It Lives Again Read online

  “That’s right,” said Frank.

  “Yes,” said Eugene, remembering the whole tragedy now. He remembered having sat around discussing it with other lawyers. “I saw it. I was very sorry for you, Mr. Davis.”

  “Thank you,” said Frank, looking at Jody again.

  Jody saw his look; searching for something to say, anything to delay what this strange man was going to tell her. “Is your—wife all right now?” she tried.

  “Yes, she’s recovered,” said Frank, keeping his eyes, those dark, piercing eyes, riveted on this lovely young woman.

  Eugene was watching that look, too. He knew what it must be doing to his wife. He had to say it. He had to put this bizarre meeting and discussion in its right perspective.

  “I have to say this,” Eugene began, looking pointedly at Frank, “for my wife’s sake.”

  “Go ahead, Mr. Scott,” said Frank, taking Eugene’s look straight on.

  Eugene began again. “Have you recovered, Mr. Davis? Or do you just go around to people’s houses and break in on their parties and try to frighten them?”

  Frank, not missing a beat, returned Eugene’s lawyer’s gaze. “If you read about me, Mr. Scott, then you no doubt have heard about the other one, the one born in Seattle,” he said.

  “I remember,” Jody interjected. “It was killed, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Frank answered, “they killed it at birth.”

  “Who’s they?” Eugene asked, less than kind.

  “You really want to know?” said Davis evenly.

  “Listen, mister,” said Eugene, “you’ve gone this far for whatever the hell reason. So you might as well tell us the whole story.”

  A pause—and then Frank Davis answered, “The father did it. The father killed it.”

  A crash! Jody had dropped the dishes she had been holding since the beginning of this incredible discussion. She sank down onto a small couch right behind her, moaning softly. “Oh, Gene,” she said.

  Eugene moved over to her. He held her, trying to comfort her, talking to her softly. “It’s all right, honey. It’s all right. Take it easy.” And then, still on one knee, his arms around his wife, he yelled up at Davis, “You son of a bitch, can’t you see what you’re doing? You’re frightening her! There’s no call for this. This has nothing to do with us!”

  Frank took a step toward Eugene, beseechingly. “Mr. Scott—”

  Eugene got up quickly. “Get out,” he said. “Get out or I’ll call the police.”

  Frank did not budge. Calmly, in control of the situation, he began again. “Mr. Scott, that’s just what you don’t want to do. The police aren’t going to be of any help to you or your baby. Believe me, the only one interested in saving your baby is me, and a few good friends,” he added.

  “Listen, you bastard,” said Eugene, taking a step toward Frank as if he were about to hit him.

  Jody stopped him. “Honey, please.”

  “Mr. Scott,” said Davis, “five minutes, give me five minutes. Surely you can give me that if there’s even the slightest chance that what I say determines whether your baby lives or dies.”

  Jody clutched her husband’s hand, pulling him down next to her on the couch. “Please, honey,” she said.

  Reluctantly Eugene sat next to his wife. “All right,” he said, “five minutes.”

  Frank took out a cigarette, lighted it, and sat down on an end table placed conveniently just to his left. Inhaling deeply, he started his story again, looking mostly at Jody.

  “There were blood specimens taken by Dr. Fairchild, isn’t that right?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Jody replied.

  “They matched up with other samples . . .” Then Davis stopped. He looked at them as if he were afraid to tell them more, as if he would have preferred that they realized what he was trying to tell them without his actually saying it.

  “What other samples?” asked Eugene warily.

  Taking another deep drag, Davis knew then that he must, however painfully, tell the whole story. “The government,” he said, “has been alerting doctors all over the country to be on the lookout for pregnancies that bear certain symptoms, symptoms traceable from the mother’s bloodstream. They’re trying to locate these infants before they are born . . .”

  Davis paused. Eugene picked it up. “For what reason?” he asked.

  “So they can be terminated,” answered Frank Davis.

  “Oh, my God,” moaned Jody.

  “This is all nonsense,” said Eugene, about to get to his feet again.

  “Wait,” said Jody. She suddenly realized something. Something that had bothered her the last couple of days. “At Dr. Fairchild’s office the other day, they were very strange to me. Remember, Gene? I told you that, didn’t I? They were very strange . . . quiet. And usually the waiting room is very busy, full of women. I tried to make some kind of dumb joke to the nurses, such as how come the doctor lost all his patients, was he charging too much, or something. And all they said was that all the appointments were canceled that afternoon. ‘Oh,’ I said. I was all set to leave. But there he was, Dr. Fairchild, waiting for me. Didn’t I tell you?”

  “No, you didn’t mention it,” said Eugene.

  Jody got up. Full of her story, she paced back and forth across the room, letting it all out.

  “Well, maybe I didn’t mention it then. It wasn’t important then. It just made me feel kind of funny. There he was, Dr. Fairchild, all alone in his office, behind the desk. He never even got up to greet me. Nothing, no examination, nothing. And then, when it was time to leave, he just sat there, as if he didn’t have a friend in the world. I figured something happened to him, that he was having a bad day. But then when I got back out in the waiting room, it was the same thing. Then I figured, either something was drastically wrong, or I was imagining things.”

  “What kind of things?” Eugene asked, still not believing a word of this.

  “Like the way the nurses talked to me, as I said, uptight, and you know they usually go out of their way to be friendly.”

  Now Eugene got up and went to his wife. “Honey, come on now, this is all nonsense and you know it.”

  “Now wait a second, Mr. Scott,” said Frank. “Please listen.”

  “No, you wait a second, Mr. Davis,” Eugene interrupted. “You come in here with this cock-and-bull story about blood samples, then my wife says she went to the doctor’s and nobody talked to her. So from that I’m supposed to believe—what?” Eugene stopped. He looked at Frank Davis, who had now moved to the window, peering out as if he were looking for something. “What do you want me to believe, Mr. Davis?”

  Taking another quick look out the window, Davis turned to him and with all sincerity explained, “I’ll tell you what I want you to believe . . . what you must believe. Your name has been forwarded to the authorities. There are certain people assigned to this program. They have been notified that there’s a reasonable expectation that you will give birth to . . .”

  “Don’t say it,” said Eugene.

  Jody gasped. Her hands came up, covering her face. “Oh, my God! Oh, no, please!”

  Eugene held her close, supporting her, and brought her back to the couch. “Sit down,” he pleaded.

  “Oh, Gene,” she sobbed. “Gene, he’s telling the truth. I know he’s telling the truth! Oh, God, no!”

  Eugene was furious. “You miserable bastard!” he roared at Davis, trying to get up. “Look what you’ve done to her!”

  “Gene, no,” Jody screamed, holding on to him, “You’ve got to listen to him, Gene, please!”

  Frank moved a step or two closer, his heart going out to this beautiful young woman, but at the same time kept his distance from the maddened Eugene Scott. “I went through this myself,” said Frank. “I know exactly how you feel. I was the first. If it is one of these children, it’ll come early, unexpectedly. They’re prepared for that. The team arrived the day before yesterday.”

  “What team?” Eugene snapped.

&
nbsp; “Specialists,” Frank answered, gazing toward the window. “They have specialists trained, ready for this sort of thing.”

  Eugene followed Frank Davis’s gaze. “Are you trying to tell me that people—specialists, as you call them—have come down here for the specific purpose of killing our baby?”

  “If it’s like mine when it’s born,” Frank answered, “. . . yes.”

  “Davis, you’re out of your goddamn mind!” said Eugene, getting to his feet.

  Davis ignored this remark. He moved back again, toward the window. “I don’t have much time,” he said. At the window, he again peered out into the street. “There’s a man named Mallory across the street. He’s watching this house. It’s just like a job to them; they change shifts every eight hours. All except Mallory. He’s always there, it seems.”

  Eugene, not believing any of this, moved quickly across the room to see.

  “No, he’ll see you,” Frank warned. “Is there another window?”

  “Over there,” said Jody, pointing to a smaller window that sat on an angle to the street.

  “Perfect,” said Davis, moving to that window, Eugene and Jody joining him.

  Outside, it was almost dark. There was a late-model station wagon, a big one, a Chrysler or a Buick, parked across the street. A cold-looking man in a short-sleeved shirt, impervious to the night air, stood by the car, his arms crossed, making no pretense about it. Whatever he was doing out there, one thing was clear: it had to do with their house.

  “That’s him,” said Frank. “That’s Mallory.”

  Eugene sighed. Convinced before that this Davis was crazy, one thing was certain to him now: that man across the street, whoever he was, was watching his house. “I saw them earlier. I thought they were surveying, or something,” he said. “I thought they were going to build something.”

  “And Dr. Fairchild’s part of all this?” Jody asked, still not able to grasp the situation fully.

  “Yes.” Frank nodded slowly.

  “Oh, God,” said Jody, going back toward the couch. Eugene and Frank followed her. Eugene turned to Frank as they went.

  “These men, they know you?” he asked.

  “They know me,” said Davis. “But they don’t know I’m in Tucson. I came in here with the other guests for the shower. I don’t think they recognized me.”

  After seating Jody on the couch, Eugene asked Davis, his lawyer’s mind racing, “How many are there on this team, would you say?”

  “Four of them,” Frank answered.

  “You know where they’re staying?”

  “At the Sunset Inn. That’s the closest place to the hospital.”

  “They know our hospital, too?” questioned Eugene.

  “Mr. Scott,” said Frank, “they know it all. They even know you’re an attorney, which might complicate things, as far as the law is concerned. They took all that into consideration, and they still know one other thing: they’re still going to do it.”

  Eugene sighed. Suddenly he crossed the room to the bar. Davis, sensing that Scott wanted to talk to him alone, followed.

  At the bar, Eugene poured himself a straight vodka, and as Davis joined him, he asked, “You want one?”

  Frank shook his head.

  Eugene then picked up his drink, at least two fingers, and downed it in one full gulp. Finished, he whirled angrily back at Davis. “If it’s going to be a monster, why not kill it? Why save it, for Christ’s sake?”

  Frank answered calmly, academically. He and others had thought this all out; they knew the answer, and the reason why.

  “Everyone uses that word so easily, Mr. Scott. ‘Monster.’ It’s even in the textbooks. The new medical textbooks they’re putting out have a section on the Davis Monster Syndrome. Syndrome, they call it, as if it were a disease, because it’s different.”

  Jody, refusing to be left out, had come up behind them. Vaguely, she asked, “They didn’t show any pictures of your baby in that magazine I read. What did it look like?”

  “Honey, please,” said Eugene, not at all approving of the way this discussion was going. Next Davis would be taking snapshots out of his wallet, passing them around. He looked at Davis. “How many people did it murder?”

  Frank returned his look. “Murder?” he asked. “Mr. Scott, you above all, as a lawyer, should know the definition of murder. In the delivery room they tried to suffocate it, and it fought back.”

  “You know that for a fact?” questioned Jody, inching closer.

  “I know it,” Frank replied. “I’ve asked people, different people. It’s pretty well documented they tried to kill it as soon as it was born.” Frank stopped, then he began to cry, softly at first, trying to control himself.

  “I’m sorry,” said Jody, moving even closer, her heart going out to this man.

  “It found us,” Frank sobbed. “It came to me for protection and I . . . I shot it. Because they told me to. What did I know? They told me it was a monster. I shot my own child.”

  “Please, Mr. Davis,” said Eugene, seeing how much he was upsetting Jody.

  But Davis continued. “But he forgave me. Is that an animal? Is that a monster that can forgive? Is it?” he asked, looking at Eugene.

  “No . . . I suppose not,” Eugene agreed, saying anything to quiet him.

  Frank paused a moment, calmer now. He wiped his wet face with his handkerchief. “We cooperated with the authorities, you know. Oh, we were the perfect little citizens. After all, they made us feel so guilty. So my wife and I let them take tests. You wouldn’t believe it. Test after test.” He smiled, the first time the Scotts had seen him really smile. “They even had tests for the tests . . . So now, now they trust us.”

  “Have you done this before?” Eugene asked. “I mean, gone to other people like us?”

  “There was a woman in Evanston, Illinois,” Frank said, in complete control of himself again. “I found out too late. I got as far as Chicago. I tried to reach her by phone. I didn’t give my name—that would have blown my cover, as they say. She hung up on me. It was too late anyway . . . the team . . .” He pointed toward the window. “Mallory was already there. They were prepared in the delivery room. They snuffed out its life, killed it.”

  “But you told us your name . . .” Eugene said skeptically.

  “Yes,” said Frank. “After that I made up my mind. The next time I had information, the next time I had a chance to save one of these . . .”—almost afraid to use the word—“. . . babies, I would do anything or say anything to save it.”

  Eugene asked, very logically, “And how do you get the information, Mr. Davis?”

  “Friends,” answered Davis, “people who have infiltrated the organization. People who feel the same as we do and are interested in saving these poor creatures.”

  Jody, her mind on another track, asked “Was it one of those?”

  Frank turned to her. “Excuse me?”

  “The baby in Evanston.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Frank. “Yes, it was one of those . . . There have been two false alarms, two mistakes, but somehow”—he looked at Jody—“I sense this isn’t a mistake. May I”—he paused:—“touch it?”

  “Yes,” said Jody, not waiting for her husband’s approval, “yes, you may.”

  Frank moved closer to her. Jody stood there waiting, as if this strange man might have some healing power deep within him. Frank placed his hand on her belly as Eugene looked on, stunned by all of this into an almost comatose state. He heard Davis say:

  “I feel it. As soon as I came inside the house, I felt it. It was the same feeling I got when I knew my son was close by.”

  Jody looked at him as if everything were decided, everything determined. “They don’t know the cause, do they?”

  “No,” answered Frank. “Some of us believe it’s the next step forward in evolution. A world in which the human race can survive the pollution of this planet.”

  “But not the human race,” said Eugene, listening carefully, picking up D
avis’s every word. “Not the human race as we know it. These . . .”—searching for the right word—“. . . creatures . . .”

  “Don’t be afraid to call them that.” Frank smiled, his eyes glazed, as if he were describing some higher calling, some secret cult. “You probably won’t be able to help it, until you see yours and recognize yourself in it.” He turned to Eugene. “I hope you have that opportunity, Mr. Scott. A few of us have. It makes us very remarkable in our own way.”

  Eugene felt very peculiar with that strange man smiling at him. This man he had not known a half-hour, who now stood in his living room with that ingenuous smile that never quite worked, telling him things, impossible things, that would shape the rest of his life.

  All Eugene wanted now was to get Davis out of his house so that he could be alone with his wife, his beautiful, exquisite Jody, who now stood there, her life, too, a shambles before her.

  Eugene motioned toward the window. “You’d better leave.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Frank, suddenly remembering the danger outside. “Is there a back way?”

  Eugene, only too willing to oblige, motioned toward the breakfast room that led to a back door. “This way,” he said.

  Frank paused, went to Jody, took her hand. “Goodbye, Mrs. Scott.”

  “Good-bye,” she said. She looked straight at Frank Davis as if some secret bond linked them. Eugene stood by, powerless to do anything about it.

  Jody watched as her husband led the way through the small breakfast room and out the back door.

  Eugene Scott brought Frank quickly across the well-cared-for back yard. Reaching the gate, he stopped to open it. Frank, beside him, was telling him tensely, “Don’t try to reach me. I’ll be in touch. Go to your office tomorrow. Don’t do anything to break the routine.”

  Eugene looked at him: a man obsessed. “Listen, Mr. Davis, you know I really don’t think I can believe any of this.”

  “Mr. Scott,” replied Frank, “two years ago, if someone had come to my door, I’d have been the same way. Who could believe such a thing? But it happened, and it’s going to happen to a lot more people. Maybe thousands, maybe millions, before this century is over.”