Nasty Little F___ers-Kindle (18 page)

Janice didn’t answer, but as soon as her name left his lips he heard a sound that stopped his heart. A sharp crack that chilled his blood and sent a shiver up his spine.

“Oh, shit!” He looked down and saw he was still sixty feet up in the branches of the tree. Not good. He stood perfectly still and held his breath, willing the sound to be his imagination.

His hopes were dashed when the sound of cracking wood came again, this time jerking his feet from under him and sending him on a violent freefall through the branches of the old pine. He bounced off one branch, which stole the breath from his lungs and caused his vision to blur, then he tumbled backwards out into space.

He felt a sharp pain at the back of his head, then there was nothing at all.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Janice tried to scream, but the duct tape prevented her. As she watched, a cloud of flies descended on Moretz. They scuttled and shuffled along on his limbs, laying eggs in his flesh. Almost immediately after laying their eggs, each fly fell to the forest floor and lay there. Some of them twitched for a few seconds, but most remained perfectly still wherever they fell. Dead. Soon the buzzing noise was gone, replaced by the sound of her heartbeat, which thundered in her ears like a bass drum.

She looked at the piles of dead flies, then at the body of Moretz. Before long the eggs started to hatch. First one, then a few more, then the rest of them opened up, releasing a mass of white grubs. They looked just like the ones currently eating Bock’s remains, but smaller. The grubs that covered Bock were close to three inches in length and had taken to devouring each other, but the hatchlings were only about a few millimeters long.

They went to work right away, feeding on Moretz’s body and causing the skin to pulse and bubble with movement. There were so many of them squirming across and through Moretz’s flesh that it almost seemed like his arm twitched. She looked closer, terrified but unable to look away, her scientific curiosity piqued in spite of her fear.

Then his arm
did
twitch. She blinked, certain it was a mistake. A hallucination brought on by stress. But sure enough, as she watched, the arm tucked itself under the torso and pushed up, like in the gym. Moretz’s other arm joined in, then his legs, and soon Clyde Moretz, minus most of his head, once again stood on the forest floor.

“Amazing, isn’t it?” Allen said. “The sheer numbers of grubs it takes to fire instructions down every neural pathway is incredible. I have a theory about it, but…” Allen paused and looked around the clearing. He seemed to be waiting for something. Then his expression lit up. “Ah, yes. There’s no one left to cut me off. Everyone’s dead except for you, me, and Sarge.”

Janice couldn’t have screamed if she’d wanted to, her heart stilled and her breath caught in her throat as the newly-animated Moretz stepped over to Allen and took a place just behind and to the right of the entomologist. Moretz stood there like a bodyguard, while Allen looked on. Both men seemed to be waiting for something.

Then she heard a faint buzzing. A single three-inch fly zipped into the small clearing and headed toward her. She could see the sun glinting off the thing’s multifaceted eyes. It flew around to her back, but she couldn’t turn around enough to see. She felt the thing land just between her shoulder blades, and was surprised at the weight of it. She jerked herself back and forth, trying to shake the thing off, but only succeeded in further damaging the skin of her wrists. The ropes held.

She felt a sharp pain in her back, and shortly after, the weight of the fly lifted. She heard the tiny thump as the thing fell to the forest floor and landed among the dried leaves and pine needles. She stopped thrashing then, knowing it was no use. The eggs in Moretz were embedded into the skin, under the epidermis and into the sub dermal layer. If the fly had laid an egg in the back of her neck, it wasn’t going anywhere.

A tiny crackling sound reached her ears, like tearing a piece of paper, and she felt something small moving around on her skin between her shoulder blades. She tried to scream one last time, but she couldn’t get the sound past the tape. She flinched as she felt a tiny pinch in her back. The grub had bit her.

A tear spilled from her eye and rolled down her cheek as she looked at Allen, standing there with a big smile, two grubs on his chest. He nodded at her, a gesture that struck her as both fatherly and patronizing.

“It’s okay,” he said. “You’re almost there.”

She wanted to tell him to go fuck himself, but just then a tingling, warm sensation started to move though her back where the grub bit her. As the feeling spread through her body, her thumping heart slowed, and she stopped shaking. Her breathing evened out and the tears in her eyes dried up. Her fear was pushed out by comfort and familiarity. She realized she knew this; this was safe. Janice sighed, and almost laughed at her earlier behavior. She shook her head, marveling at her own foibles.

“There, you see?” Allen said. “I told you it was nice.”

Janice looked up at him and smiled. She couldn’t help it. He was so handsome standing there, his shirt unbuttoned and those two miracles clinging to his chest. Now she knew. The grubs were not creatures to be feared, but delicate, fragile things that needed her protection. Protection from those who wanted to hurt them.

She nodded, and Allen came closer. He reached out to the piece of tape at her mouth and she braced herself, waiting for the pain. He ripped the tape off, but it didn’t hurt. Instead, her face felt numb. She wondered about that for a moment before she felt the answer inside her head. Not words, exactly. More like instant knowledge. The grub on her back was patched into her nervous system. It had deadened the nerves of her face just as Allen pulled the tape off, to ensure the act didn’t cause any pain.

What wonderful little creatures! She said a mental thank you and was rewarded by a warm, soft feeling that brought a smile to her lips. Allen untied her and she stood up, looking at Moretz with awe. The drones covered him from head to foot, slowly eating their way through his flesh. For now, he would make a fine servant, at least until the grubs ate so much of him as to render him useless.

The grubs were patched in to each other, too. They shared a form of communal intelligence. Through this link, Janice felt the happiness of Moretz’s grubs in her mind. Thousands of contented little lives happily munching away on an abundance of food. Another tear welled up in her eye. She couldn’t help herself. It was so beautiful.

She turned to the sound of another fly buzzing around the clearing. This one flew slower than the other had, and its flight seemed erratic and uncontrolled. She learned through her grub that this fly was another queen, but older and slower than the first. With a horrified start she realized it was weak, and close to death. Fresh tears – the sad kind – pooled in her eyes as she watched it fly slowly through the clearing and land on a stump a short distance away.

The poor thing needed to lay her egg and be free of her burden so she could rest. Janice reached out her hand, thinking to have the queen lay her precious burden alongside its kin in her back, but Allen reached out and held her arm down.

“Not that one,” Allen said.

“Why not? You have two, why can’t I?”

“Because that’s the last queen, and she’s ill. After her there are no more. Only drones, which is why it was such a shame to shoot Moretz, but it had to be done.”

“The last one?” Janice couldn’t help but feel sad. “Well, she needs a living body, doesn’t she?”

Allen nodded. “If we have to, we can give you to her, but only as a last resort. They need as many living bodies as they can find; their chances of survival go up exponentially with each carrier.”

“With each carrier,” Janice repeated. And then she understood.

Colby.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Colby eased back into consciousness, squeezing his eyes shut against the haze of pain. His chest, arms, and head all hurt. The back of his head felt cool and wet, and he reached a hand up and found a painful, sticky knot rising back there. His fingers brushed the exposed edge of an open cut, and he drew in a sharp breath, which caused the pain in his ribs to flare up. He winced and waited for it to pass, wishing he had the First Aid kit with him. Half a dozen extra strength aspirin tablets might help, but he wouldn’t be willing to bet on it.

He opened his eyes and tried to focus, but his vision swam and spun in a dizzying vertigo that immediately set his stomach on notice. Gritting his teeth to keep from vomiting, Colby forced his eyes to focus, and soon saw the ground twenty feet below. The branch that broke his fall was one of the pine’s major lower limbs and it stuck out, thick and sturdy, from the massive trunk. It shifted a little under his weight as he tried to pull himself into a more comfortable position.

The pain in his ribs jolted his whole body straight, and this time he did retch, spewing his most recent meal to the forest floor in a puddle of half digested jerky and bile. When he was empty, his stomach dry heaved, sending waves of agony through his torso. He almost passed out again, but managed to hold on long enough to calm his freewheeling innards.

Several ribs were broken. That much he could tell already, and the gash on the back of his head felt serious. He’d need to get that stitched up as soon as possible. The possibilities for infection out here were astronomical. And, God help him, he needed something for the pain. The First Aid kit had a small bottle of aspirin. But his bag, which he’d left by the tree, contained a handful of more potent painkillers. In a pocket on the inside flap, he had hidden small bottles of Vicodin, Darvocet, and even Percocet. He’d brought them along just in case anything happened.

Something fucking happened, all right.
Something big. And he longed for the little brown bottle with the Vicodin. A couple of those should help put him right. First, he had to get down from the damn tree. He looked down, hoping to see his pack. It only took a second to spot it, leaning up against the trunk of the pine, just where he’d left it. Twenty feet down, sitting on the forest floor.

He shifted his weight again, and pain shot through his ribcage.
Yep, definitely broken.
Twenty feet might as well be twenty miles; there was no way he could climb down in his condition.

Then something clicked inside his mind and he realized he didn’t see Janice. Where the hell was she? If she still had her rope, maybe he could fashion some kind of harness and lower himself down. Even without the rope, she should be able to climb up high enough to hand him a couple of pills. Once they kicked in he could climb down and wait for the chopper. Fuck finding a clearing, let the pilot worry about that, when he got to the ground he was going to lay there and not move.

“Janice?” he called. “You there?”

After a few seconds with no answer, he heard footsteps in the leaves and needles of the forest floor. Moments later Janice stood under the tree craning her neck to look up at him. He’d never been so happy to see anyone in his whole life.

She smiled when she spotted him. “I’m here, Colby. Are you okay?”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Even through the pain, he stared at her. The top three buttons of her shirt were unbuttoned, revealing a view of the pale flesh of her breasts, which rode high and firm on her chest. Her full lips surrounded her words, letting the sound filter out like notes from a violin. Her dark brown hair fell down around her shoulders. Colby could not recall ever seeing her wear it in anything less severe than a ponytail, not even when she was naked. Even from his position twenty feet up in the tree, her eyes sparkled, blue and moist, in the fading glow of the day. His breath caught in his throat and for a moment he forgot what he was about to say.

“Colby?” she asked. “You okay?”

He shifted his weight again, and the sudden flare of pain reminded him of his predicament like a bucket of cold water to the face. He grimaced. “You still have your rope?” he asked through clenched teeth.

“Yeah, it’s in my pack. You need it?”

He nodded, not trusting himself to speak.

“Okay,” she said, and turned around. She was back right away, a coiled length of rope in her hand. One end of the rope was tied to a grappling hook. Janice started to swing the hook around in circles, building up momentum. Colby hoped she would be able to toss the hook – which weighed about ten pounds – high enough for him to reach it. He looked at her slender arms and thought she’d have to make several attempts at it, and even then she might not be able to get the rope to him.

He needn’t have worried, Janice swung the hook a few times and let loose, sending it up and over Colby’s branch with ease. He took a few seconds to marvel at her strength and coordination, wondering why he’d doubted her. Was he that much of a sexist? He’d have to get out of that habit, and fast. Janice was quite a woman.

He reached over and grabbed the rope, then he untied the hook and let it fall to the ground with a solid thump. Colby regarded the rope. He had to make a harness that would hold him, but wouldn’t put any pressure on his screaming ribs. After a moment’s thought, he took the rope and wrapped it around his waist, tucking one end under the loop at his waist and looping twice more around each thigh, then bringing the end around and tying it in a double knot. It was similar in nature to the ‘swami belt’ type harness he and his friends once used for rock climbing, but of course he had to make do without a carabiner.