Lewis was about to object when Clare smiled, said “Oh, all right," and strolled over to Dr. Stern with her hands clasped behind her back. Jack smiled, skipped up to Lewis, and to Lewis’s dismay, gave him a big hug.
The tall skinny intern said, “Now, wait a minute. It could be dangerous out there, and our school contract specifically states that you can’t place us in dangerous situations.”
Lewis let out an annoyed grunt, freed himself from Jack’s embrace, unzipped his pack, and removed three large, unusually shaped rifles. Thinking Lewis had finally lost his mind and was about to shoot them, the interns all cowered with their arms held up to protect their faces. Lewis threw one gun to Dr. Stern, one gun to the interns, and kept one gun for himself. He turned to the tall skinny intern and said, “Tranquilizer darts. Happy?”
Chapter 13
Three weeks had gone by since Martin had come to tell them that Lua was pregnant, and the three women were still at the bottom of the deep round pit with the bamboo grating at the top, guarded by ebu gogo with spears.
Amber said, “We need to escape from here so we can bring an army back and kill Martin’s little girlfriend before she gives birth.”
The older and wiser Linda said, “What’s the use? Civilized man will never agree to kill the ebu gogo. They’ll want to protect the ebu gogo, and protect the soon to be born hybrid, from us.”
Christa said, “So what can we do?”
Linda said, “Right now Martin identifies with the ebu gogo. He has lost his humanity. We need to give it back to him.”
The redhead and the brunette both gave the blonde incredulous looks. Amber said, “You don’t mean… you mean we have to seduce Martin?”
“Yes. We need to show him what it means to be human again, so that we can convince him to destroy the pregnant ebu gogo.”
Unknown to the three women in the pit, the ebu gogo gestation period was only one month and Lua’s due date had arrived. As the women plotted against Lua, she lay in another cavern on a mattress of grass and leaves on top of a stone slab surrounded by ebu gogo, many of them pregnant as well. Martin had impregnated them all.
Because the ebu gogo were all between three and four feet in height, there were many positions that Martin could take with them that he couldn’t with a full-sized human woman, but still his favorite position to take an ebu gogo in was the missionary position. He felt very powerful looking down at the little furry women. He also felt very powerful at this moment, looking around at all of the pregnant bellies, and knowing that his seed had created all of them.
Lua’s enormous breasts hung off both sides of the stone slab all the way to the ground and then went along the stone floor for some ways. Martin looked on as the ebu gogo murmured among themselves in their language, which Martin now spoke fluently.
The child in Lua’s belly was huge, and she was no longer able to walk on her own due it its enormity. Lua was a three and a half foot tall creature that had been impregnated by an almost six foot tall creature, and the large size of the fetus was too much for her little body to bear.
There were impressions on her belly where the limbs and appendages of the unborn child inside her pressed against the interior lining of her womb. Where these impressions were, stretch marks had formed, and now beneath her fur, jagged purple lines covering her stomach could be seen where the stretch marks slowly ripped apart at their seams. Martin was very worried about Lua, and was relieved that her due date had come. He did not know how much more her body could take.
The ebu gogo murmured quietly to each other so that Martin could not hear, and then leaned in and said something to Lua. Then, Lua smiled at Martin and called him over. The ebu gogo parted solemnly in order to let Martin approach her. She took his hand and said, in the language of the ebu gogo, “Goodbye.”
Martin said, “Goodbye? Why is this goodbye?”
Lua groaned, smiled weakly, and said, “Because the child inside of me is too big. I will never get to meet him.”
“Him? How do you know our child is going to be a male? I have never seen an ebu gogo boy or man.”
“There are male ebu gogo, but no, I wouldn’t call them men. I wouldn’t even call them boys.
“I have already sung to you from The Song of the Ebu Gogo, so you understand where the ebu gogo came from. But what I didn’t tell you, is that in recent generations the males have turned their backs on The Song of the Ebu Gogo. Instead of worshipping life, as those of us who sing The Song of the Ebu Gogo do, many generations ago, the men started to worship death. They thought that human beings were superior, and that the world would be better off without the ebu gogo. They wanted the last of the ebu gogo to die off, so that we would no longer pose a threat to the humans. So, they decided that they didn’t want to have sex with ebu gogo women anymore, because they didn’t want to create more ebu gogo. They left the caves and went to live apart from us on the surface. Lacking a male presence, we compensated by adopting masculine qualities. We women became warriors, and hunters, and we hunted the men, and forced them to impregnate us.
But, as a result of their turning their backs on The Song of the Ebu Gogo, each generation has left the men less manly than the last, until the present generation, which is so unmanly that not only do they refuse to do their manly duty and create the next generation of ebu gogo, but even when we attempt to force them, they are unable to have sex with us because their penises have become so small.
When we first met, you found us warriors instead of lovers. But you have made lovers out of us once again. Although today I must die, I am glad knowing that I die as a woman, and not a warrior. Ack! Ack! This is the end. I can feel it.”
Then, the purple lined stretch marks on Lua’s stomach reached their breaking point and rips formed all along her swollen, furry belly. Little bloody hands poked through her belly, and then a little bloody head ripped its way through her belly, and Martin saw his little furry son for the first time. Martin looked over at Lua’s face in order to comfort her, and realized that she was dead. A lump formed in his throat and he ran from the room, tears streaming down his cheek.
Martin ran out into the jungle, and walked alone for some time, lost in thought. Lua had died giving birth to his son. He felt guilty, but he also knew that it was something that Lua had known would happen, and that it was what she had wanted. If only she had given him warning though, so that he could have had time to prepare and to say goodbye. But of course, she wasn’t that thoughtful. Lua lacked the empathy to be able to reason that Martin would want to say goodbye to her, as she had said goodbye to him. After all, she was just an animal.
Martin suddenly had the desire to speak with a fellow human being. But the only humans in the jungle were the three women in the pit, and they hated his guts. But he was so lonely, and he had things he needed to say that could not be said to an ebu gogo, but could only be said to another human being.
His heart ached for human company, for someone who would listen and understand. So even though their insults stung him, even though Martin knew that they hated him, he had nowhere else to turn, so he went to see the three women in the hope that they would listen.
Chapter 14
Dr. Stern and Clare walked through the jungle in silence. Dr. Stern held the tranquilizer gun Lewis had tossed him on one side, but it was the pretty young woman at his other side that commanded all of his attention. It had been a long time since he had talked to a pretty girl. He always kept himself locked away days and nights at the Museum of Natural History, so he didn’t often get the chance to talk to pretty girls, or anyone else for that matter.