Larry wasn’t much of a television guy; he barely watched it. He did listen to the radio. Mostly, if he couldn’t read the news, he didn’t know what was going on.
Fortunately, information was delivered to his house.
A flyer from the Department of Agriculture stated that extermination proceedings had begun for the pred bug, and should he, as a farmer, experience the insect before his farm was treated he was to call a number at the bottom of the paper.
That was a mere twenty-four hours before he was hit.
He had heard about the new breed of insect and how they were fast moving and devastating. That they could easily cause agricultural annihilation.
Whatever that was.
Larry had taken that as an exaggeration.
Until two days earlier, when he woke up.
A faint steady clocking sound carried to him through the quiet of the dark early morning hours. He made his coffee, got dressed, and went to the barn to work on the tractor. While in there, he heard Leo’s truck pull up. Leo was his head farmhand and had been with Larry for twenty years.
It wasn’t long after that Leo, in a panic, flung open the barn door.
“Larry, we have problems. Big problems,” Leo said.
Larry put down the wrench, wiped his hand, and walked toward the door.
The sun had started to rise, giving light to the sky. Larry expected to walk out and have to follow Leo somewhere. But that wasn’t the case.
When he’d left his home earlier that morning, it was still dark. He didn’t see.
Now it was light, he did.
Larry didn’t have to go far, not even twenty feet outside the barn and he could see, actually as far as he could see, his corn, which the day before had been green and flourishing, was gone.
Completely gone.
Suppressing his initial panic and anger, Larry took a closer look.
If he were to venture a guess, Larry would say there were millions. And that wasn’t an exaggeration. Millions of those pred bugs everywhere.
Nothing shook them.
They were a new breed of bugs eating everything they could.
They alone eradicated the stinkbug then moved on, evolving.
The bugs, over the course of the past year, had become stronger, more brazen, and impervious to anything used to kill insects before.
Every use of known insect pathogenic bacteria had failed.
Until a new pathogen was created. Awfully fast, many thought. But it was there and it worked.
It was successful and killed the pred bugs so quickly there wouldn’t be time for them to build an immunity. It was being called the five-day Bug Blitzkrieg. It was the government’s hope that any pred bug not killed right away would carry the new pathogen, spreading it like a plague among them. Eventually eliminating the need for the government to disperse the germ.
Larry placed the call.
He was told that while the pathogen wasn’t harmful to humans, to be safe he and his staff had to stay indoors while the pred bugs were sprayed.
Two hours later a plane arrived. That wasn’t before Larry estimated he had lost at least twenty acres of crops.
He, Leo, and four other workers watched from his living-room window. They waited the hour as instructed and then they went out.
The six of them sought out the heavy equipment—they had the acreage to clear. Plowing it, removing what was left of the crops and the bugs.
A click here and there was heard, but for the most part, Larry knew they were dead.
The second he took his first step into the field he heard the crunching under his shoes and the comments from Leo and the other workers.
“It snowed bugs,” Leo said. “Lar, this is going to take us forever to get through. What exactly do we do with them?”
“Burn them,” Larry replied.
By the time an early lunch break rolled around, they had cleared a measly third. To Larry it was disheartening. Usually he would keep going, but this time, he welcomed the break and went back to his house to wash up.
He removed his face mask and gloves and even used his elbow to turn on the kitchen sink. Once his hands were wet he grabbed the soap and started to scrub.
Fingers, hands, elbows… stop.
No sooner did the soap cross the bend of his elbow, he felt a stinging pain, as if he had rubbed against a brush burn.
He flipped on the cooler water and rinsed, then grabbed a towel. He dried off, still feeling the sting, then twisted his arm until he was able to see.
Just below the elbow on the back of his forearm was a large, deep red mark. An area the size of a lemon was bright and inflamed. The surface of it had a dry, yet waxy appearance.
Grunting, Larry passed it off as an allergic reaction to the pathogen used to kill the bugs, thought no more about it, and proceeded to make his lunch.
5.
GLIDED STOP
Twelve hours after an accident, Cass sort of figured there’d be nothing left there. A few shards of glass, a piece of a broken turn signal, a messed-up tree, and an awful lot of blood on the road.
Three people had died, four injured.
The state police, reportedly, were on scene, but Cass didn’t understand why Griffin Police weren’t… or maybe they were.
The only way to find out would be to ask.
That would warrant a trip back into town and to the station before heading to the hospital. Cass wanted some information on hand to give Marge. Something other than there was an accident. Last Cass heard that was all they’d told her.
Nothing more.
A ding-ding alert bell rang when Cass and Brian entered the Griffin police station. It always annoyed Cass. An old-fashioned bell hanging on a string—couldn’t they move with the times?
Like the town, the entire police station seemed to pay homage to an era gone by. An old-style, albeit empty, sergeant’s desk was directly out front, behind it a three-foot-high wooden wall to separate the front from the back. A couple of desks, a back office, and three jail cells that could clearly be seen from anywhere in the room.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” a voice called from the distance, then a second later Kit walked from the rear office. “You know that, right?”
“Not really. I mean I do know it, but it doesn’t apply to today.” Cass pushed on the Andy Griffith style waist-high swinging wood opening to walk into the main portion of the old-fashioned station. “Is he here?”
“No,” Kit answered.
“Then I’m okay. I just can’t be here while the chief is here. Notice I didn’t say anything about Pam.”
“She doesn’t work here anymore,” Kit replied. “She quit after your little scandal piece or I’m sure they’d have a restraining order in her name too.”
“They do,” said Brian. “She moved to Seaver so it’s easy for Cass to avoid them.”
“What’s easy is the fact that she lucked out,” Kit said. “That her fourth or fifth ex-husband is mayor…”
“Second,” Cass corrected. “Mark is my second ex-husband.”
“Second. Thank you,” Kit said. “You could have been sued for libel.”
“It’s only libel if it’s not true,” Cass said. “Mark got him to see reason.”
Kit waved out his hand. “And the judge made you see a thousand-foot restraining order.”
“Judge Moss said a hundred feet,” Cass replied. “Won’t the festival be a fun place to stay a hundred feet from him.”
“Speaking of which,” Brian added, “they already shut down Fourth, you know. As an officer of the law you need to do something about that.”
“Like what? They’re setting up. The festival is tomorrow.”
“Fourth isn’t supposed to be shut down at all.”
Kit shook his head. “Who cares. What do you guys want?’
“So nasty,” Cass said, pulling out a chair. “You’re usually much more cheerful.” She sat down, then so did Brian.