Insects: A Novel (22 page)

77

Duncan’s attention was
focused on Antonio Suarez, some thirty feet in front of the truck. He felt anxious about their situation but was worried about the young guide. Suarez had been in the water for several hours without relief, and Duncan wondered whether he should take a break. While Boyd worried about plunging everyone into an abyss, Duncan was fearful about stopping, even for a few minutes. Would the truck sink into the mud and not have the power to propel itself? Progress had been slow, perhaps one mile an hour. He was about to call for a ten-minute break when another cascade of lightning and thunder burst. He heard a commotion behind him. Turning to face the rear, he saw Hamel pointing, the binoculars glued to his face.

“It’s not grasshoppers,” Hamel said. “My God, my God, it’s the bugs!”

Hamel handed the binoculars to Duncan and put his flashlight on the water. For a moment, they glimpsed the patch of debris in the shadows just before the lightning faded, and the object disappeared into the watery darkness.

“You’re sure?” Duncan said to Hamel.

“Didn’t you see it?”

“I saw something.”

“Did you see them jumping? That’s how I know.”

“Know what?” asked Johnson, who sat on one edge of the truck bed and craned his neck to see Hamel.

Hamel and Duncan exchanged glances.

“The bugs,” Hamel said.

Johnson sprang to his feet.

“Where! Where are they?”

“They’re out there,” Hamel said, pointing. “You can’t see them except where there’s lightning.”

Johnson took the binoculars and peered into the darkness.

“I don’t see a thing.”

“I’m telling you,” Hamel said, “they’re out there. Howard saw them, didn’t you?”

“I saw something,” Duncan said, “but I need a better look.”

The conversation between Hamel and Johnson caught Alison Peeples’ and Stephanie Rankin’s attention. They’d been sitting alongside each other, covered in ponchos, taking surreptitious sips on Rankin’s gin.

“So, it might not be anything? You know, you shouldn’t be saying things like that unless you’re sure,” Johnson scolded.

“I am sure,” Hamel insisted. “I’ve been watching since we got on the truck.”

“When did you first see them?” Peeples asked, anxiously.

“I don’t know, fifteen minutes ago, ten. Not long. They’re not close enough for my flashlight, so it’s just glimpses when there’s lightning.”

While this conversation was going on, Boyd and Azevedo listened up. Boyd took the transmission out of gear and called Suarez, who returned as quickly as he could through the murk.

“Professor,” Duncan said, pointing with an index finger, “can you aim that light over here?”

It took a moment, but Azevedo managed to turn the rusty mechanism, which screeched loudly, surprising and frightening the people on the bed. The screeching of bare metal echoed into the forest. The light had greater range than Hamel’s flashlight, who scanned the area with the binoculars while the others peered into the illuminated emptiness. Moments passed. Hamel relocated the raft, now at the outer limit of the searchlight’s reach. It was larger than he’d originally thought. More than ever, it looked like it was heading toward the truck.

“Do you see anything?” Cross asked.

“It’s them. It’s the bugs. There’s thousands of ‘em. I don’t know for sure, but it looks like they’re floating on their backs. Some of them are jumping. I don’t know what that’s about,” Hamel said, peering through the binoculars.

Hamel handed the binoculars to Duncan.

“What is their weakness?” Duncan muttered to himself.

“What’s that?” Hamel asked nervously. “Did you say ‘What’s their weakness?’”

“Professor, do they have any weakness?” Duncan asked.

Azevedo paused thoughtfully.

“Their weakness was that they could not reproduce successfully.”

Duncan frowned.

“And they don’t seem to do well in water. They can’t swim, or at least they couldn’t,” Azevedo said.

Everyone heard this.

“What?” Rankin said loudly. “What the fuck are we afraid of? There’s water everywhere.”

The mood lifted at this news. There were smiles and laughter, and Johnson and Rankin started shouting in the direction of the bugs, threatening to drown them, issuing insults as if the insects could understand them. Duncan was less sanguine, aware that despite being unable to swim, they had managed to organize themselves in such a way that they could float an entire colony, apparently safely. He also knew they could jump and could see some of them doing so through the binoculars.

“So, Professor,” Boyd asked, “all we gotta do is pour water on them?”

“I didn’t say that,” Azevedo said, his voice reflecting his exhaustion. “And this is true for the bugs I studied before they proliferated. The specimens I saw, there were never more than several dozen in a colony, struggled in water and tried to crawl out of it as quickly as they could. I had not seen them flip on their backs and float. That is new behavior to me.”

“So, maybe they can swim, huh?”

“I can’t say for certain, one way or another. I only know that the ones I studied could not swim. They were like cockroaches in this regard.”

Duncan took this in and inhaled deeply, exhaling slowly. He asked Hamel to report on the bugs’ progress and asked Azevedo to point the light according to Hamel’s instructions. Could the bugs swim or not? Drowning the bugs could not be Plan A.

“We can’t assume that
blaberus
can’t swim,” Duncan said loudly. Everyone was talking to somebody about drowning the bugs, and he wanted them to stop. “We have to come up with something else to defend ourselves, in case they slam into us. We don’t know if they will. It depends on the current. But we have to be prepared.”

He’d achieved his immediate goal of shutting everyone up. The ideas were slow in coming.

“They’re kinda hung up on something,” Hamel reported, binoculars glued to his face.

“Okay, what kills them for sure?” Boyd asked.

“Fire, don’t you think?” Peeples said.

“Yeah, that would do it,” Johnson agreed.

“Yeah, but how?” Duncan asked. “We don’t have a flamethrower or torches or anything like that. All we got are two cans of gas.”

“Someone could swim out there, you know, where they are and maybe get behind them and pour some gas on the water and then light it,” Boyd suggested.

“Sounds dangerous,” Cross said.

“Too dangerous,” Duncan agreed. “You could set yourself on fire.”

“You know, we don’t even know if they’re going to attack us. What if the current carries them in a different direction?” Peeples said.

“We can’t depend on that,” Duncan said. “Whatever we do, there will be risk involved. Just look around. It’s dark. We’re in the middle of a flood.”

“Why not just keep moving down the road?” Boyd asked from his seat behind the steering wheel.

Everyone looked at Duncan for a response.

“I’m afraid we might run off the road. The water seems to be getting higher, and I’m not sure whether Antonio can keep us in the middle of the road.”

“Maybe he needs some help,” Boyd said. “Maybe if we had two guys out there …”

“They just broke loose,” Hamel interjected, breathlessly.

Pressure was mounting now. No one volunteered to walk with Suarez, and Duncan was on the verge of doing it himself but, as the leader, he felt he needed to stay on the truck where he could have a better view of the situation.

“Olay, who wants to do it? Who wants to help keep the truck on the road?” Duncan said, looking at Johnson and Hamel. Hamel continued to concentrate on monitoring the insects, showing no interest in doing something else.

“You know, George,” Maggie Cross said, “I could watch with the binoculars. Why don’t you help get us going?”

“I’ll do it,” Peeples said, finally, raising her hand.

“No, I’ll do it,” Johnson said, forcefully, clambering from the side of the truck into the water before anyone could protest. Suarez joined him in the water and helped him find a branch to use to sweep along the side of the road. As soon as they were in front of the truck, Boyd put the transmission in gear and inched the ancient vehicle forward.

“Go faster,” Hamel said. “They’re gaining on us. And I hate to say this, but there’s more of them.”

“More of them?” Cross asked. “If they can’t swim, how can there be more of them?”

“There’s more patches of them. Bunches of them. At least that’s what it looks like.”

78

Only Duncan and
Cross could hear Hamel. The diesel was loud. Peeples thought she heard Hamel say something.

“What did you say,” she asked, tugging on his elbow.

“I said there are bunches of the bugs in the water.”

“Oh.” She gave him a puzzled look and stammered, “What the fuck are we going to do?”

Hamel shrugged and went back to watching the bugs through the binoculars.

Peeples tugged on Duncan’s elbow.

“He said there’s more of them all the time. Are we gonna be okay?”

Duncan looked away briefly, trying to think of something to say. It was a question he’d been avoiding for days.

“We need to keep ahead of them,” he said, finally.

“I think you got your answer,” Rankin whispered to Peeples.

“That wasn’t an answer,” Peeples barked.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen,” Duncan said sharply. His guilt had gotten the better of him, and he knew it immediately. “Look, Alison, I don’t know. I think we should really focus on what we can do to defend ourselves or avoid them. Nobody planned on this happening.”

“So, what can we do?”

“Keep moving,” Duncan said as the truck lumbered forward. Boyd struggled to control the truck against the perpendicular rush of the water and, like everyone else, began to tire.

“It looks like at least one of the rafts is coming toward us,” Hamel announced.

Without a word, Duncan grabbed a gas can and set it on the cab’s roof.

“Find a cup or something that we can use for the gasoline.”

“Why not just pour it out of the can?” Cross asked.

“We’d use it up too fast,” Duncan said. “Besides, it’ll be easier to aim it with a cup.”

Rankin grabbed the first cup that she saw and nervously handed it to Duncan. Cup in hand, Duncan wondered how he’d light the gas. All he had was a butane lighter.

“Anybody got any matches?”

Nobody responded. He repeated his question, loudly. A few “not mes.”

“How about straw, or kindling, something that burns easily?”

Peeples dug a splinter out of the truck bed and handed it to Duncan.

“Will this do?”

“Perfect,” Duncan said, “find some more. We may need it.”

Turning to Hamel, Duncan asked, “How we doin’?” when the truck suddenly lurched, nearly knocking his legs from under him. Cross grabbed Duncan’s shoulder to steady herself.

“Sorry,” Boyd said. “We hit a rock or a hole or something.”

“Goddamn!” Hamel shouted, after nearly losing his balance. “What the fuck!”

“You want to drive?” Boyd said loudly.

“So,” Duncan repeated, “how we doing, Mister Hamel?”

“You know, I almost fell off the truck. Into the water,” Hamel said forcefully. “But to answer your question, we aren’t. We’ll be lucky if this first one doesn’t hit us. Tell ‘em to move faster.”

“We’re moving as fast as we can,” Boyd shouted. “Like I said, if you can do a better job, you’re welcome to it.”

“That’s not what I’m saying,” Hamel said defensively. “I’m saying, if we don’t go any faster, the bugs will hit us. You can stop for all I care. I don’t know how many bugs there are, and I don’t control the current, so maybe just sitting here is as good as moving. Anybody here know how to figure the odds?”

Duncan set the cup in front of him on the rusted cab roof and carefully filled it with gasoline.

“George, how close are they?”

“See for yourself.”

The raft was on the outer edge of Professor Azevedo’s searchlight, which he centered on the bugs. A couple hundred feet, and they’d either hit them or not. It’s like a video game, Duncan thought. Hit or miss, there’d be more. And certainly they would hit the truck, and either the bugs would be incinerated, or they’d drown, or they’d devour their prey.

Things began to happen very quickly as the raft of jumping bugs neared the truck. Duncan estimated it would hit somewhere near the rear passenger wheels. If only they could go a little faster, he thought they could avoid it, that it would drift by without colliding with the truck. But what could he say? They were already going as fast as they could without driving off the road, which would be far worse.

As the raft of bugs neared, he saw the ones that were jumping were actually getting well above the level of the truck bed, and that scared him. If it weren’t for that, they could try to push the bugs away with a pole, but there was too much of a chance of them jumping onto whoever was holding the pole. When he looked around, he could see the fear on his companions’ faces. There was no attempt by anyone to hide it. They all understood they could be facing a horrible end.

“What happens if the fire doesn’t kill them?” Peeples asked anxiously.

“I don’t know,” Duncan said quietly. “I wish I did. The only other thing I can think of is to get under the water and hold your breath.”

“Really?”

“Well, Professor Azevedo said they don’t swim well, and these guys here, if they could swim, don’t you think they’d be doing it? Look at ‘em, they’re on their backs, and the ones that are jumping look like, well, I don’t know why they’re doing it. I was thinking that maybe there wasn’t enough room for ‘em so they jump on top of the others to keep from drowning. But I don’t know. And it doesn’t matter.”

“That’s not much of an alternative,” Cross said. “Diving under water. Aren’t there other things in the water that can hurt us, too?”

“I don’t know,” Duncan said, “I just know that it’s something we can do. Maybe it’ll work, maybe it won’t. I don’t know what else to say.”

“They’re almost here,” Hamel shouted excitedly. “They’re almost here. C’mon, Doc, get the gas ready.”

Holding the gas-filled cup in one hand, Duncan moved sideways toward the rear of the truck bed. He handed it to Hamel and lit the splinter with his lighter.

Hamel did as instructed, keeping it from spilling by holding the cup in both hands.

“What if we miss?” Hamel said, nervously.

It then occurred to Duncan that they might need more than one cup of gasoline, and he said aloud, “Find more cups, everyone. We need more ammunition.”

Everyone got busy searching, pulling out backpacks and rummaging through them like thieves. Within a minute, they’d lined up four on the cab roof and began filling them with gasoline. At the same time, Duncan inched as near to the edge of the truck bed as he dared. He told himself not to throw it too early for fear of missing the bugs entirely, but then worried if he waited too long that the gasoline would get under the truck, setting it on fire. He knew that diesel fuel ignited at a higher temperature than gasoline, but decades of use and misuse would have resulted in flammable chemicals soaking into the wood planks on the bed and the running boards. But he pushed that out of his mind. He needed to hit them just right, just in front of them so that when he tossed the lighted splinter into the water, they would be engulfed in a sheet of flame.

Taking the cup from Hamel with one hand, who almost didn’t let go for fear of dropping it, Duncan shuffled to the edge of the truck and, leaning over, timed the release of the gasoline as the raft of bugs neared. It was a good four feet across and six feet in length. He hoped it was too big to miss. Azevedo kept the light on the bugs, giving Duncan as good a view as he could hope for. As he lit the splinter, everything seemed to him to move in slow motion. He felt ready to do what he had to do but hesitated for an instant. What if he missed? The fear of failure just wouldn’t let go as if second guessing himself had value in such a situation.

“Did y’all find cubs, I mean cups? And more splinters?”

He didn’t hear the response as at just that instant he emptied the cup into the water. There wasn’t nearly as much gasoline as he’d thought. The cup was only two-thirds full. And then he tossed the lighted splinter. He wondered whether it would set the gasoline on fire or die in the water. The answer came swiftly as a fireball launched skyward, lighting up everything around it and drowning out Azevedo’s searchlight.

Along with the burst of flame and smoke, a high-pitched screeching filled the air as countless insects were incinerated. The raft broke into smaller pieces as the bugs reorganized. Many more were jumping while others were sinking under the water. With no place to land, the jumpers ended up in the water and disappeared. The jumping gave them a few seconds of life before succumbing to the water. Because there were so many, some of them managed to land on the truck. Several landed on Hamel, who discovered how difficult they were to remove from his clothing.

“Help me,” he shouted as he pulled several off his shirt front, tearing the cloth as he did so. Peeples pulled several off of Hamel’s back and then felt a slight stabbing pain on her back.

“Doc, Doc, they’re on my back. Help me!”

Duncan grabbed at the bugs on Peeples’ back and realized their forelegs had torn into the shirt cloth. Duncan wrapped his hands around several and yanked, ripping pieces of cloth and tiny pieces of flesh as he tossed them into the water. Peeples winced.

“Did you get ‘em? Did you get ‘em?” she shouted. “Please say you got ‘em.”

“I got ‘em,” Duncan replied.

While this was going on, Azevedo tried to alert everyone that another raft was approaching but couldn’t get anyone’s attention while they struggled to clear the truck bed of bugs. The current carried the remaining pieces of raft under the truck and the bugs that jumped ended up smashing into the undercarriage, crushing themselves, or drowning. Hamel hovered near the cab on the driver’s side, clearly frightened. Responding to Azevedo’s imprecations, Duncan urged Hamel to watch the next group of insects. But he shook his head.

“You can’t ignore them,” Duncan reasoned. “Our only chance is to stay ahead of them and hit them before they hit us.”

“I’ll do it,” Rankin said resignedly, raising her hand.

“You don’t hafto,” Peeples whispered.

“Yes I do.”

Watching this, Maggie Cross frowned and gave Hamel a withering look. But he wasn’t watching as his chin was buried in his chest like a disobedient child.

Hamel handed the binoculars to Peeples, who stationed herself at the rear of the truck, about a foot from the edge, not as close as Hamel had stood. Adjusting the focus, she zeroed in on an area less than two hundred feet away, where Azevedo’s light barely reached. Still, she could make out the outlines of another raft, which itself was hung up on debris.

“How we doing?” Duncan asked.

“Ah, fine, I guess,” Peeples said, pointing toward the raft. “There’s a bunch of them out there. Can you see ‘em? They’re right on the edge of where the light is. You can see ‘em with the binocs.”

She handed the binoculars to Duncan, who initially pointed them toward where Johnson had been looking and then scanned the entire area. He thought he saw other rafts but couldn’t be certain because of the uneven light. He didn’t want to increase anyone’s alarm any more so he kept it to himself.

“Just let me know when they break loose,” he said, returning the binoculars.

Remembering what happened the last time, he slammed on the brakes; Boyd gently brought the truck from nearly two miles per hour to a dead stop. His eyes were on Johnson and Suarez, who were pointing to something in the distance, beyond reach of the truck’s single headlight. Azevedo brought his light to bear and sighed. More bugs.

Johnson and Suarez returned to the truck and asked Duncan what they could do to help.

“Keep an eye out for the insects,” Duncan said while carefully pouring gasoline into a cup.

“You gonna dump the gas on the bugs?” Johnson asked, not having been aware of the first encounter.

“That’s the plan. But be ready, because some of ‘em will get on the truck. A couple of them attacked George and Alison.”

Johnson shot a concerned look at Peeples.

“I’m okay. Just a torn shirt and a little blood. Nothing to worry about.”

While waiting for the next brush with the insects, Duncan advised everyone to try to rest, even if they couldn’t sleep.

“You and Antonio must be worn out,” Duncan said. “Find a place to sit and try to rest. I know it’s hard, but Alison and I will keep a lookout. Who knows how long we’ll be doing this?”

“The longer, the better,” Boyd said.

Despite the bugs appearing in the road in front of the truck and the rafts drifting toward them from the side and the rear, surrounding them on three sides, the rafts were either hung up or those that were drifting were not on a collision course with the truck. However, the water level had risen above the running boards and was nearly at the level of the fuel filler cap. Boyd kept the engine at idle to charge the battery and power the headlight and the searchlight. He feared that the cap would leak without a gasket and asked Azevedo to check the glove box to find one. There was no gasket, just several rusty screwdrivers, a hammer and rusted screws and other junk. He thought about the function of a gasket as a mechanical seal and then looked around the cab, reaching under the seat and behind it to find anything that he could jury rig into a gasket.

“Does somebody have a spare T-shirt?” he asked loudly.

“What for?” Rankin asked.

“I need it for a gasket for the fuel tank. I’m afraid if the water gets any higher, it’s gonna get into the tank.”

Since most of the packs had been rifled through in search of cups, Cross grabbed the first shirt she saw and handed it to Boyd, who promptly tore off a piece, which he grasped as he lowered himself onto the running board and into the water. He felt the current pushing him away from the truck but steadied himself. The water level was within several inches of the filler cap, nearly up to his waist. Removing it, he covered the inside of the cap with the cloth and screwed it into place. It was still loose, so he tore off another piece of cloth and added it to the cap. This time, when he tightened the cap, it didn’t jiggle. Not satisfied, he added a third piece of cloth and replaced the cap. This time he was barely able to screw it down completely, it was that tight. He wasn’t sure that he could get it off without a wrench but felt that it would prevent water from seeping in. All the while he was doing this, he was battered by debris floating underneath the truck. As he lifted himself onto the truck bed, he said, “What can I do to help?”