Fear (Gone 5)

The baby would not look at her. Diana looked at him even though doing so filled her with sick dread.

He could already walk. But this was a dream, so of course things didn’t have to make sense. It was a dream; she knew that for sure because she knew the baby was not able to walk.

It was inside of her. A living thing inside of her own body. A body within a body. She could picture it in there with its eyes closed, all twisted so that its tiny legs were drawn up to its barrel chest.

Inside her body.

But now in her head, too. In her dream. Refusing to look at her.

You don’t want to show me your eyes, she said.

He was holding something now. Tiny, webbed fetus fingers clutched a doll.

The doll was black and white.

No, Diana begged.

The doll had a pouting, dissatisfied mouth. A small red mouth.

No, Diana begged again, and she was afraid.

The baby seemed to hear her voice and it held the doll out to her. Like it wanted her to take it. But Diana couldn’t take it, because her arms were like lead and so terribly heavy.

Noooo, she moaned. I don’t want to see it.

But the baby wanted her to look; it insisted she look, and she couldn’t stop herself, couldn’t look away, could not move or turn or run, and oh, God, she wanted to run.

What is it, Mommy? The voice had no character, just words, not a voice, not a sound, like someone was typing them onto a keyboard so that she could kind of hear but also see the words in letters, bam, bam, bam, each letter thudding in her brain.

What is it, Mommy?

The baby held the black-and-white plush toy in her face and asked again, What is it, Mommy?

She had to answer. No choice now. She had to answer.

Panda, she said, and with that word the full deluge of sadness and self-loathing burst in her mind.

Panda, the baby said, and smiled without teeth, smiled with the panda’s own red mouth.

Diana woke. Opened her eyes.

Tears blurred her vision. She rolled out of the bed. The trailer was tiny, but she kept it clean and neat. She was lucky: the only person other than Sam at the lake to have a place without a roommate.

Panda.

The baby knew. It knew she had eaten part of a boy with the nickname Panda. Her soul was bare to the baby. It could see inside her.

Oh, God, how was she going to be a mother carrying that terrible crime in her soul?

She deserved hell. And she had the terrible suspicion that the baby inside her was the demon sent to conduct her there.

“I don’t like the idea of leaving those missiles just lying there,” Sam said.

Edilio said nothing. He just shifted uneasily and glanced back at the dock to make sure no one was standing around listening for gossip.

Sam, Edilio, Dekka, and Mohamed Kadeer were on the top deck of the houseboat everyone called the White Houseboat. It wasn’t white, exactly, more of a dirty pink, actually. And it looked nothing like the real White House. But it was where the leaders met, up on the open top deck. So White Houseboat it was.

It was also Sam’s home, a home he shared with Dekka, Sinder, Jezzie, and Mohamed.