Page 30 of You Weren't Meant to Be Human
Washville itself is a collection of shops and old stores branching out from an ill-maintained Main Street, and Crane will absolutely not be seen on its sidewalks during the day. Together, he and Stagger skirt around town and find the gravel residential roads behind the dialysis clinic.
There’s a charm to it, living at such a high elevation that the world looks flat and empty forever. Wide clear skies, shoddy yards pitted with puddles, piles of firewood, guesstimated property lines marked by differing grass heights. There’re deer tracks in the mud, and a cat at the base of a pine with knobby-knee roots.
Crane likes it here. Hard to believe that he could like something that isn’t imminently self-destructive, but whatever. He likes how the cliffs light up orange and red every autumn, and the way fog clings to the treetops. He also likes to think he would’ve moved up here even if the swarm hadn’t found him. He can’t say that for certain, but it’s nice to imagine.
Finally, the two of them spot 636 Victory Lane slouching alone halfway down the road. Crane doesn’t recognize the car in the driveway. He’s homesick as he takes the steps two at a time and knocks.
“Get that,” Tammy demands, muffled, and Jess does as she’s told.
Shit. He thought Jess was working today.
Jess hesitates in the doorway, smelling earthy and wet, wound-like. The same thing he’s been smelling since Levi got home. Wearing Tammy’s hand-me-downs and scabs on her knees.
She says, visibly uncomfortable, “Both of you?”
“Is that Crane?” Tammy calls from the other side of the house.
She calls back: “Yeah. Him and the, uh, other guy.” Then, quieter, “Look, can your friend stay outside? In the backyard or something?”
Crane shoulders past her and clicks his tongue for Stagger to follow.
Tammy’s house is a comfort. Ugly vinyl floors, wood walls, lace curtains, and ancient white appliances. There is one air-conditioning unit, and it’s jammed crookedly into the living room window. Crane used to fall asleep on the brown couch watching World War I documentaries, read the angry letters Tammy’s daughter sent in the mail every few months after pulling them from the trash, dig freezer-burned ice cream out from behind mounds of stockpiled venison.
Maybe he should’ve taken Tammy up on the option to move back in. He’d have to share the space with Jess, but he can grit his teeth through a lot.
Jess, left with no other option, considering she’d just been completely ignored, shuts the door. “The girl is in the back.”
A pained sound groans from one of the rooms. Crane’s blood goes cold. The last time he heard something like that was when he found a deer with a broken neck on the side of the road. Stagger pulls down his neck gaiter. His nostrils flare. The entire house reeks of injured human.
Tammy bustles out of the hall with arms full of dirty towels.
“Good.” She dumps the towels into Jess’s arms. “Throw these in the wash and bring new ones. You—” Pointing at Stagger. “Stay in theliving room. She’s scared enough as it is.” Stagger gives a low whine, but even the worms won’t contradict an Appalachian granny. “And Crane, with me.”
Tammy turns on her heel and leads him to the spare bedroom. Crane’s mind turns, turns, turns, sorts through every movie he’s watched and book he’s read to prepare himself for what might be on the other side of the threshold.
It fails.
The girl kneeling by the bed, face pressed to the sheets—sweat-soaked, shivering, dress rucked up to her thighs—is a fuckingchild.
Watery blue eyes. Hair so blonde it’s almost white. Legs stained and hands clasped like she’s praying.
Crane stops short in the doorway.
Tammy whisks past him, rustling the plastic sheet she’s set over the carpet. (With the amount of blood they deal with, that kind of sheet is standard issue for hive households.) The smell is thicker here, heavier. He can taste it in the back of his throat.
“Head up, girl,” Tammy says, taking her by the nape of the neck. “Show me you’re still breathing.”
“It hurts,” the girl whimpers.
“I know. Contractions hurt.”
“It’s too soon.”
“I know,” Tammy says again.
She’s eighteen at most, though he’d guess lower if he had the capacity to mentally withstand the implications of it. Her belly shows through her dress, barely. Certainly not big enough for this to be anything but a tragedy.
“I don’t want a man in here,” the girl says. “Tell him to go away.”
