by Koloen, John
“What would we do then?”
“Hopefully, get out and walk alongside our guide.”
“We’d probably make better time,” George Hamel said snarkily. He overheard everything and insinuated himself into any conversation whenever the urge hit him.
“You know,” Duncan said quietly to Hamel, “you may be right about that. I’ve been thinking that myself.”
Hamel grinned.
“I told you so,” he said to Cross.
“Shh,” she said, annoyed. “I don’t care.” Turning toward Duncan, she added, “You don’t really think we’re going to walk in this, do you? What about the snakes? You have seen them, haven’t you? And all the other things in the water?”
“No, we’ll stay on the truck as long as we can,” Duncan said sagely. “I’m just saying that there may come a time when we have to abandon it. If the water gets above the wheel wells… hell, if it gets that high Antonio won’t be able to find the road, and then we’ll be stuck.”
“Let’s hope that doesn’t happen,” she said.
“Let’s hope,” Duncan replied. “And let’s be glad that we haven’t had much rain today.”
While Duncan and Cross continued their conversation quietly, Hamel moved to one side of the truck. Occasional flashes of lightning lit the sky, partially exposing the distant forest. It was during one of these flashes that he sensed something floating toward them that was neither a log nor a tree branch. It rode low in the water and resembled a patch of leaves. It was too far away for his flashlight to reach, but there was something about it that captured his attention. Eventually Johnson joined Hamel, peering into the vast darkness.
“Can you see anything?”
Hamel pointed into the distance.
“I can’t see a thing,” Johnson said.
“Wait for the lightning. You’ll see it.”
“What am I looking for?”
“I don’t know. It looks like a pile of leaves or something. Maybe an island. Looks like a carpet of something. It’s dark. It’s hard to tell, but it’s moving toward us. I wish we had more light,” Hamel said.
“Oh, like all the other crap that’s floating around us?” Johnson said flippantly.
“No, this is different. I don’t know; it looks weird.”
“Everything looks weird in the dark.”
Lightning flashed above the canopy, followed by deafening thunder.
“There, there,” Hamel said excitedly, pointing into the darkness. “See it? Who’s got binoculars?”
Johnson stared where Hamel pointed.
“Use mine,” Cross said. “We used it to watch you guys.”
Hamel handed his flashlight to Johnson and pointed where to shine it. He looked through the binoculars briefly. He squinted to see details, but there wasn’t enough light. Johnson turned it off.
“I couldn’t see a thing,” Hamel said, disappointed.
More lightning, followed by thunder that shook the ground.
Hamel kept his eyes on what he now took to be a pile of debris. It was rounded and spun slowly, and something jumped within it, like grasshoppers, he thought. It was still too far away for the flashlight to pick up. The lightning stopped, and the forest was once again enveloped in humid darkness. Hamel waited, ready to raise the binoculars at the next lightning strike.
77
Duncan’s attention was focused on Antonio Suarez, some thirty feet in front of the truck. He felt anxious about their situation but was worried about the young guide. Suarez had been in the water for several hours without relief, and Duncan wondered whether he should take a break. While Boyd worried about plunging everyone into an abyss, Duncan was fearful about stopping, even for a few minutes. Would the truck sink into the mud and not have the power to propel itself? Progress had been slow, perhaps one mile an hour. He was about to call for a ten-minute break when another cascade of lightning and thunder burst. He heard a commotion behind him. Turning to face the rear, he saw Hamel pointing, the binoculars glued to his face.
“It’s not grasshoppers,” Hamel said. “My God, my God, it’s the bugs!”
Hamel handed the binoculars to Duncan and put his flashlight on the water. For a moment, they glimpsed the patch of debris in the shadows just before the lightning faded, and the object disappeared into the watery darkness.
“You’re sure?” Duncan said to Hamel.
“Didn’t you see it?”
“I saw something.”
“Did you see them jumping? That’s how I know.”
“Know what?” asked Johnson, who sat on one edge of the truck bed and craned his neck to see Hamel.
Hamel and Duncan exchanged glances.
“The bugs,” Hamel said.
Johnson sprang to his feet.
“Where! Where are they?”
“They’re out there,” Hamel said, pointing. “You can’t see them except where there’s lightning.”
Johnson took the binoculars and peered into the darkness.
“I don’t see a thing.”
“I’m telling you,” Hamel said, “they’re out there. Howard saw them, didn’t you?”
“I saw something,” Duncan said, “but I need a better look.”
The conversation between Hamel and Johnson caught Alison Peeples’ and Stephanie Rankin’s attention. They’d been sitting alongside each other, covered in ponchos, taking surreptitious sips on Rankin’s gin.
“So, it might not be anything? You know, you shouldn’t be saying things like that unless you’re sure,” Johnson scolded.
“I am sure,” Hamel insisted. “I’ve been watching since we got on the truck.”
“When did you first see them?” Peeples asked, anxiously.
“I don’t know, fifteen minutes ago, ten. Not long. They’re not close enough for my flashlight, so it’s just glimpses when there’s lightning.”
While this conversation was going on, Boyd and Azevedo listened up. Boyd took the transmission out of gear and called Suarez, who returned as quickly as he could through the murk.
“Professor,” Duncan said, pointing with an index finger, “can you aim that light over here?”
It took a moment, but Azevedo managed to turn the rusty mechanism, which screeched loudly, surprising and frightening the people on the bed. The screeching of bare metal echoed into the forest. The light had greater range than Hamel’s flashlight, who scanned the area with the binoculars while the others peered into the illuminated emptiness. Moments passed. Hamel relocated the raft, now at the outer limit of the searchlight’s reach. It was larger than he’d originally thought. More than ever, it looked like it was heading toward the truck.
“Do you see anything?” Cross asked.
“It’s them. It’s the bugs. There’s thousands of ‘em. I don’t know for sure, but it looks like they’re floating on their backs. Some of them are jumping. I don’t know what that’s about,” Hamel said, peering through the binoculars.
Hamel handed the binoculars to Duncan.
“What is their weakness?” Duncan muttered to himself.
“What’s that?” Hamel asked nervously. “Did you say ‘What’s their weakness?’”
“Professor, do they have any weakness?” Duncan asked.
Azevedo paused thoughtfully.
“Their weakness was that they could not reproduce successfully.”
Duncan frowned.
“And they don’t seem to do well in water. They can’t swim, or at least they couldn’t,” Azevedo said.
Everyone heard this.
“What?” Rankin said loudly. “What the fuck are we afraid of? There’s water everywhere.”
The mood lifted at this news. There were smiles and laughter, and Johnson and Rankin started shouting in the direction of the bugs, threatening to drown them, issuing insults as if the in
sects could understand them. Duncan was less sanguine, aware that despite being unable to swim, they had managed to organize themselves in such a way that they could float an entire colony, apparently safely. He also knew they could jump and could see some of them doing so through the binoculars.
“So, Professor,” Boyd asked, “all we gotta do is pour water on them?”
“I didn’t say that,” Azevedo said, his voice reflecting his exhaustion. “And this is true for the bugs I studied before they proliferated. The specimens I saw, there were never more than several dozen in a colony, struggled in water and tried to crawl out of it as quickly as they could. I had not seen them flip on their backs and float. That is new behavior to me.”
“So, maybe they can swim, huh?”
“I can’t say for certain, one way or another. I only know that the ones I studied could not swim. They were like cockroaches in this regard.”
Duncan took this in and inhaled deeply, exhaling slowly. He asked Hamel to report on the bugs’ progress and asked Azevedo to point the light according to Hamel’s instructions. Could the bugs swim or not? Drowning the bugs could not be Plan A.
“We can’t assume that blaberus can’t swim,” Duncan said loudly. Everyone was talking to somebody about drowning the bugs, and he wanted them to stop. “We have to come up with something else to defend ourselves, in case they slam into us. We don’t know if they will. It depends on the current. But we have to be prepared.”
He’d achieved his immediate goal of shutting everyone up. The ideas were slow in coming.
“They’re kinda hung up on something,” Hamel reported, binoculars glued to his face.
“Okay, what kills them for sure?” Boyd asked.
“Fire, don’t you think?” Peeples said.
“Yeah, that would do it,” Johnson agreed.
“Yeah, but how?” Duncan asked. “We don’t have a flamethrower or torches or anything like that. All we got are two cans of gas.”
“Someone could swim out there, you know, where they are and maybe get behind them and pour some gas on the water and then light it,” Boyd suggested.
“Sounds dangerous,” Cross said.
“Too dangerous,” Duncan agreed. “You could set yourself on fire.”
“You know, we don’t even know if they’re going to attack us. What if the current carries them in a different direction?” Peeples said.
“We can’t depend on that,” Duncan said. “Whatever we do, there will be risk involved. Just look around. It’s dark. We’re in the middle of a flood.”
“Why not just keep moving down the road?” Boyd asked from his seat behind the steering wheel.
Everyone looked at Duncan for a response.
“I’m afraid we might run off the road. The water seems to be getting higher, and I’m not sure whether Antonio can keep us in the middle of the road.”
“Maybe he needs some help,” Boyd said. “Maybe if we had two guys out there …”
“They just broke loose,” Hamel interjected, breathlessly.
Pressure was mounting now. No one volunteered to walk with Suarez, and Duncan was on the verge of doing it himself but, as the leader, he felt he needed to stay on the truck where he could have a better view of the situation.
“Olay, who wants to do it? Who wants to help keep the truck on the road?” Duncan said, looking at Johnson and Hamel. Hamel continued to concentrate on monitoring the insects, showing no interest in doing something else.
“You know, George,” Maggie Cross said, “I could watch with the binoculars. Why don’t you help get us going?”
“I’ll do it,” Peeples said, finally, raising her hand.
“No, I’ll do it,” Johnson said, forcefully, clambering from the side of the truck into the water before anyone could protest. Suarez joined him in the water and helped him find a branch to use to sweep along the side of the road. As soon as they were in front of the truck, Boyd put the transmission in gear and inched the ancient vehicle forward.
“Go faster,” Hamel said. “They’re gaining on us. And I hate to say this, but there’s more of them.”
“More of them?” Cross asked. “If they can’t swim, how can there be more of them?”
“There’s more patches of them. Bunches of them. At least that’s what it looks like.”
78
Only Duncan and Cross could hear Hamel. The diesel was loud. Peeples thought she heard Hamel say something.
“What did you say,” she asked, tugging on his elbow.
“I said there are bunches of the bugs in the water.”
“Oh.” She gave him a puzzled look and stammered, “What the fuck are we going to do?”
Hamel shrugged and went back to watching the bugs through the binoculars.
Peeples tugged on Duncan’s elbow.
“He said there’s more of them all the time. Are we gonna be okay?”
Duncan looked away briefly, trying to think of something to say. It was a question he’d been avoiding for days.
“We need to keep ahead of them,” he said, finally.
“I think you got your answer,” Rankin whispered to Peeples.
“That wasn’t an answer,” Peeples barked.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen,” Duncan said sharply. His guilt had gotten the better of him, and he knew it immediately. “Look, Alison, I don’t know. I think we should really focus on what we can do to defend ourselves or avoid them. Nobody planned on this happening.”
“So, what can we do?”
“Keep moving,” Duncan said as the truck lumbered forward. Boyd struggled to control the truck against the perpendicular rush of the water and, like everyone else, began to tire.
“It looks like at least one of the rafts is coming toward us,” Hamel announced.
Without a word, Duncan grabbed a gas can and set it on the cab’s roof.
“Find a cup or something that we can use for the gasoline.”
“Why not just pour it out of the can?” Cross asked.
“We’d use it up too fast,” Duncan said. “Besides, it’ll be easier to aim it with a cup.”
Rankin grabbed the first cup that she saw and nervously handed it to Duncan. Cup in hand, Duncan wondered how he’d light the gas. All he had was a butane lighter.
“Anybody got any matches?”
Nobody responded. He repeated his question, loudly. A few “not mes.”
“How about straw, or kindling, something that burns easily?”
Peeples dug a splinter out of the truck bed and handed it to Duncan.
“Will this do?”
“Perfect,” Duncan said, “find some more. We may need it.”
Turning to Hamel, Duncan asked, “How we doin’?” when the truck suddenly lurched, nearly knocking his legs from under him. Cross grabbed Duncan’s shoulder to steady herself.
“Sorry,” Boyd said. “We hit a rock or a hole or something.”
“Goddamn!” Hamel shouted, after nearly losing his balance. “What the fuck!”
“You want to drive?” Boyd said loudly.
“So,” Duncan repeated, “how we doing, Mister Hamel?”
“You know, I almost fell off the truck. Into the water,” Hamel said forcefully. “But to answer your question, we aren’t. We’ll be lucky if this first one doesn’t hit us. Tell ‘em to move faster.”
“We’re moving as fast as we can,” Boyd shouted. “Like I said, if you can do a better job, you’re welcome to it.”
“That’s not what I’m saying,” Hamel said defensively. “I’m saying, if we don’t go any faster, the bugs will hit us. You can stop for all I care. I don’t know how many bugs there are, and I don’t control the current, so maybe just sitting here is as good as moving. Anybody here know how to figure the odds?”
Duncan set the cup in fro
nt of him on the rusted cab roof and carefully filled it with gasoline.
“George, how close are they?”
“See for yourself.”
The raft was on the outer edge of Professor Azevedo’s searchlight, which he centered on the bugs. A couple hundred feet, and they’d either hit them or not. It’s like a video game, Duncan thought. Hit or miss, there’d be more. And certainly they would hit the truck, and either the bugs would be incinerated, or they’d drown, or they’d devour their prey.
Things began to happen very quickly as the raft of jumping bugs neared the truck. Duncan estimated it would hit somewhere near the rear passenger wheels. If only they could go a little faster, he thought they could avoid it, that it would drift by without colliding with the truck. But what could he say? They were already going as fast as they could without driving off the road, which would be far worse.
As the raft of bugs neared, he saw the ones that were jumping were actually getting well above the level of the truck bed, and that scared him. If it weren’t for that, they could try to push the bugs away with a pole, but there was too much of a chance of them jumping onto whoever was holding the pole. When he looked around, he could see the fear on his companions’ faces. There was no attempt by anyone to hide it. They all understood they could be facing a horrible end.
“What happens if the fire doesn’t kill them?” Peeples asked anxiously.
“I don’t know,” Duncan said quietly. “I wish I did. The only other thing I can think of is to get under the water and hold your breath.”
“Really?”
“Well, Professor Azevedo said they don’t swim well, and these guys here, if they could swim, don’t you think they’d be doing it? Look at ‘em, they’re on their backs, and the ones that are jumping look like, well, I don’t know why they’re doing it. I was thinking that maybe there wasn’t enough room for ‘em so they jump on top of the others to keep from drowning. But I don’t know. And it doesn’t matter.”
“That’s not much of an alternative,” Cross said. “Diving under water. Aren’t there other things in the water that can hurt us, too?”
“I don’t know,” Duncan said, “I just know that it’s something we can do. Maybe it’ll work, maybe it won’t. I don’t know what else to say.”