Micro

Chapter 23

Fern Gully 30 October, 2:00 a.m.

The Scolopendra burst through the wooden palisade, scattering splinters, while the people leaped and tumbled aside, screaming and shouting. The centipede had a keen sense of smell, and the humans’ scent had provoked it to attempt an ambush. The centipede mistook the leaf-bed for its prey, and sank its fangs into it as the humans scattered. With astonishing speed, it coiled itself around the leaf-bed. Gallons of venom gushed from the fangs, splashing, and filling the air with a foul odor.

The individual legs of a giant centipede end in pointed fangs-foot-fangs. Each foot-fang is loaded with venom, and can deal a sting. The Scolo’s forty legs hammered around, dribbling venom.

Amar had been sitting on the leaf roof of the shelter. When the centipede crushed the roof, Amar fell down among the coils. He threw himself facedown to the ground, trying to protect himself.

Karen knew something about centipede anatomy. She shouted to Amar: “Watch out for the legs! Each leg has a poison barb!”

Amar rolled over, and began writhing this way and that while the foot-fangs danced and thrust around him, dribbling venom. He was going to be pierced by one of those feet.

“Amar!” Peter shouted. He advanced with his machete and began hacking at the centipede, trying to draw the centipede away from Amar, but the machete had no effect, only bounced off the armor. Amid shouts and crisscrossing headlamp beams, the others struck at the centipede with their machetes, trying to distract it and give Amar a chance to escape. Karen sprayed the benzo spray, but the animal didn’t even seem to notice.

The centipede suddenly let go of the leaf-bed and began lashing its head back and forth, opening and closing its mouth-fangs, looking to seize prey. It had poor eyesight but could detect smell with its antennae, which it now whacked around. An antenna slapped Karen, knocking her into the wall of the palisade.

The centipede swung around and faced her.

Amar, lying on his back on the ground, rolled away as the centipede turned on Karen. He struggled to his feet, still holding the harpoon, and shouted, “Hey!”

That had no effect, so Amar jumped up onto the centipede’s back. He stood on the armored shell, trying to keep his balance as it heaved around, holding the harpoon, uncertain where to thrust it.

“Aim for the heart!” Karen shouted.

He had no idea where the heart was; the creature’s body was divided into many segments. “Where?” he shouted.

“Segment four!”

Amar counted four segments down from the head and raised the harpoon, but then hesitated. There was something magnificent about the creature. In that moment of hesitation, the centipede heaved its back. Amar drove the harpoon down deep into the centipede’s back, but was thrown off. He tumbled to the ground, the harpoon still lodged in the centipede’s back. The centipede whirled around, twisting and writhing, and its fangs snapped shut, the point of one fang slashing across Amar’s chest, tearing apart his shirt and covering him with squirting venom. The venom drenched Amar.

Amar curled up, moaning in pain. He felt as if his chest had been dipped in flames. The centipede went into a flurry while the harpoon clanged around. Rick and Karen rushed in and dragged Amar away. The centipede uncoiled, coiled up again, hissing. The harpoon stood in its back.

“Go up!” Karen shouted. “Centipedes don’t climb trees!”

They had camped at the foot of a tree, and the tree was covered with moss. They jumped up into the moss, grabbing handholds and footholds, and started to climb. Because gravity was less powerful in the micro-world, they could climb quickly and easily. Amar tried to climb, but shooting waves of pain were running through his body, and he couldn’t grip anything. Peter hauled Amar up, lifting him under the arms and trying not to touch the wound on his chest. They quickly reached two feet above the ground, and they stopped in a sort of cave of moss, looking out and down, trying to see the centipede.

The centipede was crawling out of the ruins of the fort, the harpoon waving in its back. They could hear it hissing. It did not get very far. It became still, and its breathing ceased. Amar had dealt it a fatal blow with the harpoon. Rick’s curare had worked.

They were huddled in a cave of moss, two feet above the ground, out of reach of any centipede. They had turned off their headlamps. Amar Singh seemed to be going out of his mind. Peter and Karen held him, talking to him, trying to keep him calm. Amar was in shock, sweating profusely, but his body temperature plummeted, and his skin felt cold and clammy. They wrapped him in the space blanket.

They also examined him with a light. The slash from the centipede fang had laid open his chest to the bone, and he had obviously lost a lot of blood. He had been splashed with a large quantity of venom, too, which had drenched the wound. There was no way of knowing how much venom Amar had absorbed, or what it would do to him.

Amar struggled with them, delirious. His breathing ran fast and shallow. “It burns…”

“Amar, listen to me. You’ve been envenomed,” Peter said.

“We have to leave this place!”

“You need to keep still.”

“No!” Amar struggled while the others held him and tried to calm him. “It’s coming! It’s almost here!” he moaned.

“What is?”

“We’re going to die!” Amar screamed. He fought to escape.

They held him down, trying to quiet his struggling.

Peter knew that the venom of centipedes had not been studied much by scientists. There was no antivenin, no antidote, for any type of centipede venom. Peter feared Amar might go into a breathing arrest. Some of the symptoms of centipede envenomation resembled rabies. Amar was experiencing waves of hyperesthesia, feeling and sensing everything with too much intensity. Sounds were too loud, and the slightest touch on his skin made him cringe. He kept trying to pull the space blanket off his body. “It burns, it burns,” he kept saying.

Peter flicked on his headlamp for a moment to get a look at Amar.

“Turn it off!” Amar screamed, swinging his arms. The light hurt his eyes. His eyes watered with tears that streamed down his face, though he wasn’t crying. Above all, an unspeakable feeling of doom had gripped Amar’s mind. He seemed to believe that at any moment something terrible would happen. “We have to leave this place!” he moaned. “It’s coming! It’s getting closer!” But he couldn’t say what “it” was.

“Run!” Amar shrieked. He tried to crawl out of the moss cave and jump. Peter and the others struggled with him, and they held his arms and legs, trying to keep him from leaping from the tree into the night.

For a long time Amar Singh struggled and babbled, but during the early hours of the morning he grew quieter and seemed to stabilize. Or perhaps he had exhausted himself. Peter took this as a good sign. He hoped Amar was turning the corner.

“I’m going to die,” Amar whispered.

“No you’re not. Hang in there.”

“I’ve lost my faith. When I was a little kid I believed in reincarnation. Now I know there’s nothing after death.”

“It’s the venom talking, Amar.”

“I’ve hurt so many people in my life. No way to make it up now.”

“Come on, Amar. You haven’t hurt anybody.” Peter hoped his voice conveyed confidence.

All of this happened in darkness, for they didn’t dare turn on their lights. Erika Moll had been very afraid of the dark as a small child, and her fear of the dark roared back as she listened to Amar’s frightened babbling. Amar’s suffering hit Erika Moll harder than the others, and she began to cry. She couldn’t stop crying.

“Will somebody shut the woman up, please?” Danny Minot said. “It’s bad enough with Amar going insane, but this sobbing is getting on my nerves.” He began stroking his nose, running his fingertips over his face.

Peter could see that Danny wasn’t doing well, either, but he turned his attention to Erika. He put his arms around her and smoothed her hair. They had been lovers, but this wasn’t love, it was survival. Just trying to keep people from dying. “It will be all right,” he said to Erika, and squeezed her hand.

Erika began reciting the Lord’s Prayer. “Vater unser im Himmel…”

“She turns to God when science fails her,” said Danny.

“What do you know about God?” Rick said to him.

“As much as you do, Rick.”

The others tried to sleep. The moss was warm and soft, and they were exhausted after the harrowing fight. None of them wanted to fall asleep, but sleep took them gently in its arms anyway.