Feast or Famine td-107

by Warren Murphy

  "Are you the coroner who died?"

  "Obviously not. That was Dr. Nozoki. I'm Dr. Krombold. Gideon Krombold. Who are you?"

  "Tamara Terrill, Fox News." She called over her shoulder. "Joe, get in here!"

  "The name's Fred," said a man with a minicam for a face-or so it seemed to Krombold on first impression.

  "Has Dr. Wurmlinger got here yet?" Tammy Terrill demanded.

  "Yes. But he's busy."

  Tammy showed him her portable mike. "I'll talk to you first. Tell me everything."

  "You have to be more specific than that."

  "No time. Just spill your guts, and we'll edit them in the studio."

  Dr. Krombold blinked.

  "I'm talking about the killer bees. I know they're out here," Tammy prodded.

  "Nonsense. Dr. Nozoki succumbed to an ordinary bee sting. The others-"

  "Tell me about the others," Tammy interjected.

  "I haven't yet finished telling you about Dr. Nozoki."

  "This is TV. We can't dwell on stuff. People lose interest. Especially our audience."

  "You know," Dr. Krombold said, picking up his desk telephone, "I think it would be best if you two left the building. I have not consented to an interview."

  "Too late. Once you're on tape, the only way not to look bad is to go with the flow."

  Dr. Krombold jumped from his seat and pointed an angry finger at the minicam lens that was recording his complexion going from florid to brick red.

  "Turn that thing off!" he blazed.

  It was spoken in anger. Krombold probably never expected an instant response, never mind compliance. But he got both.

  The cameraman let out a strident yell, screamed and the minicam hit the yellowed linoleum with a bang. The light fizzled out.

  Tammy shouted down at the man, "What the hell are you doing, you clumsy-!"

  The cameraman was on his back, going into convulsions. He gasped, the gasping turning to a wheezing with his face becoming as mottled as wine sprinkled on satin.

  "What's wrong?" Tammy demanded.

  "B-b-b-b-bee!" he managed to say.

  And up from between where his fingers were clutching his belly crawled a fat, fuzzy black-and-yellow insect. With a nasty ziii, it took to the air.

  "Killer bee!" Tammy screeched, picking up a chair. "It's a killer bee. Damn, and it's not on tape."

  "Don't become excited!" Dr. Krombold said. "Please calm down. It has stung your cameraman. It's only a matter of moments before it dies a natural death."

  "I'm not letting it sting me," Tammy shrieked.

  "Be still. Don't attract its attention," Krombold urged, coming around from behind his desk. "It will die soon. And it can't sting again. It has lost its sting."

  "Tell that to the damn bee," said Tammy, trying to whack it with the chair.

  The bee didn't die. It buzzed around but Tammy kept it at bay with her chair.

  Finally, it took up a position atop a file cabinet and turned around completely once, then sat there looking at them with its many-faceted eyes.

  "Grab a rolled-up newspaper," Tammy hissed, holding the chair between her and the intent bee. She knew that chairs were the best defense against knives. She figured a bee was just a tiny blade with wings.

  "No need," Krombold assured her. "It is dying."

  "You positive?"

  "Bees can only sting once. Then they die. Dr. Wurmlinger said so."

  "Well, he's the expert, right?"

  Slowly, carefully, Tammy set the chair down.

  She knelt over Bob or Ted or whatever his name was and shook him vigorously.

  "Get up, you slacker."

  The cameraman just lay there. His eyes were swelling shut.

  "Hey, I think he's sick."

  Dr. Krombold jumped to her side. His expert hands went to the man's throat, felt for a pulse, opened one eye and then the other and tested the open mouth for the warm breath of respiration. He found none of those signs of life.

  "This man is dead," he said.

  "I knew it! I knew it was a killer bee." And grabbing up the fallen minicam, she trained it on the bee.

  "Smile for America, you little monster. I got you now."

  The harsh light fell upon the bee. In response, it lifted its wings and launched itself at Tammy.

  Venting a shriek, Tammy then launched the minicam at the bee, praying the tape would survive a second jolt.

  Bee and camera collided in midair. The camera hit the floor for the second time.

  This time, the bee came. roaring back. It flew straight up into the air and attempted to dive-bomb Tammy. She slithered out of the way, grabbed up a newspaper and made it into a tight, hard roll.

  "I'll teach you, you little bugger!" she screamed.

  Her first swipe missed. The second, coming on the backswing, knocked the bee clear out into the hall. It landed on the black-and-white diamond-pattern linoleum of the hall with a distinct but tiny clink.

  "Where did it land?"

  Dr. Krombold eased out into the corridor. "I can't see it."

  Then the bee crawled onto a white diamond from a black one.

  "There!" said Tammy, descending on it with blond fury. The newspaper smacked it hard.

  "Got it!"

  But the bee wasn't dead yet. It continued to crawl.

  Tammy hit it again.

  Smack.

  She hit it twice more and, when it still wouldn't die, unfolded the paper and dropped it square on the stubborn bee. Amazingly, the paper marched along the floor, pulled along by the still-not-dead insect.

  "What does it take to kill you?" Tammy complained.

  This time, she stomped on every crumpled inch of the newspaper with both feet.

  "I think I got it this time," she panted, stepping back.

  "It's dying anyway," Krombold said.

  When Tammy lifted the paper, the bee was still intact. It just hadn't moved much.

  "I fixed its fuzzy ass!" Tammy chortled.

  The bee then resumed its painful crawling.

  Before Tammy could descend on it again, it crawled under a closed door. The funereal black letters on the frosted panel said Togo Nozoki.

  "Damn, that is one ferocious bee," she panted. "No wonder they're feared from Brazil to Mexico."

  "It looked like an ordinary bumblebee to me," Krombold allowed.

  "That shows how much you know," Tammy snorted. "That was a killer bee. An Africanized killer bee. Loaded with neurotoxins and other poisons lethal to people."

  Dr. Krombold frowned. "I must be mistaken ...."

  "About what?"

  "I think we should bring Dr. Wurmlinger into this."

  "Now you're talking!"

  Chapter 12

  Dr. Helwig X. Wurmlinger was no different from any child who went through a normal bug period. He just never grew out of his.

  There was no insect on earth he didn't know, but he specialized in what others called pests. He was the leading authority on the social life of fire ants, on scuttle-fly dispersal and migration patterns of the corn borer.

  He knew whiteflies from gypsy moths, and could tell the summer temperature from the pitch of the cicadas chirring in the trees.

  It was true that not all of the multitudinous species of insects on earth had been cataloged and classified. But Wurmlinger was the first to identify every insect of his native Texas, the state with the greatest diversity of insects in the United States. He could at a glance distinguish an ant thorax from that of a wasp, although they were in fact closely related. He could tell the forelegs of a praying mantis from the hind legs of a grasshopper and separate wartbirt from field crickets.

  And after three hours of methodical sorting and classifying, he came to one inescapable conclusion: the owners of La Maison Punaise had not ingested any portion of any species of bee known to man.

  He rendered his expert opinion when Dr. Krombold returned with a rather breathless-looking young blond woman in tow.

  "The victims in qu
estion didn't die from ingesting bee parts or associative glands or toxins," he said.

  "Forget them!" the blonde snapped. "We got a killer bee cornered in an office. It just murdered my cameraman."

  "How do you know it's a killer bee?" Dr. Wurmlinger said, twitching in curiosity.

  "It zapped my cameraman, and he died just like that!" Tammy snapped her fingers once. "It's a damn shame he didn't have the presence of mind to point the lens back on himself. It would have made great pictures. Death by killer-bee sting."

  "No, you misunderstand me. How do you know it was an Apis mellifera scutellata?"

  "A what?"

  "Bravo bee, or so-called killer bee."

  "It looked like one. It was big and yellow and fuzzy."

  "Africanized killer bees are not distinguishable to the naked eye, and they are not in any way or shape fuzzy," Wurmlinger noted.

  "This one was."

  "I would like to see this bee with my own eyes."

  Dr. Wurmlinger was led to the locked door of the office that formerly belonged to Dr. Nozoki. He gave the dead cameraman a sidelong glance and, evidently finding him less interesting than a live bee, ignored him.

  "I have the key," Dr. Krombold offered.

  "Is this safe?" Tammy asked. "Maybe we should spray some Raid under the door."

  Wurmlinger visibly flinched. "No doubt the bee is dead by now," he said.

  Dr. Krombold unlocked the door and pushed it open gingerly.

  "There is nothing to be afraid of," Wurmlinger assured him.

  Tammy had retrieved her minicam and had it up on her shoulders. The light was burning hot, but the protective glass was broken, exposing the hot bulb. Faint vapor curled out from it.

  Dr. Krombold went in first and looked around. His puzzled gropings caused Tammy to say, "It crawled in, remember? Look on the floor."

  Dr. Krombold did. "I see no bee," he reported.

  Thereupon, Wurmlinger entered and gave the room the benefit of his practiced eye.

  There was no bee on the floor. Nor was there a bee, dead or otherwise, under the heavy mahogany desk. He looked in other places. Behind a trio of beige filing cabinets. In the wastepaper basket. Even at the base of a human skeleton suspended from a chain on some kind of dull metal standard.

  The brownish white bones, held together by steel wire, rattled.

  "No bee."

  Tammy had slipped into the room. She directed the hot beam all over, saying, "This ought to flush the little bugger out."

  "It is no doubt dead by now," Wurmlinger insisted.

  "I'll believe it when I see its fuzzy dead behind."

  Wurmlinger started and gave Tammy a goggly look. "You say the bee was fuzzy?"

  "Very. It looked like a tiny black-and-yellow mitten."

  "You are describing the common bumblebee."

  "There was nothing common about this guy. He had more lives than Felix the Cat."

  "Bumblebees are not aggressive by nature. They rarely sting."

  "That one stung. We all saw it."

  Wurmlinger frowned. "It could not be the morphologically similar male drone honey bee. They are not equipped by nature with a modified ovipositor, or stinger. It is impossible for it to sting. Nor do drones possess venom sacs. The drone can neither sting nor inject poison, possessing neither biological apparatus. Yet bumbles are not violent."

  "Find that bee, and you'll see different," Tammy insisted. "It's vicious."

  This time, everyone searched except Tammy. She was busy working her minicam. She rolled tape as she blazed light in every direction.

  In the end, they were forced to give up. There was no sign of the bee or its tiny furry corpse.

  "It is very puzzling," Wurmlinger murmured.

  "Maybe it crawled back out," Tammy suggested.

  Wurmlinger shook his head. "Impossible. It should have been in its death throes after all that happened."

  "Tell that to the damn bee," grunted Tammy, dousing her minicam.

  At that moment, a man poked his head in the open office door and Tammy did a double take. He had pronounced cheekbones and extremely deep-set eyes. One hand held the door, and it was backed by a wrist like a two-by-four.

  "Do I know you?" Tammy blurted.

  "Were you ever a flight attendant?" asked the man with the very thick wrists.

  "No."

  "Then probably not."

  The man showed his ID card and said, "Remo Teahan. Center for Disease Control. This is Bruce Rhee."

  Tammy took one look at the elderly Asian who entered next and said, "I know you, too!"

  "Remo, it is Tamayo Tanaka," the Asian flared in a familiar voice.

  Remo looked more closely. "Oh, yeah. I didn't recognize her without the phony Japanese makeup. I thought they drummed you out of network news when your Geisha wig fell off on camera."

  "I'm with Fox now," Tammy said defensively.

  "Then I was right. Drummed out."

  "Hey, we're the cutting edge in the next century news. All the Generation Xers watch us instead of those stuffy bleeding ponytails on the majors."

  "Wait'll you turn forty," Remo warned.

  Tammy shook her blond head stubbornly. "Never happen."

  "We're looking for Dr. Wurmlinger."

  Wurmlinger actually raised his hand. "I am he."

  "Gotta talk to you. In private."

  "And this is about what?"

  "We're looking into these bug killings. We think there's more to it than bee stings."

  Unnoticed by everyone, a pair of feelers emerged from the right eye socket of the hanging skeleton specimen. They quivered.

  Remo went on. "This is starting to look like a serial killer bee is on the loose."

  "Serial killer bees! What a great lead," Tammy rejoiced.

  "Shut up," said Remo, who was making up his theory for the sake of cutting through objections.

  "Are you suggesting a serial killer is employing bees?" asked Dr. Krombold.

  "Maybe," said Remo, who was suggesting no such thing.

  The bee's entire head emerged and looked at Tammy with its compound eyes like black bicycle reflectors.

  "This is the story that will make my career," she was saying. "I can hardly wait to tell the world. Never mind my generation. Just call me Blond Ambition."

  At that, the bee launched itself toward Tammy. It landed atop her hair, crimped its plump abdomen and inserted its vicious little stinger into the exact apex of her skull.

  "Ouch!" she cried, smacking the top of her head. Too late. The bee slipped past her snatching hand.

  Then realization hit her. She began doing a syncopated version of the macarena.

  "I've been stung! Oh, my God, I've been stung! And I'm going to die. God, I'm going to die. I can feel myself dying."

  Remo stepped in, both hands coming together. He had the bee between his hands.

  Slap.

  "Got him!" said Remo.

  "No, you did not," said Chiun, his hazel eyes sweeping the room. He brought his nails up into a defensive posture, turning with each sweep and tumble of the bee's flight.

  "I had him," Remo insisted.

  "You missed."

  "I can't miss. I had him dead to rights."

  In a corner, Tammy was searching her hair, trying to locate the site of the bee's attack. "Someone help me. Somebody suck out the poison."

  "That is for snakebite," Wurmlinger said, completely unmoved by events.

  "What do you do for bee stings?"

  "You have not been stung," Dr. Krombold assured her. "That is a drone honey bee. It is stingless."

  Then the bee proved him wrong by alighting on his hand and stinging him viciously. Krombold let out a snarl.

  "I have been stung," he announced, more in annoyance than anger.

  "Are you allergic to bee stings?" asked Wurmlinger, coming over and taking his hand.

  "No. I have been stung many times without incident."

  Wurmlinger used his eyeglass lens on the sting
site. "I see no barb."

  "I can assure you I was stung. It was quite painful."

  Then Krombold started to turn red in the face and wheeze.

  "You are going into anaphylactic shock," Wurmlinger said disappointedly. "This is impossible. You couldn't have been stung."

  Dr. Krombold nodded his agreement with Wurmlinger's professional diagnosis of anaphylactic shock but shook his head vigorously at the sting assessment.

  Clutching his throat, he lumbered to a wooden chair and sat down, where he went into urgent respiratory distress and then cardiac arrest. With a final convulsive shudder, he deflated like a burst football.

  "Is he dead?" Tammy gasped from her corner.

  Remo and Chiun, swiping at the airborne bee, were too busy to reply. Wurmlinger strode over to the coroner and examined him with clinical disapproval.

  "Yes, he is dead."

  "Why aren't I dead?" asked Tammy in a funny, low-to-the-floor voice.

  "You are not allergic."

  "But he said he wasn't allergic, and look at him."

  The weird low quality of her voice brought all heads turning her way.

  Tammy had stood herself on her head in a corner. She was supporting her body with her flat-to-the-floor hands.

  "What are you doing?" asked Remo.

  "Standing on my head."

  "We can see that. Why?"

  "So the bee poison in my scalp will drain out," Tammy explained.

  "That will not work," Wurmlinger said.

  Abruptly, Tammy somersaulted to her feet. She grabbed Wurmlinger by his smock lapels. "I'll pay you to suck out the poison! I'll put you on TV. I'll do anything."

  If the prospect of a blank check with Tammy Terrill's name on it interested Helwig X. Wurmlinger, he gave no sign. After a twitchy pause, he pulled free and returned his attention to Remo and Chiun.

  They had the bee surrounded. It was describing loops, turns, chandelles and other aerial acrobatics over their heads. Remo kept trying to catch it between his hands while the old Korean was clearly attempting to slice it in two with extended fingernails. They were good techniques, but they failed utterly.

  The bee was swifter than any drone Wurmlinger had ever before seen. And it seemed to be getting faster by the second. It would hang like a bumble in one spot, as if baiting the pair to strike. Then as hands blurred toward it, it would drop or dart or pirouette out of range. It was very striking. The bee showed signs of intelligence. There was certainly cunning and forethought, at least.