system-hopping starships remotely without requiring engines or fuel on board, essentially forever, and allowed them to instantly be wherever in the universe a ship’s atoms, waves, and particles would someday be, for an infinite value of ‘someday’.

Did e-drive make trade with species across all of space viable? No question. Did galaxy-wide trade lead to giant steps in culture, science, and the arts? Again, no argument. And did it also result in nearly instant and utterly insane wealth for Slarek of every caste? Enthusiastically yes, and for many of the other intelligent races that the Slarek befriended in their travels, too.

But not for the Dumbs. Any species that hadn’t advanced enough to colonize even its own solar system by now was just, well, stupid, and you couldn’t let them get in the way of their betters, especially regarding commerce and the universal scarcity of elements on which it depended.

The issue was, no matter how far you went, the vast majority of outer space was just that - space. Crazy, vast, trackless emptiness. And everything was always moving away from you at thousands of lightyears every moment, with no food, water, or breathable atmosphere on the majority of planets. Prosperous species ate resources up and had to find more, more, more just to sustain their economies.

Which was why Earth.

Jelp felt sorry for the hoomins. Yes, they were Dumbs. That was undeniable, but also entertaining, if you liked stupidity and violence, which Jelp absolutely did, as the child of a species that had abandoned war thousands of years ago. And what hoomins called ‘religion’ might be a communicable mental illness, but the sheer audacity of those who profited from it was, well, breathtaking.

Hoomins. In all the universe, there was nothing else like them.

Intellectually, he understood the natural order whereby more intelligent beings thrived at the expense of the lesser creatures, but he had heard from Jolrir, his friend at the Directorate, that there were no plans to secure even a small breeding population of hoomins for domestication and zoos, because they had been deemed too violent and intractable to ever be serviceable pets or zoological attractions.

The Catonines would wipe them out as if they had never been.

That was the whole point of Catonines, of course. Engineered to adapt, multiply, and destroy, they could wipe a planet clean of animal life in less than a solar cycle. If it was a water planet, they evolved to swim. If a desert, they developed wings and flew. If deposited on a world where it rained frozen methane, they would no doubt grow metal umbrella-shaped shells and crawl.

Bombs and disruptors destroyed valuable infrastructure, and plagues were messy affairs. Catonines simply devoured anything that contained animal protein. When that ran out, they turned on each other, eliminating the need for a cleanup crew, leaving behind rich nutrients. They were the perfect weapon of conquest.

And yet something had changed.

Jelp had noticed it five campaigns ago. After several generations, the strain of Catonines in use had become slightly cognitive. At the time, Jelp had chalked it up to the particularly complex environment of the planet on which they had been deposited. The fact that thought beyond mere instinct persisted in the succeeding generations, in four completely different planetary systems, eventually pushed him to do something forbidden:

Examine Catonines without authorization or a design team, in search of the errant gene.

But Jelp was a First Level Geneticist, unfamiliar with canister protocols. Was it his fault if he had accidentally deployed some Catonine canisters prior to the planned campaign launch? Only three, but from his colleagues’ reactions, you would think he had personally cost the entire ship’s company their investment.

His superior had trumpeted at him for hours about why it was vital that deployment occur at the same moment across the entire planet, so as to wipe out the dominant species before they even knew what was killing them. As if he had never seen the films.

Now he was stuck on board, monitoring local hoomin communications for any mention of Catonines, so that they could be rounded up and destroyed. But Jelp knew the real reason why he had been downgraded. It was obvious.

He had questioned an Elder’s work. 

Never mind that Jelp’s research identified the Catonines’ alarming propensity to continue evolving beyond their first forms. That would have been bad enough. But there also appeared to be a trend away from mere consumption of prey, which directly contradicted their design.

They seemed to be attempting to use the local fauna as tools.

Oh, they were primitive, certainly. That had been the Elder’s argument for doing nothing about it - that even bacteria manipulated their food sources and environments. But where his superiors and peers saw harmless manipulation, Jelp saw greater intent. 

Their weapons were trying to do something. But what?

It had cost him his commendation and his place on the ship’s research team. He cleaned equipment and prepared protein segments, now, work usually relegated to podlings or alien labor. He had shamed his family and his pod.

But that didn’t mean he was wrong.

If only he could get out in the field and observe the Catonines! If he could record them attempting to do anything but hunt, feed, and reproduce, he might be able to work out where they were headed and why.

And then the answer appeared right in front of him: An online video of a Catonine larvae killing an amphibian.

The video appeared to be produced by a hoomin youngling named ‘Hayden’. There were other videos of the Catonine, but they all predated this one, which meant that it was likely second or third generation. All of the changes that Jelp had seen had occurred at least five generations after deployment, so here was an opportunity to see the changes as they occurred.

All that he had to do was tell the campaign leader that he was honor-bound to be the one to collect the Catonines that he had accidentally released, then record everything he saw once they let him off the ship.

The pod would have to restore his rank, then. Perhaps even elevate it.

2523 15th Avenue - that was the local designation of the dwelling where the hoomin youngling called ‘Hayden’ lived. It was connected to the underground sewer network, so undetected travel would be simple. It wasn’t even far from the ship.

Jelp curled his trunks on either side of his face, his species’ version of a smile.

Sometimes things just went your way.

A CAN OF WORMS BY ANY OTHER NAME

Before his retirement, Bill was a high school science teacher, which had its share of good and bad memories, triumphs and disappointments. At one time or another he had taught college-prep biology, chemistry, and physics, and all three during one year when the school district was cash-strapped and there weren’t enough teachers to go around.

When his career wrapped up, one of the things that stuck with him was an admiration for the scientific method. There was a purity in sticking to observed reality, even if your observations led you away from what you believed. ‘Truth’ was individual, but facts were universal.

Like many men from his generation, Bill had a workbench in the basement, covered in bits and pieces of things broken or at least dismembered, surrounded by and filled with tools, tubes of lithium grease, cans of WD-40, soldering wire, and countless mismatched screws, nuts, and fasteners of all kinds... plus a sampling of gadgets specific to his vocation that he’d kept and cherished, even if he was pretty sure he would never have need for a Geiger counter ever again.

You never knew.

He visited his bench less and less as he got older, and was vaguely ashamed of this fact. Even if it had been the scene of death for no less than 5 hair dryers, it was the closest he’d ever come to having a ‘man cave’. Maureen left it alone, and him, too, while he puttered at it. And now here was a perfect opportunity to DO SCIENCE, fallen neatly into his lap.

The canister was still cold, despite being out of water and in the relative warmth of Bill’s car for at least half an hour. This suggested that the contents may have been frozen at some point.

He pulled over his lighted magnifying glass, the one he sometimes used while soldering, and looked at the symbols again. They resembled no language that he had ever seen before, not even Chinese or Arabic. They might even be purely for decoration, if not for the patterns they seemed to suggest.

Even magnified and with better light, there didn’t seem to be any opening. In fact, there wasn’t even a seam like you saw on soda cans. It was all a smooth surface - no pull tab, no spout or tap… a lozenge of shiny metal with inscrutable marks.

It was too pretty to destroy. But needs must when in pursuit of knowledge, right?

Bill opened up the big vice that was bolted to the foot of his bench, surprised how dusty it had become, and slid the canister into it, tightening the vice around it enough to be firm, but without denting it. Then he reached for the coping saw.

He tried to find the part of the canister that had the fewest symbols, then lined up the coping saw blade along that line and…

Squeeeeeahhhhhh!

The noise was deafening. Bill cringed, his teeth aching and the hair on the back of his neck standing up. He stopped trying to saw the canister, and the screaming squeal stopped instantly. He felt the metal of the canister with his thumb.

It was perfectly smooth, as if the blade had never touched it.

This time, he bore down with his weight, feeling the vibrations of the canister travel through the saw blade and up his arm to his elbow, which didn’t like it one bit. All the while that crazy screaming shriek, as if the can itself was alive and being vivisected with an ice pick.

Bill stopped. Still not a scratch. How could that be? A noise like that meant serious friction was taking place, but there was no evidence of it. There should be at least a small amount of heat, too, but the damned thing was just as cold as ever.

Time for a bigger tool.

Others might prefer torches, but while quick and effective, they also had a tendency to destroy whatever you were trying to get into. A circular saw, on the other hand…

Let’s see… safety goggles, gloves to maintain grip, the body of the saw in contact with the bench, and...

SQUEEEEEEEEEAAWWWLLL!

“Jesus, Bill!” yelled Maureen from upstairs. “Whatever it is, put it out of its misery!”

Bill shut down the saw and took off his goggles. There wasn’t even a scratch in the canister’s finish.

Curiouser and curiouser…

“Are you okay down there?” asked Maureen from the top of the stairs.

“Fine.”

“What are you doing down there?”

“Just trying to get something open.”

“I hope it’s a treasure chest, with all that racket.”

“Yeah… me, too.”

“Are you going to be long? Supper’s ready.”

“Yeah, I think I’m done for now.”

But not for good, he thought. Right after supper, I’m going shopping for a propane torch.

OPEN SESAME

Maureen washed the dinner dishes by hand. They had a dishwasher, but it seemed wasteful to use it when it was just the two of them. Bill spent most of his days away from home, still trying to find a way to fill them, sneaking off to smoke by saying he was going to the corner store, even though they both knew he wasn’t fooling anyone, while Maureen filled the hours with doing volunteer work at the school and the library, plus the usual cleaning, cooking, and following friends and strangers online.

Not family, though.

That was the thing about small-town life: Family was always there, present and  inescapable. Cousins, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and…

Well that was it, wasn’t it? Kids. They had no kids. And when you didn’t, it created its own distance. Being childless made others unrelatable, and eventually distant. Not intentionally, of course, and not all at once. But as the years rolled on and their friends had kids, that seemed to be all they talked about. And as their parents died and their friends’ kids grew, went to school, graduated…

Well, it wasn’t intentional, of course. It was just a… a difference in cultures. She and Bill were in the minority, and how tiny that minority was seemed to shrink with every year, until some of their friends got divorced and remarried but still had kids who became the bitter focal point of what their exes were doing or not doing, and Bill and Maureen just nodded sympathetically and had no idea whatsoever what it was like.

Oh, they had tried, vigorously and with gusto once they mutually decided birth control was the opposite of what they wanted at that particular point in time, and then with the timing of her cycle taken into account, and then ever more desperate attempts, with finally a doctor visit, then the news:

Bill was sterile.

It was more and more common, these days, the doctor had told them, in a voice that always sounded worried. He sent them home with pamphlets about sperm banks, surrogacy (who knew why?), and adoption, and they had bickered about it and cried and made up and then never talked about it again.

But Maureen thought about it. Every day. No matter how she tried not to, knowing that it didn’t help anything and was only hollowing out an empty pit somewhere between her heart and soul.

She loved Bill, of course. That had never been in doubt, even in the worst of it. She had agreed that sperm banks and adoption wasn’t for them, and she knew it was true, as useful as those avenues might be for other people. No matter what memories they made, no matter what they called them or each other, any child that they came by in any but the natural way would somehow not be theirs. Not really.

Those thoughts made both of them ashamed, and their silence regarding the subject became the child of their shame - as real and present as any offspring could be when fashioned entirely out of ache and disappointment.

There were some compensations. No kids meant what would have been sacked away as college money went into grand vacations, a new TV, Bill’s boat, and a little dog that Maureen had named Myrtle who went out to do her business one night and disappeared. Bill thought maybe a coyote, but whatever the cause, they had never owned another pet.

Compensations, but not recompense. Maureen stared at the future and found it wanting. She suspected that Bill did, too.

She didn’t blame him, and he didn’t blame her. It was just… what it was. A situation that dictated that their lives would be a sea of sameness, from now until the hours of their death.

“Shame on you,” she scolded herself, watching the birds at the back yard  feeder, “being so… so goth.” And then she giggled, thinking of herself with hair dyed black and tattoos, smoking clove cigarettes. Did the kids still do that, smoke cloves, or did they all ‘vape’ now?

She caught a hint of her reflection in the kitchen window, a middle-aged (never old) woman with grey hair and - like her mother before her - a mustache that needed constant plucking. But pretty. Yes - still pretty.

I’ll make paprikash, she thought. Bill loves paprikash. And I’ll get a bottle of wine and we’ll get a little sozzled and cuddle and maybe I’ll do him on the sofa while we watch Netflix. 

At least that still worked.

Satisfied for the moment, and glad to be taking positive action to address her depression, Maureen went down to the basement to get some chicken out of the chest freezer. Heading down the stairs, she noticed that the light was still on over Bill’s bench, even though he was nowhere in sight.

She noticed the shiny can on her way over to turn out the light. At first she thought it was a beer, one that Bill had sneaked down while he did his tinkering. But if it was a beer, how did you drink it? It was pretty, though, and so shiny! Maybe the shiniest thing she had ever seen, even by the fluorescent light over the bench.

Maureen  picked it up, surprised by the weight of it, and the cold. Was it a beer, in some kind of newfangled container, some kind of promotion like Pepsi or Coke did?

Pershhh!

Startled, Maureen dropped the can. It landed on the bench and unfolded like origami done backwards, revealing some kind of Jello filled with what looked like black kidney beans - clearly some kind of Asian snack or dessert or something.

If that’s dessert, I don’t want any, thought Maureen.

The Catonines disagreed.

DARYL GLADRING

According to beltway legend, the Home Office was the blackest of black ops, entirely off the books and not accountable to Congress or the President. It had no facilities, no charter, no director. You couldn’t apply to work there - according to ‘knowledgeable sources’, if they were interested, they found you. Only the best of the best were chosen. No one knew anyone personally, of course, but everyone knew of someone, which caused others to dismiss it as one more in a long line of DC myths.

Mythical, perhaps - but the “Agency of Agendas” was decidedly real.

The Home Office thrived on lack of structure. Like terrorist cells, no member had ever seen more than 2 other operatives. Assignments were received in person, funds provided as bundles of  unmarked bills, and necessary equipment acquired mostly via theft, discarded once the job was done.

In an agency without tangible assets, it was only natural that the agents it required were uniquely talented, innovative, and improvisational. Because of this, the Home Office had no office personnel, accountants, IT specialists, snitches, turncoats, plants, or double agents.

If you asked a member how they knew that their organization wasn’t just a terrorist group hiding behind the covert operations moniker, they would say that it didn’t matter. For them, the Home Office was all about the work. It had an unspoken mission statement: We do the impossible, because no one else can.

Home Office operatives had killed Kennedys, started civil wars, poisoned Hollywood starlets and unsuspecting subway passengers, supplied money, drugs, and weapons to terrorists. And at the end of the day, they slept just fine in their beds, thank you very much... kissed their children, sang in church, and called themselves patriots.

But there were things that even they would not, could not do. Things that their mothers would have told them were unholy, inhuman, and grotesque, because you couldn't dance with the devil and not be damned.

From time to time they asked Daryl intriguing questions, and supplied him with whatever he asked for to learn the answers.

The intelligence community as a whole was secretly elated to finally have a resource that allowed them to deal with troublesome issues in a decisive, hands-free way, without having to get their own teams involved. And to get answers to questions they could otherwise not even ask, with the added benefit of full plausible denial.

What percentage of a person's total body weight could be surgically removed before death was inevitable? In what order should one remove the organs to accomplish this while still keeping the subject alive and mentally fit? Did making the subject eat the removed flesh lengthen or shorten the amount of time before death? What form of torture definitively caused the most pain? Physical, mental, or emotional? The greatest amount of terror, ranked by category? Under what circumstances would a parent willingly feed their child to a crocodile?

So many questions. For more than a decade, Daryl answered them all, in carefully detailed notebooks, photos, videos, and recordings.

Occasionally someone in authority in the government, military, or some industry or other would get nervous and decide that Daryl and any records of his work should be eliminated. Someone from the Home Office - via a scrubbed, robotic, super-secret phone connection - would patiently explain that this was impossible.

"What's the goddamned problem?"

"We can't get rid of him."

"Why the hell not?"

"We’ve tried. Sent a team right to his house one time. Hand-picked mercs and cleaners."

"And?"

"And we don't know. They never came out. That’s all we’re sure about. We never found any bodies, and believe me, we looked. The guy who gave the order disappeared the next night. Along with his wife, two daughters, mother, and cat. Plus a woman he was banging on the side that not even we knew about."

Thoughtful pause. "What did the target have to say about it?"

"He said he hadn't seen them but, if they turned up, he would be sure to let us know."

"Wasn't he pissed you tried to off him?"

"We've tried a couple more times since then. Sent meter-readers to sprinkle strontium powder on his bed, that kind of thing. They go in, but they don’t come out. He doesn’t seem to take it personally. Hell, he might even like it. It’s hard to tell with Daryl."

"You search his house?"

"The minute he leaves. We never find anything. About a year ago, he moved to a cabin near Seattle. It’s nice. He grows tomatoes."

And so it went, with Daryl’s leash holders taking the line that, while it was indeed horrible to provide him with a steady stream of mothers, fathers, daughters, and sons that no one would ever see again, letting him choose victims at random would be even worse.

Okay, they said, we know he's bad. But imagine if he worked for someone else.

Donald Woods rang the cabin’s doorbell. It was out of sight of the other houses further down the street, with tall, noble oaks and pines swaying in the wind. The lawn was neatly cut and edged. There were flowers in pots along the porch, including a creepy-looking one that had a smell that made Woods dizzy.

No car, noted Woods. Maybe he’s not home. But he had read the file, and knew that Gladring was always home, when not working.

I wonder where he puts the bodies? Does he grind them up, maybe, and put them down the drain? Bake them into meat pies like Sweeney Todd?

In Woods’ left sleeve there was a twelve inch carbon rod with a pointed tip. It could be rammed up into the brain through the nose, under the ribs into the heart, into either or both eyes, into the groin to drop but an assailant quickly but not kill, or into the arteries on either side of the groin to bleed them out. His right sleeve contained a garrotte that was held in place by a short button. Both of his shoes were steel-tipped, and there was a steel plate in his forehead that had earned him his Home Office code name, Bullet Head, and which was effective at breaking noses.

Woods killed for the Home Office - mostly people who also killed people for a living, which kept it interesting, but just barely.

That’s the problem with being the best at something, he thought. Eventually, you start to lose your edge because there’s no challenge.

The Home Office had a clear, simple policy about sloppy work. If someone killed you, they were offered your job. That was how Donald Woods had gone from being an Army sharpshooter to the wonderful world of spycraft: He had killed a Home Office agent without knowing that’s what the man had been. Within a few hours, a short, thin man who called himself Mario Skinner had shown up in the field, wearing an Italian suit and handmade shoes, and offered Woods a choice: come work for the Home Office or die because he knew about it.

“What’s the work like?” he asked.

“You can do whatever you need to do - as long as the job gets done.”

“I’m gay,” said Woods. “Will that be a problem? Because it definitely is in the Army.”

“Me, too,” said Mario. “No one cares, as long…”

“... as long as the job gets done.”

“Right.”

“I’m in.”

“Good. Excuse me a moment.”

Skinner had called someone, and within minutes a van bearing two large men arrived, which was interesting, because Woods’ team was supposed to be on a covert mission, and he didn’t even know where they’d gone, let alone how Skinner had known where to find him.

“Take off your clothes, please,” said Skinner, as the men opened up the back of the van.

“Right here?”

“We need them for your corpse. From this moment on, Donald Woods is dead.”

He pointed to the van, and the men who were lifting what looked to be a fresh corpse with Don’s build and wavy blonde hair.

And that had been that.

When the door opened, Woods was shocked by how - well, ordinary - Gladring looked. No scars, crazy eyes, or weird tattoos - just a middle-aged man in a polo shirt, jeans, and white socks, starting to get a little bit of a belly, with trimmed fingernails, a bland face, and a hooked nose.

“The Home Office sent me,” said Woods, watching Gladring carefully through the screen door, alert for knives, a gun, a garrotte - anything. But there was nothing.

“Yes,” said Daryl. He looked - distant. As if he was listening to music that Woods couldn’t hear.

“There’s a boy on the internet. He’s captured some kind of animal. We think it may be something alien.”

Didn’t even blink, thought Woods.

“We need a complete wipe as soon as possible,” he said. “Anyone who’s seen it IRL.”

Gladring frowned slightly. “IRL?”

“In Real Life.”

A pause - Woods on the lookout, Gladring listening to his phantom orchestra.

“What do you know about this animal?” said Gladring, finally.

“It swims. Looks like a big tadpole, but backwards, with kind of a barbed whip on the front. It’s a predator. Venomous.”

“Intelligent?”

“Not that we could tell. This is the URL for the video, You can see for yourself.”

Woods held out the card with the URL printed on it. Gladring made no move to open the door to take it.

“I’m afraid I don’t have the internet,” Gladring said. “Just never had any interest.”

“And you don’t watch television.”

And for just a moment, Gladring looked at him, right at him, pinning Woods in time and space like a butterfly to a backing board. Gladring’s eyes and mind instantly sized up and dissected Woods with a cold, reptilian lanquidity. And just as quickly, it passed, as if it had never happened.

“Thank you for taking an interest,” said Daryl, listening to his internal symphony again. “Perhaps someday I’ll return the compliment.”

“My name… my real name… is Don Woods,” said Woods.

“Be seeing you.” Gladring shut the door.

“Jesus Christ,” whispered Woods.

KARYN AND THE COPS

“I don’t understand what you’re saying,” said Karyn to the police officer perched on her family’s couch. Was his name Pruitt? She couldn’t remember. The tall one, O’Dell, seemed to be constipated. Both were obviously uncomfortable.

“I don’t understand, either,” said Karyn’s mom, while her dad just looked on with a grim expression that Karyn was pretty sure she had never seen before. “Are you saying that Todd is dead?”

“No, ma’am,” said Pruitt. “We found two bodies, so far, but neither one appears to be Mr. Armstrong.”

“Then who are they?” said Karyn. “What do they have to do with him?”

“Well,” said O’Dell, shifting from one foot to the other, “we think one of them is the suspect who kidnapped your friend. At least, that’s what his ID says. We’ll need to do some… tests… to identify the body. We think the second body belongs to a young man who was abducted in Chippewa Valley 5 months ago. His remains were in the trunk of the suspect’s car.”

“But you didn’t find Todd?” said Karyn’s mom.

“Not yet,” said Pruitt, exchanging a look with his partner. “If he contacts you, call us right away. Here’s my card.” He handed Karyn a business card. “Try to find out where he is. We have some… some questions we’d like to ask him.”

“What does that mean?” asked Karyn. “Is Todd in some kind of trouble?”

“We’re not sure,” said O’Dell. “The surveillance tapes show the suspect abducted Mr. Armstrong by force. But that suspect now appears to be dead. We need to find out what happened in between.”

“Are you saying Todd killed him?”

“We don’t know,” said Pruitt. “If he did, it’s… ” He rolled his eyes.

Karyn stood up. “Tell me.”

“We don’t…” began O’Dell.

“He melted,” said Pruitt.

“Melted,” said Karyn’s mom, as if it was a word she had never heard before.

“Dissolved,” said Pruitt.

Karyn sat back down. How did you melt somebody? That was like… like something out of a movie. People didn’t melt - not in real life.

“Was it a chemical or something in the kidnapper’s car?” asked Karyn’s dad. “Maybe Todd used it to defend himself.”

“Honestly, we don’t know,” said O’Dell. “But we’d sure like to talk to Todd.”

“As soon as we can,” agreed Pruitt, nodding.

“All right,” said Karyn’s dad. He walked toward the policemen and raised his hands as if shooing them out of the living room. “We’ll call you if we hear from him.”

“Thanks,” said both officers at the same time. Pruitt blushed. Then they were gone, Karyn’s dad saying something to them on the way out that Karyn couldn’t quite hear.

“Are you okay, sweetie?” asked Karyn’s mom. She raised her hand as if to - what? Hug her? Then put it back in her lap.

“I’m fine,” said Karyn. How did you melt somebody? It’s not like people were made out of wax.

“Are you hungry?” asked her mom. Unable to provide emotional support, she fell back on the one thing she could do.

“No.”

“You’re eating for two, remember, so…”

So what?

“Yeah, I know,” said Karyn. She stood up again. “Actually, I think I’ll take a shower.”

“Take a bath. A good soak.”

Karyn’s dad poked his head into the room, smiled ruefully, and then just stood there, unsure what to do or say. Then he just shook his head and left.

“That’s a good idea,” said Karyn, on autopilot now. “Do we still have those…”

Melted guy

“...bath salts? The lavender ones?”

“Let me check…”

Later, as she lay in the tub, asphyxiated by lavender and wondering why Todd hadn’t called her if he’d gotten away from the killer, Karyn swore she heard elephants trumpeting in the water pipes, faint but clear.

Todd, she silently prayed, if you can hear me, please please call me. Please o please, because I hear elephants in the pipes, and if that’s not crazy, I don’t know what is…

Her phone buzzed on the edge of the tub, and she grabbed it so fast that it almost went for a swim. It was Abbie, though, not Todd, and even though Abbie was her best friend, couldn’t a girl take a bath in peace?

What the fuzz have to say? said Abbie.

The guy who grabbed Todd is dead, she pecked. No sign of Todd.

Did they shoot him?

He was already dead, Karyn said. Found him & a dead kid by rest stop outside town.

Maybe Todd got away?

Hope so. Boy, do I.

What will you do about the baby if he’s dead?

The words hit her like a slap across the face. It had never occurred to her.

OMG, Abs! Really?

Just being practical, wrote Abby, which was her up and down. You’re probably too late for Plan B, though.

I don’t want to talk any more tonite, she wrote, then turned her phone off and dropped it on the rug.

Please God, she prayed, don’t let Todd be dead. I… I don’t know what to do, but I know I don’t want to be a single mom.

There was no answer - not even from the elephants in the pipes.

MAUREEN DOESN’T FEEL WELL

When Bill got back from the hardware store, Maureen wasn’t in the kitchen or on the patio, but her car was still in the driveway. When he peeked in their bedroom, he found her covered in blankets, even though it was warm.

“Feeling tired?” he asked.

“Summer flu, I think,” she said, and her voice sounded like it, if not worse.

Bill felt her forehead, which was running with sweat. She smelled weird, too. Not cold or flu weird, either. More like the bottom of a pond in summer.

“Definitely a fever,” he said. “You want something? Some ginger ale or Dayquil?”

“I just want to sleep,” Maureen said, her teeth chattering.

“Okay. I’ll order delivery. What do you feel like?”

“Maybe soup,” said Maureen. She coughed. It sounded thick and phlegmy, and that smell was even worse.

“Got bad quick, didn’t it?”

Maureen grunted assent.

As he tried to find the delivery app on his phone (was it FoodWagon or FleetMeat? Or were those games?) Bill wandered down to the basement, stopping in the kitchen to grab his bag of hardware store purchases, because what self-respecting man walked out of a hardware store with just the thing he came for?

At the bottom of the stairs, Bill caught a whiff of the same rotten ditch smell that clung to Maureen. That was when he saw it lying on his workbench. Open. Empty.

The canister was on its side. Some kind of bright yellow slime had leaked out and slowly spread across his bench. It reeked, and was dotted with little black balls that looked to Bill like cricket shit, which he only knew because of years teaching kids how to dissect the buggers.

Did she accidentally open it somehow? Or did it burst because whatever was in it was so rotten?

Bill turned on his microscope, the cheery little LED glowing bright and antiseptic.

The yellow slime was thick and frothy, like a root beer float gone horribly wrong. From habit, he pulled a slide from one of the cabinet drawers and used a pencil eraser to collect a couple of drops. Then a slide cover and under the microscope it went.

“Holy fuck,” Bill breathed.

The slide was alive with… well, something, some kind of bacteria, maybe, but if that’s what it was, Bill had never seen anything like it. For one thing, bacteria tended to be flat earth tones. That made sense - microscopic critters didn't have eyes, so color wasn’t a factor in their DNA. But whatever he was looking at was a circus of brilliant colors, shapes, and acrobatic movement.

What are you? Bill wondered.

Not local fauna, certainly. Maybe something tropical - some kind of imported soft drink that had gone bad? But weren’t soda cans sterile?

Maybe less so overseas.

Bill’s microscope was what he thought of as fancy. That meant it had a built-in digital camera, which he used to take a few shots, moving the slide around to try and catalog as many different kinds of creatures as possible.

That done, he emptied out a Tupperware container full of cotter pins and used a wooden ruler to spoon the spilled gunk into it. Once it was sealed, he went out to the laundry room and got a container of bleach and a rag to clean up the rest. No sense letting whatever was in the gunk run wild.

When he sloshed a little bleach on the remaining gunk, it hissed and degraded before his eyes to a dull, dirty green. And if he thought it stunk before, that was nothing compared to the new stench. It was like burning styrofoam, with a good bit of pig shit mixed in for flavor.

That is a gross thought, thought Bill. That’s what I get for hanging around high schoolers too long.

When he tried to use the towel to wipe up the mess, it felt warm to the touch. In fact, it was almost hot. What was it that formed when something reacted with bleach and produced heat?

“Oh, shit!”

The top of his bench was smoking, the chemical reaction eating right through the varnish and into the wood.

“Not a fucking soft drink, that’s for damned sure,” said Bill.

TODD MEETS ELEPHANT E.T.’S

When Todd woke up, the first thing he noticed was an odd odor. It was almost cinnamon, but with a hint of gym sweat and something else that he had no olfactory reference for. It was kind of like wet autumn mushrooms and kind of like bubble gum, the pink kind that was 90% sugar, but there was something else, too.

Something... alien.

The second thing Todd noticed was that he couldn’t move. It went beyond being strapped down or tied up. Although he could breathe, blink, and move his eyes, nothing else would obey him. It was like he was covered by a warm, weighted blanket from head to toe.

Don’t panic.

Todd squinted. He couldn’t turn his head, but there didn’t seem to be much light, anyway. He couldn’t see the ceiling, but it felt like he was indoors - a big room with a high ceiling. There were noises, too - machinery of some kind - but no voices.

What happened? Have I really been kidnapped twice in one night? Is it still night? The same night?

He didn’t know. Let’s see - the bottle guy had come in around 2 and knocked him out not long after. Then he’d woken up with the rotting dead kid. The bottle guy turned into the melting guy - at least, Todd was pretty sure that’s what happened because although he was melting, he was wearing the same clothes. It had been dark then, but a lighter dark - maybe 4:30? And then there was the monster in the sewer, probably a half hour later, and then… what?

He didn’t know.

Maybe I’m in a hospital.

That seemed unlikely at best. Hospitals were never this warm, for one thing, an almost tropical heat that made him feel sleepy and weak. Plus it was dark, much bigger than a hospital room, and wouldn’t he hear nurses and patients or something more than just machines that sounded like they were playing vaguely Latin music and breathing?

Maybe you’re paralyzed, said his ever-helpful Dark Doubts.

That seemed more likely, especially after getting cracked on the head at least once and more likely twice, although he couldn’t feel the pain any more, which was at least something. 

Maybe you’re a quadraplegic now, like Christopher Reeve and Stephen Hawking.

He wondered if Karyn would push him around in his wheelchair. Feed him soup like a baby. Change his diapers along with the baby’s.

Karyn. What the fuck am I doing here? Your folks must be going nuts. Knocked you up and then didn’t even show up to face them. God, I am so sorry!

“Hello?” he called. Wow - his mouth worked! That was progress, wasn’t it? “Hello! Is anyone there?”

The machinery went silent for a moment, like crickets in a field when a robin showed up. Then it started up again. But wasn’t there a new sound?

Elephants? Where have I heard - ?

Someone was coming - he could hear them, even if he couldn’t see them. Several people, from the sound of it, and then they were there and one drifted into his field of view.

“Holy shit!”

To be fair, it did look amazingly similar to an elephant, especially if you took into account the fact that it likely evolved on an alien planet that was probably trillions of miles away from Earth.

True, elephants only had one trunk apiece, not two, and the trunks didn’t end in finger-like digits. Also, elephant eyes weren’t the size of dinner plates and an iridescent green like some kind of beetle. But considering all that…

It’s a fucking alien, thought Todd. An honest-to-god extraterrestrial. And it feels… wrong… that it’s here. So wrong. It doesn’t belong here.

“I want to go home,” said Todd, impressed at how reasonable he sounded, at least in his own head. “Let me go. People are looking for me.”

Is that even true?

The elephant-thing disappeared from view, to be replaced by some kind of machinery or tool. The part Todd could see had a lot of long, pointy, dull red bits. Was this some kind of probe? Maybe an apocryphal anal probe? He sure as hell hoped not.

The probe or whatever-it-was gave a long, low squeal.

“Yes,” it said, sounding a lot like the computers in the original version of Star Trek - vaguely female, choppy, mechanical. “We see them look.”

Oh my God, I’m talking to an alien!

“So don’t you think you should let me go?” said Todd.

“No. You will tell.”

Don’t ask, don’t ask...

“Then are you going to kill me?”

Shit!

There was a pause. A cagey pause, in Todd’s estimation.

“We require information,” it said.

“About the thing in the sewer?”

There was some sound that was just below Todd’s auditory range, like a trunk-mounted bass speaker that shook your ass without you hearing the song.

Todd suspected it was the alien word for FUCK!

“What size is thing in the sewer?” the machine asked.

“Was. I killed it. Maybe three feet tall, not counting the tentacle.”

“Describe thing.”

“Hungry.”

“Yes?”

“It was fast. Smelled bad.”

“Does it follow you from water?”

What the hell does that mean?

“Where I killed it, there was maybe an inch or two of water. Is that what you mean?”

That seemed to release a shitstorm of subsonics. Todd suspected that the elephant things - the one he had seen and others he hadn’t - were having a heated argument.

Or maybe panicking.

The machine made a different noise, and a small screen popped out of the side and lit up.

“Is this thing?” it said.

Todd watched the images.

“No. I mean, it’s close, but what I saw didn’t have any fins or eyes. And it was a lot bigger. Especially the tentacle part.”

“Did thing communicate?”

“No. I… can it?” Todd thought for a minute. “Can they?”

Silence.

“Are they prisoners or something?” said Todd. “Did they escape? Are you the good guys?”

More subsonics. They were starting to make Todd’s ass itch.

“Yes,” said the machine. “Yes we are good guys.”

“Well, then you’ve got to let me go. That’s what good guys do. Maybe I can even help you catch those other things. And I know how to kill them, if it comes down to that.”

This time the arguments were well within Todd’s hearing range, if not his ability to decipher, exactly. Finally, one of them seemed to drown the others out. Then silence.

Todd felt the weighted blanket or whatever it was lifted. He stretched, and his joints popped. One of the elephant things was right next to him, the others standing some distance away in the gloom.

“Tell us,” the machine said.

HAYDEN DOES SCIENCE

Hayden was diligent about recording his observations. His mother had purchased a large binder for him, indulging what she thought of as his childhood hobby, because boys will be boys, but Hayden was sure she would not have understood the level of precision that was necessary to do science correctly. Heck, she didn’t even investigate why Hayden couldn’t smell the difference between peanut butter and regular butter!

11:15AM, July 24, he wrote at the top of the page. Subject attacked, killed, and ate a full-grown male Siamese Fighting Fish. Ate didn’t sound technical enough, though, so he erased it. Consumed, he wrote. Also 2 goldfish and 1 pond frog. Unknown sexes.

He wondered how much his new animal would eat, if given the chance. It didn’t seem to ever get full. Instead, it just got bigger. How big would it be when it was full grown?

That made Hayden think of the dead dog. Did the subject kill the dog all by itself, and then get dragged out of the water by its death throes? Or was it merely scavenging? It seemed fine, but there was no way of knowing how long it had been out of the water. Although it swam easily, its semi-transparent skin reminded Hayden of some kind of amphibian, like a frog. That made him wonder if this was its final form.

So many questions. And he had run out of things to feed it. Well, that was easily fixed.

He bounced down the stairs to the kitchen, where his mother was reading something on her phone. She was always reading something on her phone, or writing on it, or looking for it. There was an experiment dying to be performed, there, but it would have to wait.

“Hey, Mom?” said Hayden.

“Hm?” said his mother, not really paying attention.

“You know Aeden Doyle?”

“Hm?”

“He got a kitten. Isn’t that cool?”

“Mmhm.”

“He brought it to school in his backpack. We all got to pet it until the teacher found out and called his parents to take it home. It was so soft, Mom, and it had dark fur in a patch that looked like somebody waving hi, so he named it ‘Hi’. Isn’t that cool?”

“Hm?”

“I wish I had a kitten. Then I could take it to Aeden’s house so they could play.”

“Mhm.” Something on the screen made her smile. Smirk, really. And then she was tapping away, replying or commenting or something. Sometimes it went on for hours.

“So don’t you think I should go get one?”

“Hm? Mhm.”

“Thanks.”

He was out of the room and heading for her purse before she even noticed he was gone. Maybe even before she really noticed that he was there. That was the easiest way to get what he wanted, Hayden had found. And you always asked Mom, because Dad always said no, no matter what it was, and sometimes hit you if he was in a particularly bad mood, which was always.

She had credit cards, but Hayden had learned that people in stores wouldn’t let him buy things with those, so he dug down to her checkbook, where she usually kept larger bills. How much was a kitten? $100? More? He wouldn’t need food or litter or anything for it, but wouldn’t the people at the store remember a boy who bought a kitten but no cat food?

He took out $200 and put the purse back on the hall table. She never seemed to notice that the money went away. Maybe because she used the cards more. But at least the kitten would be gone before she noticed it.

Not gone, he reminded himself. Consumed.

MAUREEN 2.0

When Maureen woke up, she was dying of thirst. She had been thirsty before, of course, especially when running a fever, but this was an altogether new sensation. Her tongue felt like clay, the inside of her mouth like sand. Her eyes rolled around like marbles in dry riverbed sockets, and her head hurt.

But she felt fine this morning, hadn’t she? She remembered cleaning the bathroom after breakfast, and then kissing Bill as he headed out on one of his daily forays, and then…

What?

The next thing she remembered, she was in bed, and Bill was asking her if she felt okay. Which she clearly didn’t. And why did her mouth taste so bad? Like shit-filled pond water, but still so, so dry.

“Bill…” she croaked. Louder. “Bill!”

No answer. She listened, but didn’t hear him moving around the house or the TV. How long ago had he come to see her? Was he still in the house?

He went out to get lunch, she remembered. How long ago had that been? It felt like days.

My belly hurts, she thought. Did something from breakfast disagree with me? But Bill had eaten the same eggs, the same toast, and he seemed fine.

So what was it?

Maybe you should sleep, said a voice in her head. It sounded like her, but she never thought in the third person. She had been an English teacher before they retired; that was just weird, the equivalent of ditching the Oxford comma.

Still, I am tired, she thought.

So sleep, said the voice. You’ll feel different tomorrow.

Don’t you mean better?

Different is better. Trust me.

Maureen slept, and dreamt of the sea.

KARYN MEETS DR. HOST

On the way to the doctor with her mom (because pregnancy tests were right ‘97% of the time if used as instructed’, but Mrs. Fuller didn’t like those odds), Karyn mostly floated in her own head. What else could she do, really? She had no idea where Todd could be, the police were working on it, and if she was pregnant, there were only three choices open, as far as she could see:

1. Keep the baby

2. Put it up for adoption

3. Have an abortion

   The last one was a non-starter for Karyn, not for religious or political reasons, but because if Todd was dead, she still wanted some part of him to remain in her life. And what could be more tangible than a baby that they had made together?

She and Todd had discussed it - not his possible death, but what they planned to do - calmly and rationally, which was the way their conversations went, as a rule, and part of the reason why they fit so well together.

Even the first time they had sex. It was obviously something they both wanted to do, and so Karyn had planned it carefully, a midnight picnic on a private beach just past the north end of town. It was awkward, of course, and romantic and funny and Todd was so sweet, and everything would have been fine if a certain latex product had not failed to pass muster on quality control.

God, it was fun. Sex, talking with him, watching movies with him. Not just because he was Todd, which was wonderful in its own way, but because of who they were together. Karyn had heard a phrase once - ‘a nation of two’. That was what they were, to the point that their friends noticed that whether they were around or not didn’t seem to matter if Karyn was with Todd and Todd was with Karyn.

Of course, the two of them discussed the morning after pill, completely and at length, but somehow it just felt wrong, at least for them, at least now. If they had been younger, maybe. If they didn’t have parents who were supportive, maybe definitely. But although telling her folks had been hard, especially without Todd, they had been hurt, but wonderfully supportive.

Which is why I’m letting her take me to the doctor, thought Karyn. I know it’s because some part of her hopes the test was wrong, but that’s okay. She’ll adjust. I’ll adjust. And it will be okay.

Todd had said that, and because Todd said it, Karyn knew it was true.

Don’t be dead, Todd, she thought. Just don’t be dead. I’m not ready to give us up. I’m not ready to give you up. Be somewhere, alive and maybe hurt or tied up but okay, somewhere that the police will find you, and soon. Because I love you and I want our baby to have a chance to love you, too.

When they walked into Dr. Host’s office, the waiting room was empty except for a younger girl that Karyn remembered from school. She had a shock of bright red hair and an old XTC tee shirt, a bespangled sort of jacket, and leggings covered with the robot from the original Lost in Space TV show.

The girl smiled at her and Karyn smiled back, wondering if she was pregnant, too.

Probably. She’s definitely too old for a pediatrician.

“You must be Karyn,” said the lady in the little window that all doctor’s offices seemed to have, as if doctors were fry cooks.

“That’s me,” said Karyn, smiling at the other girl again.

At least my mom’s with me. She’s here all by herself. That must suck.

“Come on back,” said the lady. The little sign in the window said her name was Madelyne Powers.

“She was ahead of me,” said Karyn, nodding toward the red-headed girl.

“That’s okay,” said the girl. “I’m a walk-in. I’m not really here for doctor stuff, anyway.”

“Oh,” said Karyn, wondering what that meant.

Once she was through the door next to the nurse station, another lady (name tag: Aya Darwish) handed her a plastic cup.

“We need a urine sample,” she said. “You can just pop in there.”

Karyn dutifully took the cup into the bathroom, which smelled like bleach, filled it, and carefully made sure the top sealed her pee safely inside. It was warmer than she expected, which made sense, really, but wasn’t one of those things you thought about until you had to do it.

She handed the pee cup to Aya, who was suddenly wearing blue rubber gloves. Aya took her pee, put it in a metal cupboard, and then had her step on a scale before leading her to an exam room, her mom silently trailing behind.

“So, just a few things,” said Aya, sitting down on a metal chair on wheels and pecking Karyn’s name into a computer. “What are you here for today?”

“Pregnancy test,” said Karyn.

Her mom almost said something, but stopped.

“Have you taken a home pregnancy test?”

“Yes,” said Karyn’s mom. “But we want to be sure.”

“Totally understandable,” said Aya. She whipped through some more questions about allergies and whatnot, then hopped off the chair.

“Okay,” she said. “That’s all for me. I’ll let Dr. Host know you’re ready.”

The silence after the nurse left was itchy. Her mom scratched first.

“What do you want for dinner tonight?”

“Oh. Whatever,” said Karyn. “I don’t have morning sickness, if that’s what you’re…”

“No… no. I just wondered what you might feel like.”

“Anything is fine - really.”

“We’ve got some tilapia in the freezer, I think,” said her mom. “Maybe some peas?”

“I like peas.”

There was a knock at the door, and Dr. Host poked his head in.

He looks like a tall turtle, thought Karyn. Or some kind of bug. A stick insect, maybe. It was mostly his glasses which made his eyes look huge, she decided, but also the odd shape of his head and his tiny chin.

“Howdy,” he said. He glanced at a clipboard. “Who’s Karyn?”

“I am,” said Karyn.

“That’s good, because it says here that you’re 19, and as pretty as your mom is, she looks closer to 40 than you do.”

Karyn snorted. Her mom smiled a thin smile.

“So we’re doing a pregnancy test,” he said. “But I can tell you that the over-the-counter tests are right most of the time, so if you’re looking for a different answer, you’re probably going to be disappointed.”

Pretty blunt guy, thought Karyn.

“Is this a planned pregnancy or an oops?” he said.

Wow. Really blunt.

“Oops,” said Karyn.

“So have you decided what your next steps are?” said the doctor, sitting on the little metal chair with wheels. His legs were so long that his knees came up nearly to his armpits.

“No,” said Karen. “I’m not sure what my next steps are.”

“Do you want to keep it?”

“Yes,” said Karyn.

“There are some good adoption agencies, if that’s your concern,” said Dr. Host, his eyebrows so close to the top of his head that they looked like they planned to escape.

“Well…” said Karyn’s mom.

“No,” said Karyn. “I’m keeping the baby.”

“It’s her call, Mom,” said Dr. Host, taking her mother’s hand as if it was the most natural thing in the world. And crazier still, her mom let him. “Her uterus, her call.”

“It’s just… she’s so young.”

“How old were you when you had her?”

“That was different. We were…”

“... married? Well, that may or may not be in the cards, right?” He turned to Karyn. “You love the guy? He a good fella?”

“Yes,” said Karyn. “Definitely.”

“Todd’s very nice,: said her mom. “But he’s…”

“...missing?”

And then our jaws hit the floor, thought Karyn.

“It was on the news just as I came in,” said Dr. Host. “You said his name’s Todd, right?”

“Yes,” croaked Karyn.

“But that’s not really why we’re here. Todd may or may not reenter the picture. If he does, great. If he doesn’t, it sounds like you’ve made up your mind. Right?”

He looked pointedly at Karyn’s mom.

“Right,” she said, still unsure.

“Because you love Karyn and you support her decision, right?”

“Y-yes.”

“And Karyn is smart enough to know that if she needs anything, and I mean anything, you’re there to help, right?”

“Yes,” said Karyn. She smiled at her mom in what she hoped was a reassuring way. Her mom did her best to smile back. 

“Absolutely,” she said.

“Cool beans,” said Dr. Host. He peered at the computer screen over the top of his glasses, typing away with his long, skinny fingers. “We’ll get the test result back tomorrow and email you what we already know it’s going to say. I’m going to recommend some neonatal vitamins and start you on regular visits.”

“Okay,” said Karyn.

“In case no one has told you yet, let me be the first: Your life is never going to be the same. Whether that’s good or bad is up to you.”

He fished a card out of his pocket. “Some women get depressed during pregnancy. Not surprising. Hormones and internal flora and fauna all play a part. On top of all that, your fella’s been kidnapped. If you need someone besides Mom to talk to about it all, this lady is the best.”

Karyn gleaned at the card. The name almost made her laugh: Tumblina DuPrey. Counseling. The address was somewhere downtown.

“We’ll schedule an ultrasound, too,” said Dr. Host. “We know you folks love those.”

Karyn’s mom laughed, a genuine laugh. “Oh, I do.”

Dr. Host stood up. “Any questions for me?”

“Not yet,” said Karyn.

“Good answer.” He opened the door. “The front desk will get you set up. I’m sure your young man will turn up. These things have a way of working themselves out. Have faith in the rightness of things, right?”

“Right,” said her mom.

“Good. ‘Bye!”

And then he was gone.

“I like him,” said Karyn’s mom. “He’s so reassuring. It’s like he’s been doing this his whole life.”

Karyn nodded, thinking the same thing.

When they finished scheduling the next visit and passing around insurance cars with Madelyne Powers, they saw Dr. Host in the lobby, talking earnestly with the red-haired girl, who waved at Karyn.

As she waved back, Karyn saw the girl’s hair move. Not like Medusa’s, exactly - more like something was walking around on it, shifting its weight from one foot to the other. The girl seemed to notice her staring, and it stopped.

“Bye,” said Dr. Host.

“Goodbye,” said Karyn’s mom.

That was not what I expected, thought Karyn.

As Karyn and her mother walked out of the building, the red-haired girl (whose name was Miranda McCarthy, but who went by Andi) smiled and spoke to Dr. Host between her teeth, in a way that suggested she did it fairly often.

“She’s the one with the missing boyfriend, right?”

“Yes,” said Dr. Host. “Todd Armstrong. I saw it on the news. Do the Hera’s think one of their people was involved?”

“It’s hard to tell what they think, sometimes.”

“At least the kidnapper was from out of town.”

Andi rolled her eyes. “Did you hear what happened to him?”

“What?”

“Something dissolved him from the inside out.”

“Hmph. That certainly sounds like Hera territory.”

Andi nodded. “Either way, PoHo doesn’t need this kind of attention.”

“Have the Cobblers said anything?”

“I haven’t talked to them. Why?”

Dr. Host shrugged. “Maybe it’s not a local monster. It’s a big universe. You’d be surprised how few and far between the rest stops are.”

“Hellhounds and monsters and aliens...”

“...oh my.”

“I’ll ask them.”

“Thank you. Are you still hanging around with that bird?”

“I’m right here,” said a voice near the top of Andi’s head.

“Maybe you can do a little scouting,” said Dr. Host. “See if any of your friends have seen that young lady’s boyfriend.”

“What’s in it for me?”

“Not everything's about you, Nevermore,” said Andi.

“Everything’s ‘bout me, sooner or later. Or it don’t matter,” said the voice.

“Fine. We’ll get Chinese,” said Andi. “But no more riding around on my head. Being invisible doesn’t help. People can still see something’s weird.”

“Like a 15-year old girl talking to her hair and her hair talking back?” said Dr. Host.

“I wasn’t going to say anything,” said Madelyn Powers, on the other side of the glass.

“I heard that dirty bird shits on your head,” said Aya, walking up behind Madelyn.

“Welcome to my life,” said Andi.

“I’m a raven!” screamed the voice. “We can’t control that!”

Andi’s hair shook, and a large, jet-black raven appeared on top of it, stretching its wings indignantly and shaking.

“I’m done with y’all,” it said. It hopped down to the floor. “Let’s go, No Titty Girl.”

“The mouth on him!” said Madelyn.

“Wash it out with soap,” agreed Aya.

THE CHEESE STANDS ALONE

“Honey, the food’s here,” said Bill to the darkness that filled their bedroom. The light bothered Maureen, so she had closed up the blinds and drawn the shade.

“Don’t think I can eat,” gurgled Maureen. It was true. She felt sick and full at the same time, even though she hadn’t eaten since breakfast, hours ago.

“Are you sure? It’s soup.”

“Put it in the fridge.”

“Okay.”

Bill stood in the doorway, shifting from one foot to the other.

“Hey, honey,” he said. “You didn’t happen to notice a can on my bench, did you?”

“Hnh?”

“Like a soda can, but kind of… suppository-shaped?”

“What?”

“It was on my bench. Turns out it had some pretty exotic germs in it.”

“I haven’t been near your bench.”

“Are you sure? ‘Cuz you… well, you kind of smell like what was in it.”

“Like an exotic germ? Thanks loads.”

“Sorry. I just want to make sure you didn’t get, like, an infection or something.”

“No.” Maureen coughed, a muddy sound that went on and on. “I was actually feeling a little off before breakfast.”

Why did I say that, she wondered. I felt fine until… until… what?

“Oh. Okay. Well. Do you want anything? Some ice water…”

“Water!” said Maureen. “I want some water. Please.” Full she might be, but thirsty, too, like she’d spent days in the Sahara.

“Sure thing.”

Bill went to get the water. Maureen crouched under the covers and wondered why she had lied.

It will keep him from worrying, though.

“Here you go, hun,” Bill said, holding the glass out to her.

Maureen snatched the glass, poured it down her throat and chewed up the ice cubes.

“Oh my God!” Bill said. “Doesn’t that hurt your teeth?”

“Thirsty,” said Maureen. Who knew water - just water - could be so satisfying? She handed the glass back. “Can you fill a pitcher for me?”

“Yeah, sure. Lots of liquids is probably a good idea. You want some juice?”

“No. Just water. Cool water.”

“Okay.”

What’s going on here? Maureen wondered. This all feels… wrong.

Suddenly, without warning, something hit her hard and fast, weighing down her limbs and making her mouth numb. It was like being hit with a tranquilizer dart, except there was no pain.

NO!

Maureen struggled, but it was like trying to swim in taffy. In another moment, she couldn’t keep her eyes open, and fell into a warm, dark hole that had no bottom.

Bill came in and set the pitcher on Maureen’s nightstand.

“You want me to pour you a glass?” he asked.

Maureen said nothing.

Bill leaned in, squinting. She was fast asleep. Tentatively, he put the back of his hand to her forehead, but she didn’t have a fever. If anything, she seemed unusually cool to the touch. It was one of the things they had joked about, back when they started dating - Bill caught cold in a mild breeze, but Maureen could go get the mail in the middle of winter in her slippers and robe and not even notice.

Bill sat on the edge of the bed and sniffed. The sewage smell was still there, but less so, as if whatever had caused it had slunk away down some storm grate.

Let her sleep, he told himself. Then I can go back down to the river and see if you can find any more of those canisters. Then maybe look online and find out what kind of fauna was in the first one.

He looked at Maureen’s nightstand, crowded with a lifetime of nick nacks. There was the ceramic kitten he’d won for her on the boardwalk at Disney World, an ugly clay bowl he’d made during their attempt at pottery class, filled with her rings, with her wedding ring sitting on top. And behind all of that, a photo of Mollie, a border collie that they’d had years ago, killed by a car when she got out of the yard. They hadn’t had a pet since. Maureen said it was too much work, but Bill knew better.

Maybe we should have adopted, he thought. Or been foster parents or some other damned thing. Now we’re too old, and’ll need somebody to take care of us before long.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered to Maureen.

As if in answer, she sighed and rolled away from him, toward the darkness of the wall.

HAYDEN’S DAD

The cool thing about science, at least from Hayden’s point of view, was that it wasn’t fuzzy like other things were. TV shows were fuzzy, for one thing - the characters constantly made dumb decisions for reasons that made no sense. But then, they were based on people, and people were fuzzy, too, constantly changing the rules of acceptable behavior or communicating them poorly.

Hayden was nothing if not literal, and didn’t understand how anyone else could not be. It made living around other people confusing at best, and frustrating at its worst.

Hayden hated to be frustrated.

Science was clear, focused, precise. It didn’t care if you had brothers or sisters or how often (or why) your parents weren’t around. To science, it didn’t care if you were rich compared to other people or how many days in a row you wore the same clothes, because who cared if they were still clean?

Science had rules and even its own laws, and those applied equally to everyone, forever and ever, without exception, amen. The rest of his life might be chaos, but in his laboratory (which was what he called his bedroom, since he worked in it more than he slept, another thing that made sense to him), there was order. Every piece of equipment was clean, perfectly positioned, organized.

Which was why it upset him so much when he walked in to find his father using kitchen tongs to extract the body of the kitten from his fish tank.

“Jesus Christ, Hayden!” his father said, trying and failing to get a good grip on the wet white fur. “When did we say you could have a car? And how did it get in here?”

He finally got hold around the kitten’s neck, and yanked it out and onto all of Hayden’s notebooks.

“Dad!”

Hayden’s eyes filled up with tears. Months of work. Months. Now soaked and running down his desk.

“What were you thinking?” said his Dad. “You never leave the top off a fu=ish tank, buddy. The fish’ll jump out!”

He noticed the aquarium was empty at the same time Hayden did, but drew different conclusions.

“See - they’re all gone! Probably under your bed, or…”

Hayden looked at the kitten. Out of the water, it was almost completely flat, like a deflated ball made of fur.

Hayden took a step backward, toward the door. His father got down on his knees with the tongs, lifting up the corner of Hayden’s blankets. He bent over to look under the bed, the light from the window behind him.

Thwack!

Hayden didn’t see it, but he knew what that sound meant. He reached for his most recent notebook, but then remembered that it was ruined. Where was there more paper?

Hayden’s father made a surprised sound. He stood up. There was a dark green and black ball hanging from a tentacle-like limb that was attached to his forehead. As he stood, the ball swung in a slow arc. His eyes were crossed, staring at the tentacle one moment and the ball the next.

Mr. Green dropped the tongs and reached for the ball. At the same moment, the ball rose, pulled up by the tentacle and the hooks anchored in his forehead. The tentacle was thrumming, pumping venom into Mr. Green’s head, as Hayden had seen it do with smaller prey.

Mr. Green moaned. His hands dropped to his sides. In another moment, his eyes rolled up into his head.

“Dad, can you hear me?” said Hayden. There was no response.

Hayden went over to his desk and got a blank notebook from one of the drawers, watching his father the whole time. The ball part of the animal’s body covered most of his face, and it was expanding and contracting, probably breathing, but Hayden couldn’t be sure. He wrote that down.

The ball part of the creature’s body heaved and split, dripping clear goo onto the floor. Another few heaves and the outer flesh sloughed off and dropped to the floor with a wet smack. What was inside was a purple-red mass of tissue with hundreds of little black tendrils waving around in the air, reaching, all supported by the tentacle and the hooks at its end.

Mr. Green sat down suddenly with a grunt, and the mass of tissue pushed its way into his mouth. He looked bizarre like that, as if he was a frog eating an octopus, and his breathing became fast, choopy, erratic, Hayden wrote that down, too, along with the time. 

When most of its body was in Hayden’s dad’s mouth, the tentacle hooks disengaged and slowly followed the creature’s body into Mr. Green’s mouth. He gagged violently, his head jerking in all directions, and then he became still, the creature clearly lodged in his throat, which was swollen like a boa constrictor trying to swallow a hippo. Goo and spit dribbled from his lips. He blinked slowly, his eyes unfocused.

“Can you hear me, Dad?” asked Hayden. His father didn’t answer.

The creature wasn’t eating his father as it had other animals. What was it doing?

“Hayden, is your father up there?” his mother called up the stairs.

“No,” said Hayden.

“Where is that man?”

Hayden stood in his doorway, watching her. When she started up the stairs, he slid out and closed the door behind him.

“Why do you want Dad?”

“My credit card is missing. I wondered if he had it.”

Hayden came down the stairs to meet her. “I’ll help you look,” he said.

BILL GETS A CALL

“Hey, Bill,” said Mike O’Dell. His voice over the phone sounded stressed.

“Hey, Mike,” said Bill. “How are you doin’, man?”

“Good,” Mike said, and Bill could tell it was a lie, because he and Mike had been friends since high school, back when Mike still wanted to be the cop he eventually became and Bill hadn’t had a clue what he wanted to do with his life.

“You and Kathy doin’ good?” said Bill.

“Oh, yeah, we… Hey Bill, you wanna do me a favor?”

“Sure, Mike.”

Mike never asked for favors. Mike never asked for anything. Until this moment, Bill would have said that was part of Mike’s DNA.

“Do you know where the hospital morgue is?”

“Somewhere in the basement of the hospital, isn’t it?” said Bill.

“Yeah. There’s a body there that we found while we were lookin’ for that Armstrong kid.”

“Oh yeah,” said Bill. “I heard about it on the radio. You think you found’im?”

“Not yet,” said Mike. “We think the body we found is the kidnapper.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, only - well, there’s something weird about the body, and they’ve got the county coroner in and some pathologist from Detroit, but they can’t seem to agree on… on what we’ve got, here.”

“What do you mean?”

“I can’t really tell you,” said Mike. “Because I don’t know myself. Better if you come see it yourself.”

“You want me to look at a body?”

“If you wouldn’t mind,” said Mike, sounding relieved. “Maybe you can help us figure out what happened to this guy. And maybe that will help us find the kid.”

“Mike, I’m not a coroner.”

Mike, so help me God, giggled.

“Yeah, I know,” he said. “But it sure would help to have someone around I can trust to be honest with me.”

“But why me?” asked Bill.

“‘Cuz you’re the smartest guy I know.”

Bill snorted. “No, really.”

“Just come down, okay?” said Mike, pleading. “We need help. I need help. I need you.”

“Okay,” said Bill. “I’ll head there right now. But I can’t stay long. Maureen’s sick.”

“No worries,” said Mike. “Honestly, there’s not much left to look at. You’ll either figure it out or you’ll run out of the room screaming.”

“Those are terrible choices. Might want to work on your pitch, buddy.”

“Thanks, Bill.”

“No problem. I’m on my way.”

But he didn’t leave - not right away. Bill had never examined a body before. What did you even take? Rubber gloves, right? And maybe some litmus strips, in case the guy had been poisoned. Did he even have those?

Twenty minutes later, Bill had a very rough kit together, which he put in his unused gym bag. He just hoped it was enough that he wouldn’t make a fool of himself, or Mike.

On his way out, he paused at the bedroom door. It smelled a little better in there, but it was still dark and Maureen didn’t stir when he opened the door.

“I’m running an errand for Mike,” he said softly, in case she was asleep. “I’ll be home right after.”

Not a peep.

Once Bill had gone, Maureen got up. She felt sore, like all of her joints had been given a heavy workout, and thirsty - so thirsty.

She made her way to the kitchen and poured some cool water, drank that down, then another, and finally just stuck her mouth under the tap and let it pour.

Better.

She had been awake, more or less, when Bill spoke to her, but there didn’t seem any point to acknowledging it. Better he not worry, right? Wasn’t that in the Good Wives Handbook? Besides, he already sounded worried about something. And this was something she could handle herself, right? She’d been sick before, after all.

Not like this, said the voice in her - belly?

Shut up, she told it. Shut up shut up shut up.

Okay, it said. For now.

TODD AND DRDRDRR

The first thing that Todd learned about communication with an alien species was that they were… well… alien. For example, Drdrdrr, which was the closest Todd could come to pronouncing the name of the alien that had first spoken to him and who now led him around the alien spaceship, was neither male nor female. In fact, the whole idea of gender seemed to be lost on it, which made pronouns a barrier to communication.

When Todd tried to tell Drdrdrdr that he needed to tell Karyn what was happening so she wouldn’t worry, the alien seemed to think that ‘Karyn’ and ‘She’ were two different names for two different people. As a result, Todd had to rethink every sentence and only include proper names, or it got confused.

There also seemed to be some kind of social hierarchy that Todd couldn’t grok. Drdrdrr was some kind of scientist, as far as Todd could tell, but when he asked to see the spaceship’s captain or commander or whatever they called the (person?) in authority, the alien’s explanation sounded more like the rules to a card game than any kind of command structure.

There were countless other things, of course. The Slarek didn’t have bathrooms, for example. Instead, they excreted waste as they walked, which fell through the grillwork of the floors and went… well, somewhere, but did nothing to clear the stench out of the air.

Oh yeah - ‘Slarek’. That’s what the aliens called themselves, a word that seemed to mean both one and many. According to Drdrdrr, they were one of several intelligent lifeforms in this region of space, but their technology was the most advanced.

Slarek looked something like elephants, but only from the front, and only if you squinted really hard and ignored the fact that they had two trunks, the trunks had something like fingers on the ends, and they were more like praying mantis/grasshoppers from the head on back.

The trunks seemed to do the tasks that required dexterity - manipulating controls and so on - while the praying mantis claws were used to wave in greeting (or maybe they were salutes?) and to slaughter food.

That was something else that took more getting used to than Todd had in him. As they were walking around the ship, Drdrdrr asked Todd if he was hungry, and took him into what Todd assumed would be a dining room or kitchen.

It turned out to be a bare room with several small doors at the far end. When Drdrdrr waved his claws in the air, two doors opened, and two nightmare creatures with way too many legs and eyes and paunchy, pale bodies came barreling toward them, screaming like freight trains. Drdrdrr got really excited and ran toward one of them, disemboweling it in one pass. The other bashed itself to death trying to escape the room.

Drdrdrr butchered the beast it had killed with practiced strokes of its forelimbs, and ate them using its trunks. It offered a haunch to Todd, but he was too busy throwing up to answer.

That’s weird, thought Todd, puking. Would we visit an alien planet without bothering to find out anything about the dominant species that lived there? Okay, maybe. But not if we invited them on a tour of our spaceship. Even Star Trek got that part right.

After dinner, Drdrdrr told Todd that the creature that he had run into in the sewer was a species called Catonines. At least, that’s what the translation machine called them. The Slarek had captured a Catonine to take home for study, but it had somehow escaped, and Drdrdrr said that there might be others, because Catonines were parthenogenetic.

Drdrdrr’s crew was trying to capture or destroy the Catonines before they harmed anyone, and without letting the locals know that there were alien lifeforms on Earth. Todd seemed to gather that this was because ‘hoomins’, as Drdrdrr called them, were primitive and violent.

No argument there, thought Todd. Unfortunately, they’re too late. I know about them, and at least one guy’s dead.

Not that he’s a big loss, said the other voice.

“Come,” said Drdrdrr, walking into the room where they kept Todd. He was carrying some kind of chrome beach ball. “Show me where is the dead Catonine.”

BILL AND DARYL

Bill had never been to the hospital morgue before. Oh, he knew one probably existed, but that came from watching TV shows, and it made sense, if you thought about it. Not everybody walked out of the hospital or even got wheeled out, and you had to put the bodies somewhere until the undertakers came to collect them.

Or until the police had done their thing.

As TV had led him to believe, the sign in the lobby pointed Bill downstairs and, after getting lost almost immediately in the labyrinth of hallways, he stopped at the nurse’s station, where a candy striper (did they still call them that?) with bright pink hair and a Browncoats Forever! tattoo on her collarbone kindly escorted him the rest of the way.

The door to the morgue was locked, something they didn’t do on TV, and Bill had to press the buzzer and wait to be let in, telling the person who answered (another nurse, this one with a no-nonsense bun and horn-rimmed glasses) who he was and why he was there before she let him in.

It was brighter than he expected and the reek of chemicals caught him by surprise, even if most of them were familiar (bleach, formaldehyde, rubbing alcohol, and that purple floor cleaner that he could never remember the name of).

“Hey, Bill,” said Mike O’Dell, walking up to greet him with a handshake. “How you doin’?”

Bill noticed how tired Mike looked.

“Good. Well, Maureen’s sick, but we’re good otherwise.”

“Probably want to see the body, huh? I’ll take you back.”

The nurse left, and Mike led Bill past the reception area (live people still came to visit dead people, right?) and into the examination room. Just like on TV, there were 3 shiny metal tables, the one closest to them occupied by what looked at first to Bill like an ugly rug. As he got closer, he realized what it was.

“Holy shit!” he said.

The body was nude and as flat as an empty rubber glove. It was bigger than Bill expected, almost overflowing the examination table, and tinted an angry red with patches of hair on what Bill assumed were the head, belly, groin, and legs. Any indication of structure or bone was missing, and the flesh was oozy in places where the skin seemed to have broken down completely or worn through.

“There’s a hazmat suit and gloves over there for you,” said Mike, pointing to some institutional grey storage lockers.

“Thanks,” said Bill. He looked around the room and saw a fat guy in glasses and a lab coat that he assumed must be the pathologist standing next to a tall, lean fellow in a nice suit that was probably the state guy Mike had mentioned.

“Hi,” he said, walking over. “I’m Bill Higgins.”

The lean fellow took his hand. He had a solid grip, not the weak civil servant squeeze Bill expected.

“Daryl Gladring,” said the suit. “You’re from the local high school, is that right?”

“Yeah,” said Bill, a bit embarrassed. “I promised Mike I’d solve this case for him if he’d buy me some beer.”

The thin man laughed, but the guy in the lab coat didn’t.

“I don’t know why,” he said, looking over his glasses and not bothering to shake Bill’s hand. “It’s clearly some kind of corrosive agent that was applied to the body after death. The perp was just trying to get rid of the body.”

“I haven’t ever seen a corrosive agent like this before,” said Gladring. “I’d be interested to know what you think, Bill.I see you brought your own kit.”

Bill blushed, sliding off his backpack. “Just some stuff from around the house,” he said. “I’m sure you’ve got better.”

“I’m sure,” said the fat guy. He turned away and went and sat at a desk in the corner, apparently done with them.

“Don’t worry about Davis,” said Daryl. “His manners are matched only by his complete lack of qualifications.”

Bill laughed. “I feel pretty unqualified, myself. I’ve never examined a body before.”

“Nothing to it. Take your time. I’ll take notes, if you don’t mind. But I would definitely wear a hazmat suit. Whatever was used on the body is still present, and might still be chemically active.”

“Will do,” said Bill. He walked over to the lockers and took out a bright orange hazmat suit in a vacuum-sealed plastic pouch. The label said One Size Fits All, but it was still snug around the belly. Luckily the faceplate didn’t steam up and the gloves fit just right.