The Calm Before The Swarm

by Michael McBride

  Lauren shook her head. No amount of preparation could impose order upon chaos.

  And even if they did manage to prevent catastrophe today, what were they going to do tomorrow? The next day? The one after that? Pandora's box had been opened and there was no way of predicting when or where the next attack would occur. They couldn't police every sporting event, every mall, every Broadway play, every school or every government installation on the off-chance that it might come under siege by swarms of killer wasps or some other surprise threat they couldn't even imagine. If men were to the point of engineering wasps like this, then who's to say they couldn't infect nearly invisible dust mites with hemorrhagic fever or seed the clouds with anthrax or the botulinum toxin that with the first rain would make the land uninhabitable for generations?

  They'd already lost the war and they didn't even know it yet. All that remained was to determine the method of their ultimate extinction.

  And the clock was ticking.

  II

  Lauren paced nervously from one section to the next, not certain exactly what she expected to see, but she knew that with each passing second they came closer to the penultimate moment of reckoning. Thus far, there was no score. The teams on the field were performing the annual Super Bowl ritual of cautiously feeling each other out, testing for weaknesses to exploit while doing their best to hide their own. The first quarter had ended in a tie at zero apiece, and at the rate they were going, they might be looking at goose eggs at halftime. Yet, despite the score, the crowd was frenzied. These were people who'd journeyed from around the country to be a part of history and appeared as though they intended to make the most of the opportunity. Mob mentality was in full effect; commonly accepted behavior gave way to a kind of low, thrumming potential that felt as though it could ignite at any minute. Everyone stood; jostling for a better sightline, shouting, shoving, pounding beers as though this were the only place on earth that served them, absorbing the individual into the mass that threatened to explode with the first points scored.

  She studied them all, her eyes flashing from one face to the next in hopes of identifying the one face that didn't jibe with the rest, the one set of eyes focused on something other than the game, on some twisted thought squirming through a diseased mind.

  Nothing.

  No one.

  Their most gloomy estimates showed that if the wasps were released in significant numbers, fewer than a third of those in attendance would be able to receive the shots of epinephrine in time. The best case scenario still left thousands leaving the dome in body bags.

  A whistle from the field marked the two-minute warning.

  She glanced back over her shoulder. The Lions had the ball near midfield on the Super Bowl logo. Fifteen more yards and they would be in field goal range. The bedlam that followed the first points scored would provide the perfect cover for the attack.

  Her hands trembled as she scanned the crowd. Which one was it? Which one?!

  She walked along the rail to the next section and looked up from the second tier to the third.

  Behind her, the game commenced once more.

  Men and women lined the balcony. Below them, the clock ticked downward.

  1:57.

  1:56.

  A cheer rose in response to something that happened behind her, but she didn't dare look.

  The game clock continued to run.

  1:43.

  1:42.

  Somewhere beneath her feet, Eminem and Kid Rock prepared to take the stage in an unofficial nod to Detroit that had been the source of much controversy during the last two weeks. Especially among Jaguar fans, who felt something as asinine as a halftime act could swing momentum.

  1:18.

  1:17.

  If someone in the crowd wanted to guarantee that he'd be on television, where would he sit? The fifty yard line might offer the best seats in the house, but was unlikely to be featured during the broadcast. First row in the end zone? A player might leap up into the stands after a touchdown, but what were the odds that he would do so, and that he would do so in the exact right place? The only time she could think of that the crowd was going to be shown every single time was...

  0:51.

  0:50.

  That had to be it.

  Damn it! She was one section too high and two to the left.

  "He has to be in section one-twenty-five!" she shouted into her transceiver. "Right between the goal posts!"

  0:44.

  0:43.

  Lauren glanced at the game as she sprinted toward the exit to the main corridor. The Lions had crossed the thirty and were definitely within field goal range.

  Second down and six.

  Time out on the field.

  She shoved through the herd working its way in the direction of the concession stands to beat the halftime rush and dashed toward the stairs to the lower level. Her footsteps echoed as she leapt them three at a time, narrowly avoiding the groups leisurely working their way down. She exploded through the door and raced toward the gap under a sign painted with the numbers one-two-five, where several agents were already converging.

  A deafening cheer erupted from all around her, making the entire structure shake.

  She hurried through the opening in time to see a replay of the touchdown pass to the corner of the end zone replayed on the big screen. The offense was already running to the sideline as the special teams jogged inside the five to line up for the extra point.

  She caught up with the agents at the bottom of the stairs and took up position with the goal posts at her back as the net was raised behind her. Frantically, she scoured the sea of faces, but didn't latch on to one that looked suspicious. The man could be in the other end zone, waiting for his opportunity a hundred and fifty yards away.

  "He's not here!" she screamed.

  God, did they really think they'd be able to isolate one lone---?

  "There!" one of the agents shouted. He pointed up into the stands.

  She followed his extended arm to where a man stood, maybe fifteen rows up, dead center, his bare torso and bulging gut smeared with Honolulu blue and silver, his face painted to look like a lion with savage jaws and fiery eyes. He was the only person not pumping his fists or bouncing or whooping like a savage. It was as though he were totally immobile, frozen in place. He just stared past them at the field, focused solely on the place kicker as he lined up with the holder, took two long steps backward, three to the side, and prepared to make the kick.

  Lauren knew that the cameras would now be on her back, and millions of people around the world would be staring straight through the gap between the goal posts.

  The man raised a metallic object, pinched between his index finger and his thumb. It was slender and short, and flashed when the lights reflected from it.

  The world around her slowed to a crawl.

  She heard the referee whistle, which started the play clock.

  The crowd returned its focus to the game.

  The man swelled as he took a deep breath and brought the object to his mouth.

  Agents converged from both sides, shoving past the people in the seats beside him, knocking them into the adjacent rows. One agent leapt for the man and seized his wrist before the object touched his lips. Another tackled them both to the ground and they disappeared from sight.

  A thumping sound behind her.

  The entire stadium roared again.

  The ball hit the net and tumbled down toward the turf.

  She felt relief like she'd never experienced before as the agents led the man into the aisle, his arms cuffed behind him, and shoved him up the stairs to where a dozen armed men waited.

  III

  The man sat across from her, his ankles and wrists shackled and connected to another chain around his waist, which was, in turn, fastened to an eyebolt in the floor of the modified transport carrier. He stared across the bed of the enclosed cab at her from that horrible painted lion's face, itself significantly less menacin
g than what she saw behind his sadistic black eyes. Had she not known they were there, she never would have been able to detect the latex cheek, nose, chin and brow prosthetics that dramatically altered the configuration of his face. But that was him, all right, the mass murderer responsible for the deaths of more than three hundred men, women and children at the Lithium Springs Fairgrounds. Sitting not more than four feet away from her, studying her in the expectant silence as the road shuddered beneath them and the four soldiers, one to either side of each of them, fondled their assault rifles, praying for any excuse to use them.

  Lauren wore the beekeeper's suit that had protected her earlier. The Marine unit wore matching outfits in woodland camo. The yet-to-be-identified man wore no such protection. Lauren was anxious to get him into the CT scanner to see what was inside of him, but based on his distended abdomen and the foul scent that radiated from the seepage in the seat of his pants, she had a pretty good idea of what she would find. Every few minutes, he doubled over in obvious pain, but always recovered and offered them the kind of smug, bloody-lipped grin she was certain the devil himself wore.

  She turned the small metallic object over and over in her gloved hands. It was a simple device, one found at any pet store around the world, and yet one that was as deadly as any detonator.

  "Give it a blow," the soldier beside her said. "Just a little one. Let's see what being eaten alive from the inside out does to that fucking smile."

  Lauren clenched the dog whistle in her fist and looked away. There was a part of her that wanted nothing more.

  "Tied at seven, midway through the third quarter," the driver said through the two-way intercom mounted overhead.

  "Tight game and we're missing it thanks to this douche bag," the guard to the man's right said. "You say this truck's perfectly sealed, right doc?"

  The man continued to stare directly at her with that horrible expression on his face. Lauren felt the same crawling sensation on her skin she remembered so well from the first time she wore this suit.

  "We found your disposable cell phone. Hey, you listening to me, asshole? We're tracing the number of the call you made right before we got you," the guard to the man's left said. He held the phone only inches from the man's face. "Started celebrating a little early, didn't you, Mohammed or Mahmud or whatever the hell your name is? It's only a matter of time before we take out your whole damn terrorist cell. Maybe we'll get you all together in a little room and blow that whistle of yours."

  "Aren't you supposed to do one of those Jihadi loo-loo-loo-loo-loo whoops before you do yourself?"

  The men in camo laughed, their faces shadows behind their netting.

  The truck slowed and veered to the right. Lauren recognized the driveway leading deeper into the CDC complex by the gentle side-to-side swaying and the rocking of the speed bumps. They slowed, and then sped up again.

  "Passing through perimeter security now," the driver said from the other side of the steel-reinforced barrier. "You sure your guys are expecting us?"

  "My people have been on stand-by since yesterday afternoon," Lauren said. "Pull around to the rear entrance. There'll be a team ready and waiting to assist with the prisoner transfer."

  "We're staying with him every step of the way," the man to her left said.

  "I wouldn't have it any other way."

  The Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratory was in Building 18. Lauren had been driving this route for so long that she recognized each of the turns without being able to see them, right down to the swooping ramp that led up to the building. The truck slowed and stopped. The engine continued to idle.

  "We're at the service entrance, doc. But there's no one waiting for us."

  "What are you talking about? Are you sure you're at the right entrance?"

  "Without a doubt."

  "Where are your people?" the man across from her asked. They were the first words he had spoken. His Arabic accent was affected by stilted British inflection. "Is this the point where I should say loo-loo-loo-loo-loo?"

  His predatory smile grew impossibly wide, crocodilian.

  "Let me out," Lauren whispered.

  "Convoy's moving out, doc. Something's not right. No way in hell we're sticking around to find out---"

  "Let me out!" Lauren screamed.

  The rear door opened from the outside and Lauren scurried down onto the pavement in the midst of the twelve-vehicle convoy. There were military Jeeps and black SUVs. A helicopter thumped high above the treetops. She barely stepped to the side in time to keep from being run over by the transport vehicle in its hurry to back out. The other cars closed rank around it and hurriedly guided it back toward the main road with the squeal of rubber.

  Two cars stayed with her; one a troop transport bearing a half-dozen armed soldiers, the other a federal SUV with the silhouettes of four agents behind the tinted windows.

  She sprinted toward the glass doors and stopped dead in her tracks. A handful of wasps crawled on the inside of the glass, stinging at the transparent barrier. The tips of their abdomens left tiny smudges from the holes where their stingers had once been. As she watched, one of them dropped to the floor onto a mat of lifeless insect carcasses.

  IV

  Lauren's horror gave way to a kind of detached numbness as she walked through the hallways toward her lab. Dead wasps crunched underfoot. Her heartbeat thudded in her ears, punctuating the restless humming of the fluorescent tube lights. All else was silent. She passed the doorways of private offices, through which she saw the occasional body sprawled on the floor, head misshapen, clutching at its swollen throat. When she reached the lobby, she involuntarily stopped and stifled a gasp. The security officer at the desk had toppled backward in his chair. His face was so livid with fluid that his features were all but obscured. There were other corpses, felled in mid-stride, arms extended as though trying to drag themselves forward across the tile floor after their legs had failed them, but it was the lone figure at the epicenter of the nightmare, crumpled in a wide pool of shimmering blood, that drew Lauren's attention. The woman's abdomen had been torn open from sternum to pubis. The frayed edges of her dress framed the mess of macerated viscera that bloomed in sickly gray folds from her peritoneum. Despite the sheer number of stings to her face, Lauren recognized the woman immediately. It was the same raven-haired woman she had seen on the video, near the elephant pens, staring down at the sick pachyderm with terror etched onto her face. The woman she had erroneously mistaken for pregnant. A disposable cell phone---the twin to the one they had taken from the man at the game---rested only inches from her curled fingertips.

  A cluster of wasps wheeled high above her, near the skylights. Several dropped to the floor and writhed at her feet.

  The sound of footsteps reached her from behind as the soldiers thundered down the corridor in their heavy boots. They now wore camouflaged beekeeper's suits and carried automatic rifles. They assumed command the moment they entered the lobby. One barked orders while the others scattered in surreal movements that made her feel like she was witnessing the scene from underwater. One of the soldiers spoke into his transceiver, then picked up the cell phone, held it away from his body, and waited. The view screen lit up with the incoming call, but there was no ringtone. At least not one that she could hear. The few surviving wasps up in the rafters descended upon the phone in the man's hand. He allowed them to crawl on his glove as he scrolled through the list of incoming calls. He nodded pointedly to the soldier who appeared to be in charge.

  "We were set up," the man with the phone said. "They used the game as a ruse to get all of us in one place, out of their way."

  It took Lauren a moment to grasp the implications of the statement.

  "No!" she cried.

  She whirled and broke into a sprint toward her lab. Panic flooded her veins. She started to hyperventilate, felt the warmth of tears on her cheeks.

  "Please, God," she whimpered. "Please...no..."

  She veered into the corridor to her wing an
d tripped over a body on the floor. They were everywhere. On the floor. In the doorways. Huddled together as though in an effort to attenuate the assault. Heads deformed by stingers. Bodies contorted by pain. Her team. Her entire team. All of the men and women beside whom she'd worked through the years, with whom she had jostled for space over microscopes and in clean rooms, with whom she'd labored and laughed, with whom she'd shared drinks and stories...

  Dead.

  All dead.

  Her colleagues...her friends...every single one of them...dead.

  Lauren crawled over the cold remains without looking at the woman's face. She somehow found her feet and managed to stagger through the maze of corpses to the quarantine room.

  She stood outside of the airlock, her thumb poised over the fingerprint scanner to disengage the lock, knowing full well what she'd find inside.

  This had never been about the three hundred people at the circus or even the hundred and fifty thousand at the Super Bowl. It was never about a political or religious statement to be viewed by millions around the world on live television.

  It was much worse than that.

  Lauren entered the air lock and passed the chemical showers and isolation suits hanging from the walls. She used her thumbprint to open the final seal and stared dumbly at the stainless steel door as it opened.

  She sobbed as she staggered into the chilled room, and found it exactly as she had expected.

  The body bags that had been stacked five-high to either side of the room...

  The corpses teeming with countless millions of wasp larvae...

  Gone.

  EPILOGUE

  Atlanta, Georgia

  Lauren curled up under a blanket on the couch in the living room of her upscale Centennial Park North townhouse, not far from Centennial Olympic Park and the Georgia Aquarium. The space was dark, thanks to the aluminum sheets sealed over the windows and affixed to the seams around the doors. The brass glare from the lone lamp on the table beside her provided the only illumination. It cast strange webbed shadows on the walls from the multiple layers of mosquito netting she had strung up in the center of the room. Inside the mesh tent were only the couch, an end table, and a coffee table on top of which her television perched. Her beekeeper's suit was folded neatly on the cushion beside her. She fondled the remote control and tried to summon the courage to press the power button to turn it on.