It's Alive! (14 page)

“At least now we know for sure it’s got a big, bald head.”

“We don’t
know
nothing. We see, we hear, we think. Even if that girl did see something, she couldn’t be sure about that at night. And I don’t care if it’s got a bowling ball for a head. She’s the luckiest person in this town that she didn’t turn up this morning with her throat missing. Next person that sees it might not be so lucky. So next time it’s seen, it better be by us.”

The hospital was quiet, clean, and orderly—approximately back to normal. Nurses bustled soundlessly through the corridors; doctors huddled over patients; even the delivery room was functioning efficiently.

Nobody talked about what was now referred to as “the Davis incident.” But memories of it hovered in the air, and the spirit of the personnel was more somber than before.

It was perhaps to be expected—given all the furor, tensions, misunderstandings, and publicity of that tragic time—that the hospital’s public-relations man, Ned Schultz, resigned, in the best interests of everybody concerned. He was congratulated all around for his unselfishness and grace under pressure, and given a cake. He managed to find a job with KBOP Radio-TV. Dr. Norten, the chief resident, had weathered the storm. It was not, after all, any of the hospital’s fault. Some felt that he, like Schultz, perhaps should resign, only because the public tended to associate him with the awful events.

But, as a direct result of those same events, the hospital was short of doctors. And Norten had, by reason of his quietly professional demeanor, been able to convince the hospital board that he above all others should be relied upon to use his experience at the hospital to keep it functioning medically well. That he should run everything, in fact.

And that he did. He was superbly organized himself, and able to transmit that skill upon his staff. So well-ordered was he that not only was he able to continue and expand his practice with patients, but also he found time to stay abreast of all details relating to the horrible occurrence of a few days before.

As a matter of fact, at his recent overnight private meeting with a publisher in Chicago, he’d been assured of a six-figure amount whenever he would be able to deliver a suitable manuscript, which he had tentatively entitled: “The Davis Incident.”

“Telephone for Dr. Norten,” announced the P.A., “. . . telephone for Dr. Norten . . .”

He broke off a conversation with some interns in the corridor, and took the call in his office.

“Dr. Norten? Professor Eckstein speaking. I promised I’d keep you posted. I’ve been going over some reports in the coroner’s office. Fascinating details. But I guess you’re pretty familiar with all that.”

“Yes, I think so.”

“But there is something I find rather curious.”

“Oh?”

“Yes, in the blood samples. In the umbilical cord. Tell me, doctor, is Mrs. Davis an unusually energetic or nervous person?”

“Nervous perhaps, according to Dr. Francis’s files. She seemed to have an odd feeling while she was carrying the . . . child. She was apparently not terribly lucid or articulate about it, but she used the words ‘strange’ and ‘weird’ often, according to the notes. I do remember, now that you mention it, the nurse who tended her in the labor room saying that Mrs. Davis did appear, as she put it, ‘highly agitated’ before she went to delivery. That is, before her husband visited her in labor. The nurse recounted to me that she seemed quite upset indeed, apprehensive not about labor pains and the usual things, but about something she didn’t seem to express readily. And again, after she left her husband, when she was being wheeled in to delivery, there was something she said about it being ‘too late,’ and Mrs. Davis sat up. Almost as quickly, she collapsed back down on the bed, and remained relatively calm after that. Does any of this relate to what you’re curious about?”

“Perhaps, Dr. Norten. And now, is Mrs. Davis feeling especially tired, more spent than you would expect?”

“Hmm. Odd. When last I saw her, yesterday, she was in fact surprisingly energetic, I thought. Surprisingly. I urged her to take a Valium and stay off her feet, but she was fairly dancing around the room.

“For how long?”

“We left within minutes, so I can’t say.”

“You don’t know if that energy abruptly left her soon after that?”

“No. Come, come, my good man, you must tell me what’s on your mind.”

“Just this, doctor. In the umbilical cord, I discovered that there was an amazing supply of hormones, primarily adrenaline. The umbilical was saturated with it. It is as if every ounce of adrenaline in her body was suddenly thrust into the child. Anything in Dr. Francis’s files about her hormone balance?”

“Nothing I can recall, professor.”

“Had she ever been on the pill, if I may ask?”

“Why yes, in fact, for many years. Remarkably enough, she stopped taking them some time ago, then began taking fertility pills of some sort—I don’t remember the make and model. Quaint ambivalence about the procreative processes, what?”

“Lord! Didn’t anybody warn her about playing with her hormonal balance so flagrantly?”

“I daresay, professor, just between you and me, had she been my patient I most certainly would have counseled a more careful approach. Have you some conclusions from all this?”

“I fear I might bore you, doctor, with matters you have already contemplated.”

“Tut, tut. Professor Eckstein. If I have considered what you are about to tell me, you will either confirm my conjectures or deny them. Either way, we advance our knowledge of the science and the case.”

“Very well. We have here a woman who, at least at the moment of birth, infused her infant with a horrendous dose of adrenaline and other hormones. Not only would that deplete her, but it would also tend to oversupply the infant. It would be enough to kill an ordinary newborn child. But this one accepted the hormones. Such a capability would suggest grotesque consequences: abnormal growth and strength, and God knows what other abnormalities and deformities. It could even suggest why such an infant could survive in cold and damp.”

“Ahh.”

“But of course we must ask ourselves: How could such an infant accept this hormonal overdose at the last moment?”

“Exactly.”

“Supposing we postulate that the woman was producing and transferring gross amounts of these hormones, including adrenaline, from the moment of conception and through the entire term.”

“Precisely.”

“It challenges standard doctrine, but were that possible, we might have found the important clue in the mystery of how this mutant developed.”

“Certainly.”

“And we shall know what form it finally took soon, when we have the corpus for examination.”

“Assuredly.”

“But
not,
doctor, precisely
why.”

“Hunh?”

“If this theory is correct, and if our interests involve more than just the lurid, sensational, short-sighted details of the mutant itself—such as what one might find in the
Guinness Book of Records
—then we must address the riddle of why Mrs. Davis produced these massive amounts of hormones, what in her body caused them to be loosed by the truckload so as to produce this gargoyle of a child . . .”

“I should say so.”

“. . . Because, doctor, as I’m sure you already know, her glands may still be so afflicted, still producing in outrageous spasms.”

“Quite right.”

“And if they are, doctor, we must assume one of two things.”

“One or the other.”

“Either she is unique, in a way herself a mutant . . .”

“Or . . .”

“. . . or she is not unique. If the former applies, we have a simply medical curiosity. But if it’s the latter—let us pray it is not—then we could be facing what might turn out to be—I don’t want to overstate it—a horrifying epidemic.”

The phone quivered in Norten’s hand as he stared wide-eyed at the wall. “We must keep this under our hats, professor.”

“You think so? I was about to suggest that we send out an urgent alert to obstetricians and others involved with—”

“No, absolutely not. Not until we’re sure. We would risk a panic.”

“But what if—”

“Continue your excellent work, professor. Don’t breathe a word to anyone except me. As the one in charge of the medical aspects of this case, I must assume total responsibility. Mrs. Davis must be approached cautiously, for she is highly suspicious of tests or treatment just now. First, we must have the infant. Then, at the proper time, I will undertake the research into the bodily functions of Mrs. Davis.”

“I hope you’re right.”

“I believe in proceeding with care and caution.”

“So many people already dead . . .”

“What’s past is past.”

“Or prologue, doctor.”

The old woman slogged along the dark sidewalk as if through deep sand, lifting her feet wearily, pushing in front of her a twisted, rusting shopping cart loaded with rags. It was for this she was known around town as “the rag lady.”

She wore a long, tattered coat, ripped army boots, and a faded kerchief on her head. She muttered to herself as she moved painfully along.

She slept in stairwells or wherever anyone would let her in to curl up behind a door. Though not an esthetic treat, she harmed no one.

Whenever anyone would listen, the rag lady told tales. Stories of things she knew, things she saw: sagas of adventure, visitations of spirits and Martians, insights into the cosmos as well as the immediate neighborhood. Children loved her fables, and would often bring her bits of discarded clothing, which she added to her cart; parents begged them to stay away from her.

All day and into each night, she walked alone, mumbling her own stories over and over again to herself.

She plodded past the playground, where so often she could find an audience. But now she didn’t bother looking for anyone, because it was night and the playground was naturally deserted. She trudged steadily on, her head bobbing in rhythm to the slow dirge of her legs.

Until she heard a swing creak.

She pressed her face up against the chain-link fence and tried to focus her watery eyes on the row of swings in the center of the playground. The swing squeaked again and again in regular tempo. Just as it did during the day, when the schoolchildren were there.

Straining to see a distance beyond her normal view, she blinked several times to clear her old, dim eyes. She could make out the swing now, arcing steadily back and forth. And someone in it.

“Halloo,” she called weakly.

The swing stopped. The child got off. It came toward her. Not walking, rather half crawling and half hopping. It began to cry.

It neared the fence and stopped, its crying increasing in pitch and intensity. It wailed now, screamed. It sprang onto the fence.

The rag lady’s eyes widened slowly in terror. Blood drained from her face. She stumbled backward. “Nooo,” she whimpered, “nooo . . .” Her eyes rolled back in her head. She fell across the shopping cart, knocking it over and spilling its contents along the sidewalk.

There she lay, face up, amid all her rags, seeing no longer what now reached the top of the fence and dropped down beside her.

They found her early in the morning.