Violet Eyes (34 page)

“That makes no sense at all,” Anders said. “It’s a goddamned bug clown car.”

“Does anyone have a tissue or something?” Terry whispered.

“In the glove compartment,” Rachel said.

Eric reached out to open it and Terry cautioned him. “Slow,” he said. “Don’t scare it.”

Eric pulled out a napkin and Terry released the spider’s right legs to accept it. Then he raised it up over the wheel, and brought it down fast. The fly realized its peril a second too late and Terry let out a whoop of victory as he smashed the spider and its offspring. He crushed the center of the napkin between his fingers before wadding it up and tossing it to the floor.

“How did the flies get inside the spider?” Eric asked.

“They hatched there,” Terry said.

“Like…parasites?” he said.

He shook his head. “That’s what I’d say normally—that somehow these flies are injecting everything that moves with their larvae. But I think this is more than that. I’ve never seen either of these species before, and they both have these purple markings. I think this is truly a symbiotic life form. The flies hatch from the spiders and infect creatures with the eggs that produce the spiders.”

“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” Anders said.

“When I was in Billy’s house, there were spiders and flies all over the place,” Eric offered.

Terry nodded. “That would make sense.” He pushed off the steering wheel and levered himself back to the backseat. “What doesn’t make sense is how it happened. This is not a natural mutation.”

“No, it’s not,” Rachel agreed. “These things are connected with Billy. He saw them on one of the Keys.”

“Who’s Billy?” Anders said. “Another boyfriend? Wow, my little woman is quite the hussy when she gets loose.”

“Billy was our neighbor. He was all over the news last month because he and some friends were on one of the Keys for the weekend and got attacked by swarms of flies. Three of the four were killed on the island and Billy came back alone.”

“So it was your neighbor that brought these things back?” Anders laughed. “Man, you know how to pick ’em.”

“But what the news didn’t talk much about was that there were spiders on the island too,” Rachel said. “They were the first thing Billy and his friends saw. And the news also didn’t talk about the other thing they found there.”

“What’s that?” Terry asked.

“The research station. They found a steel hut with all sorts of lab equipment—and canisters of pesticide.”

“So what does that mean?” Anders asked.

“I don’t know,” Terry said. “But I think we should get out of here while we can.”

“That’s the smartest thing you’ve said all day,” Anders said.

Rachel turned the key and the engine roared to life. “I don’t know where we’re going,” she said.

“It doesn’t matter,” Terry said. “Maybe head for the Interstate. Just drive.”

Chapter Fifty-Four

Wednesday, May 22. 8:10 a.m.

“Is the perimeter secure?” The handheld unit squawked with static as Peter Skiles waited for the answer. He was walking in the early morning dew across a field of beaten down grass. Trucks had already run back and forth over this area a hundred times as they brought in equipment and set up the base. Overnight they’d constructed a watchtower at the center, and there was an officer in its Eyre now, following a search beam back and forth across the edge of the forest a half mile ahead.

Watching for anything that moved.

Men hustled back and forth in front of the tower, carrying steel beams and other equipment to finalize the perimeter guard line and shelter.

Over the past twenty-four hours Skiles had mobilized resources from throughout the southeast, and coordinated between the Innovative Industries warehouse unit and the special ops command to load tons of the eXogen19 onto fertilizer planes. Once the last units were in place, they would begin to cover the area. Nothing was to be allowed out…and nothing that was in would remain alive.

It was grim work. But it was an exchange. Peter had to remind himself of that, as he had to remind the men. This was not the time to get weak. They would be taking thousands of lives…but they were doing so to save millions. Containment was dirty, horrible work…but there was nothing else they could do. It would be the work of Washington to manufacture a hurricane or some other natural disaster to cover their tracks.

The unit crackled in his hands and a voice said, “Affirmative. All units in place.”

Skiles closed his eyes for a moment, and thought of what he had put in place.

The sterilizing planes.

The lines of armed troops all stationed to make sure nothing got out…

He was about to order a bloodbath. This type of exercise was not why he had become an agent. But his ability to handle the hard shit was why he had excelled as one. He pressed the button on the handheld, and gave the word.

“Let’s get this done.”

Chapter Fifty-Five

Wednesday, May 22. 8:23 a.m.

Rachel wound the car through the last streets of Passanattee. Along the way, she had to maneuver around cars that people had abandoned in the middle of the road. It looked like a toy town that some giant kid had been playing with, and then had just walked away from. The houses and buildings all were wrapped in cocoons, and white-wrapped bundles that she knew were bodies lay at odd angles on the sidewalks and sometimes the street. She swerved several times at the last moment to avoid running over one. It was hard to see through the flies.

The swarms continued unabated, bodies slapping off her windshield repeatedly like heavy rain. She hit the windshield wipers and squirted fluid across them every few seconds to scrape the viscous yellow guts of their bodies out of view.

“Go easy on that stuff,” Anders warned. “We don’t know how long it’s going to take to get past these things.”

The car felt increasingly claustrophobic as the shadows covered every window, and outside, webs covered every surface.

“What’s that?” Eric asked from the backseat. He pointed to a light ahead. Rachel continued to drive, keeping the speedometer below thirty mph. Orange light flickered ahead. As they drew closer, they could see the flames licking above the top of a Jeep in the middle of the road. The car had smashed into another, and between the two, had effectively blocked the road.

“Shit,” Rachel said, slowing to a stop. She was not worrying any longer about swearing in front of Eric.

“I don’t think there’s enough clearance to get around that,” Terry agreed.

“And who knows what shit’s on the road,” Anders said. “Back it up.”

She took a deep breath and put the SUV in reverse, turning left at the next intersection. “I don’t know if this goes through,” she warned.

“We don’t have a lot of choice but to see,” Terry said.

“Eric, see if you can get a signal on my phone yet?” she asked.

The boy reached into her handbag and pulled it out, thumbing it on. After a minute, he shook his head.

“No bars.”

“Figures.”

“Actually,” he added. “There are bars, kinda? But they keep going up and down.”

“See if Google Maps will work?” she asked, as they crept down the small side street. Spider-webbed houses slowly passed on either side of them. A parade of creepy.

“Lock the doors,” Anders demanded. He slapped his own with a click.

“Why? What’s the matter?” Rachel asked, glancing to the sides, but trying to keep her eyes on the road.

“I see him,” Terry said quietly, and the click of his lock echoed in the cab.

“Mom, stop!” Eric called, pointing out the window.

Anders reached up over the seat and hit Eric’s door lock. “Don’t stop,” he said. His voice was firm.

Eric screamed. “Mom, look out!”

A moment later, something slammed against the passenger door.

Rachel finally saw him and hit the brakes.

“No,
go!
” Anders yelled. “Do
not
stop!”

Rachel hesitated and Terry touched a hand to her shoulder. “He’s right. Keep driving.”

“They’re going to hurt him,” Eric cried. “We have room, we can let him in.”

“It’s suicide, Eric,” Anders said. “We’d let a ton of flies in the car, we’d all get bit, and that guy was most likely already infected, the same way as that Emma woman. We can’t risk it at this point.”

Terry agreed. He felt sick saying it, but he couldn’t argue with Anders. Self-preservation ultimately trumped altruism. “I’m sorry, Eric, but your dad is right. If we let him in, we might all end up dying. We can’t risk it.”

Rachel pressed on the gas, and in the rearview mirror, she could see the man running after them. He was portly and older, and tired after only two blocks, falling away. Then he extended a middle finger in the air, and fell to hold hands on his knees, catching his breath in the middle of the storm of flies.

She couldn’t help but wonder if there were already spiders crawling throughout his brain.

Rachel turned at the next intersection and found the main street again. It was clear, and she accelerated to thirty and then forty mph. The two-lane road turned into a four-lane highway just a mile or so ahead. Route 1 pretty much emptied into Passanattee by way of a State Hwy 337, but by the time you got this far south, most of the traffic had already exited both highways. This was the last stop before the highway turned into a meandering route through a couple small towns and eventually dead-ended at the Everglades. Passanattee was pretty much the end of the line.

“All right, gang, we’re getting out of here,” she promised, as the SUV rattled over a set of railroad tracks the marked the end of the business district. The houses here started to grow more rundown and farther between. One promised
Tarot Readings
with a neon sign in the front room window, while another advertised
Live Bait
with a handmade sign on the lawn near the culvert. Rachel could see the Mobil gas station sign marking the edge of the town.

“Oh shit,” she said then, and took her foot off the gas.

The car coasted to a stop, just behind an old yellow station wagon.

“Now what?” Eric asked.

The rusted old car had crashed into the passenger door of a parked Honda on the north side of the street. Spider web stretched from the green frame house all the way to the Honda. Thin gauzy strands even touched the front hood of the wagon. Dark shapes darted in and out of the cotton, spinning more and more, extending their dominion from house to lawn to road. There was only three or four feet of open road between the back of the wagon and another car parked on the opposite side of the street. Even if they could go around the parked cars, the way was blocked on one side of the street by a hedge, and on the other by a wooden fence. They were bottlenecked.

Rachel exhaled slowly. “I don’t know,” she said.

“Just back up and take a different road,” Anders said.

“It’s not that easy,” Terry said. “This is pretty much the only way out of town.”

“C’mon,” Anders said. “There’s got to be a side road.”

“You came in Route 1 to 337, didn’t you?” Terry asked.

Anders nodded.

“That’s the only way.” He pointed to their right. “Go a couple blocks through the brush that way and you’ll be standing in swamp. Same thing over there.” He pointed in the direction of the crunched Honda. “This is a thin passageway between ocean, swamp and the Everglades. Passanattee is pretty much surrounded by water of one kind or another. We have to go this way.”

“There’s somebody still in the car!” Eric interrupted. He was leaning over the car dashboard, staring hard at the station wagon. Rachel followed his gaze and realized she could make out the shadow of a head above the driver’s seat headrest.

“Back up a little,” Anders said. His voice was deadly still.

“Why?” Rachel asked.

“Just do it.”

She put the SUV in reverse and backed up a car length.

“Give me that sheet,” Anders said, pointing at Terry’s feet.

“You can’t go out there,” Terry said. “That’s suicide.”

“Is this the only way out of this hellhole, or not?”

Terry nodded.

“That’s all I need to know.”

Anders pulled the sheet over his face and put his hand on the door. “I’ll close this as fast as I can. But be sure to kill anything that gets in.”

“Anders, don’t,” Rachel said. “Please.”

He could hear the fear in her voice. The concern. The need for him that she didn’t want to admit.

That was enough.

Anders had known that she was still, deep down, his woman. Her heart would always belong to him. Maybe this would end up showing to her just how much.

The handle clicked and he rolled his body out of the opening, shoving the door shut as quickly as possible behind him. The sheet caught in the door and he yanked it. It didn’t come.

“Fucker,” he complained and gave a huge pull. There was a thin rip and then he was free. The flies slammed into his head and arms as he walked the few feet to the station wagon. Something bit him in the back. And then on the cheek.

He slapped the insect away from his face, but then another bite spiked on his calf.

Anders didn’t bother to slap it. The bites were beginning to make themselves felt all over this back. The sheet wasn’t stopping them.

He pulled on the door handle of the station wagon and threw the door open.

The driver was a middle-aged woman, with silver glasses and graying hair. That hair was stained with something dark and sticky-looking, and Anders could see a hole leading through the top of her skull. If he didn’t know better, he would have said she’d blown her brains out, but no, this was more the opposite. Her brains had exploded out, not been pierced by a bullet. They’d leaked across the brown canvass covering of the car seat. Her head had lolled against the window for several hours, if not a couple of days. The spider webs had probably helped to hold it there. They covered her head like a hair net. The car was full of them, tented in every corner and doorframe. The car had to be full of spiders. If he got in, he was going to get bit.