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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

Yarkie could only trust that the two Harvard scientists could deal with the distorted insects and their unspeakable appetites.

Now Amos Tarbell could admit to himself that he had privately deemed Elias Johnson’s phone call to Harvard too quick on the trigger. But now he was more than grateful. The cockroaches they had just so narrowly eluded were more formidable than any rats he had ever seen! If those bastards, those “crawling sharks,” ever got out of the woods into Yarkie’s homes the carnage would create a ghost island.

For that matter, it occurred to the sheriff, if those monstrosities ever hid on a boat and got over to the mainland, they could make a ghost land of the Cape itself. And hadn’t somebody predicted it was insects that would take over the entire world in the end?

For all his experience and ruggedness, the sheriff shivered like a child.

The biologists would have to tackle the tumbling questions in his mind. They were in for a hellish surprise. It was the damnedest “rats” they’d find when they opened the picnic box he was still pressing firmly shut.

At the thought of the mangled rabbit and the grisly autopsy ahead in the laboratory, Sheriff Amos Tarbell of Yarkie shouted for Ben Dorset to stop the car. He didn’t want to be sick all over everybody.

ALERT

ALERT

1

ONE

The two scientists, their crisp white lab coats now stained with red flecks, came into the kitchen. They faced the anxious Yarkie group, pale and unsettled themselves. In all their years of scalpels and dissections, neither one had come upon a gory abhorrence like the sacrificed rabbit. The giant roaches had tunneled through the corpse erratically, apparently tasting and sampling this organ and that. The body was a ruptured blob with flaps of shredded gristle and bone curdled in a vile bloody soup on the bottom of the picnic box, disgustingly mixed with the remains of Bonnie Taylor’s uneaten lunch.

The two roaches had been recovered. Peter Hubbard had found them lying torpid in the rabbit’s torn lungs after their glut. One of the insects had been dissected immediately; the other was placed alive in a covered glass flask so its activity could be studied. Even in its lethargic state and in the undimmed laboratory lights, the roach showed signs of restlessness. Its antennae wafted about ceaselessly, and it moved steadily if slowly around the bottom of the jar, seeming to the scientists to be seeking its partner or the main column from which it had attacked the rabbit.