Forty-eight
How could the caterpillars be changing?
Caterpillars became moths and butterflies, but certainly not these
horrid creatures. It would not be anything so innocent.
Sometime during the night that followed, a
gunshot echoed through the hills. A second shot jarred her to full
awareness. She turned toward the fading echo like an automaton.
The echo reverberated among the hills. Had it
not repeated itself from time to time, she would not have been able
to narrow down its origin. Beneath the glow of a hazy, gibbous moon
in a clear but starless sky, she pushed her way through the snow.
Somewhere near morning, her caterpillar grew
strangely lethargic. More than once, she reached up and shook it,
deliberately irritating the insect to ensure herself that it was
still alive.
If it hadn't been for one final gunshot at
dawn, she would never have found the hunter lying in the snow, dying
of a gunshot wound to the chest, nor the collection of shacks at the
junction of two county roads. The caterpillar stirred with interest
at the smell of blood in the air, although not with its usual
vigor.
A woman screamed rage and frustration from one
the handful of three-room, dilapidated houses. Caitlin stayed out
of her line of sight, assuming that a shot fired from the house had
struck the hunter. Assuming she was otherwise alone among the
trees, Caitlin turned in time to catch a five-foot long railroad tie
in the gut.
The blow knocked the wind from her lungs and
sent her reeling backward. Footsteps thudded alongside her head. A
dark shape loomed over her, engulfing her in its shadow.
A smile beamed maniacally down upon her. "Hiya,
hon! Nice of you to drop in so unexpectedly!"
He wore an orange and brown fur about his
neck. Of all the horror movies she had ever seen, or horror books
read, no story had ever featured a monster as terrifying as this.
He stood eight feet in height and four in width. As he shifted his
weight about, she could hear his joints creaking with the stress.
His caterpillar should have attacked her in an
instant, and she should have died in that same moment. That didn't
happen. Instead, the giant reached down to snatch Rex's pistol from
her belt. "Bug's been acting funny past day or so," he confessed
casually. He looked warily about, absently stuffing the pistol into
the front pocket of a pair of bib overalls torn at the seams and
riding halfway to his knees. "So, where'd your own little critter
run off to?"
Caitlin refused to answer.
She didn't know. The giant pulled
her to her feet. "You owe me, pretty lady. I'm sparing your
gorgeous ass, but the gal and her kids in the shack are mine. If
you can find that dude she was shooting at, be my dinner guest."
The giant was referring to the dying hunter,
confirming that the woman in the shack was responsible. Nobody
would ever know what that petty human drama had been about. The
noise had attracted other, far more ominous visitors who had
entirely other kinds of interests.
The giant squatted and stared at her with eyes
burning with an inner fire. "I guess you heard the noise and came
snooping, too. If there's two of us about, there may be more. And
more hunters, too. Keep your eyes peeled."
He clicked his tongue and winked at her.
Caitlin brushed the snow off her clothes and
looked around for her caterpillar.
"I'll squash the little shit if it tries to
bite me," the giant warned her. "You from around here? Say
something. Let me hear the sound of your voice."
"I'm from not too far away," Caitlin said.
"Ever looked at yourself in a mirror lately?
Got any idea what the bug's done to you? You're a goddess, hon.
You're the most beautiful creature God has ever placed on the face
of the earth."
Caitlin frowned.
"Okay, so maybe not God. Mother Nature. Space
aliens. Whatever. It's been a trip, wouldn't you say?"
Caitlin had never thought of it as an
adventure. "We're all going to die," she said.
He frowned. "How do you figure?"
"Something's happening to the caterpillars,"
she said. "They're changing into something else.”
The giant petted the bug on his back
affectionately. "Who the hell told you that?"
"My boyfriend. He says the blackout is over.
He says the caterpillars are changing, and when it happens, nothing
is ever heard from that area again."
He cocked his head with interest. "Does your
boyfriend have a bug?"
“No.”
"Scare tactics, then. Your boyfriend doesn't
want to admit that a new breed is replacing him. You and me, babe.
If you don't have the guts for it, you go the way of the dodo like
the rest of them."
He nodded to the cabin from where the gunfire
had originated. "She's mine. You can have the jackass with the
thirty-ought-six. The bitch shot him. Big time game hunter. Tried
to bag himself a little nookie and got blown away for his trouble."
The giant sidestepped and picked up the
railroad tie he had used to knock her to the ground. With another
confidential wink and smile, he turned and hurried away, slipping
between the trees on the edge of the clearing like a giant shadow.
A moment passed. The massive block of tarred
wood hurtled end for end through the air and struck a resounding
blow against the side of the house. Caitlin heard the screams of
terrified children inside. More gunfire erupted from the shattered
windows.
And then Caitlin heard the click of the hammer
striking an empty chamber. The giant went roaring toward the house,
lumbering across the back yard like a giant ape with his arms
flailing.
Caitlin went after him. She paused outside the
front door thrown open. Aside from the giant ducking beneath the
ceiling within, there were three people in the house, an overweight,
unattractive woman with a rifle and two older children. Neither
could have been biologically hers, one a black boy of about ten, the
other a skinny red-headed girl in her early teens.
The woman stopped screaming the instant Caitlin
appeared to view. The children continued to fill the air with
shrill cries of terror.
The giant knelt before the woman. "Let's get
rid of the kids, shall we?"
"They'll freeze outside!" she cried.
The giant grinned. "Tell them to get their
asses inside the closet and keep their mouths shut. Now."
The woman gestured frantically to the two
children. "Hide! Hide in the closet!"
Caitlin looked about wildly for the giant's
caterpillar. It had been on his shoulder when he entered the
house. "Wait!" she yelled.
More than willing to hide from the horrifying
intruder, neither of the children paid her any mind. Caitlin lunged
forward as both of the children dived into the nearby closet and
slammed the door behind them, but missed the two by yards.
The children fell quiet in an instant.
Caitlin's heart sank in despair. She turned to the giant in
helpless rage.
"Whoops." He put his hand to his lips to
stifle a giggle. "So sad."
He was barefoot, wearing overalls sized for a
heavy-set six-footer at best. She could see the bulge of her pistol
in a pocket. She calculated her chances of retrieving it as nil.
"Don't hurt her," Caitlin said.
The giant looked around snickering. "I'm being
naughty, aren't I?"
"Don't make it any worse for these people than
it has to be," Caitlin said.
The giant ignored her. "What do you say,
lady? Wanna mess around with me, did you say?"
"I'll do anything you want!" the woman cried.
"Just don't hurt the children!"
The giant reached for her.
"Leave her alone," Caitlin said, cold with
thoughtless anger.
The man looked around in annoyance.
"Let her go and you can have me."
"I can have you anyhow," the man said, "when
I'm finished with this little itsy bitsy one."
Caitlin backed alongside a dresser and shoved
it suddenly against the closet door. "Let her go, or I'll kill your
bug."
The giant calculated the severity of the threat
and sat back with a sigh. "Okay, have it your way." He grabbed the
woman by an arm and threw her brutally toward the door. "Go!" he
roared. "Get out of here!"
She ran out the door screaming. Caitlin's
oversight dawned on her moments too late. "No, wait!"
But she was gone, and the giant chuckled at her
clumsiness. "You forgot about your own bug, didn't you? Even if it
doesn't get her, she can't hide from me or anyone. She'll leave
footprints in the snow, don't you think?"
Caitlin moaned in frustration and despair.
"You gonna carry through with your end of the
bargain, or are we going to be bitter enemies to the very end?"
Caitlin's first thought was that she'd rather
die trying to scratch this monster's eyes out. Her second thought
was sudden awareness of an oversight of his own. She opened her
flannel shirt and barred her breasts before it occurred to him.
The giant's expression went abruptly lax.
Drool ran from one corner of his fat lips. "Well, I'll be go to
hell. Will you look at that."
Caitlin ambled closer. She sidestepped to the
bed, determined to give him anything he wanted for as long as it
took. His own caterpillar had been far more sluggish than hers. If
hers had encountered the fleeing woman, it would feed, but even so,
it would seek her out afterward and kill in self-defense.
The giant bellowed laughter. "That bed ain't
gonna hold the both of us, girl!"
He threw her down upon it. It collapsed the
moment he straddled her body, and he bellowed laughter all the
harder.
Caitlin clenched her fists, closed her eyes,
and focused on trying to breath beneath his crushing weight. He
picked at her clothing casually, as if he had all the time in the
world, and chuckled to himself as buttons popped between his massive
fingers.
Caitlin opened her eyes when he paused. Even
his breathing had stopped in abject fear. The brown and orange fur
of a caterpillar undulated alongside the collapsed bed.
"Since your caterpillar is locked in the
closet," Caitlin gasped in a whisper, "that one must be mine."
"Oh, shit."
He died with those last word on his lips. The
caterpillar spiked him in the ribs behind one arm, freezing him in
place. Caitlin screamed and heaved from side to side, desperate to
topple the dissolving mass of the corpse to one side or another.
Failing that, she averted her face from the horror and jammed her
eyes closed.
He melted down upon her, the metallic sweetness
of his death cutting her breath off. And then he was light enough
to shuck aside like a satin sheet.
Caitlin scurried on hands and knees to the far
corner of the room. She clenched her fists against the sides of her
head, trying and failing to keep her brain from etching the horror
upon her memory forever.
Clutching at her torn shirt, she staggered
outside on unsteady feet.
"Is he dead?"
But it wasn't the same woman. This one had a
southern accent, her voice vibrant and filled with inhuman energy.
Caitlin searched the face of the trees.
"My son, Caliph! Is he dead?"
Caitlin saw her then, and the assault upon her
sanity continued. She tried to turn away. Her knees gave out
instead and dropped her to the ground.
The black woman stepping from the shadows was
reed thin, standing taller than any zombie Caitlin had ever seen,
perhaps as tall as nine feet. Her height forced her to circle
around the canopies of the nearest conifers. Like a black widow
spider, she came crawling on hands and knees across the snow.
Caitlin noticed that she had no caterpillar upon her shoulders.
"The boy in the cabin!" the spider-woman
cried. "Is he dead?"
The skeletal apparition stared down at her, her
dark face twisted with anguish. She was dressed in torn bands of
cloth wound about her narrow hips. She shivered violently in the
cold. Caitlin doubted if her towering body contained an ounce of
fat, and not nearly enough muscle to support its own weight.
Caitlin glanced back inside the shack. She
noticed that her own caterpillar had not entirely consumed the body
of the giant, something it had never done before. The water it had
peed all over the floor was dark and smelly, more evidence that
something was going drastically wrong. She let that crisis slide
for the moment and went inside to pull the dresser back away from
the closet door.
The black boy had to be the jumble of bones and
skin, the lucky one of the two. The red-headed child was still
alive, lying on her side of the floor, immobilized by a translucent
curtain of silk across her face. Her body was tightly bound, and
the giant's caterpillar was a hump on her back, densely wrapped in a
new cocoon that it had spun in the handful of minutes in which it
had been alone with the children.
Her own caterpillar crawled sluggishly upon her
shoulders. It was heavier now than it had ever been. It was full.
It had eaten its fill as had all the insects everywhere. Now, it
was time to metamorphose. Caitlin remembered the word from high
school.
The caterpillars were spinning silk cocoons,
containing within each a last source of nourishment.
Caitlin turned and ran out of the shack. The
spider woman lashed out at her as she went by, but she missed and
could not hope to keep pace with her. Caitlin followed her own boot
prints back to Brighton Hollow. Rex Logan and Doc Kaufman had to
know what she had found. Before it was too late, they had to see
for themselves.
The abandoned spider-woman called after her.
Caitlin could hear her wail of torment echoing among the hills for
hours afterward.
