Forty-five
Caitlin picked trash on the outskirts of Maston,
selecting a plastic garbage bag and dropping in a frozen head of rotting cabbage.
She then walked boldly to the guard positions and held out her garbage bag
to let them decide for themselves who she was and what to do with her.
Men put rifles to their shoulders and drew a bead on
her. One man came down the hill to interrogate her. "Put it down," the
guard ordered. "I want to see for myself."
It had been worth a try. Iris Isbek would have left
orders with the guards not to let her pass without proof of Frank's death.
The guard opened the bag. He studied its content for
a time, glanced at her, and a slow smile appeared on his lips. "Okay,
miss. Have it your way."
Slowly, he stepped away and gestured impatiently.
"Go for it," he said gently.
Caitlin picked up the bag and continued on.
Leon had told her once that the victims of a fatal
gunshot wound never hear the gunshot itself. Death travels faster than
the speed of sound. She suspected word of her deception preceded her to
account for the crowd gathered around the old ballroom when she arrived,
and the fact that they allowed her to live, if only out of sheer
curiosity. They escorted her into the dimly lit dance floor, and
then closed the door behind her.
She waited out the moment it
took for her eyes to adjust to the gloom and then saw
that her throne had been removed. Only one remained, and the Matron sat
upon it.
"Connie, my dear, I didn't expect you back so soon.
Have you brought me what I wanted?"
Caitlin tossed the garbage bag to the floor between
them. It struck the floor with a satisfying thud.
Iris Isbek’s expression was one of alarm. "Is it
true? Is Frank's head in there?" She pointed with a shaking hand to one
of two guards standing in the shadows to either side of the door. "You.
Look and tell me. Is Frank's head in there?"
The guard approached reluctantly. Wrought with
tension, he peeked inside the bag. He seemed surprised by what he saw,
but looked up with a straight face and backed slowly away.
The Matron let out a cry of dismay. Another cry
resonated with it. Caitlin hadn't see John and his lover standing a bit
further back in the shadows. John rushed to his mother's side looking
distraught. She grasped his arm. "Be brave," she murmured. "You know it
had to be done."
John shook his head in denial, his eyes wide with
horror.
The Matron stood, easily the tallest person in the
room, roughly seven stocky feet in height and six inches taller than
Caitlin. She stepped off her throne and drew closer to Caitlin, ignoring
the bag at her feet. "How did you do it, my dear?"
"When he was sleeping," Caitlin said.
"He called me a freak and a monster. His own
mother."
"But that's what we are," Caitlin replied politely.
Her eyes widened. She gestured curtly. "Everybody
leave!"
The guards fled. Only John and his friend remained
behind.
"Do you wish to remain in Maston and rule at my side
as a freak and a monster?" the woman said testily.
"I'll leave as soon as I feed my caterpillar."
The Matron stared down at the bag.
"Aren't you going to look?" Caitlin said. "You won't
know whether you have been tricked or not until you see for yourself."
"Child, you wouldn't dare," she murmured in cold
anger.
"Mother, something's wrong." John's voice quavered
with fear. "She could never kill Frank so easy."
"I know, dear. Please shut your mouth."
John edged protectively closer. "But Mother..."
The Matron's caterpillar stirred on her shoulder.
She swung an arm at her son, driving him back. "Keep back, you fool! Do
you want to get yourself killed?"
John's friend tugged on his arm, pulling him away.
Iris refocused her attention on Caitlin. "Nobody
would dare toy with me. You think I lack the courage to look at my own
son's severed head."
She reached down and grabbed a fistful of the plastic
bag and lifted it into the air, dumping its contents to the floor.
Caitlin watched Iris' face for a reaction. The
Matron showed no reaction at all. "Then he won," she said. "He sent you
back here to kill me."
"No," Caitlin said. "I didn't need to be told what I
had to do."
The Matron studied her face. "Why?”
Caitlin blinked back a tear or two, nothing that
would interfere with the cold rage inside her. "I lied about my
name. You're my grandmother.
You sent me to kill my father."
The Matron took a cautious step back. “What?”
“My name isn’t Connie.”
The truth dawned on Iris without further prompting. “Caitlin! You’re Frank’s daughter!”
John’s cried out, clasping the sides of his head with
both hands.
Iris grew rigid with tension. “You’re Caitlin. I
should have guessed. Maybe I did, deep down. Did you tell him?"
Caitlin shook her head.
Iris raised a defiant eyebrow. "I'm going to tell
him."
"You won’t have the chance,” Caitlin said, her tone
of voice leaden with determination. “You're going to die."
The Matron studied her, but chuckled sadistically.
“Such anger. You must have slept with him. He’s just like his father,
you know, terribly promiscuous.”
"What does it matter?” Caitlin said very softly.
"We're just freaks and monsters and we're all going to die anyhow. It's a
bad dream, and we're never going to wake up from it."
Caitlin watched the Matron inch forward, knowing the
woman's larger caterpillar had the longer reach. "They all betrayed you,"
she added, knowing she stood a better chance of survival if she could
distract the woman with anger.
Iris paused and looked sullen.
"A hundred men with guns let me through to you
knowing I was delivering a rotting head of cabbage. They're all waiting
outside to hear of your death. They'll cheer when I walk out of here
alive. They’ll laugh at the way you died and call you a stupid bitch.
They’ll walk on your bones, grind them into the ground with their boots,
and the last caterpillar hide on your dirty walls is going to be your
own."
The Matron rose tall, livid with mounting rage.
"Mother," John called out in warning.
"Shut up!"
"Is it true, mother? Is she Frank's kid?"
"Back, you fool!"
John's friend whimpered and pulled hard on John's
arm. Iris' caterpillar turned and twisted, responding to her growing
agitation.
"Katrina's baby!" John cried out. "Mother, it's
little Caitlin!"
With a low growl, Iris lunged at her. Caitlin
reached up and grabbed her caterpillar by the fur and threw it into the
face of the Matron. Iris Isbek's own caterpillar lashed out at her, but
she was free by that time to bat the gray tongue aside with the back of
her hand.
John ran shrieking to his mother's aid. Iris’
caterpillar writhing at their feet lashed out and John lived for only
fractions of a second longer than his mother.
John's friend pulled a knife from a sheath at his
side and rushed Caitlin without hesitation. Caitlin knocked the blade
from his hand and shoved him back violently. He stumbled back into Iris’
deflating body, and then arched over backward with his mouth thrown wide,
spiked in the back by one of the bugs. Caitlin couldn’t see which.
Caitlin watched the caterpillars until they finished,
two insects, one without a host, feeding upon three corpses. First one
and then the other finished, expelled excess water, and undulated toward
her, one seeking refuge, the other mindlessly set on killing her.
Caitlin picked up the fallen knife and tossed it
spinning into the face of the larger caterpillar. The blade itself
missed, but the blunt handle caved in the face of the insect and sent it
curling up in writhing agony.
The second caterpillar advanced on her. She couldn't
be one hundred percent certain she had killed the right one. She closed
her eyes, curious rather than fearful. How much pain would there be? How
much suffering had she inflicted upon her countless victims?
The caterpillar crawled up her body and perched
itself on her shoulder. She then turned away in satisfaction and pushed
through the doors into the lobby, expecting a hail of bullets to greet
her. Except for a guard or two lingering in the dark corners, the lobby
was empty, and the two made no effort to stop her.
The town was, however, waiting outside, a horde of
ghosts watching in utter silence as she traced her own footsteps back to
the highway.
Hours later, she passed the spot where her father had
blocked her way. The wind had covered over his boot prints and only her
memory of him remained, still in the process of burning itself into the
depths of her soul. She sobbed heartbroken for two hours before moving on
into the blinding field of snow, drained now of emotion and any will to
live.
She set a new course for herself. Her caterpillar
had been fed. She had a place to go and Osco's census papers tucked away
in her back pocket, a purpose to life. She waded her way through the deep
snow knowing that somewhere ahead lay a valley, a frozen river, and a city
of one hundred thousand human beings who would have had the resources to
build a fortress against her kind. It did not matter that her kind and
the bugs would starve to death soon, or destroy one another among the
hills. It was only important that ordinary people come out of hiding when
it was over to reclaim a world rightfully theirs.
