Michael Collings - The Slab

Catherine screamed and nearly fainted.

A three-inch-wide crack in the concrete slab roughly paralleled the back wall, perhaps an inch and a half in from the baseboard and extending from the corner until it disappeared beneath the protective covering of carpeting and pad where Willard had not yet pulled them up. The crack was rough, edged with crumbling concrete.

That was bad enough.

But worse was the rippling, glistening black-brown roiling that surged inside the crack.

Roaches.

There might have been thousands-certainly hundred of the vermin swarming over each other, legs and feelers quivering as the things skittered like a repellant, oily wave breaking on grey sandy shores.

Then the edge of the wave broke over the top of the slab. First one or two, then a handful, then a dozen-the roaches spread from the crack onto the smooth but stained concrete exposed when Willard had stripped both pad and carpet.

Catherine screamed again, but Willard stared transfixed. Only when the vanguard of the wave reached him, and the lead roach crawled onto the toe of his loafer did Willard finally act. Galvanized by the presence of the thing, he reacted convulsively. His thumb jammed down on the spray nozzle of the Raid can, directing a killing jet onto the roach. The thing scrabbled helplessly at the soft leather of Willard’s shoe, then fell backward, its legs twisting frantically.

Willard shot the contents of the can across the concrete, catching all of the roaches on the slab. The force of the spray at this close a range was so strong that it spun several of them back into the crack. He followed up, spraying continually until he was at the edge of the crack. He thrust the nozzle directly against the crumbling concrete and sprayed, not looking, not wanting to see the seething mass as it contorted beneath the poison. He could hear the hisssss of the spray; he could hear Catherine’s harsh, ragged breathing-at least she wasn’t screaming any more-he could hear his own breathing, his heartbeat, the creeaak of shoe leather as he shifted his weight from one foot to the other, and somewhere behind him Sams own snuffling cries, vague echoes of Catherine’s.

But above all of that, he could hear the dry, horrible rustling of the roaches as they scurried frantically downward, tumbling over each other in a tumultuous mass, seeking the safely of darkness and dampness and distance from the hideous stuff that was coating their bodies and systematically destroying them.

Finally, with a sputter and spit, the Raid can ran empty.

Willard kept his thumb on the nozzle, though, shaking the can, and spraying, shaking the can and spraying, again and again even though nothing seemed to be coming out except an unsettling dry hissss, until the last possible drop of poison had penetrated the crack. Then he lifted his thumb.

His hand hurt from the strain. The plastic nozzle had impressed its serrated form deeply into the flesh of his thumb. His knuckles were white, and he was scarcely breathing. He looked into the crack.

Nothing.

Except for a few feebly struggling bodies, the mass of roaches had disappeared.

He stood, his foot crushing one of the dead roaches on the bare slab. He winced, then carefully stepped on each of the roaches in sight. He shoved the crushed remains into the crack with the edge of his shoe, unmindful of the viscous smears they left on the concrete.

He turned to face Catherine.

“Come on.”

He picked up Sams, still crying softly, retrieved Catherine’s purse from its usual place on the end table by the couch, grabbed three coats from the closet, and was out the door, yelling “Hurry” over his shoulder, almost before Catherine could move to follow him

The clerk at Builder’s Bargain Barn looked askance when Willard slapped his Mastercard down on the counter next to the twelve aerosol cans of Raid and ten room foggers.

The clerk was an elderly woman with faintly bluish hair and a perpetually confused expression on her rather pinched face. She looked as if she should be home spoiling grandchildren rather than tending to a behemoth computerized register that usually required her to enter each purchase at least three times before the machinery would accept it. Her neatly blue bordered plastic name tag announced simply that she was “Marge.”

Fortunately, Marge did not say anything about Willard’s unusual purchases or about the harried expression that haunted Catherine’s eyes. She stolidly passed the electronic scanner over the pricing bars on one of the cans of Raid and looked curiously pleased-not to say surprised-when the register tallied the purchase price plus state tax times twelve…and on the first try.

As if on a roll and afraid to spoil her good fortune, Marge repeated the process with one of the home foggers. Her luck didn’t hold. Glancing up at Willard, she diligently re-keyed the necessary information-department, function code, quantity-and passed the scanner over the pricing bars again.

Still nothing.

She sighed and began the procedure one more time.

“Hurry it up,” Willard said, his impatience finally bursting through. He immediately regretted the outburst and tried to make what amends he could. “We got a real crop of roaches sprouting in the…” He faltered, realizing that the subject was not quite appropriate for the tone that was coming out.

Marge ignored both his initial comment and his explanation. For the fourth time she patiently and methodically entered the information. With all of the intent determination of someone not quite certain how to proceed next, she passed the scanner over the home fogger. This time, finally, the data jelled and the computer rang up price plus tax times ten.

Marge punched a final button and the LCD screen announced the total. She carefully bagged the cans while Willard swiped his card and scrawled his name at the bottom of the charge sheet. He jerked the bag from her almost before Marge had dropped in the last canisters, and took off for the door. Catherine, almost clutching Sams against her, followed close behind.

Willard did not see the odd look Marge sent after him. Instead, he concentrated on backing out of his parking spot, speeding down the narrow lane toward the highway, then driving home as quickly as possible.

Even so, by the time they arrived at the crest of Oleander, Sams had fallen into a restless sleep and Catherine had had enough time to read out the directions for the home foggers.

“You wait in here,” Willard said as he cut the engine in the driveway. “I’ll go set these and we’ll take Sams out for a couple of hours. When we get back, everything will be all right.”

“No,” Catherine said. “I’ll come help.”

She carefully lifted Sams from his car seat and carried him into the house, laying him in a makeshift bed of afghans and pillows on the living room sofa. While she was doing that, Willard emptied two Raid cans in the crack along the back wall, spraying until the fluid dripped stickily on the rough concrete of the fractured slab. He pulled more of the carpet back, from the portion of the back wall adjacent to the kitchen wall, across the room to the sliding patio doors, then on to the far wall-the one separating the living room from the fifth bedroom.

To clear the full width of the living room, he had to push an end table and a small corner cabinet toward the center of the carpet.

The crack continued the entire span of the wall-varying irregularly from one to four inches wide, and at least as deep as the foundation slab itself. Some places had sheered cleanly away; others were rough and crumbling.

He saturated every inch of exposed concrete with Raid.

When he was finished, he turned his attention to the kitchen.