VESPULA RARIS

“Ow. OW. Fuck…Shit. OW!” Ricky Coates yelled as he danced away from the lawn mower like a marionette on a griddle. He slapped at his legs and ankles running with high knee steps to get as far away from the ground bee nest he’d just stirred up while pushing the 83-pound Honda 3-in-1 variable speed mulcher mower over one of their entrances.

He stood in the driveway for a moment, catching his breath as he watched the bees swirl around the mower like a tornado. Then he felt another jab. “OW – Shit,” he said, shaking his right hand. When he looked closely, he saw the black and yellow insect still attached. He pinched it between his left thumb and forefinger and pulling it from his little finger, squeezed. Hard. He threw the lifeless goo to the ground with an imagined splat and pulverizing it with the toe of his work boot.

He took his green John Deere hat off his sweaty head and swatted at his ankles. He wiped his forehead with his palm and ran his hand through his sandy hair before he smacked the cap against his thigh to make sure it was empty and clapped it back on his head. Motion caught his eye and he jerked his head to the left instinctively as something whizzed by his ear. Ricky flashed back to the desert in Iraq where he’d been a sharpshooter. He had good eyes and could hit a target, but when those targets shot back there was only one thing to do: Duck and cover.

Taking that as good advice, he sprinted down the dirt driveway and into the mobile home through the unkempt backyard. He always mowed the front yard first because it kept Old Lady Jameson from calling the cops on him. She lived across the street in the brick ranch and didn’t like him. She thought he was an ill-mannered redneck and he thought she was an old biddy who didn’t have enough to do and too many days of life left to get on with the act of dying. All she’d done since he’d moved in was complain. If it wasn’t the length of the grass, it was the time of day he chose to mow it; if it wasn’t his friends parking on the street when they came to visit, it was that they stayed too late and were too loud. She’d called the cops on him so many times in the last four years, he and the men in blue were on a first name basis. It was usually Dave Campbell that came out talked to him. Officer Dave had told him to try to keep his lawn mowed, to get his friends to park in the driveway and try not to make too much noise. Ricky had done his best to comply.

Today he was sure Garnet Jameson would complain about the early hour, but it was supposed to get into the 90’s – and humid - so he didn’t care what she thought, and certainly not right now.

Ricky kicked his work boots against the sliding glass door jamb to loosen any debris. It was a habit his mother had instilled in him as a child and one he was sure Garnet didn’t know he performed religiously. When he slammed the door closed behind him it made a crack he thought the whole neighborhood could hear and winced. I’ll probably hear about that from Garnet, too. He unconsciously thumbed the latch to the locked position. It was only 9:30 in the morning and his day was pretty much ruined. By the time he got himself taken care of, it’d be too hot to finish mowing the lawn.

Ricky stood in the kitchen relishing the conditioned air. The sweat under his shirt evaporated as he dropped himself into one of two plastic lawn chairs. He unlaced his boots and stripped off his dirty white socks. From ankle to knee on both legs burned with a dozen red welts. He stood up gingerly and hobbled three steps to the refrigerator, grabbed a can of Budweiser from the shelf then extracted an ice cube from the freezer. Cracking open the beer, he drank off half in one go, then belched loudly. He set the can on the table, returned to his seat and rubbed the quarter moon of frozen water against his swollen leg.

After a few minutes with no relief, Ricky chucked the melting cube into the sink and wiped his hands against the legs of his shorts. Using a dirty fingernail, he scratched at the sites to scrape out any stingers. As he did, he felt the small strangely shaped hole, but no stinger. He stood up on one leg like an unstable yogi and turned on the overhead light, then sat heavily and looked closely at the wound. Each pit was octagonal, about a centimeter across and a third as deep.

What kind of bee stings like that?

First, wasps don’t leave stingers, dummy, his mind countered, and, second, maybe that old fertilizer you got with the five-fingered discount from work caused them to mutate.

Ricky had worked maintenance at the chemical plant for more than a year now and just last month had stumbled across a stack of twenty-pound sacks marked FERTILIZER. They’d been tucked in a store room at the back of the complex, near the lab, covered in a layer of white dust. They appeared to have been there a while and he didn’t think anyone was going to miss one bag so, at the end of his shift on night, he’d thrown one in the back of his truck. He’d applied it to his lawn the same weekend. Days had gone by and nothing was said about the missing fertilizer so he didn’t think he was going to get caught.

He had a history of petty theft. That’s how he ended up in the Army with a tour in Iraq. The judge gave him a choice: jail or 4-years’ service to his country. He hadn’t liked the idea of being locked up, so Army it was. He felt he was a better man for serving and tried not to make a habit out of theft now, but Hell, he thought, the plant doesn’t pay me enough, anyway.

Ricky sucked back the remains of the beer, grabbed another one and threw himself on the second-hand couch. He reached over an empty pizza box, lifting the small metal pipe with one hand and pinching some weed from a nearby bag with the other. With practiced skill, he packed a bowl, fished a BIC lighter from under a magazine and with a flick of his thumb, lit the chamber. He inhaled deeply and felt the acrid smoke burn his lungs. Ricky took three more healthy hits from the pipe before he set it on the coffee table, letting the weed mellow him out. When he stood up twenty minutes later to take a shower, his legs still burned and he decided a couple of aspirin couldn’t hurt.

He opened the medicine cabinet, poured three small orange tablets from the bottle and popped them in his mouth. He dry swallowed as he looked out the window. The mower undulated with a layer of bees. Not just the few that had amassed when he’d disturbed the nest, but thousands. Maybe millions. There wasn’t an inch of the mower that lay uncovered. The bees- wasps, his mind corrected, enveloped it completely. He swallowed hard, the coated pills now stuck in his throat. He coughed and swallowed again.

How could there be so many?  Ricky didn’t know much about bees, but he didn’t think hives, of any kind, ran that big. Well, there’s no way I’m going out there now, he thought. I’ll wait until dark, then go out with long pants and a long sleeve shirt and hustle the mower back into the shed. And then pour some gas down the hole. That’ll get rid of ‘em.

Ricky stripped off his T-shirt and cargo shorts leaving them in a sweaty heap on the white tiled floor and stepped into the shower stall. A few minutes later, Ricky groaned and blinked back tears when he rubbed the little brown Army issue towel over his calves. He wrapped the towel around his waist, looked at himself in the mirror through bloodshot eyes and ran his fingers through his damp hair. Then he looked out the window again. The wasps surrounded the motionless mower, but it seemed smaller. Ricky closed his eyes, rubbed his forehead with his right hand and sighed. His little finger throbbed.

When he looked again, the cloud of insects wafted into the air revealing a diminished machine. Ricky’s mouth fell open and shook his head as he turned away. That must be pretty good shit, he thought as he walked down the short hall to his bedroom. Dope doesn’t usually make me hallucinate.

Light filtered through the curtains exposing the unmade bed and both clean and dirty clothes heaped on the floor, the chair, and the dresser. He didn’t notice the stale musky scent that lingered in the room. He dropped his towel and snatched a pair of Captain America boxer shorts from the top of the dresser, held them to his nose, gave a sniff and decided they were clean enough. He repeated the process with a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. Once dressed he sat on the edge of the bed and sighed loudly, falling back, his arms thrown over his head in a gesture of surrender. Ricky took a few deep breaths and fell asleep.

When he woke a few hours later the red digital numbers on the alarm clock read 2:00. He struggled up into a sitting position and rubbed his eyes with his knuckles. He pulled his hands away from face and looked down into his open palms – and choked back a scream.

His right hand pounded with his heartbeat and the little finger, starting at the second joint, was missing. Ricky made a fist and felt the remaining fingertips touch his palm. He opened his hands again and strangled back a cry.

What’s happening to me? he thought. He took a deep breath and swallowed thickly. He pushed himself up and tottering on weak legs, collapsed back onto the bed. He looked at his calves and saw large half-moons of flesh had vanished from his calves, exposing raw oozing sores. Ricky cupped a hand to his mouth and swallowed the bile rising in his throat.

He forced himself up and once back in the bathroom pawed through the closet for a roll of gauze. He sat on the closed toilet seat and wrapped the bandages around his legs, the dressing blossomed red as he worked. When he was finished, he limped into the living room and opened the front door. The heat washed over him like the breath of the devil. What was left of the mower lay in a heap at an odd angle. Both front wheels were missing; one back wheel lay on its side in the grass. The bees rippled over the engine casing like the mirage effect on hot tarmac. I must still be high, he thought.

Then he saw them: First, Old Lady Jameson stomping up the walkway, her cane stabbing at the cement path, and sometimes the lawn, to keep her upright. Then Lyla Jones, who had been an ebony queen back in high school but was now just an overweight black woman with a brood of kids who delivered the mail. Neither of them saw their peril.

Ricky tried to call out but his throat clenched. He swallowed hard and tried again: “Garnet, go home,” he said, his voice echoing back to him over the buzz but lacking any real urgency.

“I’ll do no such thing, young man,” she said, jabbing the air with her cane to make her point. “You were mowing your lawn far too early and you didn’t even finish the job.” She hobbled another few steps.

Lyla watched the scene unfold from her truck, glad she wasn’t on the receiving end of Old Lady Jameson’s wrath. Then Ricky heard a crack, as loud as a gunshot, and both he and Lyla watched the old woman rock back on her heels. Garnet’s eyes widened and her mouth dropped open as the back of her head exploded in a spray of blood, brain, and bone. Ricky heard Lyla scream and briefly caught her eye. He saw her fear and remembered the last time they’d spoken: They’d met at the Gas-N-Go down the street a few years ago. She’s asked what he’d been up to. He’d explained he’d just returned from a stint in Iraq as a sharpshooter and had just bought a place to live, across the street from Garnet Jameson, and she was always complaining to the police about him. Lyla told him she didn’t approve of guns or the endless war, that God would forgive him for the violence if he took Jesus into his heart and that he shouldn’t let his kindly old neighbor get to him. He’d smiled, thanked her for the advice and they’d parted.

Lyla started her truck and gunned the engine. Ricky glimpsed the single bee fly in a wide arc from the back of Garnet’s head towards Lyla’s truck spidering the driver’s side windshield. Lyla screamed again and grinding the truck into a gear, sped off.  When the swarm recognized its loss, it lifted, en mass, hovered over the remains of the lawnmower and descended on the dead woman’s corpse in the walkway.

Ricky slammed the front door, pressed his back against it as if to keep out hordes of invaders and tried to calm his breathing. He’d seen the chunks of Garnet’s brain splatter on the walkway before she’d hit the ground and he knew from experience no one stood up again from something like that. Although they didn’t get along, he never actually wanted her dead.

Okay, there was the one time when you ended an argument with, “Why don’t you just die and leave me alone?” he thought. He’d seen and been responsible for enough death in Iraq. He never intended to do away with Garnet… but Lyla didn’t know that.

Oh, Shit, he thought, Lyla’s gonna think I killed the old bat. She’s gonna think I tried to kill her, too.

A few minutes later he heard the sirens in the distance. She must’ve called the police.

He opened the door and surveyed the scene once more: The mower was little more than chunks of plastic lying on the lawn. Garnet’s body was sprawled on the walkway covered in insects. Ricky scratched his cheek with his right index finger and then looked at his hand. The pinky was now completely missing down to the knuckle.

How am I going to explain any of this? he thought, panic bubbling up in his chest.

A police car and an ambulance screeched to a halt at the head of his driveway, their lights flashing, their sirens winding down. The paramedics were out first but pulled up short and slowly moved back when they saw the bees covering the body.

The driver of the police car stood behind his door and called out: “Ricky? It’s Officer Dave. Come on out and tell us what happened.”

Ricky took a deep breath and opening the door a crack, called out, “Dave, I know what this looks like, but I didn’t kill Garnet, I swear.”

“Okay, Ricky. Come on out and we’ll talk about it.”

Ricky pressed the handle of the screen door. The bees blanketing Garnet’s body lifted and he heard someone retch as a fog of yellow-jackets converged on the screen. He stepped back involuntarily and the door slammed shut with a bang. He watched as their mandibles chewed at the wire mesh. One worked its way through and rocketed into his neck. He slapped at it but felt the prick before he could crush it.

Only one thing to do: RUN.

Ricky raced to the back door, struggling to unlock it in his panic. He felt two thumps between his shoulder blades, their contact like hot pokers before he could open the slider and tumble onto the patio. He heard them whiz over his head and scrambled to seal them in. He heard their bodies plink heavily against the glass, like stones tossed against a window but didn’t wait to see if they would gain enough velocity to break through. He ran, around the side of the trailer and up the dirt driveway.

“Freeze!” he heard Dave yell and skidded to a stop, instinctively raising his hands.

“Don’t shoot, Dave. I’m unarmed.” He saw both Dave and his partner crouched behind their open doors, guns drawn. Ricky took a tentative step forward, “I didn’t kill Garnet.”

“That’s not what Lyla reported,” Dave said.

“I know what she thinks she saw.”

“Don’t take another step,” Dave’s partner said.

Ricky stopped. He could feel his heart thudding in his chest, the muscles in his legs twitched. He licked his trembling lips and tried to sound reasonable, “Get your guys to gather up Garnet’s body and let’s get out of here.”

“No one’s going anywhere, just yet, Ricky.”

At first, Ricky only felt tiny feet on his hands and legs, then the bees enveloped him, covering his face, their buzz filling his ears. He tried to remain calm and breathe through his nose but their movement made his skin itch. He sucked in a breath - and a mouthful of insects. Clamping his mouth shut involuntarily started the chain reaction. As they pierced his lips and tongue, he cried out, stumbling forward. He inhaled more bugs that stung from the inside and he expelled them like a fire-breathing dragon; the cloud swarming back upon him.

It was like being electrocuted. Millions of poisoned needles pierced his flesh. He felt the stabbing on his head, neck, eyes, arms, thighs, and balls.

“Freeze!” he heard Dave yell, but the pain was excruciating and he lurched forward, pressing against the tide.

“Stop or I’ll shoot.” Dave’s voice rang out, quavering in an octave higher than normal.

Just kill me, Ricky thought.

The venom coursed through his veins, his racing heart replacing blood with poison. It burned and liquefied him from the inside. He felt his body melting. His feet dissolved and he plunged forward.

Then his mind shifted and he was one with the hive. They’re just protecting what’s theirs. Although he could feel the pressure of additional punctures, the pain disappeared. His mind floated above him. And now I’m one of them. He felt a slug hit him in the chest, throwing his body back, but knew that the bees had stopped the bullet and were already ingesting the metal.

More gunfire shattered the summer day, but Ricky didn’t feel any impact.

The toxin continued to devour his body and in a swirl like a cyclone, the cloud of insects rocketed into the blue sky leaving nothing behind but a grey T-shirt and a pair of shorts.

The uniformed officers and the EMTs stood open-mouthed, staring at the sky for a unsettled moment.

Jumping into the driver’s seat Dave yelled to his partner and to the EMTs, “Let’s get out of here.”

No one argued. They cranked their engines and throwing their vehicles into gear, catapulted debris into the air as they sped away.

Two years earlier

            Dr. John Laslow erupted through the flapping doors of the inner lab. His face riddled with welts, a thin layer of white dust powdered his hair, beard, and glasses. He stumble-ran through the maze of steel tables knocking over and shattering vials, tubes, and beakers.

            I have to seal the lab, he thought, fright propelling him forward.

            He lurched across the open space towards the doors and the emergency switch. He knew he’d be trapped, but he was a dead man anyway. His genetically modified wasp colony was bent on his destruction, but they had to be contained.

            He had such high hopes when he’d begun six months earlier. Altering the genome of the common wasp to excrete fertilizing chemicals into the landscape would have won him a Nobel Prize in Physiology. But something had gone horribly wrong. The current hive had just exploded and the colony attacked him. He’d been stung a half a dozen times before he could escape and could already feel their venom making his body prickle.       

            As he reached for the emergency button an ice pick of pain hit him in the back shoulder with such force that he spun around; then he heard the small sonic boom, like a gunshot. He clutched at his chest and looked down to see a flower of blood stain the lapel of his white lab coat. Looking back over his shoulder he saw the red smear on the window and the lifeless wasp on the floor. Fear and pain consumed him and he slapped at the emergency lock. The siren blared and the emergency lighting kicked on, showering him in oscillating light. Dr. Laslow slumped against the wall, his body dragged down to the floor by gravity.

            At least they won’t escape.

            As the darkness tunneled his vision, his gaze rested on the air vent. He watched the Queen slip between the metal grates and he knew he had failed.