“That’s it, love, you can do it,” the midwife said in a soft Black Country accent. A seasoned pro, she made it sound like she hadn’t ever done this dozens of times, and this was not her first birth, but the most important birth, and they were going to get through it together.

Another contraction. Susan half gasped and half screamed.

“They’re coming...” the midwife said. “The dilation’s looking good. You can do it, Susan.”

“WHERE THE FLYING FUCK IS GARY?” Susan roared over the pain..

“Your husband is stuck in traffic, love,” one of the nurses said.

“HE’S SUCH A WANKER!” Susan yelled.

“Just one more!” the midwife said. “The head’s almost out...”

Susan screamed.

It happened all at once, as the baby finally came out, Susan collapsed into her hospital bed feeling a mixture of absolute relief and absolute pain.

The baby wasn’t crying.

The midwife looked down.

The baby looked back up and then knocked her out cold with a single punch.

Panicking, the other nurse switched on the alarm as the doctor, clad in riot armour, moved in quickly.

“Now, come on, young man...” he said, ruining the surprise Susan and Gary had been keeping for themselves. “Let’s not get too feisty, shall we?”

Another punch sent the doctor flying. He smashed into a medical trolley and passed out from the shock.

“Stay away!” the midwife cried out. They didn’t dare flee, in case he got out, but what could they do to protect themselves?

“What about the mother?” the first nurse cried.

Susan was busy feeling a mix of relief and shock to notice what had happened, but she realised something was taking place and looked down.

At this point, her baby boy, still whirling his placenta about, turned and glared at her.

“Oh god, no!” Susan cried.

The baby strode up to her, walking on her abdomen to her chest, making his mother wince in pain.

“Please, baby,” she begged, gasping as the weight of her child pushed down on her lungs.

The baby leered at her, and then it was her turn to be knocked out with a single savage blow.

Susan slumped back into her bed once more, and the baby turned to the terrified nurses and midwife. They were next.

The doors to the delivery room burst open, and a taut, wiry, and scarred man with cropped hair and tattoos appeared. He wore bright yellow scrubs.

The Foetus Fighter had arrived.

“OI! IS THAT ANY WAY TO TREAT YOUR MUM, YOU LITTLE SLAG?” he shouted.

The baby shrieked. With a burst of superhuman strength, he hurled himself across the delivery room at the Foetus Fighter, who had taken up a fighting stance.

***

His name was Ewan. For most of his life, he hadn’t been a good man. You name it: fighting, football hooliganism, bare-knuckle boxing... It was only when he started working the doors, that he began to calm down a bit. And over time, he wanted to make amends.

The day Ewan started, the general manager said, “You’ll love this job. You’ll get to help new mums and families, keep the public safe, and make a real contribution to society.”

“And punch babies in the face?”

“Yes, that too.”

***

The baby speared into Ewan’s gut and smashed him through the doors. They flew out into the corridor, with new mothers, mothers-to-be, and visitors all scattering in panic.

Ewan grimaced as he scraped across the floor, as the baby smashed him in the abdomen with a barrage of punches. He smacked the baby aside. With an elbow to its face, he sent the baby flying.

He stood, reading himself for the next attack.

The baby went for a spear, but Ewan was ready. He caught the killer baby midair and tried to choke it out with a forearm grip. The baby broke Ewan’s hold and then grabbed at his face with its tiny, violent hands.

“Everyone, please maintain a safe distance,” the duty nurse called out from her workstation. “This is a standard medical procedure.”

“BASTARD!” Ewan screamed as he threw the killer baby into a wall. The beige painted plastering cracked on impact, but this pissed the baby off more and it leapt at him again.

The two grappled with a savage intensity, Ewan desperately trying to get the baby into a restraining hold as it went for his throat and eyes. Ewan felt himself move into what he thought was a wall, only for the door to give way. He fell backwards, hitting the edge of the sharp and painful stairs.

He didn’t have time to scream before he and the baby fell down the stairwell.

They tumbled down to the floor below, and then the floor below that, wrestling and punching each other furiously.

Ewan was able to get to his feet. This victory was short-lived. A tightness took hold around his neck.

Of course! The umbilical cord! It was still attached to the baby. Along with the placenta, which had made one hell of a mess. And the little fiend was using it as a garrote.

The baby laughed like the devil himself as the cord throttled Ewan.

Going purple, Ewan managed to tuck his chin down enough to stop himself from passing out. He barged out of the stairwell door, into the hospital’s busy ground floor with the baby still on his back, choking him. People panicked and scattered, realising what was unfolding. Others gasped in shock, overwhelmed by the madness before them.

Ewan growled as he managed to get the cord in his mouth. It tasted of blood and earth and offal, and it was as hard to chew through as thick latex. Ewan gnawed and gnawed, the world growing dimmer, until the cord gave and he felt the baby fall backwards.

In a flash, Ewan turned and smote the baby in midair with a mighty right hook.

The baby was sent spinning into the distance. It crashed into an orthopaedic surgeon. Without missing a beat, the baby lept to his feet and tied a knot in his shortened umbilical cord. He then looked back at Ewan with a determined, hateful look.

Ewan took up his stance again and taunted the baby with a beckoning gesture.

BRING IT.

The baby did. He snatched crutches from a (now ex-)skateboarder and hurled them at Ewan like javelins.

Ewan barely managed to dodge them as they streaked past, giving the baby enough time to launch another charge. He met the baby’s flying attack with a barrage of chain punches, pummeling him like a neonatal speed bag.

“HOW... DO... YOU... LIKE... THEM... APPLES... YOU... LITTLE... ARSEHOLE?” Ewan raged.

“NNG! NNG! NNG! NNG! NNG! NNG! NNG! NNG!” the killer baby replied.

“Ooo, you brute!” a grandmother cried, watching the savage beating unfold.

Ewan nailed the baby with a straight left, dashing it into a wall.

Ewan turned to the old woman. “I do apologise, madam. However, I must point out that this is in line with the Trust’s policies on–AAAAAAARGH!”

The baby had recovered and shoulder-charged into him. The fight spilled into the main lobby of the hospital, where the shops were. A crowd of onlookers had gathered.

In between hurling and blocking, kicks, and punches, Ewan noticed armed police taking position beyond the glass walls of the main entrance.

“STAND DOWN!” he called out. “I’VE GOT THIS UNDER CONTROL!”

The baby wrenched out a steel bench from the floor and hurled it at him.

Ewan nimbly sidestepped the bench as he decided it was his turn to launch a spear.

He slammed into the baby, and the two flew into a mini-branch of a certain upmarket food retail chain.

Hitting the ground, Ewan gasped and rolled forward to his feet.

Where was the baby? He got his answer from the explosion he narrowly avoided, his face scratched by flying glass. He looked over to the counter, upon which stood the baby, hurling burning bottles of spirits at him in the best traditions of the Molotov Cocktail.

Ewan charged forwards, covering his face with his arms as he narrowly avoided another blast. The baby snarled in frustration as it threw bottle after bottle, only for Ewan to sidestep each explosion and get ever nearer.

The baby threw its last bottle of lighted spirits directly at Ewan, who felt its heat fly past his ear. And then he bounded up at the counter and hoofed the baby square in the head and through the shop front with a single brutal flying kick.

Glass exploded everywhere, and the baby landed hard on the floor outside, much to the gasps of the onlookers. Ewan jumped again, this time off the shop counter and through where the window used to be. He pounced on the baby, but it rolled sideways out of the way before he landed.

The baby came at Ewan, but he grabbed him, stood up straight, and draped the little beast over his shoulders. Then he fell down hard, sideways, driving the evil baby’s skull hard into the concrete floor.

“The Burning Hammer!” a receptionist gasped.

For a moment, Ewan lay flat on the ground, gasping for breath, sure it was over.

He looked over and saw the baby had already risen. In each of its hands was a gleaming, razor sharp surgical saw.

The baby stared back at him as smoke and fire spread in their wake. In pain, Ewan got to his feet, but he already had a response of his own.

“Doreen,” he called to the old woman running the WRVS stall, “have you got them ready?”

Doreen pulled out two reinforced escrima sticks from under the counter and threw them at Ewan. He caught them in mid-air and readied for one last battle.

For a brief, yet infinitely tense moment, all was silent. The watching crowd, safe behind a police cordon, didn’t dare say a word. Just man and baby watching each other, ready to strike...

***

Meanwhile, new Dad Gary had finally arrived and was stuck in the car park looking for change.

“Did I miss anything?” he asked the attendant.

***

The baby and Ewan charged, ready to fight to the finish. The baby slashed and spun with his saws, while Ewan blocked them deftly with his escrima sticks. The battle turned into a blur of strikes, parries, and dodges as they fought with utter ferocity.

For a moment, it seemed as if the duel would never end. Then the baby saw an opening and smashed the sticks out of Ewan’s hand. With a gurgle of delight, the baby readied a killing blow against his disarmed foe...

...Only to realise he had fallen into a trap.

Ewan threw every last bit of strength, every last bit of pain, and every final scrap of desperation into one single, brutal uppercut.

It caught the baby square on the chin, striking so hard and fast, he was unconscious before he hit the ground.

Triumphant, Ewan fell to his knees, drenched in blood and sweat.

A pause.

Then he called over to the coffee concession.

“Can I have a latte, please?”

By goodness, he needed it.

***

The baby was sedated, restrained in a reinforced crib, and held in a secure room under armed police guard. For all that, they didn’t dare ask for ID when a bandaged Ewan limped in to check if the kid was alright.

He looked down at his equally battered foe and sighed. For all that had taken place, he still felt a sense of guilt.

He felt a soft rush of air as the door opened behind him. In shuffled a pale and worn-out Susan, shivering under her thick dressing gown.

“I’m so sorry, Mrs. Thomas,” Ewan said, “for everything.”

“You did what you had to,” Susan said. “If this was America, they’d have shot him by now.”

She looked at her baby properly, for the first time. Gently, she touched the thick plastic canopy they’d placed over him.

“Will he ever be?” she asked.

“Not evil?” Ewan replied.

Susan nodded sadly.

“Most evil babies get better over time. They get educational support where they read Beatrix Potter books, grow cress, and listen to The Carpenters all day. It has a ninety percent success rate, the last time I heard.”

“But what about the other ten percent?”

“They escape and grow into Evil Masterminds,” Ewan said.

“But at least he has a chance, right?” Susan asked.

“Yeah, a really good one.”

There was a pause.

“Did your husband make it in the end?” Ewan asked.

“Yes, and no,” Susan said. “They won’t let him out of the car park until he’s got the right change. I haven’t the heart to tell him what happened over the phone.”

“Let me get him out and I’ll fill him in on the way over,” Ewan said, gently. “Either way, I think you deserve a good, long rest after everything.”

“Thank you,” Susan said, and she and Ewan shuffled painfully out of the room, the guards locking the door as it closed.

They didn’t notice that the baby had woken up. He was too drugged, battered, and tied down to be a threat.

At least for now.

With bruised, swollen eyes, he was already watching the back of his arch foe’s head moving away through the door’s window.

“Soon,” the baby whispered, and began to make his plans.

About the Author:
Alexander Hay is a writer who presently lives in North West England. His previous credits include the No Sleep Podcast, Cosmic Horror Monthly, Apex Publishing, and, err, Carnage House. He has never given birth, but would like to make clear he gave some excellent feedback to the maternity ward he was born in. Sadly, he has never been lured down a back alley and then brutally mugged for his wallet, life savings and gold fillings, but that’s because he lives in a country with a National Health Service, as opposed to whatever it is Americans still insist on doing to themselves. Yeah, that’s right, bishes, I’m going there. Just because your lot got bamboozled into thinking that not being bankrupted by your kid’s cancer care is up there with Maoism. And now your healthcare is at the tender mercy of a deranged, smackhead eugenicist. Well fucking done, you stupid cunts.