Blue World Read Online Free PDF Page A

the glowing TV screen. The man wore a cap. “Please help us!” she shouted again.
    “Mom… listen…”
    “HELP US!” she screamed, and she kicked the screen door in. It fell from its hinges to the dusty floor.
    “Mom… when I was in the bathroom… and he talked to somebody in here… I didn’t hear anybody answer him.”
    And then Carla understood why.
    A corpse sat before the TV. The man was long dead-- many months, at least--and he was nothing but a red clay husk with a grinning, eyeless face.
    “GET EM, MASE!”
    the boy wailed, and he tore away from Carla’s grip. She struck with the blade, caught him across the throat, but not enough to stop him. He shrieked and jumped like a top gone crazy.
    Yellowjackets began streaming from the corpse’s eye sockets, the cavity where the nose had been, and the straining, terrible mouth. Carla realized with soul-numbing horror that the yellowjackets had burrowed a nest inside the dead man, and now they were pouring out of him by the thousands. They swarmed toward Carla and her children with relentless fury.
    She whirled around, picked up Trish under one arm, and shouted, “Come on!” to Joe. She raced toward the van, where thousands more yellowjackets were stirring, starting to fly up and merge into a yellow-and-black-striped wall.
    Carla had no choice but to thrust her hand into the midst of them, digging for the door handle.
    They covered her hand in an instant, plunged their stingers deep, as if directed by a single malevolent intelligence. Howling with pain, Carla searched frantically for the handle. The sea of yellowjackets flowed up her forearm, up over her elbow, and toward her shoulder, stinging all the way.
    Her fingers closed around the handle. She got the door open as yellowjackets attacked her neck, cheeks, and forehead. Both Trish and Joe were sobbing with pain, but all she could do was to throw them bodily into the van. She grabbed up handfuls of yellowjackets and crushed them between her fingers, then struggled in and slammed the door.
    Still, there were dozens of them inside. Enraged, Joe started swatting them with his comic book, took off one sneaker and used that as a weapon too. His face was covered with stings, both eyes badly swollen.
    Carla started the engine. Used the windshield wipers to brush a crawling mat of the insects aside. And through the windshield she saw the boy, his arms uplifted, his flame-colored hair now turned yellow and black with the yellowjackets that clung to his skull, his shirt covered with them, and blood leaking from the gash on the side of his neck.
    Carla heard herself roar like a beast. She sank her foot to the floorboard.
    The Voyager leapt forward, through the storm of yellowjackets.
    Toby saw, and tried to jump aside. But his twisted, hideous face told Carla that he knew he was a step too late.
    The van hit him, knocking him flat. Carla twisted the wheel violently to the right and felt a tire wobble as it crunched over Toby’s body. Then she was away from the pumps and speeding through Capshaw with Joe hammering at yellowjackets inside the van.
    “We made it!” she shouted, though the voice from her mangled lips did not sound human anymore. “We made it!”
    The van streaked on, throwing up plumes of dust behind its tires. The treads of the right-front tire were matted with scarlet.
    The odometer rolled off the miles, and through the slit of her left eye Carla kept watching the gas gauge’s needle as it vibrated over the E. But she did not let up on the accelerator, taking the van around the sudden curves so fast it threatened to fly off the road into the woods. Joe killed the last of the yellowjackets, and then he sat numbly in the back, holding Trish close.
    Finally, pavement returned to the road and they came out of the Georgia pines at a three-way intersection. A sign said Halliday… 9. Carla sobbed with relief and shot the van through the intersection at seventy miles an hour.
    One mile passed. A second, a