christoplast

I’m seated in the back of the Sedan as it rumbles through the empty town, headed towards the research center where Dr. Lee, a colleague and friend of mine, is awaiting my arrival. To get to the place the car has to cross a wooden bridge that creaks and groans. I got a call in the night, really more like the early morning hours, from Lee. He told me that there would be a car waiting for me in the morning, around seven. That they’d come and pick me up. He added that the reason for the call was that he thought he’d found a cure. Not just any cure. The cure. A substance that could tranquilize and tame the babies. A cure that would render them gentle again, turn them back to normal. Like they used to be before the ‘Great Attack’. No one had planned for it. No one thought it would ever occur, but occur it did. Babies all over the world suddenly turning feral and devouring their fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, anybody they saw. And who could have imagined it would happen? Not a single person. The army was sent to terminate them, but not all. Half of them were captured and caged. No one protested about it because most people had seen the damage done and knew that these things were no longer babies. They were killing-machines.
The center is located on a remote island that rises fifty feet above the water. I haven’t been to the place for about a year, since I accidently injured a guard. I was walking by and slipped and landed on him. I wasn’t hurt, but he suffered a broken nose. I left the next morning to avoid further complications. The bridge connects the island to the cliff of the town. The car drives past the bridge and the whole time I’m scared the frame of the thing is going to collapse, and we’ll all fall down into the churning water. But none of that happens. And halfway through I look out the car window and down into the water and see the waves crashing against the base of the cliff, sprouting upward and then falling back. Once we’re on the island I take a good look at the center. The place is a network of buildings all connecting to each other. Surrounding the place is a chain link fence, as high as an apartment complex. At the door of the fence stand two guards with stern faces. They’re wearing police hats and they both have their guns clasped in their hands, ready to fire if anything happens.
The driver opens his window and yells, “OK!” at the guards. They slide the doors open and give us a thumbs up. I’m escorted out of the car by another guard, and into the main building, where Dr.Lee is waiting for me inside. Lee is a bony man who needs a haircut and always has a lab coat on. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him without one. His hair is slick and falls over the sides of his head to his shoulders. He’s forty years old, just like me, but he still appears younger than me. Way younger.
“Joseph,” he says and shakes my hand,”Nice to see you.”
“Don’t worry if I don’t seem so cheerful. I didn’t get much sleep this morning.”
“I don’t think anyone does these days” he says and gestures for me to follow him.
We walk into a white tiled room with two tables. One of the walls is made of glass and looks into another room where there’s two babies crawling around and barking. They’re eyes are emerald green. I get shudders just by looking at them. The babies have razor sharp teeth and I can swear that I see a speck of red on one of them. Faint, but definitely there. Cabinets line the opposite wall, and there’s a tube hanging from the ceiling, that curves downward and then turns sharply to the right. The hole of the tube is covered by a circular sheet of glass with a small metal handle.“You heard about the missing babies yet?” Lee asks.
“No. Missing babies?”
“Yep, they escaped out of their cages yesterday. Three of them. They’re part of group C, and we have no clue where they went. We have guards looking for them all over the place, searching the grounds.”
“Are they going to kill them, if they find them or what?”
“No, just stun them for enough time, so that they can transfer them into another cage. A more secure one.”
“You’re not scared of someone getting hurt. What if the little demons spot the guards before they spot them? Couldn’t they kill someone?” There’s a chair next to a table, and I sit down. Lee goes over to one of the cabinets and takes out a glass vial filled with an ashy liquid.
“There is the possibility but these guys are trained professionals. They wouldn’t be here if they weren’t.”
A man bursts into the room, and I almost jump out of my seat. “We’ve found one of them!” he says and Lee tells him to put the baby in section 3, while they wait to find the others.
I can see that the man is wearing a 0X necklace. Ox is an organization that this center is part of. Ox captures babies and donates money here so that doctors can find a cure. Their emblem is an O intertwined with an X. The man’s literally jumping with excitement, and the necklace is rattling against his chest. “He didn’t put up a fight, did he?” Lee asks.
“Not at all. We’d already stunned him before he even noticed us.”
“Good, good,” Lee gives the guy a light smile. “One down, two more to go.”
The man leaves and Lee grabs the handle of the tube and opens the little glass door. He empties the contents of the vial into the tube and then shuts the door. “Here it goes,” he mumbles. And then: “Come on! Hurry!” he ushers me over and we both stand, our faces almost pressed against the glass. The babies are still waddling around and occasionally looking at us and growling, baring their teeth, and I can still see that speck of red on the baby’s teeth. I try not to look into their eyes. There’s an opening in the ceiling and the liquid-the supposed cure- which has been turned into a gas, wafts through the hole and into the room. The babies can smell it, and they don’t mind. They cock their heads upward as the gas fills up the room, turning it into a cloud. I can’t see a thing and then, slowly, the gas leaves the room and what is left are two normal, fragile babies. Their eyes have changed to brown and blue, and they’re no longer ferocious looking. They’re teeth are gone, and when they open their mouths to cry all I can see is their gums. Both of the babies scrunch up their eyes and tears begin to fall down their cheeks.
“Holy crap” I say, more to myself than to Lee.
“It’s amazing, isn’t it?”
“More than amazing.”
“Don’t be singing hallelujah yet though, we don’t know if it fully works.”
“They look perfectly normal to me.”
“But they could change back. We’ll have to wait and see.”
Lee passes by me, pats me on the back, and leaves. I follow him out, and we wind our way through a bunch of similar looking passageways, all with mopped linoleum floors and overhead lamps in cages. We pass by a couple of rooms and inside I see some scientists talking and laughing, in another room a guy is sitting down at his desk and tapping his pencil non-stop. Everyone we walk by salutes Lee, smiles, says hi. The whole time I don’t know where were going, until we enter the cafeteria. There are at least twenty long tables, and an enormous window that looks out into the ocean. The walls and floors are as white as you’d expect heaven to look like. Ahead of the tables is a counter where there’s a line of people with plates serving themselves. Next to the window is a Coca Cola vending machine. I can hear the ocean and it makes my stomach a little queasy. The sounds of the waves gathering and then crashing into the rocky face of the island. In the distance I can also hear seagulls, but just barely.
A guy in a lab coat walks up to us and asks Lee what he wants to drink, a coke or tea. “Tea,” Lee responds. “Thanks”
“Wow. You’ve become the boss here, haven’t you?” I say.
He puts his elbow on my shoulder and laughs. “People just don’t like to see me go thirsty.” Then the man’s back with a Styrofoam cup in his hand. He gives it to Lee and Lee says thanks again. “You’re welcome, sir” whispers the guy and then leaves. I take a seat at the closest table and Lee is halfway to sitting down when there’s a scream. I can feel my arms go limp at my sides and my feet automatically glue themselves to the floor. Lee drops his tea and it spills across the linoleum, hot and steaming. A guard runs through the door and there’s a baby chewing on his head and another wrapped around his leg like a giant leech, biting into his skin and ripping apart his flesh. The one on his head bites down on a tuft of hair and yanks it straight out of his scalp and the man delivers another long scream. Without even thinking, I jump up onto the table. The man doesn’t notices the mass of tea on the floor and tries to run through it. He slips backward and lands facedown, and there’s the crack of bone. The babies take advantage of his misstep and they both crawl onto his back and tear his uniform apart, and then they dig into his back with their shark teeth and blood struggles out of the man’s back, and his leg, and his head. The blood mixes with the tea and what’s left is a syrupy substance that looks like raspberry juice. The babies don’t stop to savor anything, they continue to bite deeper and deeper into the man, and no one steps forward to stop them or do anything.
Lee stares at the babies and then leaps for the doorway and I jump after him, off the table. The babies don’t notice a thing. Lee runs back through the halls and past the rooms and the people, until we both make it to the lab room, where we left the babies. He makes it in first and then I rush in. The two babies haven’t changed. They’re still crying. Lee sighs with relief and I fall down into the chair again, and wipe some sweat off my forehead. “It works!” he says. I notice that I left the door open, and just to be on the safe side, I hurriedly run over and close it. Then I lock it.
“What about that guy back there?” I say.
“He’ll live.”
“How do you know?”
“Didn’t you see the three guards rushing over to stun the babies?”
“No.”
“Don’t worry” he says.
It’s good to know that everything’s going to go back to normal. Just regular babies, not harmful or dangerous. And as I sit there, I wonder how not only my life has just changed, but that those of many others have too. For the first time in a long time of hiding and crying my eyes out every night, I smile and I enjoy it.