Orb Weaver: Wrath of God, 8

Tracking Lebensraum was easy. In the aftermath of the botched rally, I waited.

When the clock struck twelve, it was my second day. I would date the six days from the announcement I had just made.

I waited, and followed them. They didn’t notice that in the dark auditorium, in the chaos, that they had crushed insects, leaving a chemical scent. The little band got into cars, and I sent bugs to lock on to their fenders.

They would move out of my range, but I could tell individual insects apart, and when I got into the area…

There.

A five-story apartment. Three blocks away, I parked the little bicycle I’d been using. I’d bought it from a thrift store, and after today would never use it again. 

But I didn’t need to be any closer. Under my feet, in the sewers and drains, legions of bugs moved. Even some crabs. I would need them, for… Well. Labor.

The fifth and third floors were empty. And my bugs were dying when they went there.

Kaiser had hired or obtained professional level pesticides. Even a human would soon be dead in those areas. The fourth floor had been sealed. Windows tightly shut, doors closed, and lesser, but still powerful pesticides used in the empty apartments on each side of the suite granted Lebensraum. There was some talk, but I couldn’t understand it.

I couldn’t get enough bugs up there to form a receiver, and I couldn’t risk anything else—Victor was there and the Empire was on high alert.

I had been forced to move twice for roving patrols, until I simply got into a trash bin, empty save for some spoiled, maggot ridden food. Kaiser and his band left, and I remained. Outside the building, my bugs tracked the patrols. Inside, the vibrations of celebrations, men trying to conceal their worry with booze and porn, sounded. A few voices were loud enough for my bugs in an adjacent building to hear them.

Lebensraum was not happy at the lack of hookers. It was suggested that after I was dead, they go score some, possibly grabbing some minorities for games that didn’t necessarily leave all participants alive.

Before his triggering, Lebensraum had been a vicious thug, with a string of felonies behind him. He was no more than a powered thug now. He could have done so much with his power.

Well, easier for me.

The sound died down and I risked sending a few bugs in to touch bodies, feeling the rise and fall of their chests.

They were asleep, booze and drugs scattered through the room.

It was time. Spiders wove thick curtains of web into the ventilation shafts, blocking the air, while termites and other insects started sealing every other gap. Under windows, under doors, even the little holes that gave access to cabling for the TV.  The slower insects were hauled into their position by spiders and even crabs, so they could quickly seal the spaces with web and pulp. I hadn’t yet had much use for crabs, but now I’d be using them. I would have to make certain to return them to the bay when this was over.

In thirty minutes it was done, and then…

A pile of bugs rose by the stove, preparing to turn the burners one, after performing some work to make the burning process inefficient, producing vastly more Carbon Monoxide than normal, and spraying it in a room that was now all but completely sealed.

Then, I hesitated.

This wasn’t a fight.

This was an execution.  They were asleep. The speed at which I’d be filling the air with the deadly poison…

None of them would have a chance to awaken. Fifteen men, brutes, yes, but still…

A memory filled me.

And at last Ar-Pharazon came even to Aman, the Blessed Realm, and the coasts of Valinor; and still all was silent, and doom hung by a thread. For Ar-Pharazon wavered at the end, and almost he turned back. His heart misgave him when he looked upon the soundless shores and saw Taniquetil shining, whiter than snow, colder than death, silent, immutable, terrible as the shadow of the light of Iluvatar. But pride was now his master, and at last he left his ship and strode upon the shore, claiming the land for his own, if none should do battle for it.

Was this my moment? When I let pride and wrath be my master? I had not yet killed. And now… I would kill fifteen people. With no chance to surrender. But…

“Mary Wilson,” I murmured. “Born 2002, murdered, June 1st 2009.”  Her father, Michael Wilson. Killed. Her mother, Jessica, died by suicide.

Also murdered for all that none had touched her the day she’d dropped her pet cat off with her sister and went home to down poison while she lay in her absent daughter’s room. There were more. Kyoko, Dave, Thomas, Carla, Jessica… More killed, more injured. More raped. More terrorized.

If I let them live. Every death, every injury that followed this day would be upon my head.

And all they had to do to avoid this day was not murder. That was it.

In the trash bin, I nodded.

And in the apartment, the insects massed, and turned dials and burners started up, as others pulled the door down to the baking section.

There was no place for the gas to go, save into the sealed rooms. I waited.

Thirty minutes later, there was no sound and I sent some bugs down. They were less vulnerable to the carbon monoxide than mammals were and…

None of the bodies were moving.

It was done.

I took a deep breath, exhaled it. What would Mom think? What would Dad think?

Then I shook my head. I wasn’t done. I didn’t expect anyone would disturb the thug with powers and reputation for taking his anger out on whoever was around.

Insects flooded the room as I tore down the seals, even as another pile of bugs turned on the ventilator in the bathroom. But of course an autopsy would reveal the cause of their death.

There was a reason I’d brought crabs.

Claws snipped, insects bit and devoured. A few hundred ants would reduce a small body to bones in  a day,but that was undirected activity. Swarming up from the sewers, coming through the pipes, I had over one and a half million ants.

They tore the skin, while other bugs carefully licked up the blood and other residue, not letting any stain the clothes or bedding. Meanwhile lines of ants and crabs walked the bits of flesh to the shower and bath outlets, dropping them down where other bugs would take them to the sewers to be eaten. There would be no sign what happened to the flesh, not even the scent of decomposition.

Meanwhile, other bugs were carefully licking and working over the bodies, making certain there were no tell tale scratches or clawmarks, while a legion of ants behind them, damp bits of cloth in their jaws, wiped the bones clean, leaving shining skeletons, still clad in their bed clothes, or nude.

Looking like they’d just… died.

And other insects were on the walls, eating wallpaper, to make words.

Mary Wilson, Jessica Wilson, every person this gang had murdered, directly or by proxy. Not just once, but all over the entire suite. The ceiling, walls, even the floor. Nowhere you could look would you not find the victims of the dead men.

And lastly… This would take some work. Crabs and bugs carefully, held the jaws of the dead men open, the tendons being the only bit of non-bone I’d left…

And into each mouth a playing card of an orb weaver was inserted.

And then, in ten minutes, my legions were gone, leaving no sign what had happened inside this room.

As I had sworn, I would break the Empire, and part of that process was using terror.

I got out of the bin, Idly directing the maggots to a juicy bit of meat they’d missed. Now I had to move fast. After this got out, I expected the smart members of the Empire would assume every residence was compromised and move. But now, I’d beat them, because I knew where Victor, Othala and Rune were, and before anyone discovered what was happening here…

I would have dealt with those three. I jumped out, waited until my bugs showed the patrol moving away, then grabbed my bicycle and took off.

I didn’t feel as bad as I thought I might.

After all. I had warned him.