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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

“I wish you wouldn’t do it!” Liz’s eyes were moist. Bonnie had been in love with Craig only for hours; she had loved this man for years.

“You know that I must,” he said simply, and pressed her shoulders with a tender message they both understood.

6

SIX

“Operation Extermination,” as the Yarkie men quickly labeled the venture, went more easily than even Peter Hubbard had hoped. Only a few of the vicious roaches were visible when the group reached the cave. The huge insects were dispatched with the dry ice, but not before even the most skeptical of the firemen became frightened and shaken believers.

Proceeding by Hubbard’s scheme, a hole was quickly drilled in the ceiling of the nest, and the hoses from car exhausts were inserted simultaneously. The vapors pene­trated and spread as Hubbard planned. Elizabeth and Bonnie, standing at a considerable distance away with the firemen holding gasoline tanks, watched tensely, exchanging anxious looks.

From the firemen on guard, there were puffs of the dry ice. Where tunnel exits did bring a few furtive roaches trying for the surface, they were readily managed.

Men trained in the use of salvage tools had no difficulty shearing away the ceiling of the roach cave. Watching them enlarge the opening with their poles and hooks, Hubbard felt as if he were in an operating room where surgeons were removing the top of a skull. His heart was palpitating with the expectation of the discovery he anticipated. If his hypothesis was correct, he was about to bear personal witness to the actual fusion of individual insects into a multi-individual organism analagous to a vertebrate brain!

It was time. A hush fell over all the people on the scene. There was little breeze and only a few bird calls in the burned, leafless trees. It was almost as if the massive dose of carbon dioxide put the whole world to sleep—as the roaches seemed to be motionlessly asleep, or dead, when Peter Hubbard looked down and signaled Amos Tarbell and Ben Dorset to lower him into the nest’s darkness without disturbing the great roach mound he saw in the center. It was “the brain,” he was certain.

Elizabeth bit her lip and held her breath as the man disappeared into the hole. Pirates, or someone, had indeed cut out a great hidden cave in the eastern ridge. It was some eight feet deep to the floor. Despite the clumsiness of his protective suit and the diving helmet he decided to wear, Hubbard was able to see all around the walls. His flashlight picked out storage chambers everywhere. As in the earlier, abandoned nest, the insect larder was grisly with gaping skulls of both animals and men, broken bones of young and old, and maggots anesthetized to motionlessness on lumps of flesh that could only be from the children off the Tub.