The Homing

  “But we can find them,” Ben pleaded. “I know we can. We’ll use Bailey. I bet he could follow Kevin anywhere!”

  Molly’s grip tightened on the big dog. “We should go back in the house,” she said again.

  Ben gazed steadily at her, then shrugged. “Then go. I don’t care. I’ll just take Bailey and find them myself.” As if he’d understood what Ben had said, Bailey moved to the little boy’s side, his whole body trembling as he sniffed at the spot where Kevin had stood a moment ago. “See?” Ben crowed. “He wants to go. So go back in the house if you want to, and me and Bailey will go find everyone.”

  Molly’s eyes flicked toward the house, then up toward the hills. Kevin’s figure emerged from the shadows for a moment, and in the glow of the moonlight she thought he beckoned to her.

  But he’d told her to go back into the house, hadn’t he?

  But if he was sick, like Julie had been …

  Molly struggled, trying to make up her mind what to do. If Ben was right, and Bailey could help them find Julie and Jeff, too—

  Suddenly she pictured the look on her mother’s face when they all came into the house together, and her last doubt evaporated. “Come on, Bailey,” she said. “Let’s find Kevin.”

  The big dog bounded toward the hills, Molly and Ben running to keep up with him.

  Molly and Ben stood side by side on the top of the hill, looking down into the valley. Bailey crouched next to Molly, trembling, a strange sound—part growl, part whimper—rattling in his throat. All around them the air was thick with insects, and their ears were filled with the chirps of crickets, the clicks of beetles, and the rasping sounds of the june bugs.

  The moon was high in the sky now, and the night had brightened. Across the stream that cut through the little valley’s floor, they could see the mouth of a cave, and standing just outside the cave was a dark figure.

  As they watched, the figure started toward them, moving steadily across the valley, then starting up the hill.

  “J-Jeff?” Ben called, not quite able to see who was coming.

  After a moment of silence the figure spoke, and the little boy recognized his brother’s voice. “It’s okay, Ben,” Jeff Larkin said. “It’s me.”

  Ben ran down the hill, but as he got close enough to see his brother clearly, he stopped dead in his tracks.

  Jeff’s head was covered with a mask of bees, a squirming, humming mass whose constantly shifting form kept folding in upon itself as some of the bees burrowed deep into the swarm while others rose to the surface.

  Ben stared at the terrifying visage, his heart pounding, his breath frozen in his lungs. His eyes widened with horror as Jeff came closer and closer, finally stopping only a few feet away.

  As if on command, the bees rose away from his head, disappearing instantly into the night sky, leaving Jeff’s features, pale and strained, illuminated in the moonlight.

  “It’s all right, Ben,” Jeff said. “I’m fine. And you will be, too.”

  Ben stood as still as a fawn caught in the bright glare of headlights while his brother moved closer. Jeff knelt, and then, just as he was reaching toward Ben, a shout split the night.

  “No!” Kevin bellowed. “Run, Ben! Run!”

  Galvanized by the shout from the bottom of the hill, Ben turned and fled back the way he had come. Molly followed him, racing away as fast as her legs would carry her, her stepbrother’s cry echoing in her ears, the image of Jeff’s gray, drawn face imprinted on her memory.

  Of her sister—of Julie—she had seen no sign at all.

  CHAPTER 27

  Sara McLaughlin moaned softly, rolled over in bed, then began thrashing out against the damp and tangled sheets that had become twisted around her body during the few minutes in which she had fallen into a restless sleep. One of her arms finally slipping free, she frantically ripped the rest of the sheet loose, then tore her nightgown from her body as well. Gasping for breath, her lungs feeling as though they had filled up with thick phlegm, she flopped, naked, onto her back, her body heaving as she struggled to draw air into her congested chest.

  Freedom from the constrictions of the sheets and nightgown gave her only momentary relief from the chaos going on in her body, though, and a few seconds later she began frantically scratching at herself, desperately trying to stop the terrible itching that had grown steadily stronger as the night wore on. Finally she left the bed and went to the window, where she stared out into the moonlit night.

  Once again the hills, now silhouetted against the night sky, beckoned to her, called out to her, something hidden deep within them summoning her with a force she could no longer resist. The urge to escape from the confines of the hospital room—to flee into the hills—bloomed into an obsession now.

  Sara’s fingers fumbled with the window latch until it came free. She pushed the window open and scrambled out onto the narrow strip of grass that separated the building from the parking lot. Though a cool breeze was blowing in from the ocean, it failed to ease the fever raging within her body or to soothe the chaos in her mind.

  Whimpering to herself, oblivious to her nakedness, she dashed away from the building, instinctively dodging the bright pools of light cast by the lamps suspended over the parking lot. A moment later she disappeared into the shadows of a clump of scrub oaks. Threading her way through the trees, she ignored the sharp stabs of pain from the twigs and rocks upon which she trod. When her right foot began to bleed, she didn’t notice it at all.

  Passing through the stand of oaks, she came to a fence at the edge of the hospital property, all that separated her from the open rolling hills extending both north and east. The fence blocked her path. She ranged back and forth in front of it, moving first one way, then the other, like a tiger pacing insanely within the confines of a cage.

  Within her body, the colony turned frantic as it continued to expand and began sending forth scouts in search of a new host.

  Tiny flecks, invisibly black against the darkness of the night, emerged from Sara’s mouth, nostrils, and eyes, hovered in the air for a few seconds, then quickly died when they found no new host within which to feed and breed.

  And the colony infesting Sara’s body, receiving no signals from its scouts, continued to expand within the confines of its host, reaching deeper and deeper into Sara’s vital organs.

  Then, from out of the night sky, a cloud of insects dropped down to surround Sara, and for a moment she felt calm once again.

  Her eyes focused on the creatures as they buzzed around her head, and in her mind an image began to form; an image so abstract it could not have been replicated outside of her fevered mind.

  Yet to Sara, and to the teeming being within her, it formed a map, a clear route to take her where she must go.

  The skin of her hands ripping on the rough mesh of the fence, Sara scaled the single obstacle that kept her from the wilderness.

  For Sara McLaughlin, the last fragments of her humanity were finally extinguished.

  The homing became the single, unalterable obsession of her existence.

  Alice Jenkins arrived at the First Floor West nurses’ station at precisely ten minutes to midnight, ready to relieve JoAnna Morton, who was just finishing the final activity reports of her shift. “Anything going on?” Alice asked.

  “All quiet,” JoAnna replied with a smile. “Everyone’s asleep.” She gathered the various items that inevitably wound up on the desk—her keys, lipstick, a paperback book, two emery boards—into her purse while Alice made her habitual round of the ward, peering briefly into each room just to make sure that, as she always put it, “JoAnna hadn’t misplaced anyone.”

  In Room 112, where a card on the door read MCLAUGHLIN, s., the television was on, the bed seemed to be torn apart, and a nightgown was draped over the chair next to the bed. Of “McLaughlin, S.” there was no sign at all.

  Frowning, Alice pulled the door to 112 open and stepped inside. Shivering in the cool of the room, she went to the window, pulled it closed,
then checked the tiny bathroom that connected 112 and 114. It was empty, and the patient in 114 was snoring peacefully.

  Her frown deepening, Alice returned to the nurses’ station, where JoAnna Morton was pulling on her sweater in preparation to leave for the night. “Didn’t you say everyone was asleep?” she asked. JoAnna looked at her blankly, then nodded. “Well, would you mind telling me where you tucked McLaughlin, S. in? One-twelve is empty.”

  JoAnna Morton gazed at the other nurse for a moment, then turned and walked down the hall to 112. Just as Alice had said, there was no sign of Sara McLaughlin. “She was there half an hour ago,” JoAnna insisted as she came back to the desk. “And I can’t believe I wouldn’t have either seen her or heard her if she’d gone anywhere.”

  Unless you were reading your romance, Alice thought, but was too tactful to say out loud. Instead she headed quickly toward the far end of the hall. “I’ll check the lounge and rest rooms, you call the other floors.”

  Ten minutes later, when they had still found no sign of Sara in the hospital, they decided they knew what must have happened, even though it made no sense at all.

  Leaving not only her nightgown behind, but every stitch of clothing as well, Sara had apparently gone out the window. Once outside, the teenaged girl—stark naked—seemed simply to have vanished into the night.

  “All right,” Alice sighed when she, JoAnna, the emergency room resident, and two orderlies had exhausted every other possibility, “let’s start notifying people. Alice, you call the police, and I’ll call her doctor.” Her eyes shifted to the young resident from the emergency room. “And you can call her parents,” she said. Before the resident had time to object, Alice picked up the phone and dialed Ellen Filmore’s number in Pleasant Valley. On the fifth ring, an answering machine picked up the call.

  “This is Ellen Filmore. I’m not at home right now, but please leave a message. If this is an emergency, please call 555-6472.” When the electronic tone beeped, Alice left a brief message, then dialed the number she’d jotted down as Ellen Filmore’s voice had spoken it. After four rings, a sleepy male voice came on the line.

  “Hello?”

  “I’m looking for Ellen Filmore.”

  Instantly, the sleepiness left the voice. “This is Roberto Muñoz. I’m her nurse.”

  Alice Jenkins quickly explained what had happened. “We’re notifying the police, of course, and the girl’s parents. If you can tell me where I might find Dr. Filmore, I’d be glad to—”

  “It’s all right,” Roberto interrupted. “If she’s not at home, I’m not sure where she might be, but I can find her a lot faster than you can. I’ll take care of it.”

  Hanging up the phone, Roberto dialed the number of the clinic, starting to pull on his clothes even while the phone rang. When the answering machine there finally picked up, and Roberto heard his own voice beginning to deliver a variation of the same message that was on Ellen Filmore’s phone, he hung up, thought a moment, then dialed the sheriff’s dispatcher. “Carla? It’s Roberto Muñoz, in Pleasant Valley. Any idea where I might be able to find Dr. Filmore? Has something happened with our missing kids?”

  “We’ve got a couple of deputies out cruising around the area, but if something’s happened, I haven’t heard,” the dispatcher replied. “And I haven’t heard from Dr. Filmore in weeks. Is there a problem I can help you with?”

  “I don’t think so,” Roberto sighed. “Another of our kids just turned up missing, this time from a hospital in San Luis Obispo.”

  “Oh, Lord,” the dispatcher replied. “You’re sure there’s nothing we can do?”

  “The cops over there are taking care of it,” Roberto told her. “Talk to you later.” Hanging up, he finished dressing while he tried to figure out what to do next.

  The thing was, his boss never went anywhere without telling him where she could be reached, or leaving a message on her machine. In the three years he’d worked for her, this was the first time Roberto hadn’t been able to tell a caller exactly how to get hold of her.

  Picking up his wallet and the keys to his car, Roberto Muñoz set off in search of Ellen Filmore.

  Something was wrong.

  Karen Owen’s eyes snapped open, and for a moment she wasn’t quite certain where she was. Then she recognized the living room of the farmhouse, and as the fogginess of her restless sleep began to lift from her mind, she shifted stiffly on the sofa in an attempt to ease the dull ache that was throbbing in the small of her back.

  In the big brown leather chair across from her, Russell was snoring rhythmically, his head lolling on his chest, his mouth partly open. Beside her on the couch, Marge Larkin had lain down, curled her legs up almost to her chest, and slept with her neck bent at an angle so severe it almost made Karen wince. Slowly, her muscles protesting every movement, Karen unfolded herself from the sofa and started toward the kitchen for a cup of the coffee it seemed she’d brewed a few minutes ago. As she passed the clock, it struck a single deep note, and she automatically glanced at it.

  Twelve-thirty.

  Which meant that she hadn’t made the coffee a few minutes ago at all, and by now it would be stone cold.

  How could she have slept for two hours?

  The strain of keeping her emotions in check, when what she really wanted to do was burst into tears and collapse, had exhausted her.

  She turned the heat on beneath the coffeepot, then reached for a mug on the counter. And stopped.

  She looked around the kitchen, frowning as she tried to focus her mind. Something wasn’t quite right. What was it? Was something out of place? Or something not there at all?

  The silence of the sleeping household was unnerving her. That’s all it is, she told herself. Still, something didn’t feel right.

  Her heart beating faster as a pang of fear twisted in her belly, Karen started up the stairs.

  This is ridiculous, she scolded herself. There’s nothing wrong. Why was she getting so upset?

  But as she started down the hall toward Molly’s room, she broke into a run, throwing open Molly’s door and snapping on the light.

  The room was empty.

  “No,” she whispered, already starting toward the room next door. “Not Molly, too.” It was going to be all right. She would open the door and find Ben asleep, with Molly and Bailey curled up on the floor next to him, a blanket wrapped around them to keep them warm.

  But even as she pushed the door open, she knew that Kevin’s room would prove to be just as empty as Molly’s had been.

  Now a scream burst from her throat—a scream that was meant to be her husband’s name, but erupted only as a formless howl of anguish. Frantically, she rushed from one room to another, calling out Molly’s name, and by the time Russell arrived at the top of the stairs, followed a second later by Marge Larkin, she had checked them all. A sob of hopelessness racked her body, and she stared first at her husband, then at Marge Larkin. “They’re gone,” she breathed. “Oh, God, Marge, now our babies are gone, too.”

  Her frayed emotions finally snapping, she collapsed into Russell’s arms. “They took Bailey,” she sobbed. “Why would they do that? Oh, God, why would they do that?” But even as she asked the question, deep in her heart she already knew the answer.

  Molly and Ben had gone out into the night to look for their sister and brother.

  How long had they been gone?

  Breaking away from Russell, Karen rushed down the stairs and out into the night.

  “Molly! Ben! Come back! Oh, God, please come back.…”

  As Russell dashed down the stairs to call Mark Shannon, and Marge Larkin burst out of the house to join Karen in the yard, Karen’s screams slowly died away into the silence of the night.

  Over the next half hour, as Mark Shannon began spreading the word that Molly and Ben were gone, lights came on in the homes of Pleasant Valley and men began to leave their houses, knowing they wouldn’t sleep again until Molly and Ben had been found.

  Or until they
discovered exactly what was happening to the children of their town.

  Roberto Muñoz pulled into the parking lot of the clinic, not because he expected to find Ellen Filmore there, but because he had no better ideas of where to look next. He’d already been to her home, checking her garage to make certain her car was gone. Next he’d driven slowly up and down every street in town searching, half expecting to see the doctor’s car parked in the driveway of someone she knew.

  Her car, though, seemed to have disappeared off the face of the earth.

  Was it possible she hadn’t come back from San Luis Obispo at all? No, she would have called him. Ellen took her responsibility as the town’s sole doctor very seriously; if she were going to be out of town unexpectedly, he was always informed, no matter how late the hour.

  Parking near the clinic’s door, Roberto let himself inside, going first to Ellen’s office, where he rifled through her calendar, searching for any clue as to plans she might have had.

  Nothing.

  He moved through the rest of the clinic, not certain what he was looking for, but knowing that if anything—anything at all—was out of place, his practiced eyes would spot it immediately.

  The open drawer in one of the examining rooms drew his attention. The moment he looked inside it, he knew what was gone.

  The antivenin that Carl Henderson had brought to the clinic the day Julie Spellman had been stung.

  But why would the antivenin be gone? Why would anyone want to steal—

  But it hadn’t been stolen! He’d seen nothing to indicate that the clinic had been broken into, and no thief would have left a drawer standing open, where either he or Ellen would be sure to notice it first thing in the morning.

  It had to have been Ellen who had taken it.

  The connection clicked in Roberto Munoz’s mind just as it had occurred to Ellen Filmore a few hours earlier. He knew where she must have gone. Leaving the clinic, he drove out to Carl Henderson’s house. There, parked in the driveway behind Henderson’s gray Jeep, was Ellen Filmore’s car.