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Back The Nest Save as PDF
Chapters (82)
  1. Cover
  2. Copyright page
  3. Introduction by Will Errickson
  4. Acknowledgements
  5. TREMORS
  6. 1
  7. 2
  8. 3
  9. 4
  10. 5
  11. 6
  12. SUSPICIONS
  13. 1
  14. 2
  15. 3
  16. 4
  17. 5
  18. DREAD
  19. 1
  20. 2
  21. 3
  22. 4
  23. 5
  24. 6
  25. WITNESS
  26. 1
  27. 2
  28. 3
  29. ALERT
  30. 1
  31. 2
  32. 3
  33. 4
  34. 5
  35. ENCOUNTER
  36. 1
  37. 2
  38. 3
  39. 4
  40. 5
  41. 6
  42. HAVOC
  43. 1
  44. 2
  45. 3
  46. 4
  47. 5
  48. 6
  49. SEARCH
  50. 1
  51. 2
  52. 3
  53. 4
  54. 5
  55. CLASH
  56. 1
  57. 2
  58. 3
  59. 4
  60. 5
  61. 6
  62. 7
  63. COUNTERATTACK
  64. 1
  65. 2
  66. 3
  67. 4
  68. 5
  69. 6
  70. 7
  71. VICTORY
  72. 1
  73. 2
  74. 3
  75. 4
  76. 5
  77. 6
  78. 7
  79. 8
  80. 9
  81. EPILOGUE
  82. About the Author

The sheriff tried to pull the woman to the window where the others were now outside, reaching in to help). Hampered by his tank, he could not get hold of her and she remained rooted, staring at the insects now covering Craig Soaras’s still-­twitching muscles. Tarbell kicked the woman’s legs to make her move. She looked up from the dying man on the floor. Tarbell could see that he was a stranger to her. Her eyes were a zombie’s. But she started to the window. With Tarbell’s tank protecting them both, they reached the eager, outstretched hands of their friends. Tarbell kept triggering the killing spray at the oncoming marauders, overcome with his own loathing and fury. To him the formation of the roach heads, their eyes, mandibles, mouths, gave them the appearance of laughing monsters—monstrosities mocking all the humans! This, he thought, was what the demons of Hell must really look like: Roaches! Satan himself a deformed, giant roach!

The sheriff heard Elias Johnson calling desperately for him to leave. “Amos! We want to burn the place fast, while they’re all inside!”

The sheriff gave the nearest roaches one more deadly shot of his dry ice, and leaped through the window head first, heedless of the jagged glass. He jumped to his feet to help Johnson, Homer, and Hubbard as soon as he understood what they were up to. They were stationing themselves around the lighthouse, carrying gasoline cans.

“All at once!” Elias Johnson cried. “Splash her now!” Johnson lit a flare and threw it into the lighthouse. The explosions of orange-­red flame showed droves of cockroaches crawling out on the window frames coming after the people. The blaze caught them. Some were soaked with gasoline and split open with a hard percussion that had the Yarkie men cheering. To them, the flaring up of the roach legion was a burning flag of revenge, a fire banner of reprisal and retaliation. The conflagration stirred a sediment of savagery in them they did not know they owned.

Cries of triumph came from Johnson, Tarbell, and Homer. Elias Johnson’s eyes were fiery orbs of his own wrath. Let this burning lighthouse and the incarceration of the roaches avenge the murders of Craig Soaras and Wanda Lindstrom, of everyone the killers had slaughtered and bereaved. The old man watched with a dark, unhidden exultation as the gasoline explosions ripped the building. Now the lighthouse was a different kind of beacon light, he thought truculently—now it was a marker of a different kind of succor and salvation for beleaguered people.

They were wiping out the insects.

7

SEVEN

Leaving the flaming tower behind, in Johnson’s car speeding for the village, Bonnie Taylor was sobbing wretchedly in Elizabeth Carr’s arms.