Homing (23 page)

Without thinking, she picked up half a lemon and bit into it.

Ben stared at her, his eyes wide. "What are you doing?"

he asked. "You can't do that! Lemons are too sour to eat!"

Julie shook her head, already reaching for a second lemon. Though she knew the little boy was right, the lemon didn't taste the least bit sour to her.

Indeed, it tasted almost sweet.

Greedily, she sucked the pulp out of the second lemon half, then reached for a third.

And as the juice trickled down her throat, her hunger only increased.

She went to the refrigerator, opened it and surveyed the shelves.

There was a large bowl. Through its Saran Wrap covering, Julie could see what looked like a piece of leftover pot roast, the grayish meat sitting in a pool of congealed fat and gravy.

She pulled the bowl out of the refrigerator, set it on the counter and pulled off the plastic. Sinking her finger into the bowl, she scooped up a large brown glob of the ice cold meat drippings and stuck it in her mouth.

Ben stared at her, his own stomach rebelling g at the thought of putting that icky mess into his mouth. "Gross!"

he groaned.

But Julie was already scooping up more of the slimy ooze, and tearing off pieces of the gristly meat, stuffing them into her mouth as fast as she could, barely chewing them before gulping them down.

"What are you doing?" Ben yelled as the roast began to disappear. "Mom said we weren't supposed to eat that!" She said.

Julie, though, was deaf to the little boy's words. Her entire being was focused on satisfying the hunger within her.

She tore off more bits of meat, and dipped her fingers deep into the jellied fat and gravy.

Ben, frightened now by her bizarre behavior, edged toward the back door. "I'm gonna find Jeff," he said, more to himself than to Julie. And as she continued devouring the roast, he slipped out the back door and ran toward the far field, where he could see Vic Costas' tractor.

"Look," Ben said to Jeff twenty minutes later. "Look what she's doing!" He was pointing through the window into the kitchen, his brother beside him.

inside, Julie was still standing at the counter. What seemed to be the entire contents of the refrigerator were spread around her, and as Jeff watched, she broke a large chunk off a block of cheddar cheese, shoved it into her mouth, then pushed a wad of bread in after it.

As she chewed the mass in her mouth, her hands tore at the wrapper of some sliced bologna, finally tearing at the plastic with her teeth in her urgency to get past the packaging to the meat inside.

The bowl that had contained pot roast was empty, save for the last few gobs of gravy, which Julie scooped into her mouth as Jeff watched in awed fascination and disgust.

At that moment, she looked up and caught sight of him through the window. For a second Jeff had the eerie sense of having caught a wild animal devouring its prey.

And then she smiled at him.

Smiled at him in a way that excited him.

He remembered, then, how she'd gone off with Kevin the other night, and not come back.

Even though Kevin hadn't told him what happened, Jeff was pretty sure he knew.

After all, Julie was from L.A., and everyone knew what the girls down there were like.

And now she was smiling at him.

"Go over to Mr. Costas' house," he told Ben.

"Why?" the little boy demanded. "What are you going to do? I want to watch."

"Well, you're not going to," Jeff told him. "Just go over to Mr. Costas' and wait for me there."

Ben started to object, then saw the look in his brother's eye. The look that told him he'd better do as Jeff said.

"It's not fair," he complained. "I was the one who-"

"Get!" Jeff ordered him, and finally Ben started up the road that led to Vic Costas' farmhouse, a few hundred yards away. Only when he was sure his brother was going to obey him did Jeff finally go into the kitchen.

"Julie?" he said. "What are you doing?"

Julie, her hunger still strong within her, looked at him but said nothing.

He moved closer and reached out. His fingers touched her skin.

She jerked away, but her eyes remained fixed on him, and now she was licking her lips.

Jeff knew what that meant.

He moved close to her again. "Come on, Julie," he said, slipping his arms around her. "I know what you want. And there's no one here but us." He began nuzzling her neck, his lips nibbling at her skin. She wriggled in his arms, but her movement only excited him more. "You want to go into the bedroom?"

Julie was struggling, trying to get away from him, but Jeff twisted her around, tripping her-whether accidentally or deliberately, she wasn't quite sure-and she fell to the floor. A second later he was on top of her, pinning her down, and she was looking up at him.

He lowered his head to kiss her, and Julie opened her mouth.

Opened her mouth and exhaled in a great, rasping breath.

And from Julie's mouth emerged a swirling black cloud, a dark and writhing mist that split instantly into dozens of serpentine tongues as it lashed from Julie's throat and curled around Jeff Larkin's head like tentacles, instantly paralyzing him with a horror greater than any he'd experienced before.

It wasn't just a mist-Jeff knew that even before it engulfed him.

Though the specks were so tiny he couldn't even make them out as individuals, Jeff knew they were alive, that they were flying together in a swarm the same way termites and ants sometimes rose from the ground by the tens of thousands, home on wings they would lose within a day.

Almost instantly the mist enveloped Jeff's head like a dark shroud, and he instinctively drew in his breath to scream out in terror.

He could feel them in his mouth now-millions of them. He was choking as they filled his throat and spread through his lungs.

His scream emerging as no more than a bubbling gurgle, he rolled away from Julie, twitching as he scrabbled across the floor in a futile attempt to escape the swarming mass that now surrounded him.

He caught a glimpse of Julie for a split second, and his gorge rose as he saw a second mass emerge from her open mouth and join the cloud that now totally engulfed him.

They were settling on his skin; suddenly, every square inch of his body felt as if it were on fire.

Now they were in his eyes and his nose.

His ears were filled with them, and in his head he heard a terrible humming buzz, which he was certain was the sound of their millions of wings.

The torture went on, the nearly invisible creatures swarming around him, burrowing their way through his skin, into the membranes of his mouth and nose, his eyes and ears.

There was no way to escape them, no way to defend himself from them.

He lay squirming on the floor, and as the unbearable horror burgeoned within him, a new terror seized Jeff Larkin's mind.

He was going to die.

In some way-in some unearthly manner that he didn't understand at all-Julie Spellman was killing him.

And there was nothing he could do about it.

Marge Larkin's jaw was throbbing with pain when she woke up the next morning, and even before she got out of bed, she swallowed one of the pills she'd left on her bedside table, washing it down with water that tasted a bit stale after having been in the glass all night. She flopped back on the pillows for a few minutes, waiting for the codeine the dentist had prescribed to take effect.

She could barely even remember coming home last night. The drive had been pure torture, since she'd refused to take any pain medication, and hadn't even dared to drive until the effects of both the Novocain and the nitrous oxide had worn off. By the time she'd gotten in, much later than planned, she felt almost delirious with pain, and instantly dosed herself with codeine. Still, she had made it home, and everything seemed to be all right. Though Julie Spellman was no longer there, she had a vague recollection of Jeff telling her that he'd sent Julie home and put Ben to bed. Nodding mutely, she'd stopped only long enough to kiss Ben good night before going to bed herself.

Now, though, she recalled Ben trying to tell her something-something she'd been far too miserable to listen to.

Not that she felt much better this morning.

Still, no matter how much her jaw hurt, she was going to have to get up.

Get up, take care of her kids, and go to work today.

The thought of trying to work made her groan softly to herself. Though her official title at the weekly community newspaper was that of secretary, in fact she and Jim Chapman were, publisher, editor-in-chief, and jack-ofalls, as he liked to say-were pretty much the whole staff. There were a few people in town who wrote stories now and then, but Jim Chapman and Marge Larkin actually got the paper out. It wasn't much of a paper, Marge had to admit. In fact, it hadn't turned a profit in any of the ten years she'd worked for the Pleasant Valley Chronicle.

Not that her boss cared. Jim had plenty of money from his first career, which had involved inventing a complicated computer gadget Marge didn't even pretend to understand, and brought him checks every month that allowed him easily to make up the losses the Pleasant Valley Chronicle generated. "I'm having a good time, and I can afford it," he always told her whenever she suggested maybe he ought to stop throwing good money after bad.

So who was she to complain? She liked Jim Chapman, and she liked her job, and she hated to miss a day's work, because all too often it meant they were a day late getting the paper out.

Not, Marge suspected, that anyone in town except she and Jim cared if the Chronicle was late, but it was the principle of the thing.

So, jaw hurting or not, she was going to have- to work today'

She climbed out of bed, dressed, and went into the kitchen to start a pot of coffee. Tentatively exploring the gap in her lower jaw where a molar had been until yesterday afternoon, she opened the refrigerator to get out the milk. As she reached for the carton, she automatically scanned the contents of the refrigerator, putting together a mental list of things to pick up at the store on the way home from work.

Marge frowned. Not only was the leftover pot roast that she'd planned to heat up for dinner tonight no longer there, but other things seemed to be missing as well.

The block of cheddar cheese was almost completely gone.

And the package of bologna that was supposed to serve as sandwich material for the whole week.

It hadn't even been opened yesterday morning, and now only a couple of slices remained.

And the bread, too.

Hadn't there been a whole loaf yesterday?

How much could three kids have eaten last night?

Then she remembered that they weren't supposed to have eaten anything-at the last minute she'd decided to give them money to go to the A&W for hamburgers.

Hadn't they even gone? She couldn't believe they'd give up a chance to go to the drive-in in favor of staying home and eating leftovers.

Now, as Ben came into the kitchen, still in his pajamas and rubbing sleep from his eyes, she nodded toward the refrigerator, "You guys sure ate us out of house and home yesterday, didn't you?"

Ben shook his head. "Not me," he said with such exaggerated innocence that Marge instantly knew there was more to the story, and that she would have to dig it out of him so no one could accuse him of being. a tattletale.

"Oh, really?" Marge said. "Well, if it wasn't you, who was it?"

"Jeff and Julie," Ben said, climbing onto one of the chairs and reaching for the box of Cheerios.

"Jeff and Julie?" Marge echoed.

@'Well, mostly Julie," Ben said. Under his mother's prodding, he told her what had happened, up until the time his brother had sent him over to Vic Costas' house. "Then they finally came and got me," he finished, emphasizing the word "finally" so hard that Marge almost laughed out loud. "And we went to the A&W and had hamburgers.

Can we go there again tonight?"

"No, we can't," Marge said automatically as she tried to make sense out of what Ben had just told her.

Memories of things she read about or had seen on television flipped through her mind.

Was Julie one of those girls with that disease-what did they call it, bulimia?-that caused them to gorge themselves with food, then throw it up?

But what about Jeff? If he'd been there, too. And where was Jeff? Usually he was up before Ben.

In the room the two boys shared, she found Jeff sprawled out on his bed, facedown, covered only with a sheet.

Sunlight was shining through the window, and as she shook Jeff awake, he rolled over and shielded his eyes from the glare with his arm.

"Ma? Jeez, Ma, what are you doing? Is something wrong?"

"That's what I'd like to know," Marge told him. ""What on earth was going on around here yesterday? Ben says-" She stopped abruptly when Jeff lowered his arm and she saw his face.

Jeff looked ... what?

Not sick, exactly, but not really well, either.

His face seemed to her to be too pale, and despite the coolness of the morning, his forehead was covered with a sheen of perspiration. "Do you feel all right?" she asked.

Jeff groaned and sat up. "I feel fine," he told her. "Why, do I look sick or something?"

Frowning, Marge pressed her wrist Against his forehead, then the palm of her hand.

Despite his pallor, he didn't feel feverish.

And yet ...

Another idea flitted into her mind, one that disturbed her far more than the possibility that Julie Spellman might have some exotic eating disorder.

Didn't kids on drugs like to eat a lot? The "munchies, wasn't that what they called it?

Was that why Jeff sent Ben out of the house? Did Julie have drugs, which she'd shared with Jeff?

"I think you'd better tell me exactly what went on around here yesterday afternoon," Marge told him. Then, before Jeff could reply, she caught sight of the clock.

In ten minutes she would be late for work, and this was the morning they had to get the final layout files for the paper ready to send to the printer, no later than ten.