by David Coy
Once inside, the wasp stopped and hovered in a uniform cloud of prey-scent. Sight now pointed out the target.
It had found its prey in still air, from chamber to chamber, in about six seconds.
“What now?” Bailey asked.
“We have to warn the others.”
Mary moved cautiously to the chamber opening and looked right, left, up and down. She stepped into the tube, shoe raised and ready. She looked down the tube and saw nothing, heard nothing.
“I think it’s gone into one of the holes,” she said.
All we can do, she thought, is to wait for the scream.
Pui Tamguma was sitting and praying for the safe return of his brother from the torture chambers of the aliens when he heard the wasp fly in. He saw it instantly and tried to uncross his legs to get away. The wasp dashed down and struck him in the neck before he could move his head and Pui felt the familiar numbness from the sting spread to his voice, silencing it. He tried to get up and the wasp hit him again in the chest and it felt like he’d been hit with a rock. He tried to make it to the opening, but fell face-first just a step or two from where he started. The last thing he felt was the wasp crawling up the back of his bare leg before that, too, lost all feeling.
“Phil!” Mary called. Phil was out of his chamber before Mary got there and met her in the tube.
“There’s a wasp loose in the tube! It’s in one of the holes!”
Phil quickly put two and two together.
((rpl
“The pupa?”
“It must have hatched out,” Mary said.
“Christ!” he said.
“It flew out of our hole and that’s when I lost it. It’s in here somewhere.”
Phil looked around and thought. “Everybody out!” he bellowed. “Get out! There’s a wasp in the tube! Everybody out!”
He had to get them out of the chambers and into one area, one cluster. Isolated, any of them were targets. He moved rapidly, yelling at the top of his lungs. People scrabbled out like panicky rodents, looking everywhere. Some covered their heads and bodies with their bedclothes for protection. Ned bunched them all up in the middle of the tube.
“Is that everyone?” Phil called out to Ned.
Ned looked back over the covered heads at Phil and threw up his arms.
“I think so!”
“Check the holes at your end!” he shouted, then turned to Mary. “You check this end.”
Ned walked down the tube peering cautiously into the chambers like a cop looking in parked cars. The third one he came to was Pui Tamguma’s. He was lying face down with his head turned toward the opening. The open eyes and blank stare told the whole story. As he watched, Ned could see a small shape moving along Pui’s back, under his blue and white striped t-shirt.
“It’s in here!” he called.
Phil worked his way through the knot of people. They’d grouped together out of instinct and were some distance from Pui’s chamber, but they began to creep even further from it, like sheep drifting away from a herding dog.
“It’s in there all right. I saw it under his shirt,” Ned said to Phil.
Phil moved up close and looked in. The wasp, its abdomen pointed straight down, was visible on Pui’s neck.
“That’s it for him,” Phil said.
“While its got its stinger in him, I think I could get in there and kill it,” Ned said.
Phil considered it. The wasp was preoccupied, distracted in fact, but there was no way to tell for sure. It might have them in its sights right now.
“I’ll do it,” Phil said. “I need something to whack it with.”
When Mary came up, Phil reached over and took the shoe out of her hand. Mary looked puzzled.
“You’re going in there? Are you nuts?”
“We have to kill it.”
“Why don’t we just seal off the opening with a sheet— keep it contained.”
“To hell with that. I don’t want to worry about the god- amned thing getting out somehow. Besides, they might find it. We can’t risk that.”
Mary thought about it.
“So?” she asked.
“We don’t want them to know we know how to move around. They might tighten security, or just kill us,” Ned added.
There was no telling what they might use them for if they thought they were a threat or a danger. Phil was right.
“Go kill it,” she said. “But what are we going to do about Pui?”
“I’m not sure yet. We’ll have to figure that out later,” Phil said and moved up closer to the hole. “Why don’t you two step back. Give yourselves some distance.”
Mary and Ned moved away. Phil moved cautiously to the opening and put one foot up into the hole. The wasp was off Pui’s neck and was now on the back of his leg, its butt pointed down. Phil moved slowly to within striking distance and raised the shoe. In a blink, the wasp drew its ovipositor out of Pui’s leg and launched itself into the air. It flew up into Phil’s face and began to swoop back and forth just inches away. Phil froze and could feel the breeze from its buzzing wings against his skin. The angles weren’t right. It was too close to him to get any force with a downward hit without changing position first. No way.
Without warning, the wasp dashed back to Pui’s bare leg, turned in a quick circle, raised its ovipositor and sunk it deep. Phil didn’t bother to question why the wasp didn’t attack him. He brought the running shoe down on it with such ferocity that its juice splashed out in all directions as if he’d hit an overripe plum. There was no telling what he’d driven into Pui’s body down through the hollow needle of the wasp’s ovipositor, but that particular injection was the least of Pui’s problems. The whack had been so fierce it left a clear print of the shoe’s tread pattern on the leg.
“Did you get it?” Ned asked from the opening.
Phil looked at the remains of the wasp stuck to the bottom of the shoe. “Yeah. I got it.”
Phil stepped out of the hole and handed the shoe back to Mary. Mary held the shoe up close to her face and examined the remains, then picked at its parts with the nail of her index finger. “I’ve never seen a dead one,” she said. “These must be the eggs. They must be self-fertilizing. The damn things are probably born pregnant.”
Phil and Ned leaned over and looked. Mary had substituted her index finger for the precision of her little finger and had pointed its nail at a gooey mass of what looked like pinhead-sized yellow eggs down in the shoe’s tread.
“It’s an alien species,” Phil said. “Anything’s possible— just look around you.”
As if on cue, Gilbert walked up, Bible in hand.
He pushed his glasses up on his nose then wiped the corners of his mouth with his thumb and middle finger. He looked at Mary who ignored him.
“Did you bring it in?” he asked Phil as he indicated the mashed insect on the shoe with a nod. “That wasp?”
“That’s right.”
“And there are more of them somewhere?”
“Right. Millions,” Phil said.
“Are they yours to steal?”
The question rankled and Phil felt his anger rise up like an old and vicious dog. It wasn’t the way he said it, but the fact that he said it at all that angered.
Phil grabbed the dog’s collar and held on tight.
It was a completely twisted kind of question. Phil searched for any value in it and found not a farthing. It was devoid of meaning. He felt the dog pull hard. It was a pointless question, filled with lame morality. The more Phil thought about it, the less firm his grip on the dog’s collar became. A deep growl resonated noiselessly in the air.
Mary sensed it. She looked at Phil and raised her eyebrows. This should be interesting, she thought.
“What kind of a pointless fucking question is that?” Phil asked back firmly.
Gilbert swallowed with his mouth open and smelled shit. He acted like he had something more to say but wouldn’t just then.
For some reason she could scarcel
y understand, Gilbert was as transparent to Mary as glass; she knew that look on his face. He’d wait and say something behind Phil’s back to somebody, probably his crony, Tom Moon.
“Thanks for your input,” Phil said squarely to Gilbert. “Why don’t you go back and join the others now?” He put both hands on his hips and tilted his chin up once in the direction of the dissolving group.
Gilbert swallowed again, hard, with his mouth open.
The dismissal was perfect, delivered with precision perfect, and unbending. It gave Mary more satisfaction than seeing Phil’s fist smash Gilbert’s nose.
Gilbert stood there stupidly, for a beat, and Mary could hear his mind twisting at high speed. He turned and walked back with that loping walk Mary hated so much. His very walk, like his speech, his face, his hands and how he used them—everything about him—was sanctimonious and affected.
She looked at Phil, and Phil winked back. That made her smile.
Phil took a step or two toward the remaining knot of captives standing in the tube.
“It’s okay!” he yelled to make himself heard. “It’s dead!” He stepped over to Pui’s chamber and looked in. Pui lay there like a mannequin, his eyes frozen, unblinking, fully conscious but unfeeling—for the moment.
“What now?” Ned asked soberly, looking over Phil’s shoulder at Pui. “The man’s got a major problem as I see it.”
“You’ve got that right.” Phil could see the little worms in his mind, hatching out of their eggs and moving, feeding, growing as fast as bamboo shoots. Without the bizarre medical intervention of the aliens, Pui was doomed to be eaten alive from the inside out.
“We should kill him before he gets his feeling back,” Mary said flatly.
Phil looked at her, then at Ned. It was the only humane option. The problem was that someone would have to actually put the cord or wound-up shirt or belt around Pui’s neck and choke off his air until he died. It was one thing to say it and quite another to do it.
“What do you mean we?” Phil said and regretted it in the same breath.
Mary realized her comment had been poorly phrased. It wouldn’t be her who killed Pui if it came to it.
“Sorry,” she said.
Phil touched her arm. “It’s okay. Me, too.”
He looked back at Pui, but tried not to see the blank, staring eyes. Behind them, he knew, Pui was thinking of the worms that would hatch into his flesh—that and nothing else.
“Leave him where he is for now,” Phil said. “I have to think about it.” The “it” was how he was going to kill him. He’d already decided he’d have to do it. He just didn’t want to do it right then.
* * *
Gilbert walked up to Tom Moon but did not look at him. He swallowed with his mouth open and waited for a question. Phil’s comment had been dirty, and it was very rude how he said what he said. Gilbert wasn’t angry about it because Gilbert didn’t allow himself to get angry.
“Was it that one he brought back like Bailey said?” Tom asked.
Gilbert just changed his face and knew Tom could read the ever-so-subtle affirmative written in the line of his mouth.
But Tom couldn’t.
“Was it?” Tom repeated.
Gilbert tried again and raised his mouth into just-the- very-start of a smile, still not looking at Tom. He could feel Tom’s eyes moving over his face like Braille-trained fingers trying to read the message there.
Tom waited for an answer and finally shook his head.
“Well, hell, I guess you know,” Tom said. Everybody in this place is crazy, he thought. He walked away from Gilbert shaking his head.
Gilbert just stood there, staring, his mouth agape. From time to time he swallowed, mouth open.
It is important for people to know how to read these facial words, Gilbert thought. Phil is an evil man. Evil men do evil things. Soon there will be no evil men to say evil words.
His neck and cheeks felt flushed and hot.
* * *
Pui Tamguma blinked and knew he was going to die. He knew the wasp’s larvae were hatching and in minutes they would begin to feed: first one, then a few, then many. They were small now, but as they fed they would grow. As they did, so would the pain.
He rose slowly up on one elbow and felt the first one move deep in his leg, just a twitch, in response. He had been cycled twelve times and knew the horror well. The torture chambers of the aliens were nothing compared to what would come. He got to his feet and stood there sweating in fear. He wanted to move but knew if he did, he might stimulate them somehow to start feeding sooner. His breath came in short bursts like a panting canine and soon the sweat was dripping from his chin and off the tip of his nose. He began to feel them moving, squirming in his tissues and he began to scream. He screamed not out of pain, for it was not yet there.
Pui Tamguma screamed out of fear for the pain to come.
Phil was lying there waiting for it and he knew immediately what the sound meant. Numbly, he got up and slipped on his shirt and shoes. He reached down and felt for the belt around his waist. He ran his numb hands over it just to make sure it was there and felt the cheap brass buckle. He’d picked it up in the clothes pile outside the soakers. That was odd for him because he rarely wore a belt at all. At the time, it just seemed the thing to do. He thought about how it did its job—this inanimate thing—so well and without thought or conscience. He wondered if it might not feel something now, somehow.
No, he thought. The belt can feel nothing. The belt will do just fine.
Mary and Bailey lay not sleeping. Bailey pushed her fingers gently into Mary’s back and said, “He’s awake.”
They would not let Phil do this alone. Together they got up and walked toward Pui’s chamber and his screams filled the hollow tube like a solid thing they could feel on their arms and legs. Mary shuddered and folded her arms tight. Phil was a few feet ahead and she watched him strip off his belt as he walked. She heard it slap against the belt loops as it came out, and she felt a chill of fear.
When Phil entered his chamber Pui stopped screaming and stood there panting and sweating. Phil locked eyes with Pui for a second, then he gently placed his hand on Pui’s shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” Phil whispered to him. “This was my fault. What I’m about to do is as right as I can make this goddamned situation, and I hope like hell that you can forgive me.”
Then Phil moved behind him and placed the noose around Pui’s neck and cinched it down tight and held it. Pui closed his eyes and looked relieved. Phil just stared up at an angle with his mouth set tight and held the noose against Pui’s neck with his left hand and pulled hard with his right. Pui’s hands came up to the strap around his neck but didn’t try to pull it loose. They just rested against it. When Pui went limp, Phil continued to hold him up by the noose. Mary could see the veins bulge in his arms and wrists.
He’s so strong, Mary thought. So very strong.
Then she wept.
He lowered Pui to the chamber floor very gently and Mary could see that Phil’s eyes were wet. She noticed that his hands were shaking a little when he took the noose off.
They carried Pui’s body back to the soakers and left it there in a far corner, but in a spot where the first goon that went out the exit seam would see it easily. Phil said it should look like Pui had died there, far from the other captives.
“Sick and dying animals often did the same,” he said.
8
T hey’d called Sheriff Bob Lynch from Edna’s and told him about the blood they’d found in the tent and the footprints all around. Lucky for them Edna and Ronny were out when they made the call. Linda was sure it would have sent Edna into a state of shock again. But the blood and the footprints had little impact on Linda. To her, Phil was dead already, and if he’d been buried and someone told her his grave had been robbed, it might have had the same impact as this revelation. She thought it was tragic and strange and freakish that Phil had been killed by aliens from outer space but the
fact remained that Phil was dead; and that was that. Somebody else’s spilled blood, which just substantiated the facts, was trivial at this point.
They’d tried not to disturb the crime scene, but George was so intensely curious, it was impossible not to have some impact on it. He’d poked around inside the tent and under the sleeping bags looking for anything that might shed some light on what happened. She watched him back up and step right on one of the three-toed prints in his zeal and she grimaced as his footprint obliterated the alien one. He wasn’t satisfied until he had looked at every inch of the scene, and Linda considered it a miracle that only one footprint had been lost as a result of his brow-knitted probing and lifting and poking.
Bob Lynch told them over the phone not to touch anything, which Linda denied they’d done several times, and then he sent them home—he’d take care of it, he said.
The ride down was much quieter than the ride up. Linda managed a few brief naps against the window using George’s wadded-up jacket as a pillow. He’d offered it and she’d taken it acting timid, but accepted it gladly. The collar had a different but not unpleasant scent of an undefined cologne deep in it. She wondered what the name of the cologne would be that a man like George Greenbaum would wear and chuckled to herself over a few names she thought up. Later, in a half-sleep, she turned the make-shift pillow around so she couldn’t smell it.
It was early evening when they pulled into the drive of Phil’s house. The sweet smell of ocean was thick in the air at that time of day. Its warm scent was a sharp contrast to the crisp, earthen scent of High Ridge.
“I’ll run these samples right to the lab in the morning,” George said. “I’ll let you know what they find out as soon as possible.”
“Okay,” Linda said. “Well, thanks for driving.”
“It’s pretty long that drive.”
“You get used to it.”
“Yeah. I guess so.”
