The Nest

by Gregory A. Douglas

  Craig Soaras returned from the phone, moving fast. “Chatham’ll give us all the tanks we need.”

  “Use my boat!” Stephen Scott said loud, wanting to be part of the action. Craig ran out to his car.

  “Need any help?” Johnson called.

  “Nope!”

  Bonnie was at the door, tense. “Take care, Craig!”

  Johnson told her, smiling, “He’s the best sailor on the island.”

  Stephen Scott was asking the scientists, “How does dry ice stop them?”

  Hubbard replied, “Like other insects, cockroaches breathe through spiracles, the little holes along their bodies. The dry ice will suffocate them and freeze them to death.”

  “Ha! Good!”

  Reed Brockshaw rushed into the room from the telephone in an obvious state of panic.

  Amos Tarbell asked, “Hey! What’s wrong, Reed?”

  “You can’t believe it!” the man choked out in misery. “Doreen reminded me the Sunday School kids were supposed to have a picnic up in the woods today. Because of the ‘spraying,’ the new minister took them on a boating party in the Tub instead!”

  The sheriff said encouragingly, “Well, she’s a good sailor.” The Tub was an old harbor boat-­of-­all work, stout and seaworthy, and the coming storm wasn’t looking to be one of the big blows. But Tarbell understood the solicitude for his children that made Brockshaw shout furiously, “He doesn’t know spit about sailing a storm!”

  Elias Johnson tried to lighten the atmosphere. “Well, he’s new and he didn’t want to disappoint the children. We’re lucky to have got George Kinray here, Reed. They might have sent us one of those ministers who try to stop the gulls from flying on Sundays . . .”

  Brockshaw was in no mood for even mild levity. He shouted again, “There are times to listen to the Lord, and times to listen to the weatherman!”

  ENCOUNTER

  ONE

  In the lighthouse kitchen, cleaning up after the lunch they had prepared for the group, Elizabeth and Bonnie were preoccupied with their own thoughts. Uppermost for Elizabeth Carr was the way Wanda Lindstrom and Peter Hubbard—alone in the laboratory again—moved in a private fraternity of their work. It was clearer than ever that she was out of her depth against Wanda Lindstrom. Fortunately, Elizabeth told herself, she had no special reason to be involved.

  She forced herself to pay attention to what Bonnie, at the sink, was saying. “Do you think that really happens, Liz?” Elizabeth stopped drying dishes and looked up. Was Bonnie going to tell her it had been love at first sight with Craig Soaras?

  But Bonnie’s mind was not on her feelings for the handsome Portuguese. She was saying in a subdued way, “That those roaches could actually eat people?”

  Without meaning it to be, Elizabeth’s response was sharp. “How do I know? I’m not Wanda Lindstrom!”

  Bonnie desisted, with understanding, only to split the kitchen air with a searing scream. A plate crashed from her hands and shattered to pieces.

  “What!” Elizabeth cried out in alarm.

  Elias Johnson and Stephen Scott burst into the kitchen. “You girls all right?”

  Bonnie Taylor pointed a trembling finger at the corner of the sink and sobbed, “I thought I saw one!”

  But the moving shadow was not a cockroach, large or small. A small cleaning rag had stirred in a draft coming through the warped window.

  “Sorry.” The woman went into her friend’s arms shaking with embarrassment and relief. “I really thought—” she apologized.

  Captain Johnson patted both women heartily on the backside. “We’re all jittery as hell. What’s the menu for dinner tonight? The men’ll be hungry when they get back.”

  Elizabeth disentangled from Bonnie. “Reed Brockshaw brought in a nice blue this morning . . .”

  “First-­rate.” Her grandfather tried to sound normal, “Put the pork to the beans, girls!”

  TWO

  Leaving the lighthouse, Sheriff Amos Tarbell belched sourly as he drove to the village. The girls had made a nice-­tasting shrimp salad, but his lunch felt like lead in his middle. He was in a hurry to reach High Ridge and get the Laidlaws and Tintons out of their houses—diplomatically and tactfully—but he had to stop at the jail first. Stephen Scott, as Justice of the Peace, had ordered the release of the hoodlum jailed for nudity and drugs. The ferry for Chatham was delayed by the weather but they wanted the man on it, with a stern warning not to exercise his constitutional right to come back to Yarkie.

  After releasing the prisoner, Amos Tarbell turned to the piled-­up papers on his desk. Thus, he did not see the freed man turn up Main Street heading for High Ridge instead of going downhill to the ferry dock. Tarbell did not know that the three sunbathers had spotted jimson weed growing wild down at the cove. Indeed, the sheriff was not familiar with what the three experts gleefully recognized at once. Jimson weed was the latest discovery on the drug scene, better than marijuana because it was free to hand when found and—to the best of their knowledge—not even illegal, though it produced a similar high. But men like these were beyond caring about jimson’s side effects, which included frightening hallucinations and irrational, dangerous conduct.

  All Alex Matthews knew was that he wanted the open air after the lock-­up. He was sure his friends would be hanging out at what they had jubilantly labeled their private Paw-­Paw Patch. He had wondered for a while why Bo and Tony hadn’t shown up at the jail. He decided they had gotten away from the fuzz and hidden in the woods. He was hazy about the whole thing. The sheriff told him he had nearly drowned, but he didn’t remember anything. He’d had a great dream—like flying, only better. Being an actual fish! He could have swum under water forever. Still, some part of his head suggested he should be thankful that the sheriff had come along. It was one thing to dream a great trip like being a fish—it was another to make it real. Well, hell, everyone knew hallucinogens could be dangerous. The risk was part of the fun. Like Russian roulette, in a way. You really never did know when the shit might turn on you instead of turning you on.

  He shouldn’t be worrying about it, the man frowned at himself. He knew what he was doing, all the way. If there was danger, it was worth it to him. Hopheads of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but the chains of the fools of convention!

  The man broke into a run as he reached the tarred road bordering the woods. He remembered the path to the cliff and the cove. His excitement grew as he thought of the stash of Acapulco Gold his main men had waiting down there.

  For a fleeting moment, he had considered stopping in the village and phoning his parents, but the hell with them, with college, with practicing Beethoven. This music was what he wanted—the loud rustling of the leaves in the forest, the songs of nature, like that hissing some neat animal was welcoming him with, the sound of the wind in the trees. Ah, here his gut and his head and his soul came together as he wanted! This was what he had come to Cape Cod for! He leaped on the path, coming down hard on the ground. He kicked his heels and cavorted at being out of the crumby cell. He stamped and scattered leaves as he bounded along. “God’s dandruff!” he laughed at the leaves flying in the wind. The hissing, louder now, was like the whistling call of his friends.

  Alex Matthews plunged into the thick of the darkening woods with a near-­hysterical cry of joy: “Hey, you dudes! Ready or not, here I come!”

  The roaches were ready. Suddenly, an ice pick stabbed the man in one eye, then the other, so that he never saw what it was he had been calling to in the woods. He crashed down with an expression of amazement and stupefaction that was soon the grin of a skull on a deathbed of crimson leaves.

  THREE

  Amos Tarbell drove north from the village, to pass the lighthouse on his way to High Ridge. Everything seemed to be in order and he did not stop. He continued eastward on the small road along the shore, which would have led him to the dump if he were not turning onto High Ridge Road at the junction.

  The road climbed steeply after the s
outhward turn to the ridge, and the sheriff could see the ocean clearly. Russell Homer’s small boat was pitching and yawing in seas that were running visibly heavier now. But the craft was making steadily for the beach fringing the dump. Good boy, Russell, the sheriff considered. He might not be the brightest fellow on Yarkie, but he was a damned depend­able one to have on any team.

  Good team for a crisis all round, the sheriff contemplated. He’d take sailors for a tough job anytime, men who knew how to keep cool when things got hot. Take Craig Soaras. Hard to beat Portugee blood on the water, and a top-­notch bunkie anywhere. He seemed to have calf eyes for Liz Carr’s black friend, and that might not be too good. There was more than water between Yarkie Island and Cambridge. But it was none of anyone else’s business, if that’s what was simmering.

  Reed Brockshaw, another winner. He was doing all the work on the marina, everyone knew. Scott ought to give him an interest. Probably would, too, before they were through. If they ever got through anything again after this spooky cockroach affair.

  Ben Dorset. Ben was the one no one would have predicted good of. He had run to Boston with his family inheritance and blown it. But he’d come to his senses and back to Yarkie, and now a good right-­hand police officer. Couldn’t tell how people would turn out. Take Liz and her friend—who’d ever dream two Radcliffe seniors would get down on their knees scrubbing those filthy lighthouse floors. They had everything spick and shining, never pulled rank. The Johnson blood showed. The other girl? Bonnie Taylor sure had a sunny disposition—until Sharky, anyway. He’d seldom seen anyone so ruffled.

  Well, they all had plenty to be upset about, didn’t they? Lucky there was Elias Johnson, solid as rock. Simply his presence always made a difference anywhere in town. People thought and spoke differently when he was around. That was the real definition of leadership. America’s unsung heroes, men like Elias.

  Gravel, not yet settled into the road’s tar, spit up at his car, making a kind of castanet rhythm to his jiggling thoughts.

  Luckiest of all right now was that Elias had that professor son-­in-­law, able to snap fingers and send two expert biologists to Yarkie so fast. Right now, nobody would know which way to turn without them.

  Not that he knew yet what to do, really. Amos Tarbell let out another sour belch. Sure learned a lot about “The Strange Universe of Insects,” as one of those TV shows might put it. It was a whole different universe, at that. There was an unreal, outer-­space feeling to the entire scene on Yarkie now. “Invasion of Space Ships”—hell, that wouldn’t hold a candle to what was really, actually, in damn true fact happening! “Invasion of Cockroaches!” “The Crawling Killers!” It would sound giddy-­pated if it wasn’t so swear-­on-­the-­Bible true!

  The police car came up higher where the trees were thin, and the sheriff could see out to the ocean and the dump again. Homer’s craft was almost at the dump spit now—but far out to sea behind it there was another boat. Tarbell stopped the car to look through his binoculars. The Sunday School picnic! The wind was coming at the old Tub dangerously. She seemed to be wallowing. Reed might be right about the minister. Any savvy sailor would have turned back, would have come along the north shore with the northeast wind, to head back down to the village harbor. But the Tub was plainly aiming to come around the east side. George Kinray seemed to be headed for the South Beach pier, probably. That would take expert handling today, especially when they were by Dickens Rocks. That was a cruel finger of huge, sharp-­cut boulders that had poked holes in the ribs of many an unwary craft in just such a no’-­theaster.

  Well, the older boys on board the Tub were first-­rate seamen, and the boat was well out. He guessed she’d be okay if they kept the wind from blowing her closer to shore.

  But the sheriff reached for his radio. Wouldn’t do any harm to have the Coast Guard on Chatham keep an eye out for the Tub in case of trouble.

  Amos Tarbell drove along as he radioed. Even in the cloudy day now, the Ridge was beautiful in his eyes. The sun was filtering a brown-­orange color through the clouds, and the spreads of trees stood bronze in the un­usual light. Almost the color of the cockroaches. The man didn’t want the image, but it persisted. He tried to think instead of how the trees needed rain, but all he saw was the army of insects, that incredible mob of cockroaches that had chased after him and Ben and Russ at the grove. It was hard to believe he wouldn’t wake up and find he had dreamed it all.

  Despite the wind and the now glowering sky—though still no rain—the usual High Ridge serenity was all around him. The trees—beginning to whip about—now blocked his view of the ocean, but always up here he had the sense of the sea, as well as the stretching sky. There was a sense of great spaces extending all about. It increased the feeling of isolation of tiny Yarkie in the midst of the ocean. In a storm like the one brewing now, the land seemed even more precious to him—safe harbor, home. It would be that way again! he vowed.

  The Laidlaw place was lovely, chalk-­white against the storm-­darkened pitch pine. It made a landscape out of a Wyeth painting, Tarbell thought, though today the scene was somehow disturbing. The white railing circling the widow’s walk atop the house seemed more like skeletal bone than wood.

  Tarlell shook his head impatiently. It was no time for woolgathering or omen-­spooking. He told himself there was every reason to be on edge, but even the eerie bronze color bathing High Ridge was no cause for him, of all people, to get his heart thumping like a kid scared by a Halloween witch.

  He put his mind instead to the Laidlaws, as he turned into their driveway. They had been on Yarkie for only fifteen years, which made them newcomers. But they helped the local charities and, more important, they never pretended to belong. That made them welcome. A paradox, the sheriff smiled to himself. Typically Yarkie.

  He sat for a moment eyeing the house the Laidlaws rented from Stephen Scott. Then he knocked on the gracious white door politely. Tact and diplomacy. Get them out without scaring them. No answer. He tried the knob. Inside, the house was as quiet as it was cool. The polished bannister post sported its ivory “mortgage button” to proclaim that this house was owed to no bank. He wondered if that custom existed in other parts of the country.

  He called upstairs. No answer. He sniffed. No smell of cooking, either. They might have driven to town for broiled fish at Elvira Soaras’s cafe—Craig’s mother cooked the tastiest meal anywhere on Cape Cod.

  Outside, the sheriff paused for a moment, looking from the empty garage across the spreading lawn to the elegance of the building—the fantail window over the door, the Greek pilasters, all the trimming done with craftsmen’s passion for perfect detail. It was a waste of breath to say they didn’t build them that way anymore. And this lawn that generations of Scotts had tended. It wasn’t easy to grow this lush a green carpet around a Yarkie house in the salt air. The gardener had done well with the flowers, too. Portulacas, and the pink petunias like his own wife favored, and hollyhocks, with columbine and daffodils. The plants seemed to be opening in expectation of the promised rain. The colors of the petals seemed somehow brighter in the dark day than they did in bright sun. Another paradox, but it was the contrast, he supposed.

  The wind was blowing leaves off the elm trees almost as if it were already fall. Well, August did bring autumn pretty early up here, especially in a long dry spell.

  At the loveliness of the spot, anger shook Amos Tartell. This beauty and the decent people who lived in it should not be at the threat the scientists were talking about! Rampaging cockroach armies on Yarkie!

  At the edge of the garage wall a motion caught his eye. His heart turned over. One of them? It disappeared around the corner. Tarbell tiptoed after, holding his breath, squinting at the cement floor. There! A cockroach at least five inches long, like a loathsome living cigar, was vibrating its antennae up at him. Violent hatred churned in the officer. He remembered what the scientists had said about these bugs not having emotions, but this lurking roach seemed to be daring him, even
taunting him. Along with its acrid odor, he took in a maliciousness from the creature that iced his blood.

  Tarbell looked around alertly. Was this a vagrant, or were there others? No, this bastard seemed alone.

  In a reflex of his own, the man hopped forward. He landed on the roach with all his weight. Even through his thick sole, he felt the shell cracking and smashing. It was a noise as soul-­satisfying to him as it was abhorrent. In a cursing fury, the man kept turning his shoe on the floor, wanting to grind the creature out of existence.

  When finally Amos Tarbell looked down, he glared at splinters of shell flattened in a disgusting mash of dirty liquid and innards.

  Disgusting. Like the odor of the dead cockroach, stronger now. The smell. Tarbell recalled what the scientists had said about the phero-­somethings that were signals among them. This acidy stink might be a cockroach SOS to muster the tribe. He’d better get the hell out anyway. He wiped the bottom of his shoe furiously on the grass, kicking back and forth. He hurried to the police car.

  He drove off with a last, grimacing glance at the large circular stain the huge cockroach had made. Good! He swore. No stinking lousy cockroaches were going to beat people, no matter how damn smart or “mutated” or whatever else the hell those miserable bugs thought they were! Craig would be bringing the dry-­ice extinguishers soon, and they’d sweep the woods with all of Yarkie’s volunteer firemen. They’d find the nest and destroy it before this day was over!

  To his horror, Amos Tarbell felt a stab of pain on the calf of his leg. “What the hell!” he snorted. He jammed on the brakes, flung the door open and yanked up his trouser leg. There, like a leech, was a great roach clinging to his skin and sucking his blood. With a snarl, the sheriff plucked it off and flung it as far as he could—but immediately sorry. He should have stomped it, like the other one, instead of letting it live to attack someone else!