Nasty Little F___ers-Kindle (9 page)

“How often do they do that?” Colby asked.

“Every few minutes,” Allen replied. “I started with over thirty, now there’s only fifteen. I had to separate a few just to make sure there would be enough left to study.” He pointed at the far wall of the tent, where seven small glass containers sat on a shelf, each containing one very pissed off grub. Small bits of jerky dotted a few of the jars.

Colby watched for a few more minutes. Another grub in the communal jar fell victim to its brethren. “Nasty little fuckers, aren’t they?”

“You don’t know the half of it,” Allen said, finally turning away from the microscope. “Take a look.”

Colby stepped over and peeked into the microscope’s eyepiece, which showed a view of one of the grubs’ heads, highly magnified.
Jesus!
He’d known they had teeth, but he hadn’t realized how sharp they were, or how numerous. “No wonder it hurts so much when they bite.”

“You noticed the mandibles, then,” Allen said. “Yes, they definitely have a full working set of jaws, and regenerative teeth, like a shark. One tooth breaks or pops out, and another one steps in to take its place.”

Colby looked up. “I’ve never head of a bug with regenerative teeth.”

“Me neither,” Allen said. “Lots of insects have teeth, not like you and I, of course. An insect’s jaw usually consists of mandibles, which can often be serrated like teeth, but— ”

“Allen, the short version, please.”

“Right. Sorry. Regenerative teeth in insects just doesn’t happen. I’ve never seen it before, and I’ll tell you something else, I—Wait. Did you say one bit you?”

“Yeah, right here.” Colby lifted his pants leg and showed Allen the pocked bit of his leg where the grub had taken a piece of it. “Fucker got me pretty good.”

Allen looked at the bite, then back up at Colby. “Can I take a sample of your blood?”

“Why?”

“I want to see if it tests positive for a chemical I found in their mouths.”

“What chemical?” Colby asked as he rolled his pants leg back down.

“I’m not sure. It’s organic in nature, yet structurally similar to
phenylcyclohexylpiperidine.”

“
Phenylcyclo…
where have I heard that before?” Colby snapped his fingers. “PCP? You’re saying these things are laced with Angel Dust?”

“Technically, no,” Allen replied. “But something similar.”

“That would be why Bock and Harper didn’t seem to feel any pain.” Colby reasoned.

“Probably, yes. It would make sense. And it would help to describe their behavior, too.”

Colby nodded. Shit, yeah it made sense. It made perfect fucking sense. He remembered those things on Bock’s chest; how they looked like they were pumping something into him. Probably injecting his body with so much of the stuff he couldn’t think straight. No wonder he’d tried to kill him. “Fuck.”

Colby rolled up his sleeve and let Allen take some of his blood. The needle stung a bit – Allen was no nurse – but he’d had much, much worse. The small, round scars on his chest, remnants of that fatal gunfight in Kuwait, could attest to that.

“I don’t understand something, Allen.”

“What’s that?”

Colby taped a square of cotton to the inside of his elbow and rolled his sleeve back down. “Lots of animal poisons are mildy narcotic, right?”

Allen nodded. “Lots of them are neurotoxic poisons, too. What’s your point?”

“Well, in the case of narcotic poisons, the victim falls asleep, making it easy for the predator to finish them off, right? Or, in the case of a neurotoxin, it kills the prey quick. That’s evolution in action. The poison is designed, in one way or another, to take the fight out of the victim quickly so the predator can eat.”

“True,” Allen said. “But I still don’t—”

“Quick. What are the effects of PCP?”

“What does that have to do—”

“Humor me. What are they?”

Allen’s brow wrinkled, and he folded his arms across his chest. “Hallucinations, violent and erratic behavior, paranoia, and even the deadening of pain receptors, among other things.”

“
So why would an animal need to instill those qualities in its prey? Why make the prey more violent, instead of less? What purpose does that chemical have for being in the grubs’ saliva?”

Allen started to open his mouth, then closed it. His eyes widened. “That’s a damn good question, Colby.” He looked at the grub squirming in his jar on the table – the last one; it had eaten it’s way to the top, apparently – as it bit at the sides of the jar. The tiny clink it made as it bit the glass merged with the other dozen or so small noises the rest of the grubs made as they did the same.

“What the fuck are these things?” Colby asked.

Before Allen could reply, Janice’s scream tore through the camp.

***

Colby ran outside. Clouds overhead obscured the moon, making it hard to see more than a few feet in front of him. The floodlights of the camp could only do so much against the encroaching darkness. And, he noted, several of them were out. How the hell did that happen? He looked around and noted the others emerging from their tents or portable labs and into the night, looking confused and afraid. As well they might.

Janice screamed again. It sounded like it came from her tent. Colby sprinted across the clearing to the only tent in the camp that served a single occupant. Janice, as the only woman in the expedition, had her tent all to herself. Or she had, anyway. The shadow on the wall of the tent showed two figures inside, clearly involved in a struggle. Colby drew his .45 and ran to the flap, thumbing off the safety as he went.

He saw the tripwire just before he hit it, but it was too late. His foot caught on a strand of heavy fishing line. It wasn’t so strong that he couldn’t break it, but it didn’t have to be. It was enough to throw him off balance and that’s all it took. He fell face first into the dirt and dried leaves that covered the floor of the clearing, landing on the hard ground with enough force to blow the air out of his lungs and send his pistol flying away.

“Thanks, Colby,” a gruff voice said. It sounded like Bock. “That makes things much easier.”

When his vision cleared, he looked up and stared straight down the barrel of his own gun. Behind the rear sight, Bock’s face glared down at him, his eyes thin slits in the dark camp and his nostrils flared open like a wide animal’s. Just visible through the opening of his shirt was a single grub, face planted in his flesh and body undulating and pumping forward like a slower version of a cartoon water hose. Bock’s smile turned Colby’s spine to ice.

Janice’s muffled voice drew his attention to the left, where she and the thing that used to be Harper emerged from her tent. Harper had a firm grip on her, and despite the fact that half his muscles and flesh had been eaten away by the grubs, Janice couldn’t seem to break free. Somewhere behind him, Colby heard the sound of retching. Probably Allen again, but he couldn’t tell. The rest of the camp was silent as death. Colby didn’t have to look around to know what the rest of the team would be doing. They’d probably be frozen where they stood, waiting to see what would happen next.
That’s scientists for you
, he thought,
all wait-and-watch and no action.
But one of them, at least, proved him wrong.

“
Hey,” Steinman said, and Colby heard leaves and twigs crunching under someone’s boot. Steinman was moving. “Leave her alone, you bastard.”

Bock never blinked. He brought the pistol up and pointed it somewhere behind and to the right of Colby. The gun boomed once and jerked backward in Bock’s hand. A few seconds later Colby heard the empty thump of a body falling to the ground. Janice screamed through Harper’s decaying hand, and the sound of someone in the camp throwing up started anew. Colby also heard the sound of running feet as one or two of the guys bolted. He couldn’t blame them, he supposed. When a psycho with a gun comes along and starts pulling the trigger, running like a rabbit is a sound strategy.

He tensed, getting ready to spring up while Bock’s attention was diverted elsewhere and hopefully take the gun away. But Bock didn’t stay distracted for long. He smiled again and turned the pistol back to Colby, aiming it right at his forehead, just slightly to the left of center.

“I think I owe you one, Sarge,” Bock said, and pointed at the red stain on the front of his shirt.

Bock thumbed back the hammer with an ominous click, which Colby barely heard over the ringing in his ears.

Chapter Eleven

Colby tensed, waiting for the moment that would end his life. He refused to shut his eyes, preferring to face his death as a man. Bad enough he was going to die laying on the ground, he wouldn’t go out a coward, too. He sneered at Bock, mentally daring him to pull the trigger and get it over with. At least he wouldn’t have to watch as another failure attached itself to his name.

Because his eyes were open, Colby saw what happened next: Bock’s finger tensed on the trigger, but Janice’s leg shot out from under her and her workboot crashed into Bock’s knee. Colby heard a cracking noise, and in the split second before the gun fired he realized Janice must be wearing her steel-toed boots.

Bock grunted, and the gun banged to life again in his hand. Colby heard the whiz of the slug as it zipped past his ear. Janice had knocked Bock off balance just enough to ruin a point-blank shot, God bless her.

Colby got his feet under him and launched his shoulder into Bock’s solar plexus. Bock, already injured, swore as he crumpled over in a pile of flesh and flailing limbs. The .45 went flying again, and landed several feet away, but neither man was close enough to reach it, and Janice was still in Harper’s grasp.

Colby wrestled Bock to the ground and jammed his healthy knee into Bock’s injured one. Apparently the PCP wasn’t doing its job, because Bock screamed obscenities in his ear. Colby couldn’t keep a satisfied grin off his face.

“Guess you owe me two now, huh?” Colby said.

“Fuck you,” Bock replied.

Colby brought his knee down on Bock’s a second time, but this time Bock’s grunt of pain was less satisfying. It obviously still hurt, but the dope in his system must be compensating for it. Colby checked the grub on Bock’s chest and sure enough, it pumped more furiously than ever. He had to get rid of it somehow, so Bock could sober up and return to normal. But how to do that when his hands were occupied keeping Bock on the ground and on the defensive? He couldn’t let go long enough to grab the gun, and Bock was starting to twist and squirm beneath him, soon he would get a hand free and then the blows would start. Colby didn’t have any illusions of being able to win a fistfight with someone hopped up on Angel Dust. How could you beat someone down who didn’t feel pain?

Just then Bock wrenched his right arm free of Colby’s grip and launched an elbow at his nose. The blow struck Colby in the face, and for a second he could see nothing but a bright white flash, like looking at a blank movie screen. Another blow to his gut sent him sprawling forward, his breath stolen from him again and stars dancing in front of his eyes.

While his vision returned, he scrabbled through the leaves and twigs in a frantic attempt to regain his feet. A solid blow to his right side rolled him onto his back and caused him to gasp in pain. Most likely he’d have a nice boot print there tomorrow, if he lived that long.

His vision cleared enough for him to see Bock, eyes ablaze, looming over him. He scrambled backward as Bock kicked him in the gut, sending a shockwave of pain through his torso. He flopped backward, fighting the urge to vomit, when his hand settled on something cold and metallic just behind him. The gun!

He grabbed the gun blindly and rolled to his left to avoid Bock’s next kick, which would have caught him in the temple but only managed to graze his arm. Colby rolled up and got to his knees, aiming the .45 and squeezing off three quick rounds in rapid succession. His military training held true, and Bock’s head snapped backward as the back of it exploded in a shower of blood, brains, and bone. The second bullet took him in the shoulder and spun him around, his arms flailing wildly beside him. The last bullet missed, but only because Bock’s chest was turned sideways by the second bullet, otherwise it would have cracked through his sternum and into his heart.

Bock’s body fell to the ground with a muffled thump and landed perpendicular to Steinman’s, which Colby now saw had a fresh, gaping hole in the chest. Blood poured from both corpses and pooled in the dirt beneath them. Colby looked at the two bodies. Bock’s legs lay over Steinman’s torso. This was too much shit for one day. He could barely believe this had all started as a simple deforestation survey.

A scream behind him brought his mind back to attention. Janice! He’d forgotten all about her. He turned just in time to see Harper vanish into the woods with Janice in tow, kicking and thrashing for all she was worth. The two disappeared into the brush on the other side of the clearing.

Colby took off after them. There wasn’t much of Harper left, if he could get one good shot he’d be able to drop the bastard like a bad habit, but he had to be close enough to
see
him first. Shooting blindly into the woods was out of the question. For one, his revolver only had two bullets left, and he didn’t have any spare ammunition or his speed loaders on him. A stupid mistake, but he hadn’t expected the attack to come so soon. His rifle had a full clip, and two others sat in his pocket, but he’d left the rifle in Allen’s tent when Janice started screaming. Another stupid mistake. His old Drill would have put a boot up his ass for that.