Fifty
Caitlin circled around to where she could hear
the greatest concentration of voices. There were more men than she
had thought. When they came over the crest of a low hill, she
counted seventeen. Most carried rifles. A few had bows.
Dusk came early to a heavily clouded sky. A
few men tested their flashlights, throwing about enough light for
Caitlin to see by. Flashlights and bullets were irreplaceable, she
remembered. These were not just hunters. They were a veritable
army from nearby communities defending themselves against bugs,
zombies, and human intruders.
Men took up position in
blinds and in the low-hanging limbs of trees. Everything was
going wrong all at once. She had Rex's pistol tucked in her
waistline, but if she used it to defend herself even once, she would
be blown away by the firepower surrounding her like a dandy-lion
fluff caught in a hailstorm. Her caterpillar wouldn't hold on
by itself and she kept transferring it from her shoulder to a safer
position beneath one arm, wondering if it would seek her out later
if she simply abandoned it, and wondering what it would do it that
happened.
It was time to report back to Rex with the
information she had gathered. She had no guarantee that there
weren't other groups on the far side of the clearing, and if they
attacked under the cover of darkness, she had to be on hand to hear
them coming and warn Rex.
She slid down a gully toward the clearing. She
rounded a clump of bushes and stopped not ten feet from the barrel
of a rifle pointed at her head. The rifle was just a twenty-two,
but the dark eyes sighting over the barrel in the gloom were young
and his aim was bound to be steady.
"Whoops," she said softly, hoping to sound
friendly. If she could stall for time, she could leap into the
darkness and escape in an instant.
"If you move," the boy said, "I'll have to plug
you, lady. I know what you are."
The caterpillar squirmed in her hands. It
pulled away and rippled down the back of her pants leg, crawling
unseen into the underbrush.
"Where's the bug?" he said an instant too late.
"I don't have one." She held her hands out to
show him.
The boy looked around with growing agitation.
He took a breath to call for help.
"My bug's dead," Caitlin said hurriedly. "The
snowmobile ran it over."
The boy stared at her for a time. "No shit?"
"It's gone."
"That's too bad. I've heard what happens when
zombies lose their bugs. Maybe you can get another one."
"Maybe."
He grinned. "Take Wanda's bug. Or Olson's."
"Wanda must be the skinny black lady," Caitlin
said. "Is Olson the big fat guy?"
"That's who we're after," the boy said. "We've
had enough of those two. They won't need their bugs when we're
done with them. You a friend of those freaks?"
"I killed Olson and
his bug," Caitlin said, hoping it was
what he wanted to hear. "He tried to bother me."
"Have you seen Wanda? She was looking for her
boy. We've kept him pretty much out of sight, but he got away from
us a couple days ago."
Caitlin thought it best not to let him know
that the boy was dead, and she had no way to explain the
spider-woman’s fate. "I haven't seen them," was her answer.
"So, who the hell are you, lady?"
"I'm helping Rex Logan and Doc Kaufman."
"Isn't Logan one of Biggs' deputies?"
"Yes."
The boy shifted position and frowned. He
lowered his aim carelessly. "They told me zombies were ugly and
deformed."
"I guess that includes me."
"Not hardly, but you still kill people. I've
seen what your bugs do."
Caitlin kept her mouth shut, thinking that she
was probably dead meat after all.
"Grandma says it's God's punishment because
we've been so wicked," the boy said. "She says you're angels.
Angels of death."
"I really don't know," Caitlin said. "I'm just
out here to check on you guys. Do you think your friends will leave
Rex and Doc alone?"
The boy shook his head doubtfully. "You're
trespassing. They'll think Logan and his men are after our food.
And nobody needs an excuse to shoot a zombie."
"Do they know where we are?"
The boy grinned. "You're at the park shelter."
He was staring at her in fascination. When a
rustle in the underbrush caught his attention, she ducked into the
trees. The twenty-two cracked and echoed, but the bullet missed her
by yards.
The boy called for help. Men ran down the
hill, fanning out and shouting to one another as they came. Caitlin
slipped through their ranks. She stopped at the edge of the
clearing thinking she couldn't just abandon her caterpillar so far
from the shelter. It had been so slow and sluggish. And helpless?
She sighed in nervous despair, doubting if the
caterpillars could ever be helpless or vulnerable. If she left it
behind, the night would soon be so dark that she'd never find it.
But if she backtracked and went looking for it later, she would be
leaving Rex and Doc alone and vulnerable.
Indecisive, she crouched in an erosion ditch
and waited out the men searching the underbrush, fearing she'd get
shot transversing the open grounds between the trees and the
shelter regardless. A crescent moon like an inflamed scar transversed the
night sky. The sky itself was as black as obsidian, but burning
again with colored lights in the north.
The hunters rummaged about for an hour, then
retreated back to their campfires. Clouds filled the sky and the
darkness became total.
She backtracked to search for the caterpillar.
When she reached the spot where she had encountered the boy, he was
gone, but the caterpillar was perched nearby on a fallen log. With
a chill of apprehension, Caitlin could see that something was
seriously wrong with it. It looked swollen in size, its fur
sparser, and it pulsated like the cocoons she had seen on the little
girl and the spider woman in the picnic shelter. Its head had
elongated and flattened out, reminding her of the hood of a cobra.
Sensing her presence, it raised its head and sniffed the air,
trilling softly and soothingly, calling her to it for feeding.
Caitlin wet her lips. She was ready to be
fed. The last feeding had been inadequate, and her hunger had
become ravenous. The temptation to go to it was unbearable. She
had come to rely upon that soft, friendly trilling.
She took a step forward and paused, sensing
danger and thinking she should wait until she saw for herself the
fate of the spider-woman. Or did it matter? How could it matter if
she had no way to satisfy the hunger burning in her?
"Caitlin, don't."
Rex's voice was too soft to startle her.
"Stay back," she told the man. "Don't let it
hurt you."
"I'll kill it if it makes a move toward either
one of us. Keep your distance until you understand what is
happening. You can wait that long."
"I can't wait much longer," Caitlin said.
"We'll stick it out together. Please, come
back with me. I left Doc alone, and I shouldn't have done that."
"I can't just leave it here."
"It's not going to get far on its own."
"The hunters might kill it."
"They won't see it."
Maybe. At any rate, as long as she had Rex's
support, she was too frightened of the insect to risk a feeding
now. In all probability, the bug would just follow her back to the
shelter anyhow.
She backed away. "Okay, but I counted
seventeen men with guns and bows and some flashlights. They were
out hunting the spider-woman and the giant my caterpillar killed,
but they know we're at the shelter, and they think we're poachers."
Rex muttered a profanity. "Let's get the hell
back before we're spotted."
But once at the clearing's edge, the clouds had
parted again. They could see men spreading out along the tree
line.
"Too late," Rex muttered. "They'll see us if
we try to cross out in the open."
"Maybe we can talk to them," Caitlin said.
"I've given up trying to reason with men with
guns."
Caitlin studied the sky. "I think it'll be
dark again in a minute."
Their luck held out. The moment a cloud
crossed the moon, Rex took her hand and started out across the open
field. It was the first time in as far back as she could remember
that he had ever touched her.
Doc Kaufman looked around casually from his
seat by the fire when they came through the door of the shelter. He
set two metal cups on a picnic table within reach and poured
steaming coffee. "Bout time you two got back."
Caitlin sat close to the old man, reveling in a
strong sense of camaraderie with the two. These were her allies in
life, her friends. Like Frank Kingsley, her father, they understood
what had happened to her. They feared the caterpillars, but not
her. They hated what had happened to her, but she was still a part
of the human race in their eyes.
Doc didn't look well. He was pale and sweaty,
and he trembled violently from time to time. He finally turned
away, and Caitlin watched him rummage through his black bag and come
up with a hypodermic needle and a small vial of liquid.
"What's that stuff?" Rex wanted to know.
"This is the last of my broad spectrum
antibiotic. Won’t help if I got a virus, but it’ll kill a germ or
two." Doc rolled up a sleeve and tried to put the needle into a
vein. "My hand's none too steady. Give me a hand."
Rex knew how to use the syringe. When Rex
finished with the injection, Doc put his equipment back in his bag
and laid down on a sleeping bag spread out before the fire. Rex
tossed a blanket over the old man and sat at his side sipping
coffee.
"I got vitals on the woman," Doc said.
Rex looked up at the grotesque silhouette of
the spider woman hidden in its curtain of silk and suspended halfway
up the roof support. "I told you not to risk getting that close.
Is she alive?"
"She's breathing roughly twice a minute, quick
and shallow. Pulse is weak and about thirty beats a minute. I
tried for blood pressure in the leg. I couldn't get anything. But
I got something of a core body temperature."
Caitlin absently wondered how he had done that.
"Temperature read in the low eighties. She's
barely hanging on, sort of in a state of suspended animation. That
may have been true of the child I thought dead as well. She may
even be conscious."
"She is," Caitlin said. "I can feel it. But
why is she up there at all?"
Doc sighed.
"You think it's going to feed on her," Caitlin
said, which had been her own suspicion all along.
"The insects have adapted earthly patterns,"
Doc said, his voice soft and husky. "There are many examples in the
insect world of hatchlings that feed upon paralyzed prey."
"Maybe not," Caitlin said quickly. "Maybe it's
just taking care of her until it turns into something new and
wonderful. It's from another world. Maybe you don't know
everything there is to know about it."
Both Doc and Rex seemed unconvinced by her
argument. "Stand guard for the night," Rex said gently. "I need to
catch a few more hours sleep." He tossed a sleeping bag on the
stone floor near Doc.
Caitlin shot to her feet. "Yes, I will."
"Watch for that damned bug of yours."
Doc chuckled. "I'm certain we would both
prefer to die of pneumonia or starvation."
"I will," Caitlin said, alarmed that they could
joke about dying.
"If it comes back, don't trust it," Rex said.
"Don't even touch it."
"I won't," Caitlin said softly. She glanced up
at the spider woman looming in the darkness.
She would, though. One way or another, it
would have its own way with her. Her growing hunger would see to
that. The caterpillar would get her in the end.
