“What do you want from me?” he said.
The spider jittered up and down on its spindly legs. Will had the distinct impression that it was laughing. He spat on the ground in front of it. It froze and Will saw himself reflected in eight red spheres.
“Brave Constable,” Dampf said. “You are right. We do need your help. A single Wasp escaped through the rent, the original. It has wreaked its petty havoc over the years, but caused little imbalance in the grand scheme.”
“And now?” Will asked, already knowing and dreading the answer.
“The Pompiliad returns.”
Chapter 11
Charlotte Najarian knew for certain, for dang certain, that she would go the rest of her life without ever hearing a word of thanks from the miserable brats attending Shard Elementary. She was fifty-one and three fourths (though she’d pass for ten years older) and probably had another ten or fifteen years, may the Risen Jesus protect her, before retirement. That meant another ten to fifteen years of swollen ankles from standing in front of a steadily diminishing crowd of mouth-breathing imbeciles. The fact that it was summer vacation for another few weeks barely gave her any relief.
She kneeled in her garden on a fine August morning and tended her peonies, her boney backside in the air and her straw hat swinging back and forth like a jerky radar dish. The dang deer—always such a bother to her tomatoes and just about anything else that would bud—had given her beloved plot a pass this summer. At least she had that to be grateful for, but it wasn’t providence, no sir. It was the ten or so bars of Irish Spring she’d hung in an alien perimeter around her yard that kept those pesky deer at bay. Strange thing, but she hadn’t seen many deer at all over the past few months and Shard was normally lousy with them. Oh, she’d put in her complaints to the Constable, but that William Two-Bears McFarlan was a no good. Just look at that long hair of his and you could tell he didn’t deserve the job. He’d asked her what she wanted him to do about the deer infestation (Tics, Constable, tics! Limers! It’s a public health emergency!) and when Charlotte suggested a mass poisoning campaign, he’d had the temerity to ask her what she had against Bambi.
“A no good,” she muttered now to her cukes. “A no good Cherokee.” She checked over her shoulder. The yard was empty, of course, as was the street. She could hear a couple of mouthbreathers shouting and whooping it up down to the park on the corner, but that was far enough off that no one would catch Charlotte in her political incorrectness. “A no good injun.” She showed her teeth to the carrots. “Worse’n a nigger, if you ask me.” She finished with a nod. One of the children, probably that Patty Wilkerson trollop (always lifting her skirt for any boy over the age of eight), gave a delighted summer screech.
Charlotte cast her squint up and down Rhodes Street. And wasn’t that just a pip: naming this fine strip of Victorians and spreading, venerable oaks after that no good Rhodes family? Maybe they had been something approaching respectable back in the days when she herself had been known to lift her skirt a time or two on the playground (not that said memories even existed inside Charlotte’s mind), but it had been a long time since. For the nonce, the Rhodes Family was comprised solely of one George Rhodes, town drunk and Charlotte’s greatest disappointment.
She remembered the big blonde boy in her K-6 classes quite well. Young George has been as far ahead of the other children in his brains as he had been in athletic ability. She’d had real hopes that one day George Rhodes would come back from college, finely degreed, and take over one of the top administrative spots at the mine offices. But no, he’d chosen sin instead of success. Such a shame, such a shame. And now there was that—she checked up and down the street again—spic woman boarding at the house. If Marabelle Rhodes could know that a Porto Ricci, or whatever she was, was sleeping under the same roof as her poor lost boy… Well, it was good she was under the ground, and in the arms of the Risen Jesus.
Charlotte grunted and—again checking the street—let a fart slip as she moved over to her rows of squash. They wouldn’t be in until the fall, but the first vine shoots were coming up. Thinking of autumn reminded her of the desks in her single classroom at Shard Elementary and her contented, somewhat lofty expression darkened.
She stabbed the earth with a trowel. A drop of her sweat ran down the metal barrel and magnified the letters C. NAJARIAN as it headed for the shovel end. One of her greatest pleasures in life was engraving her name on her possessions. She’d started with a few school supplies—her scissors were always walking away—and it just took off from there. Now, just about anything she owned that was small enough to be carried and hard enough to take the vibrating point of her engraving gun bore her name. Charlotte levered the trowel, yanked a dandelion and sighed. Fall always fell too soon.
To even call it an elementary school was incorrect. Only one room was even used and in it Charlotte taught a five-student menagerie—all that was left of the children of Shard, Kentucky. There was ten-year-old Patty Wilkerson, the skirt lifting trollop; twelve-year-old Howard Sams, the fat boy (and wasn’t there always one of those); Patty’s younger sister, eight-year-old Madison (well on her way to an illustrious career as a professional nose picker); sixteen-year-old Tommy Ray Dalton; and finally the new hope, Childe Howard. And, no, she would never refer to him by his nickname, Kiddo. It was repugnant, though he seemed to like it.
To even call it a teaching job was also something of a misnomer. Charlotte hardly taught anything at all anymore. She was a babysitter. The school existed to keep the brats of Shard on a leash during the day. Oh, she ran them through a few lessons here and there, but mostly she had them stick to their respective text books. Her lesson plans were exact copies of the ones she’d used for years. She spent most of her class time with her nose shoved deep in the crack of her favorite stories, the Left Behind series. Every now and again, she would raise her eyes to silence a giggle or whisper, using the opportunity to wonder which of her mouth-breathers would be chosen when the Rapture finally came. She might have picked Childe Howard (he was such a quiet, attentive and bright boy) but for the fact that his mother was a Jew and that stain followed along the mother’s bloodlines. Well, perhaps she and the rest of the righteous would be able to put in a good word with the Risen Jesus when the End Times came.
A loud buzz burst in Charlotte’s ear. “Hai!” she screamed and her legs pistoned her up into a crouching sort of hop. She flailed a hand at what could only have been a fat honeybee or cicada—the sound was of a heavy insect, deep and droning. She stood up and backed off a pace from the plot she’d been tending. The smell of hot sun on rich earth and wet grass filled the air, thick and sharp. The brats up the street shouted to each other from farther off. The August blue of the sky spiked between leaves of deep jade from the oak across the street. She was not usually afraid of bee stings or insects; a lady couldn’t garden if she was weak in the heart about such things. But now she cradled her elbows as gooseflesh covered her arms with crepe paper. It was eighty degrees and she was cold.
Someone was watching her; had probably seen her funny little jump and screech. She whipped around, but the cool shade of her pin-neat porch was empty. During the years when the town was still a success story instead of a footnote, her daddy would sit on the porch on fair days and watch Charlotte’s Mama tend this same garden. Butch Najarian would drink his beer and smile. Every now and again he would let out a ringing belch just to let his wife know he was still staring at her behind while she rooted in the soil. She’d call him a “pig” or a “gopher” over her shoulder, but always with a grin in her voice. Charlotte would laugh fit to split when her daddy burped like that. Her mother hated it when she did, but the giggles wouldn’t stay down.
Butch Najarian’s lungs had gone pitch and he went into the dust when Charlotte was still in her teens. Not three years later, her Mama was struck with Legionnaires. The doctor said it could have been the garden what killed her. Something about microbes in the soil. Happens more than most people might a thought
, he’d told her, as if the ignorance of other people was supposed to make her feel better about her mother’s last days of delirium and shitting the bed. And now she was standing here shivering in high summer sun, giving herself the creepy-crawlies because a big old lazy bumblebee had mistaken the rim of her hat for a landing strip.
“You’re being an empty-headed imbecile,” she nearly hissed at herself. “Garden’s not going to tend itself. Get to it, woman.”
Charlotte bent back down, her knees sending off cannon shots, and slipped her hands back into the cool earth. She reached behind her for her trowel and when she brought it back around, a huge black hornet was perched on the back of her hand. Her breath caught for a moment as she just stared at it. It’s body was at least three inches long, armed at the front with mandibles like tiny garden shears and at the back with a stinger that looked like the tip of a knitting needle. Its delicate wings fluttered like chips of bluish mica on a furtive breeze. And then it stung her, gouging its spear between two prominent veins in the notch of a couple of tendons. The pain flared like a bolt of white phosphorous.
Charlotte opened her mouth to scream and the wasp flew in. Her hindbrain spoke before she could think better of it and she closed her teeth with a click. Her eyes bulged like twin cue balls as the animal forced itself over her tongue and began to quest down into her throat, all roving spikes and needles. She clasped her hands at her neck. (A passerby might have been forgiven for wondering why the local school marm was trying to strangle herself.) Her left hand had already ballooned into a grotesque clown’s glove, the dusky blue veins now black and standing out on the red flesh like wire. That dark liquid slipped up her arm and into her heart. The big muscle burned with the poison and seized. Charlotte fell on her back, paralyzed with pain and weakness. Even as she died she could feel the wasp behind her breastbone, working some secret with its clever, spikey parts. Her last moment was filled with the cobalt of the deep August sky. Beyond was the starry vault of infinity.
Twenty minutes later, a pair of antennae peeked between Charlotte’s cyanotic lips almost as if she were spitting out a cherry stem, followed by the triangular head, worming back and forth to break into the world. A moment later and the large hornet slipped from her mouth and crawled to the wide expanse of pale forehead. It began to clean its antennae and legs, drawing each through its mandibles, tasting blood and other nectars. It dried its wings in the sun and waited. In the near distance, it sensed a cool, dark place under the house. The rest of the swarm would come now. It would need their help to drag the host under the porch.
Chapter 12
The granite slab angled from the forest floor, forming a natural platform about the size of a twin bed. Early afternoon sun caught it in a bolt of white light and the rock reflected the heat back like a slow-feed capacitor. Amy James lay naked as her many tattoos would allow (sleeves up both arms, black lightning bolts on her ribs, chakra point color wheels, wings on her ankles) and soaked up the light. As far as she was concerned there was no better way to get a nice summer tan or spend her lunch hour. Bathing suits, as a rule, sucked.
“I am an iguana,” she said to no one, stretching the vowels as she stretched her limbs. The rock was a bit scratchy on her bare butt and shoulders, but the contrast between it and the soft air was kind of interesting. Truth be told, everything was kind of interesting after a couple of post-lunch tokes. She wasn’t soaring, but her feet weren’t exactly planted either.
On any other project Amy never would have considered lighting up during working hours. The Shard survey was boring her to fucking tears, though. Over the past few days she’d been tramping through the woods, covering enough of the terrain around the mine to have formulated the basis for her report: Shard sat on a typical hunk of Kentucky granite shot through with anthracite deposits. A first year geology student could have figured as much and without a semi-portable mass spectrometer and diamond bladed rock slicer. Hell, anyone with a pair of eyes could have figured it out because all it meant was that this place was a coal mine in the mountains.
Blackstone’s Business Development Unit wanted her to ascertain if the Shard load could be further exploited. If she could have some time down one or two of the old mine shafts, she might be able to figure all that out for the suits, but Legal expressly forbade her to do anything of the kind. Too dangerous. Energy companies like Blackstone were already hemorrhaging revenue from decades of lawsuits over black lung and injuries due to safety violations. They didn’t need to worry about one of their geologists getting fricasseed down in a big scary coal mine.
“Pain in my ass,” she sighed and shifted said ass off a small tooth of rock. Sweat was now pouring steadily off her and darkening the rock. She was going to end up leaving an Amy stain when she’d had enough sun. She giggled. Amy stain, Amy James. Almost rhymed. The Police would probably have considered it a decent enough couplet. Some of their rhymes were ridiculous. Like that one about coughing in Don’t Stand So Close Me? Man, that had been terrible. Hadn’t Sting been an English teacher, too?
Speaking of police, it had been three days since the handsome young Constable had stopped by her place to take the statements of the Howards and he still hadn’t asked her out on a date. He had wanted to, she could tell that much. What’s more, she’d wanted him to want to, but he either hadn’t picked up on it or… “What?” she thought aloud. “Scared?” Nah, didn’t fit. Two-Bears McFarlan didn’t put off pussy vibes.
Amy rolled over and laid her head over her folded arms. The forest stretched out in vibrant jades and faded to almost blue-black in the deep tunnel of trees. The soil smelled of strong tea and hot summer dust; her rocky beach chair of ancient rainstorms. The pink triangle of her tongue slipped out and sampled the granite: Mmm, nice vintage: Pleistocene. She sighed and closed her eyes.
No, Will Two-Bears wasn’t afraid, but there was some kind of reservation. He was waiting for something. For her to make the first move? If that’s what it took to get a decent meal and possible orgasm from the local hottie, that was fine by her, but that didn’t feel right. Maybe he was waiting to get a better feel for her. She was admittedly, purposefully, not your average Ginger Geologist and that often threw people, even if they had checked her out the way she’d caught Will checking her out when they first met.
She remembered staring down at him and his friend, George, in that open cell. Will had given her the once over in a way that stood out. Most people lingered on the neon signs of her hair and ink, but he had spent no more time or attention on those facets of her than he had her shoes or t-shirt. It was her face he kept coming back to. She got the idea he was recording her, storing her up for further reference. In another person, it might have been creepy. In him? Well, he was a cop right? Andy Griffith or not, it was his job to pay attention to people.
The wind picked up and the forest was full of sound. (Harbinger of a summer thunderstorm, perhaps? They came up fast and nasty in the Appalachians.) From the darkness behind her eyes, the wind hissed through the leaves and snapped the odd dry twig. The red-orange light on her eyelids dimmed. Cloud over the sun? She squinted one eye open. “Huh?” She opened them both and peered into the trees. She hadn’t had enough weed to start seeing things. Amy’s college roommate at the School of Mines in Colorado had been prone to light hallucinations whenever they partoked of the smoke, but that was never Amy’s thing. Her brain caught up. Not hallucinating meant she really was seeing Will Two-Bears McFarlan stagger out of the trees across the clearing.
She sat up on the rock, mind clearing with the adrenaline that came with being caught naked out of doors by the local constabulary. Well, it was one sure way to make the first move.
Will walked with his head down and had almost smashed his knees into her rock when she said, “Hi, uh, for lack of a better word.”
He looked up and Amy took in his condition. His clothes were dusty and torn in a couple of places and he was covered in spider web. His eyes were far away and his lips were parted. He reminded h
er of those pictures you always see of people wandering around after a bomb has gone off. Her embarrassed grin melted and she pressed an arm across her breasts. “Will, you okay?”
His eyes cleared and then snap focused on hers. “Amy?” Certain now. “Amy.” He looked around the clearing and then took her in on her rock, “You look like a mermaid.”
* * *
Amy’s RV smelled like Orange Pekoe tea and quartz dust. They sat at the little fold-down table she used for a work surface and meals. Will warmed his hands on a steaming mug emblazoned with the words Colorado School of Mines: Up Yer Shaft! It was eighty-five degrees and humid outside but he was cold to his bones. Amy had helped clean him up, disinfecting a few scrapes and brushing the spider webs off. Will had endured it like a child who’s taken a tumble off his 3-speed, hissing in a breath at the iodine sting every now and again, but otherwise silent. So was Amy; she wanted to ask him what had happened, but whatever it was had spilled over the edges of his mind. After sitting for nearly five minutes without a word or even a glance down at his tea, serious concern had replaced her patience and curiosity.
Shock was nothing new to Amy. One of her shoulder tattoos was a cover for an ugly patch of scar tissue earned when her old Harley decided to zig instead of zag one wet day on the way home from school. She’d literally bounced off the asphalt (leaving a smear of her shoulder on the road) and over the guardrail. Amy had been lucky that the shoulder and a sprained wrist were her only injuries. In a fog, she’d walked down the road and called for help at a gas station but it hadn’t really been her. The real Amy had stayed at the scene of the crash, flipping through the air over the guardrail again and again. The one who walked and talked to the pump jockey at the Exxon had been an automaton, shock sub-routines running at maximum.