But all his efforts would be for naught if the queen dosed him again with her neurotoxin.
She made no move, simply hovered there with her head hanging over him. Did she suspect anything?
Oh, Lord, oh, Lord, oh, Lord, oh, Lord!
He'd spent the entire day willing his muscles to move, now he was begging them to be still. One twitch, one tremor, one tiny tic, and she'd ram her proboscis into his gut again and put him back where he started.
She watched him for what seemed like forever, then she began to move—
No!
—her head lowering toward his belly—
NO!
—and past him. She arched over him, her hard little feet brushing across the skin of his abdomen. He could feel nothing but he saw his abdominal muscles twitch and roll with revulsion and he prayed she wouldn't notice.
She didn't. Her near-endless length finally cleared him and she wound her way up through the drain opening and into the night.
Now he was alone! And now was the time for action.
He strained his arms and legs upward as if fighting against steel manacles. To his delight he saw the muscles bulge with the effort. His fingers didn't move, didn't close into the rebellious fists he willed for them, but he watched the veins in the undersides of his forearms swell as blood coursed into the resistant muscles, watched his abdominals ripple and swell around the wound as he tried to sit up.
But nothing was happening. His veins and arteries continued to swell, stretching against the envelope of skin, his abdomen rippled like the Atlantic in a hurricane, but there was no sign of voluntary movement, only chaos.
And then his eyes snapped to the wound below his navel. Something moved there. Something wriggled within it. This morning's scream built again in his unresponsive throat as two slim black pincers, each no more than an inch long, poked into the air. A multi-eyed head, deep brown and gleaming, followed. It paused, glanced around, fixed Hank with its cold black gaze, then dragged its long, many-legged length from the wound with a crinkling slurp. Another identical creature quickly followed. Then another.
Hank's once quiescent and unresponsive body was moving now with a will of its own, writhing, bucking, convulsing, rocking up and down, back and forth in its webbed hammock as his veins and arteries bulged past the limits of their tensile strength and ruptured, freeing more wriggling, pincered, millipedic forms.
Something snapped within Hank's mind then. He could almost hear the foundations of his sanity begin to crack and give way. And that was good. He welcomed the collapse.
Yes. Welcomed it. A whole new perspective. Everyone above ground was dying. Dying and decomposing. Not Hank. No way. Hank was alive and would stay alive through these, his children.
Parenthood at last.
If only I could cry!
He'd wanted it so long, now it had happened. His children. They'd grown within him. Fed off him. Made him part of them. He'd go on living through them while everybody else—including the cop lieutenant and his two renegade underlings—died.
If only I could laugh!
He watched with pride as dozens more of his children broke free of the cramped confines of his body to swarm and crawl with wild abandon over his skin. So good to see them free and moving about, stretching their slender, foot-long bodies, gaining strength before heading to the surface and joining the great hunt. Some of them tangled and began to rake and spear each other with their pincers.
No fighting, children. Save it for topside.
Just then two more broke free from the sides of his throat, trailing remnants of the arteries through which they'd been traveling. They reared up and faced him, swaying back and forth like cobras before a snake charmer.
Yes, my children, he wanted to tell them, I am your Daddy and I'm terribly proud of you. I want you to—
They darted forward without warning, each burying a pincered head hungrily into one of his eyes.
No! he wanted to say. I'm your Daddy! Don't blind Daddy! How can he watch you grow if you eat his eyes?
But they were naughty children and didn't listen. They kept burrowing inward, deeper and deeper.
If only I could scream!
WPIX-TV
dead air
MAUI
Night was falling.
Jack stood in the great room and stared again at Moki's giant sculpture. The closer darkness came, the more repellent he found the piece. The stench of rotting fish from outside only made it worse. Its foulness urged him to smash it back into its component fragments.
He turned at a sound behind him and saw Kolabati emerging from the bedroom. Alone. Finally. Her dark eyes flashed with excitement as she strolled toward Jack. And as she passed she pressed something into his hand—warm, heavy, metal. He glanced down.
The necklace.
"Moki?" he said.
She motioned him to follow her to the lanai.
"He's wearing your fake," she whispered when they'd stopped at the railing.
"And he's still…?"
Bitter anguish dulled the animation in her eyes as she nodded. "Still the same."
"I'm sorry."
"Put it on," she whispered, touching the hand that held the necklace.
Jack thrust it into his pocket. "Better not. He'll notice."
"Put it on. You'll need it. Trust me."
Jack shook his head. "I'll be okay."
He looked out over the darkening valley. In the ocean beyond it he saw the white water of the whirlpool fading to gray. The maelstrom was slowing. Soon the geyser would begin and the air once again would be full of dying fish and hungry bugs.
But there was still time to make it to Kahului and take to the air.
He turned back to Kolabati. "What about the rest of it? What about you? Are you coming back to New York with me?"
"Do you trust me, Jack?" she said. Her gaze drilled into him. The answer seemed very important to her.
"Yes," he said, not completely sure of the truth here, but saying it anyway.
He sensed the new, improved Kolabati could be trusted further than the old, but how much further he couldn't say. He wasn't quite ready to stake his life on it yet.
"Good. Then I'll return to New York."
Jack couldn't resist wrapping his arms around Kolabati and hugging her. She truly had changed.
"Thank you, Bati. You don't know what this means to me, to everyone."
"Don't get the wrong idea, Jack," she said levelly. "It's good to have your arms around me again, but I'm not giving up my necklace. I have no intention of doing that. I'm going back to New York just to talk to this ancient man you've told me about. That and nothing more."
"That's fine. That's all I ask. I'll leave the rest up to Glaeken. I know he can work something out with you. But let's get moving. We haven't got much time."
"Not so fast. There's still tonight's ceremony."
Jack pushed her to arm's length but Kolabati clutched his forearms, refusing to let him go.
"Ceremony? You're going to let him kill another—?"
And then Jack remembered how last night Moki had let the Niihauan stab him first. Was that what she wanted? To see Moki die? Did she hate him that much for going crazy on her? He looked into her eyes and couldn't read them.
He would never understand this woman. Fine. But could he trust her? Her allegiances seemed as mercurial as her moods.
"That's my condition. After the ceremony, I'll return to New York. You have my word.
"Bati?" a voice called from inside.