by Rob Heinze
“Paul?” Dawn asked next to him.
“Go inside,” he said. “Go inside now.”
“Why, Paul?”
“Something’s wrong. Go inside, please, Dawn.”
She hesitated for a moment longer, then he started to move down the street in his bare feet. Others were moving with him. He was half-way to the house when someone burst out the front door screaming. They were fully engulfed in flames. It had been a woman, named Rachel Doe, who had rejoiced at the confirmation of pregnancy several weeks ago. She had even done an interview of Good Morning America, through the magic of Skype, and her whimsical way of talking about the Swarm and her new pregnancy had disarmed even the news anchors. Now her body was ablaze and the pregnancy inside her gone. Inside the house, the rest of the Smith clan died.
Paul froze, and only a few other people ran towards the burning woman.
“Someone get water!”
Paul had no idea who had shouted it. He was too intent on the horrific, agonized cries of the person burning. Shortly later, Rachel Doe Smith fell to the ground and stopped moving. The flames continued to burn on her. Paul turned to the side and vomited into the street. His legs felt unsteady.
“You okay, man?”
He looked up as someone put a hand on his back. It was a man he didn’t know, probably his own age.
“I think so. What happened?”
“House fucking blew up,” the man said. “Just blew up.”
“Houses don’t just blow up.”
The sirens started, ringing through the night, and soon the fire truck was on the street, attaching their hose to the hydrants and spraying water onto the house. The police would later report that someone had tossed homemade explosives into the house.
Paul went back home to Dawn, and when he got inside, he started to weep.
###
Quentin slept after the house fires, and in his dreams he was at the strange spot. He was working under a jaundice-orange moon, slung low in the sky, that turned his dream-setting into a macabre movie. There were bodies: piles of bodies, all wrapped and obscured. Quentin had to get rid of them all. He had to Feed the Earth. He had to wake the consciousness that lay below. He was pulling them forward with superhuman strength, amazed (even in the dream) at his speed and dexterity. The pink digestive juices were seeping, seeping up from the ground like so much water from saturated, stepped-on clay. Quentin danced around them like an actor in a ballet. More bodies, so many bodies, and all of them in body-bags. No faces, no identities, no humanity: very easy.
Then there was one, which had come undone, and under the yellow miasma of the moon, Quentin saw the face to which the body belonged.
It was the girl, Crystal, whom he had sodomized.
The one that had wound up dead from Heroin.
In the dream Quentin stared for a long time, unable to comprehend that which he was seeing. He heard the beeping (ringing, no it’s ringing) that was his “door ajar” alarm on the truck. The noise was distracting him from the body, the face of which was ivory and blue. He looked up at the truck, realized it wasn’t there in the dream, then thought: It’s the phone.
He awoke with that thought and sat up in bed.
His phone was ringing. It was 4:23 AM. Who could be calling him at this hour?
Crystal, his sadistic mind answered.
He turned the light on, temporarily blinded, and fumbled for his cell phone on the nightstand. He didn’t recognize the number.
“Hello?”
“Quinn?”
He recognized that voice, but could not place it in his sleep-haze.
“Yeah. Who’s this?”
“Cash.”
His sleepiness faded, and he sat up. “Hi, Cash.”
“Everything okay?”
“Okay? What do you mean?”
“On the island over there.”
“The island? Have you been watching the news?”
“I’m talking about with…those things, you know?”
He did know. He knew very well. When Quentin didn’t answer him, Damiano “Cash” Richardelli continued to talk.
“I heard they was going to start digging on the island, testing the dirt for radiation or something. You hear about that?”
“No,” Quentin said, distant. He was staring at the corner of his room, in which the spectre of Crystal had appeared She was naked, pock-marked, blue and dead. Her eyes were those of a prisoner. Quentin did not shake his head, did not try to banish the vision.
“You think everything will be okay?”
“Cash?”
“Huh?”
“Those bodies you gave me, did you ever give me any girls? From the club?”
There was no response on the other end for a long time. Anyone other than Quentin Warsaw might have hung up, suspecting that their caller had departed. Quentin knew better. Damiano was just too stunned to speak.
“I never gave you…what you’re saying.”
Quentin did not smile. In the corner Crystal’s ghost watched him. He blinked, then the ghost changed to Cole Kensington’s image. It looked at him, but made no indication of its intention.
It’s approving. Both the ghosts approve of what I have begun.
“We’ve awoken it, Cash. We awoke the monster, feeding it those bodies. How many over the years? Thirty? Forty? Fifty?”
“Quinn—”
“I won’t allow it to win,” Quentin kept on, staring at the ghoul in the corner. “I’ll stop what we started. And just like always, Cash, you don’t have to worry about a fucking thing.”
With that, he hung up and sat on the bed. His cell phone did not ring again, and he never heard from Damiano “Cash” Richardelli in person again.
The President came on to give a public broadcast the next evening on prime time. He denounced the acts of violence and terrorism on Bay Isle. Aside from the plane crash, it was obvious that the house fires were started by Bay Islanders. He suggested that the terrorists starting the house fires were targeting pregnant women on the island as part of growing fear of the events of The Swarm. The President urged pregnant women to take caution, and strongly encouraged women pregnant from The Swarm to receive abortions (protestors outside the White House doubled the next morning). He reassured the people of Bay Isle that the government would increase security and find the people responsible for these acts before more innocent Bay Islanders could be hurt.
###
Sometime in what would have been the sixth month of the Swarm pregnancy, a video was leaked onto WikiLeaks.com, then onto YouTube. The video showed a confused and disturbed woman, apparently locked in a single-occupancy room. The woman was clearly pregnant, the roundness of her belly hovering just above her waist. She was disoriented, walking in circles; it reminded Lynn Rice of the people in The Swarm. She was watching the video online for the twentieth time, and each time it was scarier than the last. It was 5:09 minutes long, and near the end, the poor woman had walked herself into a corner and seemed to be attempting to press herself through it. People in medical scrubs on the video went to the woman, and brought her gently back to her bed.
There were a growing number of comments under the video, which was viewed over 3.2 million times in the past week.
F$ck that island! Some weird $hit is going down!
The woman’s not even there, she’s a robot!
Who are those people in the scrubs?
Where is this? Is this on Bay Isle?
There was never any indication of who the woman was, or if it had anything to do with Bay Isle save for the title of the video that proclaimed “Woman Pregnant in Swarm”.
(The video was later removed from YouTube, but remained on WikiLeaks despite the government’s urging and condemnation of the act as irresponsible and inciting fear and panic on Bay Isle.)
Lynn stopped watching it and then texted Derrick Clinton.
Is your mom okay?
She got a text back, about five minutes later: No, she won’t get the abortion. She’s
been a fuking zombie since coming back from the beach that day. Don’t know what to do.
Lynn texted back: maybe u should take her 2 that factory or whatever, where the govs been?
She received a text: Dunno. Scared. There were these weird stains on her shirt…I guess where her nipples r.
Lynn texted back: weird how?
She received a text some time later: blue, like those egg dying tablets from Easter. It was like…like she was leaking it. They were round. Right where her nipples were.
Rex Torres had been staying at Calvin and Helena Wrigley’s house now more often that the Medi-Merge had been destroyed. He had offered his services to the representatives at the warehouse on Grand Avenue, but apparently the government did not need his assistance. They were sitting at the kitchen table with coffee and pastries that Calvin had brought from the convenience store when Rex spoke.
“What’s the one thing that everyone on this island has…has had near their genitals?”
It was such an odd question that Helena uttered a tiny exclamation, and Calvin stopped stirring his coffee. He looked up at Rex, who was deep in thought and didn’t appear to notice.
“What was that?” Calvin asked.
Rex looked at him, then over to Helena. “Think about it. What’s the one thing that everyone on this island that everyone has had in…no, in isn’t the right work. Near. Near their genitals?”
Calvin looked to Helena to see if she would offer an answer, but she had none. He looked back to Rex.
“Beats us.”
“Sand.”
Calvin and Helena stared at him quietly, waiting for a further explanation.
“It’s in the sand. Whatever caused this came from the sand.”
“Huh?”
“The beach down here is a staple, a part of life. Everyone has gone, sat on the beach, on a towel, in the sand. Everyone’s swum in the water. Sand always gets into bathing suits. It’s a fact of life.”
“Okay,” Calvin said. “Sand made everyone do what they did?”
“Not the sand,” Rex said. “Something in it.”
“Parasites?”
“Maybe,” Rex said. “I don’t know.”
“They tested all the sand,” Helena said. “It was on the news.”
“What did they test for?” Rex asked.
“I don’t know,” Helena said.
“Exactly. The tests can only find what it tested for. Like in organic chemistry in college, you can a sample of something and you have no idea what’s in it. Then they run this analysis called a gas spectrometry, and you get a printout of a graph with all these peaks and troughs—” Here Rex made up and down motions with his index finger “—and each of the peaks represent a chemical compound. But you have to know ahead of time sort of what you expect to get, otherwise it could be a wild goose chase.”
“Could chemicals…make people do what they did?”
“Have you ever been to a frat party in college?”
“No, can’t say I have,” Calvin admitted.
Rex was quiet for some time, sipping his coffee. Helena and Calvin were looking at him, waiting for some other announcement.
“What do we do with it?” He asked. “So far as I can see…nothing.”
“What does it matter, if all the pregnancies are being aborted?” Calvin asked.
Helena moaned. The thought of all the poor babies, not yet babies but representative of them, being snubbed out made her sick. But she knew it was for the health of the mothers, and that the babies wouldn’t last.
“Can you take me to the beach?” Rex asked Calvin.
“I suppose,” Calvin said. “Which part?”
“I don’t think it matters,” Rex said.
Shortly later they were on Ocean Avenue about half way up the island, in the same place where Chief Ruggiero and Dawn Thompson had run up the access. Calvin parked the car and walked up the access with Rex.
“Think anyone will be one it?” Rex asked.
“I doubt it.”
The beach was empty. Not a single chair, umbrella, tanning body and bikini was visible. Rex had brought with him an empty jar from Calvin’s house. They could see machines moving up and down the beach, though the nature of their purpose was unclear. They supposed that they were collecting samples in the same capacity as Rex. They stopped half-way to the water. A light breeze tousled their hair.
“Where should I take it?” Rex asked.
Calvin shrugged. “This was your idea. I’m just the driver.”
Rex nodded and looked up and down the beach. He supposed it didn’t matter. All the sand was just pulverized rock and sea-stuff, right? He walked a little to right, hunkered down, found a spot clear of debris, and scooped the sand into the jar. Then he capped it and stood, looking at it. It was fine sand, packed together, and there was nothing abnormal about it. He went back to Calvin.
“I guess that’s it,” he said.
“What are you going to do with it,” Calvin asked.
“I don’t know,” Rex admitted.
Rex kept the sand in the room in Calvin’s house, looking at it for a long time, knowing that it was somehow partially responsible for The Swarm. One evening, after walking the long empty beach with Calvin, they were coming up the walk when a police cruiser passed them. The cruiser stopped, went into reverse, and the window came down. It was Chief Ruggiero, who had recognized Calvin. They talked for a bit about the events on the island, and somehow it came out that Rex Torres was staying with Calvin and was a doctor…had helped at the Medi-Merge before the plane got it. Chief Ruggiero had studied Rex for a long time, then decided he would be the right fit.
###
Quentin Warsaw led the crew he had assembled into the night. They had to be careful now. The government had armed patrols that went up and down the street. There were estimates of about 100 pregnancies from The Swarm, religious freaks or Pro-Life maniacs who would not yield to the darkness of what happened during The Swarm.
Quentin Warsaw knew better.
In the cold winter night, frost expelled from his mouth, he lit the cloth stuffed into the long neck of the bottle. In the dark around him, other small flames came to life. Then, in unison, they hurled the bottles at the house of the woman who had not aborted her Swarm baby. The bottles crashed through windows, doors and struck the house. The flames, hungry, spread in the oxygen rich warmth of the house and consumed it. Inside he heard the screaming and thought: there is still time for redemption.
Then they scattered from the scene. Across the island, twelve more houses went up in flames. In a condo unit on the twelve floor, someone rang the doorbell of unit 12C. They were vacationers from Canada, the woman pregnant from The Swarm and struggling with aborting the baby despite her husband’s urgings. Her husband, grumbling, opened the door, saw the shotgun, and lost his head to bullet contained therein before he could speak. The bandits found the woman hunkering in the bathroom and shot her, in the stomach, and stood in mute horror as the liquid that oozed from her stained the floor an iridescent purple.
Quentin, meanwhile, went home and rejoiced. He had not gone back to the strange spot. He was too afraid of it now, of its awareness, of its goal: and yet he had no idea of how complete and perfect its design had been. How could he have been so foolish, so blind?
He had not heard from Damiano again, and how was Damiano or his men going to get on the island anyway? He wasn’t; it was completely blocked off.
Gathering other supporters had been easy. With the island barricaded, most of the commerce and business slowed or stopped, and the repressed occupants growing more afraid, they had been willing to do what the government seemed unwilling to do: to abort all the babies. He even found one of the contractors who had surveyed the island and was willing to help, providing access to the database from that survey.
He slept soundlessly, awoke early in the morning, and planned their next night’s abortions.
###
Reagan had watched the house across the s
treet burn. He knew what was happening, of course, and despite his wife’s growing disconnection to reality, he thought she knew it too.
They won’t know she’s here, he told himself, as he watched the house burn.
They won’t know she’s here.
###
Paul Thompson had become obsessed with the Christmas Island Crabs, and he watched the videos over and over. The scientists that studied the “swarming” of the crabs concluded that a sudden surge in hormones forced them into the reproductive mindset, that suggested to mate was more important than to live.
Paul had no idea what tests the government was running to determine a cause of The Swarm. He had no idea what had caused the “swarming” on Bay Isle.
Dawn had visited the Medi-Merge and received treatment from a government doctor, including the prescribing of pre-natal vitamins, blood work and ultrasounds. She was into her late seventh month, quite big, and very scared. She could no longer sleep. She tossed and turned, then would sit up in the bed—in the dark—and say nothing. Paul no longer slept at night, a time during which he sat on the couch near the front window, watching for signs of attackers. He couldn’t leave Dawn alone, not even in his chaotic sleep forced upon him mid-day, for he dreamed of her burning in a house fire.
In the beginning of The Swarm and military occupation, he had been certain that this baby would not survive.
Now that it had come this far, he was determined not to let it go. He knew that the stupid militia or renegades or terrorists (whatever people wanted to call them) had no distinction between “normal” pregnant women and “swarm” pregnant women. They simply went after any woman or girl that was pregnant in a position that appeared to match the date of The Swarm’s gestation.
Paul awoke in the late winter day just as darkness was quickly falling upon them. Dawn was sitting with her hands protectively over her belly and watching the TV. Paul lay and listened to it.