Infestation

by Heidi Lang

  “Maybe Gary will let you keep her.” Caden pushed the door open for them. “He gave his nephew a goat, apparently.”

  “You mean Blake?” Vivienne said.

  “Blake’s uncle is the goat man?” Rae barely looked at the Green On! lobby this time as they walked across it to join Nate outside the smoky-glass doors that led to the labs. “Oh, the yurt!” she realized. “Alyssa said he’d gone to live there so he could study the stone wall. I was wondering how many yurts are in those woods.”

  “More than you’d think, actually,” Vivienne said. “I know of at least three. Also a geodome. Oh, and a converted bus.”

  “Who’s Blake?” Ava asked, following behind.

  “One of our mortal enemies,” Vivienne said.

  “What?” Ava blinked.

  “We’re in a competition with him,” Rae explained. “Ergo.”

  “Ergo,” Vivienne agreed. She nudged Nate. “Come on, Nate. We’re supposed to be a team, remember?”

  Nate sighed loudly. “Ergo,” he muttered grudgingly.

  Ava shook her head. “You people are weird.”

  The inner glass doors opened, and Patrick stepped out, wearing his normal dark suit and confident smile. “Welcome back.” He glanced at Caden, and his smile widened. “Mr. Price. I see you have reconsidered your position on our internship program?”

  “No,” Caden said shortly. “I’m just here to support, not to stay.”

  “We’ll see.” Patrick focused on Ava next. “And Ms. Ava Carter! How good to see you again.”

  Ava’s cheeks went pink, and she didn’t quite meet his eyes. Rae could hardly believe it. She’d never seen this side of her sister before. “I hope it’s okay for me to be here,” Ava mumbled.

  “But of course. Welcome to Green On!. Perhaps you’ll even decide you’d like to work here one day.”

  “Maybe,” Ava said uncertainly.

  “My department is in the midst of some very exciting work,” Patrick continued. “I have a feeling that a lot of people—smart, capable young people like yourself—will be interested in being a part—” He stopped abruptly. “Is that a goat?” He was looking at Vivienne now, his smile faltering. It was the first time Rae had ever seen him look uncertain.

  “This is Priceless Art.” Vivienne shrugged her shoulders, and Priceless Art lifted her goat head. “We think,” Vivienne added.

  “Baa.”

  “I… see.” Patrick moved closer, reaching a hand toward the goat. “Not exactly what I was expecting when you said you found something interesting, but—”

  The moment his fingers touched Priceless Art, the goat jerked back, legs flailing wildly. Vivienne cried out, and only Caden’s quick lunge forward saved her from toppling backward with a heavy goat on her head.

  “Shh, shh,” Caden whispered, stroking the goat’s nose. Her eyes rolled, the whites showing all around them, and then abruptly she went still. “I think she fainted.”

  “Goats do that,” Patrick said. Only he wasn’t looking at the goat anymore. He was looking at his fingers, the ones that had brushed against Priceless Art’s flank. He rubbed them together thoughtfully, then brought them to his nose and sniffed. His eyes widened. “Where did you find this goat?”

  “In a tunnel,” Vivienne said.

  “Where in a tunnel?” Patrick asked, a strange urgency to his words.

  “In a cavern in the tunnel, stuck inside a giant egg sac,” Nate spoke up.

  Patrick frowned.

  “Is something wrong, Mr. Smith?” Ava asked.

  “Perhaps, Ms. Carter. Perhaps.” Patrick pasted a smile on his face. His usual smiles were wide, pleasant, attractive things. They reminded Rae of toothpaste commercials and luxury car advertisements. But this smile wasn’t selling anything that anyone would want. And when Rae looked at it, dread curled in her stomach, filling her mouth with the bitter taste of fear.

  Rae inched closer to Caden, his shoulder brushing against hers. She could feel Ava at her back and was glad her older sister had insisted on coming after all. Even if she was upset with her.

  “Let’s get this poor creature to our lab,” Patrick said. “Quickly now. You can fill me in on the details on the way.” He tapped a panel and the doors opened again. “Oh, and please do call me Patrick,” he told Ava. He strode past the smoky glass, leaving the rest of them to scramble after him.

  Rae thought of the hole Caden had found, the way it loomed there in the middle of the forest, deep and dark and mysterious. She remembered how she’d felt just before she went inside. The terror that came with the knowledge that they were about to follow a monster through a tunnel full of unknown dangers. And as she trailed behind Patrick through the long, empty hallway of Green On!, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was doing the same thing again.

  26. CADEN

  “… found Priceless Art wound up in a giant, disgusting egg sac, and of course we couldn’t leave her there,” Vivienne finished, rubbing the goat’s nose. The goat lay across the hard marble slab of a table in the middle of their underground lab. Caden couldn’t stop watching her side, how it moved up and down rapidly with her too-fast breathing, the only indication that she wasn’t already dead.

  “Of course,” Patrick agreed. He leaned against the counter that ran along the side of the room. The electric lights of the underground lab washed his face in a harsh bluish glow, erasing every shadow, illuminating every line. He wore an expression of casual interest, as if he were watching the first episode of a new show and hadn’t decided if it was worth seeing the rest of the season yet.

  Caden frowned. He’d seen that exact same expression on his brother’s face before and knew what it meant: Patrick was hiding something. But then Caden was sure that Patrick had been part of the team that opened the rift to the Other Place and pulled out Aiden. And then kept him locked in a secret underground lab. So this was the kind of man willing to kidnap a teenager. He was probably hiding all sorts of things behind that bland exterior.

  We came to an understanding.

  Aiden still hadn’t explained what that meant, just said Green On! wouldn’t be bothering him anymore. Caden’s stomach filled with that terrible sense of dread again and he pushed those thoughts away; he’d been through enough today and didn’t need to add worry about future horrors.

  Next to Patrick, Doctor Nguyen stood straight and stiff. She’d met them in the hall on their way into the lab and had listened to Vivienne’s story with growing apprehension, her eyes widening behind her wire-rimmed glasses, her mouth pressed tight as if holding back a whole tide of words she knew she wasn’t allowed to say.

  Ava stood on Patrick’s other side, her mouth also clenched. But if Doctor Nguyen’s distress was a tide, Ava’s was the building pressure of an ocean pulling inward before a tsunami. She wasn’t just agitated. She was furious, the red of her anger combining with the black of her fear. It looked almost like a gaping, bleeding wound.

  Caden looked away from her, uncomfortable. He knew Ava was upset because Rae put herself in danger again. Just as he knew his own older brother would never have cared so deeply about him.

  But that wasn’t entirely true.

  Caden thought of the Zachary Mitchell incident again. Aiden had said he’d lost his temper. That it was something he was working on now. But Caden remembered what Aiden had told him after he’d finally let Zach stumble away.

  If someone hurts you, you don’t just take an eye for an eye. You take the whole head.

  When he said those words, Aiden’s face had been filled with unapologetic fury. Where Ava’s outrage shimmered with love, his brother’s had been shot through with the entitled anger of a toddler who has just discovered someone else playing with his toys. He wasn’t being a protective older sibling but a possessive one.

  “I can’t believe you,” Ava finally burst out, rounding on Rae. “You told me you went in the tunnel to find a goat, not to track down some kind of mutant bug!”

  “Six of one, half dozen of another,
” Rae said, attempting a sickly smile.

  “What does that mean?” Nate asked.

  “It’s something our dad used to say,” Ava said, still glaring at Rae. “It means the truth is a little of both things.” Her eyes narrowed. “Which also means both things are a little bit of a lie.”

  Rae winced. “I was going to tell you the rest.”

  “When?”

  “Eventually.”

  “Maybe now would be a good time to also mention the spaceship we found,” Nate said.

  Everything went still and quiet, the silence that perfect crystal moment right before something precious crashes to the ground. Caden could feel the inevitable shattering.

  “Nate,” Rae hissed.

  “What?”

  “We agreed not to talk about that.” Vivienne scowled. “Remember? In the woods?” After they’d left the tunnels, they’d decided that it would be better—safer—not to let Patrick know they were nosing around secret Green On! stuff. Even Vivienne had thought it best. “But obviously some people have the memory of a goldfish.”

  “Actually, the whole goldfish memory thing is a myth,” Nate said. “Current studies suggest that they remember things for months.”

  “So not the point, Nathaniel,” Vivienne said. “The point is you have a terrible memory.”

  “Says the person who forgot I was in the car on the drive over here.”

  “So this is some kind of revenge?” Vivienne crossed her arms.

  “No. I just think that since Doctor Nguyen joined us here, she deserves to hear all the facts.”

  “Suck-up,” Vivienne fake-coughed.

  “Totally,” Rae muttered.

  “Um, thank you, Nathaniel,” Doctor Nguyen said weakly. “I appreciate your trust in me.”

  “See?” Nate told the others. “Some people appreciate me. Anyhow, it doesn’t make sense neglecting to mention the ship if we think the bugs came from it. Besides, we were supposed to find a mystery. It was literally the assignment. We can’t get in trouble for doing the assignment.”

  Patrick shifted, and all eyes turned to him. “This conversation has taken a rather fascinating turn. You children honestly believe that you discovered a spaceship hidden in a tunnel?” His tone didn’t change, and neither did his expression, but he still managed to convey a whole bucket of skepticism.

  Rae stiffened, and Caden could feel her indignation flaring. “That’s exactly what we found,” she said. “An alien craft, surrounded by Green On! employees.”

  “Hmm.” Patrick steepled his fingers together in front of him.

  “Don’t lie to us,” Caden said, his own anger building. “We saw it with our own eyes.”

  “I have said nothing against this… theory of yours.” Patrick gave a tight smile that made Caden want to hit him, it was so condescending.

  Caden shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his jeans. “We’re pretty sure that when your employees opened that craft, they let something out. An alien bug or two.”

  “Accidentally,” Vivienne added.

  Doctor Nguyen fidgeted and looked from Patrick to the others and back again. She cleared her throat. “Patrick,” she began tentatively. “Is it possib—”

  “Doctor Nguyen.” Patrick cut her off, his tone full of warning. And Caden noticed suddenly how odd it was that Patrick always used last names and titles for other people, while insisting that everyone call him by his first name only. It was some weird sort of power game, a method of keeping people off-balance.

  “Did you really find a spaceship?” Ava asked, and she was so earnest about it that Patrick’s expression cracked.

  He sighed. “We found something, Ms. Carter. I am not at liberty to say more than that.”

  “You mean you can neither confirm nor deny?” Ava raised her eyebrows.

  Patrick chuckled. “We no longer use that expression. Too many movies and television shows have ruined it for us.”

  “That’s right. You used to work for the CIA, didn’t you?” Ava said.

  “I see someone did her research.”

  “Us Carters always do.” Ava shared a smile with Rae. “Do you still work for them?” she asked Patrick.

  He shifted uncomfortably. “I am now fully committed to my new career here as—”

  A long, uncanny scream filled the lab, the noise echoing off the concrete walls. Caden’s hands flew over his ears as he spun around.

  Priceless Art’s eyes had rolled back in her head, the whites glowing an eerie blue in the glare of the lights above her. Her legs twitched like she wanted to run but couldn’t, her chest rising and falling even faster than before, her lips pulled back and that horrible noise pouring out of her, high-pitched and terrified.

  And then she stopped and went silent.

  Patrick inched back. “You might want to—”

  The goat exploded as something dark and shiny erupted from her stomach and headed straight for Rae.

  27. RAE

  Time slowed down for Rae, every millisecond sliced into a series of still frames like an old movie, every detail imprinted in stark relief. The feeling of blood, warm and sticky, dripping off her cheek. The horrible smell of torn guts stinking like a summer festival outhouse. The sight of that giant centipede, as thick and long as her arm, its legs splayed out on either side as it sailed toward her. And the knowledge that she would not be able to get out of its way.

  Rae tried getting her hands up, but her movements were as slow as the rest of the world, and she’d barely lifted them before the insect slammed into her chest, knocking her back against the concrete floor.

  Legs, hard and sharp, scuttled up her body, dug into her neck, pinched against her throat. Rae thrashed, trying to get a grip on the thing, but it was slippery with gore, and fast. Impossibly fast. It pinned her down, its bottom half pressing against her windpipe.

  Rae gasped for breath, and the thing reared back like a cobra about to strike. She caught a glimpse of a face on its underside—large, gleaming black eyes and a mouth stretched wide around a pair of cruelly serrated mandibles—before it darted forward, those mandibles extending toward her own mouth.

  Instantly she thought of the exploding goat and terror gave her new strength. She thrust her fingers up between the insect’s body and her face, covering most of her mouth with the back of her hand and trying to shove the thing’s head away from her. Its legs clung to her skin, the tips of its mandibles pressing into the corners of her mouth.

  She brought her other hand around and jabbed the insect in the eye with her thumb. Hard. It felt like pressing against a warm M&M, her thumb cracking through a bit of resistance before sinking into soft eyeball goo.

  The insect shrieked and pulled back, and Rae shoved it off her chest. It stumbled, and then righted itself and lifted its top half again, yellowish ooze sliding out of the crushed eye, its mandibles clacking together violently. Even though it was an insect, and it didn’t—couldn’t—have emotions, fury seemed to vibrate in every shiny, segmented line of its body.

  It dropped down and charged at her.

  Rae scrambled backward, trying to get to her feet, but it was moving so, so fast. It leaped.

  Ava slammed something large and heavy against it, crushing it into the ground. Half of it was mangled, more of that yellow liquid leaking out of snapped legs and cracked body segments, but it still managed to drag itself forward, hissing, its single good eye fixed on Rae.

  Ava swung her weapon again, and again, until the instrument broke apart in her hand. By then the bug was nothing more than a large yellowish smear on the floor.

  Patrick grabbed her by the shoulders and gently tugged her back. “It’s dead now, Ms. Carter. Extremely dead, in fact.” He sighed. “Much like that microscope you’re holding.”

  “Sorry.” Ava set the remaining pieces of it down on the lab table. “Was it expensive?”

  “Quite. But it can be replaced. Unlike your sister.”

  “Are you okay?” Caden crouched next to Rae.


  She couldn’t stop looking at the bug remains on the floor in front of her. “I don’t know.” She ran a hand over her face, feeling the sticky slime trail the insect had left behind, and shuddered. “But I’ll probably feel a lot better after a shower.”

  “You and me both.” Caden helped her to her feet. She noticed the blood smeared across his forehead and felt more of it squishing on his hands.

  “Showers all around, I think,” Ava said. She gave Rae a shaky smile, then wrapped an arm around her waist in a half hug. “I’m glad you weren’t bug food.”

  “Me too.” Rae hugged her sister back and felt her trembling. She realized suddenly that they were almost the same height. Rae wasn’t sure when that had happened; she’d always viewed her older sister as much bigger.

  Doctor Nguyen screamed, glass shattering around her.

  Rae whipped around.

  “The door!” the scientist shrieked. “Get the door!”

  Rae saw something hurtling across the floor toward the open door. Nate jumped on a chair, and Vivienne—

  Rae glimpsed her friend all the way in the far corner, her back to the room. It was very odd and brought Rae up short.

  Patrick reacted quickly, however, leaping over a chair, sprinting at the door, and kicking it shut a second before the insect reached it.

  The thing hissed and drew back, raising its upper half and clicking its mandibles together furiously.

  Doctor Nguyen slammed a large glass jar over it.

  The insect threw itself at the side of the glass, then fell back. Immediately it got back up, its segmented body moving smoothly, almost snakelike as it scuttled in a tight circle, testing the sides for weaknesses while Doctor Nguyen clamped the jar down with both hands, her face white.

  “Smart thinking,” Patrick said. “Very commendable.”

  “Th-thank you.”

  “Notice how Doctor Nguyen trapped us a complete, live specimen?” he told Ava.

  Ava shrugged. “The other one deserved to die. Messily.”

  “Did it really?” Patrick asked. “It was only obeying its biological imperative. There was no malice to it.”