Nasty Little F___ers-Kindle (10 page)

Nothing to do now but keep going and make those last two bullets count; Janice didn’t have time for him to go back and grab the rifle. Harper could kill her any second, or worse, the grubs could be eating her alive already. He plunged through the treeline and scanned the immediate area. Nothing. He peered into the woods for some sign of them, but he couldn’t see anything.

Then he caught a flash of bright yellow about forty yards into the trees. It looked like the same color as Janice’s shirt. He sped off in that direction and was rewarded by the sound of a struggle and Janice’s muffled voice. He imagined trying to force a strong, wiry woman like her to walk through the woods while trying to cover her mouth and keep her restrained. Good luck with that.

There was a thud and a grunt of pain, then the sound of struggling stopped. Colby froze in his tracks, listening to the woods and hoping to hear Janice’s voice cry out in victory, or at least defeat, as long as he knew she was still alive. Instead there was only silence. He peered into the trees ahead, looking for some sign of movement, but the forest was still. Even the birds had ceased to call, and with all the recent gunfire, he couldn’t blame them.

He stepped cautiously through the trees and walked toward the last place he’d seen Janice, or at least the yellow of her shirt. He came to a spot where the brush was trampled down and bits of yellow fabric clung to the twigs. There were spatters of blood everywhere, as well as some loose, lonely grubs wriggling through the undergrowth, probably looking for a new host. There were even a few of them on the tree next to him, climbing up the trunk and into its branches. And the stench; that rotten hamburger smell clung to the air around him and almost made him gag. He reached over and squashed one of the grubs as it made its way up the trunk.

Wait a minute… climbing up the tree?
The grubs that fell off Harper previously had always headed straight back to him. Did they always do that?

A shrill scream off to his left was all the warning he got as Harper dropped from the tree to land right beside him. It was enough, however, for him to sidestep the branch in Harper’s hand and get a quick bead with the pistol. Another loud
crack
and what was left of Harper’s head disintegrated in a cloud of red mist and two-inch long grubs.

The body fell to the ground and landed on a small bush, rustling the leaves as it fell through them. Before it had even settled Janice was on him, sobbing loudly and hugging him tight. She said thank you over and over again like an MP3 player on a continuous loop. He dropped the pistol and held her, whispering to her that it would all be okay, and she was safe now. Her shoulders bobbed up and down as sobs wracked her body, and Colby figured she probably needed to get all this out before she could go back to camp. She must have been terrified.

After a few minutes she calmed down enough to pull away and stare at the ground, looking a tad embarrassed. Colby started to tell her it was all right, then decided against it for fear of making her feel even more awkward. Besides, he didn’t want to lie. Their situation was pretty far from all right. Instead, he reached down and picked his pistol off the ground, then he tucked it into his waistband and turned back to camp.

Janice jumped and let out a yelp. Her hand shot to her pants leg and pulled it up. There, stuck to her calf, was a grub. It swallowed the piece of her leg and took another. Janice yelped again and slapped her palm on top of the grub, reducing it to a pulpy mass of goo.

Another yelp, and she lifted her shirt. Several more grubs had started the feast. Colby noticed the grubs on the ground had started moving toward Janice, who had large splashes of Harper’s blood in her hair and clothes. He recalled how the grubs had jumped from Jared’s hand to Bock and Harper, but only after they got blood on them.

“It’s the blood,” he said to himself. “They must be able to smell it.”

By now, Janice was slapping frantically at her skin as more and more grubs grabbed hold and started to eat. Colby picked her up and, ignoring the painful bites as several grubs fell from her and dug into his shoulders, ran to the small stream by the camp.

“We need to wash off the blood, Janice,” he said. “Or the fuckers will keep coming.”

Janice nodded. “Put me down. I can run.”

Colby set her down and slapped off another grub as it made its way to her neck. “Fine, let’s go.”

Together they sprinted through the woods, heedless of the slapping of branches on their faces and arms. As they ran they pulled grubs from their bodies. Thankfully, there weren’t many. Most of the grubs had gone back to Harper’s body to finish eating.

When they arrived at the stream both Colby and Janice jumped in, shedding their clothes as they went. He spotted a grub on her shoulder and pulled it out, then spent the next few minutes examining every inch of her body to make sure there were no others. Once satisfied that he’d gotten them all, she did the same to him, pulling a grub from his thigh and another from his shoulder. Neither one hurt, though both took a chunk of flesh with them. The area around the wound felt numb. Was it PCP? Colby didn’t feel high, so he doubted it. But wasn’t that what Allen said?

Maybe Allen was wrong. Maybe the grubs just had a numbing agent in their saliva, like ticks or leeches. Either way, the thought gave him the creeps.

Janice finished her examination and pulled on his shoulder. He turned around to face her and she threw her arms around his neck and buried her face in his chest. They stood naked in the stream for several minutes, catching their breath.

Finally, Janice pulled away. She was dripping wet with stream water, her nipples poking into the cool night air. Damn, she was beautiful. He looked into her eyes and felt a stiffening in his crotch.

Not now,
he told himself, thinking about the bodies back at camp. There must be something seriously wrong with his head if he was thinking about sex at a time like this. He pushed away from Janice, a little more roughly than he’d intended. She looked at him. The confusion and hurt on her face begged for an explanation. How could he
explain what he didn’t understand? She would be leaving soon, and he’d still be alone. He turned and made his way to shore, gathering his clothes as he went.

“We should get back to the camp,” he said.

“Yeah,” she agreed. “They’ll be waiting for us.”

As the two gathered their things, he couldn’t help but steal glances at her naked body. What the hell was wrong with him? Why couldn’t he let this one go?

He shoved his clothes into the water and rubbed them together, trying to get the blood out. He was right, they did need to get back to camp. He still had a job to do. There were still people to protect.

He hoped.

***

Edison sat in a quiet clearing by the stream. He’d been taking a drink when he heard bodies crashing through the woods towards him and scrambled up on the bank to hide in some bushes. From there, he’d watched as Colby and Janice leapt into the stream, tearing off their clothes and slapping grubs off each other’s bodies.

At first, his heart swelled when he saw Janice alive and well. He’d have bet anything that she would be dead by now. But Colby had saved her, apparently.

He almost jumped out of the bush and ran to her, wanting to take her in his arms and cry his relief into her hair, but he didn’t.

Colby
had saved her. Not him.

When it counted most, Edison had left her in danger and run like a squealing coward. Not Colby. He’d run after her without a second thought, risking his life for her like some knight out of a fairy tale.

Edison squatted in the bushes and watched his wife standing naked in a stream with another man, and he finally started to understand why she left him.

***

Colby and Janice washed their clothes in the stream. He hated putting his clothes back on, especially wet, but damned if he was gonna walk through these woods naked. Too many biting, scratching things out there that would love a taste of his tender flesh.

Janice got dressed, too, but elected not to wear her bra, which she said would chafe like crazy. She slid her white blouse over her smallish, firm breasts and the thin fabric clung to them. Colby had a weak moment where he stared at her nipples through her now translucent shirt, then shook his head.
Later
, he told himself. Janice caught the look and smiled, shrugging her shoulders.

“Sorry,” she said.” It’s all I have until we get back to the tent.”

“Come on,” he said, as calmly as he could manage. “We should get back to the camp and see if any of the guys are still there.” He hadn’t meant for it to come out sounding so contemptuous, but he couldn’t help it. The others had just run off and left him and Janice alone and at the mercy of two psychopaths. Well, all except for Steinman, and Colby didn’t want to think about how that turned out. Four of his charges dead now, instead of three. That familiar ache resurfaced, and he found it difficult to breathe.

Janice, obviously feeling better and more clear-headed, picked up on his derisive tone, and jumped to her colleagues’ collective defense. “They were just scared,” she said. “I don’t blame them. If Harp… if that
thing
hadn’t had a hold of me, I’d have bolted too.”

Colby nodded. “I know.” It still didn’t make it right.

“They didn’t have the benefit of your combat training, you know. They aren’t soldiers. They’ve never seen anything like this before.”

Colby shook his head, surprised at the amount of anger he felt. “Neither have I. Moretz, Allen and Edison all ran off, leaving us alone. When I see them again, I’ll...”

“You’ll what? Beat the crap out of them for being scared? They are scientists, Colby, not fighters. Moretz and Allen wouldn’t have been any good, and Edison...” She trailed off.

“Yeah?” Colby asked. “Edison what?”

“He would just have gotten himself killed,” Janice said thoughtfully. “If he’d tried to save me, he would have just gotten himself killed. And he knew it.”

“No shit, he knew it. Why do you think he ran?”

She didn’t say another word the rest of the way back to camp. Colby couldn’t blame her, he really didn’t feel much like talking, either. He berated himself for his mistakes the entire way. If only he hadn’t left his rifle behind. If only he’d been paying more attention to where he was going rather than running headlong into a trap while trying to save a damsel in distress. Shit, this wasn’t the Middle Ages, where did that chivalrous streak come from?

He vividly recalled the intense pounding in his chest when he heard Janice scream, and the wall of red that washed across his vision. What the fuck was that about? He looked backward and saw her watching the ground in front of her feet, lost in thought.

He tried to think of something to say when they reached the camp. What he saw there stopped him cold. He grabbed Janice’s arm and held her back, not wanting either of them to walk into a possible trap.

Bock and Steinman’s bodies were gone.

Chapter Twelve

Moretz was the first to return to the camp, about an hour or so after the last shot was fired. He stopped at the edge of the brush and peered through the foliage into the clearing. Sarge and Janice sat and talked at the table where they normally had their meals. Sarge’s head rested on the tabletop, while Janice rested her chin in her hands. Moretz felt his face turn red. They were both alive. And more than that, they knew he had run away and left them to die. He swore under his breath at his own cowardice.

He couldn’t help it. When he saw Steinman’s chest vanish in a cloud of scarlet, all he could think to do was run. He told himself it was perfectly natural; the body’s Fight or Flight instinct kicking in. He’d never been one for the fight, but flight? Yeah, that he could do. He could do that just fine, thank you, and he’d proven it yet again. Damn it.

Well, nothing he could do now except step back into the clearing and take his medicine. If Sarge wanted to beat the shit out of him there was little he could do to stop the former marine, and he couldn’t get home on his own. He’d never find his way out of the forest, and didn’t know where to start.

The choppers. The choppers would be coming here, to the clearing, and by God and sunny Jesus, Moretz was going to be here when they arrived. If that meant Sarge got a piece of him first, then so be it. Moretz would live, and then when the choppers showed up he could go back to Texas and take his frustration out on a handful of grad students. Better to get the shit kicked out of you than to be hunted down and killed in the woods by Bock.

He stared at Janice for a moment, and realized his infatuation with her was done. Every time he pictured her, he thought of himself running away into the night while she was in danger. Harper, with his grub-covered hands and piss-poor timing, had managed to see to it that Moretz no longer had a shot. Fucking asshole. The thought of Janice laying with that moron Sarge turned his stomach, but now it was inevitable. Moretz would have to find some other park to play in. That also meant he had to swallow his wounded pride and forget she kicked him in the balls. He could do that, if it meant getting the hell out of these woods in one piece.

He was just about to step into the clearing when a hand reached around from behind him and clamped down over his mouth. He tried to scream, but the hand held tight. He reached up and tried to pry the arm away from his face but it was like trying to move steel; it wouldn’t budge. Bock. It had to be Bock. Who else could it be? Bock was the only biologist Moretz had ever met that spent almost as much time in the gym as the lab. The burly jackass looked more like a football player than a man of science.