Chapter Thirty-Seven – "Some Questions"
Previously: To save Kendall from the homicidal Alexander Cambias, Sr., Zarf/Zoe stopped time. While time stood still, Them (who had taken the form of three throw-pillows), Doctor Who and Zarf/Zoe filled Zach in on what had really been going on. Zach learned that Zendall was sent away from their original Pine Valley for their own protection – their Nemesis, whoever that was, wanted to break up every Zendall in each and every timeline. Them, who had a score to settle with Zach, took advantage of Zendall's forced absence to give the Supercouple amnesia and put them in separate realities. Zach also learned for sure what his flashbacks had been implying – (1) Spike is his bio son and (2)he wasn't always Zach Slater. He wasn't always human. In fact, he isn't human. He is an extraterrestrial who took over Zach Slater's body after his (Zach's) suicide. Zach considers (1) a blessing, but (2) anything but. He knows he has to tell Kendall that they have been living a lie. But how can he tell her? One question haunts him: will she continue to love him when she knows the truth?
--
Zach looked again at frozen Kendall, remembering all they had been through together: good and horrendous, unbelievable and really unbelievable. Spike was looking at her too. "Mommy, move!" he cried out with all his troubled little heart.
Time started.
Zach didn't hesitate an instant. He lurched at his Father (who wasn't really his Father, he realized joyfully) and threw him to the ground, just as Alexander Cambias, Sr. attempted to fire the Uzi he no longer held at a no longer frozen Kendall.
"What the blazes happened?" he demanded of nobody in particular, staring at his suddenly empty arms.
"Where's the machine gun?" a no longer frozen Lily asked for all the no longer frozen, including a tremendously confused Alexander Cambias, Sr.
"I put it in the garage," Zach answered. "It'll be happier there. So will we."
"How did you get my gun, Alex?" the old man gasped one moment before the man he thought was his son knocked him cold.
"How DID you get his gun?" Kendall echoed, kneeling beside her best beloved, who was busy using his tie to bind up the maniac whom he had so recently thought was his dead Father, but who wasn't dead after all and wasn't his Father after all.
Zach didn't answer her. There was so much he had to tell her. So much he was afraid to tell her. "I'm not human, Lovely," he rehearsed silently. "Surprise!"
"Call the police, Lily," he directed his employee evenly. "Please."
Sensing something was missing, Zach's eyes darted around the room. Three somethings were missing. The damned throw-pillows had made their escape when time started again. Back to the poor bastards they were impersonating, he thought. But who? Zach was fully aware that as long as they were on the loose, Kendall, Spike and he were miles from being safe.
"Zach?" Kendall prompted, as Lily took out her cell phone and hit "911", which she had prudently put on Speed-Dial. "Why the scowl? We beat the bad guy, baby! Well, anyway, you beat him. Somehow. You should be happy. The rest of us are happy! I'm happy! We're home in our true Pine Valley with our baby. And our baby to come. Why don't you look happy, Handsome? It's all good!"
"Kendall, we need to talk," Zach began, tying one last knot. "But not here. Let's go someplace qui-"
"Mama!" Spike called to her, effectively ending that discussion, as she jumped up and ran to take him from Zarf/Zoe.
"How did your Daddy get the bad gun away from the bad man?" she cooed, rocking him.
Your Daddy.
"He is your Daddy in every true sense of the world," Kendall was thinking. "He keeps saying he's your biological daddy, like that matters. Anyway, how could he be?"
As if in answer to her silent question, she began remembering.
The Clinic had been blacked out but he found Kendall easily enough in Madden's examination room, stretched out on a table, all set to be implanted with Greenlee's fertilized egg, looking annoyed, frightened and incandescently beautiful.
"What's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?"
"What's going on? Where's Doctor Madden? Where are the lights? What the hell are you doing here, Zach?"
"I could ask you the same question. What the hell are you doing here, Kendall?"
"Zach, I'm here as a Surrogate. You know that. Doctor Madden is going to give me Greenlee's fertilized egg. I'm going to carry Ryan's baby for her. Where IS Doctor Madden? Zach, why do you have that look in your eye? You better get out of here. I mean it, Zach! Zach, stop!"
"Is that what you really want, Kendall?"
"Shut up."
"Answer me. Do you really want me to stop?"
"Yes! Maybe! No! What I really want is YOU. Especially right now. I need something to remember about tonight beyond surgical gloves and petrie dishes."
"Sorry, Lovely. You won't remember any of this."
"You're not that forgettable, Zach."
"You can't remember this. Neither call I. We both must believe the baby is Ryan's. It's safer that way."
"The baby will be Ryan's. Ryan's and Greenlee's. After you leave, Doctor Madden can implant the fertilized egg in me. That is, if he can find his way into this room. It's so damn dark! Why did the lights go out, Zach? Not that I'm complaining."
"I blacked out the clinic."
"You're a man of so many talents."
"You have no idea."
"I don't expect you to understand why I talked Greenlee into letting Madden do this. I need to keep part of Ryan alive. Don't ask me why."
"I need you to have my child. Our child. Don't ask me why."
"That's what I want too, Zach!"
Kendall blinked. Where did that bizarre fantasy come from? She looked down at Spike, who was staring at her straight in the eye. Then she looked down at her still flatter than flat tummy. What had Doctor Who said before Alex, Sr. crashed into the living room? Something about her baby being a Them? How could that --? Oh. She supposed it might be true in a way – after all, she wasn't occupying this body during her tour of Alternate Pine Valleys. Them were obviously making whoopee while the real Slaters were out.
"But you still belong to us," she whispered down to her tiny passenger. "Zach's body and mine came together and made you. I don't care what hooey the Doctor was spouting about Them not being able to track me anymore because I was carrying one of Them. You're as human as we are, Little One!"
"You've got to tell her, Zach," Doctor Who instructed, as if he had a right to issue orders. "She's got every right to know."
Before Kendall could tell him to shut up and mind his own damn business, Zach was leading her out of their Condo and out into the Courtyard.
"Thank you," she thanked him, plopping down beside him on the bench. "But we can't be out here too long. I don't like leaving Spike with that crew."
"Lily's in there," Zach reminded her. "She'll protect our baby."
Our baby.
"Now that you mention it, I just had a really strange flashback," Kendall murmured, not looking into his eyes, keeping her gaze on the ground for some unfathomable reason.
"I didn't mention anything about a flashback," Zach said, his gaze unwaveringly upon her. "What did you remember, Kendall?"
"Spike is ours," she said softly. The words sounded so odd to her, so incredible. "Biologically ours. But how could that be?"
"What did your flashback tell you?"
"What yours told you, I think. You blacked out Madden's Clinic and you found me there before he had the chance to implant Greenlee's fertilized egg. Lord, I sound like a lab experiment!"
"That night you were anything but," he reminisced, folding her into his arms. He had to tell her. But how could he tell her?
"Zach what do you suppose the Doctor meant about the three people closest to us really being Them in disguise? You remember. He left that message on our answering machine. I was about to ask him what the hell he meant by that when your demented Daddy came to call."
"He isn't my --" Zach began, but thought better of it. She loved him now. Completely and irrevocably. But once he told her the truth…
"Kendall, I have no idea who those damn throw-pillows are pretending to be now," he said, not immediately realizing how completely incoherent he sounded to Kendall, who had missed the throw-pillow encounter when time stopped. "I mean, I have no idea who the three Imposters are," he amended his statement, when he noticed she was looking at him as if he had gone completely bananas. "Wait," he thought miserably. "If you think I'm bananas now, Lovely, wait until I explain my true nature to you."
"Zach, darling, what is it?" she was asking him now.
--
Meanwhile, back inside the Condo, Lily was wondering why the police were taking so long to arrive.
"You know Derek," Zarf/Zoe said, reading her mind. "He takes his time. Remember how long it took him to find the Satin Slayer? Even after the fiend tried murdering his own daughter?" He nodded at the unconscious and bound Alex, Sr. "Not that he could keep him on ice for long even after he caught him."
"I hope things will improve now that McT is gone," Doctor Who sighed, referring to Zendall's Nemesis by a portion of her name. "I absolutely loathed the Satin Slayer storyline."
"So did I," Lily readily agreed. "And I wasn't too crazy about that on-line perv cornering me. Thank Goodness Jonathan is such a good killer. Well, he's had lots of experience killing people. But most of that was because of his brain tumor." She stopped talking long enough to blink back a few tears.
"What are you thinking, Lily?" Zarf/Zoe asked her, as if he/she didn't know.
"I'm thinking that I wish Jonathan hadn't gotten smart again. I miss him the way he used to be. We were alike. We fit. You know. Like Kendall and Zach fit because they're so alike."
Doctor Who squeezed Lily's hand, which of course made her scream, which in turn caused Spike to holler like a banshee on her behalf.
"Sorry, Lily. I forgot about the touching thing. Sorry, Spike."
"That's okay," she forgave him quickly. "When I become your Companion and we travel through time together, we're bound to bump into each other every now and then. Maybe I'll get used to it."
He regarded her kindly and didn't have the heart (and he had two) to tell her the Companion position had been filled. Instead he told her something else.
"Lily, Zach and Kendall may not be as alike as you think."
Lily frowned in genuine concern.
"Does that mean they'll break up like Jonathan and I did?" she asked in horror.
"Ah," Zarf/Zoe sighed, "that is the question!"
--
Zach could not put off telling Kendall any longer. So he told her.
"Kendall, I wasn't always Zach Slater."
"I know, darling. But you haven't been Alexander Cambias, Jr. for a long, long time."
"Or ever," he thought. "Before I was Zach Slater I was a being from another world," he heard himself telling the love of all of his lives. "Galios IV, to be exact. Kendall, there's no good way to tell you." He took a deep, deep breath. "I'm a Galioscian." There. He said it. Now she would begin to hate him because now she would begin to fear him.
"I am so freaking sick of Science Fiction!" Kendall replied passionately. "I even hated the Star Trek dream! As for Doctor Whoever, Zach, I want him out of our house faster than I want your Father out! Maybe we can get Derek to schlep them BOTH away!"
"He isn't my father, Lovely," Zach tried again. "I'm an extraterrestrial. I took over Zach Slater's life back in Vegas when he killed himself."
"He killed himself? I mean, you killed yourself?"
"Yes! Right after you and Ryan left to find Erica in the hospital!"
Zach searched Kendall's fabulous face for a shred of understanding, but saw only utter incomprehension.
"Look," he said, trying to break it down for her, "you remember meeting me in Vegas. You remember how you loathed me at first sight. Why do you think that changed when I came to Pine Valley? It's because I was a different man. Entity. You know what I mean. I took over Zach Slater's body and began living his life."
That rang a bell. "The way Them took over our lives all these months?"
"Exactly."
Exactly. Now she would believe him. Now she would begin looking at him as if he were a monster from outer space, which he was pretty certain he was.
"Wh-what are you trying to say?" she was asking haltingly, her beautiful eyes full of questions and anxieties and more questions. And there was only one answer.
"I'm a Them. I'm a bloody Them."
--
Back inside the Condo, Spike had fallen asleep, secure in the knowledge that the two people who mattered most to him were back where they belonged.
"I wonder where Them went," Zarf/Zoe was saying idly thirty seconds before (1) Derek finally arrived to collect a fully conscious (and snarling) Alex, Sr., (2) Kendall ran screaming back into the Condo chased by a distraught Zach and (3) the roof fell in.
"Zartz, Zift and Zetz returned to whomever they are occupying, I suppose," Doctor Who correctly assumed.
"Who's Zartz, Zift and Zetz?" Lily asked astutely.
"Long story," the Doctor told her. "Long, convoluted story."
"You can tell it to me once we're on board the Tardis," Lily said, clinging to her ambition of becoming the Doctor's new Companion. "We'll have time then. All the time in the universe!"
"Three people closest to Zach and Kendall," Zarf/Zoe mused. "Well, Erica, of course. That goes without saying."
"And Myrtle, I suppose," the Doctor supposed.
"Who's Myrtle?" Lily asked.
The Doctor forgot to breathe.
"Well, if we're listing the people closest to Kendall and Zach, I think we should include Ethan," Lily volunteered. "He's Zach's son, after all.
"Ethan is alive in this Pine Valley?" the Doctor gasped.
Zarf/Zoe nodded, not knowing what the Doctor was talking about.
"Uh-on," said the Doctor.
--
OMG! Ethan alive? No Myrtle? Could Zendall have landed into yet another wrong Pine Valley? Please return for our next thrilling installment in which (1) Derek finally arrives to collect a fully conscious (and snarling) Alex, Sr., (2) Kendall runs screaming back into the Condo chased by a distraught Zach and (3) the roof falls in!