Growth (7 page)

The spider-things gathered around all four of the support posts and swarmed up into the henhouse. As they climbed, the blobs hung unnaturally, as if they weren't connected to the legs by any kind of bones, either internal or external. They swayed, plump and gray as death, as their too-many legs clumsily worked their way up all of the four-by-ten posts.

They left nothing but silence behind them.

As the nearly invisible moon passed through the long night, the spiderlike creatures laboriously crawled up into the henhouse. Dozens. Then hundreds. At first, there were a few mildly startled clucks, a few investigative pecks, as the chickens tasted the new creatures. The insects tasted sour, and the texture of the flesh was even softer than worms. The chickens snapped at the spiders in irritation, but even that slowed and stopped as the spiders overwhelmed the birds.

Silence descended upon the henhouse.

When the sun rose, Sandy was out in the garage, beating the shit out of a punching bag while an old boom box blasted Ramones tunes.

She had learned long ago not to think about her job when she was punching and elbowing and kicking and kneeing and head-butting the bag. When she had started out as a deputy, she would come home and try and relieve her stress by gathering a mental image of some asshole she'd encountered on the job, then dump as much aggression and anger as possible on the bag, unleashing all that steam in one forty-five-minute eruption.

It worked fine, until one night on the job she almost put her fist through some drunk dipshit's face thanks to her new muscle memory. Since then, while working out, she found it was better to disassociate from the worst images of humanity and focus solely on the movement of muscles as they drove her skeleton.

She would have preferred to hang the bag outside, but she had to be conscious about how she was viewed in the community. It was bad enough that some of her fellow cops teased her, saying that she must have been picturing the father of her boy when she was attacking the bag. She'd laugh, too, and say, “Sometimes.” For her, though, it was more about taking out her frustration about everything that she couldn't control, wringing stress out of her body, simple and complicated at the same time.

Her ex, Kevin's father, would probably say that she couldn't make up her mind about a damn thing. The irritating thing was that he was probably right.

She stepped back a moment, gathering herself for another flurry of punches, and looked back to the door to the house. Kevin liked to get up late on Sundays, so she let him. She used to take him to church, but finally stopped when he asked her about her own beliefs, specifically what she thought happened when somebody died. She thought this might be one of those Hallmark or Lifetime moments where the parent sits down with their child for a life-changing talk, a moment they would both remember forever. She had also decided long ago that honesty was the only policy, with the exception of Santa Claus. She told him, “I took you to church not because I was worried about your immortal soul. I took you because . . . it was expected of me. I thought it was the right thing to do. I never worried about any of the stuff they told us. Life is beyond all of us. It's up to you to find what you believe.”

Kevin nodded. Said, “Cool.” And ran off to play with his rocket ship models.

So much for the Hallmark moment.

Sunday mornings now, she let him sleep in and play video games if he wanted. He was old enough to pour his own milk into a bowl of cereal and had proved more than capable of feeding himself. It wasn't always appropriate, such as Cheese Doodles at six a.m., but he never went hungry.

Last Sandy had heard, Kevin's father was in southern Indiana, wiping down windshields while the other worker drained oil from cars in a Quik-Change. There was no paternity test. They both knew, without a doubt, he was the father, even if he never admitted it.

The other problem was that Barry, Bar to his buddies, had tried to disappear two or three times now.

The last time Sandy had caught up to her dear old ex, he was working at a big box superstore as the guy who collected the shopping carts. The confrontation in the middle of the massive parking lot was brief, painful, and embarrassing for both. Disgusted, Sandy got back in her car. She told him to get in touch when he was a man, and until then, well he could fuck right off.

Bar assured her he was getting his life together, and he would send her money.

They both knew this was a lie.

It was easier to pretend it wasn't.

She usually spent Sunday mornings in the garage, then went back and made a big breakfast. If nothing important happened, like a car wreck or robbery or, God forbid, a murder, Sundays were her days off. The town, for the most part, complied. Nothing much happened and since things stayed quiet, Sandy could enjoy a full day at home with her son.

But lately something wasn't working with Kevin. Most times, they got along fine. He understood the rules, he did his chores and homework without complaining too much, and was happy to once in a while put down his books or tablet and join her for dinner. The past few months, though, the timing was off, they weren't connecting, and Sandy couldn't figure out what she was doing differently, and wondered what problems her son was facing alone.

Whatever it was, she'd bet that it was probably related to the town, channeled through the school. She hoped it wasn't a girl. He hadn't exactly discovered sex yet and it took a backseat to his TV shows and books. She knew it wasn't the most comfortable thing for him, being the son of the police chief, but they'd had long talks about bullying and how to respond, and she felt he would open up if that was the situation.

She headed in for some breakfast. And maybe a nap.

 

 

Ingrid always enjoyed these calm mornings after Kurt's storms. She hurt, make no mistake. After the cop left, he'd trapped her in the bathroom and gone after her with one of her pots. Ingrid wedged herself in the corner between the toilet and the wall, tucking her fingers into her armpits, knees into her chest while he went to town on the backs of her shoulders and the back of her head whenever he made a particular point, hissing that it wasn't his fault she was too dumb to understand, reminding her it wasn't any fun having to make all the tough decisions.

When he was too tired to beat on her anymore, he straightened, threw the dented pot in the bathtub, said, “You want to hide next to the toilet, you face the consequences, stupid bitch.” He unzipped his jeans and pissed on her.

Ingrid didn't see the beatings as much different from sex. Sometimes it hurt, really awful, but when it was over, Kurt was spent and tired. He kept his distance. Sometimes for days. He'd gotten whatever it was out of his system and would leave her alone for a couple of days while she healed up. He ate in front of the television, as always, but she got to eat dinner in the kitchen by herself. It was a relief, not worrying if her eating was annoying him. The rest of the time, he spent in the front room, watching TV, drinking beer, or in the bathroom, with the paper. She knew he hid pornographic magazines in the paper and sometimes she could hear him masturbating in there.

Again, it was actually a relief. It meant he wouldn't expect anything that night and it certainly smelled better in there when he was finished.

She made her way down the lawn, letting gravity guide her. Her entire face was swollen, leaving just slits for her eyes, and she couldn't see much. She carried a basket for eggs. He might be leaving her alone for now, but he still damn sure expected breakfast.

Ingrid peered through the wire. It looked like the hens were still inside the coop. Maybe something had spooked them in the night. Usually, once the sun was peeking over the corn, they were out scratching at the dirt. She would have to remember to feed them later. She only trusted herself to carry one thing at a time, and since she had to get Kurt's breakfast started, she would bring the seeds down later.

She brushed the new cobwebs out of the way and opened the back of the henhouse. The hens were still in their nests, strangely quiet. They moved slowly away from her searching fingers, if they moved at all. Her aches and pains pushed any puzzlement out of her head until it was all she could do to shove her fingers under the closest hens and find the eggs in the straw. She collected four eggs, still warm, and deposited them in the basket. She latched the henhouse door, and shuffled back up the lawn.

The chickens never made a sound.

 

 

Bob couldn't sleep.

He parked himself in his chair with a pint of Jim Beam and waited for the news to report what he already knew. Belinda had spent the night in their bed, sobbing into pillows. Bob tried not to listen. It was important to them that they each grieve in their own way, independent of the other. Bob, having let all of his anguish out in Junior's cornfield, sat silent and motionless in his La-Z-Boy. He felt his gaze bounce ever so slowly from Fox News to Junior's high school portrait on the mantel and back to the TV, all night long.

He rarely drank anything stronger than lemonade, and the Jim Beam went straight to his head. It didn't help.

Especially when the aerial footage of the smoking island hit the news networks. Bob felt lost within the blurry, shaky images, and only a few key phrases penetrated his fog of mourning. “Total annihilation . . . one hundred and sixty-four confirmed dead . . . quite possibly a result of ecological terrorism . . . the State Department is pledging full cooperation with Haitian authorities . . . Allagro stock has fallen significantly, following rumors of a failed new seed launch . . .”

Bob was never one to sit still and wait, but now, there was nothing else he could accomplish. He wanted to go out and smash something, but he needed to listen for any breaking news. There was still a part of him that wanted to hope, hope that his son had somehow made it off the island in time, and was drifting in the ocean somewhere, just waiting to be picked up. He fought against this hope, fought against it like white blood cells fighting off an infection. Still, the hope swelled inside him like an abscess, even though he knew it was poison.

He coughed and felt around for the bottle of Jim Beam on the floor next to the La-Z-Boy. He hoped he was wrong about its being empty. But he needed something to soften the blow. He knew his son was dead. He just needed the confirmation to kill the hope that he was wrong. And until then, he was a fish caught on a hook; doomed, but still alive, still allowed to struggle.

 

 

Kurt was still in the bathroom.

Ingrid thanked the Lord for small favors and set the basket of eggs on the kitchen counter. She pulled milk and bacon out of the fridge, deftly sliced a hunk of butter from the stick, and flicked it into the frying pan on the stove. She turned the heat down low, just enough to melt the butter. Her hands found a clean bowl next to the sink and set it next to the eggs. Despite being so injured that she couldn't walk without pain, she found peace in the kitchen. Her body seemed to glide around by itself, pulling out ingredients, collecting utensils, all while an internal clock kept track of the heat and time on the stove.

She reached out, grabbed an egg from the basket.

Cracked it with a precise, practiced motion.

Tiny black centipedes scurried out of the broken shell and crawled over her hand.

Ingrid didn't see them at first. She only felt a vague sensation that the weight of the egg was off, that the yolk should be spilling out into the bowl. A whiff of something foul and rotten invaded her nose, and the long black insects spread across the back of her right hand and slithered up her arm.

She uttered a deep cry of disgust and whipped her hand at the floor, trying to fling the bugs away. Her left hand knocked the basket off the counter, and the rest of the eggs smashed on the floor. Hundreds of long, black insects erupted from the shattered shells and weaved and seethed across the tiles. They looked as if ropy black tissue had stolen dozens and dozens of spindly legs from other insects and was now blindly searching for more warm flesh.

Ingrid slapped at her arm, trying to brush the string-like bugs away. Her fingers left dark gray streaks where she had crushed clusters of the centipedes, spattering them across her skin like thick droplets of oily rain. She cried out again and fell back into the fridge, clawing at her arm with her fingernails, ripping at the writhing horrors. They moved in S patterns, like tiny, frantic snakes, surging up her arm, wriggling under her shirt, and crawling up her neck.

Ingrid went berserk, spinning and flailing. Her shoes spun in the wreckage of the infected eggs, crushing bugs, creating a blackened slime on the kitchen floor. She slipped in the mess and fell, smacking her head into the stove as she went down. One wild arm struck the edge of the frying pan and sent it crashing against the back of the stove.

On the floor, Ingrid whipped her head back and forth as the centipede things crept over her jawbone and forced their way into any hole they could find, worming into her skull through her mouth, her nose, her ears, slipping between her eyelids and eyeballs.

Her body flopped and thrummed against the tiles as if she were having an epileptic fit. Eventually, her legs stopped shaking. Her arms slowed and stopped. The insects on the floor swarmed across her body and disappeared under her clothes.

For a full five minutes, Ingrid did not move.

Her right hand fluttered and curled into a soft fist. Her head twitched. Her eyes, which had never closed, gazed dully at the ceiling. She managed to roll over to her stomach and draw her knees under her. She rocked back and forth for a while, as if getting used to how gravity worked. Moving like a toddler, she crawled toward the back door.

Kurt's voice boomed through the thin slats of the bathroom door, echoing throughout the empty farmhouse, “Better not be burnin' the fuckin' bacon again.”