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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

Bonnie’s hate burst in her breast. With a shriek of outrage, she grabbed a can of gasoline and dashed to the opened roach nest. For one moment she stared into the sullen shadow of the deep hole. There were the predators, her enemies, every stinking one! The murderers of Craig Soaras! Many, she could see, were now creeping about, coming alive, surviving yet to rampage and maim again. Bonnie terribly needed to be with the first to pour the fuel on those crawling beasts, the first to set the devilish hiding place afire, the first to see the insects consumed, burned, burned, burned, and hear their roach squeaks of agony, watch their dirty bodies singe and sizzle and turn to blobs.

The weighty container slipped from her slim, perspiring hands. In grabbing for it, the woman’s feet came out from under her on the loosened earth. Spikes of new terror ripped her insides as she slid down the yawning hole. She saw herself falling in, buried alive beneath the insect filth. She, too, would die in bloody pieces in the foul roach mouths! Bonnie Taylor fainted, and did not know she was being pulled to safety by the sheriff and his men.

When she was safe and recovered, Tarbell signaled firemen to come forward with more gasoline.

The cresting explosion sent flames geysering out of the nest, destroying everything within.

The Yarkie men pounded each other on their rubber-­suited backs, jumping about and shouting jubilantly in the ultimate victory.

Bonnie watched the blaze with glaring eyes of malice and detestation. Lines from Shakespeare seethed through her mind: “. . . and entrails feed the sacrificing fire. Whose smoke, like incense, doth perfume the sky.” To the others, the incinerating fire might be the foulest stink in the world, but to her the smoke of the roach entrails was a perfume, an incense of revenge and vengeance sweet to her nostrils, though too late, too late, too late . . .

7

SEVEN

The column of smoke marked the immolation of the fearsome Yarkie misbegotten. It was the funeral pyre of demonic creatures, mutations that turned out evil dissonances in the hidden mysteries of evolution—“dissonances” at least to humans, Peter Hubbard thought.

On his feet, with his bandaged hand on Elizabeth Carr’s arm, the scientist watched with a swelling of regret as well as abhorrence as The Nest went up. The threat had to be demolished, as he had acknowledged. Yet, the natural power that had created this roach colony was an imperial force beyond Man’s right and wrong.

After all, as he taught his classes, there are a billion billion insects on earth, nearly a billion for each human. Mass extinctions occurred in Nature—like the close of the Cretaceous period, when death came to dinosaurs, plankton, ammonites, and other forms of life. Theories included disease, copper poisoning of oceans, climatic upheavals, even asteroid collisions with earth.