Robby shrugged.
We both knew what we were thinking about.
Robby said, “I’ll be right back.”
I turned around and patted Ingrid again. I tried not to be nervous about things, but my head was swimming, drowning actually, in uncertainty. I unzipped the top of my jumpsuit and played with the Saint Kazimierz medal that hung from my neck.
And then I whispered, “What am I going to do, Ingrid?”
Robby ran around the front of the car and disappeared inside the Del Vista Arms.
I thought about Shann Collins, and how she told me I was disgusting.
At exactly that moment, Ollie Jungfrau was killing aliens in an online space-shooter game. He was sitting up in his bed, in his underwear, with his laptop resting on his thighs. Ollie had eaten a large pizza and drank five cans from a six-pack of Dr Pepper. Tiny speckles of pizza sauce dotted Ollie’s swollen breasts. Ollie Jungfrau needed to piss, but he did not want to get up from bed. He tried to calculate whether he could get away with peeing in his empty Dr Pepper cans. Ollie Jungfrau decided trying to do that might cut his penis, which he could not actually see due to the roll of his belly, or it might cause him to piss in his own bed. Ollie had pissed in his bed before, when he was too tired to get up and walk to the toilet. Ollie Jungfrau got up. He walked past his window and looked down at the street.
Ollie Jungfrau saw Robby Brees running around the front of a Ford Explorer parked in front of their apartment building. Ollie hated Robby Brees because Robby was gay, and Ollie knew it, and also because Robby was so young and good-looking. Ollie wished Robby Brees would fall down, trip on the curb or shit like that, but Robby was also coordinated and balanced.
Ollie Jungfrau hated young, good-looking, coordinated kids. Especially ones like Robby Brees, who were gay.
Ollie Jungfrau’s eye caught the movement of something farther down the street in the dark. Ollie Jungfrau’s eyes were good at noticing quick movements. That was how he killed so many aliens in the game he played every day. The motion Ollie detected was not caused by an alien, however.
Ollie Jungfrau saw the dark form of an Unstoppable Soldier crossing the street ahead of Robby Brees’s Ford Explorer. He saw the creature just as Robby disappeared into the foyer at the Del Vista Arms.
The Unstoppable Soldier, a six-foot-tall mantis thing with spike-studded arms, was Hungry Jack.
Hungry Jack was hungry again.
I sat inside Robby Brees’s Ford Explorer. I was turned toward the backseat, stroking Ingrid’s fur and flipping the silver Saint Kazimierz medallion with my left hand. Ollie Jungfrau did not know the Polish kid he sold cigarettes to and called Dynamo was down there in the gay kid’s car on the street.
Ollie Jungfrau stood at his window, frozen in fright. He was in his boxers and socks, and he was standing in a puddle of his own steaming piss.
Ollie’s piss had the slight smell of garlic and Dr Pepper.
And at the same time that Ollie Jungfrau was urinating down his bread dough thighs, watching in horror as Hungry Jack scampered like a metal windup puppet through the dark toward me and Ingrid while we sat in Robby’s car, Duane Coventry, the chemistry teacher from Curtis Crane Lutheran Academy, put down his glass meth pipe after smoking three peanut-sized rocks of crystal.
Duane Coventry sat completely naked at his computer. The chemistry teacher from Curtis Crane Lutheran Academy could look at pornography for endless hours when he smoked meth. The only thing that sometimes interfered with viewing pornography, which frequently lasted until daybreak, was if Duane Coventry turned the computer’s camera on himself. Then Duane Coventry used his monitor as a mirror, so he could study his face, scratch at it, pick spots out of his skin that were not there, until he made them real with his own yellowed fingernails.
That was what Duane Coventry was doing at the exact moment Ollie Jungfrau was pissing himself, and Hungry Jack was click-stepping toward the smell of Robby Brees and the food-meat things that sat inside Robby’s car. Duane Coventry was picking his face, naked, seated at his computer, picking and picking and picking.
Duane Coventry thought he left his doors and windows open. Duane Coventry always had to check his doors and windows whenever he smoked his meth. He stood up, took a step toward the front door of his small Iowa house. Then Duane Coventry turned around and grabbed his pipe. He burned the amber residue inside the little glass globe and inhaled deeply.
Duane Coventry forgot why he’d been standing up. He sat down again and began picking his face.
Every night Duane Coventry smoked methamphetamine was exactly like this.
Nobody knew anything about Duane Coventry.
Duane Coventry wanted to look at pornography and masturbate, but he needed to check his doors and windows. Duane believed people were always outside, always watching him.
Duane Coventry went into his kitchen, where he’d been cooking methamphetamine for over a year without anyone knowing about it.
Duane Coventry loved methamphetamine more than he could ever love anything else.
He checked the door that opened onto the kitchen porch.
It was locked.
Duane Coventry walked through the small living room and checked the windows behind his sofa. The windows were latched secure. Then he checked his front door. The front door had not been closed all the way.
Scrawled into the plasterboard wall, all down along both sides of Duane Coventry’s front door were letters and numbers. They were license plate tags from cars Duane Coventry saw outside his house whenever he smoked meth.
There were exactly 464 different license plate numbers etched into Duane Coventry’s living room wall. Duane Coventry knew there was always someone out there watching him, waiting for him.
When Duane Coventry opened the front door, he stepped outside. As soon as Duane Coventry went outside his little Iowa house, he strained to think about why he was going out into the night. He had forgotten what he needed to do, but Duane Coventry, our chemistry teacher from Curtis Crane Lutheran Academy, did realize he was completely naked.
He thought that maybe he was supposed to check to be certain his car doors had been locked.
Duane Coventry’s car was parked in the driveway beside a hedge of rosebushes.
Duane walked across the yard toward his car.
It was not a good idea.
Tyler Jacobson and Roger Baird had caught up to the exhausted Eileen Pope, who was trying to find something as big as an empty house or a garage in which to lay her millions of fertilized eggs. Roger Baird had Eileen Pope pinned down. He was fucking her on the lawn just beyond Duane Coventry’s rose hedge. Roger Baird was doing one of the only two things Unstoppable Soldiers ever want to do. Eileen Pope was too tired to eat Roger Baird. Tyler Jacobson was tired and hungry. Tyler Jacobson smelled Duane Coventry’s sweat as soon as the meth smoker opened his front door.
Duane Coventry looked over the hedge and saw the three monstrous things in the grass of his lawn.
Duane Coventry said, “Big fucking bugs.”
That is exactly what they were.
Tyler Jacobson, Roger Baird, and Eileen Pope were the materialization of a meth smoker’s most horrible delusion: gigantic bugs with jagged bear-trap mandibles and folded claw-arms prickled with mountain ranges of knife-blade, triangular teeth.
In the last second of his life, Duane Coventry felt a sort of jubilant vindication: He had been right after all this time. There really were horrible things waiting to get him outside his house.
Duane Coventry was right.
Tyler Jacobson left little more than a few dime-sized bloodstains from the meal he made of the chemistry teacher from Curtis Crane Lutheran Academy.
Tyler Jacobson was unstoppable.
And at exactly that moment, Ingrid’s ears perked up.
If Ingrid were a normal dog that hadn’t lost her
throat’s barking mechanism to cancer, Ingrid would have barked and barked.
Ingrid heard and smelled the monster named Hungry Jack as he got right up next to Robby’s old Ford.
I scratched Ingrid’s ears.
I said, “What’s wrong, Ingrid?”
I turned away from her and I saw the triangular, glistening head of the giant bug that stared at me, fascinated, watching me through the windshield of my best friend’s car.
“Holy shit,” I said.
I am not certain that is exactly what I said, but I did say something.
Sometimes historians need to fill in the blanks on their own. It is part of our job.
You trust us because we are historians.
Historians are reliable blank-fillers.
It is my job.
Hungry Jack’s mandibles yawned open. A gooey string of bug saliva hammocked between his jagged side-hinged jaws. The mandibles opened and closed, opened and closed. Hungry Jack wanted to eat me and Ingrid. Hungry Jack pressed his head into the windshield of Robby’s Explorer. He tried to bite me through the glass, but he could not figure out what was keeping him from getting me into his mouth.
He bit and bit at the windshield, each time leaving streaks of milky bug spit on the glass.
Ingrid squeezed her way up between the front seats, into my lap, and also tried to bite Hungry Jack through the unyielding windshield.
Bugs are not very smart, but Hungry Jack was persistent.
I reached over to the steering column, but Robby had taken the car keys with him. Of course Robby would have taken the keys. He would have no way to enter the Del Vista Arms without his keys.
I pressed down into the car’s horn.
Robby’s Ford Explorer was exactly like Ingrid: barkless. The horn did not work.
I pushed Ingrid back and scooted my way deeper into the rear cargo compartment of the car. Hungry Jack whipped his arms up and struck them into the windshield. He was figuring out the puzzle. Cracks starred outward from the impact, fracturing the windshield in every direction, all the way to the rubber gasket frame.
At exactly that moment, Robby Brees stepped out from the foyer at the Del Vista Arms. When I saw Robby, he was standing on the sidewalk with some objects under one arm, only a few feet away from Hungry Jack.
It was not a good idea.
“Robby!” I screamed, but it was too late.
CLICKETY CLICKETY
THE COMPOUND EYES on an Unstoppable Soldier take up approximately three-fourths of his head.
Hungry Jack could see the entire world around him at all times, even when he was focused on getting to me and Ingrid, who were hiding inside Robby Brees’s Ford Explorer.
The poor old car took a beating from Hungry Jack’s tooth-spiked arms.
Hungry Jack’s head swiveled entirely around when he detected the movement of Robby Brees outside the doorway to the Del Vista Arms.
Robby Brees was going to be easy prey.
Robby stood, frozen. I screamed for him to run, but Robby was not paying attention to me.
I realized I was going to sit there and watch my best friend get killed if I did not do something about it. I crawled up from the rear compartment and grabbed the latch on the rear passenger door. I was not even thinking at that moment about how Robby and I were going to die together.
All I knew is I had to do something for the person I loved.
I opened the door and screamed at Robby again.
Hungry Jack sprang down from the hood of the Explorer and landed squarely on his four rear feet. Hungry Jack was so close to Robby that his folded and spiked arms were practically touching Robby’s shoulders.
Then Hungry Jack backed away from Robby. The monster butted up into the fender of Robby’s Explorer without ever looking toward me or Ingrid again.
Hungry Jack ran, clickety clickety, down the street and disappeared into the night.
Unstoppable Soldiers could run at speeds exceeding forty miles per hour.
Hungry Jack was afraid of Robby Brees.
I had seen it before. The first night—when Hungry Jack hatched out in that cornfield across from the Tally-Ho!—he did the same thing. He ran away from Robby Brees.
It was because Robby Brees was God to the Unstoppable Soldiers.
We found this out later.
“Holy shit,” I said.
“Uh,” Robby said.
Robby Brees had still not moved from the spot I thought he was going to die in.
“Holy shit, Rob.”
I grabbed Robby and hugged him. We stood there on the street holding each other. Ingrid curled her body around our legs, wagging her tail.
Above us, Ollie Jungfrau looked down from his window. He had regained his composure, but was still standing, soaked, in a puddle of his own piss.
Ollie Jungfrau said, “I might have known little Dynamo was a queer, too. Dumb stupid lucky queer kids.”
Robby and I had to get out of there.
Robby Brees and I had shit to do, and monsters to kill.
ON THE ROOF AGAIN
ROBBY SPED ALL the way to Grasshopper Jungle.
It turned out the things Robby wanted to get from his apartment at the Del Vista Arms were these: some clean underwear and socks, his toothpaste, the plastic lawn flamingo with the steel spike coming out of its ass, and the grimacing lemur mask.
“I should have gotten some underwear, too,” I said. “What if we end up having to stay down there?”
“I don’t know, Austin,” Robby said.
“Neither do I,” I agreed.
Nobody knew anything about what we should do.
It was why we needed to get those last two reels of film from the roof of Grasshopper Jungle.
Dr. Grady McKeon told us to get those films.
We had to get the films and go back to Eden. Robby and I both knew that it was not too late, that the infestation was still in its first stage. We still had time, and Dr. Grady McKeon said there would be instructions for what to do on the last reels of the Eden Orientation Series.
Maybe Robby and I could stop the Unstoppable Soldiers.
Maybe Shann Collins would forgive me.
Maybe that plastic flamingo would start shitting candy bars and vanilla ice cream out of its ass, too.
When Robby rounded the turn onto Kimber Drive, his phone chimed.
It was a text message from Shann Collins.
Shann’s text message to Robby Brees said this:
I hate you.
Robby glanced at the message on the screen of his phone. I watched him. He did not show any reaction at all. Robby knew it was not a joke message, though. Then he handed his phone over to me so I could see what Shann had written, too.
“I had a feeling you told her about me and you,” Robby said.
I said, “I never lie, Rob. Shann asked me about it. I don’t know what I am going to do.”
Robby sighed.
I answered Shann’s text message using Robby’s phone:
Shann, it is me, Austin. Please do not make this about Robby. I love you both too much. Can we talk?
Shann’s answer came to my phone:
You are disgusting. I hate you both.
Robby pulled the Explorer into the alley at Grasshopper Jungle.
If we had gone around to the front of the mall, we might have seen the mess Travis Pope had made at The Pancake House.
Robby and I had no idea what had been going on at Grasshopper Jungle.
He eased the Explorer along the back of the mall and parked beneath the metal ladder that came down from the roof behind From Attic to Seller Consignment Store.
Robby and I left Ingrid inside the car and climbed up onto the roof racks of the Explorer. From there, it was an easy reach to the bottom of the ladder.
“Um,” Robby said, “that creature-thing really messed the shit out of my car.”
“Sorry, Rob,” I said. “We might as well call them what they are: Unstoppable Soldiers, created from the sicko brains at McKeon Industries who thought it was a good idea to mix bug sperm and blood with anything that happened to show up in their petri dish.”
“Who would think it wasn’t a good idea to mix bug sperm and blood with shit?” Robby said.
I said, “Uh.”
Robby said, “I wonder what a can of bug spray would do to them.”
“Uh,” I said. “I think Eden One Thirty-Three and Eden Five better get their butts onto the roof and find the rest of that movie.”
“I do hate stopping a film right in the middle,” Eden 133 said. “Just when it was getting good.”
Actually, we stopped the film just when my grandfather, Felek Andrzej Szczerba, became McKeon Industries’s first Unstoppable Soldier.
We climbed up onto the roof of the Ealing Mall.
Johnny McKeon was hiding inside, just waiting for somebody to respond to his emergency alarm. Johnny McKeon was also going through the stock of handguns he had on display in the glass case at From Attic to Seller Consignment Store.
Johnny McKeon had a lot of guns for sale.
Robby and I had no way of knowing Johnny McKeon was directly below our feet.
“Smoke?” I said.
“Fags,” Robby agreed.
“I guess so,” I said.
We lit up.
The steel film canisters were right where we had left them. I bent down and picked up both canisters. What we hadn’t noticed the first time we were up on the roof became strikingly obvious now. The film cans were wrapped with tape and marked with a thick black pen: Four of Five, and Five of Five.
Robby said, “Can I ask you something, Austin?”
I said, “Sure.”
“Was it hard for you to tell Shann the truth?” Robby asked.
I shook my head.
“No,” I said.
It was the truth.
“Oh.” Robby said, “And you really don’t know what you’re going to do?”