Earl banged and kicked on the dead-bolted steel door like a mule trying to shake a mountain lion. His frantic, noisy efforts had the whole RV rocking and rolling.
“Geez! What are we gonna do?” I yelled to Grayson over the din. “Earl’s gotta use the bathroom, bad. Are we gonna let him out or not?”
“It depends,” Grayson said, shifting his gaze to Jimmy. “What kind of behavior should we expect from him if we do?”
Jimmy shook his head. “I really couldn’t say for sure. But from what I’ve seen, the men who go to those meetings aren’t dangerous. They’re more ... I don’t know. Confused, I guess.”
“Confused?” Grayson asked. “You’re going to have to do better than that if Earl’s going to get to use the privy.”
Jimmy shrugged. “I dunno. They seem to be able to function well enough to drive, but they’re disoriented somehow. Zonked out. And the next evening, when they come back to the meetings, they look grumpy.”
My nose crinkled. “Grumpy?”
“You know,” Jimmy said. “Irritable. Grouchy. Out of sorts.”
I frowned. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Grumpy angry, or grumpy desperate?” Grayson asked.
“Desperate,” Jimmy said. “It’s like all they want to do is get back to the meeting.”
“Hmm,” Grayson said. “Peer pressure has been proven to be a formidable social force. In one study—”
“Wait,” I said, smiling slyly. “I think I know what’s going on here.”
“Voodoo mind control?” Garth asked.
I glanced across the room at the mullet-headed nerd. He was still standing by the side door, his face so hopeful at the prospect of voodoo that I hated to burst his geeky bubble. Still, it had to be done.
“No, Garth,” I said. “But close. I was thinking more along the lines of addiction. Grayson, you really should test that sample for drugs as soon as possible.”
Jimmy’s face lit up. “That must be it. What else would drive grown men to walk on hot coals? Or dance around with swords like pagan weirdos?”
Garth gasped. “Maybe it’s a Comic-Con convention!”
All of a sudden, an audible hissing noise sounded, like air escaping a balloon. I thought maybe Garth’s brain had sprung a leak. But then a horrible stench filled the air.
“Ugh!” I groaned. My eyes began to burn. “Who did that?”
“Let me outta here!” Earl hollered from down the hall.
I turned to Grayson. “Well? What are we gonna do? We’re out of time. Are we freeing Earl to use the toilet, or turning your bedroom into a rolling redneck outhouse?”
Grayson sniffed the air. “My olfactory receptors indicate your point may already indeed be moot.”
“Don’t do it,” Jimmy said, climbing out of the banquette. He sprinted to the hallway entry that led to the bedroom. Then he braced both arms against the sides of the doorframe, blocking our access to it.
“It’s still night out,” Jimmy said. “If you let Earl out now, he’ll be desperate to get back to the meeting. He’ll be like a homing pigeon.”
“A three-hundred pound homing pigeon,” Garth added.
“If it is drugs and he ate all four crullers, he’ll be unstoppable,” Jimmy said.
“We could dart him,” Garth said. “You know, like they do on Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom?”
I opened my mouth to speak and nearly gagged. The disgusting smell was getting worse, not better. “Couldn’t we at least let Earl get to the bathroom?”
“No,” Grayson said, grabbing his laptop. “Apparently, he’s had a mega-dose. Jimmy’s right. He’ll be as unstoppable as a drunken linebacker.” Grayson’s fingers flew as he tapped on the computer keyboard.
“What are you doing?” I asked. “Looking up drug side effects?”
“No,” Grayson answered, his eyes glued to the keyboard. “I’m ordering a new mattress.”
Chapter Forty-Four
The initial round of smelly, eye-burning gas had subsided somewhat. We’d all survived the blast. It was nearing 2 a.m., and it appeared our battle with Earl was turning into an all-nighter.
For the last half hour, I’d been dropping hints for Garth and Jimmy to go back to their trailer, but they weren’t biting. Dead tired, I wanted to lay down so badly that even the broken-down sofa-bed coffin was starting to look good.
“Come on, Grayson, can’t we call it a night?” I begged.
“Sorry, Drex. But until we’re able to analyze the contents of that contaminated cruller hole Earl ate, we can’t be sure of what we’re dealing with. The only thing for certain is that something is warping and twisting the minds of those men, turning them into festering mush. Does anyone have any other ideas besides drugs?”
“How about stupidity?” I said, my face hot with anger. “There seems to be a lot of that going around.”
“No, it can’t be stupidity,” Grayson said matter-of-factly. “It’s not transferrable, as far as I’m aware.”
“How about greed?” Jimmy asked.
Grayson’s eyebrows crunched. “Hmm. Love of money has been known to make people do foolish things. But as you pointed out before, there’s no evidence of selling behavior on anyone’s part—either retail or wholesale.”
“Then it must be drugs,” Garth said. “It’s the only thing that makes sense.”
“Bbblllbbrrt,” someone said.
We turned and stared. The odd sound had come from Tooth—but not from his mouth.
The same, horrible stench as before poisoned the air.
Grayson grimaced as if in pain and yelled, “That’s it!”
“Sorry, Mr. Gray,” Garth said, grabbing Tooth’s collar.
I waved a hand in front of my face. “Dear lord, Garth! Open the door and let that dog out of here!”
“No,” Grayson said, wiping his eyes. He nodding toward the dog. “What I mean is, that’s it! Tooth has the answer!”
“What?” I said, pinching my nose closed. “Are you saying Earl and the other guys are being driven crazy by noxious dog farts?”
“Not exactly,” Grayson said. “It’s not the farts themselves, you see. It’s what’s causing the farts.”
“A dead possum?” Garth asked.
Grayson jumped to his feet. “No! Come on, people. Put on your thinking caps!”
I stared at Grayson. “Can I opt for a gas mask instead?”
Grayson shook his head. “Look. I’ll give you a hint. It starts with a B.”
“Bologna?” Jimmy asked.
Grayson shook his head.
“Beanie wienie?” Garth asked.
“Nope,” Grayson said. “Try again.”
“Barbeque?” I asked, my mind numb from lack of sleep.
“No, no, no,” Grayson said, reaching down to pet Tooth’s head.
“Bbblllbbrrt,” Tooth repeated.
Grayson laughed. “Exactly, my canine friend!”
He looked up at us, his green eyes twinkling like Jack Nicholson in The Shining. “Bacteria, people. It’s bacteria!”
Chapter Forty-Five
Of all of Grayson’s lame-brained ideas, this one had to be the absolute lamest.
Bacteria was driving these guys crazy?
I got up and sprinted to the side door of the RV and gulped in a lungful of flatulent-free air. Then I turned back to Grayson, who had sat back down in the banquette.
“Let me get this right,” I said. “You think bacteria is turning those robed rednecks into Pillsbury dough zombies?”
“Yes,” Grayson said. “You appear shocked. I’m curious. Why would that surprise you?”
I sucked in another breath of outside air and turned to face him. “Why wouldn’t it?”
Grayson studied me from his perch at the banquette, while Garth, Jimmy and I studied him as if we were the hapless, doomed crew aboard The Ship of Fools.
Maybe we were.
Grayson seemed to sense we were about to mutiny. He raised his arms and said,
“Gather round and let me explain.”
“Yes, please do,” I muttered, then reluctantly scooted my ass into the booth.
“You see, the human body consists of roughly thirty trillion cells,” Grayson said, spreading his fingers like two fans. “But our intestines are home to over forty trillion bacteria, give or take a recent defecation.”
I closed my eyes, not at all sure I wanted to know where this conversation was leading.
“Let me demonstrate,” he said.
Dear lord, no!
My eyes flew open. Grayson scooted out of the booth and placed both spidery hands across his stomach.
“You’re not gonna—” I gasped.
“Please! Hold all questions to the end,” Grayson said, then began rubbing his belly. “Now, my fellow associates, it’s not widely known, but up to a trillion bacteria reside in each gram of intestinal content. That means the major component of feces is bacteria.”
“Ugh!” I groaned. “We get it, okay? Poop is full of bacteria. Is there a point to all this?”
Grayson’s eyebrow rose like Spock’s. “I thought I just made it.” He glanced at me, then at the two brothers, who appeared as confounded as I was.
Grayson’s Spock eyebrow collapsed. “Don’t you see? Cellularly speaking, we’re actually more bacteria than human.”
My lips curled downward in disgust.
Well, there goes kissing anyone—ever again.
“Is that for real?” Garth asked, his eyes two bloodshot boiled eggs behind the thick lenses of his horn-rimmed glasses.
“Absolutely,” Grayson said. He patted his belly. “On any given day, each of us is carrying around up to four and a half pounds of bacteria in our digestive tracts.”
“Whoa!” Garth said. “That’s like—sixteen Big Macs!”
“I said no disruptions,” Grayson said. “Now, most of our gut bacteria belong to thirty or forty species, but there can be up to a thousand different kinds inside us, each struggling to survive within our individual microbiomes.”
“Microbiomes?” I sneered. “You make it sound like our guts are bacterial Thunderdomes.”
“An excellent analogy,” Grayson said, “because what goes on in our guts is truly a matter of life or death.”
“Phew,” Jimmy said, pushing Tooth away. “It sure smells that way.”
“Yeah,” Garth said, crinkling his red nose. “How could Tina Turner stand it?”
I shook my head.
If I had her money, I’d be sooo outta here...
Grayson’s brow furrowed. “I think you’re missing the point here, men. You see, when it comes down to it, our gut is actually key to our body’s survival. It’s constantly sending messages to the brain that are critical to our ongoing health.”
“Really?” Jimmy asked, looking down at his stomach.
“Yes,” Grayson said. “If our stomach is empty, our brain needs to know that—so we don’t starve. On the other hand, if we eat something poisonous or rotten, the brain needs to know that, too—so it can make arrangements to rid itself of anything threatening to our well-being.”
“Yay,” I said dully. “Our guts are important. But Grayson, what has any of this got to do with the way Earl’s been acting?”
“I’m getting to that.” Grayson lowered his hands. “I never told you this, but back in my research days, I was involved in studies related to the brain-gut-enteric microbiota axis.”
My weary brain skipped like a needle on a record. “The what?”
Grayson sighed. “For you laymen, it’s the study of how gut bacteria influence psychology and behavior. During our clinical trials, we discovered that bacteria in the intestines can activate stress circuits by directly stimulating the vagus nerve.”
I ground my teeth. Forget that stupid vagus nerve thing. Grayson was on my last nerve.
I curled my fist and started counting down from thirty. Grayson had half a minute to make his point, or I was gonna knock him unconscious and make a dive for the sofa-bed coffin.
“Like I said, when necessary, the gut can communicate directly with the brain,” Grayson prattled on. “If you’ve ever eaten a bad burrito, you know what I mean.”
“Ooooh,” Garth said. “Point taken, Mr. Gray!”
“So our gut talks to our brain?” Jimmy asked.
“Yes. Through the enteric nervous system,” Grayson said. “Our gut has over two-hundred million nerves in it. That’s about as many as in a dog’s cerebral cortex. Looking at it another way, our gut is about as smart as the average dog.”
Garth grinned. “You mean my poop shoot is as smart as Tooth here?” He patted the dog’s massive, dumb-looking head.
“Yes,” Grayson said. “In fact, some call the gut ‘the second brain.’”
Garth grinned. “Cool!”
“It kind of is, isn’t it,” Grayson said, a dimple forming on his right cheek. “Actually, the enteric nervous system in our gut could be considered the original brain. It developed when we were basic organisms—mere primitive digestive tubes, if you will.”
“You mean like Earl is now?” I grumbled. “I hope there’s some point to this biology lesson, Mr. Professor. We need to do something about Earl, and soon.”
“Patience, Grasshopper,” Grayson said, making my fist curl tighter.
“Now, here’s my point.” Grayson said, directing his gaze my way. “Besides regulating bowel flow, there’s good evidence that our bacterial ecosystem—the microbiome I mentioned earlier—can influence how we think and feel. In other words, bacteria can moderate both our brain and our behavior.”
I sat up, my anger evaporating. “Seriously?” I asked. “How does that work?”
Grayson shrugged. “No one knows for sure.”
“Great,” I grumbled, collapsing back into the booth. “We sat through all of that malarkey just so you can tell us there’s nothing we can do about it?”
“I didn’t say that,” Grayson said.
“Then there is something we can do?” Jimmy asked.
“Perhaps,” Grayson said. “As it turned out, during experiments with both mice and human subjects, we found we could improve their anxiety levels, obsessive-compulsive disorders, and even memories simply by giving them probiotics.”
I winced. “Probiotics?” I asked, not sure if I’d heard that right.
Grayson’s green eyes twinkled. “Yes! By increasing our subjects’ good bacteria, we were able to reduce their undesirable mental symptoms. So, extrapolating from that evidence, it seems plausible to postulate that bad bacteria could have been the cause of some of those undesirable symptoms in the first place.”
My jaw dropped. “Are you saying Earl’s under the influence of bad bacteria?”
Grayson gave a quick nod. “Yes. I believe so.”
I frowned. “But if that were true, wouldn’t we all be acting the same way he is?”
“We would indeed—if we’d all eaten one of these babies,” Grayson said, holding up the baggie with the donut hole.
“You think that thing’s full of bad bacteria?” Jimmy asked.
“Not only bad,” Grayson said, “but from a whole other galactic neighborhood.”
Chapter Forty-Six
I waved goodnight to Garth and Jimmy, then closed the RV door and looked over at Grayson and shook my head.
“I’m sorry, but intergalactic gangster bacteria taking over our thoughts and actions? That’s just too out there to believe.”
Grayson looked up from his laptop and shrugged. “Believe it or don’t—at your own peril. But the truth is, it’s already happened.”
I gasped. “It has?”
“Sure. Every year Earth’s bombarded by thousands of tons of asteroid dust. We touch it. Eat it. Breathe it in. Given those facts, microbial colonization by a more aggressive extraterrestrial species seems more than possible. It’s inevitable.”
I cringed and slid into the banquette opposite him. “Are you saying we’re doomed?”
“That’s one way
to look at it. But in reality, like I said earlier, we’ve already been colonized by thousands of different types of bacteria. They’re such a part of us now that humans can be categorized into three separate enterotypes.”
“Enterotypes?”
Grayson nodded. “They’re like blood types, but instead of human cells, they refer to the types of bacteria inhabiting our microbiomes. What’s fascinating about that is the distribution doesn’t appear to be related to geography, sex, or race.”
“Seriously?” I said. “How is that possible?”
Grayson shrugged. “It’s a mystery. Perhaps we’re actually nothing more than advanced biological hosts for microbes.”
I frowned. “What do you mean?”
“There are a thousand times more bacteria in us than there are stars in our galaxy. And hundreds of times more bacteria in our bodies than actual human cells. One could argue the idea that our own consciousness is merely a passenger inside a bacterial bus.”
My lip snarled. “How romantic.”
Grayson laughed. “On the bright side, if we ever do get superseded by bacteria, we probably won’t be aware of it. We’ll simply become the hapless hosts of the invaders, shuffling along, doing their bidding, totally unaware of what we’ve lost in the exchange.”
I locked eyes with Grayson. “You mean like Earl ... and those other guys.”
Grayson sighed. “Perhaps.”
“But you said there’s a chance probiotics could cure him.”
“Not necessarily cure. But perhaps lessen the symptoms.”
I straightened my sagging shoulders. “I want a cure.”
Grayson rubbed his chin. “To do that, we’d have to rid Earl’s body of all the bacteria in it.”
I perked up a bit—a feat considering how beat I was. I grabbed Grayson’s hand. “How can we do that?”
Grayson studied me for a moment. “I think I know a way. Look, why don’t you stretch out on that side of the banquette and try and get some rest.”
“What are you gonna do?”
Grayson smiled tiredly. “I’m going to order some stuff on Amazon.”
Scatman Dues (Freaky Florida Mystery Adventures Book 6) Page 17