Antenna Syndrome (31 page)

Crouched at the front door’s broken window, Major
blew another attack hornet to oblivion.

The blonde dashed upstairs, hopefully to lock
herself in the bathroom.

“Are you any good with this?” I thrust the Marlin
into Jordan’s hands.

“I’ve hunted deer.” He levered a load into the
chamber. “What do you want me to do?”

I looked out a living room window. At the bottom of
the driveway, the parked van blocked our only exit. “That guy in
the van is a hit man, and you’re on his to-do list. Try to get him
before he gets you.”

A swarm of hornets erupted from the van’s
bubble-hatch and flew towards the house. I knocked a pane out of a
window and got busy with the shotgun. From the doorway, Major fired
several shots. Ejected shells skittered across the floor. From
outside came a flurry of loud explosions as each hornet’s payload
was detonated mid-air. After half a dozen rounds each, we’d downed
all the bomb-bearing hornets. So far, so good.

While Major and I reloaded, Jordan opened a window
and went to work with the rifle. The van’s windshield imploded, and
holes erupted in the engine grille. Buzz left the van and took
cover in the trees. Jordan fired a few more shots and the van
sagged on flattened tires.

“Look out behind you!” Major yelled, firing a shot
into the living room.

I turned and dropped to one knee. Half a dozen
hornets, these without explosive charges, swarmed out of the
fireplace. I fired and pumped and fired until my shotgun was empty.
Wings, legs and hornet guts spattered the walls and ceiling. Major
had run out of shells and started to reload.

Two more hornets the size of softballs snarled in
through a shattered window.

Werewolf leaped in the air and snapped the head off
one. The other hornet struck me in the shoulder. Before it could
drive its stinger in, I punched it away. It spun off course, then
looped around and came at me again. I retreated to the kitchen and
grabbed a frying pan. As the hornet dive-bombed me, I swung the pan
and scored a solid hit. The hornet bounced off the cupboards and
spun out onto the floor, where I brought the frying pan down hard
and spread it all over the place.

By now, Major had reloaded and was knocking down
stragglers still entering through the fireplace. As I recovered my
shotgun and grabbed more shells, everything fell eerily quiet. We
scanned outside, still expecting another attack.

“Jesus, that was freaky,” Major said. “You think we
got all of them?”

“Nothing buzzing.” Inside and out, hornet parts were
scattered everywhere. Werewolf began to eat the remains. “Better
collar that guy. If he eats a stinger, he’ll be sorry.”

We went outside with Werewolf and checked the van.
The rear compartment had two walls of what looked like oversize
honeycomb chambers but there were no hornets left in them. In the
front seat Major found a half-liter squeeze bottle of honey and a
five-kilo bag of brown sugar.

“Who was that guy?” Jordan had put on jeans, a
T-shirt and running shoes to come out and join us. “He looked like
some kind of alien.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” I said.

Chapter 54

Werewolf sniffed the ground and barked, eager to
pick up Buzz’s trail. Major let him go and we followed as fast as
we could. We climbed a ridge of pine trees, from which we had a
clear view across a ravine. A hundred yards away, Werewolf climbed
a slope spotted with scrub brush. Fifty yards higher up, a tall
skinny figure climbed swiftly through a jumble of boulders.

“Can you hit him?” I said to Jordan.

“Not at that distance.”

“Give me that.” Major took the rifle, aimed and
fired twice. The bullets spattered low and wide; the whine of their
ricochets floated down moments later. Buzz disappeared behind some
rocks. Werewolf reached the same place a few seconds later.

When we got to where Buzz and Werewolf had
disappeared, we encountered a cliff with a hill of rubble at its
base. We looked up the cliff. Buzz couldn’t have scaled it without
our seeing him. We heard a hollow echo of barking and snarling.

“Werewolf!” Major called.

“They must have gone into the cave.” Jordan led us
to its entrance, half-covered with rubble. “I’ve been in there.
About a hundred yards deep but there’s no way out.”

We sat on our heels, debating what to do. From
inside the cave came snarling, yelping, screaming. Hard to know who
was doing what to whom.

“Got a flashlight?” Major said. “I need to get
Werewolf out of there.”

I had one flashlight in my tote bag, and a penlight
attached to my keychain. I handed the flashlight and a roll of duct
tape to Major. He secured the flashlight to his shotgun barrel and
nodded. “Good to go.”

“I’m coming with you.”

He shone the light into the cave. “It’s tight in
there.”

“I’ll have your back.”

We checked our gear before we went. Shotguns and
side arms loaded, pockets full of extra ammo, knives on our belts.
We started in.

Only five feet in diameter, the cave descended in a
gentle grade. With heads stooped, we followed it down. Water
dripped on us as we walked further in. I remembered, just before
we’d arrived at Jordan’s cottage, having seen a small lake near the
mountain.

It was now silent inside the cave. We didn’t know if
Buzz was dead, or lying in wait for us. Fifty yards in, Major’s
light found Werewolf. He lay crumpled against one wall, a terrible
rent in his side, his fur matted with blood. He raised his head and
made a sound like a wet cough. There was something in his jaws that
looked like a shirtsleeve.

“He’s alive.” Major kneeled beside Werewolf and
checked the wound, a long slash in his side that had bared the
flesh right down to his ribs. But the bleeding was slight and it
looked worse than it actually was, since his ribs had shielded his
organs from injury.

I tugged the sleeve from Werewolf’s mouth. There was
something still inside it – a forearm, severed at the elbow joint.
I examined it under the penlight. It was a few inches longer than a
man’s, with a mottled purple shell encasing bloody muscle. Its hand
had five digits, each with an extra phalange for greater
articulation, and ridged with rows of serrated teeth for gripping.
A knot of dog’s hair was caught in the joint between thumb and
first finger.

“What kind of monster is that?” Major whispered.

I swept my penlight around the cave. A pair of
wraparound sunglasses, broken in two, lay on the floor near our
feet. A few yards away lay the calf of a leg severed at the knee
joint. Same purplish exoskeleton as the arm but it wasn’t much
thicker. The pant leg was torn away but a boot remained on the
thing’s foot. I didn’t remove the boot to look at the foot. I
wasn’t that interested.

Major directed the flashlight further into the cave.
Just beyond the cone of light, the cave constricted to little more
than four feet in diameter, and twisted off to the right in a
steeper decline.

“No way the two of us can maneuver in there,” I told
Major.

“What do you want to do?”

I handed him my penlight. “Let’s exchange shotguns.
You take Werewolf and get out of here.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Go down there and finish this.”

“No need. He’s lost half an arm, half a leg. He’ll
bleed out in an hour.”

“Will he? This thing’s not made the same as you and
me. Those parts could grow back.”

We looked at each other in the dim light. Werewolf
was panting in quick shallow breaths. He needed a vet’s attention.
Even if the bleeding had stopped, he was in shock, and there was
always the risk of infection.

Major nodded. He slung the shotgun over one
shoulder, Werewolf over the other, and stood. I patted him on the
back and sent him on his way.

I picked up the shotgun with the flashlight taped to
its barrel, and made sure the magazine was full. I shone my light
into the tunnel. If it got any tighter in there, it’d be hard to
bring a shotgun to bear. I checked my pistol and switched the
safety off.

I took a deep breath. I’d been down in sewers
before, hunting nasty things, but I was still afraid. Buzz was
badly wounded but still dangerous, and would kill me in the blink
of an eye given half a chance. So I wasn’t going to blink.

I advanced another twenty yards, still on my feet
but in a crouch. The cave sloped down to the right. The diameter
shrank to three feet and I crawled on hands and knees. The cave
twisted to the left and closed in some more. I began to feel
claustrophobic and wondered how much further I could go. If it got
any tighter, I’d never be able to turn around. Could I crawl
backwards out of here?

The tunnel made a sharp left turn into a still
tighter space. I didn’t even want to turn that corner, let alone
try to squeeze into that crevice. Buzz was in there, badly wounded
but maybe not incapacitated. I could wait for him to die but how
long would that take? Hours, or longer? Or I could wait for him to
come out so I could shoot him. How long would that take? Minutes,
or less?

I backed up a bit and lay there, feeling scared and
uncertain of what to do. Panic began to creep up on me.

Since it was physically impossible to maneuver the
length of the shotgun around the corner and fire into the crevice,
I ripped the duct tape off the barrel and freed the flashlight. I
dug into my tote bag and took out the mainstays of my exterminator
arsenal – a gas mask and a large spray can of DDT.

I put on the gas mask and duct-taped the flashlight
to the right side of the mask. I taped the can of DDT to the end of
the shotgun barrel and removed the safety cap to expose the spray
button.

With pistol in one hand and shotgun in the other, I
crawled back to where the tunnel made a sharp left turn into the
crevice. I extended the shotgun until the spray button touched the
far wall at the turn in the tunnel. The can hissed as a fog of DDT
filled the narrow crevice.

A claw shot out of the crevice, seized the shotgun
barrel and shook it. Under different circumstances, the gun might
have been yanked right out of my hand, but down here, there was
little latitude for movement. The claw withdrew. I jammed the spray
can against the wall again. The DDT filled the tunnel with its
toxic mist until the can was empty.

I withdrew a bit and waited. From inside the
crevice, I heard violent coughing. I had my finger on the shotgun
trigger, thinking this would smoke Buzz out of his hole and I could
blow his head off as soon as he emerged. But the coughing subsided
and all I heard now was the muffled retching of something being
sick.

I left the shotgun behind and crawled to the end of
the tunnel with my pistol. I stuck my head around the corner and
shone my light into the gaseous fog.

Two large multi-faceted eyes glimmered in the misty
darkness. The slit of a mouth opened and a pair of mandibles shot
out at me.

I jerked my head back and fired three quick rounds
into the cul-de-sac. The mandible teeth ripped through the top of
my gas mask and tore away a clot of scalp. I fired another three
shots as the mandibles withdrew.

Fuck this shit. I was in a bad space and I couldn’t
stay another second. I’d put six rounds into that bastard, surely
he was dead and I could call it a day. I crawled backwards as fast
as I could go, grabbing the shotgun on the way by.

I’d almost reached the point where the passage above
opened into a less-claustrophobic space when Buzz came scrabbling
up the tunnel after me. Despite two truncated limbs, he moved with
the frightening speed of a giant cockroach. I emptied the shotgun
into him as he came, saw him shudder and shake as each shot tore
gaping holes in him, one eye gone now, but he kept on coming,
refusing to die.

I dropped the empty shotgun and switched to my
pistol, but my vision was hampered by the mask and I was badly
rattled. I don’t know how many of my rounds found their target
before the pistol clicked on empty.

Buzz’s mouth opened and the mandibles shot out again
at my head. I jammed the empty pistol into his maw and drew my
knife. His mandibles flailed wildly, unable to coordinate their
decapitating pincer movement. I thrust my knife into his neck and
sawed. His remaining good arm clawed at me, the serrated fingers
trying to tear the mask off my face. I gritted my teeth and worked
the knife with the fury of a man possessed.

I felt the head detach from his body. The mandibles
fell slack. The rest of the body kept moving, twitching and
jerking, the hand still clawing at me. I crawled backwards several
feet and lay there panting, my knife sticky in one hand, flashlight
dangling from the ragged duct tape on my gas mask.

Five minutes passed. Nothing stirred except my
still-pounding heart. I assessed my wounds. Bloody scalp aside, my
shoulders and upper arms were oozing from cuts inflicted by his
serrated claws. And no matter how much I panted, I felt short of
breath. Fearing venom, I pulled the EpiPen from my pocket and
jabbed it into my thigh.

After ten minutes I put on gloves and crawled back
in, just far enough to get my hands on the now-limp mandibles. I
pulled the head out with me and retreated back up the tunnel,
slowly rising to a crouch.

On the way out, I was too tired to pick up the arm
and the leg. I had the head to prove what had killed Boyle and
Mundt, and that was enough of a war trophy to last me a
lifetime.

Chapter 55

Jordan was waiting for me just outside the cave,
crouched behind a boulder with a shotgun. Major had carried
Werewolf back down to the house. The blonde had called 911. Police
and emergency medical services were on their way from
Tannersville.

I peeled the gas mask off my face and stood there a
few minutes, sucking in clean air.