fluid running. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the vegetable doll shaking.
She winced, at the thought that Merek had shoved a vibrating sex toy into it, and couldn’t decide if that was better or worse than just burrowing out a little hole. But there wasn't that telltale rumble coming from it. As her eyes adjusted to the low light, she could make out a wide fracture split down the center of the pumpkin belly, like tangerine lightning. A hunk of the orange skin surrounding the crack swelled outward rhythmically, then receded, each pulse distending the fruit further. It broke open.
An infant tumbled out of the pumpkin womb. It was entirely human save for a green complexion and soft tufts of clover on its head instead of hair. It gurgled at her, spitting out seeds and stringy pumpkin flesh. It propped itself up on chubby arms to take in the world, and crawled out of the pumpkin shrapnel to get a better view. Then its hands slipped out from under it, and the baby fell onto the dirt. It regarded her curiously a moment, and began to wail.
Instinct grabbed hold of Dagney, and she rushed over to the infant, and took it up in her arms. The child stopped crying as soon as she started to bounce it against her shoulder. She could feel pumpkin juices soaking through her clothes- at least, she hoped it was just pumpkin juices. It didn't feel warm, anyway. She made a scrunched up face, and the child scrunched its face, too.
Dagney didn’t know much about babies, but she knew that that kind of mimicry usually took months to develop. The child was heavy, too- too big, really- and slowly Dagney assembled the ideas together. Babies weren’t supposed to crawl for months- they even had to be held a certain way because their necks wouldn’t support their gargantuan heads. That meant the child wasn’t a newborn- not in the usual human sense, anyway.
Dagney continued to bounce the child and turned and stared at the cracked open pumpkin. She sympathized with its emptiness. She'd been told from a very early age that she could never have children, and so she'd expended much effort convincing herself that she didn't want any.
But now, holding one so alone, she couldn't lie to herself anymore. She stroked her fingers through its clover hair, and the baby blew pumpkin pulp spit bubbles at her. She smiled.
Her happiness dove suddenly into an icy bath of dread as her mind jumped between a dozen schlocky horror movie scenes of questionably credentialed 'scientists' hovering over a table with bone saws, smiling maniacally as lettuce and green juices flew into their faces. Her heart broke at the sound of the infant's shrieks.
Dagney realized the noise wasn't only in her mind; the child in her arms was crying, too, because she was clutching it too tightly. She slackened her grip, and looked at the baby's pudgy face. She pursed her lips, and furrowed her brow, and the child’s eyes got wide.
Dagney knew how long responders took, and that she wouldn’t have long to conceal the child. She wrapped it in her coat and walked out of the barn.
Merek was still lying where she’d left him, and snot poured out of his nose. “You can’t have her… you can’t take her away…” he blubbered. Dagney paused for a moment, thinking he meant the baby, and horror shivered through her. She unconsciously clutching the child closer to her chest.
“I’ve never loved any woman like I love her. Those legs. That nasty little mouth, and those tits,” he strained, trying to pantomime breasts, but he couldn't with his hands cuffed behind himself, so he stuck out his own chest, instead, and swung his own man-breasts from side to side.
Dagney sighed, relaxing. He didn't know about the baby, and given his current state, probably shouldn't. She carried the child to her car, and built a little nest in the floorboard for it, using paperwork and her coat. “Babies like nests, right?” she asked.
The child cooed at her.
“I'll take that as a maybe,” she said. She covered the baby with a manila folder, and stood up as the hazmat crew arrived in a county fire truck.
“Morning, Dag,” Annie, the firewoman in charge of the hazmat crew said with a wave.
“Yeah, not so much,” Dag replied, gesturing to the stains on her shirt.
Annie was a big woman with blond hair and a hard face. Dagney could have pictured her in a Victorian dress, and had no doubt she would have been considered very pretty in that era. At least until she stuck out her tongue and said, “Yuck. You want us to break out the decon shower?”
“Naw,” Dagney said. “I don't think I got hit with the worst of it. I can probably strip out of my shirt for the drive home. Plus, you know, I'm not crazy about the idea of being naked around this many men.” She gestured at the rest of the crew filing out of the truck.
“And speaking of men to be naked around…” Annie said, nodding in the direction of an arriving sheriff’s department patrol car, “looks like Officer Man-Candy just arrived on the scene.” Dagney gave her a confused look. “He's a sweetheart. And I'm sure he'll need your statement. And maybe your number.”
Dagney walked over to the squad car as a deputy with a warm tan exited.
He smiled awkwardly at her. “Dagney?” he asked. She nodded. He pulled a business card out of his shirt pocket and handed it to her. “I'm Deputy Marco. Um, dispatch couldn't stop laughing long enough to tell me what's going on.”
“Probably best I just showed you, then,” she said.
She walked him past hazmat in their yellow suits.
“Um, do we need to be taking extra precautions?” he asked.
“Not much in the way of fumes,” she said, “so unless you're planning on rolling around in the spills, or helping with the cleanup, you're good.”
Hazmat had already turned the lights all the way up, so the deputy could immediately see the doll laid out on the floor.
“Is that what I think it is?” he asked.
“If you think it's a vegetable sex toy, then yes.”
“And just so I'm 100% crystal, because I'm sure there are going to be questions at the office, that's not an unconscious person, it's literally vegetables, as opposed to animals or minerals?”
“Veggies, of the major food group variety,” she said.
“Is that a crime? I’ve got a pretty good handle on the penal code-”
“Handling the penal code…” she snickered.
“Given the circumstance, I probably could have phrased that better. But so far as I know what happened between a person and their cucumbers in the privacy of their own, uh, barn…”
“Not a crime as far as I'm aware. And, you know, normally, I wouldn't have called at all, but he kind of attacked me. Ran at me, actually. Which I might normally shrug off, but he's pretty out of his gourd, right now.”
“Nice.”
“Probably from exposure to the chemicals he's storing, which might be ironic, since I'm here investigating those chemicals maybe getting into other people's drinking water. But I figured we could use your help, cause in this state he's kind of likely to hurt himself or maybe some of the responders.”
“Serve and protect, right there on the back of my squad car,” he said with a smile. “So where's my perp?”
“Just outside.”
She walked him back to where Merek was sitting. “See, I'd noticed the chubby naked man on my way in, but you were playing it up mysteriously, and I thought there'd be some grand reveal as to the importance of this character. Something grander than just telling me, 'Oh, he's outside.'”
She grinned, and shrugged. “I had fanfare planned, a musical number, fireworks. But then we went over-budget, and the union started complaining about working conditions, and I figured maybe this time less was more.”
Marco hunched over to talk to Merek. “The lady tells me you tried to hurt her. That true?” he asked.
“She's my property!” Merek said loudly.
“I assume you don't mean the woman standing next to me, but the tart in the red lingerie.”
“She's a lady!” he yelled.
“Guy only seems to have the one volume, and a moist volume at that,” Marco said with a grin. He stood ba
ck up and turned his attention to Dagney. “I assume you're filing a report with your home office. Can I get a copy?”
“Sure.”
“That'll probably suffice for a statement. If I need anything else, I can always get in touch. Lean forward,” he said to Merek, inspecting Dag's cuffs. “Good, you've got the double-sided locks. Makes my job easier.” He slid his own cuffs onto Merek's wrists, just below Dagney's. She handed him her cuff key, and he unlocked hers. He gave her back her key and cuffs.
He put a hand under Merek's arm and pulled him up to his feet. “Come on, big guy. Now you're under arrest. You shouldn't say anything incriminating. You also shouldn't try to get any of your green ooze on me- because that probably counts as assaulting an officer- and my report’s already weird enough as it is.”
“I love her,” Merek bellowed.
“Right,” Marco said, “no chitchat.”
“Aren't you going to,” Dagney gestured to the underpants stuck to his left ankle, “you know, give the man back his dignity?”
Marco sighed, and retrieved a pair of latex gloves from his belt and slipped them on. Then he kneeled next to Merek. He winced as he stretched the boxers wide, to give Madsen a hole. “Step through,” he said, and started to thread Merek's legs into his underpants, “and you better think unsexy thoughts, sailor.” Marco got the underpants up around Merek's haunches, and pulled his fingers free quickly enough that the elastic snapped. “Sorry.”
He walked Merek towards his squad car. He