Джон Адамс - The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2019

I just didn’t expect it to end so soon.

We were in the backyard, Geode lying on their back in the sun, me wiping down their belly with a mixture of saltwater and dilute acid—the same mixture I’d used on their eggshell to encourage them to hatch, now used to encourage a shed—and me in a tank top and old jeans, half draped across the slope of their thigh, which held me up and kept me balanced. It was a beautiful day, that rare Seattle sunshine pouring out of the clear blue sky, warming the both of us to the bone.

Geode was mumbling and whistling, a soft, sweet sound that filled my ears enough that I didn’t hear the truck pulling up in front of the house, didn’t hear the door slam as the inspector got out. He must have tried the door first, ringing the bell on an empty but clearly occupied house, and when he didn’t get an answer, he went looking for the source of the sound. Maybe he was even trying to help, wanting to warn me about the looters that had been seen moving closer and closer to this area. Whatever his reasons, he came around the corner of the house, tablet in one hand, the other hand raised to block out the sun, calling, “Hello? Is there anyone home? I’m from the state, and— oh my God! ”

His voice became a shout at the end, terrified and shrill and unlike any sound Geode had ever heard a human make before. I had to assume that was why they surged to their feet, pushing me gently behind them, and roared, spitting balls of acid with terrible precision to strike the man in the face, throat, and stomach.

I screamed. The man fell, acid eating the flesh away, revealing blood-mottled bone. Geode looked back at me, as if reassuring themself that I was all right, before ambling over to bend over the body, beginning to rip the acid-softened flesh away.

I turned and vomited into the grass.

Geode was a carnivore. There was footage of their mother eating humans, shoving bodies into her mouth as she continued her rampage through the streets of Seattle. This wasn’t a surprise. But seeing it happen wasn’t the same thing as knowing that it was a possibility, and the inspector hadn’t done anything wrong, hadn’t offered any threat to my lumbering, rapidly growing child. All he’d done was startle them.

Geode, sensing my distress, stopped devouring the man and came to crouch by my side, nudging me ever so gently with the tip of their snout. I braced myself with one hand, pressing the other to their scales. My beautiful, glorious, impossible child, the baby I’d dreamt about for my entire adult life, looked at me and crooned, confused and hopeful that I would somehow make things all right.

They were already ten feet tall, and growing every day. They could devour most of the predators they’d find in the sea, and ward off the ones they couldn’t fight. The inspector . . . he’d been the first. He wouldn’t be the last. His disappearance would be the trigger that brought down an entire world of trouble on our heads.

“It’s time,” I said, and Geode creeled, and if they knew why I was crying, they had no way to tell me so.

The inspector’s pickup was sturdy, designed to navigate the broken roads and crumbling infrastructure of Washington State. Geode was heavy enough to weigh it down, but not enough to stop it from rolling. They sat in the back, head tilted into the wind, making small sounds of delight as I drove toward the coast as fast as I dared. The hibernating egg was an accusing presence in the passenger seat, concealed inside my half-zipped backpack. I’d known there was no real chance I’d have the time to hatch it, had been half intending, when this moment came, to leave it with my notes for future scientists to study. Maybe one of them would have fallen in love with its contents the way I’d fallen for Geode. Maybe it would have made it back to the sea.

But that had always been me lying to myself. My love had begun with a glimpse of agonized eyes as Geode’s mother fell, with a feeling too big for me to put a name on but big enough to drive my entire life going forward, to steer me, inevitably, toward a cove and a cave and a child and a conclusion. I couldn’t gamble on that kind of love happening again.

We were almost to the edge of the wood when the sirens started behind us. The truck jounced as Geode shifted position, barking their distress and slapping their tail against the side of the cab. I swore, fighting to keep control, and hit the gas harder. We needed to reach the trees. We needed—

They must have been following us for longer than I’d expected. A bullet shattered the windshield next to my head, and my focus became only and entirely stopping the truck before I lost control. I grabbed the backpack and kicked the door open, leaving the keys in the ignition as I flung myself out of the vehicle.

“Geode! Come on!” I ran for the distant tree line like my life depended on it, and Geode ran after me, confused and frightened but still obedient to the only authority they had ever known. They were faster than I was, but not so fast that I lost sight of them as we dove into the trees, beast and biologist both fleeing for their lives.

Well. Not really. I wasn’t fleeing for my own life anymore. I was fleeing for theirs. They were the endangered species; they were the promise I had made to myself before my mother turned the news off in that long-ago living room. My own life had been forfeit the moment I sat down with a map of the coastline and the intent to bring a legend home.

The trees slowed Geode enough that I was able to catch up, and we ran together to the place where the forest dropped off, replaced by empty coast. Geode stiffened at the sight of the sea, making a sound that was something like wonder and something like longing and something like betrayal. I grabbed one talon, heedless of the way it sliced into my palm.

“Come on!”

Together we slid down the embankment, the sound of shouts and sirens echoing behind us, our pursuers growing closer by the moment. I stumbled at the bottom, my ankle twisting on the stones, and yelped in pain and surprise. Geode didn’t pause in striding toward the sea, only swept me up in one massive arm, carrying me as easily as I had carried them only a few short weeks before. Their eyes were fixed on the horizon, a soft, humming sound building in their chest. It sounded like a sigh. It sounded like a song.

It sounded like going home.

Bullets bit into the beach. I looked back. Soldiers in olive green were lined up at the top of the bluff, guns drawn, shouting and gesturing to each other. They looked at my precious child and saw only the threat of an unfamiliar species, of competition, when we were all only seeking to survive on this planet. The seas are deep. Geode’s mother could have been down there for millennia before she rose to lay her eggs and clear away any predators that might threaten them. We didn’t have to fight. We could share.

Geode hesitated at the water’s edge, the hum turning confused. I put my unwounded hand against their arm, smiling.

“It’s okay, sweetie,” I said. “Take me home.”

It came out of the sea; it destroyed a city; it died. That’s the story.

She came out of the sea; she tried to protect her children; she died. That’s the story too.

As the water closed over my head and my lungs began to ache, I relaxed in Geode’s arms, content to give my life for my child, even as their mother had done, so many years ago. They kept walking, and the darkness grew around us, until there was nothing but the feel of scaled arms around me and the nylon strap of the backpack in my hand. And then even that was gone, and so was I, part of the deep, drowned world where monsters walk, and promises are made, and stories older than the tide, older than the stone it wears away, are told over and over again, forever.