After a while she leaned her head against his shoulder, and she cried, and he listened to rain, for a long, long time.
Two days later, the rains ceased. The waters began to recede, and the plains began to drain. The earth absorbed the waters, and finally the sun touched the earth again. Dark clouds still fringed the sky.
The earth trembled. And then began to crumble. And from within the ground crawled first one, then ten, and then a hundred, and then a million bees.
Tens of millions. Swarming. Hungry.
The Death Wind had come.
The second day after the rains ceased, Carlos was in Skeeter II, Evan Castaneda in Skeeter IV. They rose up over the mountain ridge, floating like insects on a breeze. Justin crouched next to him.
"Are you all right, amigo?" he asked. The question was one of those existential absurdities that friends were obliged to ask each other. Justin looked at him bleakly.
He didn't answer directly. "Look at the grendel dam," he said instead, pointing below them and to the east. "Utterly destroyed. They're pretty harmless most of the time, I guess—but who knows how they behave in a disaster like this?"
"Mmm." Carlos swung around. There was apart of him that didn't want to complete their stated mission, that would rather do anything in the world than find what they expected to find.
"How is Jessica?" Carlos asked. His voice had grown quieter. Much quieter. Justin could barely hear it above the hum of the rotors.
"She's made her choices," Justin said. "She thinks she's more use back at the camp."
There was something that he hadn't said, of course: Caring for Aaron.
Something had certainly happened to Aaron up there. There was some core of the man that was different. Exposed. Torn. Damaged. Something. Justin couldn't quite believe Aaron's account of what happened. Something was wrong. Had Aaron panicked and abandoned Cadmann and Chaka? What was Aaron hiding?
Or perhaps it was just seeing death, so stark and violent. Justin remembered watching Stu die in the snow. The image was locked away from him where the pain couldn't reach. Where he didn't feel it. That way, he didn't have to think about barbecues at Stu's house, or playing five-card stud, or skeeter racing with a friend and brother. It was just too painful to think about those things.
And maybe that was what was killing Aaron. No one can ever quite live up to his own self-image. Maybe Aaron just got a dose of reality.
Justin ground his palms against his eyes. Father. Cadmann. God, I'll miss you.
They were maybe twenty minutes from the coordinates when the nightmare began.
The wind had shifted. He looked out of the main window, and saw a huge dark cloud billowing across their path.
"Hey, Justin. Any idea what this is? Where in the world would a dust cloud that size come from, after a rain like this?"
The question was hardly out of his mouth before the radio clattered in a burst of static. Evan. His voice was taut with fear.
"It's not a dust cloud. Mayday, Mayday—"
Justin saw the edge of the dark cloud touch Skeeter IV. Above the skeeter was a sparkling; the skeeter lurched. The blades were sparkling, little bright flashes in the smoke... and in that moment, Justin knew the face of their enemy. He screamed to Carlos, "Get us the hell out of here! It's bees!"
Carlos's hands were lightning at the controls. The skeeter tilted far over, away from the approaching swarm.
"Bees in the rotor blades. They're exploding. Vicious little flying cherry bombs—"
Death was coming. Death was almost here.
Jessica and Aaron crossed Shangri-La's main square. The buildings had all stood up under the assault of the elements. When the tarps were dragged down, the new timbers were unwarped and sun-dried. There was repair work to be done, but it would be completed within the week. They walked out to the horse pen, next to the chamel pen on the outskirts of the camp, near the double electrified fences.
The chamels were muddied and streaked; in fact, they rolled happily in the mud. She let it touch her heart, bleakly. There was death here, but wonders too in a world that could produce creatures as beautiful as these.
A crowd gathered around them to hear the speech Aaron had promised them. Carey Lou gaped worshipfully. Beside him, little Heather McKennie held his arm. Trish and Edgar were among the throng, but she noticed that they weren't bonded as they had been only a week before. Edgar was holding hands with Ruth. They had spent a lot of time together over the last few days. There was no sexual heat between them, just gentle touches and a lot of quiet conversation.
Just holding hands. Almost innocently. Here stood a pregnant girl, and this young man, newly awakening to the hungers of the flesh. And the two of them had forged a bond of... innocence. There was no other word for it. Aaron had tried to separate him from Trish, and it hadn't worked... Trish had performed some kind of miracle on Edgar, saving him after Toshiro's death... but then didn't want him for herself. But seemed to have infected him with the Pygmalion bug.
Jessica was confused. And not a little jealous, and wasn't entirely certain why. She had all the sex she wanted. Why the hell would she covet... holding hands with Edgar?
"We have to rebuild," Aaron said. The sun burned down between the clouds, as if trying to make up for the burst of rain. It was lying to them: Geographic promised another downburst within a day or two. "We have paid too high a price. We must claim this continent for our own." His voice quavered. She had never seen him like this, never seen him quite so honest, so close to the bone. This was a new Aaron. Her father was dead, and into that vacuum had stepped a new leader.
She scanned the faces of the gathered. Family. Friends. Lovers. Standing in the muddied streets, contemplating the work to be done before the camp could come to life again.
But in the end, there would be Aaron. Aaron, who had led them back to the mainland. Aaron, who had risked his life in vain, to save the one man he loved more than any other.
She could see it in their faces. This tragedy would finally knit the entire colony together.
Dogs barked anxiously at the periphery of the camp. Jessica peered out over the crowd to see...
The impossible.
Just beyond the double electrified fence, a torpedo shape crawled through the mud. Slowly. Gradually. Tentatively.
The entire camp was utterly silent. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Aaron's face, and it was ashen. Whatever he had been about to say had simply died on his lips.
A grendel. A huge grendel. It approached slowly. And it was... dragging something.
Unmistakably, its barbed tail was hooked through the pant leg of a.... a man. A black man. Trish's rifle went up to her shoulder, and Big Chaka Mubutu, standing beside her, said, "No."
"Oh, my God," someone said. "It's little Chaka."
Little Chaka???
"He's alive," Big Chaka said. Jessica felt frozen in place, unable to move. How... ?
She looked back up at Aaron, and his eyes were wide. Too wide, and she felt as if she were falling into them.
Aaron had seen Little Chaka die! Had seen him torn to pieces by... by grendels. Her world spun, and her eyes locked again on the enormous shape that had paused just at the outer ring of buildings, and made a kind of cooing sound.
Oh, my God. It was trying to speak to them.
"The fuck you don't—"
That was Edgar's voice. A slapping sound. Jessica heard a gunshot, loud enough to stun her hearing, blasting right next to her ear. Mud kicked up a few feet in front of her.
The grendel's head cocked. It watched them.
Edgar's hand was on the barrel of the gun. Aaron tugged at it. He was in such shock that he couldn't harness his strength, couldn't pull it away from Edgar for a critical second.
"It killed Cadmann!" he huffed. "It killed Cadmann. Let me—"