The Homing by John Saul

Author:John Saul [Saul, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-77517-7
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2010-12-14T16:00:00+00:00

Carl Henderson pulled his Cherokee to a stop in a shady spot next to the Owens’ barn just as Karen burst out of the house and began running down the slope toward the corral. It wasn’t until he’d gotten out of the Jeep that he caught sight of the bees streaming from the corral behind the barn up toward the house, where they seemed to be swarming above the porch roof.

But that didn’t make any sense—the new hives had been on the farm less than twenty-four hours, and in Carl’s experience, bees rarely swarmed unless a hive was too crowded. No hive could possibly become overcrowded in less than a day, so one of the old hives must have split before it had been taken away.

Which meant that the bees now streaming toward the house would undoubtedly be of the virulently poisonous strain that had almost killed both Molly and Julie Spellman.

Carl felt a thrill of anticipation as the thought that Julie might have been stung again—perhaps even killed—flitted into his mind. Quickly, he rounded the corner of the barn, but stopped short as he saw Julie Spellman sitting on the top rail of the corral.

The moment of hope that she might be dead faded away, to be replaced by the same deep, cold anger she’d triggered in him the day she’d gotten stung.

That day, she hadn’t remembered what had happened up at the hives; but that didn’t mean she would never remember. Carl had done his best to avoid her since then, not only because he was afraid of what she might suddenly remember, but also because of the fury that rose within him just at the sight of her.

The fury that made him want to reach out to her, to capture her, to add Julie to his collection.

But he couldn’t do that, not now.

Maybe not ever.

He was almost certain that Mark Shannon was watching him. The deputy had come to his house the day after Otto died, and even though Shannon had pretended he only wanted to talk about scorpions, Carl Henderson knew better.

Shannon was spying on him.

He’d known it instantly, felt it in the way the deputy’s eyes had fixed on him, then flicked through his house, prying into the corners, searching the crannies for …

What?

Whatever he was looking for, Carl knew Shannon wouldn’t find it. There was nothing left to find; not upstairs, nor down in the basement, either.

Dawn Sanderson was gone—even before he’d driven Otto home in his own truck and deposited him behind the toolshed, Carl had taken Dawn off the wall and put her into his special box.

A wonderful, perfectly constructed box, eight feet long, four feet wide, and four feet deep—like a huge coffin—half filled with a special mixture of earth that he himself had compiled.

The box of earth stood in the back corner of the darkroom.

In the earth lived a colony of ants.

A special colony that had been multiplying for years and now comprised millions of insects.

Insects that needed to be fed.

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