Joel Arnold - Fetal Bait Apocalypse - 3 Collections in 1

Then stopped dead.

The silence fell upon them like a plastic bag pulled down tight over the head.

Portman looked up. He could hear China sniffling. Could hear the sound of her joints crackling when she straightened up. She too sensed the silence, complete and desperate.

Then the hum started.

At first it sounded like an airplane in the distance, and Portman tried to focus on the sky, trying to see the moving lights of the airplane against the thousands of bright pinpoints already there.

But the sound grew. Portman looked down at himself. It felt like his heart was beating in his abdomen. When he touched the skin on his stomach, he could feel it moving. He realized the hum was coming from inside him.

China loped over to him. “Why are you making that noise?”

Portman couldn’t answer, his mouth too dry, his jaw too rigid. Instead, he shook his head, his eyes wide, sweat pouring from his face. When China saw his stomach move — a shape beneath the skin — she screamed.

The hum intensified. The movement in Portman’s stomach increased. The shape of tiny legs, at least a dozen of them, pressed at his stomach lining from inside. Then a mouth. It looked like a child pressing his face against a sheet of pale rubber. Portman couldn’t look away.

China grabbed his arm. “Get back in the truck,” she said.

Portman shook his head. They began to hear them. A low throbbing sound in answer. A vibration. More than one. From all directions.

“I think I can drive now.” China tugged frantically at Portman’s arm. “I know I can.”

“I can’t stand up.” The ring of tiny sharp teeth pressed against his skin. A few of the teeth poked out, then retreated, as if the worm inside of him was testing the temperature of the air. Small specks of blood remained in their wake.

“You have to get up.” China pulled on Portman’s arm, leaning back with all of her strength. But Portman did nothing to help, his body dead weight.

“You go,” he said. “Leave me.”

They could feel the ground rumbling. As if something heavy was sliding across the earth.

China let go of Portman’s arm. His face was the color of bleached flour. Sweat soaked the collar of his shirt.

“Go,” Portman pleaded.

China turned and sprinted to the pickup’s cab.

“I’ll send help,” she called before shutting the truck door. The engine rumbled to life. Portman felt the breath of an exhaust pipe on his back. He was unable to hold himself upright as the support of the truck squealed forward.

On his back, the stars wavered in the night sky. They danced, suspended in the liquid blackness. He closed his eyes.

He wanted his mother. He wanted her homemade chicken soup, wanted her to place a cool, damp washcloth across his feverish forehead. He wanted the safety of her closeness, the reassuring sound of her voice. As he felt the vibrations grow within him, emanating from the creature inside, as he felt his bones knock a rhythm into the barren dirt road, he suddenly understood what was happening. The creature inside him was frightened, also. Alone. And it was calling out for its own mother. It’s own family.

It began to emit a high pitched wail, the sound piercing and urgent. Portman knew they must be close, knew the thing inside him could sense their nearness.

In the distance he heard the screech of brakes, the squeal of tires over a slick surface, the abrupt crunch of metal. He heard the plants and trees on each side of the road crackling beneath a tremendous weight. The pungent smell of freshly turned earth invaded his nostrils. He opened his eyes, not knowing what he’d see, only that they were already there, surrounding him.

He counted five of them and wondered briefly how something so large could be so quiet. They swayed slightly as if sniffing the air, giant replicas of the thing inside him, eight feet high and twenty feet long. He could barely see the stars shine through their pale, moist skin as they hovered over him.

It was touching, really. He understood their need, their love for the thing held captive in his guts. One of the giant creatures slowly loomed up directly over Portman, its slippery skin dripping silver mucus. It wavered back and forth as if in contemplation. Portman could feel the love it emanated, the sense of satisfaction at finding one of its own. A smile crept over Portman’s pale face. It was so beautiful. An eternal love.

A soft, reassuring hum rose from the creature. Portman looked up into the velvet translucence of its gaping mouth. The muted light of a thousand stars blinked at him sleepily through the creature’s skin. Everything was going to be all right.

Everything was going to be all right.

The creature hovered only a second longer. Once it fell upon Portman, there was nothing but eternal darkness and pain.

“ Tell me why.”

The doctor wore no nametag. He stood over Rudy Teague, shaking a handful of sunflower seeds in his left hand, occasionally popping a few into his mouth.

“I need to lay on my side,” Rudy said. “Please.”

The doctor, younger than the rest of them, shrugged. “Tell me why.”

“God, please. I just — my stomach itches and I can’t reach it this way. It’s driving me crazy.” A funny phrase to use, since Rudy’s hands were tethered to his sides, his legs slightly apart so his ankles fit in the strong canvas stirrups at the bed’s foot. A dark gray strap kept him from lifting his head.

“I think you’re lying,” the doctor said.

“No—”

“I don’t believe you.”

“What the fuck does it matter? Why can’t I lay on my goddamn side?” Tears, sweat, and snot sluiced down Rudy’s cheeks, painfully tickling his ears and adding to the stains on the yellowed bed sheets. His belly itched like a son of a bitch. He just wanted to lay on his side. That was all. They could truss him up like a hog if they were so afraid of him. He didn’t care. Just so he could lay on his goddamn side. He felt his navel grow red and swollen like a tiny puckered mouth waiting to suckle.

The doctor sighed. He tilted his head back and tossed in a few more sunflower seeds. He looked thoughtful as he chewed and swallowed them. Then his voice softened, his tone lowering an octave. “Don’t you want to see your son?”

All of Rudy’s muscles constricted as if he’d been hit with a jolt of electricity. He began to hyperventilate.

“Mother,” he hissed. “Mother…”

The doctor dragged a heavy wooden chair over to the bed and straddled it. He popped a few more seeds into his mouth and chewed. He placed the back of his right hand gently on Rudy’s cheek, leaned down to his ear, and whispered, “Tell me why.”

Rudy calmed slightly. “Because—” He spat out a bubble of snot that had collected between his lips. “Because it’s my goddamn birthday.”

Exactly one year before, Elaine was seven months pregnant as Rudy drove over the freshly plowed two-lane highway to his mother’s house. Snow piled high on the shoulders, and the sky was a harsh crystalline blue. The shadow of the minivan wavered alongside like a parasitic phantom.

Rudy almost reached over to push the long dark hair out of his wife’s eyes, but decided not to wake her. She looked so beautiful sitting there. He hoped it wasn’t a mistake bringing her along, but he no longer had any choice. The time had finally come.

Elaine shifted in her seat. “What’s bothering you,” she asked, startling Rudy. She rearranged the pillow behind her neck.

“Nothing. I thought you were sleeping.”

“Every time we go to see your mother, you’re like this. What’s the deal?”

“There is no deal.” He switched the radio on and fiddled with the tuner until an oldies station came in, the static making all the old crooners sound like they sang around mouthfuls of crushed glass.