Strong Light of Day (32 page)

“I don't remember saying that, either.”

“How many females in each colony?” Jones asked Jerry.

“What colonies?” the man asked, growing more confused by the moment.

“As many as five,” Cort Wesley reminded, “as few as three.”

“Based on crop ingestions and frass samples taken throughout the state, in the hot zones we identified denoting the largest infestations…” Jerry started, but then his eyes grew distant and confused. “Where was I?”

“Talking about crop ingestions and frass samples.”

“Oh yes, based on those, I estimated the population of each colony to be between a hundred thousand at the low end and several million at the high, maybe tens of millions by now, allowing for further anticipated growth.”

“Wait a minute,” said Jones, moving from California to West Texas on the elegantly drawn floor map, “are you saying each of these dark blotches across the state of Texas represents as many as
ten million
of these things?”

“Not at all. Sorry to give you that impression. I meant
tens
of millions.”

“Plural,” Cort Wesley noted.

Jerry took a single step to the side on his floor map, placing him closer to Kansas City now. “These beetles only do three things: eat, screw, move, then eat, screw, and move again. At each stop more females lay their eggs, and the eggs grow into larvae, and the larvae grow into pupae, and the pupa becomes an adult beetle. So each stop on the map represents another potential colony.” Jerry suddenly rotated his gaze between Cort Wesley and Jones, as if seeing them for the first time. “Who are you again?”

Jones flashed the badge dangling from his neck. “Homeland Security.”

“Am I in trouble?”

“Not so long as you keep cooperating, Doctor.”

“Cooperating about what?”

Cort Wesley wandered closer to Texas on the floor map, from Minnesota. He found himself standing over the general area of Armand Bayou, the site from which Luke's classmates had gone missing. Not too far to the southwest was one of the tar-black blotches denoting one of the colonies Jack Jerry had described.

“Dr. Jerry?”

“That's me!” the man beamed, swinging toward him.

“Have you ever worked the Texas rodeo circuit?”

“A few times. At least, I think I have.”

“Because I think I've seen you in action. Maybe at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo or the Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo,” Cort Wesley said, raising the two best-known ones.

“I believe I've worked both.”

“There you go, sir. You're damn good, too.”

“Why, thank you!” Jerry told him, beaming again.

“I do have a question.”

“About rodeos?”

“About this map,” Cort Wesley said, and stepped aside so Jerry could see him point downward. “This area around Armand Bayou, right here, just above this colony you've got just to the south of it. If there were a bunch of kids sleeping outside for the night right in the colony's path…”

“There wouldn't be anything left of them but bones, come morning.” Jerry's expression brightened, becoming almost childlike. “So you've seen me perform.”

“I have indeed,” Cort Wesley lied.

“And I was good?”

“Best in the show.”

Jerry's smile slipped off his face, even his clown makeup and painted red lips seeming to droop. “I think something bad happened.” He twisted his gaze out the window at the phalanx of police cars. “I think there's been some trouble.”

“It appears that way,” Cort Wesley nodded.

“And I'll tell you something else,” Jerry said, his voice so somber it started to crack. “There's going to be more.”

 

75

S
AN
A
NTONIO,
T
EXAS

“Here's my question,” Caitlin said to both Doc Whatley and Young Roger. “Since when did beetles become carnivorous? I knew they ate plants, but flesh?”

“Actually,” said Young Roger, clubbing his hair back into a ponytail and using a rubber band to hold it in place there, “they eat all sorts of things.”

“Depending on the species, of course,” Whatley interjected. “And, judging from the frass I had analyzed, this is the beetle the species we're dealing with most closely resembles.”

Caitlin followed his finger back to the encyclopedia and the picture of what looked like a giant insect encased in a shiny shell of armor.

“Odontotaenius disjunctus,”
Whatley continued, “the familiar bessbug, native to the eastern US and Canada, but common pretty much everywhere. They're normally wood burrowers, but the frass I examined indicates they've been living underground instead, likely having adapted, since the colony's large numbers would've made securing enough stray logs impossible.”

“In other words,” Young Roger interrupted, “they've adapted to their environment. Very common for insect species, which explains how they managed to outlive the dinosaurs.” He looked toward the medical examiner. “You want to tell her the real fun part, Doc, or should I?”

“Patience, son,” Whatley told him. “Now, according to what I've been able to gather from the frass, this species crossbred with the coleoptera beetle more common in these parts.”

“Is there any scientific precedent for them becoming carnivorous?”

“Over time, beetles can adapt to practically any kind of diet. Some break down animal and plant debris; some feed on particular kinds of carrion, such as flesh or hide; some feed on wastes, fungi, or plants. Some beetles are fruit eaters.” Something changed in Whatley's expression, wariness replacing the childlike gleam. “And some are predatory. Ranger. I watched a video of a ground beetle attacking an earthworm that would freeze your insides.”

Caitlin looked back at the picture. “And you're saying an army of these is what dropped those cattle in their tracks and chewed them up.”

“Not exactly chewed,” Whatley corrected. “Beetles don't have teeth; they have pincerlike mandibles that help them crush and eat food. But that's the idea, yes. And they're also a nearly perfect organism, one of the most survivable on the planet, even more adaptable than cockroaches—and far more formidable.”

“What do you mean by that, exactly?”

“Well, bombardier beetles secrete a compound they can actually shoot, potentially injuring small mammals and killing invertebrate predators outright. And the
Anthiinae
family of beetles, meanwhile, can hit their targets with similar secretions from as much as ten feet away.”

“How much of this did the two of you know a couple days back?”

“Not a whole lot,” Whatley shrugged.

“I don't like sleeping much anyway,” Young Roger added.

“At all, more like, in this case,” Caitlin corrected. “One thing, though, Doc: cattle aren't small mammals.”

“No, Ranger, they're not. But a million of these things would be enough to cover a half-acre of land in a black blanket.” His face paled a bit. “I can't even picture what a swarm of them feeding on a herd would look and sound like.”

“What do you mean ‘sound'?”

“The bess beetle is able to produce a recorded fourteen acoustic signals, more than many vertebrates. Adults produce the sounds by rubbing the upper surface of the abdomen against the hind wings.”

“But they can't fly, right?”

“Not that we know of, no.”

“That's a strange way of putting it, Doc.”

Whatley's expression turned dour. Young Roger took a single step forward to place himself between the older man and Caitlin.

“Now comes the fun part,” said Young Roger. “A picture out of the old encyclopedia is all well and good, except for the fact what we're facing here is as advanced beyond that thing as we are from cavemen.”

“The boy can't prove what he's about to say, Ranger,” Doc Whatley cautioned.

“But you agree with me on most of it.”

“Some, son. Some.”

Caitlin planted her hands on her hips, stopped just short of stamping her foot and firing her gun into the ceiling. “Will one of you get to the point?”

Whatley nodded. “We agree on the fact that exposure to something in the soil, air, or groundwater—maybe a combination of all three—led to a drastic mutation. We're guessing the mutation would've occurred over several life cycles. Since beetles ordinarily live around a year, whatever stimulus caused the mutation would date back three or four years, probably.”

“This didn't happen overnight, in other words,” an antsy Young Roger added.

“I'm talking here,” Whatley groused at him.

“My turn now,” Young Roger said, no longer able to contain himself. “These things aren't just mutations—at least I don't believe they are.”

“Then what are they?” Caitlin asked him.

“Advanced on the evolutionary scale, Ranger. I think we're looking at what beetles would have evolved into after, well, maybe another ten thousand years or so.”

*   *   *

“Just a theory,” reminded Doc Whatley, “with no proof or data to back it up.”

“The proof and data is in the cattle and crops they've been eating.”

“They don't actually eat the crops,” Whatley corrected. “They eat the refuse and, especially, the seeds.”

“Same effect.”

“Not really.”

“So,” Caitlin advanced, before the two men could start arguing again, “these crop infestations weren't really infestations or blights at all.”

“No, ma'am,” said Young Roger. “The crops didn't grow at all, or grew poorly, because the seeds had been damaged or destroyed.”

“You can see where we're going with this,” said Whatley. “Traditionally, beetles aren't migratory by nature. But these will go anywhere there's a food supply for them, in the form of crops or cattle—anything green or flesh and blood, really.”

“The whole Midwest, in other words.”

“Maybe just for starters. I've been doing some figuring, Ranger. Care to hazard a guess as to how many of these things there'll be in a year's time if this continues unchecked?”

“Not really.”

“Neither can I, because the figures keep climbing. A trillion at last count, or three thousand for every American, according to the last census.”

“Jesus Christ.…”

“Yeah,” echoed Young Roger, “do the math.”

“That's only part of the picture,” said Whatley. “That analysis of the recovered frass I did also found plenty of crop waste, too, almost like, well…”

“Almost like what, Doc?” Caitlin pushed.

“Like these sons of bitches are eating everything in their path, Ranger.”

 

76

M
ANHATTAN,
K
ANSAS

“Cheer up, cowboy. How bad can it be?” Jones said, his voice a bit slurred by the third whiskey he was working his way through. Jack Daniel's poured neat, in an actual glass, since they were flying private.

Their jet had finally been cleared for takeoff, and Cort Wesley found himself unable to stop picturing the hordes of beetles, making up the growing number of colonies, overrunning the entire state of Texas before spreading out in all directions.

“This is the happiest I've ever seen you, Jones. If I wasn't the only one here, I'd suspect someone had slipped something into your drink.”

“It's called purpose. I've got people taking my calls again. I'm back in the game. Fuck persona non grata.”

Cort Wesley had his cell phone out. “I'm calling my boys.”

“It's been, what, a whole two hours since you spoke with them last?”

“What part of my youngest maybe still being a target don't you understand?”

*   *   *

Cort Wesley turned away from Jones to hit “Dylan” on his Contacts list, remembering how his oldest son had lost his patience teaching him how to program all the numbers and e-mail. How long ago had that been? Maybe before the boy had gone off to college—an Ivy League school, no less. What were the odds?

“Everything's fine, Dad,” the boy said by way of greeting, picking up after the first ring. “Just like the last time you called.”

“Nothing suspicious?”

“Nope, other than those black helicopters circling overhead.”

“This isn't funny.”

“I'm not going back to school until it's over.”

“Put your brother on.”

“Can't you call him back on his own phone?”

“I'm paying for both of them. Now get him on yours.”

It took maybe half a minute before Luke came on.

“I'm on my way home,” Cort Wesley told him.

“You don't have to keep calling. I'm fine.” But then a pause followed, heavy enough for Cort Wesley to feel the air over the line between them. “Any word on the kids from my school?”

“Not that I've heard. But you don't have to worry. Caitlin's gonna find them and bring them home.”

Cort Wesley could hear Luke snickering on the other end of the line. “You talk to me like I'm ten. It's on TV twenty-four/seven. FBI's in charge now. Rangers aren't even involved anymore.”

“This is Caitlin Strong we're talking about. Think that's gonna stop her?”

“The big guy was here,” Luke told him.

“I know. His men still are.”

“I can't see them.”

“You're not supposed to. Neither will anybody stupid enough to come anywhere near the house.”

“That's good.” Luke paused, tension crossing over the line as Cort Wesley listened to him breathe. “Zach's parents picked him up.”

“Okay,” was all Cort Wesley could think to say, as opposed to something wrong.

“They didn't look too happy. I don't think they like me.”

“Screw them.”