Micheals stood on a little hill, watching the dissolution of his house. The leech was several hundred yards across now, lapping at his front porch.
Good-by, home, Micheals thought, remembering the ten summers he had spent there.
The porch collapsed into the body of the leech. Bit by bit, the house crumpled.
The leech looked like a field of lava now, a blasted spot on the green Earth.
"Pardon me, sir," a soldier said, coming up behind him. "General O'Donnell would like to see you."
"Right," Micheals said, and took his last look at the house.
He followed the soldier through the barbed wire that had been set up in a half-mile circle around the leech. A company of soldiers was on guard around it, keeping back the reporters and the hundreds of curious people who had flocked to the scene. Micheals wondered why he was still allowed inside. Probably, he decided, because most of this was taking place on his land.
The soldier brought him to a tent. Micheals stooped and went in. General O'Donnell, still in suntans, was seated at a small desk. He motioned Micheals to a chair.
"I've been put in charge of getting rid of this leech," he said to Micheals.