Mandibles (2 page)

*-CHAPTER TWO-*
"Do you think they'll come back?" Patricia Ketchum asked, nervously scratching her forearm.
Her husband, Joe, pulled the curtain aside a bit and peeked outside. "They're long gone. There's nothing to worry about."
"Are you sure? What if they come back and we don't hear them in time?"
"Do you honestly think we won't hear them?"
"We might not. And the lock isn't working, remember?"
Joe kissed her gently on the lips. "Relax. We'll be fine. I promise."
"But think of what would happen if -- "
Joe put his hand over her mouth. "It takes twenty minutes to walk to the lake, so even if the kids decide not to go swimming, we've still got forty minutes. But we're wasting time. Let's hurry up and get naked."
He removed his hand from her mouth and kissed her again, this time with passion. She responded, putting her arms around him, but her eyes kept darting back to the door of the camper, as if expecting the kids to burst in at any second.
Joe pulled away. "Quit looking at the door," he said.
"But what if -- ?"
"Look, if they catch us in the act, I'll personally drive them to each and every appointment with their psychiatrist, okay?"
"It's just that -- "
"Sweetie, I'm not sure if you realize this or not, but we have very, very loud children. We'll hear them coming."
"I know, but -- "
"The danger is not in us getting caught, but in Andy never coming back because Michelle pushed him into a swamp. We'll be lucky if this camping trip doesn't end with one of them impaling the other with a flaming marshmallow-on-a-stick. We'll have plenty of notice."
"Yeah, but -- "
"Don't talk."
"But -- "
"Don't talk."
"Joe -- "
"If you say one more word I'm breaking out the bondage equipment and we'll screw those kids up for life. I'll do it. Twenty years from now they'll be blubbering to the other convicts about Mommy's ball gag."
Patricia smiled. "You don't have a ball gag."
"You don't know that."
"We'll be quiet, right?"
"Of course." Joe began to lift Patricia's tee shirt.
"I should leave the shirt on, just in case we need to get dressed quickly."
"How on earth did we ever make a second baby?"
"Your parents took Michelle for the weekend that one time, remember?"
"Yes, I remember," Joe said with a sigh. "Okay, the shirt stays on, but I'm not penetrating you through those shorts."
"You don't have to be crude."
"I said penetrate! That's the least crude description there is! That's what a doctor would say, for God's sake!"
Patricia glanced back at the door. "I think I hear the kids!"
"You don't hear the kids."
"I do!"
"You're wasting valuable penetration time."
"What if they -- ?"
"Here, I'll help you." He knelt down, unzipped her shorts, and pulled them down to her ankles. She lifted her feet and he removed them completely.
"Make sure they're within reach," Patricia said.
Moments later, they were on the bed. Joe nibbled on her ear as he thrust into her. "I love you."
"Do you think we're rocking the camper too much?"
Joe began to thrust harder. "Shhhh."
"I think I hear the kids!"
"You don't hear the kids," Joe assured her, picking up the pace even more.
"What if -- ?"
Joe began to thrust as hard as he could. That did it. Patricia closed her eyes and began to moan softly. "Ooooohhhh God."
"Ooooooohhhhh," Joe agreed.
They continued rocking the camper and moaning for another few seconds, until suddenly Joe let out a sharp cry of pain.
Patricia opened her eyes as he stopped thrusting. "What's wrong?"
"Ow, damn! I did something to my back."
"Are you okay?"
"I can't move!"
"What do you mean, you can't move?"
"I mean I can't move! I hurt my back!"
Then Patricia gasped. "Oh, shit, I hear Michelle!"
"Are you serious?"
"Yes, of course I'm serious! Get off me!"
"I can't!"
Michelle's voice was getting closer as she called out "Mommy!" over and over, clearly in tears.
"Joe, you have to get off of me!" Patricia said, her voice on the verge of total panic.
Joe pushed himself up, forcing himself not to scream as agonizing pain shot through his back. Patricia immediately scooted out from under him, causing Joe to lose his balance and fall off the narrow bed onto the floor.
"Joe! Are you okay?"
"Dead, actually."
"Get dressed! Hurry!" Patricia stepped over him and began to put on her shorts.
"Just throw a blanket over my corpse."
As Patricia hurriedly finished getting dressed, Joe realized that his back no longer hurt. The fall must have worked like a chiropractor. Maybe he'd suggest that technique the next time Patricia had a headache.
"Mommy!" wailed Michelle, right outside the camper door.
"Don't come in here, honey!" Patricia called out.
Joe sat up, grabbed a pillow, and set it on his lap just as the door flew open. But Patricia quickly scooped their ten year-old daughter into her arms and left the camper before the pillow or the nakedness it was guarding could be glimpsed. Joe tossed the pillow aside, thankful that it was Patricia's and not his, and then stood up and began to put on his clothes.
Oh well. At least he'd had a little bit of sex.
He stepped out of the cabin, where Patricia was trying to console Michelle. "What happened?" he asked.
"Andy's in some kind of trouble," Patricia explained.
Michelle sobbed and nodded to show her agreement.
"Was he playing with those fireworks like I told him not to?" asked Joe.
Michelle shook her head.
"Where is he?"
The little girl tried to answer, but by now she was sobbing with such intensity that she couldn't speak.
"Can you take us to him?" asked Joe, feeling like he was trying to communicate with Lassie.
Michelle nodded.
"Good. Let us throw on our shoes and we'll go get your little brother."
* * * *

They jogged down the path toward the lake for about five minutes, but then Michelle directed them off on a side trail through the woods. The children had been given very specific instructions not to leave the main path, and Joe could see a nice padded-out lecture in their future.

He'd purposely picked this campsite because it was way out in the boondocks and hardly anybody ever came here. The reasoning behind this was to have a relaxing vacation, a truly self-delusional concept.
They slowed their jog to a brisk walk as they moved through the trail. Joe had a mental image of Andy lying on the ground, twitching, blood trickling from the twin fang marks on his ankle. They should have grabbed the snakebite kit from the camper before they rushed off.
A few minutes later, they emerged from the path into a clearing. Andy stood at the far edge of the clearing, about fifty feet away, and Joe sighed with relief to see that the eight-year-old boy looked unharmed. Andy grinned at them and waved, but it was clear that he'd been doing a lot of crying.
"Oh my God..." said Patricia.
Joe turned his attention away from Andy and looked at the ground. No wonder the kids were so scared. The clearing was filled with four-or-five inch-high mounds of loose dirt, dozens of them, about a foot in diameter. They looked like anthills, except that those didn't usually have quarter-sized entrances.
"Are you okay?" Joe called out.
Andy nodded.
"Good. Don't move."
As Joe stepped forward, something scurried out of the nearest mound. A red ant. Easily the biggest one he'd ever seen. It had to be two inches long. He crouched down to get a better look.
"Wow, can you believe this thing?" asked Joe, picking up a small stick. "I've never seen an ant even close to this size. This has got be some, like, Amazon jungle ant or something."
"Don't get too close to it," Patricia warned.
"I won't, I'm just ... man, that is one _big_ ant."
Joe poked the creature with the stick. It crawled on the tip and began to scurry up the wood toward his arm, so he quickly tossed it away.
"Stay right there," Joe told Andy. "I'm coming to get you."

*-CHAPTER THREE-*
Trevor Sotter decided for the seventeenth time that day that his job really, really sucked.
He knew that the feeling would be short-lived. He worked for the corporate accounting department of Lavin, Inc., and while it was hardly a rewarding job and far from what he thought he'd be doing at age thirty-six, he only had to work when people dropped stuff in his in-bin. The rest of his day could be spent working on his novel. Usually things were pretty slow, giving him plenty of time to write, but the third working day of each month, the "drop dead deadline" for getting everything done that needed to be credited to the prior month, was always ridiculously busy. So he was forced to work overtime, a concept that went against everything he stood for as a human being.
Essentially, his job involved moving money from a cost center to a profit center and vice-versa. Well, no, to be truthful, _other_ people moved the money, and he simply did the data entry to record the transaction. Actually, although he'd been working here for two years, he still wasn't one hundred percent certain what was actually affected by the work he did, but he knew _how_ to do it, and that was good enough for him.
He picked up the next transfer sheet. It was for eight cents. Eight lousy cents. What a waste. Trevor was going to earn more than eight cents just recording this stupid transaction. Then he realized that he wasn't going to earn all _that_ much more than eight cents, and felt bummed-out again.
His novel was called _Snot_. He'd let several people read it (the first couple of chapters anyway) and they all thought it was nothing more than an endless stream of childish bodily functions gags. They just didn't get it. It was a _satire_ of endless streams of childish bodily functions gags, and a darn meaningful one. He wouldn't have devoted seven years and thirty-four drafts to the book unless he truly believed in its message.
But he couldn't work on it now because he was wasting too much time selling his soul to Lavin, Inc. None of his co-workers understood his desire to write, to create, to change the world through his words. They were going to be working in corporate accounting for the rest of their lives, except for Fred Hibbson, who'd been promoted last week. Trevor had to admit that his co-workers were all pretty nice to him despite their lack of understanding, so he'd invite them to his lavish champagne parties in his Beverly Hills mansion, but they'd be flying coach.
He finished moving the eight cents and set the transfer sheet in his "completed" bin. There were far too many sheets remaining in his in-bin. He'd probably be here until eight or nine.
It was time for a cigarette.
Trevor pushed back his chair and got up. As he walked past the high-wall cubicles toward the department exit, he stopped at Monette Odell's lair. Her job was similar to Trevor's, but as she'd explained on several occasions, substantially more complicated. She sat at her desk, typing furiously.
"Hey, Moni, you up for a smoke?"
"No thanks."
"That's cool."
Trevor often wondered if, in an alternate universe where Moni wasn't ridiculously happily married to some stud muffin who sent her flowers every Friday without fail, she'd ever consider going out with him. He certainly wasn't unattractive. He was tall and physically fit, with long brown hair and a mustache and goatee that suited him extremely well, if he did say so himself. His wire-framed glasses were stylish rather than functional (writers weren't supposed to have 20/20 vision, so he wore lenses made out of regular glass to maintain the appropriate image), and even though management had approved a business casual dress code, he made it a point to wear a tie. A tie with Bugs Bunny on it, but a tie nevertheless. He'd rank himself about a seven on a scale of one to ten.
Moni was a solid nine. She was about twenty-five, blonde, well developed, and had a low, sultry voice that made even casual comments like "No thanks" make him want to drop to the floor and start worshipping her shoes. She had the most gorgeous smile and the most perfect teeth he'd ever seen. If her husband ever turned into a complete prick, Trevor would be the first one there to console her.
"Leaving for the day?" asked Abigail Hardin as he walked by her desk. She was Winston Kamerman's administrative assistant, a middle-aged, no-nonsense woman who did wonders to compensate for Mr. Kamerman's overall incompetence the as head of corporate accounting.
"Yeah, right. I don't think so. At least it's a three-day weekend. Got any plans?"
"My husband and I are repainting our front porch."
"Sounds like fun. I might do that too."
Trevor walked over to the wooden door that led out of the department. He swiped his ID badge through the reader, then opened the door and stepped out into the hallway. Thank God they had this security system. You never knew when somebody might try to steal his backup for the eight cents.
He proceeded over to the fourth-floor elevators and pressed the down button. The building felt vacant. The other four hundred and fifty people who worked in this building probably got to leave early for the holiday, which made his mandatory overtime all the more painful. Not that he had any real plans beyond watching some movies and working on his book, but it was the principle of the whole thing. Overtime was evil.
He rode the elevator down to the ground floor, then stepped out and took a left turn so he wouldn't have to deal with the sinister security guard at the main entrance. He walked across the carpeted floor past the cafeteria to the side entrance and pushed the glass door open until whatever that little sliding thing was that held it open caught. Employees weren't supposed to use this door, but he much preferred to look at the side lawn than the parking garage while he smoked.
Trevor pulled out a cigarette, lit up, and took a deep drag. Ah, yeah. That was good. He refused to have anything to do with illegal drugs of any kind, but he was darn well going to pack his body to capacity with nicotine and caffeine.
As he took another drag, he saw a tiny red ant crawling on the concrete by his foot. He squished it. Ants were vile little creatures that didn't deserve to live. So were all insects. Chapter eighty-six of his book made a very good argument for that point of view.
Another red ant crawled up onto the concrete and Trevor instinctively took a step back. Even the biggest ant he'd ever seen wasn't more than an inch, and this one was as long as his pinky. The ant darted toward him, and he crushed it under his shoe, cringing just a bit at the loud _crunch_.
Where had that thing come from? Florida ants didn't get anywhere near that big.
He surveyed the newly mowed lawn, trying to find an anthill, or at least more of the creatures. He didn't see any right away, but ants were always in groups, weren't they? He didn't know very much about the insect world, but he thought that maybe ants were supposed to stick together like an army platoon, or something like that. He'd never been in the military, so he wasn't sure.
Trevor inhaled some more refreshing nicotine, and then decided that since he was going to be stuck here until late this evening anyway, it couldn't hurt to spend a few minutes seeing if any more of those monster ants were hanging around.
He crouched down and pulled his socks up over his pant legs, creating an argyle shield against ant bites. Then he began to walk around the Lavin lawn, searching for more pinky-sized insects.
There were quite a few regular-sized black ants crawling on the trunk of a tree. He flicked a couple of them off with his index finger, and then watched as they dutifully crawled back toward the tree through the grass. Impressive. For him, that would be the equivalent of falling something like ... a couple of miles, maybe? He wasn't quite sure, but he didn't feel like measuring the tree trunk and dividing it by the height of the ant (or were ants measured by length?) and multiplying it by his height or whatever it would take to make the calculations. It was still an impressive fall, either way.
He looked around for about five more minutes, but didn't find any more of the big red ants. It was probably some sort of mutant, or freak of nature, or something like that. If he hadn't squished it under his shoe, he probably could have sold it to Epcot Center. _Nice move, Sotter_, he thought to himself.
Trevor returned to the side entrance and saw one of the mega-ants crawling along the concrete toward the doorway. He needed a cup or something to trap it. The cafeteria was closed, so he couldn't get anything from there. He'd probably have to go all the way back up to his desk and get the Tupperware container he'd used to store the leftover lasagna he'd had for lunch ... or else pick the thing up with his bare hands.
He considered it.
Nah.
Then he figured, screw it. If there were two of them, there were bound to be more. He stomped the ant with the heel of his shoe, then walked back inside the building and shut the door behind him, briefly wondering if any ants had crawled inside while he was out exploring.