Free Nasty Little F___ers-Kindle by David McAfee Page A

have to take his shirt off and treat him. The son of a bitch.
    He wondered for half a second if he should try and get shot, too. Maybe Janice would cluck and swoon over him. Then he shook his head. That was Colby’s trick. His method of trying to steal Janice away. Moretz didn’t need to resort to shit like that; he already knew Janice wanted him, even if she did like to play a little rough. Still, Colby’s obvious advances were starting to piss him off. As Colby and Janice disappeared into the First Aid tent, Moretz glared at their backs.
    He might just have to arrange a little accident.

Chapter Ten

    Later that evening, just before sundown, Colby went to see Allen in his tent. The pudgy entomologist hadn’t emerged since he went in, and Colby wanted to check on him. He kept his hand on his pistol as he ducked through the entrance. Allen didn’t notice him; he was bent over a microscope, peering through the eyepiece. Next to him on the table was a cut-up grub, its two crimson ends missing. In a small jar next to the dead grub, several live ones crawled around and over each other, probably looking for an exit. Every now and then, one would bite at the glass. Even from where he stood, Colby heard the tiny clink, clink of their jaws on the inside of the jar.
    “Weren’t there more of them?” Colby’s hand tightened on the pistol’s grip.
    Allen never looked up. “Keep watching.”
    Colby did, and after a minute or two he watched one of the little bastards devour another. There was no fight or scuffle; the offending grub just opened its jaws impossibly wide, then proceeded to chew the other’s head off. The other grubs soon joined in the fray, and in less than thirty seconds, the number of grubs in the jar had been reduced by one.
    “How often do they do that?” Colby asked.
    “Every few minutes,” Allen replied. “I started with over thirty, now there’s only fifteen. I had to separate a few just to make sure there would be enough left to study.” He pointed at the far wall of the tent, where seven small glass containers sat on a shelf, each containing one very pissed off grub. Small bits of jerky dotted a few of the jars.
    Colby watched for a few more minutes. Another grub in the communal jar fell victim to its brethren. “Nasty little fuckers, aren’t they?”
    “You don’t know the half of it,” Allen said, finally turning away from the microscope. “Take a look.”
    Colby stepped over and peeked into the microscope’s eyepiece, which showed a view of one of the grubs’ heads, highly magnified. Jesus! He’d known they had teeth, but he hadn’t realized how sharp they were, or how numerous. “No wonder it hurts so much when they bite.”
    “You noticed the mandibles, then,” Allen said. “Yes, they definitely have a full working set of jaws, and regenerative teeth, like a shark. One tooth breaks or pops out, and another one steps in to take its place.”
    Colby looked up. “I’ve never head of a bug with regenerative teeth.”
    “Me neither,” Allen said. “Lots of insects have teeth, not like you and I, of course. An insect’s jaw usually consists of mandibles, which can often be serrated like teeth, but— ”
    “Allen, the short version, please.”
    “Right. Sorry. Regenerative teeth in insects just doesn’t happen. I’ve never seen it before, and I’ll tell you something else, I—Wait. Did you say one bit you?”
    “Yeah, right here.” Colby lifted his pants leg and showed Allen the pocked bit of his leg where the grub had taken a piece of it. “Fucker got me pretty good.”
    Allen looked at the bite, then back up at Colby. “Can I take a sample of your blood?”
    “Why?”
    “I want to see if it tests positive for a chemical I found in their mouths.”
    “What chemical?” Colby asked as he rolled his pants leg back down.
    “I’m not sure. It’s organic in nature, yet structurally similar to phenylcyclohexylpiperidine.”
    “ Phenylcyclo… where have I heard that