Read Online Hive by Tim Curran - Free Book Online Page B

sign on the wall and getting hard looks from some of the scientists who were trying to eat. “Yeah, something’s gotta be done. And it’s up to us to do it. You know those fucking eggheads won’t lift a finger. You lock them in a closet with a microscope and they’d be just fine and dandy with it. Now, way I’m seeing this, LaHune has slipped a cog and he’s about six inches from being as crazy as Lind. He’s supposed to be in charge? Well, if we were at sea and the captain was crazy . . . “
    â€œMutiny?” Rutkowski said. “Get the hell out of here.”
    â€œYou got a better idea?”
    If Rutkowski did, he wasn’t admitting it.
    Meiner sat there watching them, thinking things. He knew these two. He’d wintered over with them half a dozen times. Rutkowski was full of hot air, liked to talk, but was essentially harmless. St. Ours, however, was a hardcase. He liked to talk, too, but he was a big boy and he wasn’t above using his hands on someone that pissed him off or got in his way. When he drank, he liked to fight and right now there was whiskey on his breath.
    â€œWe can’t just go doing shit like that,” Meiner said, though part of him liked the idea. “Come spring they’ll throw us in the clink.”
    â€œHell we can’t,” St. Ours said. “Let me do it. I’d like to take that little cockmite LaHune outside and pound the snot out of him.”
    Meiner didn’t even bother commenting on that. The visual of a couple guys out in that sub-zero blackness in their ECW’s swinging was hilarious.
    â€œJust simmer down now,” Rutkowski said. “LaHune is a pushbutton boy, all company. Push button A, he shits. Push button B, he locks us down. He’s just doing what hard-ons like him always do. The mummies is why. He’s towing the NSF line and it’s because of those fucking mummies.”
    â€œThat’s Gates’ fault,” St. Ours said.
    â€œSure, it is. But you can’t blame him, finding something like that. Like a kid first discovering his pecker, he can’t help but take it out and pull on it. Besides, Gates is not a bad sort. You can talk to the guy. Shit, you can even talk pussy with him. He’s all right. Not like some of these other monkeyfucks — “ Rutkowski shot a glance over at a few scientists at a nearby table, some of the wonder boys who were drilling down to Lake Vordog “ — he’s okay. See, boys, the problem here is those mummies. If they were gone, LaHune might be willing to pull an inch or two of that steel rod out of his ass and let us join the freaking world again.”
    â€œYou plan on stealing ‘em?” St. Ours said.
    â€œWell, maybe
losing
them might be a better word for it. Regardless, it’s something for us to think about.”
    â€œIt couldn’t happen soon enough for me,” Meiner said, his hand shaking as he brought his coffee cup to his lips.
    â€œYou . . . you still having those nightmares?”
    Meiner nodded weakly. “Every night . . . crazy shit. Even when I do manage to fall asleep, I wake up with the cold sweats.”
    â€œThose things out there,” St. Ours said, looking a little green around the gills, maybe even blue. “I’m not too big of a man to admit that they’re getting to me, too. No, don’t you fucking look at me like that, Rutkowski. You’re having the dreams, too. We’re all having the dreams. Even those eggheads are.”
    â€œWhat . . . what are your dreams about?” Meiner wanted to know.
    Rutkowski shifted in his seat, licked his lips. “I can’t remember, but their good ones . . . something about colors or shapes, things moving that shouldn’t move.”
    â€œI remember some of mine,” St. Ours said. He pulled off his cigarette, let the smoke drift out through his nostrils and past those wide, blank eyes. “A city . . . I