The Nest

by Gregory A. Douglas

  Her small frown held. “How long to Yarkie?”

  The bowler shape was already rising out of the sea to the east. “Ten minutes, about.” Craig asked anxiously, “You feeling all right, m’am?”

  She surprised him with a light laugh. “No problem.” Then she added in an open, friendly tone, “Please don’t call me ‘m’am’.”

  Craig Soaras’s mustache twitched amiably. “Okay, doctor.”

  “Just Wanda does it,” she told him pleasantly. “I understand we’ll all be working together for a while, Mr. Soaras.”

  He responded, “Just Craig will do,” and they laughed together.

  With that, the man tied the wheel and went to stand at the rail. He noticed her hands. The left one was beautiful, with soft skin and long, sensitive fingers. The right hand shocked him. It was brute red, with crooked scar tissue in a leathery pattern. The woman saw his eyes. “A lab accident,” she explained. And stopped. No need to talk of the image in her head every time she looked at her crippled hand. The mishap had been over in a flash. An experimental mouse had squirmed away and leaped into the beaker of nitric acid. Her reflex act had been so stupid, so fruitless. The animal was dead before her plunging hand hit the acid. Yet she supposed she would do the same thing again. An instinct to save life? Sometimes she thought she ought to have been a medical doctor rather than a research biologist.

  The husky boat rose and fell, bumped and kicked up spray in the rising sea. Craig returned to the wheel. Dr. Lindstrom watched his easy, sure motions, his handsome eyes alert on the compass. The woman wished she could free her lab-­cramped feelings, unfurl them to fly like the gulls to which the Yarkie sailor was pointing. The birds were wheeling over a roiling circle of sea to their left.

  “School of blues over there,” he called from the wheel. “There’ll be a traffic jam here in five minutes.” He would have liked to slow and show her the fishing, but it was no time for side excursions.

  The woman’s thoughts were elsewhere. Maybe if she could ever let her emotions show, Peter Hubbard would be less a stickler in their relationship. Thinking of her colleague brought her mind back to her business here. She moved over to Craig Soaras, steadying herself on the tilting deck with feet wide apart. The wind was blowing her hair out of its knot and she held her head tightly in her hands. “Craig, do you know the problem in the island? All Dr. Hubbard told me was the equipment he wanted to check on insecticides, something about rats and roaches behaving strangely . . .”

  Soaras told her briefly everything he had seen himself and heard about from others.

  Dr. Wanda Lindstrom said, “Well, it does sound like a mix-­up of poisons. Shouldn’t be too much trouble to correct.” Craig Soaras was elated to hear it.

  TWO

  That morning, Stephen Scott purposely drove across High Ridge on his way to the meeting Elias Johnson had called at the lighthouse. Passing Hilda Cannon’s place, Scott’s worry deepened. The station wagon was just as he had left it. There was no sign of life, no Hildie, no Ruth, no Rebecca. He was tempted to stop, but held his foot steady on the gas pedal. If Hildie was in, he wouldn’t know how to talk to her—the gun was the sheriff’s business. If she wasn’t home, he wouldn’t know more than he did.

  It was the same at the Tinton place. No sign of life. Best for him to go right on to meet the woman from Harvard.

  Though the wind was up a little, the day was still sunny, and as Scott pulled up at the lighthouse he found the people outdoors on the beach. In a circle on the sand, there were Amos Tartell, Ben Dorset, Reed Brockshaw, Craig Soaras, and Russell Homer, and Elias, hunkered on a lobster trap. On folding chairs sat Elizabeth, her friend Bonnie, with Dr. Hubbard and the new woman. His first impression was that she was too beautiful to be any kind of professor, but if she was at Harvard she must know her stuff. When the introduction was done, Stephen Scott considered that he ought to report at once about the night before, but he argued with himself that it would only muddy the waters until he heard the scientists.

  Dr. Peter Hubbard had already taken over. “Our first priority is to bring in specimens of the rats seen by Russell and Craig.” The island informality had carried the younger men to a first-­name basis quickly and easily. “The rats can’t all have vanished. I suggest we set up a bait. Use a rabbit, perhaps.” The scientist addressed Johnson. “If rats did get your dog, captain, they’ll go for a rabbit.”

  “Makes sense,” Johnson concurred.

  Peter Hubbard continued, “We have to consider that this may be more dangerous than we’ve so far thought. There can be big packs of rats roving the woods. They can easily kill a man, especially if they are sick, as I suspect here.”

  The sheriff said quietly, “We all have guns now.”

  Stephen Scott spoke up. “Right, Amos! You deputize anyone you need!”

  Elias Johnson suggested, “We can wear our foul weather gear—rubber boots, oilskins.”

  The scientist nodded. “That would be some protection.”

  The old man stood up. “Any volunteers?”

  All the young men got to their feet. The sheriff said, “Too many, we’d only get in each other’s way.” He tapped Ben Dorset and Russell Homer. “Come on back to the office. We’ll get the gear, and pick up a live rabbit at Julio’s place.”

  Stephen Scott brushed sand from his slacks. If he was going to say anything, this was the time. But once again he silently asked himself what there was to report except the gun, and that might have slipped unnoticed from Hildie Cannon’s bag any time she had walked in the forest. There were enough unanswered questions floating around without adding more. Right now, the sheriff had a clear-­cut job to do. Let him go on, then, and bring in those rats, and let the Harvard people start their investigation. It suddenly occurred to Scott that he ought to ask Elias Johnson how much money the scientists were getting and who was paying, but he hurried after the sheriff with another thought.

  “Hey, Amos, should we have the fire trucks go around town again about spraying?”

  The sheriff nodded. “Good idea. Keep people away. Especially if we’re going to have to shoot.”

  Craig said, “I’ll call the boys right out.”

  “Phone working here?” Scott asked. “Good!”

  Peter Hubbard joined the group. “Amos, if you catch anything, bring it right in. Make a note of everything you see—how the rat moves, how it holds its head, its tail. Everything. We can get important clues that way . . .”

  The sheriff threw the scientist half a salute—one professional to another. “Got it!” As fishermen, they were used to the importance of reading small signs that others would hardly notice—a meager cloud appearing, a tiny shift in the wind, a momentary shadow in the water.

  The three men piled into the sheriff’s blue and white car.

  Elizabeth stood beside her grandfather, gripping his hand. “I hope they don’t get hurt!”

  The captain said gravely, “They are good men, Liz.”

  That was just it, Elizabeth Carr considered, watching the car shoot away. They were all estimable people on Yarkie Island. It was unthinkable that evil animals were putting the place in peril.

  Behind her, Elizabeth heard Peter Hubbard calling Wanda Lindstrom. “Let’s unpack the microscopes first, Wanda. We want to take a real look at the dog’s ear . . .”

  THREE

  Sheriff Amos Tarbell and his two companions made a zany appearance as they came into the pine grove where Bonnie Taylor had picnicked and lost Sharky. The glade was an incongruous background for their storm attire, heavy boots, yellow slickers and wide-­brimmed hoods.

  Tarbell stopped and spoke softly. “Bonnie said she found Sharky just off the trail there, to the left.” They decided that spot was as good as any for the trap, in which a contented brown rabbit was nibbling on a large carrot.

  The sheriff placed the cage softly and deployed the men. “Russ, you get up that tree.” He couldn’t help but grin. “If you can make it with those boots on . . .”

>   Russell Homer didn’t like being laughed at, even in a friendly jest. He grated, “I’ve climbed higher masts in lots worse!” He swung up onto a pitch pine much as Craig Soaras had done when he discovered Sharky’s ear.

  “You got the camera?” the sheriff checked.

  “Yup.”

  “Good.”

  Ben Dorset was calling from near the small waterfall. “Now what the hell is this?” He was lifting a good-­sized aluminum container.

  The sheriff glanced at it. “Bonnie must have left her picnic box.” He looked back up to Russell Homer. “If it comes to trouble, Russ, use the gun first, the camera after.”

  “Right.” The young man looked down appraisingly. Clouds were covering the sun, making it doubly shadowy in the forest—he wanted enough light for pictures. He prided himself on the photographic skills he had taught himself.

  The sheriff stationed himself to one side of the trap, with Ben Dorset covering him from behind a tree. Birds sang in the branches, but the wind was beginning to whistle in a foreboding song of its own. Elias Johnson had timed the storm just about perfectly. These winds were the forerunners—the real blow would not hit for three-­four hours. They had plenty of time. Tarbell called to his men, “Better get the goggles on, too.”

  Russell Homer fretted, “Amos, I won’t be able to work the camera if I wear this damn thing.”

  “Okay,” the sheriff assented. The man should be safe enough on his perch in the tree.

  Settled in their places, with the rabbit quiet in the trap, the three men waited silently, uncertain, and uneasy. The forest revealed nothing except an occasional trill of a bird, and the new sound of the wind in the branches above their heads.

  Long minutes passed. Ben Dorset stamped his foot. “Cramp, damn it!” He stamped harder and harder.

  “For crying out loud, Ben,” the sheriff laughed, “you’ll start an earthquake!”

  Silence again. From his tree, Russell Homer said disgustedly, “This criminal doesn’t return to the scene of the crime . . .”

  “Quiet!” Amos Tarbell ordered abruptly. He thought he had detected a movement. Slight. But out there some way in front of the rabbit in the trap, the way he sensed the first touch of a small fish exploring a baited hook.

  The men tensed. Dorset leveled his revolver. No rat was going to live a split second unless he went into the trap.

  Russell Homer had the camera aimed.

  The sheriff was leaning forward, with his own gun cocked.

  They did not see the leaves move, but they heard the sound distinctly. It was a soft skittering, as if fingers were playing in the piles of leaves, the way children sift sand.

  Suddenly there was a flutter of the leafy surface. A rat was coming!

  But the next instant the men were guffawing to each other, with guns lowered and sheepish looks on their faces. The ferocious rat pack turned out to be a few lousy cockroaches! Big bastards, to be sure, but just overgrown bugs, fat from the dump.

  “Big sons of bitches!” Ben Dorset observed.

  Russell Homer said, “I’ve been seeing them the last week or so. Damn water bugs, eaten too much for their own good.”

  “Ugly suckers!” the deputy sheriff commented.

  The sheriff quieted the men with a finger to his lips. It occurred to him that the harmless roaches might be useful in attracting the rats. There certainly was an unusual scent around, musky-­acid, sort of set your teeth on edge. If it was from the bugs, any rats in the vicinity would get it and hopefully come to where they’d see the rabbit.

  The men watched indifferently as the three roaches moved slowly around the old lobster trap. The lingering odor of fish and bait undoubtedly had drawn them. Everyone knew roaches loved the stinky stuff, the more rotten the better.

  The sheriff felt a chill up his spine, though he didn’t know why. He sure as hell wasn’t squeamish about the cockroaches, enormous as these might be. But he muttered a curse to himself as he saw the largest one—it must be a full five inches and damn near an inch around! —halt in front of the trap and vibrate its antennae toward the rabbit as if the damn wiry extensions were actual fingers reaching out to touch the animal. The miserable insect looked for all the world as if it were deliberately prowling around the trap, the way a hunting animal might do.

  The sheriff dismissed his next thought: It was almost as if the roach was looking over the situation and making a decision about going after the rabbit itself. Absurd! How could a cockroach, no matter how unnaturally immense, figure to kill a rabbit?

  The two other bulky roaches seemed to be playing follow-­the-­leader. Their head wires were all looping around the same way. If a man didn’t know better, he’d swear the three insects were like science-­fiction creatures communicating silently through ESP or some damn airwaves. Amos Tarbell saw the expressions of disgust on the faces of his companions. They matched his own. Those swollen cockroaches were nasty looking, no two ways about it. Now their antennae were suddenly beating the air a mile a minute, like egg whisks. Their heads began to jerk from side to side. A man would swear they were sensing the rabbit exactly like wolves or coyotes sniffing the air for unsuspecting prey.

  And a man would swear they caught a scent, as three things happened at once. The first roach leaped into the cage. A second roach spread wings so wide it looked like a small bat. It whizzed inside and landed on the rabbit’s back. The third roach turned and raced away, as if afraid, or as if it wanted no part of the massacre that started.

  Gagging with nausea, the three Yarkie stalwarts watched the fantastic, repugnant sight. The first roach went directly for the rabbit’s eyes. The men heard the click of the breaking cornea as the insect mandibles pressed in. They saw the gush of ­liquid from the eyeball as the panicked rabbit chittered with the pain. They watched what they could not believe: The great cockroach insinuated itself quickly into the rabbit’s eye socket, obviously eating its way through, right on into the brain. Then the insect body vanished entirely while the men looked on.

  The second roach was at the rabbit’s neck. It moved exactly as if it knew the jugular vein, the way a leopard or lioness breaks a prey’s neck or hyenas bite at hamstring muscles to bring a victim down.

  Incredible was too mild a word. The sheriff could see the disbelief in Ben Dorset and Russell Homer. He was glad they were witnesses. To describe this scene without corroboration would be to invite the men in white jackets.

  But it was happening, terribly happening, beyond any doubt. The rabbit was flinging its bloodied body about in agonized terror. Blood spurted from its torn throat and ran out of the trap onto the leaves. The savage roach had chewed through to the blood vessel it wanted. Those mandibles must be powerful to rip a rabbit’s skin, the sheriff thought. Those teeth must be razor-­edged to cut the wounds killing the rabbit. The men were almost glad when the bewildered animal twitched violently and fell on its side, dead in moments, out of its suffering.

  “Jesus God!” Ben Dorset breathed.

  The sheriff shouted across to him, “Gimme that damn box!” As Dorset tossed him the picnic basket, Tarbell yelled up to Russell Homer, “Come the hell down! We’re taking the trap and leaving!”

  Homer’s face contorted. “We want the pictures, don’t we?”

  Amos Tarbell flung the trap into the aluminum box and slammed the cover shut. “Come on, Russ!”

  “Jesus Christ!” It was a sudden cry of open alarm from Ben Dorset. The other men looked where he was pointing. An army of the giant roaches was advancing on them, literally thousands of the insects. To Russell Homer in the tree, their carapaces and wings looked like the shining armor of toy soldiers, little robots, wound up and coming mechanically through the leaves. But it was plain they were anything but toys. Their antennae were flailing above their heads. Homer thought of tanks with cannon circling in moving turrets. It was unreal, and it was the most terrifying experience he had ever known. He kept clicking his camera, desperately adjusting for shutter speed and available light. Th
e Harvard people had to have this incredible record!

  Amos Tarbell was screaming, “Russ! No more time!”

  Homer kept taking shot after shot.

  The sheriff and Ben Dorset emptied their revolvers at the insects. Earth and leaves and roaches sprayed into the air. But nothing deflected the column. The advancing cockroaches calmly crawled over the dead bugs. Some paused to chew at the bodies, but the main group kept coming.

  Amos Tarbell tugged at Russell Homer’s feet. A boot came off in his hand. “Dammit!” he cried, “we’re in trouble, Russ! Get!” He flung the boot at the oncoming cockroach force and, banging into Ben Dorset, whirled for the road and the police car, much as Hildie Cannon had done the night before.

  Russell Homer seemed suddenly to comprehend his peril. He jumped down from the tree, but in his effort to protect the camera he landed on his back, not his feet. Without his goggles, and missing a boot, Homer lay stunned. The roach column paused momentarily as the ground shook with the man’s fall. Then it shifted of one accord in his direction.

  “Jesus, damn!” Amos Tarbell yelled violently. He handed the cage with the rabbit to Dorset and raced back to Russell Homer. The man was thrashing on the ground now, realizing his danger, trying to get up and run. The front of the roach column was hissing steadily toward him. The sheriff’s one thought was that Russell wore no goggles. Impelled by the awful image of the roach eating into the rabbit’s eye, Tarbell leaped across the grove and yanked Homer to his feet. Dazed, the young man started to follow the sheriff, but in his confusion he dropped the camera. When he turned to fumble for it, hissing insects immediately lunged for his bare face. The sheriff jerked the man away just before their mandibles touched his skin. “The hell with the camera!” With a mighty shove, Tarbell sent Homer headlong up the path in Dorset’s footsteps.

  In turning to help his friend, the sheriff had lost his own lead over the roaches. Now they were only feet away from him. His boots and storm clothes made it hard for Tarbell to move quickly, but his adrenalin was pumping as it had done only once before in his life, when a Mako had abruptly attacked when he was swimming off the east shore with his family. He had stayed to battle the shark then, to give his wife and children time to escape the ravening jaws. Fortunately, he had gotten his fist on the Mako’s nose from above and pounded his own fear into it. He had been lucky. It was one of those times when a shark withdrew. The Mako had probably eaten not long before.