Thirty-one
Memory of the crying baby led Caitlin back out into
the countryside. She lost track of time during the long walk and didn't
reach the shack until well after dawn. Plastic-covered windows were too
dusty to see through. Bald tires and rusting car parts littered the front
lawn. A kerosene lantern burned in the window, and a dead dog lay on a
bare spot beneath a tree, still chained to its dog house.
Smoke curled from the shiny new pipe of a
wood-burning stove. Caitlin stood at the gate of a fence surrounding the
property and listened to the baby cry and cry. She didn't want to
frighten anyone inside, or risk being shot at, but the heartbreaking wail
of the infant tore at her.
The first rays of sunlight penetrating the dense
stand of trees startled her. She looked around and wondered how the hours
had managed to pass so quickly. She had wandered most of the night,
aimlessly at times. After the caterpillar fed her, it was difficult
sometimes to think clearly. It was a peaceful feeling, just walking
through the world with nowhere special in mind, but it was certainly a
fact that it didn't get her to where she wanted to go with any efficiency.
She put the caterpillar on the mailbox and went to
the door. She pounded furiously. When no one answered, fearing the baby
had been left alone, she turned the door knob and pushed the door open.
The lock held fast, but the hinges tore away from the door frame. Inside,
a boy sat against the back wall, cradling the baby that was making all the
fuss. The infant was red-faced, its tiny fists balled and quivering as it
sucked air and let out its raucous scream.
The boy holding the baby wasn't in much better
condition. Dirty and disheveled, his big brown eyes looked like those of
a frightened cow. He wore coveralls with holes in the knees and brown
boots with holes in the toes. He was terrified of the intruder who had
barged into his home and helpless to defend himself. The house was a mess
with dishes piled in the sink and roaches crawling among dirty clothes
heaped everywhere. The wood burner had turned the air into a
nose-stinging haze.
The baby was wrapped in a pink blanket. "Is that
your baby sister?" Caitlin asked of the boy.
He swallowed hard. His Adam's apple danced up and
down his throat. "No, ma'am. She's my daughter."
"You're her daddy?"
He nodded with a faint smile of pride.
"I guess you're no older than my own daddy was when I
was born," Caitlin decided. "If he's still alive, he lives near Culverton
somewhere. I haven't seen him since I was a baby myself. I wouldn't know
what he looks like."
"Yes, ma'am."
"My Aunt Vivian told me that my mother was driven
away from her home, but I don't understand why my father couldn't have
followed her to Brighton Hollow, or why my mother didn't go back and stand
up for herself. I think a lot happened that my Aunt Vivian won't talk
about."
"Yes, ma'am."
Caitlin eyed five or six empty baby formula cans on
the kitchen table next to a plastic bottle filled with clear water. "You
out of formula?"
The boy stood. He held out the squalling baby in a
gesture of helplessness. "My wife went to Penrose day before yesterday
for some baby formula. Never came back. I can't stop her from crying."
Caitlin gestured with a nod to the bottle on the
table. "Maybe she’s thirsty."
The boy shook his head nervously. "She won't hardly
take water. She’s hungry."
Caitlin knew a trick or two from babysitting. She
took the bottle of water to the sink and added a bit of sugar from a bag
in the cupboards. She put the plastic nipple on, and handed the bottle to
the boy. The baby paused long enough to taste the offering, then began to
suck greedily.
The boy sighed a shuddering sigh and sat back down.
He cradled the baby, staring hollow-eyed at the floor.
"Do you think something happened to your wife,
mister?"
He shook his head in misery. "I don't know."
"You should have gone yourself."
He glanced at her, his face filled with guilt. "I
can't drive. I had my license suspended."
"What was she driving?"
"A pickup."
"What color?"
"Gray with lots of rust." He looked up at her
hopefully. "She took my shotgun with her. I was thinking of walking to
Orange City with Betsy here for help."
"Too dangerous," Caitlin said. "Richard Jenkins is
dead, and the caterpillars are everywhere."
They boy's eyes widened. "No, shit? Jenkins is
dead?"
"If you can catch a ride with someone, Brighton
Hollow is safer. Leon Biggs is dead, but Rex Logan is doing okay."
The boy nodded eagerly. "Yeah, Rex is a sharp dude.
I know Rex. Biggs is dead, too?"
Caitlin shot to her feet, far too restless to sit
around talking. "I'll go see if I can find your wife. Penrose is in that
direction, isn't it?"
She pointed and he nodded eagerly. "Yes, ma'am, just
down the road two miles or so." The boy rose to his feet. "I sure
appreciate the help."
Caitlin looked at the baby again for a minute and
thought briefly of Rex Logan and what they could have shared together. If
the boy said anything more to her, she didn't hear. She closed the door
behind her, lifted the caterpillar from the mailbox as she passed, and
started off down the road. A full moon loomed along the western horizon,
soon to be washed away by the light of the sun.
It took less than an hour to find the boy's wife and
the baby's mother. The gray rusting pickup had nosed into a ditch
alongside two other abandoned cars in front of a farmhouse situated close
to the road. The house was dark except for the glow of a kerosene lamp in
a front room window.
The caterpillar squirmed on her shoulder, the first
time she had ever sensed agitation or unrest from the creature. She had
no idea what it meant. Maybe there were other caterpillars about. She
wondered how it would feel to talk to another like herself. What would
they say to one another? Would the caterpillars be friendly to each
other, or would they fight?
She saw clothing on the front lawn. The skeletons
that had been in them had been washed away by the recent rain. Caitlin
started up the sidewalk to the front door, her senses heightened beyond
anything she had experienced in the past. She had never before heard the
wings of an owl flapping. They were too quiet for ordinary ears. Tiny
animals rustled in the underbrush, mice and more distant coons and
possums. And from inside the house, she heard the latch of a door click
shut.
She went around back, alert for other caterpillars,
hunters with guns, dogs, anything that could prove a danger to either her
or her caterpillar. She stood alongside an opened window for ten minutes,
long enough to assure herself that there was only one person moving
inside.
The back door stood open. Two skeletons lay sprawled
in the kitchen, a small naked one lying on a table and another wearing a
dress on the floor with the imprint of a shoe on its skull. She passed
through the dark of a connecting hallway and stopped in the door to the
living room.
An old man with a caterpillar on his shoulder stood
at the front window. He turned, his eyes widening with alarm when he saw
her. Caitlin held out her hand to quell his alarm. "Wait. I just want
to talk..."
His caterpillar leaped, arcing through the air toward
her face. Her own caterpillar flew to the curtain of a nearby window,
then dropped to the floor and lashed out at the old man. Caitlin swatted
aside the barbed end of the swiftly approaching gray tongue, then batted
the insect itself to the floor. She took a single step forward and kicked
the caterpillar with her bare foot. It struck a side wall hard and slid
dead to the floor, leaving behind a smear of oily goo.
The old man had not reacted nearly so fast. He lay
dying on the floor, his eyes reflecting unimaginable horror as her own
caterpillar began to feed. "I just wanted to talk," Caitlin said softly,
and then she turned away to search the house for survivors.
She found skeletons without clothes in the basement,
and two upstairs. The caterpillar had been responsible for their deaths,
but there had been other, equally unpleasant things happening in the house
before they died. The old farmer had been kidnapping people from the road
in front of his house and doing things to them. She didn’t want to know
exactly what. She tried not to think about it.
Caitlin found an empty bedroom with a neatly made
bed. She had no need to sleep, but she lay upon the bed in her black
satin dress to wait for her caterpillar to finish its business and seek
her out. And then she herself would need to be fed.
She hoped the baby and its father would survive,
although she thought she'd rather not go back and tell the boy that his
wife and the baby's mother was, in all probability, among the dead.
Guilt gnawed at the edges of her psyche. The old man
had been evil. She felt no regret that he had died. But she'd run out of
bad men sooner or later, and still her caterpillar would have to feed.
She understood that now, more so than in the beginning when she had been
too confused to see anything at all too clearly.
In the end, she was going to destroy everything she
had ever valued in life. The last thing to be lost to her would be her
own life. First, though, would come the death of all that it had meant to
be human. It would be like losing one's soul, just like they warned about
in church, except that it would not be her fault. But it would happen,
and nothing after that would matter at all.
