Hellboy hissed something and Lament said, "What's that?"
"How's this happen?" Hellboy repeated. "How does something like this happen?"
"How's what happen?" This.
With a little heat in his voice, Lament said, "You think you got the bloom on strange births?"
"I didn't say that."
"No, you didn't. The Lord don't differentiate between the unsightly and the adorable. We're all born under Heaven. We're all God's children, every one of us, you never heard that before?"
"I've heard it," Hellboy said, his hooves sinking deep in the muck, and thinking Lament might just be a little on the stupid side after all. "Never figured it applied to me."
"Oh, you're just feelin' a touch of melancholia. That's natural enough after the day we've had, for a man far from home. The world is full of odd beauty. I already done told you that, iffun you recall. No different here than anywhere." They marched along and, after a while, Lament went on. "I'm sorry son, I shouldn't have snapped at you like that. How's this happen? You can have your pick of answers. There's plenty of them. Maybe none are true or maybe all of 'em are."
"I wasn't really asking. It was rhetorical. I know about mutations."
Lament's face hardened. "Maybe you only think you do. Got your mind set on poisoned moonshine and improperly buried bodies during epidemics, don't ya? Or we can talk about all the toxic waste dumping going on. I seen them chemical polluters myself, throwing in barrel after barrel. I fought 'em off with fists and a good hunk'a chicory. Men from the town kept a watchful eye for a year or two, and sent some of them boys runnin' with their keesters full of buckshot. But I don't know that it ever stopped them. There's too much money to be saved dumpin' into these depths. Corporations aren't always righteous. Nor the government."
Hellboy, who'd been a part of the government practically since he was born, said nothing.
"And the granny watches," Lament went on, "they say there's ancient forces in the blackwater, and you and I know that's true. Whether said evils reach into the blood of men and women to affect the children or not, I guess everyone has their own say about that."
Putting it like that, Hellboy wondered exactly how it was that all these people weren't on the verge of mutation or cancerous illness or zombification.
"The real question is, why you askin' the question at'all?"
"I don't know."
"Yeah, you do. You thinkin' about family."
"I don't think about family. Ever."
"Iffun you say."
Far ahead, the pumpkin-headed boy turned and rushed back, excitedly chattering to Hellboy although Hellboy couldn't understand him. Lament would have to translate.
"Enoch says we're almost there."
"That's his name? Enoch?"
"It's biblical."
"I know it's biblical. How is it you can speak their languages?"
"They just speakin' English, as well as they can manage it."
Fishboy Lenny went,"Fweep mwash. Wooph."
Hellboy said, "I can't understand a word of it."
"Neither can I."
"You don't know the language, the language knows you." Lament let out a smile. "That's right, son. Now we're confabulatin'."
An ugly thought struck Hellboy and he stopped short. "Hey, these swamp people, they're not luring these teenage girls here with their babies to try to bring new blood to the people, are they?"
"Why'd they want to go and do that?"
"To clean up the gene pool."
Lament frowned, scratched at the scabbing wound on his neck, and looked at Hellboy for a long time. Enoch stepped up, leaned toward Lament's ear, and let loose with a stream of quiet gibberish. Lament listened and nodded, and finally went, "Oh, now I see. Thank ya."
"What was that about?" Hellboy asked.
"Oh, he was just explainin' to me what it was you meant." Lament blinked at Hellboy. "You got yourself a complex mind, son, you truly have. The answer is no, the babies ain't here for no genetic purposes."
"Well, good."
The kids climbed over a sycamore log in the brush upsetting bitterns, limpkins, and squawk herons. There was a quick flutter of many wings and a rush through the leaves. The land gave way to more solid soil littered with clumps of palmettos, oak, and palm trees.
"You sure this is the right way?" Hellboy asked.
"I've never lost myself quite this badly before. So no, I ain't sure of much at the moment. But the children, they know. So long as we follow, we'll get to the village soon enough."
"I still don't get why Sarah came all this way. What's so safe about this place?"
"Prayers and will have power. This was once a shanty town where the swamp folk held their all-night sings. A lot of healin' and good will and faith and miracles took place on this ground. Suppose it's about as holy a spot as you're likely to find anywhere near Enigma."
"And yet it's where all these poor people live now. The ground hasn't done much to make them well."
"Depends on whether you think they're sick, I reckon. Do you?"
"I didn't say that-"
"It's all right, son, I know what your intent was. You just need to understand that what some folks might call freaks, others consider blessed."
"I think I understand that pretty damn well."
"See that then? Already you better off than a whole slew of ignorant dullards."
"That makes me feel a lot better."
"Good. Always glad to help a friend."
It began to rain lightly and the kids all let out whoops of joy. Hellboy didn't quite get it, but he liked that they were so full of energy and elation. He hoped they stayed here in their little corner of the planet, where they might count on one another and their people to get them through. The rest of the world would try to steal that laughter from them.
Passing beneath a sharp palmetto frond he felt something cold brush against his cheek. He looked up and a huge snake was hanging uncoiled from the leaves, its mouth open.
Hellboy shoved Lament aside."Watch it… a snake!" He brought his stone hand up and caught the snake just as it was prepared to leap.
Lament said, "It's only a timber rattler."
"Only a rattler?"
"At least it ain't a cottonwood mocassin. Just don't let it bite you. Go on and let it get about on its way."
"Oh." Hellboy opened his fist. The rattler wasn't about to ever get about on its way again.
"I don't think you needed to squeeze it quite so hard, son," Lament told him.
"Guess I overreacted a bit."
The kid with the insectoid eyes came running over and asked Hellboy in perfectly nuanced English, "Are you plannin' to keep it?"
"I hadn't thought about it."
"May I have it, please?"
"You want a crushed dead snake, kid?"
The boy nodded enthusiastically. "Yes, please."
Shrugging, Hellboy figured, All right, whatever. He handed the timber rattler to the kid, who grinned, and the snake was reflected and refracted about a billion times in his eyes. The boy ran off to rejoin the others ahead.
A few years back Hellboy had run into a cult of Nyarlothepian sorcerers down in Paraguay who used boiling baths of serpent venom to call up long-slumbering demigods. Now he couldn't even go to the reptile cages at the Bronx zoo without thinking about bad juju.
"What's he want with the snake?" Hellboy asked, wiping his hand clean on a thatch of fronds.
Lament said, "Well, it ain't for no damn genetic purposes, if you still got that on your mind. Why else would he want it? It's 'cause he's hungry."
"He's going to eat it?"
"Probably bringin' it back to his ma so she can fricassee it and feed it to the whole family. They make for good eatin', especially with fried rice."
"Jesus Christ."
"Can't exactly order in prime rib and chicken cacciatore out this far in the bogland. Can't order it in town neither, but that's another matter altogether. Folks here live on snake and lizard, gator meat, wild goat, hog, duck, squirrel, and fish, mostly."