Trish had Aaron down, a long bloody furrow along his cheek. Her knee pounded into his groin over and over again. Blinded by the blood in his eyes, Edgar kicked wildly. Screaming, Aaron got his foot into Trish's chest and push-kicked her away. She flew five feet and slapped into the mud. Edgar got a kick in at Aaron's head, then screamed as the first of the bees reached him and bit, tearing a little wedge of flesh from his cheek.
He forgot about Aaron and ran toward the nearest dorm.
Trish fled toward the rec hall. Beneath it was a Kevlar reinforced shelter. Grendel-proof. Bee-proof? A mesh metal curtain hung across the doorway. Trish slipped through its folds. "Jessica!" she screamed from safety. A bee spattered against it, crawled, searching for a way in. She held her side, her face. They bled, where bees had bitten.
Jessica ran for the shelter. Aaron screamed, "Help me—"
And Jessica turned for a fatal moment. Aaron staggered up, and their eyes met. His arms went out to her—
A dark wind blew across her and covered Jessica in bees. Hair to ankles, all of her right side was twinkling black. She screamed, thrashed, tried to brush them away, tried to spit them out, tried to run. Aaron took two steps toward her, but it was too late.
Trish couldn't watch any more. She closed the door. Bees were clawing through the curtain.
Aaron took a step toward Jessica, out of his mind with pain, but... but he felt something, something that he had never felt before. He just couldn't let her die. He just couldn't—she was down in a mass of crawling black shapes. Her arm stretched out to him, scintillating black. She screamed. Bees crawled into her mouth. One burrowed out of her cheek. They were at her eyes. Aaron lurched away.
There were a few human shapes on the ground. Lucky ones were in Kevlar safety sacks, or wrapped in blankets. A few bee-ridden Star Born crawled blindly, being eaten alive. He slapped at his face as a bee went for his eyes. It bit his hand instead, nearly tearing off a finger joint. He had only seconds to live—
He saw the chamels. They were burying themselves deep in the mud and dung that filled their pen. Their exposed haunches shone Cadzie blue.
He dove for the mud pit, burrowing through the filth until he came up next to one of the chamels. Rolling in the muck, covering himself. Gouged in a hundred places, Aaron shuddered as chamel shit oozed into his wounds. His arm snaked up, grabbed the creature around the neck, held it close. This wasn't perfect. But the bees had other targets, horses and pigs and human beings. They might not find him. They couldn't find him. Oh, God, he hurt so much.
Jessica.
Jessica.
Wrapped in a blue blanket, Katya hammered on the mess hall's shelter door. The sound of the swarm was overwhelmingly loud, loud enough to drive rational thought from her mind. She had only been bitten twice, but the fear almost paralyzed her.
No response. She ran to a sheltered nook—a toolshed next to one of the dorms. In the mess hall, she saw a torch waving. Some idiot was trying to use fire to keep the bees at bay.
There was a sudden crackle, and five thousand bees just exploded. Fire and a machine-gun flashing pop-pop-pop and shredded crustaceans showered flame everywhere. Half of the camp was rain-drenched, and invulnerable. But half was unfinished, naked wood protected by tarps and then sun-dried for two days. That burned.
The acrid smoke stench wound its way into her nostrils, and she shut the door as tightly as she could. She pressed her hands against the wood. It was still damp. Oh, God. She hoped that was enough.
The door shuddered as bees rapped against it. Wood splintered.
Katya wrapped herself more tightly in the blanket, staring into darkness.
Flaming bees slammed against the metal walls of the communications shed. Metal wouldn't burn, but it was still a terrifying din. "Where's Edgar?" Ruth screamed.
Carey Lou gaped at her. Shock? Remembered, and said, "I saw him outside. Just before we sealed the door."
Ruth screamed again, but then fought her way back to calm. The radio behind her crackled. "Hello? Can anyone hear me?"
Ruth twitched it on, and cried into it. "Edgar?"
"Ruth? Yeah, it's me. I don't know for how much longer. The bees are taking the building apart. They're eating the wood. I managed to get here, but I don't know if I can get out."
"What's wrong?"
"Ankle. Twisted it pretty bad. I think that maybe I broke it. I'm in dorm number four."
She looked around the room. Under them in the shelter, there were a dozen Second. Here there was only Carey Lou. Bees batted against windows, which so far remained secure. "You don't think that you can get over here? Do you have a blanket?"
"It isn't that. The door is jammed. I can't get it open. They're going to take the whole damned building apart. I can feel it."
Ruth bit her lip. She opened the hailing frequency. "Is there anyone who can help? We've got problems. Edgar is in trouble."
There was no answer for several long seconds, and then, "We can't get out of the shelter, Ruth. I'm sorry. Maybe when the bees go away. They ‘re bound to at dark. Or if it starts raining again. He'll be all right."
Ruth spun. "Give me your blanket, Carey Lou," she said. "I need two of them."
Carey Lou said, "What?"
"Don't worry. You'll be safe right here. Keep trying to get through to the mine. We need them to bring down Robor. We have to get out of here."
"In the middle of the bees?"
"Don't you get it?" she said fiercely. "This could go on for months.
Everyone will die unless we get out."
Carey Lou nodded, and handed her the blanket. She wrapped the first one around herself, and draped the second as a cowl. "Good-bye, Carey Lou," she whispered.
"Ruth, do you have to go?"
She nodded. She paused at the door, wedged it open a few inches, and then slipped out, into the storm.
"Mayday, Mayday," Carey Lou bleated into the microphone. "We need
Robor. We need to evacuate—"
Hendrick Sills scanned the communal living room of Deadwood Pass's dormitory. His eyes passed the overstuffed chair twice before spotting Sylvia Weyland, sunken deep within. She was peering out of the slit window set in the reinforced concrete wall, warmed by the crackling fire at her side. She seemed utterly lost in thought.
She was staring out across the complex. The mine was still perking along smoothly, producing its quota of plastic briquettes. At this point, it barely needed human supervision anymore. Analyzing units built into the bore head sampled the strata as it dug. There would be no more fossilized bee surprises.
Sylvia looked up at him, face placid. "How is the loading?" she asked. "Any problems?" Robor was scheduled to make a half-loaded mercy run back to the island. "I need to get home." She stopped, and seemed to consider her next words carefully. "I need to be with Mary Ann."
"We have an urgent message from Shangri-La," Hendrick said. "It's bad."
The placidity vanished from her face.
"Emergency at Shangri-La. They've got a swarm of those damned carnivorous bees. Most of them made it to shelters, but they need to evacuate. Now."
She was out of her chair in an instant. "Evacuate Deadwood. I want everyone on board Robor in five minutes. I want weather charts, and a route to Shangri-La mapped by the time I'm on board. We're gone in ten." She paused. "And get every goddamed blanket in the camp."
Carlos lost control of the skeeter only ten feet from the landing pad. "We're going down!" he screamed above the roar of exploding bees. The ground looming up at them told the rest of the story. They bounced, hard, too hard. The door buckled in its frame, leaving an inch gap. Justin used his feet to jam a Kevlar survival sack into it.