Total pages in book: 50
Estimated words: 46314 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 232(@200wpm)___ 185(@250wpm)___ 154(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 46314 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 232(@200wpm)___ 185(@250wpm)___ 154(@300wpm)
6
“They’re here!”
I must have fallen asleep along with Obigor. I startle awake at some unknown time of the night or maybe early morning. Justice is standing inside the vault, his wings tucked tightly behind his back with the effort to get in through the relatively narrow hole above. He is a mothman, and he looks like one. He is tall, he has large moth wings and big red moth eyes, and he has a very particularly long and curled tongue that I understand to be very, er, effective.
I don’t see Sally.
“Where is Sally?” My voice is sharper than I want it to be.
“I’m here!” She steps out from behind Justice, whose stupid moth wings and massive monster stature make it possible to hide a much cherished friend completely. She rushes over to me, looking like she’s missed me almost as much as I’ve missed her.
She brings a rush of normality into a very strange situation. The two of us are just so pedestrian and human compared to the one, two, three mutants who surround us. It is such a huge relief to see her. I feel tears pricking my eyes as I wrap my arms around her and give her a big hug.
“Where the hell have you been?” I try not to cry the words at her.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I got busy.”
Sounds like an understatement to me, but all that matters is that she’s okay. She looks the same as she always has, pretty red hair and all the expected features of Celtic heritage. I do think she looks tired, but she has been the captive of a mothman for weeks. God only knows what ravages she has endured during that time.
Before I can murmur an escape plan in her ear, she’s pulling back and smiling at me in the way she smiles when she knows something that I don’t know yet. The next words out of her mouth are the most confusing ones I’ve heard in a long time.
“I need to go check on the kids,” she says. “Come with me? I need an extra pair of hands.”
Kids? What kids? Sally and I have always been career girls. We don’t have kids or plans for them. Maybe they had to rescue some locals on their way through. Maybe…
All I know is that she’s leading me up and out of the vault, and nobody is stopping us. Before her arrival I wasn’t allowed near the dangerous surface, but for some reason nobody seems to question Sally one bit.
When we reach the surface, I see that there’s another car parked next to mine. A black sedan. It doesn’t draw much in the way of interest to me, because I am much more concerned by the prospect that children have somehow been dragged into this situation.
“How are my babies?” Sally is speaking in a sing-song voice which almost makes me think she’s had part of her brain removed. Last I saw Sally she was a hardbitten New Yorker, who secretly smoked in the weirdest way, holding her cigarette between her index and her ring finger for reasons I never understood. She was quirky and reclusive and often rude, and I loved all of that about her. I don’t recognize this tone. What has Justice done to her? And what does Order intend to do to me? Where did either of them get children… Oh. Oh no.
I look over her shoulder and recoil in horror.
There are… things… wriggling around in the back seat. Three larval creatures with nearly human faces. They emit giggling sounds, sort of like toddlers with cherubic cheeks. They have no arms or legs, but they do have little hands and feet emerging from the waving segments of their caterpillar like bodies. They are playing, I think, clambering over one another back and forth the way puppies do.
She looks at me. I look at her. I do not know what to say about what I am seeing. It is a perversion of all things wholesome about family life, and yet it is sort of adorable too. Am I grossed out? Horrified? Afraid? Yes.
“What’s… who are these?” I try to formulate a respectful question.
“I laid eggs,” she says, matter-of-factly. “And then these hatched. These are my monster children.”
“Wow!” I say, suddenly knowing precisely what word I need to utter. “Congratulations!”
“I know they’re creepy looking,” Sally says, doing me a massive solid. I thought I would have to pretend her larvae were adorable, and I have a hard enough time doing that with normal human offspring.
“They’re just different. That’s all. I never thought I’d see you as a mom, but here we are. It’s really good to see you. I was so worried. Chief Connor is going to be, well, really fucking angry, I guess, but so relieved you’re alive.”
“We need to talk about that,” she says. “We need to talk about a lot of things. You need to be careful. If you sleep with one of these creatures, you don’t know what could be coming out of you.”