Page 25 of Lagoon

Please, please, Jonathan, think of something else, please.

He stopped, staring down at Bub’s motionless form. He lifted the bat, holding it with both hands over his head as he looked down at the creature. There were tears forming in his eyes.

It would probably be easier with a gun, but he couldn’t risk it. Bub was coming out of the tranquilizers too quickly, and if he went to go and get Angela Ramirez, he might come back to find Bub gone. Besides, that’d be putting Ramirez in danger, and he wouldn’t do that. He couldn’t trust the other guards. Maybe Thompson was all right sometimes, but the others were all jerks, just like Harris.

Better to get it over with.

Bub wouldn’t feel anything.

“I’m sorry,” he said again. “I’m so, so sorry.”

And then he brought down the bat on Bub’s skull.

Again and again.

When he had pounded Bub’s head into something misshapen, he backed away and wiped at the tears that were freely streaming down his cheeks.

Then he started in on the tanks.

He smashed everything, and all the water went down the drain in the middle of the floor.

When he was done, he left the lab and went back to his cabin. He sobbed himself to sleep, feeling like a little boy who’d had all his toys taken away—no, a boy forced to destroy his toys—no, a man who’d treated his work as if they were toys. A man who’dbeen pretending he was still a boy, a boy who’d just had to grow the fuck up.

One thing he didn’t know about the drain in the middle of the lab. It hadn’t been a problem up until now, because very rarely did anything go down that drain. But a few months ago, during the rainy season, there had been some flooding and it had necessitated some repairs of the plumbing pipes that were buried under the encampment, and some of the pipes had been rerouted during all that. So, all of the things that drained out of the lab that night now drained directly into the same water that was being used for the settlement’s drinking and showering water.

So, the next morning, everyone in the place woke up and had a shower in it, or drank a glass of it, or brewed a cup of coffee of it.

CHAPTER EIGHT

RILEY, WHO WASdrinking a cup of coffee full of spliced together insect-mammal-Bub-salamander DNA that morning, was nominated to go and check on Jonathan.

She’d had her first cup of it in her cabin the next morning. She’d sat in her perfectly decorated living room, clutching it, wondering what the hell had even happened to her. How could she have come to work in a place that was so quickly falling to shit?

A man had died yesterday.

She had hardly even processed that.

She’d been captured by a creature, had his weird needle-like protuberances stuck into her, been rescued, and then watched everyone in the whole place get into a big argument. She was too blindsided to even know how she felt about this.

If a helicopter had set down and said she could go home, she would not have said no.

No helicopter was coming, however. So, at this point, she was in survival mode.

She finished her coffee, then left her cabin, looking for anyone else. In the mess hall, there was breakfast. It was prepackaged, frozen, and she had to heat it herself, but it had been created by some big-deal chef, and it was actually pretty good. She was in the middle of eating it with Angela when Harrisand some of the other guards came in and everyone started wondering about Jonathan.

That’s when they said she should go check on him.

So, she did, leaving behind her second cup of coffee.

On her way to Jonathan’s cabin, however, she was intercepted by Nancy, whose eyes were bloodshot and who looked as if she hadn’t slept or showered. She was coming down the dirt path, clutching her elbows.

Riley stopped and called out to Nancy, asking if she was all right.

Nancy, blank and listless, stared through her. “He destroyed everything. It’s all gone. I thought I wanted it, but now, in the wake of it, I wonder. What’s Anderson going to do with me now? Maybe he’ll find me somewhere else. There’s nothing left here.”

“Who destroyed what?” said Riley.

“You want to see?” Nancy turned and walked up the path.

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