Coop had to pee. Real bad.
The sound of shuffling feet. More groans of pain. A noise like a yawn, if that yawn came from a gravel-voice demon.
Something moved across Cooper’s limited field of vision: feet. Walking near the dead bald man. Feet that were too large for their loafers, so big the leather seams had split. What little light there was showed a glimpse of skin inside those splits… not white skin, not black or brown or tan, but… yellow… the color of bile mixed with sour milk.
I am so fucked, so utterly fucked.
And then, something spoke.
“WHERRRRRRE…?”
The deep, drawn-out word eased through the boiler room, an audible shadow of blackness. Something about the sound resonated deep in Cooper’s chest and stomach — he felt a fear so primitive it shut down everything, left room for only one thought: to move is to die. He recognized the word, but that voice… it wasn’t human.
A second voice answered.
“BASE… MENT?”
An even deeper tone, somehow more terrifying than the first.
Cooper’s bladder let go. He was barely aware of the wet heat that spread through his crotch down his right hip, along the part of his right thigh that pressed against the concrete floor.
“COME,” said the first voice. “FIIIND… SOMEONE.”
The yellow feet shuffled away. Cooper couldn’t see where.
He was shaking. His body trembled so bad it made Jeff’s body tremble as well.
The boiler room door opened, closed.
Cooper listened as the door’s echo faded to nothing.
A long-held breath slid out of his lungs. He tried to move, but he could not. He lay there, in his own urine, shaking so badly he could barely think.
What was happening? What had made those people yellow? Gutierrez’s PSAs about “T.E.A.M.S.” had never said anything about that.
Triangles, excessive anger and massive swelling.
Cooper stuck his tongue out and felt it, checking for hard bumps, then yanked his fingers away — those fingers had touched the membrane covering Jeff. He swallowed automatically, before he thought to stop himself from doing so.
Was some of that shit now inside of him?
He had to find a place to wash up. He was in a boiler room… there had to be a sink down here somewhere. He could wash his hands, clean up the piss. Cooper slowly slid out from under Jeff. He listened carefully for any sound coming from the hallway, for any hint of sliding yellow feet.
Nothing.
He crept to the edge of the boiler, peeked around the curved edge: he saw no one, just the closed, white doors that led out into the hall.
In the hall, the yellow people could be waiting…
Cooper quietly walked deeper into the boiler room’s shadows. His eyes continued to adjust. He froze when he saw another unmoving, membrane-covered man. This one was standing, wedged against a vertical pipe. So tall… six-six? Six-seven? Tall, and thick, like an NFL lineman, but also lumpy, just like the cocooned Jeff.
Next to the encased man, Cooper saw a metal sink, the industrial kind.
What faint light there was reflected off something on the floor, something wet… water from the sink? A puddle, a thick puddle, running up to the shoes of the cocooned man.
Shoes… four of them.
Cooper looked closer. Near the head, a flap of membrane hung down. It was brown, but only on the outside — the inside looked wet-black. Behind the torn membrane, something white.
Cooper’s eyes finally adjusted to the limited light. He was staring at a skull smeared with globs of rancid black. The white bone beneath the rotted flesh looked pitted and pockmarked, like someone had sprayed it with acid.
The membrane-covered man had a lump on his left side, below the chest. The lump, it was the shape of a person… a shriveled person, as tall as Cooper but thinner than a death-camp victim.
This can’t be happening… none of it…
Cooper moved to the sink. He watched the membrane-covered man out of the corner of his eye as he turned on the hot water. He saw soap on the sink’s edge, used it to scrub his hands until they stung. He pulled handfuls of paper towels from a dispenser on the wall and used them to clean the piss from his pants.
He finished and turned off the water. He was dabbing himself dry when he heard a metallic click — the sound of the boiler room door, closing.
Cooper turned quickly, expecting to see something coming down the aisle toward him, but all he saw was the closed door. Had another of the creatures left?
Jeff.
Cooper looked left, to the base of the wall, to his friend……
the membrane, disgusting and tattered and torn, lay in a rumpled heap on the concrete floor.
Jeff was gone.
REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS
“I’m pregnant.”
The words stunned him. Clarence Otto stared at Margaret, but he wasn’t really seeing her. He wasn’t really seeing anything.
His lungs didn’t work. The little air he still had in them came out in a single syllable:
“What?”
Margaret hadn’t talked to him for almost four days, not since the videoconference with Cheng and Murray. She’d hidden in her private mission module. She hadn’t even come out for meals. The SEALs waited on her hand and foot, bringing her whatever she needed.
And then, not even fifteen minutes ago, that tall black SEAL, Bosh, had found Clarence up on the helicopter deck, told him Margaret was waiting to speak with him in the conferencing module.
Clarence had entered. She had pointed to a chair, told him to sit. He had. Before he could even say how are you, she’d hit him with that mind-numbing news.
“I said, I’m pregnant.” Margaret stared at him. She wasn’t smiling, wasn’t frowning.
Pregnant. His wife, the woman he still loved, pregnant with his child.
“That… Margo, that’s fantastic.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “Is it? Is it really fantastic, Clarence? Then I wonder why being a single mother isn’t at the top of every little girl’s lifelong wish list.”
Single mother? What was she talking about?
“I’m right here,” he said. “This is great. I mean, it’s a shock, but it’s great.”
She pointed at him. “You’re not right here, Clarence. You left me, remember? And irony of ironies, you left me because I wouldn’t have a kid.”
Everything he’d ever wanted — the woman he’d fallen in love with, a child, a family — right there in front of him. He’d waited so long for her, then made an agonizing decision. Would he lose his dream because he hadn’t been able to wait just a little bit longer?
“I know,” he said. “I did leave you, you’re right. But that was before.”
She smiled. “Oh, before? You mean when I was a total mess? Now that your old Margo has returned, you want a do-over on abandoning your wife?”
No, that wasn’t what he… well, yes, he did want that. He never would have left this Margaret.
“Things have changed,” he said. “Think about it — we can be a family.”
She crossed her arms again. “If I decide to keep it.”
Clarence sagged in his chair. If I decide to keep it: those six words carved a deep chasm, with her on one side and him on the other. And that decision, the fate of his unborn child… that lay on her side of the line.