agents instead. VX has a similar pedigree, actually.”
Dagney stopped as they got closer to the barn. “See, I already have a problem here. There’s 350 feet from this barn to the aquitard- see that marker there? And it’s supposed to be down slope, which clearly it is not. That's how captan flowed into it last time.” Merek fell in behind her as she berated him. “But what really irritates me, is that these are all things noted in the assessment after your spill last year. It really is like you’re looking for reasons for me to kick your ass- with paperwork, obviously, and not my dainty little girl feet.”
She stopped when they got to the barn. The door was already open a sliver, and Dagney reached for the handle to pull it open enough for them to enter. Suddenly Merek kicked at her, only managing to throw himself off balance; he fell hard into the mud, soiling his off white underpants. “Don’t touch her! You can’t touch her! She’s mine!”
Dagney noticed several leafy vines trailing out of the open door; they had kept it from closing all the way. They ended at the corner of the barn in a dome of leaves, propped up with chicken wire and sticks. She could make out several different varieties of plants by the leaves: pumpkin, cucumber, squash.
Dagney opened the barn door, and felt for a switch in the dark. The lights were on a dimmer, which had apparently last been set to mood lighting, and as she turned around she understood why, and gave up on wanting to see better.
Strewn about the floor were a woman’s clothes: red stiletto pumps, a red miniskirt and an even mini-er top.
There was a “woman” lying on a pink flannel blanket, mostly stained the same deep green as Merek's groin. A pair of red silk stockings were stuffed with vines, torn under vinyl, crotchless panties; a matching bra was filled with hefty green winter squashes. Between them a still-growing pumpkin torso made her almost look pregnant. Her arms were cucumbers tied together by their vines. Her head was a turban squash turned on its side. Its lumpy top almost resembled a face, and there was a heavy lathering of eye shadow and smeared lipstick painted over it. Green tendrils mixed with an auburn wig, giving it the appearance of dreadlocked hair.
The vegetable doll lay peacefully back with its legs splayed; there were dents from a pair of big knees in the flannel between them.
Dagney put the doll out of her mind, but focused on the green sludge it was soaked in. The oily gel was pooling in various places on the ground inside the shed. It seemed to be leaking from a variety of different canisters: poisons, pesticides and chemicals.
At that moment, Merek burst into the room. In stumbling to his feet, he’d managed to drag his boxers back around his right ankle. “I love her!” he bellowed, and the words seemed to jiggle with his bare belly and engorged member as he ran towards Dagney. She moved to the side and Merek smacked straight into a post and collapsed to the ground.
“Those pesticides are leaking into the groundwater. We think they’ve made some kids at McLoughlin Middle School sick,” she said. She was angry, as much about him possibly poisoning kids, as him charging at her like a pissed off green unicorn.
His tears formed a river with the blood flowing from his lip. “You don’t have to tell me about my land. I worked this land my whole life. I know my land. Biblically.”
Dagney sighed. “No person shall transport, store, dispose of, display, or distribute any pesticide or pesticide container in such a manner as to have unreasonable adverse effects on the environment. I’m pretty sure that was an attempted assault, too. Now you are going to be arrested- or fined, at least.” Dagney put a hand under his sweaty arm and pulled him up. He stumbled groggily, and she led him outside. “Sit,” she said, and set him flat against the side of the barn. With his hands cuffed behind him, unless the big man was a contortionist, he wasn’t getting up without help.
She called hazmat and the sheriff’s office, and was about to dial Nelson when she heard a cracking sound from inside the barn. She thought it might be one of the aging pesticide containers rupturing. “Crap,” she said, “exactly what I need.”
She hurried inside and scanned the chemical drums that lined the barn. While several were in disrepair, and a couple were even leaking from pinholes, none had broken open. Her eyes scanned the room for movement, and she listened for the sound of 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.
r />
“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.