Harvest (61 page)

“
Haven’t seen you about
for a while.” She smiled and pulled a large brightly coloured
children’s carry-all into a better position on her
shoulder.

“
I moved out.” She smiled
as friendly as she could.

The haggard looking
twenty-something cast her eyes back at the building “Lots of people
are moving out
.
” She faced
Cat. “Not surprising really after everything that happened. Me and
mine are off soon.”

“
I know what you mean;
when those kinds of things happen it gives you itchy
feet.”

“
Itchy?
My feet want to run! I can’t wait to
escape from our cramped two bedroom place what with baby on the
way. After everything that we have lived through we need a new
start somewhere else. Give the kids a nicer neighbourhood away from
all this.” She rolled her yes in an impression of
bliss.

Several of the girl’s
words anchored themselves in Cat’s head;
‘run,’
‘escape,’ ‘new start’ –
‘somewhere else’.

The girl continued. “A lot of
people are in the family way at the moment. It’s a regular
baby-boom. They say it happens in times of stress. People get down
to it. Comfort I guess.”

Craig and Kelly had been
brought together by what happened, and Kelly was now three months
pregnant. Cat couldn’t escape the girls earlier words;
‘RUN,’
‘ESCAPE,’
‘
NEW START’ – ‘SOMEWHERE
ELSE’
. They played in her mind in a mantra she
couldn’t stop; a mantra that she had already followed in her own
actions. To get away from everything that had happened. Except now
she wasn’t sure that there might be an alternative more
subconscious motive.

The girl leaned forward
conspiratorially and spoke with a knowing tone of a shared secret.
“You three months gone too?”

Cat smiled and laughed, but it
died in her throat as she realised the girl was commenting on the
way she was rubbing her tummy. It had been bloated for a month now.
She had been nauseous. She had missed a couple of periods. No. Now
she did laugh. It was ridiculous. She wasn’t pregnant. She hadn’t
had sex for nearly a year. She looked down at herself, at the small
rise of her tummy against the material of her tee-shirt. She wanted
to be sick. She turned and ran.

RUN – ESCAPE – NEW START –
SOMEWHERE ELSE.

She could hear the mantra
clearly now, but it hadn’t come from her mind, it had come from
the
thing
in her head. She
understood it. Craig and Kelly with their baby, Jason and his mum,
all the residents that had left or were leaving had on some level
heard or felt that same an urge to leave.
How many of those women were pregnant?

They had been right about
the
thing’s
motive, it did
want to consume and grow. Somehow, like a cuckoo or a parasite it
had left its young behind with people and families that would
instinctively protect them. It would no longer be vulnerable from
being concentrated in one place, but would be spread out across the
city and maybe beyond. Hiding in the children like it hid in Cat’s
mind, they would grow up in new neighbourhoods and communities. In
hospitals, nurseries, schools, colleges – they would find the
perfect breeding grounds.

Then the disappearances would
begin.

###

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