Everything Has Teeth

by Strand, Jeff

  He shoved her as hard as he could. The woman fell backwards. She landed with a crash but didn't flatten her child.

  Warren pulled the knife out of her chest, then used it to cut the crying baby free. He stuck his index finger into the rip in its onesie. The cut wasn't very deep. He didn't know if there was such a thing as a superficial cut where a baby was concerned, but he didn't think the child was in any danger of bleeding out before he could get it to the emergency room.

  He looked around for the little girl. She was still standing in the kitchen.

  "You killed my mommy," she said.

  "No, no, I don't think she's dead. She'll be fine, I promise."

  "You killed my mommy."

  "I had to protect you and your little brother."

  "You killed my mommy. I wanted to do it!"

  The little girl ran at him, arms outstretched, fingers curled into claws. Warren couldn't believe this. He dropped the knife to make sure there wasn't a horrible accident, then braced himself. The little girl struck him much harder than he'd expected, almost knocking him over.

  Warren scooped her up. She screamed in rage, kicking and flailing and trying to scratch his eyes out. He carried her out of the living room and into a hallway, yelping as her fingernails raked across the side of his head. He stepped through an open doorway into what appeared to be the mother's bedroom, tossed the girl onto the bed, then hurried out of the room and slammed the door. It didn't lock from the outside and there was nothing to use to wedge it closed, so he hadn't bought himself more than a few seconds.

  Clearly he had to be a dick.

  He heard the bedsprings squeak and then footsteps on the floor, so he threw the door open, bashing the little girl in the face. Then he closed it again and ran back into the living room. He scooped up the baby and fled the apartment.

  Warren reached the exit to the complex just as Julia was entering it. They rushed outside together.

  "Is the girl okay?" Julia asked.

  "Sort of. She's alive."

  "Here, I'll take the baby from you."

  Warren shook his head. "No, that's all right. I've got it."

  He wasn't very comfortable around babies except when his own daughter had been one, and any other time he would've been grateful to pass it off to somebody more nurturing.

  But the baby kept trying to hit him. Trying to claw at him with its tiny fingers.

  It didn't hurt, of course, but he didn't think it was right to give Julia a homicidal baby.

  Warren didn't comment on the two dead bodies lying on the sidewalk, nor did he say anything about the bloody tire iron in Julia's hand. Everything was fucked and they could save the discussion about what they'd done to survive for another day.

  Once they reached his car, Warren realized that he couldn't exactly drive with a baby on his lap. "Watch out," he said, handing the baby to Julia. "He's...angry."

  Somebody screamed. Warren and Julia looked back just in time to see a teenaged boy hit the ground. Several floors up, a man and woman high-fived each other. Then the man shoved the woman over the rail as well. "Asshole!" she yelled on the way down, before splattering next to the boy.

  Warren and Julia got in the car and sped off.

  Warren turned on the radio. "See if you can find any news," he said, while taking his cell phone out of his pocket. He never used his cell phone while driving, especially when going this fast, but obviously these were extenuating circumstances. "I need to call my daughter."

  Yvonne answered immediately. "Dad?"

  "Oh, thank God. Are you okay, honey? Is anything happening where you are? How's your mom?"

  "Mom was being a total bitch. I chopped her hands off and she acted like I was the worst person in the world. I don't know why you ever had sex with her."

  Warren felt like he was going to throw up. "Is she dead?"

  "I don't know. Probably. She was bleeding pretty fast. Why do you even care? Is that why you called? If you want to get back together, man up and call her. Don't put me in the middle of your drama."

  "I just...I wanted to know if you're okay."

  "Come on over and see."

  Warren disconnected the call.

  "Her too?" Julia asked.

  Warren didn't answer. "She lives almost an hour from here. So it's not just this area."

  Julia turned the dial, flipping past music and commercials until somebody was talking.

  "—spraying all over the place! Oh, it was wicked! I could've watched that all day!"

  Gunshots. A man stood on the corner, opening fire on a crowd of about five or six people who were walking on the other side of the street. A woman came up behind him, grabbed a handful of his hair, yanked his head back, and jammed something (a nail file?) into his throat as Warren sped through the intersection.

  "This is insane," said Warren. "Absolutely insane. What the hell has...?"

  And then he understood.

  * * *

  Julia almost lost hold of the baby as Warren slammed on the brakes. The tires screeched and she tried to see what he'd braked to avoid hitting. There was nothing in front of them. He turned to her and grinned.

  It didn't look like a crazed "I've lost my ability to cope with reality" grin.

  "Tipping point," he said.

  "What?"

  "Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of goodness in the world," said Warren. "Good people doing good things for selfless reasons. But, let's face it, there's also a lot of bad behavior. We can be anonymous online and say whatever hurtful shit we want. You ever read the comments section? There are some truly wretched human beings out there. Meanwhile, other people are feeling emboldened to do awful things in the real world. It starts to build up."

  "What the hell are you talking about?"

  "It keeps building up, and building up, and then you've hit the tipping point. Suddenly almost everybody is affected. And it's a beautiful thing."

  Julia threw open the car door. Warren lunged across the seat at her, grabbing her arm.

  "Hey! I took you out to a fancy goddamn restaurant! Where's my repayment?"

  Julia yanked her arm away. She kept a tight hold of the baby with her other arm, and punched Warren in the face.

  She didn't mean to get him right in the eye. But she did, and Warren covered his eye as he cried out in pain, giving her time to scramble out of the vehicle.

  The baby continued to claw at her arm.

  Julia ran. Behind her, she heard Warren get out of the car.

  "Julia!" he shouted. "We had a connection! Why are you being such a tease? Come on back here so we can finish the date! I wore my nice shirt and everything!"

  Julia fought back a sob as she continued to run.

  * * *

  Warren wanted to chase after her, but he wasn't used to getting this much exercise, and his eye stung like crazy, though she didn't seem to have popped it. He'd let her go. Maybe she'd change her mind and come back.

  "One..." a couple of guys shouted in unison, up above.

  Warren glanced up, but then his eye stung even worse and something trickled down his cheek. Shit. Maybe it was leaking.

  "Two..."

  "No! Please don't!" somebody screamed, also up above. "Don't do it!"

  Warren wiped his eye and looked up again. The two guys were standing on a balcony, holding some poor bastard by his hands and feet, swinging him over the side. He wasn't surprised that so many people were getting thrown from great heights; it looked like a fun thing to do, like throwing watermelons but with a more satisfying impact.

  "Three!"

  They flung the screaming person over the rail.

  Warren's depth perception was all messed up, and the pain was keeping him from completely focusing on his surroundings. Otherwise he would have figured out sooner that the two guys above were aiming for him.

  Direct hit. Both bodies broke apart.

  Warren lived just long enough to hear them whooping in victory.

  * * *

  Up ahead, a yo
ung man was dragged out of his car by a group of women who were dressed for a night of bar hopping. Their high heels had clearly been selected for style, but turned out to be functional as they stomped on him repeatedly.

  When the women left, presumably to find another victim, Julia stole his car.

  She placed the baby on the passenger seat. She didn't care if the child was affected by this madness; tipping point or not, Julia wasn't going to abandon a baby.

  She sped down the street.

  There was carnage everywhere. A couple of teenagers laughed and danced around with a spurting headless body. A man's legs were slammed repeatedly in a car door. A little girl clubbed an old lady to death with a wrench, while a woman who was probably the little girl's mother cheered her on.

  Julia drove for miles, praying to reach the boundaries of the insanity.

  Praying it wouldn't affect her.

  She had to trade vehicles after encountering a multi-car pile-up that she assumed had been done on purpose. A mangled woman, hanging out of her open car door, begged Julia to help her, and Julia spent a desperate two minutes trying to stop the bleeding before the woman finally went silent and still.

  She kept driving.

  There was no end to it.

  She drove onto the highway, but oncoming cars kept swerving into her lane, so she abandoned that idea. She didn't know which direction might lead her out of this anyway. For all she knew, safety was in the opposite direction.

  Julia pulled into a suburban neighborhood, with several bodies littering the street, and, after a failed attempt that forced her to flee from a woman wielding an axe (who the hell had axes in suburbia?) found an empty house where the owners were either out killing people or were dead themselves.

  She put the baby in a different room so that she wouldn't wake up with it clawing at her, then went to sleep.

  * * *

  When she woke up, it was daylight.

  Julia didn't feel any different.

  If she was still unaffected, then so were others. She'd find them.

  Maybe Warren was right about the tipping point.

  They'd tip it back.

  NAILS

  "Ew. Clip those things."

  "What are you talking about? I just cut them yesterday." Ricky glanced at his hand. His fingernails were about a quarter-inch long. Had he cut them yesterday afternoon?

  Yes, he'd done it while he was watching the otter video on YouTube. He distinctly remembered that. Unless...he'd gotten out the clippers, sat down with the intention of clipping his fingernails, and then been so distracted by the amusing otter antics that he forgot.

  Weird. He was pretty sure he'd clipped them, but nails didn't grow this much overnight, and he liked to believe that his life wasn't so boring that he could say with one hundred percent certainty when he clipped his fingernails.

  "All right," he said, pulling aside the blanket and sliding his legs over the edge of the bed.

  "I didn't mean to do it right now," said Maggie.

  "I need to get ready for work anyway."

  It was still strange having Maggie in his bed on a workday. She'd been sleeping over on weekends for the past four or five months, but it was only within the past couple of weeks that she'd been here on mornings that required setting an alarm. He wasn't sure if he liked it or not.

  They both had office jobs, but hers started half an hour later, so she got to stay in bed while he got ready, and then she'd get up right before he left the apartment. Which was fine—it wasn't as if he thought she was going to steal his TV or something—but it still felt kind of invasive. Plus, it was one great big step closer to "So when are you going to put a ring on that finger?" He didn't want to put a ring on that finger. He liked Maggie a lot, and would never consider being unfaithful to her, but he had every intention of trading up at some point in the future.

  Ricky clipped his nails, shaved, showered, and got dressed in his slacks, long-sleeved shirt, and tie. None of those were required by the dress code. Employees were allowed to wear jeans (unripped) and short-sleeved shirts (without logos), and ties weren't required except when bigwigs from New York City were visiting the office, but Ricky always wore business attire. If you were a professional you should dress like one.

  He gave Maggie a kiss and left the apartment.

  * * *

  As long as it arrives first thing in the morning, Tuesday is not a problem, Ricky typed in the e-mail. If it is not here by eight, though, we will have to—

  Ricky's fingernails were making an annoying clicking sound on the keyboard as he typed. He held up his hand and inspected them.

  They weren't as long as they had been when he woke up this morning, but they were close. That was insane. Nails didn't grow that fast. He was freaking positive that he'd clipped them after Maggie's comment. He'd even spent a couple of minutes trying to find a nail that hadn't landed in the trash, just so Maggie wouldn't see it on his bathroom floor.

  He would never, ever become the kind of person who would cut his fingernails in the office, so he didn't keep a clipper in his desk drawer. What was the deal? Had he changed his diet in some way that affected his fingernail growth rate? Ricky had never heard of this sort of thing happening, although to be fair, it was not a subject he'd ever really researched.

  He typed rapid growing fingernails into his Internet browser and skimmed a few of the search results. It could be that he was somehow healthier now. That would be nice, although he wasn't sure why he'd be suddenly healthier now. He was pretty much eating and exercising the same, and his stress level was actually a bit higher now that Maggie was getting closer.

  Or it could be hyperthyroidism. That wasn't so cool.

  "Whatcha doin'?" asked Gary, startling Ricky so badly that he nearly knocked over the cup of coffee that was three feet away from his keyboard. Gary was a short, tubby guy who waddled rather than walked, yet he possessed a ninja-like ability to suddenly materialize in those very rare occasions when Ricky used his work computer for something non-work-related.

  "Nothing," said Ricky, which was the same answer he'd given to the same question asked by Maggie recently when she'd walked in on him looking at pornography.

  "You don't want to mess with hyperthyroidism," said Gary. "Better get yourself checked out."

  "I will."

  After his usual lunch of a salad and bottled water, Ricky returned to his cubicle and began to type, stopping after a few keystrokes.

  He couldn't quite see a difference, but his nails were definitely longer. How the hell did somebody's nails get noticeably longer in two hours? That's not how fingernails worked! It was freakish and unnatural!

  Ricky considered biting his nails to get them back down to a length where he could type without inconvenience, but decided against it. Chewing your nails was nasty.

  By the time he shut down his computer, his nails were half an inch long. That was utterly bizarre. No way could this be explained by a vitamin surplus.

  He clipped his nails as soon as he got home. 5:13 PM. He'd keep track of how quickly they grew.

  Maggie arrived at 5:48 PM. No phone call or even a text message; she just assumed that it would be fine to stop at his place after work instead of her own. At some point they were going to have to discuss this. Not tonight, though, because she was wearing the green blouse that showed off the maximum allowable amount of cleavage without being unprofessional.

  She cooked him dinner (nice), had sex with him on the couch (very nice), and then they watched one of those stupid competition cooking shows to which she was addicted (not so nice, but worth it for the dinner and sex).

  "Look at this," he said, holding up his index finger during a commercial.

  "Ew," Maggie said. "I thought you were going to clip those."

  "I did."

  "No, you didn't."

  "I did! Seriously!"

  "Nobody's fingernails grow that fast," Maggie informed him.

  "Mine did. It's weird as hell."

  "Maybe
you just imagined clipping them."

  "I think I can remember when I cut my own nails."

  "Really? Is it an activity that weighs heavily on your mind?"

  "Do you want me to prove it to you?" Ricky asked. "Do you want me to go get the clippings?"

  "I don't. I really, truly don't."

  Ricky got up off the couch. "I'll be right back."

  "Seriously. I believe you. I don't want to see them."

  Ricky hurried into the bathroom. He knew that digging his own fingernail clippings out of the wastebasket in the bathroom was the kind of thing that would negatively impact his chances of having another round of sex tonight, but he needed to prove that he wasn't some kind of hygiene-ignoring slob.

  He sifted through the contents for a couple of minutes, hoping his hands wouldn't come into contact with anything too horrific, and managed to find four of the ten clippings, which was enough to prove his story. He walked back into the living room, holding them in his cupped palm.

  "See?"

  "C'mon, Ricky, that's gross."

  "But do you see them?"

  "We're not supposed to be at this point in our relationship yet."

  "But you believe me, right?"

  "Yes. Yes, I believe you. Jeez. Be careful—you're gonna drop them on the couch."

  "It's my couch. If I want to cover it with fingernails and water them every morning, that's my right."

  Maggie sniffed a few times.

  "What are you sniffing for?"

  "Pot."

  "I'm not on pot. All I'm trying to do is prove that my fingernails are growing at an accelerated rate, and as my girlfriend, you should believe me without me having to hold a handful of clippings up in front of you."

  "How do I even know those were from yesterday?"

  "Fine!" said Ricky. He wanted to angrily fling the fingernails to the floor to demonstrate the power of his conviction, but, no, then he'd have to awkwardly drag out the vacuum cleaner. "You're going to watch me clip them, then you'll see how they look in the morning."

  "I don't want to watch you clip them."