Page 30 of Lagoon

He would have protested, but once he was there, he was in such agonies that he couldn’t do anything at all.

He fell to the floor and went into a fetal position as waves and waves of pain wracked him.

How long that went on, he couldn’t say.

But it was some time later when someone was banging on his door.

He barely managed to call out. He couldn’t get up to answer it.

It was Ramirez, who opened the door, swore, and said, “You, too, huh, doc?” And then ran off, leaving his door open to the muggy air, which wafted inside as the pain went on and on.

CHAPTER TEN

IT WAS TWOdays that all the men in the camp were in too much pain to do anything at all.

The women’s wounds in their stomachs were leaking green fluid and—when Riley felt around inside—she could feel hard growths around all the places that she’d been punctured. There was pain, like waves of cramps here and there, but nothing like whatever was happening to the men.

The women went around to all the guards, bringing them water, which was all they could keep down.

And Riley and Angela had several conversations with Nancy.

“We need help,” Riley said to her. “We need Anderson Scott to send someone for us.”

“Not until we know what’s going on,” said Nancy.

“What if it kills us before we know?” said Riley.

“We’re not going to die,” said Nancy.

She wouldn’t contact him, and they didn’t have any luck getting into her phone or laptop because it was locked down tight with fingerprints and passwords and everything else.

Harris’s plan had probably been to give the laptop to Luther, Angela said. Luther was good with stuff like that. But Luther was down for the count like the rest of the men.

But it was Luther who said something about the pipes. He’d been part of the repairs, and he remembered voicing someconcerns about putting the pipes all together the way they had. He told them, in a scraping, gasping voice, that it was likely that they’ll all drunk and bathed in whatever had come out of the lab.

So, that was when Riley went to Jonathan.

He was in and out of consciousness. She’d tried to get him into bed, but he always seemed to end up on the floor of his living room.

She sat there and babbled about the acid in a human stomach, about how it didn’t make sense to think that whatever he’d put in those tanks could really be affecting them in this way, how it was all ridiculous.

“This is not one of those Marvel comic books,” she said. “This can’t be happening.”

“What are you talking about?” he had said, looking at her with strange, blank eyes.

So, she’d shown him the way the scales were growing around the holes in her belly.

He’d sat up then, gritting his teeth against the pain, and she’d seen it all register in his expression. He scooted over to lean his head back against the wall, still sitting on the floor of his living room. “Did you know that, in certain circumstances, amphibians can change sex?”

“I, um, I heard something like that once,” she whispered. “But this—”

“So, the exposure to this cocktail of amphibian and other creatures cells and DNA,” he said, “who knows what it’s enabling us to change into.”

She grimaced, shaking her head. “No.”

“You’re the one who brought up Frankenstein,” he said to her.

“I didn’t mean… this isn’t possible,” she growled.

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