Species (39 page)

The explosion rocked the subterranean cavern and sent pebbles and fist-sized boulders pelting the entire length of the cave’s drafty interior. Flaming jellied napalm and unidentifiable saffron-colored pieces of the creature splattered in every direction, and Dan yelped when a chunk of squishy yellow flesh nearly took his eye out and left a deep purple bruise in its wake.

And, finally, it was over.

Nothing moved within the cavern but the flames dying out across the bubbling pool . . . and a rat, scuttling into a dark crevice with a bit of severed tentacle.

Press drew a deep, relieved breath as he stared at the tar pit. “I could have been down there with her.” He glanced at Dan, gratitude etched in the dusty lines of his face. “Thanks, Dan.
Again.”

Dan grinned at his two teammates, not even feeling the angry bruise below his eye anymore. “I think I like my new job,” he said proudly.

“It’s got lot of variety!”

42

“S
o, tell me,” Laura said. “How did you arrange this? Not many people can reserve a quarter-mile of ocean-front for an afternoon.”

She and Press were sitting on a stretch of incredibly clean beach. In front of them was the ocean, wide and sparkling like an endless bowl of diamonds below the Pacific sunset. While it was a public region of Las Tunas State Beach in Malibu, the area was strangely trash-free and empty—no cars, no litter, no vacationing couples with children fighting it out over whose turn it was to use the beach raft. Laura thought she’d never seen anything so beautiful.

Press lifted his face, enjoying the faint sting of the sand carried on the breeze. “You know me. I’ve got connections.”

“Uh-uh. Speaking of connections, any with Dan?”

Press’s lips turned up in a small grin. “We keep in touch. Seems he was only tooting his horn when he made that crack about this being his new job, though.”

“Oh?”

Press leaned farther back on the beach chair and stretched lazily. “Yeah. He’s out of the special-project stuff entirely. Decided he could put those empath feelings to better use with abused children.”

Laura’s eyebrows shot up. “Really? And they let him go, just like that? That’s wonderful!”

Press shrugged. “What can they do?
Make
him feel something for them? I don’t think so. Besides, I don’t think he knows anything classified beyond this project anyway.”

Laura looked doubtful. “That seems awful easy.”

This time Press laughed. “Easy, nothing. You’d better believe they’ll watch that fellow for the rest of his life. He knows it, but it doesn’t bother him. Part of the reason he made a successful ‘change’ was that he went with the Department of Health and Human Services. Things would have been more . . .
difficult
had he tried to switch to a private employer.”

“So he still works for Uncle Sam,” Laura said wryly.

“Exactly.”

They drifted into silence for a while, then Press leaned forward and clasped his hands. “I guess I’m still wondering
why,”
he said. “They sent us what we needed to know to . . . I don’t know. Grow
them,
if that’s what you want to call it. Why would they go through all that trouble simply to destroy us?”

Laura gazed out over the water. “It boiled down to a fight over the most important thing in the world, Press.”

“What’s that?”

“Babies.”

Press looked at her oddly. “Babies? What do you mean?”

“Babies
—whose
babies, more specifically. Whether the next generation was going to be hers, or ours.”

Press looked at her thoughtfully, then pulled something from his pocket. When he held it up, Laura realized in amazement that it was the Polaroid shot taken of Sil and John Carey. “Hey,” she said, “how’d you get your hands on that?”

“I told you,” he said as he stared at it. “I’ve got connections.” He studied the photograph for a few moments. “Look at her,” he said quietly. “She was half us, half something else, a predator from so far away it was impossible to make a physical journey through space. You once suggested that we were weeds in the galaxy and she was the weed killer. I had automatically assumed it was to conquer us, take our planet or something like they do in the old science-fiction movies—but that doesn’t wash because of the travel distance involved in space. So maybe you weren’t that far off. Maybe we
should
be stopped before we spread.”

“Now there’s a cheerful thought for a lovely late afternoon at the beach,” Laura commented. When he didn’t say anything, she turned her face back to the ocean. “Which do you think was the predatory half?” she asked softly. “Her half, or ours?”

Laura almost didn’t hear his answer. “I don’t know.”

He looked up at her finally and she gave him a warm smile; after a second he couldn’t help but smile back. She wore a lacy camisole that made the skin of her face and arms appear smooth and peach-colored in the fading sunlight; he could smell tropical-flavored lip gloss that made her mouth exquisitely inviting. Her clear gaze was like a glittering mirror of the ocean. “What beautiful eyes you have,” he said, leaning toward her.

Still smiling, Laura’s lips brushed his, then moved closer for a full kiss. He barely understood the words she murmured against his mouth.

“And in front . . .”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Y
VONNE
N
AVARRO
is a dark fantasy writer and illustrator who lives in a western suburb of Chicago. Her first short story appeared in
The Horror Show
in 1984, and since then her short fiction and illustrations have appeared in over forty professional anthologies and small press magazines. She has also authored a reference book called
The First Name Reverse Dictionary
for writers and parents-to-be. She has written one previous novel,
AfterAge,
for Bantam, and her next novel,
deadrush,
will be coming out in October of 1995.

ABOUT THE SCREENWRITER

D
ENNIS
F
ELDMAN
is a photographer and screenwriter. He is the author of “The Golden Child” and “Real Men,” which he also directed. He lives in Los Angeles.