Insects: Specimen (The Insects Trilogy Book 3)

by John Koloen

  One of Miller’s assistants handed him an electronic tablet. No sooner had Duncan signed than Miller led his crew into the lab, where they immediately donned paper respirators.

  “Boy, it stinks in here,” one of the crewmen said.

  Along with a small platform truck containing their equipment, they’d brought a metal push cart with top and bottom shelves.

  “There sure are a lot of these bugs, ain’t there?” one of the crew members said as they peered into the tanks, which were crowded together along one wall of the lab. The other side contained the partially installed habitat.

  “So, how we gonna do this, boss?”

  As space was at a premium, the carts were left in the lab’s lobby.

  “Ramon, bring the push cart in here,” Miller said. Poking his head into Duncan’s office, he asked, “Does it matter which tank we take?”

  “Where you taking it?”

  “Ah, a lab on the first floor. Room 112,” he said, looking at his phone.

  Duncan and Boyd exchanged glances. Neither was familiar with the destination.

  “No, doesn’t matter,” Duncan said, as he turned to his computer to look up the room number.

  Back in the lab, Miller said, “Ramon, you and Angel take one of the tanks. Doesn’t matter which. And take it down to Room 112. DeShawn, you and me’ll wait till they come back. Don’t want to start this till they get back.”

  “This is a little different than anything else we’ve done, ain’t it,” DeShawn said.

  “What are there, a dozen tanks full of bugs? Yeah, this is different.”

  “It’s one of the things I like about our job. There’s always something different.”

  Angel and Ramon were startled when, approaching one of tanks, the insects leaped against the glass side facing the pair. Both hesitated, looking at each other.

  “Damn, I’ve never seen that before,” Angel said.

  “There must be hundreds of ’em. They’re scary looking. Hey, boss, I thought you said they’re like cockroaches.”

  “Yeah, cockroaches don’t do that. Did you see that?”

  “Just put the tank on the cart and take it downstairs,” Miller commanded. “We got a busy schedule today. Time’s a wastin’.”

  63

  “YOU ALL PACKED up?” Cody Boyd asked as he and Howard Duncan waited for the exterminators to start their work. Their minds no longer focused on work, the office devoid of contents, they sat together, perhaps for the last time, discussing their futures.

  “So other than moving in with Carolyn and writing a book,” Duncan said, “are you going to try to get another job here?”

  “It wouldn’t be my first choice, but never say never,” Boyd said. “Anyway, Carolyn thinks I should take some time off before looking for another job.”

  Duncan nodded toward the lobby. The two exterminators were returning without the cart. After the group briefly assembled in the lobby, Miller followed his charges into the lab. Angel carefully uncoiled a clear rubber hose, one end of which was connected to a valve at the bottom of a polyethylene tank and the other end to a wand. All four men wore paper respirators.

  “I don’t know if I want to watch this,” Duncan said quietly. “All that work, all the effort, down the drain.”

  As Angel approached the first tank, the adult specimens it contained bristled. Leaning over it, he gave a worried look to Ramon, who stood at his side, preparing to open the top.

  “I don’t know boss,” Angel said nervously, his words muffled by his mask, “they look mad. Look at ’em. They look like they’re getting ready to jump.”

  “Not afraid, are you?” DeShawn chided. Miller gave him a withering look.

  Miller approached Angel from behind.

  “I see what you’re talking about,” Miller said. “But they’re only bugs. Look how small they are and how big you are.”

  “I just don’t want ’em jumping on me, you know.”

  “Ramon, you make sure they don’t jump on Angel, OK?” Miller said firmly.

  “How am I supposed to do that if I’m holding the top open?”

  “Use your other hand. Sheesh, do I have to tell you everything? Now, get crackin’, we got other jobs to do.”

  With Angel and Ramon in front of the aquarium and Miller and DeShawn directly behind them, Ramon eyed Angel for the go sign. Aiming the business end of the wand with one hand, his other hand on its control valve, Angel tensed and nodded slightly. Without hesitation, Ramon opened the top.

  64

  DUNCAN’S ATTENTION WAS diverted for a moment as he received a text from Cross’s attorney.

  “Looks like I should sign the release,” he said, not looking up from his phone.

  Boyd, who was watching the exterminators, gasped.

  “What’s wrong?” Duncan asked, as he looked at Boyd and then followed his eyes to the lab.

  “My God,” Duncan cried out.

  As Angel had feared, the specimens leaped at their chance to escape the tank, landing on Angel just as he pressed the wand’s valve. Batting at the insects, Ramon lost his grip on the top, allowing it to slam shut. Miller and DeShawn watched as the front half of the top shattered on impact. Within seconds, several dozen of the vicious predators were loose, immediately attacking the unfortunate pair. Miller and DeShawn backed away fearfully, not knowing what to do. Angel, whose face was directly over the opening, dropped the wand in panic as a half dozen of the diminutive killers attached themselves to his face, clawing and chopping furiously, releasing tiny rivulets of blood. Screaming, his hands covering his eyes; terrified, he stumbled against the platform truck and rebounded from it into nearby aquaria, falling fully into one, crushing it under his weight, releasing a buzzing, humming cloud of insects that converged on him like tiny guided missiles.

  While Miller and DeShawn had retreated into the lobby, Duncan and Boyd rushed to join them. Ramon initially pulled several of the bugs off that had landed on his coveralls. He tried to grab at several that had landed on Angel but was driven back after Angel crashed into the tanks. He was now fighting his own battle as several dozen bugs swarmed around him from all directions. Using his hat to bat them away turned out to be a mistake as several became entangled in his hair. Shivering with fear he, too, stumbled against the platform truck, banging his shins so hard that he fell to his knees. It took only seconds for the bugs to attack his face as he pushed himself up with his arms. Several crawled down the front of his coveralls as he glimpsed the laboratory door. Lurching toward it, his hands covering his eyes, screaming, he pulled on the handle.

  “Help me, please,” he screamed.

  Miller stood on the opposite side, gripping the handle so that it wouldn’t turn.

  “What are you doing?” DeShawn shouted. “Open the fucking door.”

  “I can’t,” Miller said. “They’ll get in here.”

  “They’re already here,” Boyd cried, as he stomped several bugs that had crawled under the gap between the door and the floor.

  Suddenly, Miller backed away and started stomping wildly. DeShawn bolted out the lobby door and down the hall. Ramon burst into the lobby, breaking the closing mechanism on the door that opened into the hallway, followed by Duncan and Boyd. Miller stood in the lobby, trying to battle bugs that had leaped onto his coveralls, the lab door closing behind him.

  Boyd ran after Ramon to help him while Duncan shouted at Miller to get out of the lobby, but he didn’t hear him as he fought a losing battle to keep the bugs off of his face. Transfixed by Miller’s struggle, Duncan hesitated at trying to help him. The longer he stayed in the lobby, the bigger the target he became. Behind him, Angel thrashed on the lab floor, curling into a fetal position, choking on bugs that attacked his mouth.

  “Get out of there,” Duncan bellowed, but the big man continued to fight the bugs, grabbing wildly at one only to have another land on his hand. “Cover your eyes, cover your mouth,” he shouted as he turned away and ran down the hallway. It was déjà vu all over agai
n.

  65

  BLABERUS HAD LITTLE difficulty in overcoming Angel, who had no idea what to do to protect himself. He’d never faced anything like this. His instinct was to swat at them as if the monsters were mosquitoes. As soon as he swung at them, they were gone, reappearing on his head or finding their way under his coveralls, hungrily attacking his flesh. He could feel them climbing his legs like an itch that began at his ankles and moved toward his groin. But it was the ones that attacked his head and face that caused him to run into the platform truck. They were relentless. Several had torn through his paper respirator and chopped at his lips with their forelimbs, protected by the remains of the mask. Grabbing at it, he tore it off and with each hand seized one of the attackers, pulling at them as they dug in. After several attempts, he ripped them off his face, leaving their heads and upper limbs embedded near the corners of his mouth.

  While he did this, which took only seconds, others had gotten into his hair and others were attacking his eyes, his nostrils and his ears. But he wasn’t done resisting. Trying to protect his face with his hands, he straightened himself so that he was on his knees in front of the platform truck. But he couldn’t rise to a standing position. He’d banged his shins against the hard edge of the truck as he fell and now his lower leg refused to provide the power needed to stand. Instinctively, he pushed himself up with his hands. Two, maybe three seconds elapsed, but it was enough time for the opportunistic demons to start chopping around the edges of his eyes, overwhelming him with searing pain. His eyes closed tightly, he grabbed at the bugs that were doing the damage and could feel his eyelids lift as he tried to pull them off. It didn’t help that, at the same time, two of the bugs were halfway up his nostrils, making it difficult to breathe without opening his mouth. Running out of breath, disoriented, each of his hands wrapped around a bug that had attached itself to his eyelids, he ripped them off. Reacting to the limitless pain, his palms pressed against his leaking eyes, he lowered his head and instead of running toward the door, he crashed headfirst into another tank, glass shattering, the top dropping on his head. Grabbing at the top, he threw it against a nearby tank, which cracked like an egg. Suddenly, the room was filled with the terrible whirring of their wings, like June bugs. The sound sent shivers down his back.

  Adrenaline rushed through his system. Unable to get air through his nose, he was forced to breathe through his mouth. Already deprived of oxygen, he tried to suck in air as if through a straw, but his burning lungs overrode his caution, forcing him to gulp. And that was all the bugs needed.

  He bit the first bug in two but couldn’t spit it out before the second one entered and this one got into his throat. Gagging, he vomited over himself. Hysterical, his heart pumping furiously from fear and futility, he fell to his knees, his torso bowing to the ground, his forehead hitting the floor. Despite his best efforts, now blinded, his face warm with blood, he vomited again, his face now pressed into the sour, acidic puddle. Sliding his head away from it, he crawled several feet, rolling onto his side in a fetal position, moaning.

  66

  GABRIEL COX WAS on the phone. He could hear shouting and footsteps growing louder in the hallway, drawing close quickly. Then Howard Duncan burst into his office.

  “What is it, Dr. Duncan?” Cox demanded. “Can’t you see I’m on the phone?”

  “Fuck the phone,” Duncan shouted, panting. “The bugs are loose.”

  Cox stared at him as if not having heard what he’d said.

  “Blaberus is loose in the lab,” Duncan said with somewhat less volume, catching his breath.

  “What am I supposed to do about it?” Cox said. “It’s your lab.”

  “Goddamn it, man, don’t you understand? The exterminators you sent, they’re dying.”

  “What?”

  “They broke the tanks, the bugs are all over the lab.”

  “How many?”

  “How many tanks?”

  “Bugs.”

  “Hundreds, maybe. There’s no time. We have to do something.”

  Cox disconnected his call as Duncan rushed into the hallway.

  “C’mon,” he admonished, “hurry.”

  The two-story building was about the size of a football field. Duncan’s lab was on the second floor near one end while Cox’s office was at the opposite end. The floor plan was maze-like and color-coded to help employees find their way. Duncan and Cox knew the way but it took several minutes to reach the lab. As they arrived, Cody Boyd came running from behind.

  “Where’d you go?” Duncan asked hurriedly.

  “I chased Ramon and got him to jump into a fountain. He only had a few bugs but he was terrified.”

  “So, he’s OK?” Cox asked.

  “Yeah, just some cuts, nothing major.”

  The discussion ended abruptly as the trio arrived at Duncan’s lab. Miller had moved from the lab’s lobby into Duncan’s office, perhaps to escape the bugs, perhaps thinking they couldn’t get inside. But the interior doors left an inch of clearance from the floor, no barrier to blaberus. Scuttling after him, with even less space to maneuver than he’d had in the lobby, the big man was no better off than his employee Angel.

  Cox couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

  “My God, my God,” he gasped.

  They watched helplessly for a moment before Duncan realized that the outer door was ajar. The insects had yet to take notice of their potential victims, but Duncan could see they were regrouping. As he’d seen in Brazil, the initial attacks were to disable their victims, not to kill. But there weren’t enough of them to consume the bodies. Were they killing for the sake of killing?

  “Can we save them?” Cox asked.

  “If we hurry,” Duncan said.

  “What can we do? We can’t go in there, can we?”

  “No. We’ve got to stop them from getting out of the lab.”

  “The door’s broke, boss,” Boyd said.

  “I know. We’ve got to close it.”

  “I’m not getting anywhere near those things,” Cox said, stepping back from Duncan and Boyd.

  “If they get into the hallway…” Duncan began.

  “You do what you have to do, I’m calling security.”

  “What are they gonna do?” Boyd asked.

  “I don’t know. Burn the place down for all I care.”

  While they talked, the first blaberus scouts had approached the misaligned door.

  “Boss,” Boyd nudged Duncan. “We need to shut that door right now.”

  “You do what you have to do,” Cox repeated, backing down the hallway. “I’m calling security.”

  67

  DUNCAN FEARED THAT whatever chance Miller and Angel had of being rescued would vanish once the outer door was closed. Unlike the interior doors, the exterior door was equipped with a sweep that sealed it from the hallway. But Ramon had dislocated the upper hinge, leaving the door tilted across the frame. It didn’t help that they could hear the exterminators’ pleas for help. Duncan and Boyd knew exactly what was happening to them. Their only hope was that the bugs would move on in search of other victims.

  “You take the left side, I’ll take the right,” Duncan said calmly, Boyd standing at his side. “We just need to close it. Push it back in the frame. They can’t knock it down.”

  “What about those guys?”

  “We can’t let the bugs get into the hallway,” Duncan insisted.

  With Gabriel Cox watching, Duncan and Boyd launched themselves toward the door. Forcefully straightening it, they pushed on it so that the left side fit into the frame while the right side bulged out. Duncan pushed against the lower portion with his lower body and pounded with his fist against the top portion to try to force it into place. With Boyd putting all his weight against the left side to keep it in place, Duncan managed to get enough of the top into the frame that, as long as pressure was kept on it, it would stay in place.

  “Gabe, we need help,” Duncan shouted.

  “I’m not coming nea
r that thing,” he said, just as chief of security James Haverty arrived with several beefy armed men dressed in camo.

  “Who’s in charge?” Haverty bellowed as he assessed the situation.

  “They are,” Cox said, pointing.

  “Dr. Duncan, what’s happening here?”

  “The bugs are loose.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Holding the door. If we let go they’ll get out,” Duncan said. “There’s men inside.”

  “What? Where?”

  “One’s in the lab and one’s in my office. They need help or they’re gonna die.”

  Haverty directed one of his men to take Duncan’s place at the door and pulled the scientist aside. Duncan briefly explained what had happened.

  “I’m no exterminator,” Haverty said. “Can we poison them?”

  “How?”

  “Pump it full of insecticide or something.”

  “How?”

  “Drill a hole in the door?”

  “What’s that going to do?”

  “Kill ’em? Gas ’em.”

  “You pump a fumigant in there and the men are dead.”

  “You think they’re gonna live, really?”

  “I don’t know. We can’t hear them now that the door is closed. They were alive when we closed it.”

  Cox, who slowly approached the pair, nodded in agreement.

  “I couldn’t stand listening to them,” Cox said.

  As Haverty spoke into his shoulder microphone, Boyd, who faced the lab, shouted, “They’re getting into the vents.”

  68

  MOVING ALONGSIDE BOYD, peering into the lab, Duncan saw something he hadn’t seen before: Reptilus blaberus crawling on the ceiling. For an instant he marveled at this previously unknown ability. He knew they could jump upwards of ten feet, but even with the help of their wings they couldn’t remain airborne. He’d wondered whether they were climbers, but the glass aquaria made the question moot. Now they could not only jump, but they could attach themselves and maneuver upside down, squeezing between the vent louvers and into the conduit. Some of Biodynamism labs had self-contained ventilation systems. Duncan’s lab did not. It shared conduit with many of the second floor offices, rooms and hallways.