The Narrows

CHAPTER 28

THE PLACE SMELLED HORRIBLE but Backus knew he could live with it. It was the flies that repulsed him the most. They were everywhere, dead and alive. Carrying germs and disease and dirt. As he huddled under the blanket, his knees drawn up, he could hear them buzzing in the darkness, flying blind, hitting the screens and the walls, making little sounds. They were out there, everywhere. He realized he should have known that they would come, that they were part of the plan.

He tried to block out their sounds. He tried to think and concentrate on the plan. It was his last day here. Time to move. Time to show them. He wished he could stay to watch, to bear witness to the event. But he knew that there was much work to do.

He stopped breathing. He could feel them now. The flies had found him and were crawling on the blanket, looking for a way in, a way to get to him. He had given them Me but now they wanted to get to him and eat him. His laugh broke sharply from beneath the blanket and the flies that had alighted on it scattered. He realized he was no different from the flies. He, too, had turned against the giver of life. He laughed again and he felt something go down his throat.

"Aaaggh!"

He retched. He coughed. He tried to get it out. A fly. A fly had gone down his throat

Backus jumped up and almost tripped as he climbed out. He ran to the door and out into the night. He shoved his finger down his throat until everything came up and came out. He dropped to his knees, gagged and spit it all out. He then pulled the flashlight from his pocket and studied his effluent with the beam. He saw the fly in the greenish yellow bile. It was still alive, its wings and legs mired in the swamp of human discharge.

Backus stood up. He stepped on the fly and then nodded to himself. He wiped the bottom of his shoe on the red dirt. He looked up at the silhouette of the rock outcropping that rose a hundred feet above him. It was blocking the moon at this hour. But that was all right. That just made the stars all the brighter.