Christopher Ransom - The Birthing House

He made it home twenty minutes after he'd left. He felt like he was walking on air. His stomach had shriveled into a tennis-ball-sized knot. It was going to take another fifty minutes to prepare the meal, but it would be worth the wait. She would appreciate it.

He was halfway across the front porch when the door opened and Jo popped out, her rental car keys in one hand and a small backpack in the other. It was her old forest-green L.L. Bean from grad school, the one she used to pack an extra bra and panties in when she stayed the night at his crummy little apartment. Panties in the pack. God, she had been beautiful. And wild, too. Now she looked pale, haggard.

'Where you going?' he said, standing five feet in front of her.

She jumped slightly. 'Oh, you're back.'

'I have food.' He held out the bags for her to see. 'Some steaks, wine. You need to eat, Baby.'

'No, right, that sounds good.' She looked over his shoulder, up the street.

'Where are you going?' He thought of all the acceptable answers: to return the rental, to refill my prescription, to lend Gail a cup of sugar.

'Oh, I just don't feel like myself.'

'Obviously.' He looked at her hand holding the strap slung over her shoulder. 'What do you need? Do you need a doctor ?'

Again, on that one word she flinched.

'No!' She blinked, and he waited. Then, in a calmer but still pleading voice she said, 'I'm not myself, Conrad. Ever since I came home I don't feel like myself. Please . . .'

He took a step closer.

'We should work this out together, Jo. Until they find Nadia. It's dangerous out there.'

'I never felt like myself here,' she said absently. 'That's why I went away.'

Conrad waited.

She continued to present her case. 'I'm not mad at you any more, honest. I'd just feel better if I got some rest. I can't sleep here.'

'Oh, you're not mad. Okay. Good. 'Cause when I saw you come out with your bag over your shoulder, I thought . . . I know I dumped a lot of this crap on you. You must have come home and thought I'd lost my shit here without you.'

She was breathing hard, and worse, trying to not to.

He stepped back and cocked his head to one side. 'I understand, Jo.'

'What?' She tried to smile.

'I understand how you feel. But the bag gave you away.'

She stopped smiling. Her eyes went to his hands, to the bags he was holding.

'That's your overnight bag. You aren't planning on ever coming back, are you?'

'Conrad. Please.'

He saw her think it through, weighing her odds. 'Nope. Not this way. Maybe out the back, but out here you don't stand a chance.'

She slumped, letting her backpack fall from her shoulder.

He reset the groceries in his grip and took another step forward.

She ducked, clutched the strap, swinging wide and up. The sound of nylon against his head was a dull whap , but he felt like he'd been hit with a sack of grain.

'Ah, sonofabitch -' He staggered into the siding.

Jo darted forward, all six feet of her waist-high. He kicked his leg out and surprised both of them by connecting with her neck. It was like kicking an iron pole, felt like he broke three toes. Jo fell down, coughing, then she was on her hands and knees scrabbling about on the porch like one of the dogs in a way he might have found funny if some last remaining sane part of him did not recognize she was still his wife.

'Stop it,' he hissed, disgusted. 'Do you want the neighbors to see this?'

'Stay away from me,' she coughed, pulling herself up, rubbing her throat. 'Stay away from me, you piece of shit.'

'You're not leaving,' he said, idly swinging the bag with the wine bottle. 'Just turn around and go back inside so we can talk.'

She looked past him again, looking for a way around. Then all the fight was gone and she was just standing there.

'I didn't mean to hurt you,' he said. 'I'm sorry.'

She nodded, rubbing her neck. 'Fine. You win.'

She took a breath, looked next door and kicked for his balls. She missed, but connected with his thigh and wheeled, darting back into the house, knocking the door open as she blew into the kitchen.

He dropped the groceries on the floor and missed her shirt by inches as she fled out the back door. He pounded down the wooden steps to the yard, glancing wild-eyed over the fence to see if Gail and Big John were getting an eyeful, and took the deck in three giant strides.

She was making a beeline for the -

(birthing shack)

- garage. He realized that in all the years he had never seen her run. It was something to watch, all that woman pumping her arms like a track star. She didn't look back.

She can't make the fence , he thought gleefully, and the garage is locked. She's fenced in!

'Jo, don't!' he yelled, closing the distance.

She was twenty feet from the garage. Closing. Long legs, thighs shuddering like a thoroughbred. Fifteen feet. Ten feet from a nasty surprise - the door was locked. He saw the rest, how it would play out. It was like it was scripted. As if he had made it all up and now it had come to life. He could see the beats forming on paper the way he used to write them.

The WIFE, an attractive brunette in her early 30s SLAMS into the warehouse door, YANKING to no avail. Her HUSBAND, disheveled in a handsome, dopey way, gives chase.

She WHEELS, her eyes as black and large as a doe's, then back to the door, KICKING as if her life depended on it. Which of course it does.

HUSBAND

Baby, stop, just please stop!

WIFE

(shrieking)

Stay away from me!

CLOSE ON: her SHAKING hand, clutching the

doorknob. It won't budge.

HUSBAND

(deranged; paying homage)

The dingo ate ma' bayyyyyy-beee!

The door would not open. She would be forced to turn and fight him on the lawn. The scene would end badly. How could it not? That was the rule of conflict, the stuff of good drama.

But this wasn't scripted and, instead of finding the door locked, she hit it hard with one shoulder and banged it open.

He jogged across the rest of the lawn, mindful of that first step before the door. No way was she strong enough to break the padlock.

Someone must have left it unlocked. And it wasn't me.

The garage was dark inside - not even red. What happened to the heat lamps? He heard fumbling sounds, a shovel falling to the floor as he pounced over the two steps down and he was inside, landing on the carpet. The sliding garage doors were shut and he could see her moving past the cages, searching for the handle.

They were trapped.

He found the light switch. The overhead Vita-Lites flickered and cold white filled the room.

Jo turned, chest heaving, hair in her face.

'This is stupid. I'm not going to hurt you,' he said.

Jo's eyes shot to something on the other side of the cages. Her face contorted and the room was silent.

'Jo?'

Her scream erupted, an inhuman sound. He looked around, her screams fanning out as he tried to understand what, besides her stupid husband, was upsetting her so. She sounded like she was being impaled.

He saw the cages. He saw the snakes, black and sleek. One stretched out across the branches he'd built into the walls of its home. Another, lower, coiled like a fire hose, its head resting at the center of the nest it had made of its own body.

He saw the incubator smashed on the floor, the black vermiculite soil spread out in wet clumps, the leathery eggs destroyed, their slug-like contents oozed and congealed on the floor.

Somebody had sabotaged the eggs.

Oh, fuckers. Murderous motherfucking whores!

Jo was still screaming.

He turned away from Shadow's ruined clutch. His eyes roamed across the cages and higher, to the corner of the garage where the hooks had been bolted into the wooden ceiling beams, the rubber hooks for hanging bicycles.