Bug Man Suspense 3-in-1 Bundle (100 page)

So did Pasha.

Petrov began to eagerly dig into the growing pile of corn and pitch it toward the center of the silo, working as hard and as fast as his aging back would allow.

Semchenko watched the old man work for a few moments, then nodded to Pasha. The two men set down their shovels and waded through the corn to the opposite doorways. Pasha climbed out onto the stairway on his side. Semchenko sat down on the ledge of his doorway, leaned out, and signaled to the corn elevator operator below him.

The engine started up again.

Petrov began to sink.

He looked up in horror and saw Yuri Semchenko calmly watching him from one of the doorways. He twisted around and saw Pasha doing the same behind him. He tried to take a step, but when he lifted one leg the other leg only sank deeper. With a rustling sound the corn poured toward the center of the silo like sand emptying from an hourglass.

Within seconds the corn was up to Petrov's waist.

“Don't do this!” he cried out. “Yuri, please!”

“Sorry, old friend, but a conscience is a dangerous thing. I cannot be certain where yours might lead you.”

“I won't tell anyone! I swear!”

“Yes, I know.”

The corn was up to his chest now. He threw himself forward and tried to swim, but there was nothing to push against and the corn flowed up and around him and licked at him with its yellow tongue.

“Stop struggling, Nikolai. You'll only sink faster.”

But the old man began to struggle frantically, thrashing and clawing and beating at the corn. Nothing helped; the corn continued to swallow him like a snake with a helpless mouse. His shoulders disappeared like two rocks beneath a rising tide. His hands clawed at the air above him, then fell limp and slowly sank back into the yellow sea. The corn rose up to his neck, then his chin, and he threw back his head and gasped for air as his lungs began to compress.

His eyes looked at Semchenko one last time. “Yuri,” he whispered. “Please—don't—”

The corn poured over his face and into his mouth and he was gone.

Semchenko stared at the sea of grain for a minute or two, then signaled to the machinist to stop the engine again.

The silo fell silent and the corn was perfectly still.

He looked across the room at Pasha. “Clean this up,” he said. “Tell the authorities it was an accident. And Pasha—I was never here.”

2

North Carolina State University, Raleigh

N
ick Polchak slumped in his chair in the back of the classroom and watched stone-faced as the student concluded her presentation.

“And that,” she said brightly, “is the life cycle of a fruit fly.”

She tucked her poster under her chin and turned from side to side, offering her fellow students one final look before grinning hopefully at her professor.

Everyone in the classroom turned and waited for Nick's evaluation.

Dr. Nick Polchak was one of the best-respected and most-feared professors at North Carolina State University. Nick loved his academic discipline—entomology, specifically the study of the arthropods that comprise half the living species on our planet, and he had no patience for anyone who didn't share his passion for insects or his love of technical detail. For Nick life was bugs, pure and simple, a perspective that had long ago earned him the moniker “the Bug Man.”

Nick took off his glasses and rubbed at the bridge of his nose. “C-minus,” he said. “And that's only because I'm in a generous mood.”

The student did a dramatic double take, an imaginative blend of indignation and personal affront. “A
C-minus
? C'mon, Dr. P.!”

“Don't call me that,” Nick said. “It makes me sound like a urologist.”

“I deserve better than a C-minus!” The student hoisted her poster high overhead, as though Nick might have somehow overlooked it. “Look at this thing! I practically spent the whole night on it!”

“Lovely,” Nick said. “Let's take a closer look.”

As Nick worked his way to the front of the classroom, the students began to grin like hungry hyenas. They knew what was coming; it was the main reason they'd signed up for the course. Nick's students took an almost perverse pleasure in watching him savage their classmates on the days when projects and papers were due. This was the first project of the fall semester, and everyone could taste blood.

The young woman lowered the poster to chin-level and allowed Nick to look it over.

“Ms. Smith,” he began.

“My name is Karnofski.”

“Whatever.” Though Nick had at his fingertips the Latin names of hundreds of species of blowflies and flesh flies, he had only two names for students—Smith and Jones, depending on which name randomly rolled off his tongue when summoned. “First of all, your drawing is all wrong,” he said. “
Drosophila
is yellow-brown in color and has transverse black rings across its abdomen.”

“That's awfully picky,” she grumbled.

“Yes, science is like that. Second, their wings don't look like a couple of badminton rackets, and if I remember correctly, only the fairy-princess fruit fly is decorated with glitter.”

Snorts and snickers from the classroom.

Ms. Smith-Karnofski frowned. “I wanted to make it stand out.”

“Well, don't. And what, may I ask, is
that
?” He pointed to the fly's head, where a curved line arced beneath the two huge eyes.

“That's a smile. I was trying to make it look—you know—friendly.”

Nick turned to the class. “Okay, let's get something straight. This is a course in basic entomology. What Ms. Smith here should have brought us was a technically accurate rendering of a
Drosophila
melanogaster
. Instead, what we have here is essentially a Precious Moments fruit fly. I'm sorry to break it to you, Ms. Smith, but fruit flies are not cute or cuddly or friendly. They are tiny arthropods that are valuable for research chiefly due to their extremely short life cycle.”

Nick took the poster and held it up to the class. “What else is wrong with this drawing?”

No one dared an answer.

Nick ran his finger around the contour of the drawing. “See this? She colored inside the lines. That's an indication of a serious personality flaw that Ms. Smith will want to address before she gets any older.” He handed back the poster. “Sorry, Ms. Smith, the C-minus stands. Who's next?”

Another student stepped to the front—an eager-looking young man with a thick gauze bandage wrapped around his left forearm.

Nick looked him over. “We're all yours, Mr. Jones—impress us.”

The young man quickly unwound the bandage and held his hand out palm-up. In the fleshy, hairless center of his forearm was a shallow gash about three inches long. The flesh around the wound was red and swollen, and in the center of the gash was a line of wriggling white maggots.

The class let out a gasp and the front row emptied out.

“My project is on
maggot therapy
,” the student announced. “Maggots have been used for hundreds of years to clean out wounds. They eat away the dead tissue and keep the wound from getting infected.”

Nick took the young man by the wrist and adjusted his glasses to get a better look. “Well, nobody can accuse you of coloring inside the lines. I have to ask you, Mr. Jones, is this a self-inflicted wound? You didn't do this to yourself just for my project, did you?”

“Nah. I got it skateboarding.”

“Good. I get in enough trouble around here.” Nick turned to the class; it looked as if someone had tipped the room and deposited everyone along the back wall. “Okay, gather around. Let's see what we can learn from Mr. Jones.”

No one moved.

“Oh, c'mon,” Nick said. “You've all seen grosser things than this. You live in the dorms, don't you?”

The class eased forward and surrounded their wounded classmate.

“All right,” Nick said to the young man. “Go on with your report.”

Mr. Jones looked at him. “Go on?”

Nick blinked. “Was that it?”

“Pretty much. It's more of a . . . demonstration.”

“Where did you learn about maggot therapy, Mr. Jones?”

He grinned. “From the movie
Gladiator
. Remember? Maximus has his shoulder ripped open and it's full of maggots, and this guy tells him, ‘Leave them—they clean out the wound.'”

“Uh-huh. Tell me, Mr. Jones, how much do you know about maggots?”

“Um.”

“A maggot is the larval form of a fly,” Nick said. “The gravid female looks for decaying matter to lay her eggs in. Some species prefer decaying flesh, like the ones on your arm—probably common green bottles. The eggs hatch into larvae and begin to feed. They have two little mouth hooks, one on either side, and they use them to scrape away the decaying tissue and stuff it into a kind of prestomach known as a ‘crop.'”

Nick looked at the group; their faces were slowly contorting. “Give me a break,” he said. “I've watched some of you eat—it isn't much different. The maggots will pass through three stages of development called ‘instars.' When they reach the final stage—when they've stuffed themselves on Mr. Jones's decaying tissue—they'll drop away and look for a secluded spot to pupate. A few days later they'll emerge as adult flies. Tell me, Mr. Jones, where did you get the maggots for this little demonstration?”

“Well—we've got a lot of flies around our house.”

“And why do you suppose that is?”

The young man shrugged.

“It's because you're a male, Mr. Jones, and your decor probably includes a lot of decaying matter. So you just exposed your open wound to the air?”

“It took a long time,” he said solemnly. “I had to sit there for hours and act like I was dead.”

“Yes, I've seen you do that in class—you're very convincing. And where did the flies come from?”

“Where did they come from?”

“Before they landed on you. You don't think your arm was their first stop of the day, do you?”

He paused. “I never thought about it.”

“Flies aren't picky eaters, Mr. Jones. Yours probably landed on a dog pile on the way into the house, then stopped off for dessert in that garbage can your roommates never empty. And every time the fly lands, it picks up bacteria on its feet and deposits them on the next place it visits. Take a close look at his wound, everybody—see the redness around the edges? Notice how swollen it is? That's what doctors call
infection
, and Mr. Jones has managed to get himself a pretty good one.”

“Oops,” the boy mumbled.

“But let's give Mr. Jones credit—he was half right. Maggot therapy has been used for hundreds of years, and maggots will eat away decaying tissue and clean out a wound—the procedure is known as
cutaneous myiasis
. But maggots used for this purpose are always laboratory-reared—otherwise they'll spread the very infection they're meant to prevent. Now I'm afraid we'll have to excuse Mr. Jones so that he can visit our campus health center, where they'll give him a massive dose of antibiotics and possibly a psychiatric evaluation.”

Mr. Jones looked chagrined. “I guess it was kind of stupid, huh.”

“No, it was just ignorant, and fortunately ignorance is curable. Next time check your facts first—and don't do your research at Blockbuster Video.
Gladiator
got it wrong.”

“What about my grade?”

“I'm giving you a B-plus,” Nick said, “because you didn't use glitter and because a guy like you is probably going to need a few breaks in life.” Nick looked at his watch. “Okay, that's it for today. We'll pick up with your projects next time—and please, no more death-defying ‘demonstrations.'”

As the students began to scatter Nick noticed that a much older man had been standing among them—Noah Ellison, chairman of the Department of Entomology.

“Nicholas,” the old man groaned, “please tell me that wound was not self-inflicted.”

“Of course not,” Nick said. “I cut him open myself. Cadavers are expensive.”

Noah's expression didn't change.

“I'm kidding, Noah. That was his entomology project—
maggot therapy
.”

“I take it the larvae were not sterile.”

“It's a new technique. Apparently it's very successful with gladiators.”

“You have to admire the boy's spirit,” Noah said. “It will take him a long way.”

“It's taking him to the health center right now. What can I do for you, Noah?”

“I have good news and I have bad news,” Noah said. “Knowing you as I do, I'm going to tell you the bad news first—otherwise you'll get overly excited by the good news and refuse to sit still for the bad.”