The Slab

by Michael R Collings

  The last was a play for humor.

  Catherine didn’t laugh.

  “Anyway, when I got up this morning and cleaned up in here, I could tell that the rest of the bread was all dried out. I tossed it. And got a new loaf from the freezer.” He could trace the relief as it blossomed in her face. For a moment, it seemed as if she was struggling to say something, then her expression crumbled and she burst into tears, long and hard and frightening.

  “I know I saw them. I know it. I know it.”

  “Come on,” Willard said finally, not really knowing how to handle the situation. “Let’s go into the living room and sit down. Relax.”

  She allowed herself to be led into the other room. She dropped heavily onto the sofa. Willard returned to the kitchen and lifted Sams out of his high chair and set him on his feet. The boy toddled across the carpeting, clambered slowly and awkwardly onto the couch, and settled himself next to his mother. He carefully spread his blanket over his own legs and across part of his mother’s lap. Catherine took no notice.

  Willard knelt next to her, forcibly reminded of the night before. “Look,” he said, “you two stay here and I’ll check things again. Okay?”

  She nodded without speaking. Her passivity was more frightening to Willard than anything else. Catherine was nothing if not self-reliant, independent, strong. She might have an aversion to crawly, squirmy things, but Willard was well aware of how much she struggled against those weaknesses. For her to collapse this completely…

  He was baffled.

  Still, he began carrying out his promise. Armed with a now-familiar, half-used Raid can noticeably lighter than it had been the night before, he re-sprayed the baseboards in the kitchen. He felt Catherine’s eyes on him as the repeated the process in the living room.

  Then he concentrated his efforts on the metal frame of the sliding door that opened from the house to the patio. There, it seemed to him, would be the logical place for vermin to enter. The doors might not meet exactly. Possibly there was some dirt in the tracks that…

  “What the hell?”

  Catherine’s head jerked up at the sound of his voice.

  Willard dropped to his knees and began tugging at a loose flap of carpeting that had been tucked into the corner where the wall between the kitchen and the living room abutted against the back wall.

  “What…?” he repeated.

  “Willard?”

  “Look at this.”

  Catherine got up slowly and crossed the room.

  Willard was still on his knees, slowly pulling the thick carpet back a foot or so. He glanced over his shoulder at her.

  “This isn’t even tacked down. It’s just laying on top of the padding.” He leaned further over and peered into the corner. “Shit.” He leaned back and held something out to Catherine.

  It was a splinter of wood, perhaps ten or eleven inches long and just over an inch wide, with needle-sharp nails protruding every half inch or so, the tips just long enough to catch in the backing of the carpet.

  “This is supposed to be set into the concrete. It keeps the carpet stretched. Something broke it off.”

  He turned back to the flap of carpet. Catherine looked over his shoulder. They could both see the remains of twisted, broken strips bordering the carpet pad. Willard caught the edge of the pad between his thumb and index finger and peeled the half-inch-thick green foam pad away from the concrete flooring.

  Catherine screamed and nearly fainted.

  5

  A three-inch-wide crack in the concrete slab roughly paralleled the back wall, perhaps an inch and a half in from the baseboard and extending from the corner until it disappeared beneath the protective covering of carpeting and pad where Willard had not yet pulled them up. The crack was rough, edged with crumbling concrete.

  That was bad enough.

  But worse was the rippling, glistening black-brown roiling that surged inside the crack.

  Roaches.

  There might have been thousands-certainly hundred of the vermin swarming over each other, legs and feelers quivering as the things skittered like a repellant, oily wave breaking on grey sandy shores.

  Then the edge of the wave broke over the top of the slab. First one or two, then a handful, then a dozen-the roaches spread from the crack onto the smooth but stained concrete exposed when Willard had stripped both pad and carpet.

  Catherine screamed again, but Willard stared transfixed. Only when the vanguard of the wave reached him, and the lead roach crawled onto the toe of his loafer did Willard finally act. Galvanized by the presence of the thing, he reacted convulsively. His thumb jammed down on the spray nozzle of the Raid can, directing a killing jet onto the roach. The thing scrabbled helplessly at the soft leather of Willard’s shoe, then fell backward, its legs twisting frantically.

  Willard shot the contents of the can across the concrete, catching all of the roaches on the slab. The force of the spray at this close a range was so strong that it spun several of them back into the crack. He followed up, spraying continually until he was at the edge of the crack. He thrust the nozzle directly against the crumbling concrete and sprayed, not looking, not wanting to see the seething mass as it contorted beneath the poison. He could hear the hisssss of the spray; he could hear Catherine’s harsh, ragged breathing-at least she wasn’t screaming any more-he could hear his own breathing, his heartbeat, the creeaak of shoe leather as he shifted his weight from one foot to the other, and somewhere behind him Sams own snuffling cries, vague echoes of Catherine’s.

  But above all of that, he could hear the dry, horrible rustling of the roaches as they scurried frantically downward, tumbling over each other in a tumultuous mass, seeking the safely of darkness and dampness and distance from the hideous stuff that was coating their bodies and systematically destroying them.

  Finally, with a sputter and spit, the Raid can ran empty.

  Willard kept his thumb on the nozzle, though, shaking the can, and spraying, shaking the can and spraying, again and again even though nothing seemed to be coming out except an unsettling dry hissss, until the last possible drop of poison had penetrated the crack. Then he lifted his thumb.

  His hand hurt from the strain. The plastic nozzle had impressed its serrated form deeply into the flesh of his thumb. His knuckles were white, and he was scarcely breathing. He looked into the crack.

  Nothing.

  Except for a few feebly struggling bodies, the mass of roaches had disappeared.

  He stood, his foot crushing one of the dead roaches on the bare slab. He winced, then carefully stepped on each of the roaches in sight. He shoved the crushed remains into the crack with the edge of his shoe, unmindful of the viscous smears they left on the concrete.

  He turned to face Catherine.

  “Come on.”

  He picked up Sams, still crying softly, retrieved Catherine’s purse from its usual place on the end table by the couch, grabbed three coats from the closet, and was out the door, yelling “Hurry” over his shoulder, almost before Catherine could move to follow him

  6

  The clerk at Builder’s Bargain Barn looked askance when Willard slapped his Mastercard down on the counter next to the twelve aerosol cans of Raid and ten room foggers.

  The clerk was an elderly woman with faintly bluish hair and a perpetually confused expression on her rather pinched face. She looked as if she should be home spoiling grandchildren rather than tending to a behemoth computerized register that usually required her to enter each purchase at least three times before the machinery would accept it. Her neatly blue bordered plastic name tag announced simply that she was “Marge.”

  Fortunately, Marge did not say anything about Willard’s unusual purchases or about the harried expression that haunted Catherine’s eyes. She stolidly passed the electronic scanner over the pricing bars on one of the cans of Raid and looked curiously pleased-not to say surprised-when the register tallied the purchase price plus state tax times twelve…and on the first try.


  As if on a roll and afraid to spoil her good fortune, Marge repeated the process with one of the home foggers. Her luck didn’t hold. Glancing up at Willard, she diligently re-keyed the necessary information-department, function code, quantity-and passed the scanner over the pricing bars again.

  Still nothing.

  She sighed and began the procedure one more time.

  “Hurry it up,” Willard said, his impatience finally bursting through. He immediately regretted the outburst and tried to make what amends he could. “We got a real crop of roaches sprouting in the…” He faltered, realizing that the subject was not quite appropriate for the tone that was coming out.

  Marge ignored both his initial comment and his explanation. For the fourth time she patiently and methodically entered the information. With all of the intent determination of someone not quite certain how to proceed next, she passed the scanner over the home fogger. This time, finally, the data jelled and the computer rang up price plus tax times ten.

  Marge punched a final button and the LCD screen announced the total. She carefully bagged the cans while Willard swiped his card and scrawled his name at the bottom of the charge sheet. He jerked the bag from her almost before Marge had dropped in the last canisters, and took off for the door. Catherine, almost clutching Sams against her, followed close behind.

  Willard did not see the odd look Marge sent after him. Instead, he concentrated on backing out of his parking spot, speeding down the narrow lane toward the highway, then driving home as quickly as possible.

  Even so, by the time they arrived at the crest of Oleander, Sams had fallen into a restless sleep and Catherine had had enough time to read out the directions for the home foggers.

  “You wait in here,” Willard said as he cut the engine in the driveway. “I’ll go set these and we’ll take Sams out for a couple of hours. When we get back, everything will be all right.”

  “No,” Catherine said. “I’ll come help.”

  She carefully lifted Sams from his car seat and carried him into the house, laying him in a makeshift bed of afghans and pillows on the living room sofa. While she was doing that, Willard emptied two Raid cans in the crack along the back wall, spraying until the fluid dripped stickily on the rough concrete of the fractured slab. He pulled more of the carpet back, from the portion of the back wall adjacent to the kitchen wall, across the room to the sliding patio doors, then on to the far wall-the one separating the living room from the fifth bedroom.

  To clear the full width of the living room, he had to push an end table and a small corner cabinet toward the center of the carpet.

  The crack continued the entire span of the wall-varying irregularly from one to four inches wide, and at least as deep as the foundation slab itself. Some places had sheered cleanly away; others were rough and crumbling.

  He saturated every inch of exposed concrete with Raid.

  When he was finished, he turned his attention to the kitchen.

  The vinyl floor tile seemed unbroken along the outer wall, but when he knelt down and looked closer, he noticed odd ripples in the tiles next to the baseboards. On a hunch, he grabbed a sharp paring knife and punched the wall-edge of one of the tiles near the middle. The blade easily broke through. He wiggled the handle. The blade moved freely, swinging an inch or so forward and backward before grating against concrete.

  He tried another spot midway between that one and the far corner of the kitchen. Same result.

  “Shit,” he yelled, reversing the blade and slamming the end of the handle against the brittle, yellowing tile. The vinyl shattered, revealing a foot-long crack. He struck the next tile. The crack continued beneath it as well. Increasingly frustrated and angry, he grabbed another can of Raid and emptied it into the exposed opening.

  He could see nothing at the bottom of the crack-the sunlight was too bright through the windows and cast too sharp a shadow at the base of the wall, but he wasn’t going to take any chances.

  In the meantime, Catherine had resurrected half a dozen old packing boxes-not yet discarded-and was haphazardly stacking dishware, silverware, cooking utensils, and linens in them, emptying every closet and drawer in the kitchen. Fortunately, some of their things had not yet been unpacked; she was angry enough as it was and didn’t need the added aggravation of breaking china or glasses.

  Finally, though, the kitchen was ready-prepared according to the explicit directions on the back of the fogger package.

  “Get the pets,” Willard instructed, “while I get these ready.”

  Catherine went back through the house and grabbed the double cage containing Yip and Yap, the boys’ hamsters, threw a heavy towel over the cage, and ran it out to the car. On her second trip, she carried Sams out and strapped him into his car seat.

  Inside the house, Willard slid the removable plywood door into the doggie door, making sure that Will, Jr.’s dog-officially named Richard Beagle but mostly answering to “Crud,” Will’s favorite expletive-was safely blocked outside.

  “A few hours in the cold won’t kill you,” Willard said when he heard the dog scrabbling at the plywood insert with his sharp nails. “It’s not as if you don’t have a perfectly good dog house out there. You just never use it.”

  Ignoring any further complaints by Crud, Willard checked the rest of the house: interior doors open, windows closed.

  Everything okay.

  His last act before leaving the house was to set up four of the foggers: one in the kitchen, one in the family room that had started life as a garage and had been converted by the last owners, one in the intersection of living room and entry hall, and one at the end of the hall by the back bathroom door.

  Holding his breath as he activated each of the foggers-and understanding all the while that it was not necessary to do so-he retraced his steps through the house and finally left, locking the front door securely behind him.

  In the car, Sams was whining and restless. Yip and Yap were huddled beneath a pile of cedar chips in the corner of the cage. Already the car was assuming the bitingly ammoniac stench Willard associated with hamster cages at least two days beyond scheduled cleaning time. He wondered if he would ever get the smell out of the unpholstery.

  Without speaking, he cranked the key and backed out of the driveway. He glanced at his watch.

  Eleven fourteen. About two hours until Charter Oaks released classes. Another hour before Will’s school was out for the day. They would have to pick up the older kids from the school yards and find something to do for a good part of the afternoon.

  Maybe a quick visit to a park, if it proved warm enough. Or a surprise early dinner at Carl’s Jr. or Burger King. The boys would love a kids’ meal, complete with toy treat. It was an inconvenience to have to stay away so long, Willard thought, but better that than the alternative. Better that than the unending colonies of roaches that seemed suddenly to have infested their house.

  Squaring his shoulders and sternly reminding himself to ignore the increasing odor emanating from the hamster cages-now accented by a hauntingly similar odor from Sams-Willard drove away.

  7

  By eight thirty that night, the house had returned to a semblance of order. The padding and carpet had been folded back in place, minus the splinters of tackless carpet strips. Willard wasn’t too happy with the slightly rumpled texture the carpet had taken on near the baseboards, but there was little he could do about that. And a few ripples were the least of his problems at the moment.

  He stood up and surveyed the carpet, then turned away and began staring at the walls and ceiling, probing in the cracks along the interior baseboards.

  “What are you looking for?” Catherine said as she came in from the bedrooms. She sounded worried, as if she were afraid that their attempts to eradicate the roaches had failed. “Are there any more…?”

  “No,” Willard said. “No sign of wildlife.” He grinned, trying to lessen Catherine’s lingering horror over the experience.

  She grimaced.


  “No, I’m just curious.” He pushed the thin blade of a small screwdriver into the back corner, along the juncture of the rear wall and the common wall between the living room and the back bedroom. The plaster resisted for a moment, then the blade disappeared.

  “Shit,” Willard muttered as his knuckles scraped abruptly against the plaster.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Look.”

  He sliced downward with the screwdriver-the blade slit through the plaster as neatly as if it were warm butter. He gestured to the dark opening.

  “I’ll bet this whole damn back wall’s separated from the house. The gap’s been plastered over and painted.”

  “Willard,” Catherine said sharply. “The children might not be asleep. I don’t want them to hear that kind of…”

  But he wasn’t listening. He was already in the kitchen, rummaging through the utility drawer until he came up with a small hand flashlight. He carried it through the living room, knelt in the entry hall, and began examining the shiny Solarium tiles.

  “Look,” he said after a few moments. He held the light at a sharp angle to the floor. Small as it was, the bulb was sufficient to cast hairline shadows that zigzagged faintly but definitely from wall to wall across the entryway. “See that.” He pointed with his free hand to the shadows.

  “What is it?”

  “Another crack. In the foundation slab.” He rose to his feet with a grunt and disappeared into the hallway, the flashlight throwing a faintly orange glow in front of him.

  It took less than half an hour to discover that the house-walls and slab alike-seemed laced with cracks, major and minor, each of them carefully retouched with plaster and then artfully repainted to disguise the flaws. The worst of them seemed to be in the northwest corner of the master bedroom, where the plaster split the entire length of the juncture of the two outside walls-another hairline crack, so fine as to be virtually invisible unless one searched for it. In addition, the line separating wall from white popcorn-textured ceiling was ragged and rough.