The Uninvited (13 page)

Dick laughed. “Oh, I doubt it. Fluke of nature, that's all. But I'll have to leave this thing at school. My wife is terrified of roaches.”

Dick left them sitting in the lounge and went back to his classroom. There, he placed the jar on his desk, on top of a pile of papers, and turned around to find a bigger container for the bug. The jar slipped from the papers and crashed to the floor, the mutant freed from its unwelcome home.

“Damn!” Dick said, then without thinking, reached down to capture the bug. The roach bit him on the finger, then leaped on his wrist and bit him savagely there, several times, drawing blood. “Goddamnit!” Dick flung the bug from him, sending it sailing out an open window.

The bug forgotten, Dick washed his bites and put mercurochrome on the wounds. About ten minutes later he began to feel ill. An hour later, he went home, sick to his stomach, wondering what in the world had he eaten to make him this sick.

 

 

“LP two to base.” Slick spoke softly, but there was fear in his voice.

“Go ahead, two.”

“We found the kids. What was left of them, that is.”

“Did you get pictures?” Vic asked.

“In living color. And Chuck lost his breakfast,” Slick added.

“That's better than what Al lost last night,” Sheriff Ransonet replied.

Al said, “Sheriff, you really don't have to rub it in, you know?”

“Sheriff!” Vic yelled into his mic. “Hang on for just a minute.”

“What's going on out there?” Sheriff Ransonet shouted.

But there was no reply from LP two.

“Slick? Chuck? Answer me! What's happened? What's going on?”

But only silence greeted the personnel in the dispatch room in Bonne Terre.

“Sheriff!” Chuck's voice was filled with dread. “It's Captain Jack LaFever. We're bringing him in. He's . . . oh, hell! Something has chewed out one of his eyes. He's yellin' about giant bugs and roaches.”

“No more of this on the air!” Vic ordered. “Nothing! Go to emergency tach if you absolutely have to. Get in here fast. I'll meet you at Dr. Long's office—back door.”

“Sheriff?” one of the office personnel said. Her face was pale; she had heard the conversation concerning Captain Jack. “The phones are out of order.”

Al Little glanced at Vic. “Now, what the hell?”

Yeah,” Vic said. “Hell is right, I think. And it's just started smoking for us.”

Upstairs, in the cell area above the offices, a prisoner began screaming. “Lemme out of here!” he wailed.
Goddamn it, get it off me. Help me!” the voice was terror-filled.

 

 

The lights flickered in Brett's classroom, died, then came back on. The second time they went out, they stayed out, casting shadows around the classroom.

“Oh, well,” a student joked in the gloom,
what the heck. The Vikings didn't have electric lights, either, and just look what they accomplished.”

After the laughter subsided, Brett sat on a corner of his desk and said, “All right, let's pursue that. What did the Vikings accomplish?”

“They conquered half the known world,” a boy said.

“Discovered America a long time before Columbus did, didn't like it, and went back home.”

“They were savages,” a girl said. “They were robbers, looters, and rapists.” She spoke primly—or tried to sound prim. Somehow it didn't quite come off. She was a pretty girl, in a blonde, pouty way.

Yeah, you'd like that last thing, wouldn't you, Carla?” a boy called out. He was hidden in the darkness of the back of the classroom.

Knock that off!” Brett hid a slight smile. He knew who the boy was.

Carla was one of the prettiest girls in school, but, Brett knew from listening to the kids talk, she was a notorious tease. The boys all said she liked to give a boy the come-on, get him all worked up, and then pull away, leaving the boy with a bad case of the stone-aches.

One of these days, Brett thought, looking at the girl, you'll do that to the wrong boy in the wrong frame of mind and find yourself in trouble.

Carla met his eyes and smiled at him. She met his gaze boldly, holding his eyes to hers, neither smile nor gaze wavering.

My God! Brett realized with a start. She's flirting with me!

A girl's voice shattered the staring of student at teacher. “Did you all hear the news about Mickey and Judy?”

Brett allowed his class to talk.

“What news?”

“They've been found.”

“Where? In Alabama? Are they married or just shacked up in a motel?” a boy called.

Maybe my old psychology professor was right, Brett thought as he looked out over his class. Maybe kids are only one step away from being savages. Sometimes I think that's true. And once again he regretted his decision not to go into psychology, or at least take more hours in that field.

The girl's one word reply shocked and silenced the classroom. “Dead.”

Ten seconds ticked past before anyone spoke.

“Aw, come on, Lisa! That's not funny.”

“It's true! I heard the principal talking to the cops. The deputies found them in Mickey's Bronco, just down the road from the Cole farm.”

“I'll never park there again,” a boy said.

“Wow! What happened to them?”

“I don't know. I had to get to class and didn't get to hear that part.”

Brett let his class buzz with conversation. It was no more disruptive than the damn lights flickering off and on. Just down the road from the Cole farm, Lisa said. And Kiri had told him the Cole family had been murdered. Far too much was happening too quickly in this Parish.

The bell rang and the classroom emptied in a gushing blue-jean clad babbling. Kiri walked in, or rather, glided in gracefully.

You heard about Mickey and Judy?” she asked, walking to his desk.

“Yes. And why did the bell ring so early?”

“Mr. Buck's dismissing school for today because of the problem with the lights.”

Brett grunted. “He finally made a decision worth a damn. Wonder how long he agonized over that?”

She grinned at him. “You still don't like Mr. Buck, do you, Brett?”

“No, I don't—probably never will. I don't think he has any business being in the principal's office. He's the nearest thing to a cretin I've ever seen this close to the top of the administration. How the hell did he ever get through college?”

Her grin changed to laughter. “He majored in football. It might interest you to know that in the past forty years no one has sat in the principal's or superintendent's office who did not start out as a coach.”

“But this man can't even speak proper English! What the hell kind of example is that for young people?”

“Keep talking like that, Brett, and you'll never make tenure here.”

His eyes were serious. “If it weren't for you, Kiri, I would have pulled out last year.”

“Why didn't you? I would have gone with you. All you had to do was ask.”

They smiled at each other and walked out the door.