The Nest

by Gregory A. Douglas

  The sheriff heard Elias Johnson calling desperately for him to leave. “Amos! We want to burn the place fast, while they’re all inside!”

  The sheriff gave the nearest roaches one more deadly shot of his dry ice, and leaped through the window head first, heedless of the jagged glass. He jumped to his feet to help Johnson, Homer, and Hubbard as soon as he understood what they were up to. They were stationing themselves around the lighthouse, carrying gasoline cans.

  “All at once!” Elias Johnson cried. “Splash her now!” Johnson lit a flare and threw it into the lighthouse. The explosions of orange-­red flame showed droves of cockroaches crawling out on the window frames coming after the people. The blaze caught them. Some were soaked with gasoline and split open with a hard percussion that had the Yarkie men cheering. To them, the flaring up of the roach legion was a burning flag of revenge, a fire banner of reprisal and retaliation. The conflagration stirred a sediment of savagery in them they did not know they owned.

  Cries of triumph came from Johnson, Tarbell, and Homer. Elias Johnson’s eyes were fiery orbs of his own wrath. Let this burning lighthouse and the incarceration of the roaches avenge the murders of Craig Soaras and Wanda Lindstrom, of everyone the killers had slaughtered and bereaved. The old man watched with a dark, unhidden exultation as the gasoline explosions ripped the building. Now the lighthouse was a different kind of beacon light, he thought truculently—now it was a marker of a different kind of succor and salvation for beleaguered people.

  They were wiping out the insects.

  SEVEN

  Leaving the flaming tower behind, in Johnson’s car speeding for the village, Bonnie Taylor was sobbing wretchedly in Elizabeth Carr’s arms.

  Peter Hubbard and Russell Homer were riding with the sheriff. In the long silence among them, it came to Amos Tarbell that if Hubbard had tried to escape first, he had a reason. The man was no coward. As if to let the scientist know he did not misunderstand, he made conversation. “You think we got all the roaches in there?”

  Peter Hubbard did not open his tired eyes. He was sick to death of the insects’ saturnalias of blood, of Wanda Lindstrom’s heartbreaking sacrifice, of the mindless annihilation of Craig Soaras, of all the lives pillaged by the Yarkie miscreations. It was a burden he had accepted as correctly belonging on his shoulders, but it had grown too heavy with terror and death, and he felt he was sagging under it. But he knew, too, that he must keep himself strong. At this point he was truly the only one who could help Yarkie before the killer insects became uncontainable. His reserve plan had a chance of succeeding. No matter how exhausted he was, he had to set it in motion. The scientist hugged the heavy red box to his chest, and glared at the roach container he was steadying between his feet on the floor of the car. His plan required both what was in the box and in the container . . .

  The sheriff was repeating the question.

  “No,” Hubbard had to answer. “If the roaches are organized the way I now believe, we will have burned up many of their fighters, maybe most of them. But the infestation still comes from a core on the island. I’m convinced of that absolutely. Until we get that core, this will go on and on.”

  Russell Homer said under his breath, “Jesus Christ, I don’t know how much more I can take.”

  “Me, too,” the sheriff admitted honestly.

  Peter Hubbard fell silent. It was necessary to think through once more the details of the next step he intended in this escalating battle against the killer cockroaches. What exactly were its chances of working? What were its risks?

  There would be time enough to tell the others of “Plan B” after they had all taken some breakfast, and after he had primed his “secret weapon.”

  They were lucky the Chatham police chief had been able to get his hands on what the plan required. And lucky that Craig Soaras had been able to bring it back to Yarkie without incident.

  The thought of Craig Soaras made Peter Hubbard even more determined to succeed. How refreshing it was to enter a world where honesty and decency were the order of the day. Oh, not that Yarkie was a paradise of angels. Of course these people had their faults, like everyone else. Yet their way of life was still based solidly on old, proven truths of getting along through mutual respect and tolerance. They wanted no handouts, no “free lunch.”

  Hubbard smiled to himself wryly. He knew he was drastically simplifying problems of enormous complexity. As a scientist he chided himself for doing so, but in his head he found himself believing, perhaps childishly, that the woes of the country would be much reduced if everyone was like Craig Soaras and his fellows.

  COUNTERATTACK

  ONE

  The bedraggled, half-­clothed group arrived at the Johnson house as dawn began to show the promise of a clear day. Their spirits did not match the lightening sky. Nature was a hypocrite. The arching sky was an inviting, cerulean innocence—“heaven” above. It was hard to remember the glowering blackness of yesterday’s storm. And harder to remember that the innocent morning somewhere harbored the murderous insects imperiling Yarkie.

  Peter Hubbard was concentrating on the Johnson living room, trying to clear his mind of the tragedies at the lighthouse. Elizabeth looked young and fragile in the skimpy cotton bathrobe in which she had escaped. She was going around refilling coffee mugs. The man thought how much the room’s simple elegance mirrored the character of the granddaughter who had come out of it.

  The chamber was large and square, paneled in pine. The fireplace was of wood, not marble, and it had a wooden mantel, a business-­like shelf without fuss or ornament. It was painted clean enamel white, in quiet contrast to the pewter-­gray walls.

  Cupboards held an assortment of milk glass behind square panes. Priceless pieces, Hubbard supposed. Yet, the chairs and sofas had a no-nonsense, homespun look—maple and walnut mixed unfashionably, with seats cushioned in faintly patterned muslins, for utility not show.

  The more dramatic contrast was a museum-­quality collection of treasures brought home over generations of overseas sailing and trading. As in other Yarkie homes, the Johnson sideboard held lacquer boxes of Chinese black and gold, along with carvings of ivory and alabaster. A gold-­leafed Buddha head commanded one corner of the room on a fluted column of black marble. A Japanese screen of soft golds and browns brought a distant landscape of rising mists into the New England room.

  These were lush notes against the basic austerity; yet nothing seemed incongruous or out of place, for every­thing reflected the actual experience of the people who had lived for so many years in this house, on this island. In the same way, Peter Hubbard mused, Elizabeth Carr held an exotic romantic appeal behind the sober gray of her straight New England gaze. She had grown into an arresting woman; and there was no incongruity, either, in the ardor he saw along with the intelligence in her deep-­set eyes.

  Elias Johnson began the necessary discussion. “One thing bothering me is whether we ought to tell the fellows in the firehouse what has been going on.”

  Stephen Scott, who had been called to the meeting, surrendered drearily. “I don’t see how we can keep it from them anymore.”

  Peter Hubbard disagreed. The men listened to him with quick respect. He had to be their leader now, not Johnson or Scott or the sheriff. He said, through the weariness and distress that creased his gaunt face, “I’d like to wait until we try one more way of getting at the heart of this. It’s a strategy I worked out with Dr. Lindstrom.”

  The man’s voice broke on the name of his slaughtered colleague. Elizabeth Carr was wrenched at his obvious desolation. There was no way she could console him. She could only offer the compassion and support of her new understanding, and pray that his “strategy” would bring them all new hope against hope. The only consolation for any of them would be the total destruction of the infernal nest, the utter extermination of the raging insects.

  Peter Hubbard was going on slowly, weightily. “I haven’t talked about this before because it introduces a new kind of risk.” His
voice grew louder and blunt as he disclosed his plan. “It involves the use of radioactive material.”

  The silence of the group’s response was a measure of their unpreparedness.

  Hubbard lifted the small red box he had not let out of his grasp. “That’s what I have in this box—a radioactive liquid.” He said quickly, “I can assure you that the amounts to be used are very small, and will be no real threat to any of us.”

  The staggered sheriff asked, “You mean, Peter, you’re going to put radioactive stuff in the nest when we find it?”

  “No. To exterminate them that way would require a quantity that might be dangerous, and could be spread all over the island if we weren’t entirely successful.” He paused, and resumed, “My thought is quite different.” He tapped the red box. “I plan to use this radioactivity to help us locate the nest . . .”

  “How in the world—?” Stephen Scott began. The others shushed him, keen to hear the scientist.

  “To explain it briefly, I am going to mix a radioactive salt with food for these roaches here.” Hubbard put a finger on the taped lid of the jar he had saved from the lighthouse laboratory. “I have purposely kept these devils hungry.” He eyed them narrowly. They were hyperactive, though it was morning. He judged they were ready for what he had in mind. “After these specimens have eaten radioactive food, I can follow them with a small Geiger counter I have here. My expectation is that they will head straight for their home base . . .”

  “Ingenious!” Elizabeth applauded.

  Amos Tarbell asked a sensible question. “How do you know what these damn things will do when you set them free? They might just as easily go for you!”

  “Well, look here,” the scientist reminded the group. “These fellows are in one corner with their heads pointing one way, just as we saw in the laboratory.” He rotated the jar as had been done the day before, and the roaches raced across to resume their compass-­pointing pattern. “After all the disturbances at the colony—forest fires, the loss of the fighter roaches we burned last night—I believe these roaches here are ‘magnetized.’ That is, I think the air is carrying unusually heavy pheromones pulling all the strays back to the base.”

  “My God, it’s uncanny,” Bonnie Taylor murmured.

  Hubbard continued. “They have to regroup, as we would put it. I’d almost say they’re ‘rethinking’ their position.”

  Elias Johnson whacked his thigh enthusiastically. “And we follow them right to the hellhole!” Spirits began to rise. “But if the radioactivity is going to be as weak as you say, Peter, how will it destroy the whole population?”

  “It won’t!” Hubbard spoke forcefully. “I do have a plan to get rid of them, but let me make it plain right now that no one is going to destroy the nest until I have a chance to study what’s down there and take pictures and recover specimens for the university.”

  Protest came from Elizabeth. “How can you do that without getting killed!”

  Peter Hubbard gave her a pale smile. “That is my problem, then, isn’t it?”

  Amos Tarbell thought again he needed to apologize for ever thinking this man a coward.

  Hubbard was adding, “As soon as we’re ready to go, I’d like Amos and Russell to back me up with the dry-­ice tanks. I’ll feed these roaches our poison, take them into the woods in this jar, and let them go up there.”

  The sheriff spoke in an admiring tone. “You’re taking a hell of a chance, Peter!”

  “It’s the only way,” the scientist answered resolutely. He turned a stern face to the flask containing the experimental roaches. His determined thought was—you traitors are going to lead me right to Big Daddy, aren’t you?

  Peter Hubbard understood fully that the only concern of his companions was the destruction of the roach nest. They could not realize the scientific significance of the fantastic discovery he expected was awaiting him somewhere in the Yarkie woods. It would indeed be a major moment for modern biology. If only half of what he suspected was true, there were lessons to be learned in phylogeny, in biochemistry, in the evolution of the nervous system, in insect sociobiology, and more.

  Unfortunately, the scientist reflected, he could see no possible way of either containing the Nest, or salvaging it. Something might yet occur to him, but for the present he would have to be satisfied with his current plan simply to take out as many significant specimens as he could.

  Hubbard did not see Elizabeth Carr’s admiring eyes on him. She would have liked to reach out and touch him, but the shadow of Wanda Lindstrom’s death stayed her hand. It was not a time for sentiment.

  Amos Tarbell was asking, “Peter, what if you let them loose and they get away from you in the leaves or wherever the hell? They’re damn slick and sly.”

  “Precisely. The Geiger should pick them up. I expect they’ll be laying down trail signal—including the radioactivity—all the way.” Hubbard did not deny himself the tingle of nonscientific pleasure he felt at the thought that the roaches’ own adaptive mechanisms would be working against them this time.

  Stephen Scott held his mug out to Elizabeth for more coffee. “If it will get the cockroaches, I’m all for it! I think it’s a brilliant idea, Peter!” he praised.

  “We have another positive element going for us,” the biologist said. “Remember about trophallaxis?—the way one insect regurgitates its stomach contents to feed another, and so on all around a colony? I think these roaches sometimes follow that behavior. If so, our messengers will soon be sharing their radioactivity with all their brothers and sisters. It might take twenty-­four hours to contaminate the whole group, but that would give us a broader signal on the Geiger counter if I should somehow miss the trail of these particular fellows.”

  “And help track down strays, too!” the sheriff appreciated.

  “Brilliant!” Elizabeth applauded again. The others haggardly smiled their appreciation as Peter Hubbard rose to put his strategy into action.

  TWO

  If the cockroach enclave had indeed been the higher-­order vertebrate it resembled in many ways, the Colony could now be thought of as nursing its wounds in its lair after losing a bloody jungle battle.

  The viscid Dome in the inky murkiness of the Nest was throbbing erratically with unfamiliar nerve currents. The organism’s unease was only partly due to the strangeness of the recently moved domicile. The discomposure was deeper. The group was incomplete. It was as if an animal like a wolf had lost a limb. No blood flowed out here, but the missing layers of weight, of motion and odor and sound, were somehow akin to an open wound.

  The disturbance, an inchoate inner distress, took the form of tiny sparks of neural electricity that ran irritatingly along the roaches’ ganglia: Why hadn’t the fellow colonists returned from the battle to which the Dome had sent them? Where were the fighters who had the mission of keeping Enemy away from the retreat?

  The huge roaches of the royal guard raced about in a frenzied oscillation, stirring the air of the rancid nest. New surges were issuing through the heavy atmosphere of the cave from the center palpitating cluster, but as yet they did not form into obeyable stimuli. They only increased the vexedness that was leading roach to pinch at roach, females to gobble their eggs as they laid them, and some of the royal guard, even, to jostle and jab irritably at each other. This was conduct never before experienced in this roach domain.

  THREE

  In the brightening morning, in the woods beyond the Cannon place, the Geiger counter was ticking steadily and reassuringly in Peter Hubbard’s hand. This tracing gave him a solid sense of gratification. He had always admired inventors, people who saw into difficult problems and unknotted their solutions. The devising of laboratory experiments tapped the same kind of resourcefulness, but this roach hunt was unique. Hubbard’s glow came from the success of an idea that might not have worked at all. Now it was the promise of a successful mission of discovery and, yes, revenge.

  A few yards behind the scientist, Amos Tarbell and Russell Homer came vi
gilantly, carrying the tank weapons against possible surprise. The three men were again wearing the clumsy diving suits for protection. It made it difficult to move as softly as Hubbard wished. Hearing the ticking of the Geiger counter, the sheriff and the young man were lost in admiration of the scientist. Privately, they had wondered how the trick could work. But the contaminated roaches had set off without hesitation just as Peter Hubbard had predicted. These bugs were more interested in nesting than in seeking to attack anyone.

  Hubbard had reemphasized that he was out only to discover the nest. When found, they would wait to demolish it. For one thing, it was his obligation to study what he could before its destruction. For another, it would be wise to give the home center at least another day to call in the stray roaches around the island.

  At a sharp signal from the scientist, Amos and Russell jerked to a stop. Apparently the roaches had halted! Was it the nest!—or were the insects themselves confused? There was still a considerable smell of smoke among the stark, burned trees. It could be misleading them.

  Hubbard dropped his hand and turned in a new direction, heading back toward the Cannon house. The men followed obediently in silence, their eyes turning constantly on guard against possible crawlers.

  At the Cannon picket fence, Hubbard halted again. He pointed toward the cemetery plot beyond the Cannon barn, and started to climb over the fence.

  Beneath his goggles, the sheriff whispered excitedly to Homer, “The nest is in the Cannon graveyard! The roaches are in the graves!”