Twenty-three
She had no choice but to wander. She could not
sleep. She walked down Troll Valley Road at a brisk pace, burning excess
energy and trying to keep herself from thinking too much. Despite
herself, she felt good about being out and about in the night and the
wilderness. She felt more alive than she could ever remember feeling. A
strong feeling of expectancy filled her to the brim. Something marvelous
was going to happen. Something new had come into the world to change
things forever.
An hour may have passed. A car came roaring up from
behind her. Headlights snapped on high beam, pinning her in their glare
as she turned about to confront the intruders.
Earl Rather sat hunched behind the wheel of his
pickup truck. Two or three boys sat in the front seat with him, lined
behind the dusty windshield. Morris Rather and a couple of others stood
in the truck bed, banging the cab and yelling at the top of their lungs.
Earl swerved to hit her at the last instant. His
sheer murderous intent caught Caitlin off guard, but not the caterpillar.
An instant before she was struck, the caterpillar leaped clear with
superhuman reflexes.
The impact with the front fender sent her careening
into the weed-filled drainage ditch. She hit ground hard enough to knock
the wind from her lungs.
Truck tires slid on the gravel shoulder of the road.
The engine clattered to a stop. Doors slammed. Footsteps came pounding
back to where she lay. "That's her," Earl muttered in a deep and angry
tone of voice. "That's the bitch that killed Jeremy Berman."
They dragged her by her hair to her feet, walked her
into the glare of the headlights, and threw her down again. When she
scrambled to her hands and knees, Earl shoved her back down with his foot
and put the barrel of a shotgun to her chest. "Why are you still alive,
bitch? That thing was stuck to you! It bit Jeremy and killed him deader
than a doornail!"
"I saw it, too," Morris muttered remorsefully. "His
face turned black."
Earl poked her with the shotgun. "How did you get
away? What in hell was it doing to you?"
Caitlin lay on her back, propped up by her elbows.
"It was making me its friend," she shot back at him, "because I was the
first to find it."
"That gray piece of meat?" Earl grimaced and shook
his head. "You're full of shit, Caitlin. You probably don't even know
what happened. It was something from the meteors that fell. We want the
nasty little fucker so that we can kill it."
"If you even get close, it'll just kill you, too,"
Caitlin said. "You had better go away before it's too late."
Earl gave her a brutal poke with the gun and turned
away with a disappointed scowl.
"You ain't just gonna leave her here, are you, Earl?"
Morris said worriedly. "Let me have her. Please? Just once? It'll
hardly take a minute."
Earl laughed at his brother's foolishness. "Morris,
you ass, if you want her that bad, hell, don't let me stop you."
Morris' face lit up with joy. He pulled Caitlin to
her feet and shoved her toward the dark underbrush.
"Hang on there a moment, little brother."
The crowd laughed nervously. Morris looked worriedly
about.
"If we let you have all the fun," Earl said,
grinning, "you gotta put a show on for us. Do it right here. Right here
on the ground in the light so that we all can watch."
"Ah, Earl!"
"If you're gonna pork that cute ass, we want front
row seats."
Morris glanced back at Caitlin with an anxious frown,
but he shrugged and began tugging impatiently at her clothing.
Caitlin grabbed the boy's wrist, blinded by sudden
anger. Morris tried to wrestle free of her grip. He laughed at her
boldness at first, confident of his ability to overpower her. He blanched
as her grip began to cut off the circulation in his arm.
"Earl, she's hurting me!"
Earl barked astonished laughter. "What do you mean
she's hurting you? She's just a girl. Don't be such a wimp, Morris.
Just get on with it."
The caterpillar had done this to her. It was part of
the tremendous energy she felt. It had made her strong.
Morris slapped at her with his free hand. Caitlin
grabbed his other wrist and twisted harder, livid with more anger than she
could control. She forced Morris to his knees. He threw his head back
and howled in pain.
The laughter of the crowd fell into confused
silence. Sensing that his brother was in genuine danger, Earl lunged
forward, swinging the stock of the rifle toward the side of Caitlin's
head.
She could have ducked out of his way. Before the
need arose, the caterpillar struck. It leapt upon her shoulder from the
ground, knocking her forward a step or two. On the peripheral edge of her
vision, she saw the long gray tongue lash out and catch Earl alongside the
face.
Earl reared back and went rigid, his lips curled back
from his teeth. Both barrels of the shotgun exploded harmlessly into the
air. The caterpillar then leaped onto his toppling body, accompanying him
on his fall to the ground.
One of Morris' wrists snapped. Caitlin looked down
at her forgotten assailant and snatched her hand away from his suddenly
limp fingers. As he screamed, their remaining audience began to back away
in horror. One by one they turned and fled into the trees.
Morris scampered to his feet, clutching his broken
wrist, and stared wide-eyed at his dying brother. Caitlin had seen it
happen to Leon. She looked away in time to avoid the horror of watching
Earl's face melt into his skull. Morris wasn't so fortunate. He
blanched, turned blindly away, and stumbled off into the trees.
Numbed by the fury of the attack and its unexpected
outcome, Caitlin returned to the highway and continued walking. If she
had been endowed with superhuman strength, she could easily outdistance
the caterpillar before her hunger started to bother her again. No matter
how unpleasant her death, it would at least break the horrible cycle of
killing and feeding she could see building.
It didn't work out that way. She walked for what
seemed like hours, knowing deep down that when the hunger struck, she'd
not be able to resist. When it finally began to burn inside her, even as
gentle as it was, it was far more profound than she remembered. The sheer
intensity of it stopped her cold in her tracks and spun her around.
In a cloud of horror greater than anything her
victims could have experienced, Caitlin stumbled back down the highway,
her foolish notions of suicide abandoned. Regardless, she would never
find the caterpillar in the darkness. She had left it miles behind her.
If it had wandered into the forest and gotten lost, she had accomplished
nothing but to condemn herself to living hell.
Despite her fears, she came upon the creature far
quicker than she would have thought possible. It had been following her.
It leaped onto her leg and crawled to her shoulder without hesitation.
She dropped to her knees and cocked her head to help it locate the
position of the artery by which it would feed her. It bit without
hesitation and filled her veins with sustenance and pleasure beyond human
endurance.
The bitter sweet sensation spread everywhere. She
collapsed face down upon the pavement gasping for air, fully aware now of
how her relationship with the caterpillar worked. The caterpillar was
using her to find its victims. It fed upon them, then fed her in turn.
Together, they were a team. The caterpillar was a predator, and she its
slave and bait.
