The Fly Killers

August 15, 1985

Albuquerque, New Mexico

Jackson rolled over and sighed.  The sun beat in through the window, striking him across the eyes.  He turned away from the window and toward the bedside table, where his precious Darlingtonia californica sat in her bed of sphagnum moss, waiting patiently for a wayward insect to come her way.  The sunlight glistened on Darling’s spindly stalks, with their bulbous heads that reared up like swollen cobras.  They were beautiful and sensual and deadly.

He glanced over at the clock.  Six seventeen.  Too early to call Joe Reser.  He dropped his head back on the pillow and closed his eyes.

Please let me go back to sleep.

He’d been dreaming of a woman.  He grasped at her image with his mind, trying to hold it, but even though he clenched his fists and squeezed his eyes shut against the intruding light, the dream faded.

He pushed his head back against the pillow, holding his breath and soaking in the early morning silence, but something whispered to him.  A breath of air raised the hairs on his arms and neck and he sensed a presence in the room.

The whisper turned into a humming like a tiny electric razor.  The noise opened his eyes, flushed the last vestiges of the dream from his mind.  He clamped his teeth together and froze.  The thing wavered in the air, audible but not visible, first close, then far, and then near again.  The buzzing stopped.  He felt a tickle on his left arm as something small and black and hairy and dirty tip-toed along the tops of the jungle of hair on his arm, around the legs of the painted dragon, maybe attracted by the green and purple scales and the yellow underbelly of the beast.

Jackson held as still as he could, as still as he did back there in Muang Khong, hiding in the trees.  Laos was where he’d got the tattoo of the dragon.  Laos was where he got the name Fly Killer.  That’s what he did.  Swat at flies.  Swatted them with his three-oh-eight M40.  Swatted ‘em good.  Men, women, children.  On the border of Laos and Cambodia.  Him and Reser and the others.  Those were the orders.  Hide in the trees and pick off anyone who came by on the road.  Better than front line stuff anyway.

But the flies were bad.  Hiding with the flies was bad.  Flies crawling on him, crawling into his nose and eyes and ears.  Flies touching him, buzzing in his ears while he tried peered through a black metal tube, flies dancing on his dry lips as he focused those little wire crosshairs on those little heads a thousand yards away.

It was a little girl that had changed everything.

In his mind, like a movie, he saw his target again, a long way off, tossing her long black hair over her shoulder, flies zig-zagging around her like she was some kind of meal.  She turned and looked at Jackson and held up her middle finger, but there was no way she could see him up there on the ridge, dug into a shallow pit, three hundred yards off. But she flipped him off with one hand and then with both hands and stuck out her tongue and Jackson’s gun bucked and he pushed it back down onto the dusty sandbag he was using for a rest and by the time he reacquired the target, she was just a pile of flesh on the ground.  Nothing but food for the flies. He wasn’t supposed to kill anyone. Just recon. But she’d flipped him off and those damn flies everywhere.

He resigned after that and came home with an honorable discharge. A hero.

God, I fucking hate flies. I hate them. Hate hate hate.

He felt one tickling the the hair on his left forearm as it explored his skin. Slowly, ever so slowly, he raised his right arm and then brought his hand down, striking with his palm and brushing violently, but the thing buzzed by his ear as it flew off.  He caught sight of it.  Large, almost green.  Ugly as sin.

Jackson threw off the sheet and ran for the bathroom.  He dropped to the floor and threw up in the toilet, wiped his mouth and then grabbed a flyswatter off the wall.  Every room had a one, white wire, with square of plastic mesh, hanging from a nail on a white wall over white linoleum.  Jackson slammed the bedroom door shut and pressed his back against the wall.  His eyes scanned the room, over and over, looking for movement.  Nothing.  He took three deep breaths and calmed his nerves.

Blow fly, he thought.  Muscoidea Calliphoridae.  Too green to be a house fly.  He shot a glance at Darling.  She sat quietly, waiting.  A passive offense against his dreaded enemy.

“Why didn’t you get that?” he growled. “Jesus, Darling.”

Jackson moved along the wall to the window that faced the street.  He slipped his fingers between the slats of the Venetian blind and peered out into the bright morning air.  No cars.  Nothing moving.  He halfway expected to see her standing there, black hair shimmering in the sun, leaning against the stop sign on the corner, or sauntering down the sidewalk, staring up at him.  Her chest a gaping, bloody wound.

He spent some time watching both directions before he let the slats clatter back into place, and then he opened the bedroom door and slipped out.  Silence met him in the hallway and followed him downstairs to the kitchen.  He set the swatter on the counter and turned on the stove to heat water.  Out of the corner of his eye he saw one, hugging the vertical side of the soffit above the sink.  His fingers reached and found the looped metal handle of the swatter.  He crept backwards till he was in range, and then struck quickly from behind, counting on the fly’s instinctual need to jump back and up during take-off.  The fly dropped into the sink and started turning in frantic circles, too stunned to fly but not quite dead.  Jackson grabbed the vegetable sprayer and washed the struggling insect into the disposal.  He ran the cold water full force and counted to thirty as he ran the blades.  Just as the disposal rattled to a stop something buzzed by his ear again.  He raised the swatter up and spun around, but the fat, greenish-black speck darted from his field of vision before it disappeared.

Blow fly again.  Where did that one come from? Or is it the same one?

He let the teapot whistle for a long time before he gave up his position.  He poured a cup of hot chocolate for breakfast, stirring with his left hand, holding the flyswatter in his right.

Maybe there are fewer flies up north, maybe Seattle or Vancouver.  Not Alaska.  There are flies in Alaska.

He shivered and a trickle of sweat ran down his temple and across his jaw.  As he stood there with a hot cup in his left hand and the flyswatter in his right, a thin, gray fly landed on the vent over the stove, just a fleck on the bone white metal.  Jackson struck quickly.  The body flicked into the air.  Jackson put his cup down and grabbed a tissue.  His eyes searched the counters and the floor, but the body didn’t turn up.  He crawled on his hands and knees, looked under the stove and the fridge, still nothing.  He grabbed his cocoa and walked slowly over to the couch, still searching for the body, hoping the force of the blow might have flicked it this far.

He sat down and took a sip.  Across the room, next to the recliner, two flies buzzed around each other.  They circled and danced, touching and flitting away and then touching again, the larger of the two riding on the back of the smaller, twitching, flitting, their tiny bodies barely moving as they coupled.

“Oh my God, not in my house,” Jackson said.  His cup clicked against the glass tabletop as he placed it out of the way.  He crept, hands and knees, across the carpet, waiting, biding his time, mesmerized by the stillness of the lovers, by the tension in their bodies, by the way the upper clutched against the lower like a jockey desperate to finish a race.  Jackson’s stomach turned.  He struck with a deft, light touch that knocked them down, still coupled, but didn’t leave a bloody streak on the chair.  From the blades of the ceiling fan above, greenish-black eyes watched him.

He picked the stunned lovers up with a double layer of tissue and pressed their bodies between his fingers.  He felt the crunch of thorax against thorax as their bodies collapsed under the pressure of his giant hands. 

Jackson set the tissue on the counter.  He pulled a pair of tweezers out of the drawer and peeled the thin, white paper back, layer by layer.  The bodies still clung together in death.  Small and gray.  The greasy remains smelled faintly like red wine and cloves.

Jackson covered his mouth with a clean tissue and leaned closer.  He pried at the entwined lovers, separating them.  He stood up and dug through the junk drawer till he found a small magnifying glass.  He held it over the bodies.  The bulbous eyes nearly touched on the top of the head.  Two, delicate, velvety strips of hair ran down each side of the face, silver all along their length.  Jackson straightened up again and frowned.

Musca autumnalis, he thought.  Face fly.  Another anomaly.  There isn’t a ranch or farm within miles of here.

He snapped on a latex glove and picked up the larger of the two flies with the tweezers.  He walked over to the kitchen window and set the body on Judith Finn’s outer lips.  The fly slipped down off the bright red peristome and into her pitcher-like flower.

“What’s the matter with you, my love,” he asked.  “Not doing your job.  Are you sick?”

He picked up a spray bottle and spritzed her broad leaves with a mist of purified water.  He touched her lightly and then leaned forward, peering down into her vulva-like opening.  Deep within the pitcher, a dozen flies squirmed in the glistening fluid as the plant digested them.  Jackson inhaled sharply and stepped back.  He left his gloves on as he wrapped the other body back up in the wad of tissue.  He threw it in the garbage along with his gloves and then washed his hands three times, staring the whole time at Judith Finn.

Jackson returned to the couch and took another sip of his chocolate.  Something hard went down his throat, something small, maybe a chunk of un-dissolved chocolate.  He looked into the cup, staring at the smooth surface of the hot liquid.  A wisp of steam rose into his nostrils.  He swallowed again, licked his lips, ran his tongue across the top of his mouth.  He felt his stomach knot up and he barely made it to the bathroom before he threw up again.  He ran back into the kitchen and grabbed the phone, punching in Reser’s direct number.

“I think I swallowed a fly,” he said.

“Jackson?”

“I think I swallowed a fly,” he said.

“What the fuck you calling me for?”  Reser asked.

“You’re a cop, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, Jack, not a therapist.  Why don’t you call poison control?”

Jackson sat with the phone against his ear, waiting.  Reser’s voice softened a bit.

“Don’t you have anyone else you can call?” he asked.

“No.”

“God, lucky me.  Okay, what kind of fly was it this time?”

“Musca domestica, I think.  Yes, I’m sure it was musca domestica.”

“That’s not poisonous,” Reser said.

“They’re all poisonous,” Jackson said.  “They carry almost two million bacteria on their bodies.”

“I know,” said Reser.  “And their wings beat two hundred times a second and they have four thousand lenses on each eye and they can fly at four and a half miles an hour.  Do you know how I know all this crap, Jack?”

Silence.

“I know this crap, Jack, because you told me.  Over and over you told me.  And now I know it, and I don’t wanna know it.  It’s like a curse.  And now I know that they carry more than two million germs.  I’m so glad.”

“Less than two million,” Jackson corrected. 

A fly landed on the counter in front of him.  He stared at it, focusing on it.  It held as still as stone.  Jackson’s eyes locked on its gray, striped thorax.

“Reser,” he whispered.

“Jackson, you need to get help.”

“Listen,” Jackson said.  His voice barely registered on the other end.  “I’m looking right at Muscoidea Sarcophagidae.”

“Listen, Jack,” Reser said.  “I’m kind of busy.”

“You don’t get it, do you?” Jackson said.

“No. I don’t.”

“Jesus, Reser,” Jackson said.  “You’ve got to send someone over here.  You’ve got to call CDC or someone.  These things will eat the flesh right off your bones.  They lay their eggs inside you and eat your from the inside.”

“Their just fucking flies,” Reser said.  “Just kill it, Jack.  And stop calling me every time you get a bug in your house.  For Christ’s sake.  Get some spray or something.”

“It shouldn’t even be here,” Jackson whispered.

He glanced into the living room, where one swatter leaned against the armrest or the couch.  His eyes darted over to the wall beside the fridge.  The kitchen swatter still hung there.  He slid over, still holding the phone to his ear.

“Just a minute,” he whispered.

He grabbed the white plastic weapon and set the phone down by the stove as he circled around toward the far counter.  He struck like lightning, leaving a bloody pulp on the white Formica.  He cleaned it, scrubbed it and then stuck his hands under a stream of hot water, holding them there.  He looked out the kitchen window, out past Judith Finn’s bulbous body.  It took him a moment to register what he was seeing.

A woman walked down the other side of the street, striding along like a cat basking in the sun, thin white legs moving slowly, black hair shining like oil.  Black, sleeveless shirt, stark white arms, defined like a sculpture.  Tight black dress, short, very short.  Too short.  She turned toward him, saw him watching her, smiled, and then turned away again.  The smile burned at his gut, like something dangerous, sultry but dirty, and her eyes were green like the scales of a dragon.  The hot water ran over Jackson’s hands, scalding him.  He cursed and pulled his hands away.  He slapped at the faucet handle.  The water stopped and the house was quiet again.  When he looked back outside, she was gone.

I’m going crazy, he thought.

When he came back to the phone it was beeping.  He held it to his ear.  Nothing.  Jackson cradled it and sat back down on the couch.  Her dark green eyes tore at him.  He wanted her to come to the door. It was a crazy desire. He felt his stomach quiver with both revulsion and desire.

Two more flies circled around his head.  He swiped at them in mid-air, felt the tiny impact of one against the webbing of the flyswatter.  Three more landed on the counter.  His eyes shot toward the door.  Closed.  He checked each window, downstairs and then up.  All closed.  When he came back down, five flies perched on the edge of the counter and three more flitted through the air above them.

“Where are you all coming from?” he asked.

The phone rang.  Jackson froze, staring at it.  It rang again.  He touched it.  It rang again.  He lifted it slowly.

“Reser?”

Nothing.  No breath, no voice, no sound.

“Reser?” he asked again.

A dial tone replaced the silence.  Jackson put the receiver down.  A fly buzzed by his head and he grimaced.  He grabbed the flyswatter and stood in the middle of the room, waiting.  His eyes moved slowly upward, toward the ceiling fan.  A dark, greenish-black abomination perched on one of the blades.  Jackson’s upper lip twitched and raised his swatter slowly.

Blow fly, he thought.  Shouldn’t be here.  Unless there’s something dead somewhere.  I’ll have to check under the fridge.  Check everywhere.  Maybe I need to call Reser. 

Jackson swung, hit the blade, spun the fan, but the fat fly buzzed slowly by his ear as it made its escape.  He swung at the air, missing again.  It floated off, toward the kitchen.  Jackson watched it.  Fat, ugly, slow.

He took another breath and then three black specks drew his eye to the kitchen counter.  He struck at them, slapping the flat plastic against the counter again and again, then against the cabinets and the ceiling as the flies circled and dashed around him.  He finally hit one in mid air, stunning it.  It skidded across the linoleum and staggered.  Jackson crushed it with a tissue and then threw it away.  He sprayed the floor with disinfectant and then went on the prowl for the others, trying to concentrate, but the woman on the street kept distracting him. Narrow white legs, high-heels tapping on the cement, blood-red fingernails hanging loosely at her sides.  And those dark, green eyes, so green that he could see them from his window.  They sucked him in, tempted him.  He thought about how those green eyes would look under him, with her porcelain skin hot against his, her arms pinned down against the sheets, hips pressed together, hard.

He cleared his throat and twisted his jeans around a bit to get comfortable.  The house was silent except for the ticking of a clock.  No buzzing flies.  Nothing but silence.

The doorbell rang like a jackhammer against Jackson’s head, paralyzing him.  It rang again.  He stood frozen.  And again it rang.  His right leg moved.  Then the other.  With a jerky, half-walk, half-stumble, he made it to the front window.  He nudged the curtain with one finger.  His insides jumped and he suddenly felt as if he knew what it was like to be shot in the chest.

Her.

Long black hair flowed like water as the woman glanced over at the window.  She smiled as if she could see right through the curtain.

Jackson’s heart pounded against the inside of his chest.  He moved toward the door, drawn to it, but burning inside.

He paused with his hand on the lever, then flicked the deadbolt and pulled the door open.  She stood there, silent, staring with those deadly green eyes.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi,” Jackson said.

She peered past him.

“Can I come in?”

Jackson nodded and stepped out of the way.  As she passed, he caught the scent of cantaloupe and fresh cut grass, and then something else, something sharp, like sweat or garlic.

She turned, smiled, and then reached behind Jackson and pushed the door closed.

“You’ll let all kinds of things in,” she said.

Jackson watched the door shut.  She walked into the living room and took her time examining the couch, the old end table with its coffee rings and chipped legs, the bookcase full of odd-sized books.  She pulled out Dickerson’s Entomology and flipped through the pages, then put it back.  She put her hands behind the small of her back and turned toward Jackson.  He took two steps toward her.

“Can I get you something to drink?” he asked.  He felt as if his lips were sticking to his teeth.  His heart hammered so hard he thought he might have a heart attack, and he felt a hot bolt of energy shoot up his leg and into his groin.  He took a quick, shallow breath and glanced down to make sure that he hadn’t wet himself.  The heat in his legs subsided, but it left a burning knot right in the center of his gut.

She slipped off her shoes and took a step toward him.  He braced his legs but felt as if he were standing in a swamp.  She crossed her arms grabbing the bottom hem of her cotton shirt with the tips of her fingers.  She pulled upward, exposing her belly.  A fly buzzed across Jackson’s ear and he grabbed at it but missed.  He stopped suddenly, with his right hand balled into an empty fist by his ear, mesmerized as her arms rose above her head, pulling her shirt up and away in a cascade of silky, black hair that fell across her bare shoulders and brushed against her breasts.

She tossed the shirt behind her and took another step toward Jackson as she pushed her skirt down her thighs.  It landed in a puddle at her feet and she stepped out of it.  Her fingers touched the front of Jackson’s shirt and the fire in his gut turned to ice, so cold it hurt.  He wanted her more than anything, but something stopped him.

The smell.

She teased each button open, and then rolled his shirt off his arms and back.  Her chest touched his as she reached around him, and her musky scent both revolted him and intoxicated him, as if he was suffocating in fermented pears.  He wanted to run, to escape, but he wanted more.  Her fingers touched his belly, opened his jeans, pushed them down, traced like feather across his legs, lips caressed him, blood pounded in his head, his legs collapsed and he fell to the floor, into a black pit of nothingness, where he dreamed.

Her hands pinned him down, pinned his arms, pinned his legs, but she had more hands, and the tore him open, tore into his gut, and she was inside him, tearing at him, burrowing into him, pressing something deep inside him, laughing, screaming, burning, exploding in pain that seared away his very soul.

He woke up, alone, naked, spent, sprawled in the middle of the living room.  He turned his head.  The front door hung open, sunlight streaming in.  He rolled over and pushed himself to all fours.  His stomach convulsed and a rush of hot liquid streamed up his throat and out his mouth.  He hung his head down and tried to take a breath, but his gut felt as if he had been stuffed like a turkey.  He stayed that way for a while, until he could breathe a bit, and then he rolled back onto his legs, sitting on his heels.  He touched his belly with his fingers.  Some kind of ridge there.  Hard, like scar tissue.  He looked down, but the bright light blurred his vision.

Got to get that door shut, he thought.  Despite the haze that had formed in his mind, he struggled to his feet and crashed against the door, slamming it shut.  He pressed his back against the wall and stood there, shaking.  He threw up again, clear fluid that hung from his mouth like raw egg.  A fly buzzed over and landed on his shoulder.  He froze.  Another fly landed on the floor nearby, and two more near on the stair railing.  As he slowly raised his head, he counted four more on the wall in front of him.  He reached behind him and snicked the lock shut before he staggered into the kitchen to get the flyswatter.

Still naked, he lunged at two of the flies that followed him.  The eight became ten.  They were big and black and ugly, a chorus of blow flies and heavy flesh flies that moved as if they were trapped in thick molasses.  Ten more joined them in the hallway as Jackson swung with his arm across his face.  The swarm backed Jackson into the living room.  A dozen house flies flitted around the window.  Several settled on the ceiling fan.  Jackson batted at them, hitting the blades of the fan.  The strike sent the blades spinning and the flies scattered, but now they touched down everywhere, on the bookshelf, the coffee table, the couch, the window.  They crawled on Jackson’s feet and legs, lit on his arms and back, teased him, tickled him, caressed him.

He growled and swung like a madman, over and over, swiping at the air and the rug and the pillows on the couch.  He hit his own body over and over again.  Two dozen became four, then eight.  Jackson screamed and ran.  He grabbed another flyswatter and beat at the air, swinging them both at once.  He ran to the front door, twisted the lever, pulled at the lock, but the swarm enveloped him, sent him running upstairs again, where a thick, black cloud consumed him.

*                              *                                   *

Detective Reser chewed on a toothpick and looked over Sherri Cox’s shoulder.  Sherri was new in town.  She’d just replaced old Tex Samples, who had been the Medical Examiner for as long as Reser could remember.

“Why’d he call you?” Cox asked.

“He always calls me,” Reser said.

“Got some kind of connection to you,” Cox noted.

“Yeah, we served together in Nam.  Then a few years later I ran into him again.  Put him away for a while.”

“How long?”

“Ten years, give or take.”

“He’s still got a grudge?”

“Nah.  More like he thinks of me as a friend.”

Cox just grunted.

“How long you say he’s been dead?”  Reser asked.

“My first guess was about ten hours,” Cox said.  “Based on the external condition of the body, signs of rigor mortis, all that.”

“That was your first guess, what’s your second?”  Reser asked.

“Look at this,” Cox said.  She pushed open the carcass and Reser gagged.

“What the hell.”

“Maggots,” Cox said.

“Yeah, maggots in a dead person.  So what?”

Cox turned her head and looked over her glasses at Reser.  She held up a writhing maggot in a pair of tweezers.

“Look at this, detective.  This is first or second instar, almost ten millimeters.  That means they’ve been in there for at least three days, maybe more.”

“So?”

“So, that means they were oviposited before the subject died.”

“Which means?”

“They laid their eggs in him about two days before he died.”

Reser chewed on his toothpick for a moment before he spit it out into a nearby trash can.  Cox dropped the larva back into the body cavity.  It burrowed itself into the writhing mass of identical white maggots.

“That’s when he called me,” Reser said.  “Two days.  Must’ve died that day.”

“You hung up on him?”

“He was just fucking with me.  Said he swallowed a fly.”

Cox glanced back down at the body, writhing with little white worms.

“I’m calling cause of death natural causes,” Cox said.  She pulled the sheet up over the body.  “And I suggest you have the body burned.  Soon.”

They walked out together, stripping off their gloves.

“I gotta say it,” Reser said.  “The old coot had it comin.  Hated those flies with a passion.”

“Guess what goes around, comes around,” Cox said.

“Yeah, guess so.”

Cox pushed open the double doors and stepped out into the hot afternoon.  Reser followed her.  As he let the doors swing shut behind him, a single, greenish-black fly buzzed by his head.  Reser ducked and batted at the air with his open hand.

“Definitely fly season,” Reser said.  “The things bug the heck out of me.”

Cox opened the door of her Mercedes and got in.

“Maybe you should be nice to them today,” she said.

Reser leaned against the door and smiled at her.

“You going straight home?” he asked.

She pulled on the door and he stepped back.

“Yeah, and you should do the same.  Bye, Detective.”

Her wheels threw bits of gravel as she drove off.  Reser got in his Wrangler and swatted at the flies that had moved in while he was gone.  He hit the road and the wind blew them all out.  When he got home, he settled in on the couch and flipped on the TV.  A fly buzzed around the screen for a moment.  Reser got up and dug the flyswatter out of the kitchen junk drawer.  He came back, on the prowl for the fly, when he spotted two of them humping on the arm of the sofa.

“No you don’t,” he said.

He grinned as he killed them in the act.

How’s that for coitus interuptus,” he said.

The doorbell rang.  Reser frowned.

Reser opened it and his eyes froze.

“Well, hello,” he said.

She tipped her head back a bit, exposing her long, white neck, greeting him with a quiet smile.  Her dark, green eyes stared into his, flitting back and forth like emerald fireflies.

“Do I know you?” he asked.

“Not yet,” she said.  Her voice had a thick, sultry ring to it.  She slipped a thin, white leg across the threshold and Reser stepped out of the way to let her in.  Reser inhaled the scent of cantaloupes and fresh-cut grass, and something else, something sharper, like garlic or sweat.

She noticed the flyswatter on the arm of the couch.

“Trouble with flies?” she asked.  She slipped off her shoes and ran a finger along the wall.

“Nothing I can’t handle,” Reser said.

From the motionless blades of the ceiling fan above, a pair of bulbous, greenish-black eyes watched.