Page 44 of You Weren’t Meant to Be Human

Thirty-One

I was about to come get you,” Tammy says as soon as the back door slams shut. “Lord, you’re freezing. Where’s Jess?”

Crane drops the stuffed-full go bag just inside the door.

Levi and Stagger have situated themselves by the hive, the shotgun leaning against the wall; both of them have taken off their shoes so as not to mess up the nest that Jess had so carefully built.

It’s in a horrible, voyeuristic place. Right in the doorway to the closet so the worms and the flies can see it all.

It makes the word childbirth feel less accurate than an emotionless, unhuman alternative: parturition , or, why not, let’s use the word that’s really lodged in his head, whelping like a fucking dog.

Tammy says, “Jess, boy. Where is she?”

Crane does not answer. He watched Jess climb up into the truck, adjust the seat, and fumble with the key. She’s pulled out of the parking lot by now. On her way gone. To wherever. California. Somewhere a hive won’t find her.

And his parents, they’re gone too. He keeps thinking about them. Mom let herself go gray; is that because he said he liked it gray years ago? Is Dad using the same aftershave so Crane would recognize his father by smell?

He can’t help it. He sniffles, wipes his eyes, tries to pretend he’s not crying. The pain, the adrenaline. The realization of it all.

It’ll be over soon. He just has to be able to do it.

“Shit,” Tammy growls, gathering him close. She’s watching Levi, and for a terrible second Crane thinks she’s going to tell, but she doesn’t. “Okay. Okay. Let’s get this baby out of you.”

After the cold of outside, it’s too hot in here.

Crane is sweating. His clothes stick to him.

He’s wrestling out of Levi’s jacket as Tammy walks him to the blankets and towels laid out on the floor, as Levi catches him by the elbows and helps him down.

In the nest, he shucks his bra and fumbles to kick off his pants.

He’s burning up and making a low animal noise in the back of his throat.

“Easy,” Levi chides. Stagger whines with concern, settling onto the floor to brace Crane against him. “Easy now.”

Tammy snaps for Levi to help with Crane’s boxers, says she needs to check his dilation again. He barely feels her fingers in him. Levi doesn’t watch. Stagger brushes Crane’s hair from his face, has an arm around his torso, holds him up and breathes steady, to remind Crane to breathe too.

“Everything look good?” Levi says.

Tammy doesn’t answer his question, instead catching Crane’s eye. “I know it don’t feel like it,” she says, “but this looks like it’s gonna be the kind of labor most mommas would kill for.” She wipes her hands. “Fast and easy. You lucky sumbitch.”

Crane almost laughs. Easy? Motherfucker.

Easy. He’s going to scream. Tammy is taking notes again.

His stomach is in a strange shape now—it’s not round like it had been, now deflated without all the amniotic fluid that trickled out of him, the bump clinging to the shape of a baby.

The buzz of the hive is starting to get into his head, makes it feel like a bug is crawling around in the narrow gap between his brain and his skull.

This is what must have been crawling in Harry’s head the day he died.

Oh child, you’re doing so well. It’s beautiful.

Tammy is talking again. “If you don’t feel the urge to bear down yet, we can wait until the head is further down. No use tiring yourself out.”

Crane doesn’t want to be sitting anymore. Not with his legs spread like this. Too exposed. He gets onto his knees, braces his hands on his thighs. The contraction leaves and he feels hollow in the wake of it. He isn’t getting enough rest between them.

“There you go, get up, make yourself comfortable. Drink.” Tammy brings him water. “It’s coming. You’re doing good. You’re okay.”

“Where’s Jess?” Levi asks.

Tammy says, “Pay attention to your damn baby.”

Your baby. Levi’s baby. This creature currently trying to rip its way out of him.

All he can think of are those women in, Jesus they were comedies of all things, wailing at their husbands: you did this to me!

That had never been funny to Crane. He didn’t know how it could be funny to anybody when it was objectively the truth.

Levi did this to him. The hive did this.

Thank you, child, the hive whispers. Crane groans. Your womb is a gift, we are so lucky, we are so blessed to have you.

He doesn’t have long until the next one hits. He needs to drink and conserve energy for the incoming wave.

But these wriggling, weak, crushable sons of bitches.

These bugs that tore Stagger open and crammed themselves inside him.

These creatures that whispered in Levi’s ear and told him what to do.

This mass of little black bodies and intestine-shaped things spilling across the floor and walls of the room.

The day Harry died, Crane found him in the manager’s office, beating at the door to the hive.

Rattling the chain. Screaming. His hands were bloody.

Levi had just dropped Crane off for his shift and he’d come into the back to get another box of coffee grounds before opening, but also to figure out what that banging noise was; he’d been convinced Mike had left the back door open the past night, and it was slamming open and closed in the wind.

Pathetic ape, the hive said.

“You sick motherfuckers.” Harry left red handprints on the metal. His hair had grown long, and he had the gaunt paper-paleness of someone starving. He hadn’t been doing well for a while, Crane had thought, but not this bad. “You did this to me. You did this.”

Crane froze in the doorway, but it was too late. Harry had seen him.

“You,” he gasped. Crane took a step back. “You. Where’s the key.”

The key? The key was supposed to be at the register. Was it not?

Crane would later learn that Harry had started talking like this to Mike the night before, and Mike had absconded with the key to prevent exactly this. But right then, Harry didn’t know that, and neither did Crane.

Crane shook his head. No key.

So Harry grabbed Crane instead. “Can you feel them? Can you feel them inside you? Jesus fucking Christ, you’re just a kid. You shouldn’t be here. They’re going to do it to you too.”

Levi had arrived then, and the rest of the shift was spent on his hands and knees with a bucket. No bleach, no cleaning chemicals, because the hive hates those. Just the reek of vinegar and copper, scraping pieces of bone and brain out of pits in the old concrete.

Now, on the floor, Crane sees it, where Levi’s shirt has ridden up just a little bit as he paces, checks his gun, paces again—the scar.

Under it, something moves.

Crane wants to laugh. He wants to scream until his lungs give out, but he can only cough and splutter against the phlegm in his throat. The hive did this to all of them, huh? Their rotten bone-nests weren’t enough. They had to find their way inside everybody.

Cuttin’ up and sewin’ together.

Thank you, child, thank you, this will be so beautiful.

And after all this time, there’s still no answer as to what the hive wants this baby for. Why it wants this so bad that it was willing to destroy Crane’s trust, his body, his life for it. What can he give the hive that nobody else could? What could a baby give the hive now that it could not before?

Levi grabs the shotgun, circles the room like a frustrated animal. Tammy tells him to sit, but he doesn’t listen. Stagger rubs circles into Crane’s back.

It feels like the pressure of the head in Crane’s pelvis will crack the bone in half. Crane reaches between his legs as if he might be able to touch something already, as if he’ll find a lock of hair with the tips of his fingers. Nothing yet. His hand only comes away wet.

You suffer and labor for us in your glory.

We are so grateful for you.

The hive can go fuck itself.

Our little one will soon see the sun.

For the first time, Crane feels—so foreign, so strange he barely knows what it is, but so instinctual that he would never be able to disobey—Crane feels the urge to push.