It was the suddenness of the silence that startled me.
It only lasted a handful of seconds.
It was broken by a medley of low crunching sounds, like someone walking around in an overfilled junkyard. I felt a foot lightly kick me on my side. I groaned in response, but couldn't bring myself to move. The foot hooked itself under my shoulder and roughly flipped me over to my back. My vision was hazy at first, but seconds later it stabilized. It was the strange Changed/Not Changed woman, looking down at me with a hateful grimace.
She was pointing my shotgun at my face.
She pulled the trigger.
*
They say when you’re about to die, your life flashes before your eyes – that you see some of the most important, impactful moments that you've ever lived through in a quick slide-show like moment of reflection and clarity.
That is such bullshit.
All I had time to do was blink. Blink and take a deep, sharp breath.
But I didn't die.
The gun didn't even fire.
I looked up from the gun’s barrel, following its impossibly long length to stare into the face of the Changed/Not Changed woman. She was sneering at me. Suddenly, I understood – she knew that the gun was out of bullets. She knew it wasn't going to shoot. As if able to sense my comprehension, she casually tossed the gun to the floor beside me.
And then she slowly, almost in slow-motion, crumpled to the ground.
Holding her belly.
I looked at her with a sudden jolt of comprehension: she was pregnant!
That revelation hit me like blow to the face, and (without thinking) I immediately scrambled to my feet and ran to her side, gun forgotten, and placed my hands on her arm. She was...bleeding. And breathing heavily.
She was about to give birth!
Can The Changed even give birth?!?
I gave myself a good mental bitch-slap. Obviously, they could.
I had watched plenty of old television shows and documentaries, so I had a pretty good idea of how the process was supposed to go. I braced myself. It was going to be a long afternoon…
*
I lifted the baby up in my arms. She – and yes, it was a she - had a slight green tint to her skin, with dark straight black hair and large bright brown eyes. She looked so tiny...and so green...like a plant decided to up and give live birth.
But she was also adorable. So adorable. And she didn't even cry like babies were supposed to when they were first born...she just looked up at me with tiny intelligent eyes, almost as if she was analyzing me with far more intelligence and curiosity than I could ever muster. It was creepy.
My head snapped up as the mother slowly, clumsily tried to get to her feet.
But she couldn't. She fell back to the ground, hard, and let out a jagged blast of breath.
And just like that, she was gone.
Dead.
*
It took several long moments before I could move enough to shift the baby to one arm while I grabbed my shotgun with the other. I really needed to reload it, but I needed to get out of this place quickly.
I stumbled to the door, slipping repeatedly on broken merchandise and various types of liquid, terrified of dropping the baby - or the gun, for that matter - or falling to the ground. My bitten arm practically had its own heartbeat now, and was bleeding heavily. The baby seemed to sense my forced lucidity and shaky balance, because she clung to me like her little life depended on it.
Which it did.
I didn't make it very far before I was frozen in place once again: the bodies of five Changed lay sprawled on the ground, a strange greenish-red jello-like substance oozing from their headless or nearly headless necks. I frowned as I studied their bodies, moving from one to the other in a careful, methodical manner. Several of them twitched slightly as I passed, causing me to reflexively point my empty shotgun in their direction. I didn't have to worry, however, they were all dead. That strange woman – my pregnant, Changed doppelganger – killed them all.
So she wasn’t shooting at me.
She was shooting at them.
She saved my life.
*
I had to get out of there.
The Changed can somehow sense The Non-Changed from great distances (something I discovered FREQUENTLY when I had to make trips for supplies), so staying in one place too long is the equivalent of shooting up a flair and screaming, 'Hey! I’m over here!' over and over again. And The Changed - they're everywhere. No matter where you go, there's always some near you. It's never a matter of if they're going to come, but when.
I retrieved my backpack, still tightly holding the tiny green baby against my bruised and slightly broken body, quickly walking out of the mall’s enormous double doors and back to my old beat-up truck.
I tossed my backpack to the passenger seat and carefully slid into the drivers, carefully repositioning the baby as I closed my door and instinctively locked it after. I let out a deep breath and closed my eyes for a second, feeling the infant’s light sweet-smelling breath against my chest. I concentrated on the sound. The feeling. I peeked through my eyelashes. She was sleeping, her tiny little fists clutching my shirt tightly to her ridiculously small body.
My heart instantly melted.
Ivy.
I was going to name her Ivy.
I began mentally collecting myself, preparing for the long journey home to my mom and Maxx.
As I sat there with my eyes closed, my mind hit me with a startling but pointed question: why did Ivy's mother save my life?
I slowly shook my head and opened my eyes. I knew I'd never know the answer to that question. I would never see her again. She was dead. And I was left with her daughter. Ivy - I guess she was my daughter now, by proxy…
I started my truck and pulled out if the mall’s parking lot, beginning my journey home – a disheveled mess of bruised, sore, and tired girl.
And sleeping infant.
Thankfully, the day was over.
I had no idea how wrong I was…
*
My daughter had been gone several hours before I heard them. Not The Changed. Something different. I knew immediately that they weren’t Changed because they were…talking…although I couldn’t make out a word of what they were saying.
It wasn’t like any language I had ever heard before.
I was still hogtied – an unnecessary precaution that my daughter took to prevent me from killing myself. I gave up on that endeavor long ago, resigning myself to the fact that I wasn’t going to transform into one of them. Not completely, at least. But I couldn’t risk living with my family again. No one knew how this all worked…and I didn’t want to take any chances.
The large barn door opened quietly, slowly.
The sudden flooding of light blinded me momentarily, but I could still make out the shapes of what appeared to be three tall, thin human beings strolling into the barn all at once.
They came several feet into the barn and then stopped. Their heads moved in unison, appearing to take in the carnage left behind by my daughter. My vision finally returned fully and I quickly took in their overall appearance. Stick-men. They looked like tall, muscle-less stick-men with green, slightly mottled skin. And it appeared to almost…move…in a strange, thick, “fluidy” kind of way.
And then, again in unison, their heads…their large, pupil-less eyes…suddenly locked onto me.
They started to walk in my direction.
The barn door closed behind them. By itself.
I somehow knew that I was going to die.
I had no idea how wrong I was…
J.C. Nichols is a full-time ninja and occasional writer who currently resides in Corpus Christi, TX.
His hobbies include surfing, camping, and professional slap-boxing.
"The Change: Birth" is his first short story.
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The Change: Birth Page 2