Crump-crump-crump.
Six shots left, Daniel thought, his visor darkening as he looked into the sun. Johann and Christian were at the windows, their visors blacked to cut out the glare of a sun which seemed to be balanced on top of the wall, three kilometres off, like a searchlight beamed directly at them. “I can’t see the fuckers!” Johann shouted anxiously.
“Don’t bother looking for them,” Aidan yelled back, “just fire into the sun!” “Aidan’s right,” Daniel said, his voice quiet but commanding. “Don’t worry if you can’t see them. They’re there all right. Can’t you hear them?” They could hear them, even over the sound of gunfire. And once you heard that sound you couldn’t really hear anything else - not if you’d fought against bees before.
Bees, the most innocuous of insects, the most friendly as far as humans were concerned.
Only these weren’t cuddly little honey bees, these were ferocious fighters; soldier bees, ten to twelve inches long; semi-intelligent genetic machines, developed from an old GenSyn patent, which had only one idea in mind - to destroy unwanted intruders.
Daniel blacked his visor, then put his gun to his shoulder and fired blindly into the space directly in front of him, slewing the gun from side to side and not releasing the trigger until the chamber was empty. And still the sound of the swarm grew.
Dead.
He had only ever fought bees once before, and that had been on his second tour. There had been seven of them at the beginning of that brief encounter. At the end of it there had been only him and two other boys. Most teams weren’t even that lucky.
Daniel undipped another gun and opened fire again. There was a deep, circular shadow now at the centre of the sun, a dark spot, like the pupil of a golden eye. The bees were still several hundred metres off, but the intensity of the noise suggested they were right on top of them. “Stun?” Aidan suggested.
“Won’t work,” Daniel answered. “We’ll get some of them, but the rest will simply sit on us until we unseal, then pick us apart” “Then what the fuck do we do?”
Keep firing, he thought, but he didn’t know if there was enough ammunition in the Garden to bring a whole swarm down. Why, there could be anything up to a thousand of them out there.
“Back off!” he ordered. “Into the store room. We’ll block the door and sit it out” The store room had a packed earth floor and a solid stone ceiling. It wasn’t big but it was large enough to hold the five of them. As they began to back towards it, there was a scream.
Daniel cleared his visor and looked. Three of the bees were feasting on Johann. One of them had speared him straightthrough his visor. Another had landed on his back. As Daniel watched, Johann’s visor slowly cleared. His helmet was filled with blood, but Johann was still struggling, drowning in his own blood!
Yet even as Daniel took in the sight, a flash of orange-black filled his own vision. Instinctively, he ducked to one side, bringing up his gun, a satisfying thud telling him he’d connected.
And then he was inside, Aidan and Christian gasping for breath beside him.
“Where’s Ju Dun?” he yelled, as Aidan threw himself forward to secure the door. A bee poked its upper body into the space between the door and the wall, trying to prise its way around the closing door, one eye swivelling, searching the interior. Its mandibles twitched. As Aidan ducked to avoid it there was gunfire -loud in that enclosed space - and the bee’s head was blown away. “I’m here,” Ju Dun said from the shadows, lowering his gun.
Daniel looked to Christian. The boy had his head down, his visor still blacked.
He made no sound, but Daniel knew he’d seen what had happened to Johann. Daniel turned. There was a second door, at the back of the room. They would need to secure that, too. Yet even as he stepped toward it, the wooden panels seemed to swell and groan.
Daniel pointed to the heavy wooden table to his right “Ju Dun, help me! Lefs barricade the door.”
He had no plan except to survive. To get through a few more precious minutes.
And maybe they’d go away.
Maybe.
The wooden panels of the door bulged again. There was a thud, the flutter of a wing against the roof. Lifting the table, they slammed it against the door. As they did, a solid steel sting rammed its way through both layers of wood, missing Daniel’s arm by less than a centimetre, the poisoned tip quivering. Bees. Of all the fucking luck.
“A hive,” Daniel said, turning to look at Aidan. “We must be near a hive.”
Bees were patient. They remembered their purpose. Only nightfall would draw them off, but that was half a day away.
And one thing was certain. They would not last half a day. For the bees were relentless. They did not give in until their purpose was achieved. While Daniel paced the room, trying to work out what to do, Aidan made a check on what armaments they had left between the four of them. Christian was slumped against the wall. He had cleared his visor now, but his head was down and he wasn’t speaking. Ju Dun, standing close by, was watching him. The young boy frowned, then looked up at Daniel. “We can’t stay here,” he said, unexpectedly.
Aidan looked round. He frowned, then looked up at Daniel, his eyes querying that “Ju Dun’s right,” Daniel said. “If we stay our chances are zero. I know them. They’ll regroup and attack both doors at once.”
“And if we go out, our chances are pretty slim, wouldn’t you say?”
Daniel smiled. “So ifs heads we lose ...”
“... and tails we lose.” Aidan too was grinning now. He grabbed up his gun then turned to face Christian. “Come on, lad. Grieving’s over. Ifs time to get revenge.”
The first rocket blew down the door. Christian’s flamer took out the dozen or so bees that thought to slip into the gap. Then Ju Dun ran through, spraying bullets right, left and centre. Daniel followed an instant later, picking off anything Ju Dun missed. Aidan, in the doorway, turned, aiming the big rocket launcher up at the main swarm that had lifted and turned toward them, the second rocket exploding in their midst Then they were running, following a straight line to the nearestbuilding two hundred metres away, forcing the bees to adopt a tight formation in pursuit The bees gained on them, step by step. They were almost on them when Daniel called the order and, as one, they turned to face the cloud of angry machines, the four of them in a line and kneeling.
If they were going to die, then they were going to go out in style. Christian’s flamer licked the edges of the swarm. Crump-crump-crump went the big rocket launcher.
(My one left, Daniel thought, conscious of Aidan discarding the launcher and opening up with his automatic.
The three explosions punched great holes in the tight-packed swarm. Normally the bees would have spread out more, to lessen the impact of rocket attacks, but Daniel’s tactic had forced them into a basic error. More than a quarter of the swarm had been destroyed in those three explosions. Suddenly, the odds had changed.
Now it was a simple bug-shoot. Get them before they get you. And the gods help the man whose nerve failed.
Christian, beside Daniel, was crying now. Daniel could hear him in his helmet But he was also shooting like a man possessed and between them they were slowly driving back the swarm.
And then, suddenly - miraculously, it seemed - the bees lifted and turned, heading back the way they’d come.
Daniel’s mouth was dry as he watched them, wondering if this were only a trick - a tactic to un-man them. To give them hope then snatch it away once more. “Hold tight,” he said, “they may be re-grouping.” But the truth was they were moving farther and farther away and that hellish vibration - the great pulse of insect wings that had seemed to fill the air - was also diminishing, until, a minute later, it was barely audible. The day was suddenly quiet The sun beat down on them.