Denise Gardner: Shame on us, but I think we started to mourn Margot the day she turned thirteen and first dyed her hair black.
Phoebe Truffeau, Ph.D.: One can argue that all early prohibitions to bestiality were intended to prevent the Lyssavirus, or any disease, from jumping to human beings.
Ancient cultures also warned that bastard offspring of a priest would become werewolves. As would any children produced by incest.
Denise Gardner: Shame on me, but when I first suspected, when I had my first inkling that Margot might have rabies, I wrote it off as playacting. Watching Margot and her clique of goth friends, they made such a point to be rude and outlandish. It seemed too much, as if their fondest dream was to have rabies. Well, like I said, shame on me.
Phoebe Truffeau, Ph.D.: Once the virus begins replicating and is transported along sensory and motor nerves, the infected subject can remain asymptomatic for months, despite shedding virus and infecting additional subjects. That scenario appears to be the case with the alleged superspreader, Buster Casey.
No, epidemiologists no longer use the term "Patient Zero." Any individual responsible for ten or more infections, we now refer to as a "superspreader." What "Typhoid Mary" Mallon was to typhoid, what Gaetan Dugas was to AIDS, and Liu Jian-lun was to SARS, Buster Casey would become for rabies.
Sean Gardner: Our Margot, you know what happened. So many of her friends died that we held a group service. Not just Dean Leonard. Except it's different when you bury a goth child. Yes, it's still heartbreaking, only it doesn't look as bad. Actually, our Margot looked better—well, healthier—than she did before she got sick. The viewing, with all of them dressed up and so somber, it looked like her junior prom. But no one was dancing. Or smiling. Or laughing. Everyone gloomy and dressed in black…
Okay, it looked exactly like her junior prom.
11–The Bees
Echo Lawrence (Party Crasher): Get this. Independence Day, one year, the whole Casey clan goes out for a picnic. A barbecue with marshmallows and seared animal flesh. All the aunts and uncles, all the cousins, an acre of Caseys sprawled on blankets or folding lawn chairs, eating corn. Everybody hugging everybody, shaking hands.
Even al fresco, the generation that controls everything, that owns it all, the adults sit at a picnic table. Everyone else, in the dirt. The adults a little shuffled since Esther and Hattie and Bel died, but mostly the same.
That sunny day, first one bee, then another, buzzed the adult table. The old grannies waved them away. Then the table was covered. The adults were coated in bees.
Sheriff Bacon Carlyle (Childhood Enemy): The county medical examiner was asking: Did any of the deceased handle bees lately? He's wanting to be told: Did any of them work with beehives? Something he called "swarm attractant" would explain the attack.
From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms (Historian): Nasonov pheromones. A plastic vial the size of your little finger exudes the bee attractant equivalent to five thousand honeybees fanning and scenting the air. Apis mellifera, the common honeybee, follows the scent and seeks out any cracks or openings in which to create a new hive.
Swatting at these bees will prompt them to exude the «alert» pheromone, which attracts additional bees to attack. Because their primary predators are bears, the attacking bees focus on the eyes, nose, and open mouth of the aggressor—any feature that occurs as a dark opening, including the ears, the bees will swarm. Any carbon dioxide the victim exhales will make the attacking bees more aggressive.
Swarm attractant itself has a pleasant, faint citrus smell. Almost undetectable to humans. Because nasonov pheromones are so potent, the preferred method of storage is to place the plastic vial inside a sealed glass jar, then secure the sealed jar inside a deep-freeze.
Shot Dunyun (Party Crasher): It was like a cloud blotting out the sun, a big black fucking storm. Humming. In the middle of a nice sunny day, it starts to rain. But instead of water, it's raining bee stings. No shit. It's pouring down sheer pain.
Echo Lawrence: People were running for their cars, screaming until their mouths were filled with bees, choking on bees, stung and smothered to death. By the time the county vector control could intervene, Rant's Uncle Clem was dead. So were his Aunt Patty and Uncle Cleatus. His Uncle Walt died in the hospital.
Shot Dunyun: The FBI shitheads who asked about Party Crash nights, after Rant died, those agents loved the bee story. They couldn't take notes fast enough.
Echo Lawrence: Relax. Nobody called it murder. Not yet.
Shot Dunyun: How weird is that? It was like something from the Old Testament: the Killer Bee Picnic, the Mouse Shit Attack, the Plague of Fleas, and the Deadly Spider Hat. The next Thanksgiving dinner, with seven oldsters dead, the rest of that generation stayed home. The oldest Caseys turned over the adult table to their middle-aged kids. Siege ended. Baton passed.
12–The Food
Echo Lawrence (Party Crasher): To make time stand still—what sand mandalas are to Buddhist monks and embroidery is to Irene Casey—eating pussy was to Rant. He used to wedge his face between my legs and slip his tongue into me. He'd come up on his elbows, smacking his lips, his chin dripping, and Rant would say, "You ate something with cinnamon for breakfast…" He'd lick his lips and roll his eyes, saying, "Not French toast…something else." Rant would snort and gobble, then come up with his eyes shining, saying, "For breakfast, you drank a cup of Constant Comment tea. That's the cinnamon."
From just the smell and taste of me, he'd nail my whole day: tea, whole-wheat toast without butter, plain yogurt, blueberries, a tempeh sandwich, one avocado, a glass of orange juice, and a beet salad.
"And you had an order of fast-food onion rings," he'd say, and smack his lips. "A large order."
I called him "the Pussy Psychic."
Bodie Carlyle (Childhood Friend): In the time it took most folks to sit around a table, say a blessing, pass their food, and eat it, eat a second helping, help themselves to pie and coffee, then drink another cup of coffee and start to clear the dishes, in that same stretch of time, the Casey family might take only one bite. One bite of meatloaf or tuna casserole, and still be chewing it. Not just eating slow, but not talking, not reading books or watching television. Their whole attention was inside their mouth, chewing, tasting, feeling.
Echo Lawrence: Get real. Most guys are keeping score with every lap of their tongue. Every time they come up for air, they're clocking your pleasure. And, lick for lick, you know this had better balance out with the pleasure you give them back. So, lick after lick, you never can relax and get off, not when you know that meter is always running. Every lick an investment in getting licked back.