Micro - Michael Crichton [120]
Despite the horror of his situation, Rick Hutter felt strangely bored. Paralyzed in the dark, he had nothing to do except imagine his approaching death. He decided he’d better focus his mind on the things that had made him happy during his life. This might be his last chance for memories. He recalled wading into the surf at Belmar, on the Jersey Shore, where his family had spent a week at a motel each summer—what they could afford. His father had driven a delivery truck for a convenience store chain. He remembered standing on the driver’s seat of his father’s truck when he was five years old and telling everybody he was going to be a truck driver just like his dad. He saw himself opening the acceptance letter from Stanford and reading it with complete disbelief…a full scholarship at Stanford. Then graduate school at Harvard, again on financial support. He saw himself in Costa Rica, interviewing an old lady, a curandera, as she brewed a healing tea from the leaves of the Himatanthus tree.
His mind turned to the lab. One night he had been trying to extract a compound from the Himatanthus leaves. Karen King had been working late, tending an experiment with her spiders. They had been alone in the room together. They had worked side by side at the lab bench, right next to each other, without saying a word, the air thick with mutual dislike. But their hands had brushed by accident…Maybe I should have tried to hook up with Karen that night…of course, she probably would have punched me…
A dying man thinks mostly about missed sexual opportunities. Who said that, anyway? It might really be true…
He began to feel sleepy…drifting off…
“Rick!”
Her voice woke him up. It came faintly through the earth.
I’m here, Karen! he shouted, in his mind. But he couldn’t make his mouth move.
“Rick! Where are you?”
Hurry up! There’s a Hoover with jaws in here with me.
Karen’s light flickered briefly, the first light he’d seen in a long time—and was gone. Total darkness swallowed him again. She had moved on.
Come back! he shouted in his mind. You missed me!
Silence. She had gone away.
Then, in the darkness, the horror of horrors arrived. Something moist and very heavy slid over his ankle, pressing his foot into the ground. It’s not happening. Next he felt the segments of the larva bumping over his leg, bump, bump, bump. No! The segments were sliding over his stomach, now, then sliding over his chest, squeezing the breath out of him. No! Please, no! The wasp grub lay on top of him now, its weight pressing down on him, suffocating him. He could feel the grub’s heart beating, thumping against his chest. He heard a moist clickety-click. Those jaws were starting to work.
Click-click. Snip-snap. Snick.
The light returned. A ray shot into the cell. It revealed the black cutter knives flicking around a queerly soft mouth like a pale anus. Right in front of his face.
Karen was shining her headlamp into the cell. She saw the scene. “Oh, my God, Rick!” She began hacking at the rubble in the doorway, flinging stones aside.
The teeth brushed against his forehead. The grub was nosing around, looking for a soft spot to begin chewing. It tapped its teeth over his shoulder, leaving a streak of drool. He felt the teeth prick his nose. And the moist mouth brushed across his lips like a kiss, spewing out drool. It made him cough and choke, automatically.
“Hang on—!”
Hurry, this bastard wants to give me a hickie.
She got through the opening and threw herself at the grub, kicking the grub with both feet, pushing it away from Rick’s face. “You leave him alone!” she shouted, and thrust her machete into the grub. The grub gasped, a hiss coming out of its airholes. Karen pulled out the blade and raised the machete and swung it, beheading the grub in one blow. The blob-like