by Rob Heinze
It was the President. He urged the women still pregnant on Bay Isle to come forward. He put the number around 80 women. He then strongly stated that, if you did not come forward, the United States will have to bring you forward. The pregnancies that resulted from The Swarm had to be stopped.
“Christ,” Paul whispered.
Dawn, startled, hadn’t known he was awake. She looked over at him. Her eyes were wide.
“Just Swarm pregnancies, right?” Dawn asked him. “That’s what he said.”
Paul nodded, but in his heart was fear and that fear would be with him until his baby was born, or they were all dead.
###
Chief Ruggiero knew very little about the Executive Order to terminate the pregnancies on Bay Isle. He did not know the reasoning, who gave the order, and he did not know if what they were claiming—all Swarm pregnancies were ectopic and thus an immediate health risk to the mothers—was true. He knew that it had been coming, what since his department no longer responded to the cases of arson and murder of pregnant women. Something in his deep-rooted policeman core had told him the government was covering something up—something about the pregnancies.
He pulled into the small convenience store the day after the President gave his speech on the non-viable pregnancies and how the government would now begin to search for the pregnant women. It was early in the morning, a warm yellow light coming up from the sea side of the island. Night clung to the sky beyond the convenience store, over the bay, and the Chief could see the lights on the far-away highway. He wondered how long it would be before people on the island—especially the vacationers—started rioting to get off. If they had gone seven months, could they hang on for two or three more months until The Swarm pregnancies were terminated and the government could be sure none were left alive?
He wasn’t sure they would make it.
The Chief was starting to see the first signs of a revolt, like the abrupt gargling snores of a sleeping monster being roused to wakefulness. One of his officers had asked him why they couldn’t let people on the island if there was no radioactivity, no contamination? A lot of his guys lived off the island and missed their families. They had a computer in the station that they had setup a web-camera on with a subscription to Skype, so that the guys and gals could see their families and talk to them. There had been reports of someone trying to swim to a boat in the bay, possibly a friend come to rescue them. The person had apparently been shot by the military. They had found a family dead in one of the condo units that looked out onto the Atlantic. Apparently the man had shot himself, his wife, and his two kids. There was no apparent motivation, and calls to their living relatives back home yielded no clues. The Chief knew the answer. Fear—superstitious fear—was growing on the island. He supposed that the Government would open the barricades once they were sure that all the pregnancies had been aborted.
You don’t know that, Robert.
“But I suspect it,” he said to himself.
And he hoped that they would determine all the pregnancies were gone soon, or they were going to have far more condo units with dead families, people murdering each other all over the island like that Jack Nicholas in The Shining.
Inside the convenience store he found no other patrons. There was a single clerk working the cash register, watching a TV behind the counter that the Chief couldn’t see. She smiled at him and said good morning. The Chief looked up at saw someone’s back. That person was moving away from him, with his head down, as if trying to scurrying away before being seen. The Chief had no way of knowing that, but by the motion of the man he knew it. Then he knew who the person was: Reagan, the manager of the store. He called out to him. Reagan’s body froze, shivered slightly as if a shock had passed through him, and he then turned around. The Chief walked towards him.
“Hello, Chief,” Reagan said.
He had, indeed, seen the Chief coming through the doors and he had tried to slip into the back before he came in. The Chief and his people were in here often, since it was open 24 hours a day. Their supplies were scarce, and had grown scarcer since the blockades, but they had received truck-loads of supplies on occasion, as allowed by the government.
“Hi, Reagan,” the Chief said. “How’s your wife?”
Reagan swallowed. It was the first time someone had asked about his wife since The Swarm—someone who actually knew he had a wife.
“She’s gone,” Reagan said.
“Gone?”
“She left…before The Swarm.”
“Left where?”
“I don’t know,” Reagan said, shrugging. “Had a pretty bad fight.”
“She take your boy too?”
He nodded. “Yep.”
“Were you in The Swarm?”
Reagan lied. “Unfortunately.”
“How are you dealing with that?”
“With what?”
“Waking from that nightmare?”
“It’s been difficult. Trouble sleeping. I can’t believe it’s been almost…seven months? I wish my wife could come back onto the island.”
“I am sure she will, when we’re allowed to open up these barricades.”
“When do you think that will be?” Reagan asked.
“I am not sure,” the Chief lied, knowing it would be when all the Swarm pregnancies were gone.
“I hope soon.”
“Me too,” the Chief said. “Well, you take care of yourself.”
Reagan nodded, smiled dimly, and went into the back storage room. Back there he sat in a chair, out of view, and closed his eyes. He thought about the room in the attic, which was either stifling hot or freezing and smelled always of wet wood. They spent time up there occasionally, switching between the main floor when the threat seemed lower. Reagan, who had begun to see the strangeness in his wife, knew that it was only a matter of time before the government joined the terrorists killing pregnant women. And when it became a matter of official government business? Then they might as well bust into the house and carry his wife, screaming, onto their trucks. He would never let it get that far.
The Chief, meanwhile, remembered how Reagan had tried to slip away from him. Had he really not spoken to the young man since The Swarm? He found it hard to believe, but the seven months that had passed had done so in a haze. His mind had trouble piecing together the different parts. Under the cold dawn sky, he wondered why these women—the so-called Swarm Mothers—hadn’t just come forward? It would have stopped the government from getting involved, that’s for sure.
A couple days later, the patrols and squads were amped up as the search for the remaining Swarm pregnancies intensified.
Chapter 8
There were a few things that led to the government’s patrols and search for the remaining swarm pregnancies.
The first was a woman named Mrs. Clinton, who had to be forcefully dragged from her house. Her son had contacted the authorities to tell them his mom hadn’t taken the abortion pills, refused to go out of the house since The Swarm, and she was acting really strange: sweating and dream-speaking. Plus, she was starting to leak this weird, sharply colored liquid from her “female parts”. The squad had come in the day time, trying to talk to her, but she had gotten violent and resistant, so they had injected her with a sedative and taken her to the warehouse. There they had completed the abortion manually, kept her for observation, and sent her home. The second thing was that the estimated 80 or so women suspected pregnant from The Swarm had not come forward despite the President’s warning. Now the trucks went house by house, searching for fugitives, pulling them out and forcing them to the warehouse on Grand Avenue. Islanders took videos and photographs of the initial insanity, posting them to the internet for the world to see: protests began on the opposite side of the north bridge, in Washington, across the whole world. Now it became the Government hiding some knowledge of the pregnancies and the people wanting to know what was happening. Let them be born! Let them be born! It was the primary chant against the forced
, aggressive abortions. People posted videos and images of supposedly pregnant swarm women ranting and raving, twirling in strange circles as if to gather enough speed to blast off.
People now turned their speculation to that of extra-terrestrial takeover, forces from another planet that had somehow beamed this zombie-ray down to humans. NASA reported no unusual activity in the sky.
The patrols went house by house, door to door, trying to locate handful of women yet to come forth. They used a bull-horn to announce their presence. Helicopters patrolled over-head, searching the street, the beaches and the bay areas for fugitives. On the bay side was an old, decrepit house, half of which had fallen into the marsh land and sunk into the mud. The patrols arrived there, upon receiving a tip from a helicopter that had spotted someone fleeing into it. They uncovered a dozen Bay Islanders. Somehow they had acquired guns. There was a brief fire against the approaching patrols, and from the sky the helicopter watched as the patrols open fired on the dilapidated structure. Eventually, under the barrage of bullets, the lean-to finished that which it had started: the standing half collapsed into the marsh, killing the refugees within. All the women had become pregnant just before The Swarm, and had known via home pregnancy tests of such. This was never known. Autopsies revealed fetuses that appeared healthy, normal and viable: this information was classified. Wireless devices became tracking tools, the Government calling upon the service providers to locate the missing person. One woman was found within a public bathroom. She, too, had confirmed her pregnancy before The Swarm. She, too, had experienced infertility and conception problems prior to The Swarm. She, too, begged that they examine her, see that she was normal. She, too, was brought to the warehouse on Grand Avenue, sedated only to awake without a fetus inside her.
Too much fear had grown, and there was no distinguishing between “swarm” pregnancies and “normal” pregnancies.
Quentin Warsaw had gone to the spot in the public works property, and there he had taken his handgun (a gift from Damiano) and shot at the pink protuberance in the sand. The bullets had zipped harmless into the bulbous shape at the bottom of the hole, leaving an impression of a toothpick stab through a bubble-gum bubble. He had left, uncertain of what to do, but he had told the spot that he had won…he had won: the government was now involved and there would be no Swarm babies born.
He was sitting in quiet remise, listening to the sound of the patrols in the street, urging everyone out of their homes, when the doorbell rang.
I didn’t think they were that close, he thought.
He went to the door, a middle-aged man who had inadvertently stumbled into a deep, dark place, and sparked the slumbering strangeness therein to awake.
Two guys stood on the porch. He did not recognize them. He hadn’t even thought about his last phone call with Damiano “Cash” Richardelli. That was what? How long ago?
“Can I help you?”
Beyond them the sound of the bullhorns was dim, distant: he had made a mistake, then. Quentin had made a mistake.
“Oh, Fuuuuu—”
The sound died in a long monotone squeal as the bullet, which had been fired by one of the men’s gun, tore through Quentin’s throat. He staggered into the house, grasping at his throat as if to pull the bullet out, trying to talk and falling to his knees.
The two men came inside. Quentin knew that Damiano had finally grown too afraid of the bodies being discovered and had sent two cronies on the island (how could he have had people on the island? Quentin wondered at the moment of his death) to erase any link to it. Quentin watched as they both raised the guns. They fired in unison, the silencers like bird chirps in the house while the bullhorns outside proclaimed their warning. Then the two guys left the house, and the man who had started The Swarm was left to bleed out in his living room.
###
The swarm militia ended before Quentin’s death, as soon as the government took over. The people who had been after the swarm pregnancies rejoiced in the government finally “waking up” and ending the gestations. Paul and Dawn Thompson had been terrified since the attacks on pregnant women had started—not knowing how many non-swarm pregnancies had been killed—but somehow having the government taking over was worse. It was scarier because now it was in-the-open and legal, with far more resources.
Paul knew they had to move, had to run. They had stayed up all night after the President had announced the government’s absolution to “save” the swarm mothers from the “ectopic” pregnancies. Dawn was big, and tired, and scared. There was a heaviness, not just of weight but of mind that had come down upon her. She lay in bed, dreaming about the child inside her. She had always waited a girl first, then a boy and then one more girl. They had since seen ultrasounds at that warehouse on Grand Avenue, but they had requested not to know the sex. After the miscarriage, and the struggle to conceive, she had begun to worry that it would never happen naturally. Then it had come, and now it would be gone again—and not via nature, either. She wanted to run, really did, but this was not the movies. The helicopter patrols, the street patrols, and the small density of the island seemed to preclude that possibility.
There was nowhere to run. They would have to hope that, with their arsenal of tests, the government would see that her baby was normal, that Dawn was not leaking “bright fluids” (as reported on the media), and then let it be borne. Dawn and Paul both knew that the doctors in the warehouse had tested her, scanned their baby, and seen that it was normal. So why should they be scared?
On the evening that the patrols started on Bay Isle, the doorbell rang in the Thompson house. Not unlike Quentin Warsaw, Dawn and Paul Thompson listened to the sound of the patrols, certain that they had been further away…unless that sound was some diversion?
For a long time neither Dawn nor Paul were able to move. Their feet were glued to the floor. The front door, miles away, seemed too square, too perfect, too final. The doorbell rang again.
Dawn, wide-eyed, looked at Paul. Who is it? She mouthed.
He shook his head. They could still hear the bull-horn far up the street, calling to residents to emerge from their houses.
Paul started to creep towards the front door. He could see a shadow moving on the floor. He got to the door, placing his palms on it as if to hold out the visitor, and peaked through the sun-panel on side of the door.
It was Chief Ruggiero. Paul’s heart sank. The patrols had sent the Chief to their house early. He turned to Dawn. He didn’t know what to do. Her face had grown several inches.
“It’s the Chief,” he whispered. “From Bay Isle.”
Chief Ruggiero? Dawn thought, perplexed.
“We have to go, out the back,” Paul said, rushing from the door.
He was at the door when he realized Dawn wasn’t following him. He called after her.
“Dawn, come on!”
She was facing the front door and standing now. In the dying dusk sunlight, her shadow stretched eerily across the floor and the reflection of her elbows made it look as if her shadow had wings.
Archangel, fly, Paul thought randomly.
“Dawn?”
“He’s not with them,” she replied.
He had taken her to the beach, during The Swarm. They had shared a few brief moments together and in those moments they had seen one of the strangest, most horrible things that two humans could witness. She had told him, randomly and with no purpose, that she was pregnant. No, he hadn’t come here for the patrols, but why had he come? She went to the door, despite Paul’s urgings not to. For a moment he almost rushed her to pull her back, but the sight of her ever-long shadow stopped him.
She opened the front door. The click of the knob’s mechanism was like a gunshot. Then she pulled the door inwards.
Chief Ruggiero saw her, smiled, and said he needed to come in—and fast. She stepped aside, and Chief Ruggiero entered their house. Dawn shut the door and turned to him. The sound the patrol’s bullhorn, and the distant beat of the helicopters, formed the backdrop
to which the Chief greeted them.
“Hello,” he said to Dawn. “I’m sorry to scare you.”
“With what’s happening here, nothing can scare us,” Paul said.
Chief Ruggiero looked up at him, hesitant, and then extended a hand. They shook, and Dawn explained how the Chief and she had seen The Swarm together.
“So you know what they’re doing?” The Chief asked.
“Yes,” Dawn said. “Killing the swarm pregnancies.”
The Chief nodded. “Have you been to their doctors, up on Grand Avenue?”
Dawn went cold. “Yes. Why?”
“I don’t know how true it is, but word came down from the County Sheriff that they were planning to end any pregnancy around the same gestation period of The Swarm babies. I asked him why, and he couldn’t tell me, except to say that they were concerned from some high levels of a Carbon isotope geologists reportedly found.”
“What’s that mean?” Paul asked. “Concerned for non-swarm babies?”
“I guess worried they might come out with high levels of this isotope.”
“So? So what? Then, if it’s sick, it would die. Why kill it before?” Paul asked.
The Chief shook his head. “I’m just a messenger. I don’t know why. I think they’ve gotten a little superstitious, and I think that you’ll want to come with me.”
“Where?”
“There’s a hiding place. We have about a dozen women—women and families—just like you. They’re waiting for this to pass. We even have a doctor aboard to check them out.”
He looked to Dawn’s belly. He had remembered Dawn telling him she was pregnant, and he had found a few other women through an associate and their doctor friend, Rex Torres.
“Where is this place?”
“In someone’s attic, right on the island. I don’t think this will last long. I think they’ll search, find most people except the folks we put in that attic, and then I believe they’ll lift the barricades. Then you’ll be able to slip off the island, have your baby, and live wherever you want.”