Page 20 of You Weren't Meant to Be Human
No, he’s not. This was a mistake. The hive will understand he can’t do this. It loves him, doesn’t it? It always has. He doesn’t want to die. It has to understand. It has to.
He tries to stand, reaching for the buzzing emergency light, but Levi gets him under the arms. “Nope,” he says, even as Crane sobs and struggles and his feet slip in the loose rocks. “We’re going home. You look like shit.”
Aspen:Crane?
Aspen:Are you taking a walk or something?
Aspen:We need to leave for the appointment in an hour.
Aspen:Birdie found your note. Are you okay? The door is fucked up.
Aspen:We’re not upset. If you need to talk something out I have the tablet. We’re not mad at you.
Birdie:I hate that I get it but I did the same thing with my parents when I was ur age. I made the mistake and went back to them. I know it sucks and its bad but I can put money on the fact that u went back because ur scared. and we’re scared for u too and we’re not mad but please let us know you’re not dead in a ditch somewhere or smth. please?
Nine
Out in the living room, muffled by the flimsy door and the drone of the standing fan, Levi’s voice: “You still in there or what?”
According to the alarm clock, it’s late afternoon. Hard to prove with the blackout curtains. Crane wakes up tacky-mouthed, blankets tangled around his feet, and a gray pillow shunted off to the dirty hardwood.
For a moment—a moment too long—he can’t remember how much of the previous forty-eight hours actually happened. There’s no physical evidence to show for it. No new bruises, somehow. No swollenstomach. Only a dehydration headache to prove he cried himself sick, and the thin sheen of sweat that means it’s time to update the utility failure spreadsheet.
In the living room, again: “Talk, motherfucker.”
The only response is a boar-like grunt.
Right. The sun-warmed gravel of the parking lot. The man with the worms under his skin. The positive test. All real.
Crane doesn’t get up. He puts a hand on his stomach and watches the ceiling. It’s dizzyingly blank up there; no overhead light, no fan, no fire alarm. (The alarm went off two nights in a row when they moved in, so Levi ripped it down and threw it into the trash.) Nothing to focus on except the skin under his palm.
No matter how hard he presses, he can’t find the thing inside him. It’s the same fat and organs as always.
It’s not right that he can’t feel it. His body shouldn’t be allowed to hide itself from him. What did that one website say?You’re starting your third month, Mama!At nine weeks, because maybe it’s been nine weeks probably, the baby is the size of a grape.
No. Not a baby.
Embryo, then. Fetus. Larva. He imagines a larger-than-life maggot or, what is the larval stage of a worm? Just a slightly different worm? That, sitting in the gory slop of his pelvis. Flystrike cranked up to eleven, the sort of thing Harry was going on about before Levi put him down with the shotgun.
“You kill him or just hollow him out?” Levi says out there. He’s got that grit-teeth growl he gets when he’s mad. “What’d you do to him, huh? How bad did you fuck him up?”
Crane resists the urge to drag his phone from the nightstand and look up pictures of myiasis, human shoulders and dog necks turned into meaty lotus pods. If he does, he’ll have to check his messages. Allthe stressed texts from Aspen and Birdie he knows he’ll have, they’re going to make him ill. Again.
“Jesus.”
The tellingthump-thumpof the noisy floor; someone approaching. Crane buries his face in the pillow before the bedroom door opens and obnoxious yellow light cuts across the bed, pretends he’s still asleep.
Not that it matters. Levi takes Crane’s head in one big hand and thumbs open an eyelid.
“Making sure you’re still breathing,” he mumbles as Crane flinches away. He pulls a shirt out of the worn-but-not-noticeably-dirty pile beside the hamper to sniff. A purple-green bruise swallows his entire cheek, punctuated by a fresh scab. “M’going out for slugs. Don’t do nothing stupid.”
How many bullets did he use down in McDowell that he needs more already? That, or he’s stockpiling. He does that when he’s nervous.
“Big guy’s out there, he’ll keep an eye on you. We clear?”
Levi pulls on the shirt, dog tags jingling. He’s got a whole mess of scars—some on his hands from soldier shit, couple on the arms from people fighting for their lives, the usual—but the newest is a swollen keloid that looks too much like an incision for a bowel surgery. He came home with it a few months ago, an odd cut right above the waistband of his jeans. Never said a word about it.
“We clear?” Levi repeats.
