Shoofly Pie & Chop Shop (43 page)

“So, Deputy,” he called out. “I thought you were supposed to hold me.”

The khaki smudge shifted uneasily.

“You can’t hold me from over there. You’re not doing your job, Benjamin. Uncle Pete’s gonna be awful mad!”

The shape began to stretch and grow until it covered the shadow of the door. Nick started to back away.

If he gets those hands on me again, I’m finished.

He dropped to his knees and began to feel the ground all around him. He scuttled back on all fours constantly reaching, searching, until he came upon a small branch about three feet long. He grabbed the very end, stood up, and pointed it at his approaching foe like Peter Pan attacking a pirate ship.

The khaki blur was almost on top of him now. Nick stood staring, blinking, sensing. Suddenly he saw a streak of pink and felt the branch swept aside. He jumped back a step and shoved the branch in the deputy’s face again. Once more it was brushed aside, and once more he repeated the strange maneuver. The deputy grew impatient—this time he grabbed the branch, and at that instant Nick pulled hard. The childlike deputy instinctively joined
this little game of tug of war and pulled back even harder, drawing Nick close—dangerously close. Nick jerked the branch again, this time with his full strength—and then he waited. He waited for that instant when the deputy would pull back again with his full strength.

And when he did, Nick let go.

The deputy toppled backward and sprawled in the gravel parking lot with a huff and a crunch. Nick turned toward the lab—he had bought himself thirty seconds, maybe less, and he would need all of it. He fixed his eyes on the blurry rectangle in the center of the Quonset and ran toward it, ran as fast as he possibly could with his arms extended straight ahead like a frantic sleepwalker.

I see the door—but how far away is it? Can’t afford to slow down—and I sure don’t have time to go searching for a doorknob.

An instant later his right ankle caught the edge of the wooden step, and he stumbled headlong into the screen door. His arms and head punched through the screen wire like tissue paper. The center strut caught him across the ribs, and the wooden frame shattered and folded inward like an umbrella. For an instant he lay trapped, surrounded in a tangle of wood and wire like a Lepidoptera in a butterfly net. He leaped to his feet thrashing, flailing, kicking himself free. He turned back to the door and saw the khaki blur rise from the ground, straighten, and then begin to grow larger once again.

Twenty seconds … I’ve got twenty seconds, no more.

He stumbled back against the glass cases. Nick whirled around and slapped his hands against the cool glass. He paused for a split second, thinking—then he stumbled to the left, feeling his way along the glass fronts until he came to the corner, to the last case on the bench, to the fragment of signboard he had once taped to the glass that cautioned unknowing visitors: BUTHIDAE—DO NOT REACH INTO TERRARIUM with remaining hand.

He tore off the cover, grabbed the huge case by the lip, and dragged it over onto the floor. It landed in a thundering crash of glass and rock and sand, and then there was silence.

Except for the tiny, brittle sound of a hundred skittering legs.

Nick leaped backward, feeling rapidly along the glass cases to his right until he came to the case at the opposite end. He
backed around the corner, positioning himself behind the massive terrarium.

“Sorry, Lord Vader, there’s a disturbance in the Force.”

The deputy arrived in the doorway, picking his way through the tangled wreckage of the screen door.

“Hello, Deputy,” Nick said with a nod. “Welcome to my world.”

The deputy started forward. Nick waited, seeing nothing, estimating the seconds required for the deputy to reach the corner—and then with one great shove smashed the terrarium onto the floor at his feet.

“Look out!” Nick pointed at the floor. A dozen glistening black-knuckled hands with bulbous claws and arcing tails reached out for the deputy’s feet. Beanie staggered backward in terror, back toward the open doorway, stumbling blindly into the entangling heap of wood and wire and mesh.

He fell like a giant redwood on the shattered remains of the other terrarium.

He lay stunned for a moment, arms and legs wallowing in the debris—and then there was the skittering of legs again, the flash of slender pedipalps, and the lightning whip of needle-tipped metasomas.

“Ow,” he said dully, and then “Ow!” again.

He raised himself to his elbows. “Ow!” He jerked his right elbow up and rolled onto his left side.

“Ouch! Ouch! Ow! Bees or sump’n!” He slowly rolled to his feet.

Nick felt his way down the aisle toward the office door, listening. If he counted correctly the deputy had just taken a half-dozen stings from the Androctonus australis—the north African fat tail scorpion—one of the deadliest scorpions in the world.

He found the door. He fumbled for the doorknob, slipped inside, and slammed it shut behind him. He turned to the lab.

The puparium. Got to find the puparium.

He had left it in a folded handkerchief resting in the center of the worktable—or was it by the microscope? He swept the room with his useless eyes. He saw wispy streaks of green and white, mounded blurs of black and chrome, and flashes of fluorescent
blue and shadowy gray. How could he possibly hope to find a puparium the size of a grain of rice?

My extra pair of glasses!

He lunged forward and crashed into a rolling stool, sending it rocketing into the corner. He bumped blindly into the worktable and began to work his way to the right, patting his outstretched hands over the cluttered surface, his darting fingers detecting only textures of vinyl and paper and plastic.

They’re in the desk drawer. Or on top of the bookshelf. No—they’re in the filing cabinet with the hot plate. He began to slow down. Or in the glove compartment of the Dodge. Or in my trailer. Or in Pittsburgh …

He stopped. If he couldn’t find his extra glasses when he had perfect vision, what were the chances of finding them now?

Behind him the office door burst open. Nick spun around. He could hear the sound of the deputy’s shallow breathing and repeated swallowing. His footsteps seemed to shuffle, almost stumble into the room.

The deputy already had systemic effects; his adrenal gland was dumping catecholamines by the truckload. A single sting from a fat tail can kill an average-sized man in a few hours—how long would it take the venom of six to work its way through this mountain of flesh?

One thing’s for sure—I can’t wait around to find out.

“Beanie, listen to me. Those weren’t bees that stung you, they were scorpions. Do you know what a scorpion is?”

Nick eased slowly to the left as he spoke, edging his way toward the exterior door. He stared wide-eyed at the blur before him, watching for the slightest change in shape or size.

“It’s like a wasp, only worse—much worse. More like a snake.”

“Weren’t no snake,” said a whimpering voice.

“Like a snake. Like a copperhead, or a rattlesnake—even worse than that! You’ve got to sit down, Beanie; you’ve got to rest.”

“Unca Pete said to catch you. Unca Pete said to hold you.”

It’s no use—whatever Uncle Pete wants, Uncle Pete gets. If I can’t get him to slow down, then I’ve got to get him to speed up—I’ve got to speed the circulation of the venom through his system. I’ve got to make him run!

Nick whirled around and groped for the doorknob.

“Well, come on then, Deputy!” he called back over his shoulder. “Catch me if you can!”

He threw open the door and lunged out. He took two quick steps forward, caught the wooden deck rail across the groin, flipped head over heels and fell five feet to the ground below. He lay stunned, winded, the sky circling above him in screaming streaks of blue and white.

Suddenly a khaki thundercloud loomed overhead, and Nick heard the heavy clump of boots on the wooden stairs.

Can’t breathe … no time … got to get up … got to get moving!

He struggled to his feet and started to run—but which way? The last time he ran, he was yoked to Kathryn; the last time he ran he had her eyes. This time he was on his own. He did a quick mental inventory of the hazards and barriers around the lab—the coils of razor wire, the half-buried posts, the rusted pump housings, the overgrown sinkholes. But there was no time, no time to plan a strategy, no time to chart a path or course. “One thing at a time,” he had told Kathryn—and right now the thing was to run.

There was only one direction to go—wherever the deputy was not. He spun around until he spotted that imposing silhouette, then launched out in the opposite direction.

The deputy started after him. He ran slowly at first, toddling like a child, then lumbering like an awkward foal, then galloping like a Great Plains buffalo. Nick listened to the pounding footsteps behind him. They grew heavier and more erratic, and the breathing was increasingly labored—but the deputy was still matching him step for step, even gaining on him. With his sight he could have easily outdistanced the clumsy, plodding deputy—but now he was forced to run like a child himself, shortening his stride and checking each uncertain step. He felt like a circus clown jammed onto a tiny tricycle, his long legs jabbing up and down like pistons, pedaling furiously but going nowhere fast.

He looked up ahead. He could see no trees, no bushes, no details of any kind—but he could at least distinguish where the dark ground ended and the glowing sky began, and it rose sharply to the left.

If I can’t beat him with speed, I have to beat him with endurance. I’ve got to make his heart pump; I’ve got to make his blood flow. I’ve got to go up!

He veered left and began to climb. The steep hill cut his own speed in half, but it slowed the struggling deputy even more. The upward climb forced Beanie’s thundering heart to pump, to push, to strain … and with every gushing pulse the deadly neurotoxins spread.

Suddenly the footsteps behind him stopped. Nick turned, panting, listening. He heard the deputy double over and retch. He staggered forward, halting every few steps in crippling convulsions.

“Can you feel it, Deputy?” Nick called back. “Can you feel the poison spreading through your system? Does it hurt where they stung you? Are your arms and legs swelling yet? Are your eyes watering, does your tongue feel thick and fat, is your throat closing up? Next comes the cramping and then paralysis—that means you can’t move, even if you want to. And then you die, Deputy, you die—just like Teddy died when you put a bullet in the back of his head!”

The deputy looked up, forced himself erect, and started toward Nick again.

Nick began to backpedal, easily maintaining the distance between them now. “Come on then,” he shouted. “Come and get me, Beanie boy! Uncle Pete said to hold me, remember? Uncle Pete said to break me! Well come on then, break me! I dare you! Come on, Beanie, don’t let Uncle Pete down!”

Nick turned to run again—he saw a horizontal flash of purplish brown and then an explosion of fire and light.

He ran head-on into the limb of a tree.

He lay on his back, nauseous from the impact. He felt his forehead—a jagged ravine lay open across the center, and blood poured into his eyes. He squeezed them shut, rubbed them with knotted fists, and forced them open again. He saw nothing but blotches of light through streaks and stains of red. He was blind now, really blind.

And he heard footsteps.

Heavy, dragging, desperate footsteps. And breathing like the sound of ripping canvas, like hissing steam and gurgling tar.

And it was close.

Nick rolled onto his stomach. He felt a tree root coursing under him like a vein. He felt his way along the root, crawling forward until he came to the trunk. He circled around to the opposite side, then reached up and felt for the lowest limb. He pulled himself up and stopped, his own stomach in convulsions, every heartbeat exploding in his head like mortar fire.

He reached up—he pulled—he rested. Waves of dizziness and nausea almost washed him from the tree.

He reached up—he pulled—he rested. He dragged himself up limb after limb—how far had he climbed? How high was high enough?

“Come on!” he shouted below him. “Come after me, you pathetic puppet! Climb! Work! Pull yourself up!”

Below him he heard the rattle of fluid-filled lungs and the crackle of crumbling twigs. The deputy was climbing after him.

An instant later a ham-sized hand clamped his left ankle in a grip of iron.

Nick reached up—he pulled … no more. He had nothing left. He threw his arms around the tree and held on.

Now the deputy began to pull—slowly, firmly, until it felt to Nick as though the deputy’s entire weight was suspended from his ankle. Nick tried to kick his leg free—impossible.

Now Nick’s own grip began to give way. He dug his fingers desperately into the trunk, but he continued to slide helplessly to the left. There was fire in his knee and left hip socket, and the coarse bark raked across his naked chest like burning coals.

The limb began to bend …

“Beanie!” Nick raged through grinding teeth. “Will—you—hurry—up—and—die!”

The huge hand began to tremble, then loosen, then slip away, taking Nick’s tennis shoe with it. There was an instant of silence, then a great rustle of leaves, and a snap like the crack of a rifle—then silence again.

Nick looked down. Somewhere far below him a smear of brown and green and khaki lay perfectly still.

“Shoofly pie,” Nick whispered.

He threw his arms around the tree again, and everything went black.