Homing (27 page)

Karen hesitated, then reluctantly shook her head. "But I can bear them," she said. "That awful buzzing."

"It'll stop," Russell assured her. "When it cools down-"

"I know," Karen broke in, slipping out of his embrace and moving to the refrigerator. 'Bees don't move if it gets below fifty-four degrees,'. she went on, parroting what he'd told her earlier. "But it's almost a hundred out there right now, and it's not going to drop fifty degrees tonight. What if . . ." She floundered for a moment, searching for an argument she hadn't already used. She understood that they couldn't just move the swarm, the way Otto and Kevin had taken the one out of the tree the day they'd been married. Short of ripping the wall apart, there was no way of getting at the queen, and Karen knew you couldn't move the swarm without moving the queen. Tearing a gaping hole in the wall was the one thing absolutely certain to fill the house with bees.

"All right," she sighed, pulling a head of lettuce out of the vegetable bin at the bottom of the fridge, then straightening up and facing Russell again. "I'll make you a deal.

I won't leave you if you promise me we'll call someone in the morning and have them come out and fumigate the swarm."

"I promise," Russell replied.

"But I won't sleep in our room, either," she went on.

"Not with that awful humming. I'd be afraid they were going to come through the wall any second."

"They're not carpenter ants," Russell observed dryly. "Those guys don't make holes, they fill them up." He grinned as Karen shuddered. "Hey, think of the money we could save on insulation if we just let them fill the walls with honeycomb!"

Karen's eyes blazed. "Don't make jokes," she told him.

"You may think this is all very funny, but in case you've forgotten, both my daughters have almost died from bee stings. How would you feel if it had been Kevin we'd flown to the hospital instead of Molly?"

His laughter dying, Russell said, "You know how bad I feel about what happened. I guess I was just trying to lighten things up a little."

"Well, you can't do it by making jokes," she said. "And I mean it about having an exterminator out tomorrow. And I mean it about sleeping downstairs. And the kids can sleep downstairs, too, if they want to."

"Sounds like it's going to be a slumber party around here," Russell observed. Then, as he started out of the kitchen, his eyes fell on the large clock that hung on the wall above the door to the dining room.

It was almost six-thirty, and he clearly remembered Karen telling Julie to be home no later than six when she'd gone into town with Jeff Larkin.

instantly, he thought about what had happened a few nights before, when she and Kevin had come home along the back road, reeking of beer.

Now she'd taken off with Jeff in his car, and was already half an hour late getting home.

Maybe., he reflected, giving her an early release from her grounding hadn't been such a good idea after all. One day, and already she was breaking a promise.

Well, when she got home, the two of them would have a talk.

And the later Julie was, the longer-and more unpleasant-the talk would be.

Jeff Larkin banged the fender of Vic Costas' ancient station wagon, his frustration at the car's refusal to start growing with every passing second.

He'd been working on it for nearly an hour already, but was no further along than when he'd begun.

And Julie, who was sitting in the front seat, turning the key whenever he told her to, was worried about how late it was.

"I was supposed to be home at six," she'd told him a few minutes ago. "I'm already half an hour late!" He'd checked the battery, finding the cells full, The snapping spark he'd gotten when he grounded a screwdriver across the positive pole told him there was nothing wrong with its charge. Besides, the radio worked fine, and the headlights glowed brightly even in full daylight.

After that he'd started checking fuses, but quickly realized he was out of his depth-there was no manual for the car, and he didn't know where half the fuses were, let alone what they might be for. Still, all the ones he'd found had been in good shape, so he almost eliminated a fuse problem from his list of possible causes for the car's absolute refusal to start.

What the hell could it be, anyway?

He wracked his brain, trying to think, but all day long he'd been feeling strange, and the last couple of hours, since he and Julie had taken off in the car after he parked Ben with Vic Costas, he'd been feeling steadily worse.

But not so bad that he wasn't hungry. They'd stopped at the A&W and gotten some hamburgers, and he'd been about to head up into the park when Julie stopped him.

"Do we have to go up there? The power lines drive me crazy-"

Jeff had glanced over at her. "Is that why you didn't want me to take the county road when we came into town?

Because of the power lines?"

Julie nodded. "I hate them." But she hadn't told him why So instead of going to the park, they'd driven up into the foothills, parked the car, eaten their hamburgers and talked.

He asked her about the bees that morning, but she just shrugged her shoulders. "How could I have done that?" she asked. But she didn't quite say she hadn't done it.

After that, they just talked for a little while, and then, at quarter of six, they decided to head home.

And the car hadn't started.

With every minute that passed, Jeff was more pissed off.

Dropping the hood down, he went around to the driver's door.

"I'm going to try pushing it," he said. "Put it in neutral and let the parking brake off." As Julie followed his instructions, he leaned hard Against the wagon's back door and pushed the car ahead a dozen feet, until it hit the downhill grade, "Okay, set the brake again," he called to Julie. The car jerked to a stop, and as Julie slid over into the passenger seat, Jeff got in behind the wheel. Putting the car in second gear, he held the clutch in with his left foot and released the parking brake again. The car started rolling forward, gaining speed. When it was doing ten miles an hour, he let out the clutch.

The car jerked as the transmission grabbed, then the engine coughed twice and started up. Jeff shook his head in disgust as he braked the car and the engine idled.

"Almost an hour," he groused. "I messed with it for almost an hour, and all it needed was a push! Do you believe it?" Then he felt a chill wash over him, and he shivered.

Jeff felt Julie watching him and heard her voice: "You okay?"

He turned to look at her and tried to speak, but just as at the corral that morning, when he'd tried to tell her stepfather about the horse, the words died on his lips.

Fear twisted his guts as he felt that strange force-a force he could neither fight Against nor identify once more refuse to let him speak.

Julie chuckled. "You're fine, right?" she asked, her voice tense. She was leaning Against the passenger door, her face pale, her voice trembling as she spoke. "Go on she whispered, her words almost pleading. -Tell me how you feel. Just try." Jeff hesitated, then opened his mouth, determined to tell her exactly what was happening to him.

But again something unidentifiable rose up in his mind, seizing control. "I'm fine," he heard himself say.

And then, as he saw the knowing look in her eyes, he understood.

Whatever was doing this to him was doing it to her, too.

"What is it?" he whispered, barely trusting himself to be able to utter the words. "What's happening to us?"

Julie's whole body trembled as if she were gripped in a fever. "I don't know." She hesitated, then said, "Sometimes it seems to get better. Sometimes you almost forget it's there. But then it gets worse again. And then . . ." She fell silent, as if searching for the right words. "It fills you up," she whispered at last, her voice barely audible. "It fills you up, like it did with me yesterday. Then you have to do something." Her eyes locked on Jeff's. "You have to do something like I had to do yesterday."

Jeff stared silently at her, waiting for Julie to go on, but she said nothing else. As he put the car in gear and drove them home, though, her words echoed in his mind and he remembered once again the horrifying black swarm that had erupted from her throat the day before.

Erupted out of her, and attacked him, penetrating his body through his mouth, his nose, his ears, even his very skin.

Was that the source of the terrible force inside him that twice today had seized control of his mind?

But what was it?

What did it want from him?

Was it filling him up now, too?

And when it filled him, what would he do?

And then he had another thought.

What would it do?

After it filled him up and took control of him, what would it do?

But even as he formulated the question in his mind, Jeff Larkin was already certain that he knew the answer.

When it was done with him, when he could serve it no longer, the thing-the strange force inside him-would kill him.

Marge Larkin was getting angrier by the minute.

Not only had Jeff not been there when she'd arrived home from work, but he'd dumped Ben with Vic Costas, and left her a note saying only that he'd gone for a ride with Julie Spellman and would be back by six.

Julie Spellman!

Marge still didn't know what had gone on between her son and Julie yesterday, and now they were together again and half an hour late getting home.

The worst, though, was that he'd left Ben with Vic Costas!

"As long as the kids don't bother me," the old farmer had told her when he'd reluctantly agreed to rent her the little house behind his barn. The building hadn't been occupied since he'd sold most of the land off to UniGrow, keeping no more than he could easily tend himself. "I don't really want no kids around the place. If I'd wanted kids, I'd have gotten married and had some of my own, and you don't notice I ever did that, did I?" Marge had promised that not only would Jeff and Ben be no trouble, but that they'd help out, too.

Up until Jeff had turned sixteen three months ago, it had worked out just fine. But then Jeff found the old Mercury station wagon buried under a mass of weeds next to the toolshed. Though the car had been completely hidden by the dense foliage, he discovered that it looked far closer to ruin than it actually was. Fortunately, the windows had been closed tight, and the interior of the car had actually turned out to be pretty clean. So he'd hacked away the weeds and set to work getting it running again.

Vic Costas went along with it, albeit reluctantly, but again had given her a stiff warning. "Any trouble," he said, wagging his finger severely, "any trouble at all, and out you go. I'd forgotten that old car was even there, so I guess it's okay if he wants to use it. But he pays! He pays the insurance, and the license, and everything else." His canny eyes had narrowed, almost disappearing into his weathered face. "And don't forget who's responsible," he told her. "Not me-you! He's your boy, not mine."

Though Marge suspected that Vic's gruff manner was more bluff than anything else, she wasn't about to risk finding out, for the tenant house on his farm was by far the best thing she'd been able to afford in the years since Ted Larkin had left her and the kids, simply disappearing one day, never to be seen or heard from again.

If Jeff got them kicked out of the tenant house, she didn't know what she was going to do.

She glanced out the window once more. Still no sign of Jeff.

She was about to pick up the phone to call the Owens and ask if Julie was home yet when she spotted a car moving along the dirt road that edged the foothills. Her hand on the receiver, Marge didn't move until she recognized the battered station wagon as it passed their driveway on its way to the Owen farm.

Five minutes later, when Jeff finally pulled the old Mercury up in front of the house, Marge was waiting by the front door, the first words of her angry lecture already rehearsed in her mind.

"Do you know what time-" she began, but the words died in her throat as she stared at her son.

His face was pale-ashen, really-and glistening with sweat.

His clothes were dirty and his hands black with grease.

"Jeff?" she asked. "What happened? What's wrong with you?"

Jeff, his six-foot-two-inch frame looming over her own five and a half feet, felt the beast within him take over.

"What do you mean?" he asked, uttering the words the force inside his mind chose for him. "Nothing's wrong."

Ben, who had sensed his mother's anger and maintained a careful silence for the past hour, came back to life.

"It is, too!" he countered, pointing at his brother's face.

"You look just like Julie did yesterday! You look like you're sick!"

Jeff barely glanced at his brother. "I'm not sick," he told his mother, obeying the instructions of the dark entity hidden inside him. "I just had to work on the car-it wouldn't start."

Marge inspected her son more carefully. Her eyes narrowed suspiciously and she moved closer to Jeff. "Let me see your eyes."

Jeff instantly understood her implication. "Oh, right," he groaned. "Julie and I are going to go out and get stoned, and I'm going to come driving home drugged out! What's with you, Mom? it just took a while to get the car started.

What's the big deal?"

"The big deal," Marge replied, her voice growing cold in the face of Jeff's lack of concern, "is that according to your own note, you were going to be home at six!"

Jeff's mouth dropped open. "I couldn't help it! How was I supposed to know the car wouldn't start? And I couldn't even fix it, either!" Digging in his pocket, he produced the keys to the station wagon and held them out to her. "If you don't believe me, go try it yourself!"

Her eyes steely, Marge snatched the keys from Jeff's hand. Marching out of the house, she yanked the door of the station wagon open and slid behind the wheel. inserting the key into the ignition, she twisted it.

The engine instantly roared to life,

She gunned the engine a couple of times, then shut off the ignition and returned to the house. "I thought you said it wouldn't start," she said coldly.