The Nest

by Gregory A. Douglas

  Wanda Lindstrom was answering his concern. “I’ve checked every cover, Peter. Absolutely tight, and too heavy even for these beasts. The lips go down a full half-­inch.”

  Hubbard frowned. “But not ground glass.”

  The woman said firmly, “Any cockroach that can beat those covers deserves to get out!”

  The scientist smiled at her. “Not near me, please!”

  She was mollified a little, and admitted, “I’d feel safer with the screw tops, myself.”

  They returned to their silent examination of the roach carcasses before them. After a full hour, Wanda Lindstrom straightened. She rubbed the back of her neck, wincing. “My neck’s killing me again, Peter. One of your better massages, please?”

  “My pleasure.” Hubbard put down his scalpel. His strong fingers went familiarly to her neck, and he pressed gently into the stiffened muscles.

  The woman sighed with pleasure, but spoke of their work. “Do you notice a decided enlargement of the Malpighian tubules, in both the male and female roaches?” Her eyes closed blissfully.

  Continuing the massage, Hubbard said, “Yes. I’ve been thinking about that. They may be using the excretory system rather than other glands to send out the pheromonic signals.”

  There was another sigh of relieved tension from the woman. “It’s a real possibility, I’d say.”

  His fingers pressed harder. “We’d need more powerful microscopes to be sure.”

  “M-­m-­m!—It doesn’t really matter, though. I mean, we’ve established an unusual number of pheromonic chemicals already.” Dr. Lindstrom opened her eyes and indicated the apparatus containing the variety of chemical tests proceeding all around them. She turned to face him, eyes closed again. She sighed deeply. “Oh, that’s good, Peter . . .”

  The man rotated his fingers into her shoulders. Her head bent closer toward his chest. Peter Hubbard smelled the woman’s hair beneath his nose. It held a trace of sweet perfume. His mind went back to the one time, after Christmas drinks at a faculty party, when he had taken her home and they had almost—

  The man concentrated on the massage. The neck muscles were stiff as a board. Elizabeth Carr, he mused, would be soft and yielding under his touch. He was glad for the break in the dissection, and he let his thoughts spiral. Women should be soft. He was old-­fashioned about that.

  Wanda Lindstrom looked up with misty eyes. “You always make me feel like purring.”

  “Long practice, after all,” Hubbard laughed companionably.

  What the woman said came as a surprise to him. “I like Elizabeth Carr.” In the hovering silence that followed, an explanation seemed necessary, a word to indicate she was making no personal comment about Peter Hubbard’s relationships with anyone else in the world. “I mean, whenever I’ve seen her in Cambridge, she seemed—oh, a princess character. Here she’s been cleaning like a housemaid, peeling potatoes without a fuss.”

  “You’ve had her wrong. She is good people,” Peter Hubbard said, dropping his hands.

  Wanda Lindstrom returned to her place, her voice quickly clinical again. “I’ve dissected out the brain and ganglia on this specimen. I suspect a high order of neuronal function. I’d guess we’ll find noradrenaline, adrenaline, and neurosecretory cells with granules making kinetic metabolic hormones . . .”

  Hubbard responded in the same business-­like tone: “Morphogenetic controls on growth and development, abnormally advanced. Yes.” He studied his own specimen. “I would say these roaches can do damn near everything but think!” He paused, then declared, “And maybe even that, in their own way . . .”

  “Well, I wouldn’t go quite that far,” the woman considered.

  The two scientists became so absorbed in their dialogue that they did not observe what was happening on a shelf behind them. Had they been looking at the container set aside for the largest group of roaches, they would have witnessed a remarkable feat. An ingenious escape effort was under way. It was an effort requiring the kind of “thinking” Peter Hubbard had just anticipated—a plan requiring common purpose, common effort in an amazing way.

  The scientists were sincere and correct in their caution against anthropomorphism, but both Peter and Wanda had themselves described insect colonies acting with seeming intelligence, and an intercommunication that paralleled some human behavior. Wanda Lindstrom would have been reminded instantly of the time she had watched ants cross a water obstacle by forming a bridge of individual insects. It was a living construction, with one ant crawling on top of another and clinging to the preceding body while another ant repeated the process. The linkage of clasped forms became the core of reinforcing strands of ants, until it was strong enough for the whole tribe to use as a span.

  Similarly, rats were known to ascend out of deep holes by forming a ladder of their bodies.

  The Yarkie roaches in the specimen jar were now engineering just such a ladder device. They were at the last inch up the side of the jar, reaching toward the glass cover. Although the lid was tight, the roaches atop the living ladder were beginning to loosen it little by little. Whatever their drive, the comparative effort among men would have been superhuman. The insects worked silently, as if fearing that any noise would attract attention from their huge white Enemies across the room.

  Then it somehow became clear to the roaches that a single ladder could only tilt the lid, making it stick harder on the opposite side. Promptly, a second ladder was started at the other end. Finally, together, the leading cockroaches—ones with the strongest heads, apparently—lifted in concert.

  And the lid moved up, evenly.

  It moved only a fraction of an inch each time, but with primordial patience the monster insects continued the task—until their combined strength and cunning actually raised the glass cover sufficiently.

  But their intelligence, if such it was, did not foresee that their success would bring a shattering noise.

  Hubbard and Lindstrom took in the threat in a moment. A great cockroach with a five-­inch wing expanse was already flying at the man’s eyes. Hubbard ducked in the nick of time, and Wanda Lindstrom batted the roach to the floor where she ground it savagely under her heel.

  Other roaches were crawling up the living ladders and scrambling out of captivity. Not all were the flying type. They sat on the open shelf sifting the air for the scent of the Enemy. Hubbard shouted to the horrified woman to escape out of the room. He himself rushed for another lid.

  A flying roach landed squarely on Peter Hubbard’s nose. Without thinking, he smashed his face hard with his open palm. It killed the roach, but squirted its smashed innards over his cheeks, sending a stinging chemical into his eyes. He stood stunned, temporarily blinded, unable to defend himself against the roach threats now coming more fiercely from the opened glass container.

  Wanda Lindstrom saw there were only moments to act before the full scores of roaches sallied out of the jar and set upon them both. She shoved Hubbard out of her way to rush to a steaming kettle nearby, and dashed back with it to the shelf, pouring the boiling chemical on the roaches crawling and hopping about. Watching them shrivel, she did not notice when two huge roaches, as if teamed, winged up and struck at her eyes. The woman shrieked with the abrupt pain and, in the shock of the assault, dropped the utensil. Scalding liquid skinned her feet in an instant.

  Peter Hubbard, wiping out his eyes, leaped to help his besieged colleague. Roaches were already tearing at her blistering legs, their mandibles peeling off the burned flesh easily, their teeth avidly chewing the soft, blood-­oozing tissues. Wanda Lindstrom slumped to the floor, moaning. Dropping beside her, Hubbard tried to pick away the storming cockroaches. He smashed a few, but many clung to the running wounds. For the moment, the gorging insects disregarded the man; the open flesh was easier to get at, and they were hungry after their long fast.

  Wanda Lindstrom cried at him indistinctly, “It’s too late, Peter! Don’t let them get you!”

  He still tried to aid her. The insect bodies b
ecame a moving blotch over her face. Hubbard tried to keep the roaches off, but he saw one already crawling up into her nose, others violating her ears, and both her eyes had been taken at the first assault. The woman kicked Hubbard away with her burned, torn feet. “Get out, Peter!” Her scream gurgled through globs of blood streaking her chin, running down her throat into the cleft between her breasts. The white lab coat was smeared crimson. He saw she was right.

  Peter Hubbard started to fumble his way out, but was overcome with nausea. As he helplessly vomited, he thought how it was one thing to examine a chewed dog ear under a microscope, to hear of the abomination on Dickens Point, but it was intolerable to watch his companion choking to death because cockroaches were crammed in her nose and throat. It was one thing to dissect an insect-­lacerated rabbit and another to see these scurfy roaches drill into the body of his dear and cherished friend, Wanda Lindstrom.

  Wanda could have escaped, Hubbard considered bitterly as he bent again in his vomiting. She could easily have made it to the door when that one roach had landed on his face. But she had stayed in the lab, gone for the boiling liquid, consciously risked her life to save him.

  And he had been unable to save her. She lay still now, mercifully fainted or, better, quiet in the clemency of death.

  Now, Hubbard realized abruptly, roaches were lurching toward him, attracted by the stink of his sickness. He had to save himself! He was Yarkie’s one hope for now. He looked about desperately for the dry-­ice tanks, then realized that in the haste of the men, the weapons had been left in the kitchen shed. Could he get out at all?

  Not if the roaches could help it!

  They had sensed him again. Through his still-­fogged eyes, he could make out hazy forms crawling toward his shoes. Sickeningly, there were new wings fanning around his head. With his hands up, Hubbard made for the door. With only half-­vision, he stumbled into a crate from which Wanda had been taking fresh apparatus. He tripped. As he flung his arms out to regain his balance, the flailing kept the flying roaches from him. He stamped at others on the floor, and slid frighteningly on the slippery mess they made, almost going down.

  He grabbed a table, clung to it, breathing heavily, wishing his eyes would clear. He needed to get to the sink and water. But if he stumbled or skidded again he might fall, and if he fell they would be over him in an instant.

  The kitchen door flew open. After hearing the commotion in the laboratory, it had taken Elizabeth minutes to free a carbon dioxide extinguisher from the packs tied in the shed. She had realized at once what must have happened. Now she burst into the room with the black tank nozzle held out like a gun, her legs apart, ready to let loose a dry-­ice bombardment.

  She took in the scene immediately, and pressed the trigger violently. The white, freezing stream blasted onto the roaches circling the floor threatening Hubbard.

  Elizabeth Carr had no time for the revulsion that wrenched her insides when she saw Wanda Lindstrom, with cockroaches invading the bloodied corpse. She turned the spray on the bugs with new imprecations. She saw the woman was gone, the dry ice could do her no harm now. As the insects died, Elizabeth heard herself shrilling, “Come on, you spawn of hell! Just come after me, damn you!”

  Behind her came Bonnie’s uncertain voice. “What’s happening, Liz?”

  Elizabeth screamed hoarsely, “Get out, Bonnie! Close the goddamn door!”

  But Bonnie was beside her friend, pulling away a roach that had reached Elizabeth’s ear. The black woman warned frantically, “They’re getting at you, Liz!”

  Peter Hubbard was at the lab sink, furiously trying to get his eyes clear. But water seemed to have been a mistake. Whatever chemical the roach had left on his face made an acid that blurred his vision rather than clearing it. He had to stand by helplessly while the two women were trying to fight off the insects.

  Bonnie Taylor went down on her knees in a reflex of fury, and was chopping at every roach within reach with the kitchen knife she held in her hand. With each hacking blow she gave out a loud grunt of satisfaction as the sharp blade slashed giant roaches into pieces. She shuddered in new horror when she saw both pieces of a roach body continue to scuttle about for a moment after being sliced apart.

  Peter Hubbard blinked his eyes hard, willing them to recover. Thankfully, the effects of the chemical began to wear off. He still could not see clearly, but at least could make out the figures of Elizabeth and Bonnie, and saw the furious contest they were in. There were still scores of roaches attacking, each one a hideous threat of blindness and worse.

  Hubbard grabbed Bonnie from her knees. “Get two more of the tanks, fast!” She obeyed swiftly. To Elizabeth, Hubbard barked anxiously, “Are you all right, Liz?”

  “A few bites, but okay, I think!” Elizabeth panted. “You?”

  For answer, the man grabbed the tank from her. “Give me that and get back inside with Bonnie!”

  Elizabeth handed the tank over. As it left her hands, she was seized with a tremor. The ordeal had stimulated her to physical action equal to her fury. Now horror took over, searing every last nerve. The tears came as she took in Wanda Lindstrom’s ravaged face—that beautiful face ripped like a rag—and the stare of the blank eye sockets. Bright, intelligent, caring human eyes only minutes ago!

  Elizabeth ran for the kitchen to help Bonnie bring more tanks. But the floor was slippery now with melting dry ice as well as gore, and she lost her balance. She landed on her buttocks with a bump that drove the wind out of her.

  Hubbard cried out, aiming his tank near her, “Hurry up! Get into the kitchen!” He saw insects circling her fallen body at once. They were too close to Elizabeth to permit the use of the tank.

  Crawling on her knees, in her panic the woman kept slipping and sliding like a clown. But it was not funny in any way. Sheer terror was on her face as she saw three great roaches nipping at her ankle, the blood spreading quickly on her skin.

  “Peter!” Her voice came out as a croak of despair rather than a cry for help.

  Hubbard dropped his tank and stepped carefully to Elizabeth. Disregarding the danger to himself, he deliberately picked off the attacking roaches, one by one. They punctured his fingers and drew his blood, but he did not stop.

  Bonnie came in again, joining the laboratory battle. “Throw those bugs right here!” she yelled. “I’ll squirt the motherfuckers to death!”

  Peter Hubbard was as human as any of them. When he had lifted Elizabeth safely to her feet, he carefully placed each roach where he could stamp on it with his heavy boot. He wanted the personal revenge of hearing their fat bodies pop and break under his foot. It could not help Wanda Lindstrom, or the other victims, but it could express the surging hatred he felt for these harpies, these scum of Nature. It was not a scientist’s reaction; it was a man’s.

  He guided Elizabeth gently while Bonnie covered them both with her tank. In the kitchen, Hubbard cleansed the woman’s bites, then left Bonnie with Elizabeth and went back into the laboratory for his grim, necessary task. With dry-­ice flowing, he killed every escaped roach he could see. At Wanda Lindstrom’s body, he iced to death every brown-­black insect that was violating the woman. His face was a mask of primitive malevolence.

  When nothing more moved near Wanda Lindstrom, he knelt to roll the body over. As he suspected there were still roaches at work, eating at her back, masticating her flesh. With his jaws biting until his teeth hurt, Hubbard ragingly sprayed the dry ice to murder them all. Finally, every insect was belly up, legs stiff wires in death. Wanda Lindstrom’s enemies were frozen and gone.

  Peter Hubbard searched the room thoroughly for any other possible loose insects. He saw none he hadn’t killed. He found gripper’s tape in a carton and strongly sealed the lids of every remaining specimen jar—the bloody pariahs would not repeat their escape. As he worked grimly on, he thought he should have been a theologian rather than a biologist. Maybe then he would understand how Nature, or God, or Whatever could create this blind vicious hunger to so wretche
dly destroy a woman like Wanda Lindstrom.

  Looking down, above the torn body, the dry-­ice tank hanging from his weary hand, the scientist cried for her, for all of them.

  THREE

  There would be grief later on at the memorial services for Wanda Lindstrom held in Cambridge, but nothing then would match the outpouring of sorrow of the Yarkie men returning from High Ridge that night after the laboratory debacle. With the help of new rain, the second flare-­up of fire in the woods had been controlled without too much difficulty. Now the men shared the bitterness of fellow soldiers beside a fallen comrade.

  This woman, so different from all of them, had come to aid Yarkie, and she had helped generously, without the reserve that might have been expected. She had not needed to trek to the kettle hole searching for the roaches with them. She had not needed to work so arduously in the lab. She had not needed to respond so immediately to Hubbard’s summons in the first place. Far from being cold or distant, she had stood with them shoulder to shoulder. And from what they learned now, she had just sacrificed her life to save Peter Hubbard’s. The Yarkie men gave Wanda Lindstrom their highest accolade—she was “topnotch crew.”

  At times like this the least said among them, the best. The sheriff quietly asked Craig to make a coffin. Meantime, Elizabeth and Bonnie had, with aching tenderness, wrapped the woman’s broken body in old curtains. The shroud was not clean, but it covered the terrible sight. The men, as if in a funeral procession, reverently carried the body to the empty second-­floor room and laid it on the sandy floor until the officials could decide how to handle the matter the next morning.

  When Elizabeth called the Task Force to dinner, they ate without appetite. In the general quiet, they became conscious of the noisy way Russell Homer stowed away his food. He didn’t slurp, but he bent over his plate and sucked food into his mouth, swallowing with an audible gulp. It was a little irritating, but at the same time somehow comforting, a reminder of normal Yarkie days when there was nothing more troublesome to be worrying about than one’s manners and what herbs to put in a fish chowder.