Insects 2: The Hunted

by John Koloen

  “Mister Howard, Mister Howard,” Suarez shouted as he ran toward the ATVs, “The bugs are back.”

  Nobody paid attention at first, as it was difficult to make out what Suarez was saying. The path he took wrapped around a rocky outcrop surrounded by dense vegetation, with a gentle, twenty-foot descent. Mitchell and Robinson had unpacked their gear while Duncan and Boyd prepped their traps, setting them on the ground ready to be baited.

  “Mister Howard, Mister Howard,” Suarez repeated as he reached the ATVs, nearly stepping on the traps.

  “Watch out,” Boyd shouted, as Suarez deftly stepped to avoid the soft drink bottles.

  “The bugs are back,” he stammered.

  “What?” Duncan asked.

  “Out there. Dead animals, just like before. Many of them.”

  Mitchell and Robinson looked at each other, their faces instantly registering excitement. This is what they had come for. After days of shooting B-roll and recording background sounds, finally there was something interesting to do.

  “Hot damn,” Mitchell said, as he started toward the path.

  “Hold it,” Duncan squawked.

  “What? Why?”

  Duncan motioned for the film crew to wait.

  “Are you sure?” he asked.

  “Yes, yes,” Suarez said, catching his breath. “Just like before.”

  “Did you see the bugs?” Boyd asked.

  “No, thank God,” he said, crossing himself. “Just the carcasses, just like before. We should get out of here, don’t you think?”

  Hearing this, Mitchell responded resolutely.

  “We’re not leaving until we get our shots.” Robinson nodded in agreement, cradling his camera like a rifle.

  “Don’t worry,” Duncan said, “We’re not leaving. Apparently, blaberus has already been through this area. It’s probably safe, assuming there’s no stragglers.”

  “Stragglers?” Robinson asked.

  “You never know,” Boyd said.

  “You never know what?” Mitchell asked.

  “We don’t know much about their behavior other than that they eat everything and move on. We think they’re territorial, but we don’t know the size of their territory.”

  “Maybe we’ll get some clues,” Boyd said. “One thing’s for sure, there’s no point putting the traps out.”

  “You’re right about that,” Duncan agreed. “Let’s head down there. Antonio, you lead the way. Show us where you found them.”

  Suarez did not get far in front of the others as usual, tempering his normally rapid pace. Mitchell chafed but Robinson, with his arthritic knees, didn’t mind going slow, especially where the path descended. Standing at the edge of the area he’d found the carcasses, Suarez pointed. The smell of rotting flesh became apparent as they approached.

  “What’s that smell?” Mitchell said disgustedly.

  “Over there, maybe ten meters,” Suarez said.

  “It’s the smell of death,” Robinson said.

  Suarez was reluctant to enter the killing field, so he let the others pass him. For a moment, their curiosity was greater than his fear but after a cursory examination of two carcasses, Duncan and Boyd became wary. Plenty of meat remained. They stared intently at the ground around them, rotating three-hundred sixty degrees, bending at the waist to get a closer look. While Mitchell held a microphone in the air near the scientists, Robinson stepped back to get a better angle, almost tripping on vines. As he steadied himself, he saw several small carcasses.

  “There’s more,” Robinson said.

  “More what?” Mitchell asked, disappointed that Duncan and Boyd weren’t talking and his microphone was capturing dead air.

  “Carcasses. Whaddya think?”

  Boyd and Duncan spread out, hoping to find blaberus remains as well as to determine the extent of the kill. As they expanded their search, they realized that the area provided slim pickings for the insects. Aside from the cluster that Suarez had found, they turned up only a handful of small mammals and reptiles. Knowing that the insects had pillaged the area several times, they wondered whether the colony had exhausted the food supply or whether it was smaller than they’d estimated.

  “I got one,” Boyd said, holding a dead blaberus in his hand.

  Robinson immediately zoomed in on Boyd’s hand. The insect was barely two inches long.

  “Looks like a cockroach to me,” Robinson said after finishing his shot.

  “Yeah, it’s kinda small. I was expecting something bigger.”

  “The size isn’t important,” Duncan said, as Boyd handed the specimen to him. “It’s a juvenile, just the kind of specimen we wanted to capture.”

  “Not gonna happen now, is it Howard?”

  “I think what we need to do is move in that direction and see if that’s where they went.”

  “We’re not gonna chase ’em, are we?” Boyd asked uneasily.

  “Absolutely not. We may be too late. They may have depleted this entire area of food.”

  Mitchell gave Boyd a puzzled look.

  “That means they won’t be coming back. We’ll have to start over.”

  “Are you kidding?” Mitchell blurted. “That just sucks. Are you sure?”

  “You know, Thomas’s group is somewhere in that direction,” Boyd said. “Maybe they’re having better luck. You can check them out.”

  “It doesn’t work that way,” Mitchell said. “Murphy’s got him covered. We’re s’posed to cover you guys.”

  Boyd saw the discouragement on Duncan’s face as they joined Suarez on the path. Both of them knew that Thomas had gotten out much earlier and that he stood the best chance of capturing live specimens. Although neither knew much about Thomas’s intentions, nor his methods, the only purpose for being in this part of the rainforest was to capture specimens, without which his expedition, as well as Duncan’s, would be a complete failure. The thought that he would lose the race to Thomas gnawed at Duncan. It wasn’t that he had animosity toward him. They barely knew each other. It was that he felt he’d overcome many obstacles just to get where he was, which was nowhere. But unwilling to quit, he took the lead, walking west and then north, along the bottom of a steep embankment flanked by another bluff separated by a wide hollow that seemed to go on forever. Stopping often to look for signs of blaberus, Mitchell was the first to notice how noisy the monkeys had become. The volume increased as they walked and it seemed the trees were filled with millions of howlers screaming at the top of their lungs.

  “What the fuck is going on?” Mitchell shouted in Boyd’s ear.

  Stopping in their tracks, they scanned the forest for the cause. Listening was stressful for all of them.

  “Anyone got ear plugs?” Boyd shouted.

  “I really can’t take much more of this,” Mitchell yelled, his face revealing his discomfort. “How can you stand it?”

  And then the screeching diminished. It was as if the monkeys had strained their vocal cords and couldn’t keep it up. But one of them did, shrieking in the distance, the sound coming not from above but from ground level. The sound was not simply high-pitched and recurrent but painful, as if in agony.

  “They must’ve gotten one of the monkeys,” Boyd said.

  “Jesus,” Mitchell said. “I’ve never heard anything like that.”

  Suarez grimaced. He’d heard the tormented screams before.

  Duncan broke away from the group, looking for higher ground, hoping to get a better view. As disturbing as it was to listen to or to watch the agonizing death throes of an animal, it might represent his best and perhaps only opportunity to capture live specimens. There had to be a way to get to the top of the bluff, which was only ten feet above the hollow in some places. The sides were granular and soft, giving way when he put his foot down. Fortunately, it was overgrown with vines, which he used to pull himself to the top. He ran until he found an open spot that gave him a view of the pitiful screams.

  “My God,” he muttered as Boyd caught up with him.
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  90

  JASON GRUBER RAN ahead of everyone after pushing the slower moving soundman and videographer out of the way. He caught up to the newsman from Manaus, who had stopped to catch his breath. He was sweaty and panting and struggling to get the words out. Gruber knew only two things, that one of his people had yet to return from his field assignment and that someone was in desperate straits. The tall American felt his composure melting away.

  “What’s wrong? What’s the matter?” Gruber shouted as he reached the Brazilian.

  “Os insetos estão atacando. Eles estão matando um homem.”

  “In English, in English.”

  “The insects, they are killing a man.”

  Although they were a hundred yards away, they could hear the screams and the Brazilian urged Gruber to follow him, but the scientist ran in the opposite direction, pushing past the film crew and other assistants, all of whom followed the Brazilian. Nolan Thomas, who remained at his post overlooking the forest valley, watched wordlessly as Gruber ran past him and to the ATVs where he grabbed the heavy flamethrower, hoisting it by the shoulder straps and rushing toward his boss and stopping to answer a question.

  “What’s going on?” Thomas asked.

  “I think it’s Greg,” Gruber said, catching his breath. “The bugs are attacking.”

  “What?”

  “I gotta go.”

  Thomas watched as his chief assistant rushed awkwardly down the trail, balancing the flamethrower on one shoulder, his eyes glued to the ground to avoid tripping. It seemed to him that time had slowed to a crawl and that he would never reach his destination but he arrived only a moment behind the film crew. Remaining at a distance, the Brazilian media crews watched and did their jobs, just as Murphy, Walker and Wilson did theirs. Nobody attempted to help Covelli, whose screams filled the air like falling icicles. Fifty feet off the trail, clouds of insects swarmed over their shrieking victim. Gruber confronted the other assistants who stared at their tortured colleague, shouting for him to run, as if running would cause the hundreds of blaberus to let go.

  No one had to tell anyone not to get close to the slowly dying victim. Everyone could tell there was nothing they could do without themselves becoming a casualty. Everyone but Gruber, who was impelled to do something, though there was no time to create a strategy that would keep him safe. None of them had ever seen anything like this, and they were at once transfixed and horrified. Each could only imagine the pain and terror the victim felt as he stumbled blindly, his eyes torn open like soft-boiled eggs, aqueous humor draining down his bloody face.

  Lowering the flamethrower to the ground, Gruber turned several knobs and switched on the device’s ignition system. With a single motion, his knees bent, he slipped his arms through the shoulder straps and slowly rose, shifting the uncomfortable load until he felt the straps tighten with the fuel-tank’s weight. Holding the nozzle with one hand, he pressed a button to ignite the tip and frantically moved forward and back, left and right to find a position from which he could sweep the area without scorching his screaming, fallen friend.

  Even though Gruber had acted in a matter of seconds, they were a lifetime to the bloodied colleague, who struggled vainly to rise from his knees, his face now wearing a mask of writhing monsters.

  “Watch out!” Someone shouted. “They’re everywhere!”

  Frustrated beyond endurance, the insane screaming diminishing in volume but not frequency, Gruber stepped off the path, held the nozzle like a shotgun at his waist, and let out a burst of flaming liquid that arced across the open space between him and his friend. Everyone watched in horror as the leading edge of it cascaded on the flailing victim, extinguishing his shrieks in a matter of seconds, his body crackling like burning leaves. At the same time, hundreds of the insects filled the air with tiny squeals as the flames incinerated them. Horrified by what he had done, frozen where he stood, Gruber stared at his colleague’s blackened, flaming body as the nozzle slipped out of his hands.

  Thomas, who had finally joined the others, shouted, “Jason, get out of there. Get out of there right now. Do you hear me?”

  Gruber turned his head toward Thomas, uncomprehending, unable to move. For a moment, the insects seemed to retreat, or at least cut off their attack, perhaps to regroup. Risking his own life, Thomas bolted to his assistant, grabbed his arm and pulled him roughly to the path along the bottom of the embankment. Thomas shook his assistant who appeared to be in catatonic.

  “I need you, Jason!” Thomas shouted. “We need you.”

  91

  NO ONE HAD a better position than Duncan and Boyd to see what was happening. Fifteen feet above the unfolding catastrophe on the earthen bluff, they had a clear, if somewhat distant, view of a scene that was all too familiar to them.

  Unable to climb the slippery and soft side of the bluff with their equipment, Bob Mitchell and Joe Robinson proceeded down the trail, led by Antonio Suarez, who felt responsible for them. The effect of distance insulated Duncan and Boyd from the horror occurring below.

  “That’s not the whole colony,” Duncan said.

  “Think it’s a scouting party?”

  “Too big for that, but not big enough for a colony. There’s gotta be more.”

  “Where are they?” Boyd asked, his discomfort rising with each scream.

  “I don’t know. But they’re there.”

  They watched in disbelief as Gruber approached the victim only to incinerate him.

  “My God,” Boyd whispered. “Jesus, fucking Christ. Did you see that?”

  Duncan saw it and pointed beyond the flames, well behind Gruber.

  “They’re jumping,” Duncan said. “Out there, a line of them.”

  “I see a few. What are you seeing?”

  “They’re surrounded.”

  “All of them? Can’t you see?”

  So much was happening, so much of it horrible, that Boyd labored to process it. But Duncan saw beyond the single attack.

  “Get out of there!” he shouted, his hands cupped around his mouth. Directly below them, Suarez and the film crew watched the unfolding tragedy as if they were standing in a safe place.

  “Get up here,” Boyd shouted to them.

  “What? Why?” Mitchell yelled.

  “You’ll die, get up here!”

  “We’ve got equipment.”

  Hearing the urgency in Boyd’s voice, and having witnessed the death of Thomas’s assistant, Robinson gently set his camera on the ground and, grabbing vines and digging his feet in, climbed toward Boyd, who reached out and, with great effort, pulled the heavyset cameraman to the top of the bluff.

  “What about our equipment?” Mitchell protested.

  “It’s your life or your equipment,” Duncan shouted. “Don’t be stupid!”

  Facing the young producer, Suarez looked at the top of the ridge.

  “Do you want to die?” he said quietly.

  “Fuck,” Mitchell swore, dropped his equipment and duplicated Robinson’s path to safety, followed closely by Suarez.

  “Look at how fast they’re moving,” Duncan said.

  “Get out of there!” Boyd shouted at Thomas’s group. “There’s more.”

  He had gotten their attention but several leaned toward him, cupping their ears as if they couldn’t hear what he’d said.

  Duncan, Boyd and Robinson, shouted in unison, “Get out!”

  92

  WHILE ROBINSON, MITCHELL and Suarez raced to help Thomas’s crew as they struggled to climb the bluff, Duncan stopped Boyd from joining them.

  “What are you doing?” Boyd asked, testily.

  “Look at them.”

  “Look at what? They need help, can’t you see?”

  “No, look at blaberus.”

  Boyd gave Duncan a disapproving look but obeyed.

  “What am I seeing?”

  “It’s not the main colony.”

  Boyd stared at Duncan for a moment and then looked more closely at the insects below.


  “There must be at least a foot between them, at least,” Duncan said. “Nothing like we saw before.”

  “They’re scout groups?”

  “It looks that way.”

  “It didn’t look that way from down there, not where that guy got killed,” Boyd said.

  “I think what happened is that he ran into one group of scouts and the others converged, making it look like there are a lot more of them than there are.”

  As much as Boyd wanted to listen to Duncan’s insights, he couldn’t resist the commotion created by Thomas’s group and bolted toward them only to stop halfway. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed two of the Brazilian journalists who had stationed themselves off the path and on the forest floor, presumably at a safe distance from where Covelli had died. They were swinging their arms wildly and running, high-stepping as if trying to keep their feet off the ground. They had no idea what they were dealing with and it showed as vines entangled their feet. They didn’t start screaming until they fell for the first time and then they didn’t stop. Their colleagues, having seen what happened to the American, backed away quickly, watching from what appeared to be a safe distance.

  Duncan believed he had gained some understanding of how the insects worked on the ground. Previously, he had thought blaberus used scout groups to detect prey but until now had no idea how they worked, the tactics they used. Apparently, many scout groups were sent out, each working independently. Duncan was astonished by the amount of territory they covered in this way. Worse for victims, he thought, was that even though nearby groups converged on prey when it was detected, the other groups continued to search for food sources and it was the scouts that subdued the prey. Originally, he’d believed the scouts reported back to the main colony and it was the main colony that killed the prey. The one thing that puzzled him was that the scout groups seemed to close in on prey without first surrounding it. Perhaps that came later, depending on the number of scouts in the vicinity.