Page 23 of You Weren’t Meant to Be Human

Sixteen

The tail end of the graveyard shift rush—or the closest thing this gas station ever gets to a rush—isn’t the best time to clean out a pair of wallets stolen out of the pockets of corpses, but pausing to take a breather isn’t an option.

If Crane keeps moving, keeps working until exhaustion numbs his hands and leaves him unsteady, he won’t think about what Tammy said, or what Jess said, or what Levi said, or what the hive said, or anything at all.

Eleven thirty p.m. The floor has been swept, coffee refreshed, register double-checked, expired food on the shelves removed. Stagger sits behind the counter with his eyes barely open as Crane peels open the Velcro on the first wallet.

Driver’s license (organ donor, fitting).

Social Security card (good for opening fraudulent lines of credit).

Two credit cards (equally good for running up before someone at the bank catches it).

Fifty dollars in bills. A phone number written on the back of a mechanic’s receipt.

An expired coupon for a Butterball turkey.

Crane nicks the cash—score—and sorts the rest into zippered folders for Tammy to pick up later.

So. As far as he could tell, Hannah’s baby was normal.

Did he think that the poor girl was going to give birth to the Eraserhead baby?

No, of course not. (Kind of.) (Turns out twenty-week fetuses do actually kind of look like the Eraserhead baby if you squint, tilt your head, and are a horrible person.) But a monster would at least make sense.

A baby doesn’t even have the decency to mean anything.

It’s a baby. When it comes down to it, a baby is a chemical reaction that’s gotten out of control.

He’s thinking again. Not good. He goes for the second wallet, a nice leather one with initials stamped into the corner. Another driver’s license, a nickel, a photo of a preteen boy on a swing, a Maryland EBT card. Boring.

What does the hive want with a baby? That’s the thing he can’t get over—as if he can get over any of it, as if he hasn’t been ruminating over every loose end he’s stumbled across for the past few months, driving himself crazy rehashing every last detail he can remember, over and over and over like suddenly it’ll make sense once he finds the right connection.

He doesn’t want to be doing this. The last time he thought too hard he tried to set himself on fire.

If there was any kind god in the universe, Crane would’ve been born in the fifties, when he would have spent his life after eighteen blitzed out of his mind on tranquilizers like a good housewife, or have his brain scrambled by a lobotomy, and okay, he doesn’t want that , he doesn’t, he swears, it’s—it’d be easier, though, wouldn’t it?

Fuck the cerebral cortex. Animals don’t have meltdowns about doing their reproductive duty.

Animals get fucked and eat the babies if they decide they don’t want them after the fact.

He’s being mentally ill about this. He shoves the wallet under the counter and sets aside a carton of Marlboro Reds, since Levi will want it when he swings by, but rips open the side and digs out a pack and produces a single cigarette.

He only ever smokes when Levi does, and sometimes not even then.

It tastes awful and the nicotine buzz makes him feel funny—he doesn’t even like being tipsy, only ever drank the one time in the back of the car after graduation and never looked at a bottle again.

The only thing smoking has going for it is the way Levi looks at him when he lights the cigarette.

Still, something he’ll hate sounds perfect right now. Crane grabs a purple Bic from the display beside the leave-a-penny, puts the cigarette into his mouth the way Levi does, and frustratedly attempts to get the lighter to light.

Maybe he needs to go back out to the woods in the dark. Dig up the corpse. Open the bag and see if the worms on the inside have chewed their way out.

The bell above the door rings.

Shit. The cigarette tumbles out of his mouth. He tries to catch it, but it ends up on the counter.

“Oh,” says the lady from the Dollar General as she comes in with an apologetic smile. “Ain’t nobody told you those’re bad for the baby?”

Great—he’s at the part of pregnancy where strangers start commenting on it.

What happened to not talking to the mute behind the counter ?

Perhaps that piece of common Washville knowledge is being overwritten by the insurmountable human urge to make weird remarks the moment they clock someone’s belly.

“Don’t matter how small that thing ends up being,” the woman says. She plucks a cup from the self-serve coffee station and peers at the available pots, sitting steaming in their nooks—regular and decaf, no dark roast or anything fancy. “Still gonna hurt coming out.”

Crane is extremely aware that it will hurt.

The woman offers a smile over her shoulder as she pours the coffee. She’s middle-aged, distinctly West Virginian with the Realtree camo jacket over her Dollar General uniform, a plain wedding ring on her left hand.

“I’m playing with you, you know.” She sets the pot down, grabs a pack of sugar. “I’m the last person to talk. Smoked through both my pregnancies; swear to the Lord above it’s the only thing that got me through.” A pump of vanilla creamer, then a tentative sip. “Damn, y’all keep this hot.”

Crane makes a low noise in the back of his throat: Sorry, I guess? He is also increasingly unsure of how every mother in the history of the world hasn’t gone postal at least once.

The woman—he’s never caught her name, since she doesn’t wear her badge at work—comes over to the counter, fishing out her wallet.

“Three fifty-five, I know, give me a second.” She tries her damnedest to catch Crane’s gaze.

He keeps avoiding it. “I’m happy for you, you know.

I’ve had my eye on you since you first moved here, and I’ll admit I’ve been worried—everything you’ve been doing to your body.

No offense. It just breaks my heart what some young girls do to themselves these days. ”

Crane freezes, finger jam-stuck above the small coffee button on the register touchscreen.

“I thought, you know, if she ever changes her mind, ever realizes what she’s really doing to herself, it’s going to be so hard to undo all the damage those doctors have done to her.

” She finds the money, but stops after counting it out, holds the transaction hostage.

“And if she ever realizes she wants a baby? It’ll be so difficult, my lord, I hope she doesn’t cut off her breasts. There’s no reason for any of that.”

He is aware, vaguely, that he could end this conversation right now.

Take the coffee, dump it out, point her to the door, and make Stagger escort her out if she won’t listen.

Stagger is even looking up at him right now, dull eyes focusing behind the hood and mask.

Trying to sort out the situation, figure out what’s happening and why Crane’s pulse is hammering thump-thump-thump so hard in his chest.

Crane does not do that.

“So I wanted to let you know I’ve been praying for you,” the woman says. “I know being a girl is so difficult, but you don’t have to run from it. Motherhood is wonderful.”

She hands over exact change and puts a few extra pennies into the tray as her kind deed for the night.

“Have a good rest of your evening. I’ll keep you in my heart.”

The bell above the door rings again when she leaves.

And Crane feels something in his stomach.

It confuses him more than anything; almost reminds him of a period cramp, but it’s too gentle for that. Too quick. A muscle spasm, then, or the anxiety-nausea that’s one of the few emotions he knows how to identify.

Or the warning signs of a chestburster.

A long time ago—ancient Greece or something like that, back when nobody knew jackshit about how pregnancy works because they all thought the uterus could detach from the vagina and wander about, wreaking havoc between organs until her husband knocked her up to anchor it back into place—apparently the first time the baby moved was the moment it became a human.

Quickening , Tammy called it. The moment it could finally be deemed alive, when it swallowed a soul and turned into a person.

Crane doesn’t believe that. If asked when a fetus becomes a person, his answer would be incoherent, borderline contradictory. It’s what a human is made of; it is always a person, of course it is. It is also a tapeworm, entitled to nothing, not shelter or nutrients or affection.

Whatever the answer, it doesn’t matter, because the thing is really actually fucking alive.

He thought it’d be more drastic. A hard knock to the stomach, an elbow jammed into his ribs. It’s not. It’s the jerk of a soft-boned, butterfly-skinned limb.

It’s hard to stand, suddenly. He braces himself on the counter.

Fingertips against the handwritten notes laminated with yellowed packing tape, LIMIT TWO CIGARETTE CARTONS PER CUSTOMER and MUST SHOW ID NO EXCEPTIONS .

Stagger whines, gets up to help, but Crane shows his teeth. Don’t touch. Don’t, don’t. Wait.

Wait.

For a bit, nothing. The hum of the drink coolers, the tinny voices of the radio set to the country station.

It’s the end of Throwback Thursday and Crane hates Throwback Thursday, would willingly listen to all the awful post-9/11 bro country in the world if it means he doesn’t have to sit through another Kenny Rogers song.

There it is again. A jolt. So faint and gentle, but completely unmistakable.

A shaky breath hisses out from between his teeth, catching in his throat. He bites down on his lip ring hard enough he thinks he might bend it or rip it right out of the skin.

“Okay?” Stagger asks.

Crane doesn’t answer. Doesn’t sign OK , doesn’t reach for Stagger’s hand to feel the worms to calm himself.

Hannah is such a lucky bitch.