He felt himself trembling. He leaned back against the wall. Sweat was oozing out of his pores.
Strasser snapped his fingers. Kelber patted a breast pocket of his black jacket, inserted a hand, fished out a small box. At the same time the guard by the upper doorway turned and disappeared the steps to the floor above.
"Now pay attention, Ryan."
Strasser took the box from Kelber and held it to his ear, shook it gently. What he heard seemed to please him. He looked around as the sec men's boots hammered on the steps above and the guy reentered the room. He was holding a tall drinking glass. Strasser nodded to Kelber, who took the glass, then carefully opened the box. He tipped the contents into the glass. From where he stood Ryan saw a flutter of something small and dark, heard a faint clatter as whatever it was hit the bottom of the glass. Strasser took the glass and gazed at it critically, holding it up to the naked light set into the ceiling above him. A satisfied smile slithered across his face. He turned to Ryan and stepped toward him, still holding the glass up. Ryan caught a flicker of frenzied movement at the bottom.
"Fascinating insect mutie," he said. "Some kind of cross between a borer beetle and a termite. Much the same, I suppose, but this little beauty has certain characteristics you don't find in either."
Ryan stared at the glass. The thing was bigger than he'd thought, maybe as big as a human thumb, streamlined. He saw a black and shiny carapaced back, and four horned antennae quivering at the front. The insect scrabbled around in the glass, its six legs slipping on the smooth surface. It stopped suddenly, facing him. He peered closer, aware that the nearest guard had thrust the barrel of his M-16 almost to his left temple. He saw that the labrum flap over the insect's mouth hardly concealed mandibles that seemed grotesquely out of proportion to its size: huge sickle-shaped tusks, almost like horns. The compound eyes, small though they were, seemed to glitter in the light, their honeycomb of lenses directed at him.
The insect was quivering gently. Ryan couldn't get it out of his mind that he was being studied, noted, categorized. It turned suddenly, rushed at the opposite side of the glass, launched itself at the transparent walls of its prison. And fell back, its legs waving wildly. It landed on its shiny back, rolled on the instant, and became mobile once more.
"Ugly little brute," murmured Strasser, taking the glass away and staring at it affectionately. "But... fascinating. Doesn't like wood at all. Meat eater. But it doesn't like dead meat, Ryan. Fastidious. Likes its food in the hoof, you might say. But the really curious thing is it seems to have a positive yen for human flesh. We discovered this quite by chance when we popped one into the mouth of someone who had... displeased me. The insect ate its way out of the stomach. Right through the entrails. You probably noted its somewhat overlarge mandibles. Remarkable, don't you think?"
With a yell Ryan flung himself at the gaunt man, his hands outstretched to claw and tear and rend at whatever he could grasp.
And the world blazed up in a brilliant flash of light that seared his eye, exploded through his head, fierce agony lancing through his brain. He reeled, smashed to the concrete floor by the M-16 barrel rammed into the side of his head.
Something heavy landed on him. He sought to fling it off but a booted foot slammed into his head and more pain flooded through him, slashing at his nerve ends. He found that his arms were suddenly twisted behind him, his legs held to the floor under some heavy weight. Through a haze of pain and fury and disgust he heard Strasser's voice.
"Take the gag out of her mouth and stuff it into Ryan's."
His head was wrenched back by the hair and he tried to grit his teeth together but someone pinched his nostrils tight and involuntarily he gasped open his mouth. The gag filled it and he dry-heaved, his senses screaming that he had to have air. He could hear snorted squealing sounds and could only suppose they emanated from him. The fingers unclasped.
His head throbbed agonizingly. It was as if someone plunged a knife rhythmically and repeatedly into the soft core of his brain. Suddenly he was lurching forward, being shoved and dragged toward the wooden block until he was staring wildly, frantically, up into the rear of the girl.
Strasser was standing near him, beside the girl, one hand holding the glass, the other pushing one of the smooth white globes of her buttocks.
He said thoughtfully, "Now which shall it be, anal or vaginal passage? Difficult to choose. If the former it will at least mean that Kelber's animal lusts will not remain entirely unsatisfied, if for only a short time. Kelber has often been known to make the best of a bad job, Ryan. He is, I fear, not very discriminating in his tastes. If the latter, of course, I doubt that even Kelber would care to try his luck where something as voracious as this little brute has already been." He inclined his head, looked down at Ryan. "What d'you say, Ryan? Back or front, hmm? No answer? How very churlish." He licked his lips. "Front, I think."
He placed the lip of the glass against the broad full cheeks, and began to push it under the girl toward the dark cleft, tipping it gently upward as he did so.
Ryan struggled like one possessed of many devils. His head jerked back, his chest bulged. He could feel the tendons and veins on his arms spring out like corded cables. He was screaming, shrieking, but no sound came out of his mouth.
Strasser glanced down at him, smiling with his mouth but not his eyes, and tipped the glass up some more. It was now almost horizontal. The beetle began to scurry along the smooth curved path until it had about reached its goal. It stopped, antennae quivering. Then it scurried on remorselessly, at last reaching flesh, a portion of buttock fringed by coarse red hair, short and curly, just glimpsed. The antennae extended toward the white skin as though testing the air. Presumably satisfied with the intelligence it had gathered, the insect began to move slowly, inexorably, out of Ryan's sight.
Squealing, frantically nodding his head, adrenaline flooding through him like liquid fire, Ryan managed to inch himself forward, heaving those guards atop along by the sheer strength of his frenzy.
Strasser looked down at him again, regarded him thoughtfully, coolly, gauging his surrender — then rammed the glass hard into the girl's rear, at the same time flipping its mouth slightly upward, the sudden movement catching the beetle, the lip of the glass tossing it into the air. It curved high, legs scrabbling at nothing, and for a split second seemed to hang, weightless, at the peak of its parabola. Then gravity took over and it dropped. Strasser neatly caught it in the glass and beamed in triumph, as though he had just performed a particularly knotty conjuring trick. He gave the glass and the box to Kelber.
He said, "Excellent. Take him out to one of the trucks. The girl, too. Dress her. These..." He waved an arm at J.B. and the others, then frowned in thought. "I was going to say, kill them. But no. Take them downstairs. One of the cells. I'll deal with them personally when we return."
Ryan felt himself gripped under the armpits and dragged to his feet. He needed that. Right now he felt incapable of supporting himself on his own. Strasser caught up with them. The gaunt man with the skull face reached out and grasped at the gag in his mouth and tore it out. Ryan gasped, swallowed, grunted, spat out bits of rag that still clung to his teeth and his tongue and his lips. He gazed up at Strasser, his chest heaving, his eyes blurred.
He cracked, "You're dead, Strasser... dead..."
"No, no, no," said Strasser, leaning forward and tapping him lightly on the chest with a bony finger, his tone mildly amused as though he were speaking to a fractious child, "you're dead."