33 BULLETS

Walking after Thann found out I was pregnant was going at a stinkin' snail's pace. I needed to get back to Molly even more so now that I was having a baby. She'd had two alien babies. She was sure to be able to give me a bit more information on Indawo pregnancies than anyone else.

But Thann hovered over me like a mother hen.

Aww, a mother hen. I missed my chickens.

Focus.

I mean, I guess it makes sense. This will be the third baby on the whole darn planet. Even normal Earth dads hover. My brother waited on his wife hand and foot... well for the first baby anyway.

If I even made a bit of a yawn or looked at a potential seat too long, he would have me laying down for fifteen minutes.

It was tedious.

He was being ridiculous.

We hadn't even made it back to where we camped last in two days.

But I was starting to feel better. The nauseous episodes were getting fewer and far between, but the craving for raw meat was sky rocketing. Though, I hadn't admitted to that one... yet.

This was going to be a long nine months.

Thann seemed so surprised that I agreed to raw meat that day far back, I couldn't imagine him seeing Molly chow down on uncooked hamburger too often.

Maybe he was expecting me to like it, and when I got sick that was the problem.

Who knows?

And while I was feeling better, my pants had grown tighter and tighter. My extra pair of pants wouldn't fit here soon, even unbuttoned.

Was I already showing?

Taking my hundredth break since lunch, I sat on a rock and looked down over my belly. It really did seem like there was a bit of a bump there.

Unbuttoning my pants, I gave my stomach a breather from its entrapment and roamed fingers over the heavy heat there. The heat was growing too. Now it was just over an inch above my belly button and rounding wider on the sides too.

Thann put the packs down and came and kneeled in front of me, hands bracing over the emerging bump. It was becoming his favorite place to be. Night times would have him wrapped around me, hands over my belly and every waking minute between.

I didn't quite mind. I didn't know what the baby thought, but I responded to his heat. It was soothing and peaceful, like a breath of fresh air after a long ocean dive. So I just let him do it whenever he wanted.

I didn't see the big deal about people grabbing your stomach.

But I guess that I've only ever had him around, so I couldn't speak for Earth women.

What was it that my sis-in-law's pregnancy shirt said? 'If you didn't put the baby in, or are going to take it out, don't touch the belly'.

I guess Thann did put the baby in. It was kosher.

Now why was I already having a belly to touch?

"Is it just me, or should I not have to wear maternity pants for like six more months?"

I was what, a week along? Two weeks along?

Counting on my fingers, my period wasn't even due for another seven days. That would barely make the baby setting up camp, right?

It wasn't the first time I desperately wanted to check google.

Only vaguely could I remember my sister-in-law's symptoms and timeline to a pregnancy, but she had a similar size to me and she didn't even begin to show until four months in.

"Is this right? Should I be bump'n yet?"

I was going to be as big as a cow when this baby got through with me.

He grinned and kissed just above my belly button. "Ingane ikhula ibe nkulu."

"Sure. Nkloo," I agreed with his nonsense.

After a few minutes of rest, he grabbed out my cellphone and gave it to me. "Thann movie."

I giggled. He'd been begging to see his war stories monologue movie about me and the dragon every day for the last week. I'd had to make sure to set the solar charger out every stop so there was enough juice to power it. "You sure like your TV."

I unlocked the phone and found his video. But before I could even press the play button, he grabbed it from me and pressed on his own.

His mouth widened to a full grin, and when it was over he handed it back to me. "Good."

He'd been acting like he needed to make sure it was still there every day. It was fun to see him so excited to see it. Maybe they didn't have much technology on his planet. Or at least I hadn't seen any yet.

I was thinking his planet was set in like an iron age time frame. Not much technology, but they made daggers and jewelry, so they had to have some metal workers. Maybe if they had more village like places, I could see that we weren't living in caveman times.

I lifted my shirt higher and then took a snapshot of my belly. "Guess it's time to start documenting the bump too."

Though it made me sad that I'd never get to print them out.

Huh.

If I brought all this stuff with me, my cell phone included, I could probably take it back. My mom would love to see baby photos of my little surrogate alien child.

It made me smile.

After I earned my ticket home, at least I wouldn't forget these cute aliens.

Leaning down, so Thann could be in the pic too, I took a selfie.

My friends would never believe my story. I could hear them now. 'Pics Eleanor. Pics or it didn't happen.'

In another day we passed where we had stopped with Cane so we were getting somewhere. Slowly, but surely, we were getting there.

We came to a large valley with tall lavender grasses and I stopped to gaze over the beauty.

Thann decided that was my need to stop and picked me up by my waist and placed me on a boulder nearly the size of myself.

"Werewolf?" He asked, pointing to the valley.

My glance shot over the land. "Where?"

He chuckled and tapped his heart. "Thann werewolf." Run.

"Oh, okay." I smiled my acceptance.

He took a few steps away and dropped his pants, rolling them tight for his pouch and then bent into his wolf form.

Wolf eyes glanced back to me and I waved. Then he howled into the air and started a run around the whole valley.

It was fascinating to watch him. He became a grey blur and I could only barely keep my eyes on his form. Kind of like a tennis match where your head really has to move to follow the ball; I felt like I was really having to concentrate to keep his image in view.

When he'd been taking laps for a few minutes, my eye caught a movement of black a couple yards from the rock. Something small meandering between the grasses. I watched the spot but nothing was there that I could see between the tall grass. It had disappeared before I could get a good look.

Black was the color of those bat frogs, so I wasn't sure if I should be scared or not.

I kept scanning around the area and almost decided that I didn't see anything when I caught another glance of black between the grasses at the base of the rock.

I knew it could be any number of snakes or bitey rats so I stayed on the rock even tucking my feet above the grasses and craned my neck to look down at it.

There was no sound, no movement, no black.

It got me nervous.

I could still see Thann's fuzzy outline in the valley and wanted him to check if it was just a frog, so I cupped my mouth and yelled. "Thann!"

The moment I did a pop sounded like someone put a pin in a balloon and my right leg felt like someone dipped me in lava.

I screamed as vision blurred with agony. It was like white hot torture, someone stabbing a pickax into my calf and the skin melting off from acid. A fire breathing dragon was crushing me, shredding me away to nothing.

I couldn't think. I couldn't do. I was just motions and a screeching voice.

My hands darted to my leg to hold on the pain when Thann's hands slapped them away.

My screaming had never stopped.

He lifted me into his arms and was yelling gibberish in his own language. It felt far away. I couldn't even tell if he was angry or caring, I only knew that arms were around me and air was traveling over my leg. Each breath of wind like thousands of nails assailing me.

I couldn't focus on anything but pain.

Suddenly I was submerged in ice cold water, the fiery heat of pain to the icy chill of water pressing my body into shock.

I couldn't get a full breath in before I passed out.