by John Saul
Inside the corral, holding a big horse by its reins, was Molly, whom Ben had seen a couple of times but never spoken to.
“Is that your horse?” he asked.
Molly shook her head. “Mine’s a colt. This one’s my sister’s, and Kevin’s going to teach me to ride her.”
“Will he teach me, too?” Ben asked.
Molly hesitated, then shrugged. “I don’t know. Who are you?”
“Ben Larkin. I live over there.” He pointed off toward Vic Costas’s farm. “Can I watch while Kevin teaches you?”
Molly shrugged. “I guess.”
A few seconds later, as Kevin came out of the barn, Jeff joined his brother on the fence. “Hey, Kev,” he called. “Where’s Julie?”
Kevin glanced at Jeff. Why was he asking about Julie? What did—Then he remembered that Julie had been babysitting Ben yesterday afternoon.
Had Jeff been there, too?
A twinge of jealousy shot through Kevin. “I don’t know,” he replied. “I guess she’s in the house.”
“She’s coming down to watch me ride,” Molly informed Jeff. “You can watch, too, if you want.”
Kevin flushed when Molly contradicted him, and quickly turned away from Jeff. “Come on,” he told Molly. “Let’s get you up on Greta.”
Molly watched as Kevin demonstrated how to mount the horse. Then he dismounted, and, still holding the reins in his left hand, lifted Molly with an arm around her waist till she was high enough to place her foot into the stirrup, grab the pommel, and scramble up, throwing her right leg over Greta’s saddle. “I did it!” she cried as she sat up straight. “I got—”
Greta took a sudden step, and Molly, surprised by the movement, almost lost her balance.
“Hang on!” Kevin told her. Quieting the horse, he moved back to where Molly sat and shortened first one of the stirrups, then the other. “There, that’s better,” he said.
He showed Molly how to hold the reins properly, and gave her instruction on how to sit on the horse. Grasping the bridle, he began leading Greta slowly around the corral, letting Molly get used to the feel of the horse.
On the third circuit of the enclosure, Kevin noticed that Julie had come down to the corral, and was now seated on the top rail, watching.
Next to her, sitting very close to her, was Jeff Larkin.
As they approached Julie and Jeff, Kevin felt the mare tense. Then she snorted loudly and jerked her head, as if trying to pull away.
“What’s wrong?” Molly asked. “Is she scared of something?”
Kevin, certain the horse had merely reacted to the twinge of jealousy he’d felt when he saw Julie and Jeff together, tightened his grip on the bridle.
“It’s all right,” he said, trying to soothe the horse. “Nothing’s wrong at all.” He kept walking, making the circuit of the corral yet again, and Greta seemed to relax as they moved away from Julie and Jeff. “Good girl,” Kevin whispered into the mare’s ear. “I don’t like it, either, but we’ll just act like we don’t notice.”
They came around the last turn in the fence, and as they approached Jeff and Julie once more, the horse shied. Her nostrils flared and her ears flattened against her head. “Easy,” Kevin crooned. “Just take it easy.”
But the horse, as if sensing some unseen danger emanating from Julie and Jeff, tried to pull away again, this time rearing up and jerking loose from Kevin’s grip.
On top of the horse, Molly shrieked in alarm and dropped the reins. A second later Greta reared again, one of her hooves lashing out toward Kevin, who ducked away just in time to keep from being kicked in the head. As he rolled away from the spooked horse, Greta lunged off in the other direction. Molly clung to the pommel, screaming in terror now, but the next time Greta reared up, the little girl slipped from the saddle and fell to the ground. Thrashing around, trying to roll away from the bucking horse, Molly’s screams grew ever louder.
From her place on the fence, Julie watched in horror as the horse lunged back and forth in the corral, its hooves striking the ground only inches from her sister. Molly scrambled first one way, then another, but no matter which way she turned, Greta seemed to be there, blocking her escape.
Any second, Julie knew, the horse’s hooves would drop down on Molly and—
She felt a surge of adrenaline in her body, and from somewhere in her mind there came what seemed like a burst of pure energy.
Her eyes fixed on the horse, and in her mind she envisioned it under attack.
And then, as the horse continued to lunge in the corral, something happened.
Its bucking abruptly stopped and a shrieking whinny burst from its throat. A second later it plunged away from Molly, as if trying to escape something.
Julie kept staring at the horse, her entire attention focusing on the thrashing animal.
Jeff, beside her, felt her tense, and when he turned to look at her, Julie’s expression was a frozen mask of concentration.
Then, from behind him, Jeff heard a humming sound. When he turned to look, he saw them.
Bees.
Thousands of them, pouring into the corral from the direction of the house, swirling around the terrified horse in a dense cloud.
Greta, surrounded by the mass of stinging insects, thrashed from side to side as she tried to dodge away from the undulating swarm.
She tried to run then, but dozens of the tiny creatures had settled on her head, found the spots around her nose and eyes where the hair was thinnest, and plunged their stingers in.
Hundreds more clung to her belly and crept up the in-sides of her flanks, where the hair was worn away and her bare skin was exposed.
Thousands more began burrowing through her short hair until they found the skin below.
Kevin, still in the corral, scooped Molly up from the ground, then watched in awe as the bees relentlessly attacked the mare.
And Jeff, from his place next to Julie on the fence, found himself almost hypnotized by her oddly emotionless eyes as she watched the tormented creature stumble, then fall to the ground and begin rolling over and over in a vain attempt to escape the swarm of insects.
As Molly and Kevin, mesmerized by the sight, retreated silently back to the fence, the horse whinnied one last time.
Then its body trembled and it lay still.
Except for the humming of the bees, an eerie silence fell over the corral.
CHAPTER 14
Karen shut off the vacuum cleaner, sighing as she reflected that it had taken her twice as long just to do the upstairs of the farmhouse as it had taken to clean the whole apartment back in L.A. And there were still the kids’ rooms to do before she could even start on the bathrooms.
The noise of the machine died away, and Karen pulled the plug out of the outlet midway down the wall of the upstairs corridor, letting the cord snake back onto the spring-loaded reel of the Electrolux. For just a second she considered the possibility that the plug might snap off the end of the cord as it hit the canister, thus ending the chore. The plug held, though—as she’d known it would—and before she dragged the machine into the master bedroom, she eyed the corridor once more, searching for any dust she might have missed.
It was while she was inspecting the hall that she realized she was still hearing a faint buzzing in her ears, though the vacuum was off.
She hesitated, then shrugged it off, telling herself it was nothing more than a residual effect from listening to the Electrolux roaring at her for the last half hour. Even Bailey, who had been asleep on Kevin’s bed when she began, had abandoned the house as soon as she’d turned the machine on. A little while ago she’d seen him snoozing in a patch of sunlight out by the barn.
Pulling the Electrolux along behind her, she entered the master bedroom and was about to plug the vacuum in again when she noticed that the humming in her ears hadn’t disappeared, but had grown louder.
Louder, and more familiar.
The first stirrings of fear fluttering in her belly, she moved tentatively ar
ound the room.
The sound was loudest when she stood next to the wall separating this room from Julie’s. Leaving her own bedroom, she went into the one next door.
The level of the humming was the same, and loudest when she stood next to the master bedroom wall.
The sound was coming from inside the wall, and still growing louder.
And now, with terrible certainty, she knew what it was.
Bees!
But how could they be in the wall?
Going to the window, she opened it and was about to unhook the screen when she saw them.
Hundreds of them, hovering in the air just outside the window.
Her skin prickling with goose bumps, Karen watched them land on the wall, then creep through a crack in the siding. But even as they disappeared into the wall, more and more kept arriving, until the air seemed choked with them.
For what seemed an eternity, Karen stood frozen at the window, gazing at the cloud of insects just beyond the screen.
What if they suddenly attacked the screen?
Could they get through?
The thought of them filling the room in which she stood brought her back to life. She reached out and slammed the window shut.
The sound of the frame thudding against the windowsill triggered a memory in Karen’s mind—of the day they’d found Otto’s body, when she’d awakened to this very same sound.
A sound that Russell had insisted was nothing just before he’d closed the window to shut it out.
Her heart beating faster, Karen went back to her own room.
The humming was louder now, and she flushed with anger as she moved to the window and peered out.
Bees were still arriving, hovering in the air, crawling over the screen that covered her window.
At least a dozen had found a tiny hole in the mesh and worked their way into the space between the screen and the glass. Karen shuddered as she remembered the reactions Molly and Julie had had to the bee stings. What if she’d left the window open this morning, as Julie had, instead of shutting it against the heat of the day? Her eyes fixed on the growing mass of bees outside, and she felt an icy chill of horror.
Molly!
The last time she’d looked out the kitchen window, Molly had been starting across the yard on her way down to the corral! And if the bees were swarming in the yard—
She heard a shriek, then, from somewhere outside.
A shriek that she knew instantly was that of her younger daughter.
“Molly!” The name erupted from her throat, and she rushed from the bedroom, bolted down the stairs, and burst out the back door.
But Karen was barely off the back porch when she stopped short, her eyes caught by something moving only a few feet above her head. She looked up, shading her eyes against the bright glare of the sun. For a moment she saw nothing.
Then her eyes focused and she shuddered.
A steady stream of bees was flying up from the direction of the corral, one corner of which was now visible behind the barn.
Her blood ran cold as she realized that Molly wasn’t alone down there.
Kevin was with her, and she was almost certain that Julie had gone down, too, to watch her sister’s first riding lesson.
“Oh, God,” she wailed, breaking into a run. She raced down the slope toward the corral, her mind reeling. What if they’ve been stung again? What if this time all the kids have been stung?
“Stick out your tongue and say ‘Ahh,’ ” Ellen Filmore told Gareth Parker. The four-year-old gazed up at her solemnly, but made no move to comply with her order.
“Don’t hurt me,” he said.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” Ellen promised. She held up the tongue depressor for his inspection. “See? It looks just like an ice cream stick, doesn’t it?”
Gareth shook his head emphatically.
“Well, maybe it doesn’t,” Ellen agreed. “But I’m not going to put it down your throat or anything. I’m just going to press your tongue down a little bit, so I can see how your tonsils look. See?” Opening her mouth, she used the depressor to flatten her own tongue, then leaned over so the little boy could peer into her throat. Just as he leaned closer for a better look, she said, “Ahh!” loudly enough to make him jump, then reached out to tickle him. As the little boy began giggling, Ellen threw the used tongue depressor away and began peeling the paper from a new one. “Now what do you say?” she asked. “Your turn?”
Gareth nodded. “Okay,” he said, opening his mouth and leaning forward slightly. Ellen pressed his tongue down, moved closer, and was just about to get a good look at the offending tonsils when she felt the little boy’s fingers plunge into her ribs and heard a burst of laughter explode from his throat.
Reflexively jerking back as the depressor dropped from her fingers, Ellen did her best to fix the little boy with a stern look, but didn’t quite succeed. “You planned that,” she accused.
Gareth nodded happily.
“Okay,” Ellen sighed. “Let’s start over again, all right?”
But as she was reaching for yet a third depressor, the door to the examining room opened and Roberto Muñoz stuck his head in. “Better get out here, Doc,” he said. “We got a problem.”
From the waiting room, Ellen could hear a low moaning sound, followed by a worried female voice: “It’s going to be all right, Andy. Just hang on!”
It was the urgency in the woman’s voice that commanded Ellen Filmore’s attention more than the sound of the moan.
A moan could mean anything from a stomachache to a hangover, but whoever was with the patient in the waiting room obviously thought it was a lot more serious than either of those. Leaving Gareth Parker under Roberto’s supervision, she hurried out to the waiting room.
One look told her what had happened.
It was Andy Bennett, his face flushed the same abnormal red she’d seen only a few days before on Julie Spellman, and a week before that on Julie’s little sister, Molly.
Andy’s right hand and forearm had already swollen grotesquely, and he appeared to be on the verge of falling into unconsciousness.
“Bee sting?” Ellen asked, though she was nearly certain it could be nothing else.
Marian Bennett glanced up and nodded, her lips clamped tightly in a harsh line as she attempted to control the fear that had bloomed inside her as she’d watched Andy’s arm blow up and his face turn red.
His breathing had become increasingly strangled on the short ride to the clinic. Now he was gasping for breath.
“It’s all right,” Ellen assured her, already turning back toward the emergency room. “I’ve got something that will take care of it.”
Marian Bennett found her voice. “I don’t know what’s happening to him. He’s never been allergic. He—”
But Ellen had already disappeared, moving quickly as she found a syringe, unwrapped it, and filled it with half the remaining contents of the vial Carl Henderson had given her the day he’d brought Julie Spellman in. She strode back to the waiting room, an alcohol-soaked cotton swab in one hand, the hypodermic in the other. “Get his shirt open and off his upper right arm,” she instructed Marian Bennett.
Jerking at the front of Andy’s shirt, Marian exposed her son’s chest, then pulled the shirt off his shoulders. The instant his arm was exposed, Ellen Filmore swabbed it with alcohol, then plunged the needle in.
As the contents of the hypodermic needle flowed into his blood, the color of Andy’s face began to change, fading quickly back to normal.
As Marian watched in amazement, the swelling in her son’s arm began to ease, and his breathing—nothing more than a labored gasp a few moments ago—took on an easy rhythm.
But with Andy Bennett, as with Julie Spellman a few days before, the instant and dramatic easing of his most obvious symptoms was only part of what was happening inside his body.
What neither his mother nor Ellen Filmore could know was that Andy Bennett—though he looked better every minute—was fee
ling worse.
While the symptoms of the sting were easing, those of the treatment were just beginning.
He opened his mouth to tell the doctor what was happening to him, to tell her about the nausea boiling in his stomach and the feverish chill that held him in its icy grip, but when he heard the words he uttered, he felt a new kind of fear—a fear that gripped his mind as painfully as did the sudden illness that had invaded his body.
For the words he spoke were not the words he’d intended to say.
Indeed, they bore no relationship at all to the violent illness that seemed suddenly to have taken possession of his body. “Good,” he sighed. “That feels so good”
“You’re sure?” his mother asked, looking at him with anxious eyes. “You’re really all right?”
Andy wanted to scream, wanted to fall to the floor, writhing in agony, wanted to vomit up the vile nausea he felt in his belly.
Instead he stood up and smiled.
“I’m fine,” he heard himself say. “Let’s go home.”
Carl Henderson pulled his Cherokee to a stop in a shady spot next to the Owens’ barn just as Karen burst out of the house and began running down the slope toward the corral. It wasn’t until he’d gotten out of the Jeep that he caught sight of the bees streaming from the corral behind the barn up toward the house, where they seemed to be swarming above the porch roof.
But that didn’t make any sense—the new hives had been on the farm less than twenty-four hours, and in Carl’s experience, bees rarely swarmed unless a hive was too crowded. No hive could possibly become overcrowded in less than a day, so one of the old hives must have split before it had been taken away.
Which meant that the bees now streaming toward the house would undoubtedly be of the virulently poisonous strain that had almost killed both Molly and Julie Spellman.
Carl felt a thrill of anticipation as the thought that Julie might have been stung again—perhaps even killed—flitted into his mind. Quickly, he rounded the corner of the barn, but stopped short as he saw Julie Spellman sitting on the top rail of the corral.