The Bottom Feeders and Other Stories

4: A Plague from the Mud

Oregon has always known plenty of rain, but that particular summer was unusually wet. Those relentless rains drenched Monument — a small scattering of houses swallowed by pine trees in the John Day River Valley. It was a tiny town with a population hovering around 150. They were loggers, mostly, or other folks that enjoyed the solitude and security supplied by miles of quiet evergreens. So small and nestled neatly into the valley, Monument could just vanish, and most folks wouldn’t notice.

One damp morning I sat in a small booth at Pine Peaks Café, reading my newspaper, poking at the soggy remnants of a short stack of pancakes, and trying to ignore a black beetle scurrying across the restaurant’s “sparkling” floors. Over at the counter, Randy Crouse, a bearded bear of a man who ran a small logging outfit that usually did piecemeal work on contract, sat sipping a cup of coffee. He perched on his stool with slumped shoulders, wearing the look of a man who witnessed too many wet days.

“Aw hell, Darla. You might as well fill ‘er up again.” Randy pushed his cup and saucer across the counter. “I don’t see as we’ll be cutting again today. Too, wet, even for Oregon.”

Darla Smith, a dark haired wisp of a middle-aged waitress, poured him another cup of black swill. “Yeah. This is a bit much.” She aimed her voice at my booth. “What d’ya think Professor, we going to drown out here, wash away with all this rain? Some kind of biblical flood?”

I hated the nickname. Most everyone in town over the age of twenty-five called me Professor because I taught English at Grant County Consolidated High School. I was the only teacher on the payroll who lived in Monument. “I wouldn’t know really, but I figure these things go in cycles.” I straightened my glasses and turned back to the newspaper.

“What do you mean, ‘cycles’?” Randy asked through his beard, sitting up on his stool to show his barrel chest.

“The rain. Some years it’s more; some years less.”

“Damn genius,” Randy muttered. He looked down just then, spotted that little black beetle, and crushed it with his size thirteen boot. “Hey, Darla. Don’t call the health department just yet, but it looks like the rain is driving ‘em inside,” he said, holding up the soiled sole of his boot.

“Shut up, Randy,” Darla said.

“Speaking of health codes, why don’t you sell that bread anymore, the stuff you used to bake right here in that big old oven out back? Somebody find a bug in a loaf?” Randy asked with a wide grin.

I saw Randy again about a week later. He stood at the back of his of his dented Chevy, leaning over the tailgate and talking to a couple of his workers: Pete Archer and Manny Swick. Pete and Manny were Monument’s Laurel and Hardy. Manny was the plump one with a constant smile lurking under his thick mustache, and Pete had a pale face — long like it had been stretched in a taffy machine.

“Hey Professor, get a load of this.” Randy waved one big paw in my direction as I crossed Main Street in front of Peterson’s Drug.

The sky still hung in a damp gray shroud around the trees, but Monument was as dry as it had been in weeks. A quick thought shot through my head: Randy, Pete, and Manny should probably be out in the forest cutting on a day like that, especially during such a wet year.

“What is it?” I stepped closer to the men huddled around the bed of Randy’s truck. Lumpy, Randy’s old, nappy hound, sat panting near the cab. There was something else, too — shiny and black like a dress shoe. Little legs like bits of broken black bamboo jutted out at odd angles. At the front was a smallish head with a set of nasty pincer jaws — not huge like a Hercules Beetle, but wicked enough. Its body was about the size of a large rat.

“This some kind of gag?” I asked.

“Like hell. We found a few of them out at the cutting site. All dead like this one.” Randy leaned in and I could smell a hint of whiskey just under the coffee stench. “A couple of them looked like they were stuck in the mud — like they were climbin’ out.”

“What do you suppose it is?” Manny asked, a hint of fear floating just under his words. His usual ruddy face looked whitewashed and pale.

I bent over the tailgate, a little shocked by the possibility. “A beetle, I guess.”

“Damn big beetle.” Randy stroked his beard.

“You should really show this to Lane, you know Nancy Albricht’s kid. He’s back for the summer, and he’s studying entomology at Oregon State.” I looked at Randy. “This would be like winning the lotto for him.”

“Anto-mol-ogy,” Randy spoke slowly. “What’s that, beetle breeding?”

“Entomology. The study of insects. Bugs. Let’s give him a call.”

“It kind of looks like a common black beetle — family Carabidae. They’re an import from Europe. Not native to the Pacific Northwest, that is.” Lane Albricht, blonde and broad, stood in the center of the small group of men gathered around his father’s workbench, poking and prodding the specimen Randy brought from the forest. “Damn it’s big. Where’d you find this?”

“There were a few out near our site. Maybe a half dozen. A couple of them looked like they were crawling up out of the ground.” Randy made a face and pantomimed a large beetle exiting a pile of mud. I figured the beetle in the woods didn’t have a beard.

Lane tilted his head and studied Randy’s acting. “Interesting. Most Carabidae species usually live under old trees, bark, or stones near water. Were the others the same size?”

“Yep, close anyway.” Randy ceased his beetle impression. “Look, these things are a little spooky, and we haven’t even seen a live one.”

“Yeah man. I don’t wanna be out there with these things crawling all over me.” Manny shivered, jiggling his protruding belly. Pete nodded.

Lane carefully looked at each man in turn, “Large insects aren’t unheard of. They found this other beetle, Titanus giganteus,in Brazil that was about seventeen centimeters long. This guy is easily bigger. I’d like to know if you find anything else. Especially a live one.”

“Whatever kid. If we do, it sure as hell won’t be alive for long.” Randy thumped Manny and Pete in turn. “I guess we better get to work fellas. We’re wasting daylight.”

Peter and Manny exchanged a look. “Look, Randy, I can’t speak for Manny, but I’m not really sure I want to go back out today,” Pete said, glancing back at the black critter on the bench.

“Yeah Randy, maybe we should…” Manny began.

“You’re both a couple of pansies. Ain’t nothing out there I can’t squash with my boot.” He started across the street toward his truck and climbed into the cab. “You sissies can walk home. And kid, you can keep that one. Call it a souvenir.” With a slight chuckle, Randy started the truck and rolled down the street.

The four of us stood in silence for a moment.

I turned to Lane, glancing first at the black specimen on the table. “Are these things going to be a problem?”

“Naw. Probably just some freaks, aberrations. I mean Carabidae is a carnivorous species, but…”

“Carnivorous beetles?” Pete’s taffy face stretched with surprise.

“Sure — they eat other insects and can run really fast to catch their prey. But they wouldn’t harm animals.” Lane ran his hand through his wavy blonde hair. “I’m gonna call my advisor. I know he’ll want to see this.”

Manny smoothed his mustache with one finger. “Look guys, I think we’re going to hoof it back downtown.” He turned and started walking with Pete.

“Take it easy,” I called after them and turned to Lane. “They seemed a little spooked. Do you think we should try to get in touch with the park service or something?”

“No. Not yet. This could be an important find. We don’t want the state coming in and mucking things up with paperwork. If these beetles really were crawling from the ground…I dunno, they could be a new species, something not studied.” He must have seen the confusion on my face. “You know about cicadas right?”

“Cicadas. Yeah, they make that buzzing sound. Only around during certain years.”

“Right. They spend most of their lives underground, only coming out to mate and die. A lot of insects go through early stages in the life cycle underground — natural protection from predators.” Lane looked at the beetle carcass, touching the tip of one foreleg. “I think this guy ‘grew up’ underground. Look at the forelegs.”

I examined the two segmented limbs closely, noting they were somewhat thicker, maybe sturdier, than the other legs. “How do they know when to climb out of the ground?”

Lane bent down and really scrutinized the beetle’s abdomen. “Probably just a chemical trigger…something inside that says ‘it’s time’.”

“Probably?”

“Yeah. Sometimes these things happen because of environmental factors.”

“The rain?”

“Not exactly. More like ground temperature reaching a certain point — raising a degree or two. Something like that. Something that would signal ‘everything’s ok, come on out’ to the little bundle of nerves in his ganglion — his insect brain.” Lane thrust a thumb toward the beetle’s head. “I guess enough rain, if it’s warm enough — could help boost the ground temperature. I don’t really know.”

We always had our fair share of community wildlife in Monument. Deer or elk would wander through town, especially in fall — during mating season, the “rut” as we called it. That summer, more large mammals wandered out of the surrounding woods, many more than I had experienced since living there.

The sheriff, a thick, balding fellow named Mort Kress, and one of his deputies, Benny Wilson, brought this large buck into town one day. It was dead — mauled. Something had torn the poor thing open, gutted it. I was sitting outside the café when they pulled up in the sheriff’s truck, and I could see the antlers sticking out of the bed. Curiosity drew me across the street. “What happened?” I asked.

“Nothing but road-kill, I guess. Benny and me figured we better load it up, get it out of there. Found it out on Deer Creek Road. Surprised nobody reported this one.” He slammed the door of his truck shut.

“What do you mean?” I glanced into the bed, saw the horrible strips where flesh was torn from the sides of the deer.

“Look at it. Must’ve messed somebody’s car up pretty good, by the looks of that.” The Sheriff turned and followed Benny inside the café. I stood for a moment, taking in the image of the mauled animal, and imagining the monstrous car that could do that kind of damage.

The rain started again, heavy floods from the iron sky. I sat in my booth at Pine Peak, munching on some burnt bacon and digesting a few short stories from my new textbooks for the fall. Randy perched on his usual stool with no sign of Pete or Manny.

“I don’t much mind the rain today,” Randy muttered to Darla. “Too many of those damn bugs.”

I closed my book, and turned my head slightly toward the counter, enticed by the word “bugs”.

“You’ve just been workin’ too hard,” Darla said, smiling. “Trying to make up for lost time with the weather.”

Randy tugged hard on his beard and said, “No. No, there’s something out there.” He wagged one rough finger toward the café windows. “Them bugs. They’re getting bigger.”

“Nonsense.” Darla chuckled — she wasn’t the kind of woman who giggled.

“Hell, I’m telling the truth. Old Lumpy came running out of the trees last Thursday evening, tail tucked between his legs. I started laughing at him, they way he looked all scared — I figured he pissed off a marmot or something. Anyway, this big son-of-a-bitch comes scurrying after him. Craziest thing, watching this beetle the size of that old hound come scurrying out of the forest.” Randy’s voice became a little distant. “The damn thing scrambled right over a downed tree, straight at me. I dropped the chainsaw right on it.” His coffee cup made a noisy clink when it hit the saucer.

“I think the only thing you’ve been dropping is a little too much of the old Kentucky vintage, if you get my meaning,” Darla said as she turned back to the counter and replaced the coffee pot on its warming plate.

“Randy?” I asked, standing now just a few feet from the counter. “Was anybody else out there with you?”

“Hell no. Pete and Manny totally turned on me. Won’t go out after talking to that kid — Lane. Shit, I’m not going back until I’m sure those damn bugs are gone.”

“I think you should call the sheriff. I mean if you _really_ saw something that big…”

Randy stood up, stretching all six feet of his barrel chest in front of me. “You think it’s the booze too, huh?” He pushed past me and exited the café.

I finished my meal in silence, walked home under a black umbrella against the rain, and called Lane.

“Hello?”

“Yeah, Lane. It’s me Rick.”

“Hey Mr. Grinnich.” The kid still called me Mr. Ginnich even though he graduated three years ago. “I called my advisor. He was out of the office for the summer session, but I left a message and emailed him some digital pics of the beetle.”

“That’s what I’m calling about. Randy was down at Pine Peaks today, and he claimed he saw another beetle. He said it was bigger and alive.”

“Really? They couldn’t get much bigger. The ecosystem just couldn’t support them.”

“Randy does have a bit of a whisky problem, but that wouldn’t make him hallucinate…”

“What time of day was it?”

“I don’t know — wait he said ‘evening’. I know he’s been working late, trying to make up lost time because of the rain. That and his workers have chickened out on him.”

Lane’s voice grew distant for a moment, like he spoke away from the receiver. “That would make sense, most species of Carabidae are nocturnal…Listen, I’m going to call Randy, see if I can go out with him tomorrow.”

“If it stops raining.”

“Of course. I want to see these things myself.”

After a slight bribe — a fifth of Jack Daniels, Randy agreed to drive Lane out to the woods. Lane called that night and explained the deal, and I waved them the next morning as they drove west on Kimberly-Long Creek Highway. It was early on Tuesday, and I jogged around town, my usual workout. Something floated in the air that day, something quiet and watchful. The trees seemed closer, pressing in on the edges of Monument, swelling the town to some breaking point. After the jog, I ate my breakfast at Pine Peaks and spent a good part of the morning camped at the booth in the corner. Darla seemed a little distant that morning — distant and brooding.

Sheriff Kress came in around ten. “Mornin’ Darla.” He turned to me and nodded. “Mornin’ Professor.”

“Black?” Darla asked.

“Sure.” He settled onto one of the stools at the bar.

“Busy morning?” she asked while pouring the coffee.

“Not so much. A couple of calls on dogs.”

“Strays?”

“No. Old Elmer Nowlan’s mutt got torn up by something. Probably just some over-aggressive raccoons, but it was a bit of a mess. The Hernandez family can’t find their dog — that old German Shepard…Zeb.”

Something clicked. “Sheriff,” I said while standing and walking toward the counter, “did Randy Crouse ever report anything strange to you? Call you about some large insects?”

“Bugs? No.” He sipped his coffee. “What would I have to do with bugs?”

“These are big. We brought one to Albricht’s place, had Lane take a look.”

“Randy hasn’t said anything to me. How big is big.”

I sat down on a stool next to the sheriff. “The one I saw was about the size of a shoe.” I held my hands up for a visual aid. “Randy claims to have seen larger specimens out in the woods.”

“Randy has claimed a lot of strange things over the years.” He stood, dropped a few coins on the counter, and patted me on the back. “I wouldn’t worry about it too much, Professor. Thanks Darla.” He strode from the café, climbed into his truck, and pulled away.

Early that evening, the quiet seemed to swell and fill the little clearing occupied by our town. I sat on my porch, trying to enjoy the end to a rare, cloudless day. It was the sort of day I’d moved to Oregon to find, the sweet pine smell, the buzzing aliveness from all the trees and close wildlife, but I felt anxious. I had been nervous since Randy and Lane left that morning.

I was startled by the shots — not the first time I’d heard distant gunfire, but this series of pops pushed all the blood from my veins for some reason. The sound came from Deer Creek Road, echoing through the valley to the east. I hurried down the hill toward Main Street, knowing that the sheriff would be there if he was in town.

Darla stood on the sidewalk wiping her hands on her apron. A few other townspeople, maybe a dozen, stood around in the gathering twilight, mumbling about the gunfire. Pete and Manny were there, by each other’s side as usual. Nancy Albricht, Lane’s mom, held a cell phone to her ear, pacing a small segment of walk just down the street from the café.

“What’s happened?” I asked Darla.

“Don’t know. I just heard the shots. Nancy’s worried, trying to call Lane.”

A slight pop sounded in the distance, and the lights flickered and went black inside the café. Darla rushed inside. The sun started to slip past the crooked lip of trees in the west, and a punishing silence crawled into Monument. A brooding silence.

“I got Lane. They’re on their way back.” Nancy crushed the silence with her nervous voice as she hurried into the small throng of people.

Darla stepped out of the café. “We aren’t just without power. The phone’s gone too.”

The sun completely disappeared behind the pine trees on the horizon, dropping night’s heavy blanket on Monument. I thought about walking back to my house up the hill, but the dark streets worked against me. I felt safer in the group of people. Clouds started to roll over the little piece of yellow moon in the sky. My stomach tightened. I looked at Nancy. “I think you should try the sheriff on your cell phone.”

Before she responded, someone in the group asked, “What’s that?” Everyone stopped breathing for a moment, listening to the shadows all around. A small scrabbling sound, like twigs scratching against asphalt and concrete, crawled toward town from the east. I turned to look, just missing the headlights as they rounded the curve behind me.

“Lane!” Nancy hollered, hurrying to Randy’s truck. The small gathering was blown bright from Randy’s headlights, and most looked pale and unnatural under the beams.

“Mom, look, what’s everybody standing around for?” Lane asked as he hopped down from the passenger seat. “You look like you’ve all seen a ghost.”

Nancy hugged her son.

“Awww, Mom…” Lane pushed away.

“Did you find anything today? Any more beetles?” I asked, moving closer to Lane.

He rubbed his blonde hair. “Yeah, but Randy couldn’t find the big one that he went Texas Chainsaw Massacre on the other day. All we found were shells, like the beetles had been molting…growing. Like the cicadas. A bunch of them. But no live ones.”

The crawling sound grew louder, just underneath our voices, a scratching from the shadows. I looked at Nancy again, “I think we better call the sheriff.” She nodded and started punching numbers on her phone. Feet shuffled on the pavement, a small gathering of nervous movement.

Randy climbed from his truck, engine running and lights still shining. Another set of headlights swerved down Main Street from the south. “Sheriff Kress!” Randy shouted, recognizing the police vehicle. Those lights clicked off, and Benny stumbled out of the driver’s door. Illuminated by Randy’s lights, I could see his face was ashen and dotted with dark spots. He held one arm close to his side, a dark streak spreading down his hand. In his injured arm he carried a shotgun.

“Get out, all of you! Load up and get the hell outta here!” He took the bloody hand from his arm and waved it wildly at the small crowd.

“Where’s the Sheriff?”

“Dead…shit…he’s dead. They were everywhere — those goddamn bugs — coming this way. Sheriff stood there, point blank, and unloaded his twelve-gauge. They didn’t flinch. Get the hell out.”

There was a singular moment of silence, and then the handful of citizens in front of Pine Peaks Café started in separate directions, slowly at first. That sound, that scratching, moving sound, grew louder, surrounding and swallowing us. Movement hovered just outside the light, and at the edge of my vision I saw small legs like black bamboo and probing antenna fingers.

Benny hit the pavement with a wet smack. His shotgun dropped to the ground, skidding toward my feet with the force of the blow. A beetle, an abomination the size of a desk, perched on his back, locked its awful pincers around Benny’s head, and twisted with a quick, wet snap and spurting gout of blood. Then the thing started on his body, scratching and snatching with its nightmare jaws.

Randy shoved me aside, and grabbed the shotgun. At the edge of the headlight beam, I could make out the black, moving legs of many more beetles. Randy took quick aim at the beast on Benny’s body, and fired into its mass.

“The light…they’re nocturnal! Stay in the light!” Lane yelled. It was too late. The headlights yanked away, and I turned just in time to see a shadow of Pete’s terrified face behind the windshield of Randy’s truck. With a quick turn and jerk, he pulled a U-turn on Main Street, heading north toward the old highway. The moon poked out from a little cloud, and I saw the shining black carapaces of a half-dozen beetles as they latched on to the vehicle. The street all around swam with the shimmering shells of the devil beetles as they swallowed the town, their little skittering feet chasing the soft padding of shoes on pavement.

Randy fired again, and I just caught a glimpse of a black monster rise up in his muzzle flash. Darla shouted, “Get inside!” Temporarily blinded by the shot, I stumbled toward the café. I pushed past her as she held the door open, the sounds of screams and frightened shouts at my heels. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw nothing but black on the street. With the moon gone, the beetles became invisible, just a scratching and snapping mass of black.

Choking on my burst heart and sucking in air to cool my terror, I climbed over the counter and pushed into the kitchen. The glass windows broke behind me with a thunderous crash. Darla screamed. Needing a hiding place, any place, I felt for the door of the large baking oven, the oven used last when Pine Peaks baked its own bread. I threw it open, yanked out the baking rack, and scrambled inside, pulling the door shut behind me. I hid in that oven all night, cramped and crying in darkness and sweat, listening to the muffled shouts of the townspeople — the screams that echoed into my oven tomb, horrible shrieks that slipped through the cracks in the heavy iron door. The screams faded to moans, and soon I was lost to nothing but the constant scuttling and scrabbling of antennae and legs as the unreal beetles swarmed through the wreckage of the café.

In the morning, after the world fell silent, I climbed out of that oven covered in soot and grease. Little bits of glass and broken furniture crunched as I crawled toward the smashed front of the café. Outside, the forest listened. Surely those awful beetles waited in the darkness under the pine boughs, waited for the night when they would move on.

I found no bodies on Main Street — nothing but broken glass and small bunches of debris washed into little piles by overnight rain. I walked through the dead streets, meandering toward my house, my car. Lumpy, his hair matted and wet, crawled from under a parked truck, sniffing my hand and wagging his tail weakly. That plague of awful, black horrors seemed to have devoured the rest of Monument. When I reached my house, I would call, warn anyone who would listen about the plague, and then load Lumpy in my car and escape that valley while the sun offered protection.