Sit tight, Anzer had said. What the hell else was he going to do? Hit the local bars and two step his way to Bangor? Maybe grab a stripper and a case of Mike’s Hard Lemonade for good measure? What an asshole. Colby fumed. When he finally got to see Anzer again, the prick would be so sore he wouldn’t want to sit for two weeks. Colby’s cell phone wasn’t large, but he was willing to bet Anzer wouldn’t like having it shoved up his ass.
He looked down the trunk of the tree. It would take a few hours before a chopper could get there. Plenty of time to climb down and scout around for a suitable spot to sit and wait. He and Janice could eat the rest of the jerky and maybe find a small stream to refill their canteens. Food, drink, and Janice for company. It wouldn’t be such a bad time, he supposed, if she was willing to talk to him, anyway. If not… well, it wouldn’t be the first time Colby sat in silence waiting to be rescued.
Then he heard the gunshot.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Janice watched Moretz as he approached, his right hand stroking himself under his pants. He said nothing, just stared at her with an all too eager expression, doubtless thinking of what he was going to do to her.
A loud bang sounded somewhere off to her left, and Moretz’s head exploded in a burst of red, sending blood and pieces of skull in a wide radius. She closed her eyes, but still heard the fluids and bits of brain fall all around her. It sounded like a heavy rain. Then came a muffled thump as Moretz’s body fell to the dirt.
When the last droplet of blood fell, landing squarely on her forehead, she dared to open her eyes and look in the direction the shot had come from. There stood Allen, holding Colby’s AR-15. He held it across his chest, not pointing it at anyone, but he didn’t put it away, either.
“Stupid bastard,” he said. Allen stared at the body and shook his head. “I told him to leave you alone.”
Janice tried to speak, but her mouth was still covered by duct tape. The best she could manage was a muffled yelp that sounded nothing like the cry for help she’d been hoping for. She kicked her legs in the dirt as much as the rope would allow, trying to get his attention. It worked. Allen looked from Moretz’s body to Janice.
She felt the corners of her mouth lift under the duct tape. Allen would help her, of course he would. Then she, Allen, and Colby could get the fuck out of here. And she would be sure to patch things up with Colby. She had to let him know she cared, no matter what he thought of her. She couldn’t leave until she’d told him the truth; that she thought she might be falling in love with him.
But Allen didn’t approach.
“Sorry, Janice,” he said. “I’d cut you loose, but they’ll be coming for you soon, and it’s better if you can’t move. They’ll want him, too,” he jerked the rifle in the direction of Moretz’s body. “The only difference is you’ll still be alive, like me. Now that Moretz is dead he’ll be more like Edison back there.” Allen pointed somewhere behind Janice.
She turned her head and twisted her waist to see behind her. If the tape hadn’t been over her mouth she would have screamed at the sight. There stood Edison, or what was left of him. The wounds from the big cat were still visible, but they could barely be seen under the writhing, crawling mass of grubs that traveled the length and breadth of Edison’s once plump academic’s body.
Everywhere she looked, they squirmed over him. Grubs feasted on his eyes, on his chest, even his lips. One particularly fat grub squirmed into Edison’s mouth while she watched, presumably going after his tongue. She felt the bile rise in her throat and forced it down, knowing if she threw up with duct tape covering her mouth she could very well drown in her own vomit.
A lump of flesh behind Edison also crawled with grubs, but it lay on the ground rather than standing upright like a man. She thought she recognized a dull green shirt and camouflage pants, however, and she shuddered.
“Yeah, that’s Bock,” Allen said, confirming her suspicion. “He finally fell down about twenty minutes ago and hasn’t gotten back up.” Allen chuckled. “There sure was a lot of meat on him.”
She looked away from Edison and Bock and back to Allen, her vision blurring as she fought back tears. What the hell was going to happen to her? She sobbed, a strangled, subdued sound beneath the tape.
“Don’t worry, Janice,” Allen said. “You’re still alive. That means you’ll be like me, not like Edison and Bock. Or Moretz, for that matter. He really was an idiot, anyway. Always thought with his cock. The flies will put eggs in him, and he’ll come back for a bit, but he’ll be better. He’ll still be dead, though; they can only lay their eggs in dead tissue. But you’ll be fine.”
She shook her head, not understanding.
“The grubs,” Allen continued, “need living people to spread. Dead people are just food, although they can be useful to folks like us. Don’t worry, they won’t hurt either of us as long as we’re carrying.” Allen opened his shirt and pointed to a pair of grubs attached to his chest, just above the left nipple. They hung there like leeches. “Buggers got loose in the tent and nabbed me before I could stop them. Neat, huh?” He closed his shirt back. “I was studying some fecal matter I found on the outskirts of the camp at the time, looking for any sign of Jared. Needless to say, I didn’t find any. He was probably killed by that mountain lion, and the grubs brought him back after.
“I was just about to get Colby under control, but Bock ruined it by showing up at the campsite and causing a ruckus,” Allen shook his head. “Stubborn fucker. Always had to do things his way. Didn’t help much, though, did it?”
Janice stared, unable to speak and not knowing what she would have said anyway. Her mind was locked; she couldn’t think straight anymore. Bock, Moretz, Edison… all hijacked by a bunch of grubs?
“I can hear them,” Allen continued, pointing to his temple. “In here. Not sure how they do it, though. They didn’t give me a lot of time to examine them, but from what I can tell there are two types. Feeders – or drones, if you will – like those on Edison. And queens, like the ones on my chest. There aren’t any queens near enough, or any feeders, for that matter. Moretz had two, but I blew them apart when I shot him. My fault, they were on his neck. I should have shot him center mass, but I’ve never been much of a marksman. No worries, though. They’ll be along soon. I told them where we are.”
Janice sat, hunched in the dirt and tied to the trees, trying to make some sense of what Allen had just said. Could it be true? Or was he just crazy? Either spelled trouble for her. She began to sob again, unable this time to prevent the tears from spilling from her eyes and rolling down her cheeks.
“Now, come on, Janice,” Allen said. “It’s not bad, I promise.”
She turned away, unable to look at him.
“No, really,” he continued. “It’s quite beautiful actually. So simple and pure. You’ll be amazed at what these little guys can do. Patching into dead nervous systems and releasing chemicals that allow them to talk to our minds is just the start. You’ll see. It’s really quite fascinating.”
As soon as he finished talking, she heard a distant buzzing, like a cloud of flies gathered at a carcass. Allen must have heard it, too, because he perked his head up and cocked his ear toward the sound.
“Ah,” he said. “Here they come, now.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Colby was hurrying down the tree when he heard the buzzing. It reminded him of the cloud of flies he’d seen devouring the bear carcass; the ones Bock had tried to push him into. That was when he killed Bock. Or when he thought he killed Bock. The bastard kept coming back. Was he out there even now? Or had he fallen to the grubs, too?
Colby wasn’t a genius, not like some members of his team, but he had enough smarts to realize the grubs had something to do with all the dead people walking around. And what were grubs but baby flies? Those big, three-inch bottle flies could very well be the mommies and daddies of all these fucking grubs. If they were coming, Colby knew it could only mean trouble.
And Janice was still
down there!
He scrambled down the branches as fast as he could go, oblivious to the cuts and scrapes on his hands and arms, and focused on getting to the ground. The sound of the flies rose as he descended the tree, finally becoming a fevered crescendo while he was still about seventy-five feet up. He peered through the trees, trying to see what was going on, but from this height the foliage blocked his view.
“Janice?” he called. “Janice, are you all right?” He didn’t know if she could hear him, he could barely hear himself over the droning of the flies, but he shouted and climbed, just the same.
“Janice! Answer me!”
He reached down for another branch, going as fast as he dared, when the sound of the flies stopped. He craned his ears, trying to determine the reason for the silence, and he thought he heard a muffled sobbing coming from somewhere below. He tried to see through the foliage, but it was useless. “Janice?” he called again.
Janice didn’t answer, but as soon as her name left his lips he heard a sound that stopped his heart. A sharp crack that chilled his blood and sent a shiver up his spine.
“Oh, shit!” He looked down and saw he was still sixty feet up in the branches of the tree. Not good. He stood perfectly still and held his breath, willing the sound to be his imagination.
His hopes were dashed when the sound of cracking wood came again, this time jerking his feet from under him and sending him on a violent freefall through the branches of the old pine. He bounced off one branch, which stole the breath from his lungs and caused his vision to blur, then he tumbled backwards out into space.
He felt a sharp pain at the back of his head, then there was nothing at all.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Janice tried to scream, but the duct tape prevented her. As she watched, a cloud of flies descended on Moretz. They scuttled and shuffled along on his limbs, laying eggs in his flesh. Almost immediately after laying their eggs, each fly fell to the forest floor and lay there. Some of them twitched for a few seconds, but most remained perfectly still wherever they fell. Dead. Soon the buzzing noise was gone, replaced by the sound of her heartbeat, which thundered in her ears like a bass drum.
She looked at the piles of dead flies, then at the body of Moretz. Before long the eggs started to hatch. First one, then a few more, then the rest of them opened up, releasing a mass of white grubs. They looked just like the ones currently eating Bock’s remains, but smaller. The grubs that covered Bock were close to three inches in length and had taken to devouring each other, but the hatchlings were only about a few millimeters long.
They went to work right away, feeding on Moretz’s body and causing the skin to pulse and bubble with movement. There were so many of them squirming across and through Moretz’s flesh that it almost seemed like his arm twitched. She looked closer, terrified but unable to look away, her scientific curiosity piqued in spite of her fear.
Then his arm did twitch. She blinked, certain it was a mistake. A hallucination brought on by stress. But sure enough, as she watched, the arm tucked itself under the torso and pushed up, like in the gym. Moretz’s other arm joined in, then his legs, and soon Clyde Moretz, minus most of his head, once again stood on the forest floor.
“Amazing, isn’t it?” Allen said. “The sheer numbers of grubs it takes to fire instructions down every neural pathway is incredible. I have a theory about it, but…” Allen paused and looked around the clearing. He seemed to be waiting for something. Then his expression lit up. “Ah, yes. There’s no one left to cut me off. Everyone’s dead except for you, me, and Sarge.”
Janice couldn’t have screamed if she’d wanted to, her heart stilled and her breath caught in her throat as the newly-animated Moretz stepped over to Allen and took a place just behind and to the right of the entomologist. Moretz stood there like a bodyguard, while Allen looked on. Both men seemed to be waiting for something.
Then she heard a faint buzzing. A single three-inch fly zipped into the small clearing and headed toward her. She could see the sun glinting off the thing’s multifaceted eyes. It flew around to her back, but she couldn’t turn around enough to see. She felt the thing land just between her shoulder blades, and was surprised at the weight of it. She jerked herself back and forth, trying to shake the thing off, but only succeeded in further damaging the skin of her wrists. The ropes held.
She felt a sharp pain in her back, and shortly after, the weight of the fly lifted. She heard the tiny thump as the thing fell to the forest floor and landed among the dried leaves and pine needles. She stopped thrashing then, knowing it was no use. The eggs in Moretz were embedded into the skin, under the epidermis and into the sub dermal layer. If the fly had laid an egg in the back of her neck, it wasn’t going anywhere.
A tiny crackling sound reached her ears, like tearing a piece of paper, and she felt something small moving around on her skin between her shoulder blades. She tried to scream one last time, but she couldn’t get the sound past the tape. She flinched as she felt a tiny pinch in her back. The grub had bit her.
A tear spilled from her eye and rolled down her cheek as she looked at Allen, standing there with a big smile, two grubs on his chest. He nodded at her, a gesture that struck her as both fatherly and patronizing.
“It’s okay,” he said. “You’re almost there.”
She wanted to tell him to go fuck himself, but just then a tingling, warm sensation started to move though her back where the grub bit her. As the feeling spread through her body, her thumping heart slowed, and she stopped shaking. Her breathing evened out and the tears in her eyes dried up. Her fear was pushed out by comfort and familiarity. She realized she knew this; this was safe. Janice sighed, and almost laughed at her earlier behavior. She shook her head, marveling at her own foibles.
“There, you see?” Allen said. “I told you it was nice.”
Janice looked up at him and smiled. She couldn’t help it. He was so handsome standing there, his shirt unbuttoned and those two miracles clinging to his chest. Now she knew. The grubs were not creatures to be feared, but delicate, fragile things that needed her protection. Protection from those who wanted to hurt them.
She nodded, and Allen came closer. He reached out to the piece of tape at her mouth and she braced herself, waiting for the pain. He ripped the tape off, but it didn’t hurt. Instead, her face felt numb. She wondered about that for a moment before she felt the answer inside her head. Not words, exactly. More like instant knowledge. The grub on her back was patched into her nervous system. It had deadened the nerves of her face just as Allen pulled the tape off, to ensure the act didn’t cause any pain.
What wonderful little creatures! She said a mental thank you and was rewarded by a warm, soft feeling that brought a smile to her lips. Allen untied her and she stood up, looking at Moretz with awe. The drones covered him from head to foot, slowly eating their way through his flesh. For now, he would make a fine servant, at least until the grubs ate so much of him as to render him useless.
The grubs were patched in to each other, too. They shared a form of communal intelligence. Through this link, Janice felt the happiness of Moretz’s grubs in her mind. Thousands of contented little lives happily munching away on an abundance of food. Another tear welled up in her eye. She couldn’t help herself. It was so beautiful.
She turned to the sound of another fly buzzing around the clearing. This one flew slower than the other had, and its flight seemed erratic and uncontrolled. She learned through her grub that this fly was another queen, but older and slower than the first. With a horrified start she realized it was weak, and close to death. Fresh tears – the sad kind – pooled in her eyes as she watched it fly slowly through the clearing and land on a stump a short distance away.
The poor thing needed to lay her egg and be free of her burden so she could rest. Janice reached out her hand, thinking to have the queen lay her precious burden alongside its kin in her back, but Allen reached out and held her arm down.
“Not that one,” Allen s
aid.
“Why not? You have two, why can’t I?”
“Because that’s the last queen, and she’s ill. After her there are no more. Only drones, which is why it was such a shame to shoot Moretz, but it had to be done.”
“The last one?” Janice couldn’t help but feel sad. “Well, she needs a living body, doesn’t she?”
Allen nodded. “If we have to, we can give you to her, but only as a last resort. They need as many living bodies as they can find; their chances of survival go up exponentially with each carrier.”
“With each carrier,” Janice repeated. And then she understood.
Colby.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Colby eased back into consciousness, squeezing his eyes shut against the haze of pain. His chest, arms, and head all hurt. The back of his head felt cool and wet, and he reached a hand up and found a painful, sticky knot rising back there. His fingers brushed the exposed edge of an open cut, and he drew in a sharp breath, which caused the pain in his ribs to flare up. He winced and waited for it to pass, wishing he had the First Aid kit with him. Half a dozen extra strength aspirin tablets might help, but he wouldn’t be willing to bet on it.
He opened his eyes and tried to focus, but his vision swam and spun in a dizzying vertigo that immediately set his stomach on notice. Gritting his teeth to keep from vomiting, Colby forced his eyes to focus, and soon saw the ground twenty feet below. The branch that broke his fall was one of the pine’s major lower limbs and it stuck out, thick and sturdy, from the massive trunk. It shifted a little under his weight as he tried to pull himself into a more comfortable position.
Nasty Little F___ers-Kindle Page 13