Mother's Revenge

by Abuttu, Querus

  Kendall nodded, eyes wide from behind a fringe of hair.

  He found the red shoe, bagged and tagged, lying on the ground. Spotted Micah’s small footprints continuing across the clearing in the mud of the trail. There were a couple of other prints, most likely Hernadez’s. He’d done his best to keep the scene clean. Williams figured at this point he’d need a state forensics team in here. His own office wasn’t equipped for anything like this. He turned. “Kendall, let’s go.”

  Silence.

  “Kendall?”

  Her Explorer’s jacket lay crumpled beneath a tree.

  “Kendall!” Dammit, where did she wander off to? Maybe she headed back down the trail on her own.

  Williams took off after her, figuring he’d catch up with her in a couple of minutes. He crossed the clearing, got back on the trail, and headed back toward the development.

  No footprints. Coming or going. Not even bent blades of grass or crushed leaves.

  He stopped, stared. The trees were older, the air heavier, the undergrowth thinner, the path narrower than he remembered. “Kendall!” He called again, but got no response.

  He keyed the walkie-talkie. Nothing. Battery was good. Could it be interference from the trees? He pulled out his cell. No signal. This is not good.

  Williams took a deep breath. The town was pretty much due north. He slipped off his watch and held it flat in his hand, aiming the hour hand at the sun. Not quite as good as a compass, but the bisected line between the hour hand and twelve should get him going in the right direction. Walk a mile or so and he should see or hear something that would help him zero on the town. Or he’d be able to get a signal for his radio or phone.

  He headed generally north, using his pocketknife to mark his trail. This wasn’t his first damn rodeo.

  Leaves crackled. Williams froze, except for the hand that found his holster.

  Silence.

  Slowly, Williams swiveled his head toward the noise.

  Nothing but trees.

  Must have been the wind.

  He started walking again. But something was hinky. If he was headed back toward town, the woods should be thinning. But the trees were taller and thicker than ever. Hell, he didn’t know there were trees this big in the whole damn county. This wasn’t a woods, this was a fucking forest.

  Damn it, I should have stayed put. The search party, they’d have come and found me.

  The noise again, like branches rubbing together.

  He unholstered his nine mil.

  How did it get so dark? And of course, he’d left the big flashlight in the truck. Because who takes a flashlight with them at one in the afternoon on a sunny day? He felt around on his belt. At least he had the smaller one.

  He decided it wasn’t dark enough to start wasting the precious batteries.

  The noise again. Wood on wood, with an undertone of something else. Groaning?

  The woods could get to you when you were all alone. He took in a deep breath. Had to be a bobcat. A fox maybe. Stalking him out of curiosity, but not really a threat. No big predators like cougars or bears had been spotted around here since the early 1900s. Except he’d seen that online article about cougars moving back into areas where they hadn’t been seen in decades.

  Williams gripped his gun tighter.

  That noise.

  “Kendall?”

  Fuck. He thought he heard something. Could be the wind. Or was it a muffled whimper?

  He took a step toward the sounds.

  “Micah? Hernandez?”

  The wind kicked up out of nowhere. Leaves and needles swirled in the air. Over the rattling branches and whipping gusts, a weak whisper.

  “Help. Please.” A girl’s voice. Or a young boy’s.

  “Micah? Kendall? Where are you?” Williams yanked the flashlight off his belt. The thing felt like a toy in his hands, but it did a damn good job of lighting things up. He beamed the light over the trees.

  What the hell?

  In the middle of a circle of oaks stood a wide, half-rotted out trunk, about six, seven feet tall.

  Something moved.

  A flash of a pale limb, like an arm motioning him to come that way.

  Williams released the safety on his pistol, pointed his light directly at the stump. Grit and wind stung his eyes. He couldn’t see squat, not in this dark, not with this wind.

  Williams took a couple of steps toward the trunk. His light cut through the mix of darkness, dust, and whirling leaves to reveal two more rotting trunks. A sweetish smell like his grandmother’s pan dulce came with the wind.

  As he stepped closer to the stump, the wind died down and the smell grew stronger.

  “Help me.”

  With the wind weakening, Williams could hear the words clearly. He broke into a sprint, crashing through the branches and undergrowth. “Micah! Kendall! Hold on! Police!”

  He drew up short. Nearly dropped his flashlight and gun.

  A jagged crack ran from the top of the stump to its middle, its edges covered in what looked like a mottled gray fungus.

  Kendall stared back at him from inside the gashed wood. Only her face was visible as she hissed, “Please, God, help me.”

  Williams covered the ground between him and the tree in two steps. “It’s okay, Kendall, I’m here. I got you.” He dug his hands into the mold, ripped out a chunk.

  “Fuck!” The gray shit burned his hands. He bent to pick up a branch to use to tear at the stuff. When he looked back up, the gray gunk had grown back, like he’d never even touched it.

  Kendall looked at him, panic in her eyes.

  He reached out to touch her face, to let her know it was okay, he’d get her out of there. Her skin was hard, cool, slightly rough.

  Like wood.

  “Jesus.” He picked up his flashlight, shined it at the other trees. Micah’s and Hernandez’s faces stared back at him.

  Williams took a step backward, nearly tripping over a root. Turned to run.

  And realized the root was wrapped around his ankle.

  Max Wright is a corporate communications and occasional fiction writer living in Dallas, Texas. His fantasy and horror stories have appeared in a number of magazines, e-zines, and anthologies, and of course he’s working on a novel. Or two. When he’s not trying to scare people, he enjoys tennis, writers’ group meetings, B-grade horror movies, military history, and trying to banish the gremlins who haunt his partially restored sports car.

  Hope

  Scientific Mothers

  by

  Catrin Sian Rutland

  It all started at a reproduction conference in San Diego. Our group of eight scientists was discussing the fertility crisis with predominant questions on our minds. How had the great reproductive decline really started? Would it end or were humans devolving so quickly that we were about to kill off our own species? How could we change the situation and should we really do anything at all? We understood the biology but so much of the decline was due to social values and personal interest rather than the mechanics of reproduction.

  I am now an old woman of ninety-three years, and no longer completely sure that we did the right thing. There are too many questions that remain unanswered, but I am not sure that our action can be reversed entirely, either. I want to explain what we, the Scientific Mothers, did and why. It’s imperative you understand that we did it out of love. We created something and hoped destruction did not follow in its wake. I will never see the end of our great experiment, but maybe you are living it now.

  After World War 2, it seemed that the human race’s population had exploded. The baby boomers were also the first to really benefit from consistently successful contraceptives. Successive generations developed these drugs. Women and men started to have real choices about their careers, family life, and health. Some countries, such as China, even implemented laws designed to restrict childbirth. One child per couple. Some people protested. How could humans be expected to deliberately limit their families? How could they
give up loving more children? Who could expect people to forget terms such as brother, sister, aunt, and uncle? Unexpectedly, and within just a few generations, the population declined throughout the developed countries. Naturally, the developing countries still had increasing populations but nature itself also ensured that their populations did not grow exponentially. Disease, starvation, climate change, and the lack of health care and sanitation still took their toll. By 2075, when the Scientific Mothers met and talked at that first conference, the decline was becoming extreme.

  In the 1800s the total number of humans walking on the planet was approximately one billion. By 2011 the numbers had increased to seven billion. Despite population estimates of ten billion living souls by 2085, we were in fact surrounded by just four billion, roughly the same as in the 1970s. The net reproduction rates were declining ferociously, and by 2075 only one in six women in the developing countries were having infants. This number fell to one in ten across Australasia, Europe, America, the Middle East, and Russia.

  As each year passed, the birthrate decreased still further. Yes, we were scientists, but the decrease in children hit us at another depth. Laughter and cheer were diminishing in our lives. We noticed people, in general, took less joy from watching little ones open their birthday presents or hearing them squeal in delight at discovering a neighbour’s cat in the garden.

  We went to parties and celebrations but no longer were the toddlers shining in their dance performances, singing in small choirs, or wearing their best party frocks at Christmas. They were conspicuously absent at social events. Our lives were more sober. We had fewer people to care for or about. The words brother, sister, cousin, niece, and nephew were terms that only the oldest people could now use with any frequency. A light was dimming in the world and no one would take responsibility for it.

  The world was changing, and changing at a faster pace than at any time in the glorious past. Governments worried as the aging populations became impossible to manage. It was true that people lived longer than ever before, but with so few young people it was not possible to care for those with physical needs and age-related disorders. We watched on as the number of surgeons declined just when they were needed more than ever before. Despite robotics assuming so many human roles and the dawn of the great age of computers being upon us, people were still needed to rule over the planet. Robots could do housework, build technologies, and assist in hospitals. Computers could drive cars, sort shopping, and run basic households, but we still needed people to watch over these machines and make decisions.

  People still needed people, and life behind a computer was increasingly lonely. Human contact was a biological necessity, yet as each generation was born, mankind became increasingly self-absorbed. In the old days people would have the time to sit down with family and read the news to the older people. They would sit and talk or play board games. Nobody seemed to have that time anymore. There were too many people needing to be cared for and not enough people to share that time with. No grandchildren to coo over or babysit. No strollers to take to the park to enjoy a gentle walk in the sunshine, and no lullabies to sing. Our hearts were growing empty and increasingly geared around a world full of adults.

  Experiencing life independently was a pleasure and material goods became ever more important. Infertility rates had increased for so many scientifically proven and unproven reasons, and although the governments and sciences worked hard to eradicate the complications, they could not keep up the pace. As fast as infertility remedies were created, contraceptive efficacies increased. As hormones were removed from the oceans, water supplies, and food chains, more heavy metals and fresh toxins were discovered.

  Perhaps the greatest reason for the reduction in babies was the human mind itself. Women found new joys in their work. Men chose the freedoms of bachelorhood and reveled in the carefree childless lifestyle. The numbers of single parents hit an all-time high, and people feared the responsibilities involved with nurturing and paying for their children alone.

  Society began to put the onus on achievement, possessions, and living life around pleasure and self-satisfaction rather than placing importance on developing a family unit. Decades before, little boys and girls dreamed of starting their own families, and their careers were based around providing those offspring with the best in life. After weddings in those bygone eras, smartly dressed kids would giggle and dance at receptions. Proud newlyweds would answer endless questions on whether they too might start on their own family very soon. Not anymore. Now, it was assumed that the delightful couple would concentrate on their lives together rather than indulging in the expensive and time-consuming burden of children.

  And expense was a very real concern. Living cost money. Following years of economic recession and several food shortages, the price of just existing had rocketed. Pregnancy, childhood medication, and hospital expenses could cripple parents financially, even assuming they didn’t need fertility interventions to start with. Social care and free education had been eradicated in every country, and nannies, nurseries, and childcare costs had become astronomical.

  Where once upon a time children grew up and flew the nest, they increasingly depended upon their parents to fund their lavish lifestyles and remained in the family home. Slowly but surely the older generations tired of the time and effort needed to bring up children. In a world where they observed others doing what they pleased, it became difficult to make decisions based on the biological need of procreation. Men and women fought against their natural instincts for having children and reasoned instead that they would have better lives without them.

  We eight women watched this as we grew up, and listened as pressures were placed upon us to achieve and live rather than blindly fall pregnant and exist in poverty. At that conference we discussed why the world had become what it was and talked about how much we missed the laughter of little ones and their infectious giggles and smiles. Children were no longer part of day-to-day life. The movement against pregnancy had begun early in our lives and those of the girls surrounding us. Implants containing progestogen were routinely inserted into girls’ arms once they turned twelve. At first this was in a bid to prevent teen pregnancy and protect young lives. As time went by most women chose to keep their valued contraceptives.

  I had not often played with dolls. Due to the movements against encouraging girls to dream only of family roles and stereotypes, those types of toys were generally frowned upon. In discussions with a friend, she said that her grandmother had told her that boys and girls once played with dolls routinely but technologic fashion soon turned them towards computer games. Parents and teachers were obsessed with exams and education as each child became more expensive and therefore more precious. Playtime and exploration had no place in modern society, so dolls were eventually rejected, and over time thoughts of even having children were gradually abandoned.

  Instead of building societies that supported each child and parent, governments turned to cheaper alternatives to encourage childbirth. The populace fought against elevated taxes to pay for schools and medical care for kids. With so many people choosing the childless life, it just wasn’t popular with voters. Pressured to fix the problems caused by the harsh declines in population, successive governments implemented anti-abortion laws and tried to promote parenthood again.

  Child abandonment has been a part of society throughout history. Even the old fairy tales tell of babes left out in the woods and children raised by wild animals. Since genetic testing became routine, simply leaving a newborn at the hospital door had become impossible. In this event both parents would be jailed for life. Politicians no longer tolerated such actions, and judges were forced to comply with harsh international laws.

  Even optimistic potential parents hunted for solutions to the challenges of raising children, but struggled and wearily abandoned such dreams. Home schooling was near impossible as both parents needed to work in order to pay for the basics such as food and a home. The costs of parenting i
f marriage separation occurred were near impossible to manage. Even the risk of criminalisation and jail were higher for those who had children. Schools were happy to fine and even criminalise parents for days missed from school, poor examination grades, or failing to complete the excessive amounts of homework each night. Ideals initially put in place to prevent truancy or parents not bothering to take their kids to school had taken off and expanded. These private schools now gave their teachers annual performance-related bonuses based on attendance and grades and these fines helped towards running the school. Schools had turned into places of fear for both students and parents, and teachers were forced to perform well otherwise their own livelihoods were at risk.

  Meeting those seven other women at conference had been a breath of fresh air for me. I worked in an environment where few women had or indeed wanted children. I wanted children but like so many people I was worried about the cost, being excluded from “polite society” and the prospect of a lifetime of concern and stress. I did also realise that I was missing out on all the love and caring that I could be a part of. I yearned for the magical feeling of growing a child inside me, yet simultaneously feared the responsibility that this would bring. These other scientists were just like me. They wanted children. They wanted society to rebuild. They wanted humans to grow and flourish. It was too late to reeducate the masses. Governments throughout the world had tried that, but with no infrastructures in place, people still rejected the idea of procreating. There was also the problem of reproductive difficulties to overcome.

  We eight had read about strange fertility rituals that now only lived on in history books. We had fallen in love with the idea that humans could once again value fertility and the embryo. People would once again value the small cells growing and dividing to become a valuable part of society. We recounted tales from early mankind where they painted pictures of sexual organs on cave walls and carved sexualised montages and copulating couples in flamboyant Roman baths. We saw films of English children dancing around maypoles, naked people writhing around in waterfalls amidst the blood of sacrificial animals in Haiti, tribes praying to their goddesses, and people putting their faith straight into the hands of fertility clinics.