The School of Revenge

by Michael Richan

  “Why?” Aaron asked. “Why the infection? Why not just kill us too?”

  “Because,” Boone replied. “Infecting us is reproduction. That’s how they spread themselves.”

  Aaron felt the bile rise in his throat. Boone detected the kid’s distress and pointed down the hallway. “Bathroom!” he said, taking another bite. “Don’t puke on my floor!”

  Aaron ran, making it to the toilet just in time. After heaving, he wiped his mouth and fell back against the tile of the bathroom floor pressing his hands to his stomach. He didn’t want what Boone was saying to be true, but he knew in his heart that it was.

  “You’re thinking you should never have slipped your arm into that box,” Boone said from the bathroom doorway, holding his plate of food. “You’re wondering why you gave into the emotion of it. I remember. I did the same thing. It’s human.”

  “It’s sick,” Aaron said, the back of his hand at his mouth. He reached forward and flushed the toilet.

  “You’ll get used to it,” Boone replied.

  “I want it out of me,” Aaron mumbled. “There must be a way.”

  “Been working on that,” Boone replied, turning and walking back into the living room. Aaron rose from the floor of the bathroom and followed him. “There might be a solution. So far, though, everyone I know who’s tried has failed and died in the process. Learning to live with it is your best option right now, trust me.”

  “How? You said there might be a solution? I don’t want to molt.”

  “Molting isn’t the problem. Turning into a Scolo is the problem. You’ll molt twice a year, but if you don’t take steps, after five or six years you’ll molt and emerge as a Scolo. That’s what you need to be worried about, if you want to stay human.”

  “Are you one?” Aaron asked hesitantly.

  “No,” Boone replied, sitting back down on the sofa. “I’ve got a way to keep the transformation from happening.”

  “But you can’t stop the molting?”

  “No. The molting happens. There’s no way to stop it.”

  Aaron sat on the sofa next to Boone and placed his head in his hands. He wanted to cry, but he stopped himself, not wanting to appear weak to Boone.

  He felt Boone’s hand on his back. “It’s OK. You’ll learn to live with it, like I did. You don’t have to turn. There are things you can do.”

  “Like what?”

  “We can get to that later,” Boone replied. “Right now I want to talk to you about a different matter. Something I think you’ll like.”

  “What?”

  “I’ve waited thirteen years for this thing to come back, and now that it has, I want to take it down. I want to crush it like smashing an insect under my heel, and hear its body crunch and break into pieces. I want it dead.”

  Aaron looked at Boone, trying to gauge his seriousness. “Really? Kill it completely? You can do that?”

  Boone put his plate down. “Come with me. I want to show you something.” He rose from the sofa and walked down a hallway, Aaron following. He walked past his bedroom to a second door and opened it, allowing Aaron inside. Then he flipped on a switch.

  The room was lined with bookcases. In the center of the room sat a desk, covered in papers and open books. Behind the desk, on a long shelf, sat a half-dozen glass jars of varying sizes, and at the end of the shelf was a large terrarium.

  “Have you ever looked at a centipede?” Boone asked. “Really looked?” He walked to the desk and reached behind it to the shelf, removing one of the glass jars. As he lifted it, Aaron could see movement inside. Curled at the bottom was a centipede about four inches long. “Take a long look. See how it works. Each section is armored.”

  Aaron held the glass jar to his face, examining its contents. The black-bodied creature was comprised of multiple sections, each with two legs. The movement of the jar caused a reaction in the centipede, and it began to track around the bottom of the glass container. Aaron watched its wave-like motion as it moved.

  “Yeah,” Aaron said. “It’s a bizarre insect.”

  “Not an insect,” Boone corrected. “Insects have six legs. These are arthropods. They are highly resilient and are found almost everywhere, including the Arctic. They’re poisonous, though small ones have difficulty biting humans. These bigger ones, though…” Boone moved to the terrarium at the end of the shelf. As he approached, a large red centipede inside rose from the bottom, arching up.

  Aaron sat the glass jar on the desk and walked to the terrarium. The twelve-inch creature inside reminded him of the ones he’d seen in his room. “Is that one of them? One of the mortipedes?”

  “No, that’s Scolopendra, a centipede found in the tropics. I can’t keep mortipedes, it would weaken my defenses. You don’t want them around, either.”

  Aaron pressed closer to the glass sides of the terrarium, examining the large body of the centipede. It was frozen still, and he watched it closely for any signs of life. When he shifted his face slightly, the centipede launched at him, landing against the side of the glass with a thud. Aaron fell back in surprise.

  “They move incredibly fast,” Boone said. “So do mortipedes. So does Scolo. Any normal encounter with it, it will win. But — I think we may have a chance at destroying it.”

  “How?”

  “It’s gorging right now, feasting on the endorphins of revenge from all the fresh kids in West Seattle. It’ll have to molt soon. You saw me on the floor while I was molting. Did I look like I could defend myself?”

  “No,” Aaron replied.

  “Neither can it,” Boone continued. “When it molts, it’s vulnerable. And when it does…”

  Boone walked to his desk, and pointed to an open book. “This is how we’ll kill it.”

  Aaron walked to the desk and looked down at where Boone was pointing. It was a drawing of a large scorpion, its pinchers open and its tail raised for a strike.

  “A scorpion?”

  “This,” Boone said, his finger still pointing to the book, “is not your average scorpion. It’s the size of a man. It was the Scolo’s natural enemy, one of the few creatures that could kill it. They’re practically all gone now, which is one of the reasons why the Scolo continue to be so successful.”

  “If the scorpions are all gone, what use are they to us?” Aaron asked.

  Boone smiled at him. “It took a lot of work, but I found one.” His eyebrows raised.

  “Found one? Where?”

  “Believe it or not, right here in Washington. Bellingham.”

  “Is that why you went there yesterday?”

  “Precisely. Met a guy up there. He let me see one of them in person, up close. It’s absolutely terrifying.”

  Aaron paused. “We’re going to haul a giant scorpion into the library, so it can attack Madame Pritchard while she’s molting?”

  “No, we’d never be able to wrangle the thing,” Boone said. “Too unpredictable. We don’t need the whole scorpion, just this.” Boone pointed again to the drawing, his finger touching the tip of the scorpion’s tail.

  “The stinger?” Aaron asked.

  “It’s not the scorpion that will kill the Scolo,” Boone said, “it’s the poison in the tail. In thirteen years of studying Scolo, that’s the only substance I know of that will do it.”

  “How do we get the poison out of the stinger?” Aaron asked.

  “The poison will come out when we stab the stinger into the molting body of the Scolo,” Boone replied.

  “I’m confused,” Aaron said. “If the stinger’s on the scorpion, and we can’t move the scorpion, how are we going to get the stinger into the Scolo?”

  “We’re going to cut it off the scorpion,” Boone replied. “Then we’ll use it like a weapon when the time is right.”

  “Oh,” Aaron said. “So you made a deal with the guy in Bellingham to take the stinger?”

  “Nope,” Boone said, turning to leave the room. “He’d never agree to that. He’s raising them in captivity, trying to rebuild t
heir population. Not an easy task, given their size. He’s got a lot of younger ones, but their poison isn’t strong enough, and won’t be for years. The mature one is one-of-a-kind right now, and he considers it too valuable to kill, which, of course, is what will happen to it when we remove the stinger.”

  Aaron shook his head as he followed Boone from the room. “I’m still confused.”

  Boone turned to him. “We’re going to sneak into his compound, and steal the stinger from the scorpion.”

  Aaron’s eyes went wide. “We’re? We’re going to?”

  “You want your friend back, don’t you? Killing the Scolo is the quickest way to make it happen.”

  Aaron gulped.

  “You’d better get home,” Boone said. “Be here tomorrow morning by 9. The Scolo is going to molt very soon, so we need to get that stinger right away. We’re doing it tomorrow.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Aaron spent a restless night anticipating the activities of the next day. He resolved that he would try to find out as much about Boone as he could on the drive to Bellingham.

  He was relatively successful. After being stuck in construction traffic for a half hour, Aaron was using the time to quiz Boone on his past. Boone seemed generally forthcoming, but there were one or two areas where he pulled back and clammed up. Aaron kept going, trying to get more information from him.

  “What’s the plan,” Aaron asked, “when we get there?”

  “The guy that runs the place is going to be out of town, so it’s really just a matter of breaking in successfully without setting off alarms. I’m going to kill the power to the whole place; that’ll take care of the alarm system, but it’s going to make things dark underground.”

  “Underground?”

  “Yeah, he has them stored in an underground bunker. We’ll have to use flashlights to get around.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “I’ve got a special job for you,” Boone said. “It’s low risk. Well, as low risk as you can get with this type of thing.”

  Boone took a sip from his coffee mug and replaced it in the holder. “I’ll take care of the power, and I’ll break us in the entrance of the bunker. We’ll have to make him mad in order for him to manifest; anger is one of his species’ triggers. I’ll handle that.”

  “What do you mean, ‘manifest’?”

  “You know, appear. Look like a scorpion.”

  “Oh, OK.”

  “Once he manifests, you’ll start up the spinner. That’ll mesmerize him.”

  “Spinner?”

  “It’s a contraption that you turn with a crank. It makes a spinning light display that its animal brain can’t resist. It’ll become transfixed, and that’s when I’ll move in and remove the stinger.”

  “How are you going to do that?” Aaron asked.

  “With a knife!” Boone replied. “How’d you think?”

  “I don’t know,” Aaron said. “There’s so many special devices and stuff, I thought maybe you had a different way of doing it.”

  “The main thing is that you keep that spinner going. As long as you do, it’ll be docile and manageable. If you stop for any reason, it’ll resume being angry and both you and I will be in big trouble.”

  “You just turn it?” Aaron asked.

  “I’ll show you exactly how to work it before we go in,” Boone said, looking at him. “You can do this, right?”

  Aaron paused. He knew he was nervous; the idea of a giant scorpion terrified him. “I think so.”

  “Think so?” Boone repeated. “Dude, we’re risking our lives doing this. You need to be damn sure you can handle it! I don’t want to get inside the room with that thing and you drop the ball!”

  “I won’t,” Aaron replied. “I can do it.”

  Boone was still looking at him. “Well, good. I hope so.”

  After they passed Mount Vernon, Boone took an exit from the freeway, and they made their way over backroads deep into farming country. Boone pulled onto a dirt driveway that led past a large country home and twisted through an outcropping of trees to a clearing three hundred yards from the house. The only thing in the clearing was a small cement structure, barely large enough to contain a door. A large bramble of blackberry bushes grew over the top of it.

  Boone turned off the car and they got out. “I’m going to run back up to the house and deal with the power,” Boone said, walking to the trunk. “While you’re waiting, familiarize yourself with this thing.”

  He opened the trunk and Aaron looked inside. A round wheel with lights mounted on it was sitting in a box; Aaron reached to remove the contraption and Boone ran back down the road.

  He lifted the wheel. It wasn’t heavy. It had two handles on the back. He grabbed one in his left hand. The right handle could be turned, so he began to twist it around, and the wheel on the front began to spin. After two revolutions Aaron noticed that the lights were beginning to glow.

  No batteries, he thought. The power comes from turning it.

  He played with it a little, seeing how fast he could go. When it was turning at full speed, the lights were nice and bright. He was beginning to develop some confidence.

  He hadn’t noticed before it stopped, but a hum in the distance suddenly ceased. It sounded like a fan shutting down.

  A few minutes later Boone returned. “Got it figured out?”

  Aaron held the device up and demonstrated.

  “That’s perfect. I’ll tell you when to use it, OK?”

  “Sure.”

  Boone walked to the door in the cement building and began working on the lock. He had it open within a minute and pulled the door back. It was a long staircase leading down below the surface of the earth. It was dark.

  “Flashlights,” Boone muttered, returning to the trunk of the car. He came back with two, and handed one to Aaron. Aaron grabbed it, but Boone didn’t release it.

  “Tell me the plan,” Boone said.

  Aaron rehearsed the steps they’d discussed.

  “OK,” Boone said, letting go of the flashlight. “Stick to the plan. Don’t let anything distract you, no matter what we see.”

  Aaron nodded an assent, and Boone turned to enter the doorway. They descended.

  After two dozen steps they came to a landing. Aaron turned to look back up the staircase; the light from the autumn sky seemed far away, unable to penetrate much farther than the first few steps.

  A hallway extended from the landing to the right. Boone led them forward.

  “OK, it’s this first door on the left,” he said, shining his flashlight at a heavy metal door that appeared. Just beyond it was a window that reflected the light of their flashlights.

  Aaron walked to the window and looked inside. “It’s in there?” he whispered.

  “It is,” Boone replied.

  Aaron turned. To his right appeared another door, farther down. Behind him was solid wall. Tube fluorescent lights sat dark in fixtures on the ceiling.

  Boone walked past the window, heading down the hallway.

  “Aren’t we going in?” Aaron asked.

  “We are, but I have to stop and get something first,” Boone replied, pointing his flashlight at the next door. He began working on its lock.

  “What’s in there?” Aaron asked.

  “The thing that’ll make it angry,” Boone replied.

  Aaron waited patiently while Boone worked, shining his flashlight farther down the hallway. It looked like another door and window on the right, but be couldn’t see past that point.

  “Is this just a row of rooms?” Aaron asked.

  “Cells, more like it,” Boone replied. “There’s almost a dozen of them. Ah!” The lock clicked, and Boone removed his picking tools. “Wait here.”

  Boone opened the door and slipped inside, closing it behind him. When he returned, he was holding a small girl in his arms. Aaron guessed she was maybe five years old. She was only half-awake.

  “A girl?” Aaron asked, surprised.

>   “Yup,” Boone replied, walking quickly. “Close the door behind me.”

  Aaron grabbed the door and ran to catch up with Boone, who had carried the child to the first door. He set her on her feet.

  She balanced herself, rubbing at her eyes.

  “Keep an eye on her while I work,” Boone said to Aaron, and turned to the lock on the first door.

  Aaron was beginning to feel uneasy. The idea of stealing a stinger from a scorpion was frightening enough. He hadn’t been prepared for the idea of a little girl being involved. When he glanced at her, she was staring at him.

  “Hi,” Aaron said to the girl.

  “Can I go outside?” she asked.

  Aaron didn’t know how to respond to her. “Uh, maybe. First we have to wait here, though.”

  She rubbed at her eyes again, trying to wake up. Aaron heard the click of the lock, and Boone turned to them. “Follow me, and have that thing ready.” He grabbed the girl and pushed open the door.

  Aaron followed him inside. He slipped his flashlight into his back pocket so he could position his hands on the handles of the device, ready to turn it when Boone gave him the signal.

  Boone’s flashlight spun around the room, searching. It stopped when it landed on a man sitting against a wall in the back corner of the space.

  A man? Aaron thought. Where’s the scorpion? And why does Boone have this little girl? What’s going on here?

  Suddenly Boone was turning the flashlight to illuminate the child. Aaron could see a long, shiny blade in Boone’s hand, reflecting the beam of the flashlight, creating spots of light against the opposite wall. Boone raised the knife to the child’s throat. He turned the girl to make sure she and the knife were visible to the man in the corner.