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. The 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.

But the cockroach sharks, as Tarbell thought of the crawling column now, were not to be turned. There was no nose to punch, no mass to fight against. The sheriff knew in his gut that these bugs were killers relentlessly coming after his eyes, his flesh, his bones. He ran for his life with every gulp of acid-­stinking air he sucked into his heaving lungs. It came to him that he was running not only for his own life, but possibly the lives of everyone on Yarkie! The scientists had to be told! They had to see the specimen roaches caught inside the dead rabbit . . .

Tarbell saw Ben Dorset nearing the road. It occurred to the sheriff that if he stopped and let the roaches take him, Dorset and Homer could get away. But in the pinch, he found he did not have the ultimate courage to sacrifice himself. Not, at least, while he was still a step ahead of the creeping doom. He raced with fire under his ribs now, not daring to look back. But he had seen how swiftly those impossible insects could move. He didn’t have to remember how fast a kitchen roach skittered away, a damn streak of brown lightning, gone almost before the eye could spot it. He had long legs, but the bugs would keep gaining if he faltered for even a moment.

In front of him he saw Ben Dorset reach the road. Hope skyrocketed in his heaving chest. But at the same moment, Russell Homer went sprawling. The sheriff tripped over him and both men lay tangled in the leaves. Fumbling frantically to regain their feet, they slipped and skidded against each other clumsily. Russell kept crying, “Sorry, sorry!” Amos Tarbell saved his breath, shoving at the man with a silent vehemence.

A roach landed on Homer’s cheek and folded its wings. Without thinking, the sheriff brought his gloved fist against the young man’s face. The roach was mashed, but Homer bellowed angrily, “What the hell you doing?”

Another roach landed, moving straight for Russell Homer’s eyes, and Amos Tarbell swatted the reddened, perplexed face again. The man raised his own fists, but at the same moment a roach flew onto the sheriff’s cheek, and the light dawned. Homer used his own gloved hand to flick the insect off, but its mandibles had already drawn blood. The young man had no choice but to do as Tarbell had done. He slapped hard, and squashed the roach against the sheriff’s jaw.

Both men heard the deputy sheriff bawling for them to hurry, but more roaches were hitting the men’s open faces, and, while they headed for the road, they had to stop at every step to brush away or squash the marauders.

The roaches were winning, sliding all over the men, too many to be dealt with. Russell Homer cried out in protest and panic against the implacable killers. The sheriff fought silently, knowing in his heart that he was losing, that this was the last battle of his life—against an inconceivable enemy.

Until all at once the men were blinded by a searing light that scorched their eyes.

Russell Homer froze as if hit with a hammer, but Amos Tarbell understood immediately that his deputy had swung the police car’s powerful spotlight down the forest path. He saw the roaches on Homer’s cheeks let go and fall away to the ground. The nipping stopped on his own cheek. He wanted to stay and grind the miserable insects into the earth, but he stumbled on toward the light. Thank God they needed that great light to power through the mists and fogs that often covered Yarkie.

Tarbell pushed Homer, staggering, onto the road, and dared to look back for a moment. Yes! and praise Almighty God, the roaches were in disarray. The spotlight was anathema to them. He had wondered right from the start why even the first roaches had come out during the day, but the trap had been in a dim area. And these cockroaches were obviously all too different from what people expected, in all too many terrible ways. Thank God the searchlight had stopped them. He could see the column breaking up faster and faster, with roaches skittering crazily down into the leaves, seeking darkness now.

They might regroup and attack again, but the men had their chance to escape.

Ben Dorset had placed the aluminum box on the back seat, and the three men rode in front as the police car accelerated to over sixty in split seconds. Russell Homer hardly had time to close the door and was nearly thrown out as Dorset went screeching around a curve. Fortunately, Amos Tarbell had solid hold of his young friend. At the wheel, Dorset hit the siren in a crescendo of warning to anyone who might be ahead.

The sheriff could not help turning to see whether the roach army had reformed. Dorset was speeding too fast for a good look, but the road behind seemed empty.

The man’s eyes lowered from the rear window to the picnic case bouncing and sliding on the rear seat as the car swerved left and right with the speedometer climbing to eighty, ninety, one hundred. They hit a bump and the box flew off the seat and bounced on the floor. Horrified that the lock might spring, the sheriff reached back to press the lid down. He uttered another silent prayer of thanks when he saw that the cover had held. It seemed to him he could see right through the metal to the evil antennae inside, reaching, reaching, reaching for them all. He shuddered with the feel of the livid mandibles clamping on his cheek and the sting of the insect teeth biting for his blood. He knew too well now what was happening on Yarkie. And knowing it, he still could not bring himself to believe that it was roaches—just cockroaches!—no matter how vicious and huge a breed—that could be so infernally powerful.

Yarkie could only trust that the two Harvard scientists could deal with the distorted insects and their unspeakable appetites.

Now Amos Tarbell could admit to himself that he had privately deemed Elias Johnson’s phone call to Harvard too quick on the trigger. But now he was more than grateful. The cockroaches they had just so narrowly eluded were more formidable than any rats he had ever seen! If those bastards, those “crawling sharks,” ever got out of the woods into Yarkie’s homes the carnage would create a ghost island.

For that matter, it occurred to the sheriff, if those monstrosities ever hid on a boat and got over to the mainland, they could make a ghost land of the Cape itself. And hadn’t somebody predicted it was insects that would take over the entire world in the end?

For all his experience and ruggedness, the sheriff shivered like a child.

The biologists would have to tackle the tumbling questions in his mind. They were in for a hellish surprise. It was the damnedest “rats” they’d find when they opened the picnic box he was still pressing firmly shut.

At the thought of the mangled rabbit and the grisly autopsy ahead in the laboratory, Sheriff Amos Tarbell of Yarkie shouted for Ben Dorset to stop the car. He didn’t want to be sick all over everybody.