by Tim Downs
“Who is to say what should not be done?”
“God. He is to say.”
Another snort. “Then let God tell me himself and not some cowardly old man.”
“I cannot have a part in this. I will not.”
“Yes, Nikolai, you’ve made that very clear.” He tossed a shovelful of corn in front of Petrov and nodded toward the center of the room. “Throw it there—in the middle.”
Petrov slowly scooped up the corn and threw it a few feet. “I have to go, Yuri. Please, I have a train to catch.”
“Pasha must help me first,” Semchenko said. “The sooner he finishes, the sooner he can take you to the station.” He tossed another shovelful at Petrov’s knees.
So did Pasha.
Petrov began to eagerly dig into the growing pile of corn and pitch it toward the center of the silo, working as hard and as fast as his aging back would allow.
Semchenko watched the old man work for a few moments, then nodded to Pasha. The two men set down their shovels and waded through the corn to the opposite doorways. Pasha climbed out onto the stairway on his side. Semchenko sat down on the ledge of his doorway, leaned out, and signaled to the corn elevator operator below him.
The engine started up again.
Petrov began to sink.
He looked up in horror and saw Yuri Semchenko calmly watching him from one of the doorways. He twisted around and saw Pasha doing the same behind him. He tried to take a step, but when he lifted one leg the other leg only sank deeper. With a rustling sound the corn poured toward the center of the silo like sand emptying from an hourglass.
Within seconds the corn was up to Petrov’s waist.
“Don’t do this!” he cried out. “Yuri, please!”
“Sorry, old friend, but a conscience is a dangerous thing. I cannot be certain where yours might lead you.”
“I won’t tell anyone! I swear!”
“Yes, I know.”
The corn was up to his chest now. He threw himself forward and tried to swim, but there was nothing to push against and the corn flowed up and around him and licked at him with its yellow tongue.
“Stop struggling, Nikolai. You’ll only sink faster.”
But the old man began to struggle frantically, thrashing and clawing and beating at the corn. Nothing helped; the corn continued to swallow him like a snake with a helpless mouse. His shoulders disappeared like two rocks beneath a rising tide. His hands clawed at the air above him, then fell limp and slowly sank back into the yellow sea. The corn rose up to his neck, then his chin, and he threw back his head and gasped for air as his lungs began to compress.
His eyes looked at Semchenko one last time. “Yuri,” he whispered. “Please—don’t—”
The corn poured over his face and into his mouth and he was gone.
Semchenko stared at the sea of grain for a minute or two, then signaled to the machinist to stop the engine again.
The silo fell silent and the corn was perfectly still.
He looked across the room at Pasha. “Clean this up,” he said. “Tell the authorities it was an accident. And Pasha—I was never here.”
2
North Carolina State University, Raleigh
Nick Polchak slumped in his chair in the back of the classroom and watched stone-faced as the student concluded her presentation.
“And that,” she said brightly, “is the life cycle of a fruit fly.”
She tucked her poster under her chin and turned from side to side, offering her fellow students one final look before grinning hopefully at her professor.
Everyone in the classroom turned and waited for Nick’s evaluation.
Dr. Nick Polchak was one of the best-respected and most-feared professors at North Carolina State University. Nick loved his academic discipline—entomology, specifically the study of the arthropods that comprise half the living species on our planet, and he had no patience for anyone who didn’t share his passion for insects or his love of technical detail. For Nick life was bugs, pure and simple, a perspective that had long ago earned him the moniker “the Bug Man.”
Nick took off his glasses and rubbed at the bridge of his nose. “C-minus,” he said. “And that’s only because I’m in a generous mood.”
The student did a dramatic double take, an imaginative blend of indignation and personal affront. “A C-minus? C’mon, Dr. P.!”
“Don’t call me that,” Nick said. “It makes me sound like a urologist.”
“I deserve better than a C-minus!” The student hoisted her poster high overhead, as though Nick might have somehow overlooked it. “Look at this thing! I practically spent the whole night on it!”
“Lovely,” Nick said. “Let’s take a closer look.”
As Nick worked his way to the front of the classroom, the students began to grin like hungry hyenas. They knew what was coming; it was the main reason they’d signed up for the course. Nick’s students took an almost perverse pleasure in watching him savage their classmates on the days when projects and papers were due. This was the first project of the fall semester, and everyone could taste blood.
The young woman lowered the poster to chin-level and allowed Nick to look it over.
“Ms. Smith,” he began.
“My name is Karnofski.”
“Whatever.” Though Nick had at his fingertips the Latin names of hundreds of species of blowflies and flesh flies, he had only two names for students—Smith and Jones, depending on which name randomly rolled off his tongue when summoned. “First of all, your drawing is all wrong,” he said. “Drosophila is yellow-brown in color and has transverse black rings across its abdomen.”
“That’s awfully picky,” she grumbled.
“Yes, science is like that. Second, their wings don’t look like a couple of badminton rackets, and if I remember correctly, only the fairy-princess fruit fly is decorated with glitter.”
Snorts and snickers from the classroom.
Ms. Smith-Karnofski frowned. “I wanted to make it stand out.”
“Well, don’t. And what, may I ask, is that?” He pointed to the fly’s head, where a curved line arced beneath the two huge eyes.
“That’s a smile. I was trying to make it look—you know—friendly.”
Nick turned to the class. “Okay, let’s get something straight. This is a course in basic entomology. What Ms. Smith here should have brought us was a technically accurate rendering of a Drosophilamelanogaster. Instead, what we have here is essentially a Precious Moments fruit fly. I’m sorry to break it to you, Ms. Smith, but fruit flies are not cute or cuddly or friendly. They are tiny arthropods that are valuable for research chiefly due to their extremely short life cycle.”
Nick took the poster and held it up to the class. “What else is wrong with this drawing?”
No one dared an answer.
Nick ran his finger around the contour of the drawing. “See this? She colored inside the lines. That’s an indication of a serious personality flaw that Ms. Smith will want to address before she gets any older.” He handed back the poster. “Sorry, Ms. Smith, the C-minus stands. Who’s next?”
Another student stepped to the front—an eager-looking young man with a thick gauze bandage wrapped around his left forearm.
Nick looked him over. “We’re all yours, Mr. Jones—impress us.”
The young man quickly unwound the bandage and held his hand out palm-up. In the fleshy, hairless center of his forearm was a shallow gash about three inches long. The flesh around the wound was red and swollen, and in the center of the gash was a line of wriggling white maggots.
The class let out a gasp and the front row emptied out.
“My project is on maggot therapy,” the student announced. “Maggots have been used for hundreds of years to clean out wounds. They eat away the dead tissue and keep the wound from getting infected.”
Nick took the young man by the wrist and adjusted his glasses to get a better look. “Well, nobody can accuse you of coloring inside the
lines. I have to ask you, Mr. Jones, is this a self-inflicted wound? You didn’t do this to yourself just for my project, did you?”
“Nah. I got it skateboarding.”
“Good. I get in enough trouble around here.” Nick turned to the class; it looked as if someone had tipped the room and deposited everyone along the back wall. “Okay, gather around. Let’s see what we can learn from Mr. Jones.”
No one moved.
“Oh, c’mon,” Nick said. “You’ve all seen grosser things than this. You live in the dorms, don’t you?”
The class eased forward and surrounded their wounded classmate.
“All right,” Nick said to the young man. “Go on with your report.”
Mr. Jones looked at him. “Go on?”
Nick blinked. “Was that it?”
“Pretty much. It’s more of a . . . demonstration.”
“Where did you learn about maggot therapy, Mr. Jones?”
He grinned. “From the movie Gladiator. Remember? Maximus has his shoulder ripped open and it’s full of maggots, and this guy tells him, ‘Leave them—they clean out the wound.’”
“Uh-huh. Tell me, Mr. Jones, how much do you know about maggots?”
“Um.”
“A maggot is the larval form of a fly,” Nick said. “The gravid female looks for decaying matter to lay her eggs in. Some species prefer decaying flesh, like the ones on your arm—probably common green bottles. The eggs hatch into larvae and begin to feed. They have two little mouth hooks, one on either side, and they use them to scrape away the decaying tissue and stuff it into a kind of prestomach known as a ‘crop.’”
Nick looked at the group; their faces were slowly contorting. “Give me a break,” he said. “I’ve watched some of you eat—it isn’t much different. The maggots will pass through three stages of development called ‘instars.’ When they reach the final stage—when they’ve stuffed themselves on Mr. Jones’s decaying tissue—they’ll drop away and look for a secluded spot to pupate. A few days later they’ll emerge as adult flies. Tell me, Mr. Jones, where did you get the maggots for this little demonstration?”
“Well—we’ve got a lot of flies around our house.”
“And why do you suppose that is?”
The young man shrugged.
“It’s because you’re a male, Mr. Jones, and your decor probably includes a lot of decaying matter. So you just exposed your open wound to the air?”
“It took a long time,” he said solemnly. “I had to sit there for hours and act like I was dead.”
“Yes, I’ve seen you do that in class—you’re very convincing. And where did the flies come from?”
“Where did they come from?”
“Before they landed on you. You don’t think your arm was their first stop of the day, do you?”
He paused. “I never thought about it.”
“Flies aren’t picky eaters, Mr. Jones. Yours probably landed on a dog pile on the way into the house, then stopped off for dessert in that garbage can your roommates never empty. And every time the fly lands, it picks up bacteria on its feet and deposits them on the next place it visits. Take a close look at his wound, everybody—see the redness around the edges? Notice how swollen it is? That’s what doctors call infection, and Mr. Jones has managed to get himself a pretty good one.”
“Oops,” the boy mumbled.
“But let’s give Mr. Jones credit—he was half right. Maggot therapy has been used for hundreds of years, and maggots will eat away decaying tissue and clean out a wound—the procedure is known as cutaneous myiasis. But maggots used for this purpose are always laboratory-reared—otherwise they’ll spread the very infection they’re meant to prevent. Now I’m afraid we’ll have to excuse Mr. Jones so that he can visit our campus health center, where they’ll give him a massive dose of antibiotics and possibly a psychiatric evaluation.”
Mr. Jones looked chagrined. “I guess it was kind of stupid, huh.”
“No, it was just ignorant, and fortunately ignorance is curable. Next time check your facts first—and don’t do your research at Blockbuster Video. Gladiator got it wrong.”
“What about my grade?”
“I’m giving you a B-plus,” Nick said, “because you didn’t use glitter and because a guy like you is probably going to need a few breaks in life.” Nick looked at his watch. “Okay, that’s it for today. We’ll pick up with your projects next time—and please, no more death-defying ‘demonstrations.’”
As the students began to scatter Nick noticed that a much older man had been standing among them—Noah Ellison, chairman of the Department of Entomology.
“Nicholas,” the old man groaned, “please tell me that wound was not self-inflicted.”
“Of course not,” Nick said. “I cut him open myself. Cadavers are expensive.”
Noah’s expression didn’t change.
“I’m kidding, Noah. That was his entomology project—maggot therapy.”
“I take it the larvae were not sterile.”
“It’s a new technique. Apparently it’s very successful with gladiators.”
“You have to admire the boy’s spirit,” Noah said. “It will take him a long way.”
“It’s taking him to the health center right now. What can I do for you, Noah?”
“I have good news and I have bad news,” Noah said. “Knowing you as I do, I’m going to tell you the bad news first—otherwise you’ll get overly excited by the good news and refuse to sit still for the bad.”
“I’m not a child, Noah.”
“Of course you are, Nicholas. Intellectually you’re quite extraordinary, but let’s face it—when it comes to impulse control you’re essentially an adolescent.”
“Thanks, Dad. So what’s the news?”
“The bad news is: The entomology department is hosting a reception for incoming graduate students and we’re encouraging our faculty to attend—all of our faculty.”
Nick let out a moan. “Why me? You know I despise things like that.”
“This is their first introduction to our department, Nicholas. We’re making an effort to give our department a human face.”
“Our department should have an insect face,” Nick said. “If they wanted a smiley face, they should have enrolled in the humanities.”
“Nicholas—for some of them it’s their first introduction to our nation. We have several foreign graduate students every year, you know. Who is there to greet them when they arrive? Who helps their wives and children settle in? Who tells them, ‘Welcome to America’?”
“Doesn’t the government take care of that? What are we paying taxes for?”
“Now you’re just being silly. What does this really require of you?”
“In terms of physical energy or emotional trauma?”
“Nicholas.”
“Okay, Noah, I give up. I’ll be there.”
“In body and in spirit.”
“That I can’t promise.”
“Nicholas.”
“Oh, all right—I’ll do my best. Now what’s the good news?”
“Our office just received a phone call from the Sampson County sheriff’s department. It seems a man has been murdered there, and they’re requesting the assistance of a forensic entomologist. They specifically asked for you—not that there are many options. Sampson County is about—”
“I know where it is, Noah. How long ago did they call?”
“About an hour.”
“Do you have an address?”
Noah held out a slip of paper.
Nick snatched it from his hand and hurried for the door. “Why didn’t you tell me this in the first place?”
Noah watched as the door slammed behind him. “That’s why,” he said.
3
The body sprawled facedown in the dirt between the long rows of bushy green shrubs. The victim’s arms lay at his sides with the palms facing up, indicating that the man had made no attempt to break his fall.
“Dead bef
ore he hit the ground,” the Sampson County detective said.
“At least unconscious,” Nick replied. “Have you got a name?”
“Massino,” he said. “Call me Danny.”
“I meant the victim.”
“Oh. His name is Severenson—Michael Severenson. This is his farm. How long you figure he’s been out here?”
“Quick guess? Three days, possibly four. It’s a little hard to tell because the body’s been shaded by these plants. If he was lying in the direct sun this time of year, he’d be a lot further along.”
The furrow was no more than thirty inches wide, allowing the two men barely enough room to kneel—Nick at the victim’s feet and the detective at the head, with the overhanging branches brushing against their arms.
“What kind of a farm did you say this is?”
“Tomatoes, mostly—one of those organic places. You know—” He lifted his little finger and wiggled it.
Nick blinked at the detective. When he did, his huge brown orbs vanished behind his lenses and reappeared an instant later. “I’m not following you.”
“You know, one of those froufrou places. Back to nature—no bug spray, no chemicals, nothing but dear old Mother Earth. I’ll bet this guy never thought he’d end up fertilizing his own plants—talk about organic.”
“The human body makes excellent fertilizer,” Nick said. “The soft tissues contain carbon and nitrogen, and the bones are a good source of calcium and phosphorus. It’s like a slow-release fertilizer, really, since the body decomposes over a period of—” Nick noticed a sudden silence and looked up.
“I was kidding,” Massino said.
“Oh.”
Nick went back to the body again. There appeared to be two bullet holes near the center of the back, one on either side of the spine. “Have your forensic techs got everything they need here?”
“Yeah, they’re done.”
Nick worked two gloved fingers into the holes in the victim’s khaki shirt and carefully ripped the fabric open, exposing the skin. The bullet holes were spaced just an inch or two apart, and the wounds were already heavily infested with maggots. He studied the placement of the bullet holes. “Pretty good marksmanship,” he said.