Brianna worked her hands beneath the baby. It was slimy on its back, too. Then she looked down and saw something that made her smile.
“Hey. It’s a girl,” Brianna said.
“Take her,” Diana cried.
“She’s breathing,” Brianna said. “Isn’t she supposed to cry? In a movie it cries.”
She frowned at the baby. Its eyes were closed. Something strange about it. The baby wasn’t crying. She seemed perfectly calm. As if this was all no big thing, being born.
“Take her away from here!” Diana yelled. Her voice was coming from far away.
Brianna lifted the little girl up and oh! Her eyes opened. Little blue eyes. But that couldn’t be, could it?
Brianna stared into those eyes. Just stared. And the tiny little girl stared back, eyes focused so clearly, not the squinty little eyes of a newborn baby but the eyes of a wise child.
“What?” Brianna asked. Because it almost sounded like the baby was saying something. She wanted Brianna to take her over and lay her down in that crib.
Well, of course, who wouldn’t want to lie down in that nice, white crib?
There was a siren going off here at the hospital, an insistent screech that Brianna just ignored. As she laid the baby down and…
But wait. No. That wasn’t a siren.
It was a voice.
Run. Run. Ruuuun! the siren said.
But now Brianna’s breath was short; she was choking because the baby wanted to be put down in that nice crib with the green sheets.
Green? Hadn’t they been white?
Green was a nice color, too.
Brianna was so incredibly weary holding the baby. She must have weighed a million pounds. So tired, and the green sheets, and—Ruuuun! Ruuun! Nooooo!
Brianna blinked. She gulped air.
She looked down and saw the baby lying on rock covered with a sickly green that looked up close like a billion tiny ants.
The green swarmed up onto the baby’s chubby little legs and arms.
“No, Brianna! Noooo!” Diana cried.
Brianna, paralyzed with horror at what she had just done, watched as the seething green mass flowed onto the baby’s arms and legs and belly and then poured like water into her nostrils and mouth.
Penny, holding a rag to the bloody hole in her shoulder, staggered back, laughed, and suddenly collapsed to the ground.
“What did I do?” Brianna cried.
A noise. She spun, ducked, and barely avoided the whip.
She snatched up her shotgun—BLAM!—fired into Drake’s belly. He smiled his shark grin.
Too much. Too much!
Brianna ran.
OUTSIDE