Back home, darkness came in stages. But in the tropics, MacCready knew, twilight was fleeting, almost momentary. Something told him to find the damned road before it was too late, but instead he approached the nearest hut. Sheets of dirty fabric hung like dead skin across a large screenless window flanking one side of the doorway. The entrance seemed to be gathering shadows.
Seeing that he would need to maneuver up a wooden ladder to enter the hut, he holstered his pistol, then silently, carefully, he began to climb. A faint odor was wafting from within, almost sweet, and he recognized it as the last stage of extreme decomposition. MacCready poked his head over the top rung, and into the hut.
Are those—?
Suddenly, something hugged his face, like a veil, vibrating wildly. MacCready stepped back and fell halfway down the ladder, bruising both knees as he released his grip to claw at a membranous shroud that clung to his cheeks and brow.
MacCready felt something buzzing and pulsating in his hair and he batted at his own head for several seconds before regaining his composure. Looking down at his hand, he saw several silk-entrapped creatures. Insects . . . flies. It’s a spiderweb, he thought, shaking his head. A spiderweb and I’m pitchin’ a goddamned fit.
But it wasn’t the spiderweb and the flies that were the real problem. It was something else. Something else inside this h—
As if on cue, from within the dwelling came more buzzing, rising in volume like radio static. And before MacCready could move, a thick cloud of flies rose from the floor, swirled through the doorway, and engulfed him.
“Shit,” he cried in disgust, swinging his arms wildly. More insects became entrapped in the remains of the organic veil still clinging to his face—more and more of them. A half dozen found their way into his mouth, tasting faintly of their last meal. MacCready tore at the webbing, spitting and coughing.
Several minutes later, his pack at his side, his lips wiped clean of webbing and flies, R. J. MacCready stared up at the doorway. Well, that could have gone better.
I should be on that road by now, he thought. But there was something about this hut—for starters, the flies and the smell—which told him, You’re not going anywhere just yet.
“Let’s hold the flies this time, huh?” MacCready announced, hauling himself back up the ladder, this time using a flashlight.
The first thing he saw was the body of a man, sitting with its back against the far wall. MacCready was reminded of a balloon that had lost most of its air—and he also knew that this was not far from the truth. He had once seen a water buffalo collapse and die in the tropical heat. For whatever the reason, rather than removing the huge carcass, the villagers merely stepped around it, most of them giving the putrefying meat pile an increasingly wide berth as the days passed. Some of them, however, had not paid attention and one day the water buffalo paid them back—with interest. After swelling with internal gases for seven days, the buffalo exploded like a bomb, spraying several horrified villagers with a slurry of liquefied flesh. In the tropics, the special effects of death were often more than even a biologist could bear. MacCready knew that something similar had occurred in the hut. The man’s torso, inflated by bacterial gasses, had popped. About a week ago, MacCready guessed. The explosion phase was over, thankfully. These days, the Balloon Man was sinking quietly into himself.
He peered into the man’s mouth, locked now into a silent scream—gums drawn back, teeth blackened from an eruption of blood that appeared to have gushed onto his chest. The scientist knew that the Balloon Man’s mouth had taken on a new role—as a convenient portal for the insects that came and went and laid their eggs.
Ten days. Definitely.
Even the scent of death had become more subtle—a cloying mixture of decayed meat and vegetables that the zoologist hated more than any other smell. And yet, beneath this stench, there was something else—something familiar.
It smells like flowers, and he was momentarily reminded of his mother’s favorite scent, a perfume called Field of Gardenias.
MacCready aimed his flashlight away from the corpse, but the rest of the room looked no better. The man’s entire family lay dead on woven pallets. No sign of struggle. Killed in their sleep? Is someone experimenting with poison gas?
But the bodies were lying in pools of black, tarry matter. Glued to the floor in their own dried blood. No. Not poison gas. Something else.
MacCready shivered. “Is this bad ju-ju, or what?”
He was answered by a barely perceptible rustle, like parchment, fluttering in a breeze. He glanced up at the nearest “curtains.” There was no breeze.
The rustling ceased, and there came to him a grim certainty that the sound had come from the far end of the hut. From the dark. Instinct told him that if he aimed his flashlight there, whatever it was would be gone. Would that be so bad? The scientist resisted the urge to stare, an ineffective means of viewing objects in the dark. Instead, he watched from the corner of his eye—the closest thing to “night vision” that humans possessed.