In the quiet she heard an unfamiliar sound. It was coming from behind a heavily leafed bush before her. It was a rustling of leaves accompanied by a hissing Kim had never known before. With curiosity, the girl spread the bush apart with her hands, wincing at sharp thorns that drew spots of blood.
Kim peered into the gloom. The noise might be a baby bird fallen from its nest, or a baby rabbit, or a chipmunk caught in a crevice—though she had never heard such hissing from any of those friendly animals.
She decided she would go back and tell her father when she heard her brother calling triumphantly through the trees, “Hey, Dad, betcha Kim can’t beat this load!”
The bravado of it stung Kim with an anger that steeled her purpose. She lowered her head and butted her way obstinately toward the sibilant sound. She came to a half clearing where there was a little more light. It fell on a gleaming jewel lying in the leaves before the child’s astonished eyes. Directly on top of a heap of leaves there was an iridescent shell, longer than her longest finger, which scintillated like treasure in a ray of sunlight.
It was unlike any shell she had ever seen on the beaches. The delighted girl leaned over, her face near the object. Her lustrous eyes, wide with guileless curiosity, were scarcely an inch above the shining shell when she sensed that it was alive. She bent more closely, studying it intently. It was hard to make out in the shifting light, but from the front of the thing there emerged two antennae, like those she’d seen on crabs and lobsters, though smaller.
The shell shifted slightly in the leaves, and the antennae, thrust in her direction, seemed to be reaching up toward her eyes. She moved her head back quickly.
What kind of creature was under the pretty shell, Kim wondered. As she reached her fingers out to turn it over a sharp hiss issued from whatever it was. Her hand jerked away. Fear prickled her spine. “I just want to see,” the child murmured indignantly. “I’m not going to hurt you, you know!” She reached for the shell obstinately. This time something flashed out so quickly she hardly saw it. But she felt the sting, and tumbled away. Lying in the leaves, she stared at her hand and saw blood running along her finger.
Angry now, Kim crawled forward once more. The tarnation thing had dared to bite her! She bent to examine it again, but more cautiously now, ready to hop back if it pulled any more tricks. Then she realized that another “whatever-it-was” had appeared through the leaves. And another, and another. There were antennae waving all about, encircling her.
At once, the child was tingling with a primal fear. This wasn’t a game she liked! She started away, then decided to go back. She would take one of the things to show her parents, and put David in his place. She reached down determinedly with the hand that had not been stung.
When she lifted the thing into the ray of sunlight to observe it more closely, it seemed to go dead.
With her small fingers, Kim gently stroked the shiny shell, and saw the iridescent color came from the folded wings. This creature didn’t look like a beetle at all. It was—she couldn’t believe her eyes—a roach! She said it aloud: “Cock-a-roach!”
But so big!
Nobody in the world had ever seen a cock-a-roach this size! It was a giant! It was a cock-a-roach from the kitchen of the giant in Jack and the Beanstalk!
Kim began to giggle as she made up a story about the strange bug climbing down the beanstalk and getting lost in the Yarkie woods.
She wondered why it was so still: Had she stunned it picking it up? Was it afraid of the sunlight? She knew that cock-a-roaches liked to stay in the dark cracks at home.
The girl looked at the great insect with growing curiosity. Had this bug bitten her? It looked so nice, not at all anything to be afraid of. She lifted it higher, closer to her eyes to see it better.
“Kim!” It was her father, angry-sounding. His voice startled her and the bug dropped out of her grasp.
“I found something, Daddy! Come and see!”
Reed Brockshaw grabbed his daughter in his arms. “Are you all right?”
Kim pointed at the leaves. “Look at the shells there!” But before her father could turn his eyes, the girl saw the glinting surfaces vanish. She pouted. “They’re down in the leaves!” She didn’t want her father to think she hadn’t told the truth. “Cock-a-roaches! Look at my finger!” She lifted her incontrovertible evidence. “It even bit me. See the blood?”
The man started away with the girl against his chest. “We’ll put something on that. Does it hurt, honey?”
“No.” Her father smelled of sun and tanning lotion, and love, and she hugged him hard.
To his wife, Reed Brockshaw said, “Kim stuck her finger on a thorn. Put a Band-Aid on it . . .”
Kim spoke indignantly. “It wasn’t any thorn! A cock-a-roach as big as a house bit me!”
“Oh, you,” her brother said predictably, “always making things up!”
FOUR
Captain Elias Johnson was on the sheriff’s official phone, finishing his call to his son-in-law in Cambridge. The circle of men was waiting respectfully. At the ancient, worn oak desk sat Amos Tarbell, sheriff of Yarkie Island. He was a self-contained man of forty-two, of medium height, but with the stocky strength of a man who had sailed freighters around the world. His face was like his body, strong and solid. His eyes were sharp with looking into distances and into people. Few on Yarkie fooled with Amos Tarbell.
The noon whistle was blowing at the volunteer firehouse across the street when Johnson finished on the phone. Aside from Craig and Amos, two others were present. Russell Homer was a slight fellow, with a narrow, bony face but a quick and willing smile. His life had been uphill on Yarkie, his ineffectual mother dead when he was an infant, his father the scorned town drunk. He had been brought up by an aunt who was strict even by island standards. He wore an Ahab-type beard to look older, respectable. He knew his was the dirtiest job in town, except for the fish-cleaning shed. Russell didn’t mind. Riding the yellow bulldozer at the dump, he dreamed his dream, oblivious of the stink, the screaming gulls, the scurrying rats, the streaming roaches. He was saving for the day he would put a payment down for a machine of his own and hire it out on Yarkie. He would be his own boss, his young wife and son would be invited to any home on the island, even Hildie Cannon’s on High Ridge, the cream of the cream.
Right now Russell Homer sat hunched over, feeling guilty for the mess at the dump. Maybe he didn’t spread the new chemicals correctly. He kept repeating a private prayer that the Harvard people could fix things fast. It was lucky they had Elias Johnson who could put them in touch with that kind of help and authority.
Stephen Scott, seated next to Homer, was a fat man who always seemed to be puffing for breath even when he was still. He was the Yankee entrepreneur of Yarkie, a selectman like Johnson, and persuasive enough even to get the votes for his marina project. He could be greedy, but people also knew he often helped poor families anonymously. It was a typical Yankee contradiction.
Ben Dorset entered the office just as Elias Johnson began his report. Dorset, a lanky, blond man of thirty, was the first deputy sheriff and assistant fire chief under Craig Soaras. He had come from the firehouse where, following Johnson’s instructions, the pumper truck was now leaving to crisscross Yarkie with a warning that High Ridge Woods were out of bounds, being sprayed.
Elias Johnson spoke crisply, “Richard says he can’t tell us anything till he knows more, but he agrees the new poisons may be the trouble. He thinks that the rats may try to get out of the dump, so, Amos, we’d better put some men with guns at the spit out there, where it narrows, and have them shoot any buggers they see. At night we’ll set up flares.”
“Right!” the sheriff agreed promptly.
“Meantime, we’re in luck. Richard’s top assistant, a Dr. Peter Hubbard, is free to come out pronto. Hubbard is on his way to Logan right now to catch the plane for Chatham, he’ll be here early this afternoon. We need someone to go over to Chatham for him
. . .”
Stephen Scott said at once, “Reed can take my Bertram!” Everyone understood the spirit of the offer. The Bertram craft was “the gold-plated yacht,” Scott’s pride. It was the fastest boat around, could make the ten miles in less than half an hour even in rough water. “Where is Reed?” Scott thought to ask.
Craig Soaras remembered it was Brockshaw’s day off, and that his family had planned to picnic around East Beach. “I’ll find him,” Craig volunteered. He himself would have enjoyed the rare opportunity to sail the Bertram, but he knew that Scott would prefer to have his own man at the wheel.
Johnson said impatiently, “Okay! Whoever goes to Chatham, have him ask for Dr. Peter Hubbard.” He stood up abruptly, clearing his throat. “Now Craig and I will go find Sharky and bury him.”
“Damn shame!” the sheriff murmured. “That was a real nice pup.”
Scott spoke to the group quietly but with power. “And we all keep this on the quiet side, fellows, right?” The men comprehended his concern without further explanation; their grim faces told him so around the room.
Craig Soaras was opening the door for Elias Johnson to leave when a middle-aged woman with two girls swept into the office, fuming with outrage. Hilda Cannon was a widow, the doyen of one of the oldest of the old Yarkie families, and she considered the sheriff’s office an extension of her own home. She and her twin daughters, fifteen-year-old Rebecca and Ruth, filled the room with their bulk and wrath. The woman was in mid-shout before the door closed, and Johnson turned back to hear her complaint.
Mrs. Cannon shook a sausage-like finger under the sheriff’s nose. She vociferated, “I warned you, Amos, but would you listen to me?” The woman pivoted to Johnson as her oldest friend. “Elias, I told him to run those hoodlums off the first day! We don’t need layabouts and drifters on this island!”
Amos Tarbell’s neck swelled against the tight collar of his starched tan uniform. “And I told you Yarkie is still under the United States Constitution!” It was now the sheriff who looked to Johnson for confirmation. “We may not like those three fellows, but they have their civil rights too, you know.”
Hilda Cannon’s eves bulged. “What about my girls’ constitutional rights?”
Amos Tarbell addressed the two girls directly. “Those men touch you, Ruth? They talk out of the way to you, Rebecca?”
The girls started to giggle, and their mother herded them behind her back. “They are embarrassed enough! I’ll tell you what those hooligans dared to do! They exposed themselves to my girls! They are out there right now in the cove by Rock Cliff stark naked!”
The old captain said dryly, “Well, the girls didn’t have to look, did they?”
The woman was taken aback. “Are you standing up for those bums?”
The man continued. “It’s a steep hike up to where you can see that cove, Hildie . . .”
Mrs. Cannon whirled on the sheriff. “You put those hoodlums in jail where they belong!”
The sheriff looked to Johnson and Scott. “Do we have an ordinance against nude bathing?”
Both village officials had to recall. Johnson said, “Don’t think we ever got around to that.”
“Never had that particular problem come up,” Scott allowed.
Amos Tarbell soothed Hilda Cannon’s ruffled feathers. “I’ll go down there and get them dressed.”
“Off this island!” she insisted, huffing out with her daughters.
FIVE
While Elias Johnson and Craig Soaras were startling into the woods to get Sharky’s body for burial, three nude men were taking their ease on the secluded beach they had discovered below one of Yarkie’s cliffs. The rocks formed a wall on one side, and the forest was protective on the other.
The noon sun was baking their skin and Angel Dust was baking their brains. One of the three suddenly jumped to his feet. His young naked male body was handsome though his face was puffy and slack. At eighteen, he looked thirty and more. He was gasping wildly for air and shouting, “I’m a fish! No wonder I can’t breathe! Come on, Bo! Come on, Tony!” His mouth gulped as he pounded across the sand and plunged beneath the waves before his companions could take in what was happening.
The man named Bo opened one eye. “What’s the shit, Tony?” His speech was drug-slurred and muffled by the heavy black beard he wore.
His companion grunted out of his own fog, “Alex gone to take a piss.”
Bo smirked. “My ass. He gone to whack off.”
The two eased back into their cradle of sun, drowsiness, and sea sounds. Neither one noted that no head broke the surface where their friend had dived.
Looking down at the men from the top of the rise, Amos Tarbell found it hard to accept that the zombie-like forms were probably of good families, with rewarding careers open to them. They were the results of modern permissiveness, he thought—at home, in school, in a world of eroded values. It had pithed their characters as surely as something evil had pithed the eyes of Elias Johnson’s dog that morning.
Amos Tarbell and Ben Dorset slid down the rocks and raced into the water past the two prone bodies. The sheriff yelled, “Don’t you bastards realize your buddy is drowning!”
The two sat up in the sand, blinking vaguely at the disturbance. Bo laughed to Tony, the younger, slighter figure. “Wild shit here, man.”
But the two displayed a befuddled interest when the sheriff and his deputy came ashore with the inert body of their friend. Amos Tarbell began artificial respiration. The man named Tony protested, “Hey, this guy is reaming Alex!”
The two started angrily for the sheriff, but Ben Dorset pulled his gun. “Just quiet down, and nobody’ll get hurt.” He put Bo’s hands behind his back and slipped handcuffs on.
“Hey, man, we ain’t done nothing!”
The younger one started to run, but Dorset tripped him and handcuffed him as well.
Bo complained, “How the fuck we supposed to get dressed with our hands behind our back?”
Amos Tarbell called to Dorset. “This one’s coming around. Radio the office for a boat—”
Tony whispered to Bo, “They’re fuzz, man! I can’t take another bust!” With that, while Ben Dorset was preparing his walkie-talkie, the man darted away into the forest. His bearded friend lumbered after him.
Ben Dorset started to follow, but Tarbell stopped him. “Don’t worry about them.” Working on the near-drowned figure, the sheriff couldn’t help smiling at the picture of two naked fellows, with their hands locked behind, trying to climb up to the ridge through the tangled thickets. He said, “We’ll pick them up later.”
There was a crash from the trees and a sharp cry. It was Tony’s voice, alarmed. “Bo! I can’t get up!”
There was no answer.
“Bo! Where the hell are you?”
The only sound was a loud hissing noise. Both the sheriff and his deputy looked toward the woods. “What the hell was that?” Dorset said.
The cry behind them became a scream. “Bo, come back!”
The scream turned to a burst of horror. “My foot! Christ, something is eating my foot!”
Ben Dorset said uneasily, “Hey, Amos, you think—”
“The rats? No. We’re too far from the dump. He’s just having a bad trip.”
The voice in the woods soared into an inhuman screech. “My cock! Holy Jesus God! It’s biting my cock!”
Ben Dorset nodded to the sheriff. “Bad trip.” He’d learned about drugs in police school. It was the fellow on the beach who needed their help—he looked like he’d swallowed the ocean.
The screeching exploded into a staccato of agony. “My eyes, Bo! I can’t see!”
The deputy got up. “I better go take a look in there, Amos.”
The sheriff shrugged. “If it’ll make you feel better.”
Sprawled where he had tripped in the Yarkie trees, Tony Carlucci was anguishedly telling himself it was just an evil trip—the flitting shapes on his body were unreal, like the d.t.’s. T
he nails driving into his ears, the teeth tearing his flesh, they were the hallucinations of bad shit.
The stinging up his rectum—how could that be real!
The man flung himself about, legs flailing. He bucked and twisted and squirmed. Without the use of his hands, he was helpless. But he groaned to himself that he was tough stuff—whatever this shit was, he would beat it!
Then Tony Carlucci could swear some feathery things were touching his lips, almost like tiny kisses. For a moment it was pleasant, but then there were sharp pins stabbing his mouth, and he could feel bugs crawling between his lips. The man gagged and clamped his teeth against them, until the pain of flesh being eaten from his bones made him cry out. In that instant, his open mouth was crammed with hissing insects. In another instant, his throat was invaded with a vibrating mass of huge, evil-smelling bugs he could not make out. The man gulped reflexively, swallowed against his will, and spewed out, all at once, it seemed. He felt hot blood spilling from his throat, pouring through his lips which were being chewed away to the bone of his jaws. He cried, soundlessly now, “Oh, God, please help me!”
In the depths of his addled brain, the man was only too aware that this was no bad dream. Searing irons had burned out his eyes. Spikes were splitting his skull. His brain itself was being chewed from within by razor teeth. This was a “trip” from which he would never return.
Tony Carlucci knew he was dying, and it was not his past that flashed before him but the future he would never have. He wanted to plead that the drugs had only been kid stuff, his quitting school only macho wild oats, he had always intended to be straight, join his father’s grocery, marry, have kids.
Have kids? His cock and his balls had been chewed away on this crazy island!
Nerves in the man’s head were jangling like fireworks. He felt lightning forking out of the blackness of his eyes. Bugs were burrowing through his brain. Their bites were like flints striking fire in his skull. The edges of his brain were browning and curling up, frying in pain. And buzz saws below were cutting his body apart, separating his limbs, slicing away chunks of his organs.
The Nest Page 3