Homing (14 page)

For the moment, despite his gut feeling, Shannon was pretty much stymied. Unfolding his six-foot-four-inch frame from the creaking rattan chair on Russell Owen's shady front porch, he gazed out over the valley. The morning wasn't too hot yet, and the air was clear enough today that you could see all the way across to the peaks of the Sierras, just visible in the distance.

In the pasture adjacent to the barn, the horses were grazing; in the field to the north of the pasture, he could make out Russell's small dairy herd.

On mornings like this Pleasant Valley looked so ridiculously peaceful that it almost made Mark Shannon wonder why they needed his services at all.

But of course he knew why they needed him: every now and then, he got a call like the one Otto had made this morning. This problem, though, looked like it was going to go away by itself, once Otto settled down a bit. "Well, I'll talk to Carl Henderson," he told Russell and Karen, who were flanking Julie on the wide glider that creaked even more than the wicker whenever it moved. "But if Julie says nothing happened, I guess that's pretty much gonna wrap it up." As he placed his hat carefully back onto his thick thatch of blond hair, he decided there was no point in telling them he also planned to keep a weather eye on Carl Henderson, just in case. After all, even though Julie seemed like a nice kid, there was just the off chance that she might have been leading Carl on, in which case there wouldn't have been any bruises for Ellen Filmore to find.

Time, Mark Shannon knew, would eventually tell the tale. As he said good-bye to the Owens, he made a mental note to keep his ear to the ground for any rumors about Julie Spellman, as well as Carl Henderson. Jail-bait was jail-bait, but if Pleasant Valley was going to have a Lolita on its hands, he wanted at least to be able to warn a few folks to give her as wide a berth as possible.

That, he decided as he left the farm, was the major part of his job-keeping the wrong folks from getting together, so as few sparks would fly as possible.

When Mark Shannon was gone, Karen turned worriedly to her daughter. "Maybe you ought to go upstairs and lye down for a while," she mused.

Julie shook her head. "I'm fine," she said. This time the words she uttered were almost true, for in the time that had passed since Dr. Filmore had given her the shot, she'd finally begun to feel better. The feverishness was almost gone, and the strange itchiness deep inside her had all but disappeared.

Perhaps, after all, she wasn't losing her mind.

"All right," Karen sighed. "if you say so." As Julie got up and went into the house, Karen focused on Russell.

"The hives," she said, her tone telling Russell there was going to be no putting this discussion off any longer. "I told you I want those hives off the farm, and I meant it, Russell. First Molly almost died, then Julie."

"But they're both fine," Russell protested. "They both responded to the antitoxin."

"What if Carl Henderson hadn't had it with him today?" Karen asked. "Julie was worse than Molly! She wouldn't even have made it to San Luis Obispo!"

"But he did have it," Russell reminded her.

"What if Dr. Filmore runs out of it?" she pressed. "My God, Russell, it's not even on the market yet, and any of us could get stung any time!" She shook her head. "I just don't want those hives anywhere around. Those bees are dangerous."

"They're not that dangerous," Russell replied doggedly.

"And besides, we can't just get rid of them. Without the bees, the alfalfa won't pollinate. We can't run the farm without them."

Karen stared at him. "You're telling me that we're totally dependent on them?"

"It's part of how a farm like ours works," he said. "Alfalfa is a terrific crop, but it can't pollinate itself. It has to have bees."

"There's got to be another way," Karen began, but Russell didn't let her finish.

instead he explained to her what had happened when they'd used UniGrow's fertilizer on the fields and the hives had been inadvertently sterilized. "We lost more than eighty percent of the crops," he finished. "Without the bees to pollinate the fields, the alfalfa just disappeared."

His eyes fixed on hers. "We can't let that happen again, Karen. One more year like that, and we'll be wiped out. I mean wiped out, Karen," he repeated, reading the doubt in her expression. "We'd lose the farm."

Karen took a deep breath, held it a moment, then let it out slowly in a long sigh. "All right," she said, getting to her feet. "Then let's think of something else. Come on."

They left the porch and started down the driveway toward the road. Crossing it, they walked hand in hand along the dirt track that led toward an immense berm of rocks. Behind the boulders lay the hives. "What if we moved them farther from the house?" Karen asked.

Russell shook his head. "It's not that easy to move hives. You have to move them at least five miles, 'or you lose the workers. Any distance much less than five miles, and the day after you move them, they'll head out to gather pollen and nectar, but instead of returning to the new hive, they'll go back to where the hive was before.

doesn't change unless the territory is completely unfamiliar, they'll just go back to the previous site and hover there until they die. The only way around it is to move them into a completely new environment, where nothing at all is familiar to them."

Karen turned to look at him. "Then we'll have UniGrow bring in new hives and put them as far from the house as we can," she said, as if the solution to the problem should have been as obvious to him as it was to her. "Or is there some reason why we can't do that, either?"

"I don't know," Russell admitted. "But I can talk to Carl Henderson about it. I suppose it depends on whether they have any hives available right now." He put his arm around her shoulder and pulled her close. "We'll figure it out, hon. And once we know what's going on with the bees, and how come both the girls reacted to them, we'll know what to do. But we have to give Carl a chance to check out the bees." He bent over and kissed her. "I didn't really know how worried you were, either."

"I wasn't, until today," Karen told him. "I thought Molly's reaction was just a freak allergy, but when Julie-2' She shuddered as she remembered her older daughter in the clinic, her flesh distended with swelling, her breathing labored and ragged, looking as if she might die at any moment.

"We'll get it solved," Russell promised her. "Carl's working on it, and he'll get the UniGrow labs fired up, too. The worst scenario is that we live out the summer with these hives. Because of the contamination in the fields, the bees we have will be starting to go sterile, so we'll have to get new ones next year anyway. But one way or another, we're always going to have to have bees here.

Without them, there's just no farm at all."

Feeling less than mollified, Karen nevertheless slipped her arm around Russell's waist. Something, at least, was being done, and if they were all careful, maybe nothing else would happen.

The sun was low in the western sky. In another fifteen or twenty minutes it would drop behind the foothills of the coast mountains, sending a shadow racing swiftly across Owen farm, then across the breadth of the San Joaquin toward the Sierras. For an hour after the shadow had fallen, dusk would linger. After only a little more than a week in Pleasant Valley, Karen had already discovered that the long evenings of slowly fading light were her favorite time of day. This evening, with the heat of the afternoon already broken and a cool night breeze already creeping from the ocean into the valley, promised to be nearly perfect. "I want to go for a walk," Karen told Russell as they sat on the front porch, rocking the glider gently and gazing out over the farm. "I want to go down by the creek and listen to the running water, and I want to smell the fresh air. And I want you to hold my hand. I want us to pretend that we're in one of those dumb romantic novels where no one ever has to deal with the real world.

Supper was over, and in the kitchen Julie and Kevin were doing the dishes. Molly was playing on the lawn with Bailey, though Karen wasn't sure whether the dog had quite figured out that Molly was a nine-year-old girl, rather than a calf. The two of them had invented a chasing game, the rules of which, as far as Karen could tell, only the dog and the little girl could possibly understand.

inside the house the phone began to ring. Karen was about to get up when Russell stopped her. "Let one of the kids get it. If it's for us, they'll tell us." Karen sank back onto the creaking contraption upon which they were sitting. A moment later Kevin appeared at the screen door.

"Can we go to the movies?"

"By 'we,' do you mean you and Julie, or you and Julie and Molly?" Russell countered.

Kevin's eyes clouded. "Come on, Dad-nobody else is taking little kids."

"Who all's going?" Russell asked.

Kevin reeled off four names that sounded vaguely familiar to Karen, though she could attach a face to none of them.

"What do you think?" she heard Russell ask.

She shrugged. "If Julie really feels well enough, I guess it's okay."

Ten minutes later Kevin and Julie came out. "We're going to walk over to Jeff's house," he said. "He's going to drive."

Karen looked questioningly at Russell, who pointed toward the next farm toward town, which spread out from a haphazard group of buildings a half a mile away from their own house. "Marge Larkin's oldest son," he explained. "She rents an old tenant house from Vic Costas, next door."

Karen, still worried about what had happened that morning, gazed up at Julie. "You're sure you're all right?"

Julie's eyes rolled with adolescent scorn. "How many times do I have to tell you?" she said. "I'm fine, Mom!"

"All right," Karen sighed. "Just checking. What time will you be home?"

"One?" Julie asked, obviously using the hour as an opening bid.

"Ten," Karen countered.

"Mom!" Julie wailed. "The movie won't even be over by then! And it's summer-we shouldn't have to be in until midnight."

"And this is a farm, where everyone has to get up early," Russell interjected. "You'll be home by eleven, and that's it."

Julie, unused to having to bargain with anyone but her mother, looked as if she were about to argue with Russell.

And Karen, in that instant, knew the moment had come to establish the rules of the new family unit. "Eleven it is, then," she said. Her eyes held her daughter's, and for a moment she thought Julie might still try to argue. But before she could say anything, Kevin spoke.

"Nothing's open later than ten-@, anyway. Let's go."

"What about you?" Russell asked as Kevin and Julie left the porch and swill off across the fields toward the farm next door. "Ready for your walk?"

"What about Molly?" Karen countered. "We can't just leave her here."

"Why not?" Russell asked. "This isn't L.A., honey.

Dad's right next door, and she's playing with a dog who would cheerfully tear the throat out of anyone or anything who tried to hurt her. She's fine by herself."

Karen shook her head. Not tonight-not after what had happened just that very morning. This evening, at least, she wasn't about to leave her daughter alone with no one but the big dog to look after her.

Russell, reading her worries perfectly, whistled to Bailey, then called out to Molly. "Come on! We're going down by the creek!" As Molly and Bailey dashed off across the field, Russell stepped into the house and picked up the flashlight that always sat on the table in the foyer.

When he'd come back out of the house, Karen slipped her hand into his and they started toward the stand of scrub oaks that bordered the field. Through them a brook wound its way down from the foothills to the valley floor.

A few minutes later, sitting on a rock at the edge of the stream, Karen peeled off her sneakers and socks, and dipped her feet into the water, sighing in contentment as she felt the coolness of it penetrate her skin, and watched Molly and the dog explore the shore a few yards downstream. "Perfect," she sighed. 'This is just perfect." She leaned back, resting Against Russell's chest, and felt his arms tighten around her. "It's all going to work out, isn't it?" she asked.

"Of course it is," Russell assured her. "From now on, everything's going to be wonderful."

Dawn had no idea how long she had been praying for death. A while. Maybe minutes, maybe hours, maybe only seconds-she had thought her torture had finally ended. The blackness around her had begun to recede, and she heard music playing. Heavenly music, like she had always imagined the harps of angels would produce.

She felt a gentle caress, as if loving fingers were stroking her skin.

But then everything began to change-the swirling colors turned into a glaring light, and what had been music before was now the furious buzzing of thousands of insects.

The stroking fingers became instruments of torture as mandibles and stingers sank into her naked skin.

Her mind felt as if it were about to shatter as it was wrenched once more out of the safety and comfort of sleep by the torture her body was undergoing, and again she tried to force a scream from her ruined vocal cords.

All that emerged was a bubbling gasp as her final plea for rescue dissolved into a barely audible gurgle of defeat.

It was the laugh-the shattering, maniacal braying that cut through the last defenses of her crumbling mind and made her open her eyes.

He was standing in the open doorway, silhouetted Against the glare of the naked lightbulb behind him, a black shadow Against a blinding white background.

She knew who it was, though, even knew why he had come.

She was dying, and he wanted to see it happen.

A surge of rage energized Dawn, and from somewhere deep within herself she found the strength to lash out once more, to kick out at him, even though she had no hope of reaching him. As he laughed once more, she fell limp and her head flopped forward.

For the first time, her eyes beheld what was happening to her Paralyzed and totally muted by the awful sight, she gazed in horror at the thousands of insects crawling over her skin. But they weren't just crawling on her They were killing her Killing her and eating her at the same time.