by John Everson
“There was a full breach here, wasn’t there?” Peter said quietly.
The man opened his mouth to answer, and something buzzed nearby, angry in the dawn air. From inside the man’s mouth, something faintly purple moved. As Peter watched, a flurry of legs suddenly crawled past the man’s lips and across his face. The I.I. researcher moaned, and slapped futilely at his cheeks before holding out a ravaged, welt-ridden hand for help.
Peter shook his head and sighed, speaking into the microphone held by a thin metal tube near his mouth. “It’s a Level 4,” he said. “It’s too late.”
The man before him tried to roll away to his feet, but Peter took out his revolver and without pause shot the man through the back of the head. Instead of a spray of blood, the air was suddenly alive with movement of tiny black legs. The man’s head was like a piñata; the spiders were exiting the hole the bullet had made like a stream of black blood. Peter backed away from the body to move towards the forest. As he made his way back down the trail, past the empty Quonset, the brush around him began to move. Thousands of small crablike things darted out onto the edge of the trail behind him. The black chitin of their backs shimmered with violet iridescence in the light of the sun. The trail was alive with mutation.
“Code Red,” he yelled into the mic as he ran back down the trail towards the boat. “No survivors. Contain and Terminate. Immediately.”
“Confirmed,” answered the voice of his partner.
Those words set in play another team waiting less than a hundred miles away. That team would never physically set foot on the sand here. Peter and Gordon were motoring away at full speed, but still in sight of the small Key when the roar of low-flying propellers filled the air. Beneath them, a cloud of silver settled over the tiny island like a chilling coat of fog.
Nothing moving would survive that deadly cloud.
As it settled, the spiders ran, slowed, and then stilled beneath the blanket of death. Within a few hours, the animals and insects of the small island had all melted to a brown sludge.
This time, Sheila Key was dead.
Chapter Six
Wednesday, May 8. 7:33 a.m.
“We need to name this dog,” Rachel said when Eric finally meandered into the kitchen. The clock read 7:33 a.m., which was of concern to Rachel, since they both needed to be out of the house before eight. “The bus will be here soon,” she complained, but Eric passed right by the bowl of Rice Krispies she’d poured to kneel at the face of the dachshund, who panted quietly at the front door of his cage.
“Hey, buddy,” he smiled, letting the dog lick his face repeatedly. “Did you sleep good?”
“Not as good as you,” Rachel grumbled.
“Huh?” Eric said. The confused look on his face made Rachel want to hug him.
“I took your dog outside at four in the morning because he was crying in here. And I didn’t even have a name to call him, to tell him to come back in the house.”
Eric grinned. “You could have called him Dog.”
“Yeah,” Rachel said. “And from now on, maybe I’ll just call you Boy.”
“Well…” Eric began.
“Don’t start,” Rachel said. “Just sit down and eat please. The bus is calling.”
“His name is Feral,” Eric announced.
“Feral?” Rachel said. Her eyebrows dipped. “That’s a wild cat!”
Eric shook his head. “Nope,” he said. “I looked it up last night. It means untamed.”
“I don’t think we want to encourage that.”
“But it’s true, he’s not tamed.”
Rachel laughed. “Not, he’s not. But again, that’s not something I want to perpetuate! And I don’t think he’s that wild—he did get me up before dawn instead of peeing in his cage.”
“That just means he’s smart.”
“No, that just means I’m dumb for agreeing to let you keep him. I’m not getting up with this dog every morning, Eric. Seriously, I’m not.”
“You won’t have to, I promise,” he said. His voice filled with nervousness, no doubt considering whether his mean mom would send the dog back. Rachel didn’t answer him. Better if he worried a bit, and maybe worked to take care of his new pet a bit more.
Still, it was Rachel who stopped home during her lunch hour to take the dog out. And she couldn’t blame Eric on that one. He couldn’t come home at lunch to do it; and she didn’t want the thing to piss all over her new kitchen floor. Okay, the floor was old linoleum, but it was new to her.
So she left the office (happy to do so) and stopped home for a half hour to have a bite and to let “Feral” take a walk. She was honestly happy to do so; she had no love of her new job. But it paid the rent, and that’s all that it had to do. Most times, you had to work to live, not the other way around. She envied those people who absolutely loved to go to their jobs, and lived for the adrenaline rush of office politics or generating clients, or whatever it was that they did. She’d never known that feeling. She worked strictly because she had to have a check every two weeks.
The house was quiet when she unlocked the door, but in a moment, she heard the shuffle of nails on the kitchen floor as the dachshund heard her come in. And then she heard the sound of his panting whine.
“It’s okay, buddy,” Rachel said, bending down to ruffle his short-cropped fur after she unlocked the gate she’d set up between the kitchen and the front room. A couple minutes later, and she had Feral on a chain and walking down the sidewalk in front of the house. The dog did its business as soon as they got outside, but then she took him down the sidewalk. The neighborhood was strangely still in the middle of the day. The sun beat down from overhead; hot and sweaty. You could taste the humidity in the air. It was thick; it just felt like things were growing in every breath. The dog trundled along with anxiousness, but still never got to the point of pulling her; dachshunds were good like that, she thought. They just didn’t have the legs to drag you down the street. She thought of Hera, the Golden Retriever she’d had as a kid. That thing had basically pulled your arm out of the socket as it ran ahead, chasing whatever it tasted on the breeze. Walking Hera had been like water skiing.
She crossed the street with the dog, walking down the opposite side from her house, when she saw the first human evidence that someone was living in the house across the street. She’d seen the results of pruning and lawn care over the past week, but now she actually saw the reason.
A man was bent over in the flowerbed at the house directly across the street from hers. And Feral suddenly tightened the give on the leash. He wanted to head straight for the guy.
“Whoa!” Rachel cried, yanking back on the leash. “Take it easy.”
Her voice clued in the man to their presence. He straightened from his crouch and turned to look towards the voice.
“Hey,” he said, nodding. He was young and tan and had bleach-white hair that leapt off his head to kink and curl across his shoulders and over the white cotton T-shirt he wore. The shirt was damp with visible splotches of sweat across his chest.
“Hey,” Rachel answered. “I like what you’re doing with the place!”
He smiled. “I realized that if I didn’t do something, you might not be able to find the house.”
“Well, that begs the question, did you want people to be able to find the house?” Rachel asked.
He laughed, and opened his mouth to answer, but then paused a second before voicing his thought. And in that moment, Rachel realized exactly who he was. She’d seen him on the news with Eric just the other night. He was the kid who’d survived the island of bugs. He was the kid everyone had been interviewing on the news.
“I actually would rather that nobody find the place,” he said. “But it was starting to get difficult for me to see the door.”
Rachel nodded. “I’ve seen you on the news,” she said. “You’re the kid who…”
“Who let his friends be eaten by bugs,” he finished for her. His voice dripped momentarily of bitterness. He h
eld out his hand. “Hi, I’m Billy.”
“Rachel,” she said, accepting his grip. His hand was warm and firm. A faint spark went off somewhere in the lower end of her spine as she held it. He was young, fit and looked like he’d spent a lifetime beachcombing. Honestly? She didn’t want to let go.
“Glad you don’t mind the spin that they take on your story on TV.”
“How can I mind?” he asked with a smirk. “They keep putting me on TV!” He snorted.
“Yeah, well you don’t have much say in what they do with what you say,” she pointed out.
“No,” he admitted. “But it’s all true. My friends were eaten alive by bugs, on an island I took them to, and I couldn’t help them.”
“What could you do?” she asked. “Sit there and be bug food with them?”
“I know, right?” He smiled. “That’s what I thought. But not everyone seems to think that way.”
She smiled, giving him the look that said, “It’s okay, no matter what happened.”
He nodded across the street at her small ranch. “So you’re new here, I think? Just moved in?” he asked, changing the subject.
Rachel nodded. “Long story about how we ended up here,” she said, “but quick ending: we’re here now.”
He smiled. “Maybe that’s the story I should be telling reporters!”
“Short and sweet is always better,” she agreed.
Feral suddenly gave a hard tug and pulled the leash right out of Rachel’s hand. “Hey,” she yelled, as the dog bolted around the corner of Billy’s house. She ran after the dog but it had too great a head start. She rounded the corner of the house to the backyard just in time to see Feral’s tail disappear through a doggy entrance cut in Billy’s back door.
She stopped at the door and scowled. “Feral, come back here!” she called.
Behind her, Billy laughed. “He’s hot on the scent. My dad used to have a German shepherd. I bet he can still smell Duke. I’ll get him!”
A couple minutes later, Billy returned, leash in hand, and an anxious dachshund pulling against it. Feral wanted to go back in the house.
“He was in the utility room, where Duke used to have his food dish,” Billy said. “Guess I need to clean the house more…obviously I haven’t done too good of a job!”
He handed the dog back to Rachel, who apologized again. Feral kept pulling at the leash, trying to get back in the house. The dog whined faintly, and Rachel smiled. “I think we better go.”
Billy’s lips split into a smile, and he nodded. As he did, his eyebrow twitched, as if he’d felt a sudden twinge of pain. “I guess you’d better follow short and sweet, there. I’m sure I’ll see you around.”
She nodded, and then stumbled forward, following the pull of the leash. “Don’t work too hard,” she called over her shoulder.
Billy watched the woman stumble along behind the puppy as it pulled her across the street. She was nice, he thought. A bit older than he’d usually look at—there were some weather lines around the languid pools of her chocolate eyes, but her body looked trim; definitely MILF material. He knew she had a son; he’d seen the kid coming home from school and hanging out now and then over the past few days in the yard.
Billy had no qualms about looking long at the retreating canvass-clad rump of his neighbor. So what if she was ten years older than him? That just meant she had ten years more experience in how to keep things moving in just the right rhythm in the dark.
“I’m okay with that,” he said out loud.
And as he did, a pain shot across the back of his skull and he winced, taking in a deep breath. It had been happening a lot today, despite the aspirin.
“Shit,” he complained. “What was that for?” he asked the air.
There was no answer. But he did suddenly get a flash of something he never wanted to see again. The image of Casey, her face a mess of raw meat, holes through the skin, blood still seeping to spot the lush green leaves of the jungle plants.
Billy crouched down and reached out to pull another weed. During his time as a drug runner and then his consequent time behind bars, nobody had taken care of the house. Even after he’d gotten out and returned to school, he had not taken the time to dig in and reclaim the gardens his dad had once kept here. He spent his time at college with his friends, not at home. Now that he was digging in, he had a horrible feeling that just when he got the beds all cleaned out, he was going to actually have to worry about filling them with something besides weeds. Because when he was done pulling weeds, he didn’t think there was going to be much left except dirt.
“Maybe I should just leave the weeds?” he whispered, tossing another stalk on the growing throw away pile. “They’re easier to grow.”
Chapter Seven
Thursday, May 9. 5:15 p.m.
Feral insisted on crossing the street and sniffing through Billy’s yard during every walk, most likely because Billy’s yard reclamation project had released a plethora of rich scents…at least to the dog’s keen nose. Eric met Billy on a dog walk Wednesday night after dinner and hit it off instantly. On Thursday afternoon when Rachel got home, the two were playing an impromptu game of catch along with Jeremy on Billy’s newly shorn lawn.
Meanwhile, Feral leapt about, chasing the ball back and forth on its way to the catchers’ mitts. The pup was always just a little too late to get near the ball.
“Have you played T-Ball or Little League?” Billy asked when Eric took a backwards leap in the air and managed to glove the ball like a pro.
Eric shook his head. “Dad didn’t believe in that shit.”
Billy raised an eyebrow.
“Sorry,” Eric amended. “Stuff.”
Billy grinned. “I don’t care if you swear, kid, but don’t let your mother catch you. Moms hate ‘that shit’.” He winked and then threw a sidearm pitch that sent Jeremy scrambling. The boy almost tripped over Feral, who vaulted after the ball like a fat snake through the grass.
When he came up with the ball and saw Rachel pull up in the drive across the street, Jeremy tossed the ball to Eric and excused himself. “I gotta get home,” he said. Eric waved goodbye to his “babysitter”. He hated it that his mom thought he needed someone to watch him for the couple hours between school and when she got home.
Eric tossed the ball back to Billy. “Did you ever play Little League?” Eric asked.
Billy shook his head. “Nah. We just played at the park down the street—a few of us kids in the neighborhood at the time. I don’t think they would have let us in the Little League.”
“Why not?” Eric said.
“We didn’t play nice,” Billy said, smiling as he spun a fastball towards the boy that he knew was going to curve and drop to the ground.
Eric dove for the ball and took a face full of grass as he rolled after it. “Yeah,” he said, after spitting out a mouthful of dirt when he came up with the ball. “I can see why they wouldn’t let you play.”
When the front door slammed, Rachel yelled out from the kitchen. “Please get washed up; dinner will be ready in a few minutes.”
Eric kicked his shoes off and ran to the bathroom. The sound of four extra feet behind him made Rachel smile.
Agreeing to the dog was probably the best thing she could have done; though she could live without getting up at 4 a.m.
But this, like everything else, would pass. Hopefully soon.
Rachel strained the spaghetti noodles, tossed them into a stainless steel bowl and set them on the table. Then she poured the sauce into a Pyrex bowl and set it on a potholder next to the noodles. She tossed two plates and forks on the table, and grabbed the Parmesan from the fridge—all before her son was back from the bathroom, she noted to herself.
Eric finally joined her at the table, and ladled himself a healthy plate of noodles and sauce. Feral waited on the floor next to the table, panting. The dog knew there was food there, just waiting for him. His nails made faint scratching noises on the floor as he shifted back and forth, hoping th
at by some act of either charity or clumsiness, one of the humans would drop a gift of food his way.
Rachel had put her foot down about feeding the dog from the table on day one. “If we let him think he’s going to get stuff from the dinner table, that’s all he’ll ever do is bother us while we’re eating. We’ll put some food in his dish, once we’re sure we have enough for us,” she’d warned Eric.
Now Rachel felt her own resolve waning. She so wanted to hold out the string of a noodle for the pup to leap at—
The sharp digital ring of the phone suddenly broke her mutinous thought.
“Who the heck…” she muttered and pushed her chair back from the table. But when she saw the number on the caller ID, she pressed her eyes closed. She took a deep breath, forced her eyes open, and picked up the phone. But instead of putting it to her ear and saying hello, she held it out to Eric. “It’s for you,” she said. Her voice was monotone.
The boy’s face lit up as he snatched the phone from her hand, and hopped off his chair at the dinner table.
“Hi, Dad!” he chirped. You could hear the excitement in his voice, and Rachel didn’t have the heart to tell him to stay at the table. It was dinnertime, and she shouldn’t have answered the phone in the first place. So the fact that their meal was interrupted was partially her own fault. Hers… and Anders’s. Asshole. He knew this was too early to call. Her fork clinked hard against the plate as it stabbed through her noodles. Better to get it over with though, and not have him call back.
In the other room, she could hear Eric excitedly telling his father about Feral, and then how he had had to climb a rope tied to the rafters of the gym at school during P.E. class.
