Web of Fire Bind-up (49 page)

Bobby shrugged and handed him the map.

‘Take a look for yourself. Far as I can see, this is the only road coming off the main one. And look. There's the quarry. See?'

Joey peered out of his side window and looked at the two hundred metre drop down to the stones below. He took the map and smoothed it across his knee, paying particular attention to the part with the red circle drawn around it.
U.S. Government Facility
it said.
Restricted Access.
Bobby was right. The map showed it at the end of a dirt track with a quarry marked over on the left-hand side.

‘Hell, Bobby,' he said. ‘We're in the back end of beyond. Guess it keeps their army boys out of trouble, though. Nearest bar must be miles away.'

Ten minutes later, the truck rumbled to a halt outside a three-metre-high fence with razor wire strung across the top. A soldier in combat fatigues strolled out from his guard post, a rifle slung over one shoulder and a clipboard in his hand.

‘Can I help you, sir?' he asked, crouching down level with Joey's open window.

Joey smiled. ‘Reckon it might be the other way round,' he said, winking at Bobby. ‘I'm here to solve your little insect problem.'

The man nodded and checked the sheet on his clipboard. Joey noticed that his face was covered in angry red bites.

‘You Pestralis Pest Control?'

Joey jerked a thumb backwards.

‘You'd better believe it. Leastways, that's what it says on the truck.'

The soldier glanced at the side panel where a cartoon picture showed a fly with its tongue hanging out, being struck over the head by a mallet. Above it were the letters: PPC and beneath it the words:
Bug-free Zone.

‘Got any ID?'

Joey fished out the authorisation letter from his top pocket and handed it through the window.

‘OK.' The soldier pointed beyond the barrier to a cluster of buildings in the distance. ‘See where those cars are parked? Report to the CO there. He'll bring you up to speed on the situation.'

Joey nodded and slotted the gear lever into first,
waiting for the barrier to rise.

‘Between you and me, Buddy,' said the soldier as the barrier slowly jerked into life, ‘I'd say you're gonna have your work cut out here today.'

‘Well, Buddy,' grinned Joey, rubbing his finger and thumb together, ‘between you and me, that's just the way I like it.'

Joey had once considered joining the military himself, but getting up early had never really been his thing. His first thought, upon meeting the Commanding Officer, was that he looked as though he could use a couple more hours sleep himself. Looking at the bites on his face and neck, Joey decided that the guy could do with a decent bug screen too. Maybe he'd flog him a set or two before the day was out.

‘Glad you could make it,' said the CO, extending a hand towards him. ‘My name's Colonel Jackson.'

‘Joey Pestralis,' said Joey, shaking his hand. ‘And this here's Bobby Morgan.' He smiled and then added: ‘My second-in-command.'

‘Good to meet you,' said the Colonel. ‘Please. Take a seat.' He took off his cap, threw it on the desk and began to scratch at a red lump on the side of his head. ‘As you can see, we're having a bit of a problem with insects here at the moment.'

‘Well, that's what we're here for, Colonel.' Joey leaned back and folded his arms. ‘Can I ask what kind of problem?'

‘Flies,' said the Colonel. ‘Hundreds of the darn things. Thousands, actually.'

‘Inside you mean?'

‘Some. But no – outside, mainly.'

Joey shrugged. ‘Well it
is
summer, I guess.' He didn't want to do himself out of a job, but there wasn't a whole lot he could do about flies buzzing around in the great outdoors.

‘Yeah, but you see, this isn't
normal.
Take a look at this.'

The Colonel unbuttoned his cuffs and pushed up his sleeves to reveal a mass of red lumps which extended from his wrists to his elbows.

‘Let me see those.'

Joey leaned forward and took a closer look.

‘Wow,' he said. ‘Insects did that?'

The Colonel nodded and buttoned his cuffs again. ‘Now you can see what we're up against. These things just come out of nowhere. Whole swarms of 'em biting chunks out of us. We're getting pretty sick of it, I can tell you. Do you think you can help?'

Joey thumbed his nose. ‘Yeah, I'm sure we can do something. But tell me, how big are these flies?'

The Colonel frowned. ‘Well, let me see. They're not tiny, that's for sure.' He held up his finger and thumb and framed a couple of centimetres between them. ‘I'd say they were about… so big. Vicious little critters they are, too.'

Joey nodded thoughtfully.

‘Colour?'

‘Not sure exactly. Black, maybe, or brown?'

‘OK. We'll check 'em out later. But we're probably looking at some kind of horsefly. The American possibly, or maybe the three-spot.'

‘Horseflies. Really?'

‘That'd be my guess at this stage, Colonel. Aggressive attacks and vicious bites are all characteristic of that particular insect.'

‘But I don't get it. We've been on this base for years and never had this problem before. What do you think's causing it?'

Joey shrugged. ‘Could be any number of things. Maybe some local farmer's moved his cattle out and left the flies without their usual food source. Or maybe it's just down to climate change. Impossible to say, really. But I've got something in the truck which will help you keep their numbers down. What do you say we go set it up?'

‘Sure,' said the Colonel. ‘Set up a million if they'll get rid of the damn things.'

Half an hour later, the Colonel stood in the middle of the compound looking at one of the strangest contraptions he had ever seen. Four plastic legs supported what appeared to be a medium-sized shiny black football. Fixed above the football was a pyramid of netting leading up to the neck of a large plastic bottle.

‘What the hell is that?' he asked.

‘It's a horsefly trap,' replied Joey proudly. ‘What do you think? I designed it myself.'

The Colonel walked around it, examining it carefully.

‘Well, I guess you boys know what you're doing. How does it work?'

‘Simple really. Horseflies are attracted by shape, temperature and dark colours. So when the black ball heats up in the sun, the horsefly sees a warm head above four legs and thinks: ‘Horse'. So it flies over, lands on the ball and climbs up looking for a place to bite. But when it gets to the top, it realises it's made a mistake. Then, attracted by the light, it flies up into the bottle where the heat of the sun kills it.'

The Colonel nodded approvingly. ‘Very clever,' he said. ‘But does it work?'

‘Are you kidding? I'm telling you, Colonel, I've been to farms in high summer where they're catching sixty or seventy flies a day.'

‘Sounds good to me,' said the Colonel. ‘It's about time we evened up the score. You boys fancy a beer while you're waiting?'

‘You bet,' said Bobby who generally let Joey do the talking, but knew that important matters demanded an individual response. ‘Got any potato chips?'

The sun was fierce as the three of them stood around the trap in the heat of the afternoon, watching two large black flies buzzing around in the bottle. A third fly was busy crawling over the surface of the ball, making its way to the top.

‘There you go,' said Joey. ‘That's your problem right
there. Three-spot horse flies. See those white patches on their backs? That's where they get their name from.'

The Colonel bent down and peered into the bottle. Then he turned to Joey and shook his head.

‘That ain't them,' he said.

‘What?' said Joey. ‘Are you sure?'

The Colonel crouched down and took a closer look.

‘No,' he said. ‘These are too big. Now I come to think about it, the ones we had were smaller and lighter coloured. More brown than black.'

Joey looked at the Colonel doubtfully. To most people, a fly was just a fly. But to Joey it was the enemy and so he had made it his business to find out everything about them. As far as he could tell, the only kind of fly that fitted the bill in this case was the one buzzing around in the bottle, right there in front of him. But Joey decided to be patient. After all, time was money and he happened to know that money was something the US Government had in plentiful supply. It didn't take a genius to work out that the longer this job took, the more of it would end up in his pocket.

‘Hmm,' he said, scratching his head. ‘OK, Colonel. In that case I think perhaps we'd better stick around for a while. See what else we can find.'

‘Well, Bob,' said Joey as they sat out on the steps of the CO's office, sipping cold beer and watching the sun go down. ‘I don't know about you, but I reckon I could get used to this.' He grinned, clinked his bottle against
Bobby's and took another swig. ‘Sure as hell beats working for a living.'

Bobby grinned and nodded. ‘Don't it ever,' he said.

Suddenly, his hand twitched and he dropped the bottle with a cry of pain.

‘Ow!' he shouted. ‘God-
dammit
!'

‘What is it, Bobby?' asked Joey. ‘What's up?'

Bobby rubbed his hand furiously.

‘Something just bit me,' he said. Then he yelped, slapped his neck and swore. ‘Hey! What the hell's going on?'

‘Here,' said Joey. ‘Let me take a look.'

He was just reaching out for Bobby's hand when there was a loud buzz in his ear followed by a sharp, stinging sensation on his cheek. As he reached up to touch it, a cloud of flies suddenly descended upon them in a thick swarm. Bobby screamed and Joey felt himself being bitten viciously on his neck, face and arms.

‘Get inside, Bobby!' he shouted, crouching down and slapping at the flies as they dived aggressively again and again to deliver their painful bites. ‘Get inside now!'

As Bobby ran for cover, Joey gritted his teeth and slammed the flat of his hand down on one of the yellowy-brown flies that had latched itself onto his forearm. Then, squeezing it tightly as though his life depended upon it, he put his head down, let out an anguished cry like a warrior going into battle and ran quickly up the steps toward the shelter of the building.

‘See?' said the Colonel, ‘what'd I tell you? It's brown.'

‘More like yellow,' said Bobby, rubbing at the bites on his face that had swollen into angry red weals. ‘Did you see those little devils? They jus' went ape-crazy for us.'

Joey leaned forward and stared at the squashed, misshapen fly that he had deposited on the smooth surface of the Colonel's desk. Although he had pretty well flattened it, the sharp blood-sucking mouthparts were easily identifiable.

‘You want to know the weirdest thing?' asked the Colonel. ‘There were fifteen or twenty men around when you were attacked just now. But this time, not a single one of them was bitten. It was as though the flies were just after you two.'

‘That certainly is unusual,' said Joey. ‘No doubt about it. But then again, maybe your guys just had the good sense to wear some industrial strength insect-repellent.'

‘Well,' said Bobby. ‘I'm definitely gettin' me some of that before I walk out through those doors again.'

‘I wouldn't bother,' said the Colonel, peering out through the window. ‘There's no sign of them now. They've completely disappeared.'

Joey was thoughtful as he gunned the motor back along the dirt track. He watched the clouds of dust kicking up in his rear-view mirror and ran his mind over the day's events once more. Whatever those insects were, they didn't resemble any biting fly he'd ever come across before. Glancing over at Bobby, he saw that he still held the glass sample tube with the dead insect safely wedged inside.

‘You take good care of that little critter now, Bobby,' he said. ‘Don't you lose him. When we get back we're gonna find out exactly what he is. And then we're gonna go back up there and give all his little friends the good news with a few hundred gallons of bug juice.'

He scratched irritably at the bites on his arm and spun the steering wheel around to bring the truck parallel to the edge of the quarry.

‘I'm telling you, Bobby. There ain't no insect on the planet who's going to get the better of Joey Pestralis.'

Unfortunately for Joey Pestralis, however, this was some way short of the truth. Because at that moment, the thick carpet of flies which had lain hidden beneath the seats of the truck rose into the air with a fearful buzzing and descended upon the terrified men like a plague from hell. And as Joey screamed and clawed at his eyes, the truck skidded off the road in a screech of tyre rubber and crashed over the precipice, its wheels spinning wildly in the air.

The only small consolation – if it could be described as such – was that, as they plunged towards the quarry floor two hundred metres below, the two men remained unaware of the sharp rocks that were rushing up to meet them. Unaware, that is, until they tore through the windshield and smashed their world into a million pieces, puncturing the fuel tank and turning the truck into a white hot fireball of smoke and flame.