The Nest

by Gregory A. Douglas

  New murmurs of horror went around the table.

  Stephen Scott could not contain his fearful question any longer. Almost stuttering in his premonition of the answer, he said, “You’ve been talking about these roaches killing Sharky, and the rabbit, and rats . . .” He stopped, then could no longer hold the words in. “Are you saying these cockroaches can kill people?”

  Hubbard answered, “Yes,” bluntly, without hesitation or concealment.

  Elias Johnson slapped the table. “No! That’s impossible! Just roaches?”

  Wanda Lindstrom backed up Peter Hubbard. “I’m afraid Dr. Hubbard is right. Especially if the insects attack in swarms, as we have to suspect.”

  “My God!” Scott whispered to himself.

  “What’d you say, Stephen?” Elias Johnson asked roughly out of his own mounting trepidation. “What’d you say? Speak up, dammit!”

  “Nothing!” Scott sputtered. He simply could not permit his forebodings to assume the reality that words would impart to them. The possibility was too inhuman to contemplate. But in his mind’s eye he was again in the empty Tinton house the night before, again flashing his light in the woods looking for the Tintons and for Hilda Cannon—and now totally unable to keep his concern from leaping to the question of the missing Cannon girls as well.

  He was glad when a question from Craig diverted attention away from him. “How would Sharky’s ear get up in a tree?”

  “Roaches climb easily,” Hubbard told him. “They might have been disturbed before they finished . . .”

  “Lay anchor here just a minute!” Elias Johnson called out. “I just barely got it through my head that these damn things could be like piranha. Okay. Now you’re telling us they—they lug away parts of what they kill?” His eyes were hot with the challenge of the impossible.

  It was Wanda Lindstrom who gave him the gristly answer, in a tone so quiet it could barely be heard through the kitchen. “It’s not any different from the way jungle animals drag prey back to their caves, for their young, or to feed on later. Conceivably, these insects have a central nest . . .”

  Now Elias Johnson sputtered, “Cockroaches could drag a dog?”

  The woman kept her voice clinical. “Not in one piece,” she said steadily to the disbelieving faces around the kitchen.

  “Oh, come on!” Amos Tarbell protested. “Ben, Russ and I saw the damn things just an hour ago. There were zillions of them, all right, and they did try to get at us, but you’re saying they could drag us somewhere . . . ?”

  The woman repeated, understanding their resistance, “I said, not in one piece.” She sat down. The facade of the scientist was cracking. Despite her self-­control, the image of a body being cut apart by mutant roaches sickened her, too.

  Hubbard said sympathetically to them all, “This is tough, but none of us can afford to be squeamish. I must repeat what you already know, that there are many insects capable of moving weights many times their own, especially when individuals combine. You have probably seen ants doing this with your own eyes. Given the size and muscle of these roaches here, they could handle very large loads, especially if they have developed some kind of organization that is not common among the roach species.”

  Craig protested again. “I can see it with maybe an ear, a paw. But a whole body?”

  Hubbard answered slowly, “Based on the behavior of related insects, like termites, I have to tell you that bands of roaches could, yes, chew and gnaw through tissue and cartilage and bone like a butcher’s saw or cleaver. Yes, they could separate pieces small enough to be handled by gangs that would join together for the purpose.”

  Bonnie cried out, “Oh, please!” She ran from the room out to the beach with her hands to her cheeks.

  Hubbard heard the expressions of consternation and continuing disbelief. His face hardened. These were seamen, used to the stink of bait and chum and the blood and guts of the big fish they disemboweled, the tuna, the sharks. It was no time for delicate stomachs. He gave Elizabeth a way out before he continued, “Elizabeth, do you want to check on Bonnie?”

  The woman looked up at him and shook her head. Bonnie could take care of herself. She was staying to hear the worst.

  Hubbard was unrelenting then, “Yes, roaches like these might well be able to cut through even a human body!” he certified.

  Stephen Scott went paler.

  “We have seen such behavior, I repeat,” Hubbard stressed. “As I said, it’s entirely possible that these insects can circle the limb, biting down as they go—”

  “Good God!” Amos Tarbell groaned. “Like a bloody chain saw!”

  “Exactly,” Wanda Lindstrom sighed.

  “Until they cut right through. Bone and all.”

  When the scientist stopped, the room was silent. Elizabeth and all the men were stunned. Peter Hubbard and Wanda Lindstrom had moved them into a world so alien, ogreish, and alarming that they had no way to formulate their reaction. The ghastliness was in the blood, beyond the reach of words or horror or comradely comfort. A strange, raw wind was blowing up from a biological nether world of phantasmagoric claws, fangs, and mindlessness. It would have seemed impossible anywhere; it was beyond all comprehension on Yarkie Island.

  TWO

  Elizabeth was no biologist, no scientist of any kind, but the awful logic of what Peter Hubbard had said must lead to another question, insane as it might sound. “Peter, what you and Wanda are describing—doesn’t that take a kind of, er, brains? I mean, all the insects working together in such an organized way . . . ?”

  “Roaches don’t have brains!” Russell Homer made bold to scoff. A person didn’t have to go to Harvard to know that!

  Hubbard corrected the man quietly, “Of course the individual roaches do have brains. Rudimentary, but brains. The question here is whether there may be a larger center, controlling a colony of individuals.”

  “That’s my question,” Elizabeth nodded—aghast at her own thought.

  “Such colonies are not unusual in nature,” Hubbard resumed. “We all know the groups formed by ants and termites. Still, Russ is right in a way. The social organization of insects doesn’t take place through a ‘brain.’ It works through a kind of community instinct. Each individual fits into the overall social pattern, something like robots running on a central computer program.”

  Russell Homer ejaculated, “That’s what I said they looked like! Robots!”

  Wanda Lindstrom contributed, “Peter, they ought to know that we did find an unusual and advanced nervous development in the specimen we dissected. Ordinarily, given the size of this roach, the brain should be no bigger than a small pea, sitting just behind the juncture of the antennae with the head. But in our specimen, the brain was at least twice as large. Also, the ganglia, which normally are only slight swellings in the insect’s ventral nerve—that’s a primitive chord that runs along the ventral side the way the vertebrate spine runs up the back—these ganglia are double the normal number, and they form more distinct nerve centers than I have ever seen in any insect species. So whatever signals these roaches are exchanging, they seem well-­equipped to work together, whether in hunting down prey or disposing of it once they’ve killed it.”

  Hubbard took the ball again. He addressed the sheriff. “Now, have you told us everything you observed when the roaches went after the rabbit? Everything exactly as you saw it?”

  He sounded like a district attorney, he knew, but this cross-­examination could be important. The laymen would not understand the significance of subtle behavior that might be key points to the biologists.

  The three men who had escaped with the rabbit trap concentrated. Russell Homer, especially, had his eyes screwed up, trying to replay every detail. He was thinking that if it was his fault the camera was lost, he would retake every exposure in his mind. He started to report aloud as the images followed upon each other. Click: “The rabbit stopped eating the carrot all of a sudden. It looked around, scared. That’s when I heard the noise, the way we tol
d you. Like a puffing sound, a kettle letting off steam. Not a whistle, just a hiss.”

  Wanda Lindstrom nodded emphatically.

  “We thought it was mice.”

  Bonnie, who had come in quietly and was leaning against the doorpost, said softly, “I heard that, too, just before Sharky ran away.”

  Homer’s eyes tightened harder. Click: “There were three of those cockroaches!” His eyes came open with his sharpened recollection. He turned to Tarbell and Dorset. Click: “Remember how one of them didn’t follow the others into the trap . . .”

  Wanda Lindstrom slapped the table. “One roach turned around and raced off,” she anticipated.

  The three men were startled by how she had guessed the fact.

  She said strongly, “That third roach had a different job to do, you see! He went back to tell his friends that the scouts had found more food!”

  Reed Brockshaw cut in, “Roaches do that? I know about bees flying back to the hive to show the way to flowers, but I never heard it about cockroaches!”

  Peter Hubbard said somberly, “These roaches are full of surprises. Unpleasant ones.”

  Elizabeth asked him slowly, “You think we’re dealing with a definite mutation, then?”

  The scientist’s answer was again upsetting. He eyed the room frankly. “Dr. Lindstrom and I have been speculating about that possibility. You see, one of the classic cases of social organization among insects happens to be the termite colony, and—” he paused again for effect—“it happens that termites and cockroaches are related.”

  Amos Tarbell’s surprise echoed the others’. “Termites and roaches?”

  “We don’t want to sound like a textbook, but you need to have this background if you’re to understand what may be happening and how to protect against it.” Hubbard knocked his pipe out and turned to his associate. “This is Dr. Lindstrom’s specialty,” he said. “Wanda, why don’t you explain . . . ?”

  Elizabeth admired the way the two tossed the biological ball back and forth, with total respect for each other’s competence and no touch of self-­importance. Marriage should be like that, she mused. She found herself half-­wondering why they had not married in the six years of their obvious mutual esteem.

  THREE

  Obligingly, the blond scientist picked up where Peter Hubbard had left off. She understood exactly what he wanted her to explain: “It may be relevant,” she began, “that termites and cockroaches evolved from a common ancestor. They are two branches of a root that is off by itself in the basic classification of the ‘phyla.’ Interestingly, one biologist has called termites the ‘social cockroaches.’ So it might not be too surprising if cockroaches displayed what might be called a ‘phylogenetic drive’ toward a social colonization that we find in termites.”

  Stephen Scott asked straightforwardly, “What’s that ‘phylogenetic,’ please?” The man was blinking the way he had done as a student when he was trying hard to understand. It occurred to him that he had never tried harder in his life, or about anything more crucial.

  Elizabeth answered, wanting to show again that she wasn’t a scientific illiterate. “It means the development of the different species, the steps in the evolutionary process.”

  Wanda Lindstrom acknowledged her with an honest smile, and resumed, “Let’s consider the termites for a minute—they may teach us something about these roaches. The first fact is that termites are amazingly adaptable. Especially in what they eat. Everyone knows they eat wood, and some people know they eat wool and paper, too.” Dr. Lindstrom tapped the table firmly. “But hardly anyone realizes that termites also eat the plastic linings of electric cables, and have even destroyed horn and ivory, and—though you won’t believe this—billiard balls! The Mastotermes darwiniensis of Australia!”

  This time there were no rasps of disbelief. The listeners were getting used to their strange journey through the convoluted world of biology and the variegated forms of life.

  The woman repeated, “Yes, termites eat plastic and leather and—”

  Stephen Scott felt sicker with each word spoken. He echoed feebly, “Leather and rubber?” His one consolation was gone! He had thought it could not possibly be the giant roaches that had taken the Tintons and Hilda Cannon—and maybe Ruth and Rebecca—because he would have found shoes, leather belts, handbags.

  He didn’t want to hear Wanda Lindstrom’s confirmation of his nightmarish fear, but the woman was saying, plainly and terribly, “If these roaches have mutated in the direction of the termite, they would not be leaving much evidence of their attacks, you see—whether they killed an animal or a human being.”

  Stephen Scott saw all too well. Although it was cool in the room, he was sweating as if it were a steam bath. “Maybe leather belts and stuff,” he cried out desperately, “but what about a wrist watch, a pair of glasses! For God’s sake, don’t tell us they eat those too!”

  “No, they’re not that tough.” Dr. Lindstrom permitted herself a sad smile. “At least not yet, to our knowledge. But what they can’t eat, they might take back to their nest—like magpies. You know that’s not unique animal behavior.”

  FOUR

  In Amos Tarbell’s investigative mind, blotchy thoughts were racing parallel to Stephen Scott’s. Ruth and Rebecca Cannon! Had they gone back into the woods to spy on the naked men and been overtaken by the killer roaches? And what about the handcuffed fellows? Only one had shown up at all, with no news of the other anywhere this morning. And why was Stephen Scott asking his questions with his face all crumpled looking? And what was he taking out of his pocket now—?

  “What the hell!” the sheriff exclaimed as Scott put Hilda Cannon’s pistol on the kitchen table. With it, his story came spilling out. The group grew deathly white as they gathered the implications. There was the silence of a shared trauma when he finished.

  Elias Johnson broke the silence. “So we have got ourselves one hell of a problem, looks like!”

  Peter Hubbard said, “I am afraid so, Elias.” The change from his previous formal address seemed indicated. The group was going to war together, and war made quick companions and intimates.

  Amos Tarbell voiced his new concern. “Maybe I ought to send some men out to look for Hildie and the others.”

  Johnson challenged, “And get the men chomped up, too? Sit down and let’s hear what we’re really up against!”

  Peter Hubbard said, “Well, right now, all this is mostly conjecture on our part . . .”

  Johnson clipped, “Conjecture away, damn it! If these consarned bugs are into a colony, we need to know it! We may have to get everybody off the island!”

  Stephen Scott pounded a hammy fist into his palm. “Now wait just a goshdarn minute here! There’s no need to panic the whole town!” His vehemence was inflamed by his personal uncertainty and secret alarm. “Dr­. Hubbard says conjecture! We aren’t going stampede everybody off Yarkie for a confounded possibility!” He turned on the biologists, seeking assurance. “That’s all it is, isn’t it, possibilities?”

  Both scientists nodded. Peter Hubbard felt it was up to him to maintain perspective for the understandably nervous group. He said, “You are right, Mr. Scott.”

  Scott persisted at Elias Johnson. “For all we know, this’ll be cleared up in no time when the lab really gets going here. Whole thing’ll blow over! Why rouse up the town needlessly!”

  Johnson answered back. “I wouldn’t say needlessly from what we’ve been hearing!”

  The fat man rejoined, “You want reporters all over the place? Don’t you realize the bad name you’d give Yarkie! Who’d ever come back here if they heard we have—” he spit out the incredible words—“killer cockroaches!”

  Elias Johnson asked the biologists, “How much time have we got?”

  Peter Hubbard gauged the situation: “Evacuation is a big responsibility.” His eyes sought Wanda Lindstrom. “I think it would be premature at this point.”

  His colleague’s appraisal was the same. “The kind of
mutation we’re guessing about would be very rare and unusual.”

  Scott loudly repeated “very rare and unusual” in Elias Johnson’s ear. The old man growled, “I heard her! I ain’t deaf, you know!”

  Feeling more secure, Scott thrust another demand at the scientists in a militant manner. “What’s this ‘mutation’ thing you keep talking about? Seems to me all we have here are some cockroaches and rats going nuts from new chemicals in the dump.” He finished with satisfaction. “You just double check it, and we’ll have this settled in no time!”

  It was Wanda Lindstrom who answered the selectman, with her quiet authority. “Dr. Hubbard and I hope you are exactly right, Mr. Scott. And I agree it may not be necessary to take drastic action like clearing people out . . .” Her gray eyes bore into the man’s as she added a signal word, “Yet.” Then she said to the others, “But we had all better recognize that evacuation may become necessary if our surmise about a mutation should prove correct.”

  “There it goes again!” Scott muttered. Aloud he complained; “I’d still like to know what you mean by that.”

  Peter Hubbard intervened. To Elizabeth, it seemed he wanted to shield Wanda Lindstrom from harassment by Stephen Scott. She was embarrassed, herself, at the belligerence the man was displaying. Why, Scott was almost making it sound as if Yarkie’s trouble was Wanda Lindstrom’s fault. Elizabeth’s admiration of the woman had been growing throughout the difficult session. She could only respect her self-­possession.

  Peter Hubbard was being patient with Stephen Scott. “I’m sorry if we seem to be getting ahead of ourselves, sir. I’m glad you asked about mutation, because it may not be clear to others as well.” He did not wait for a response. “The word, of course, means a change. In biology it means a sudden variation in a form of life—in this case possibly the cockroaches—usually when something abnormal happens in the basic genes. Then a new form of the species is created. It might just die out—as happens with freaks such as you sometimes see in circuses. Or it sometimes persists and gives birth to more individuals with the new characteristics until a new species is, in effect, established . . .”