What the Hell Did I Just Read

31. THE UNDISCLOSED HOSPITAL WAS RECENTLY RENOVATED AND IS NOW A PRETTY NICE FACILITY

After all that, we wound up spending the next few hours sitting quietly in a hospital waiting room, damp as dishrags, eating snacks and sodas out of their vending machine.

Why were we there? To see if “Maggie” recovered? To try to contain her if she erupted into a towering shadow of doom? Fuck if I knew. John eventually fell asleep, sprawled across five chairs and snoring loudly. Amy leaned on me and rested her wet head on my shoulder. Joy—who was completely dry—casually filed her nails. Marconi mostly stayed out on the sidewalk to smoke his pipe and talk on his cell—he apparently had people he could reach out to for advice in situations like this. That must be nice.

Eventually, Loretta came shuffling down the hall and I noted she looked whole again—no longer appearing to have been attacked by a great white. It wasn’t because she was whole, necessarily, but that the Soy Sauce was wearing off and I was now starting to see what everyone else saw. I no doubt could have seen through the illusion with some concentration, but I had no concentration juice left in my brain. Besides, I knew the truth.

Loretta said, “The doctor says she’s going to be okay.”

John blinked sleep from his eyes and raised himself up on one elbow. “That’s … good. She appears, uh, normal, and everything?”

“She’s been through a lot.”

Amy said, “I’m so sorry about Ted.”

Loretta sighed and sat in one of the chairs across from us.

“This is going to sound awful, but Ted … he never really came back home. From Iraq, I mean. We were high school sweethearts and … well, you don’t want to hear our life story. It just seemed like he never forgave himself for what happened over there. It’s like he felt like he owed a life, somehow, like it was an overdue bill he’d shirked. He kept moving us, from place to place, paranoid about the government, about everything, sure that someone was going to come and make him pay what he owed. When Maggie got taken, it was strange, because I swear it’s like that’s what he had been waiting for, all that time. I don’t want to say he wasn’t upset, don’t take it that way—but in those hours and days after, he was so alive. I hadn’t seen him like that since right before he shipped out. He finally had another damned war to fight.”

Loretta wiped her eyes.

Amy said, “I just hope that wherever he is, he’s at peace.”

Loretta said, “If he is, well, I guess that would make one of us. The son of a bitch got just what he wanted. A big, heroic sacrifice. Now the rest of us are left to clean up the mess. He probably thought he was being selfless or something. But look what he left behind. What he did, that’s the most selfish thing you can do. I want to find the jerk who convinced males that martyrdom is cool and kick him in the teeth.”

Loretta closed her eyes and pressed her lips together again. Reestablishing control. Then she quietly excused herself and went back to see her child.

Joy looked up from her nails and said, “I wonder if Waffle House is still open.”

I said, “Do you even eat?”

“Don’t be a dick.”

Amy sat up, my hand sliding off of her shoulder. She was watching Loretta as she plodded her way back to her monster baby.

She said, “We were wrong, weren’t we? We said the bug things dig up your worst fear to use against you, but it’s not that. Ted got his war. John, well, he got his car chase, right? It’s like…”

She trailed off, watching Loretta disappear around a corner.

From behind us, Marconi said, “I have found that our greatest fears and our greatest desires are, in fact, two sides of the same coin. I have known many who have died before their time, clutching that coin in their fist. Figuratively, of course.” He had come up behind us at some point, now standing with his overcoat draped over a forearm.

I said, “Jesus, you don’t just sneak up behind people and start spouting wisdom at them. Not at this hour.” I turned back to Amy. “So according to him, your proverbial coin is … waffles, I guess?”

I went to put my hand on her shoulder again but she stood up, wandering away like she needed to stretch her legs.

Marconi said, “I’m afraid I must excuse myself, I’ve an early morning production meeting, then it’s off to Minneapolis. Something is digging up graves, or so they tell me.” He glanced at a pocket watch. “I’ll assume any questions I have for you can be answered over e-mail.”

I said, “Wait, what? This isn’t over, Doctor. Do you know what’s gonna happen with the larvae if we all just go back home?”

“No. Do you? The best I can say is that a chick that cannot break free from an egg eventually dies. Or, it doesn’t get fertilized at all and someone scrambles it in a frying pan. All of this supposition is based on some very limited data.”

John said, “And the Millibutt will continue to spit out new ones.”

I said, “I’d have to consult my notes, but I’m pretty sure we didn’t accomplish anything. We literally could have just stayed home and gotten the exact same outcome.”

Marconi said, “I admit that this one will require some massaging at the editing stage.”

“So what’s the story gonna be?”

“Very straightforward, I should think. It’s the cautionary tale of a town in the throes of a panic over a supposed winged creature that witnesses claimed could turn itself into a man. A creature that managed to snatch eleven small children. All of whom were, thank goodness, recovered unharmed, thanks to the noble sacrifice of a brave veteran. But was all of this the work of an unearthly creature of the night? Or a mere human with a deviant mind? Which kind of predator is more terrifying? That, dear viewer, is up to you to decide. Now enjoy this commercial for auto insurance.”

Amy said, “Eleven children? There were twelve. You forgot Mikey.”

“There is nothing to forget.”

She stared into the middle distance and said, “Oh, right.”

I stood up and stretched. “All right. We get a few hours of sleep, then we round up the biker kids and figure out what we need to do to contain this thing. Every minute counts, people.”