Homing (41 page)

"You're sure you don't mind?" Marge asked. "It would sure-well, it would sure just make things a little easier.

The way I feel right now, I just don't know how I'd make it through the night."

"We'll make it," Karen told her, injecting a lot more confidence into her voice than she really felt. Even as she spoke the words, though, an anguished sob rose in her throat. She quickly got to her feet. "Molly? Time for bed."

"Not yet," Molly replied, automatically shifting into her bargaining mode, just as she did every night. "It's only--"

"Eight," Karen told her. As Molly started to argue again, Karen shook her head. "Not tonight Molly. Please don't argue, sweetheart." Moving into the den, she reached down, lifted Molly to her feet, then stood there for a moment, her fingers resting on the soft skin of Molly's cheek.

Be all right, she prayed silently. If something happens to you, too, I won't be able to stand it. I really won't.

"But I'm worried about Julie and Kevin, too," Molly insisted, as if she'd unconsciously picked up on her mother's thoughts.

"I'm sure they're all right," Karen told her. "Maybe by morning they'll have come home. Wouldn't that be nice?" Molly nodded, but Karen could tell by the look in her eyes that the little girl didn't believe the words any more than she herself did. "Ben's going to stay tonight," said, Karen grasping at anything to distract Molly's attention, certain that if they talked any more about Julie and Kevin, she would burst into tears. As she'd hoped, Molly's expression instantly brightened.

"Can he sleep in my room?"

Karen shook her head. "But he'll be in the room right next door, and tomorrow morning when you go out to take care of Flicka, he can help you. Won't that be fun?"

Just as Karen had hoped, the idea of having Ben stay the night distracted Molly enough so that she let Russell pick her up and carry her to the stairs with no further protest.

"You, too, Ben," Marge Larkin called from the living room. "Time for bed."

The little boy, detecting his mother's false cheer, got up from the floor and went to the living room, where he wrapped his arms around Marge's neck. "Don't worry," he whispered into her ear. "Jeff will come home. I know he will!"

Marge's arms closed around her younger son. "I know," she replied. "I know." But as Ben followed Russell up the stairs a moment later, Marge knew that she didn't believe the words she'd spoken to Ben any more than Karen had believed what she'd told Molly.

"Are Kevin and Julie and Jeff really going to come back?"

Molly asked as Russell tucked her quilt snugly around her shoulders a few minutes later.

"I hope so," he told her, leaning down to kiss her cheek.

Then he winked at her. "Who knows? Maybe your mother's right. Maybe by the time you wake up tomorrow, they'll be back. Wouldn't that be a nice surprise?"

Molly nodded, but she could tell that her stepfather didn't really believe they were coming back, either. Tears welled up in her eyes. "What if they don't come back?" she whispered, her voice trembling. "What if something bad happened to them?"

Russell felt helpless in the face of the little girl's misery.

"But they will," he said, barely able to mask his own desperation. "I'm sure they will." Hearing a soft whimpering at the door, Russell looked up to see Bailey standing there, one forepaw up, his tail wagging uncertainly. Russell frowned, then understood. "You want to sleep with Molly tonight, boy? Is that it?"

The big dog's tail began wagging furiously and he bounded into the room, leaping up onto Molly's bed, then flopping himself down next to the little girl. To Russell's relief, Molly's tears dried up. "Can he sleep with me?" she asked. "Can he really?"

Russell nodded. "I don't see why not." He leaned over and kissed Molly once more, then scratched Bailey's ears.

"You two take good care of each other, all right?"

Molly nodded, slipping her arm around Bailey, and the big dog happily licked her cheek, his heavy tail thumping on the mattress.

Russell snapped off the light, closed the door, and went back downstairs.

Molly and Ben, at least, would sleep through the night.

The rest of them, he was certain, would not.

The moon hung low in the sky, casting a dim glow over the valley floor but leaving the interior of the cave swathed in a velvety blackness. Kevin Owen sat on the cavern's floor, his back resting Against the cold rock wall that formed the inner limit of the chamber, his eyes staring vacantly toward the pale gray luminescence beyond the entrance, but his mind focusing only on stimuli he'd barely noticed until he'd come here today.

All around him, from every part of the cave, insects buzzed softly in the night. But tonight, instead of blending into a monotonous white noise that would drop quickly from the forefront of his consciousness, each sound remained clear and distinct.

Just beyond the entrance he could hear crickets chirruping, their musical note seemingly a beacon, not merely to members of their species, but to other creatures as well.

In sharp counterpoint to the crickets' gentle melody, other beetles were clicking loudly, and each time Kevin heard one of the sharp snapping sounds, he could almost see the little creatures' bodies lifting off the floor, flipping in the air, then dropping back.

Though he couldn't see them at all, he could sense the presence of ants creeping over the packed earth of the cavern's floor. Indeed, he could even hear something he imagined might be their mandibles working as they discovered bits of detritus to break up and carry back with them to their nests, hidden below the ground.

The most distinct sound, though, was the sound of the bees.

From all around him the vibration came, a nearly subliminal tone to which something inside him seemed to be responding.

For the first time since the sickness had come upon him, the terrible sensations inside his body had eased.

The itching, the terrible itching that had permeated his entire body, had stopped, and the chills of fever that had held him firmly in their grip for almost two days had finally released him from their icy embrace.

A breeze, set up from the steady beating of millions of tiny wings, caressed his skin. And the fear that had been his constant companion since he'd first come up here with Jeff Larkin had finally faded away, and he knew that he had come to the place where he belonged.

He had come home.

He had no idea how long he'd sat with his back Against the wall, how long he'd listened only to the narcotizing sounds of the insects that surrounded him, for his consciousness of himself as an individual had begun to fade.

No longer was he Kevin Owen, for the swarming organism that now inhabited his body had repressed all but a few scraps of Kevin's own personality, bending both his mind and his body to its own imperatives and those of the greater swarm of which it, in its turn, was only a minor part.

As he sat in the darkness, an urge began to form in Kevin, a primal instinct that he was helpless to disobey.

Following a set of instructions that seemed to have no distinct origin nor any true form that his mind could have recognized, even had he wanted it to, Kevin silently rose from his position and moved toward the entrance of the cavern. Emerging from the mouth of the cave, he paused, standing perfectly still, his eyes unfocused.

The night seemed to have come alive.

The air was thick with flying insects, and the floor of the valley seemed to have become a living entity, for in the dim moonlight a constantly shifting carpet of tiny creatures was barely visible, creeping and crawling in what the ordinary observer would have seen as no more than a random pattern. Something in the massive horde's movements penetrated the entity within Kevin, and he began to move once more, eastward across the valley toward the hill beyond.

Beneath his feet, crushed by the heavy soles of his shoes, thousands of insects died, but even as the life was pressed out of them, their bodies were instantly devoured by the other insects around them.

The carpet they formed remained untorn, the pattern in which they moved unbroken.

By the time he reached the base of the hill and began climbing, the pattern the insects danced on the valley floor had imprinted itself upon Kevin's mind.

And his body no longer his own-had become a slave to it.

He walked through the darkness, oblivious to the lack of light, his own intelligence now totally suppressed by the alien consciousness of the hive that had invaded his body. Molly woke up in the darkness of her room, certain that something was wrong, She was lying on her side, with her back to the window. Though she had not opened her eyes, had not heard anything, either, she still knew she was no longer alone.

Someone or something else was there.

Clamping her eyes more tightly closed, she tried not to move, certain that if she so much as wiggled a finger, whatever it was would leap at her, pouncing on her out of the darkness, tearing her apart like the ogres she'd read about in her fairy-tale books.

Time seemed to stand still, and finally Molly risked opening her eyes. Just a little-just barely enough to see the slight glow of the moonlight coming'in through the window.

The moonlight, and a shadow!

Involuntarily she drew in her breath in a soft gasp, then held it, fearful that whatever was in the room must have heard her.

The shadow moved!

And now she heard it, too.

Something was moving toward her, coming from the direction of the window, moving around the foot of the bed A scream rose in her throat, but she refused to let it out, because if she did, whatever was coming for her would certainly leap onto her and And then Bailey, whimpering eagerly, licked at her face.

Her breath exploded as the paralyzing fear that had gripped her a second ago evaporated, and she threw her arms around the big dog, burying her face in the fur of his neck. "Don't do that," she whispered, as if the dog could understand every word she said. "You scared me!"

Bailey slurped at her face again, then pulled away from her clinging arms to trot back to the window. Putting his front paws on the sill, he whimpered softly, then turned and stared at Molly, who was now sitting up in her bed.

"What is it, Bailey?" she asked, keeping her voice no louder than a whisper. When Bailey whimpered again, she slid out of bed and went to crouch by the dog, slipping one arm around him as she struggled to see into the darkness beyond the window.

Her forehead furrowing into a deep scowl, she tried to figure out what to do.

Ben Larkin was in the room next door to hers.

But where was everybody else?

Padding silently across the floor in her bare feet, she opened her door a crack and listened.

The house was silent.

Pulling the door open a little farther, Molly slipped out into the hall, then went to the room next door. Once again she stopped to listen, but still heard nothing. Finally she opened the door, crept inside, and shook Ben awake.

"Ben," she whispered. "Ben, wake up!"

Ben rolled over, his eyes finally opening. "What?" he asked. "What's wrong?"

"It's Bailey," Molly said. "He's acting real funny. Come and look! Come on!"

Rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, Ben pulled on his pants and shirt, then followed Molly into her room, where Bailey was still at the window, whimpering eagerly. "Look at him," Molly said. "What's he doing?"

Ben, like Molly a few minutes ago, went to the window and peered out into the darkness, but saw nothing. "Maybe he has to go outside," Ben said. He turned and cocked his head at Bailey. "Outside?" he asked. "Want to go outside, boy?" Bailey wagged his tail furiously and dashed to Molly's closed bedroom door. "Get dressed," Ben told Molly.

"We'll take him down and let him out. He has to go to the bathroom

Molly scowled at Ben. "I'm not taking off my pajamas with you in here," she announced. "Besides, if we're going outside, you have to put on your shoes."

Less than a minute later, with Molly clutching at Bailey's collar to keep him from bolting ahead of her, she and Ben stood at the top of the stairs, staring down into the glow of light spilling from the living room into the foyer.

"What if our moms catch us?" Molly whispered. "They'll never let us go out this late."

Ben's lips pursed, then he motioned for Molly to follow him, and turned away from the stairs, tiptoeing rapidly back to the room. When both Molly and Bailey were inside too, he closed the door, then went to the window. "Bet we can jump off that," he said, pointing to the roof of the back porch, which slanted away from the wall only a couple of feet below the windowsill.

Molly gazed at the edge of the porch. It couldn't be any higher than the roof of the carport behind the building they'd lived in back in L.A., and she'd jumped off that lots of times.

Well, she'd jumped off it once, but she hadn't hurt herself.

"What about Baily?"' she asked Ben, who was already out on the porch roof, gingerly creeping down toward its lower edge. The boy glanced back and whistled softly, and the dog scrambled out the window onto the roof.

A moment later Molly followed, and a few seconds after that, the two children and the dog were all lined up on the edge of the porch, peering down at the ground eight feet below. "Can you do it?" Ben whispered, and Molly could tell by his voice that he didn't believe she would.

instead of answering him, she rolled over on her stomach and slid down the roof until she was dangling from the rain gutter, only her fingers supporting her. She clung there for a second, then took a deep breath and let go. A split second later she was on the ground, grinning up at Ben.

"Come on," she hissed. "Hurry up, or they'll hear us!"

Suddenly Bailey, crouched next to Ben, stiffened, his ears pricking, his whole body quivering. An instant later he launched himself off the roof, hit the ground on all fours, and charged off toward the chicken coop.

"What is it?" Molly whispered to Ben as he dropped down beside her. "What's he doing?"

And suddenly the same idea occurred to both children, and Ben's eyes widened with excitement. "I bet he smells Kevin," he said. "Dogs can do that, you know. They can smell stuff from miles away!"