by Gina Ranalli
In her sluggish travels across town, she had learned two things about the bees: they were attracted to light and sound, the latter of which seemed to agitate them greatly.
She had learned both of these the hard way, the vehicle having been attacked no less than three times since she’d driven it out of Martin’s driveway.
The attacks, though frightening, had proved fruitless on the creatures’ part though. They were unable to get inside the Rover and once Rebecca had stifled her own urge to scream and the dog’s frantic barking, the things had eventually flown away. She’d had to kill the engine multiple times during her journey because the sound of it brought them towards it more often than not and despite them not being able to get at her, she still didn’t want to be swarmed.
And she’d seen swarms.
Dozens of the digger bees had descended upon a Wal-Mart parking lot, bouncing off the lamp posts the way moths bounced against porch lights.
She had kept the vehicle at a crawl, lights off, until she was a good four blocks from the Wal-Mart and had since seen other examples of the bees being drawn to light and sound.
So far, she’d seen very few people alive out on the streets and suspected that most folks had either fled early on or were hiding inside their homes. There were a lot of car wrecks along the way, mostly one-vehicle accidents, and she assumed the drivers had panicked when they’d been attacked by the flying monstrosities, crashing their cars and either escaping when they could or remaining inside, out of sight or injured.
Creeping along the road, she’d heard a man shouting and grimaced inwardly, knowing exactly what that would mean if he was out in the open and then, sure enough, she’d seen movement and, tracking the bee, she’d seen the man’s arms reaching skyward.
Her first thought was that he’d been trying to attract a bee, though why anyone would do such a thing, she couldn’t imagine. Then the bee had struck him and another man rushed out of the diner, also shouting.
Rebecca swerved the Rover into the lot and flipped the headlights on, hoping to draw the bee off the fallen man and to her. She hit the brakes hard just as a loud crack blasted the night.
The standing man spun to look at her and she immediately saw he held a rifle of some sort. Cursing, she instinctively ducked below the dashboard, fully expecting her windshield to explode.
Instead, she heard more yelling and then the man with the weapon was at the driver’s side window, beating it with the side of his fist.
In the backseat, Lou began to go ballistic, barking and snarling, obviously terrified.
“Stop it!” Rebecca shouted at the man. “You’ll bring them right to you!”
But her warning was too late as another bee smacked hard into the man, pinning him against the door of the Rover, its mandibles snapping inches from the back of his head.
Rebecca’s eyes met the man’s for an instant and then his own eyes screwed closed in agony.
He’s being stung!
It was below her line of vision, but she knew it was happening.
She felt like screaming herself, completely helpless and horrified as this man was killed right in front of her with only a car window between them.
“GET OFF OF HIM, YOU FUCKING PRICK!”
Rebecca blinked in surprise as a shrieking woman came running at the vehicle brandishing a baseball bat and clubbing at the enormous insect with all her might.
The woman hit the thing over and over, until it fell away from the man, perhaps stunned, and onto the ground. The man slumped out of sight as well and Rebecca’s paralysis broke.
She unlocked and opened the door and shouted at the young woman. “Get inside!”
The woman ignored her, kneeling at the man’s side. “Joe? Joe! Are you okay?”
“My...leg...” the man groaned. “Bastard got me.”
A deafening crunch came from the direction of the diner, snatching Rebecca’s attention away from the strangers for a moment. The entire building shifted and then the far side collapsed inward with the sound of splintering wood and crushed metal.
“Oh, God,” she whispered. She looked at the two people on the ground and yelled, “Come on! You have to get in here right now! It’s not safe! The ground is giving way!”
When the two seemed too dazed to comprehend what she was saying, she leapt out of the vehicle and struggled to get the man to his feet. She opened the Rover’s back door and did all but shove him inside. Turning back to the girl, she said, “HURRY!”
Finally understanding, the girl climbed into the vehicle and Rebecca slammed the door behind her, jumping in behind the wheel and slamming her own door as well.
Then her eyes fell on the crumpled, unmoving form still in the lot. “What about him?” she asked the young woman.
“He’s a dick,” the girl replied.
Rebecca probably would have been amused by this response under different circumstances, but now she said only, “Good, because he’s dead.”
She threw the Rover into reverse and hit the gas, the dog still barking in her ear.
Once she’d pulled back onto the road, she again cut the headlights. Behind them, the diner exploded, probably due to a ruptured gas line.
“Holy shit!” the girl cried, covering her head.
“You can say that again,” Rebecca said, speeding up. “Lou, quiet!”
The dog immediately fell silent and went to work sniffing the moaning man.
“The stinger...” the man said. “Pretty sure it broke off in my thigh.” He was struggling to sit up, teeth gritted against the pain. “Help me get it out, Stacy.”
“What?” Stacy asked. “Joe, I...” She began to cry. “I don’t know if I can.”
“Please,” Joe grunted. “If you don’t...” He trailed off, wheezing for breath.
Now that they were a safe distance from the diner, Rebecca slowed the vehicle to a crawl. In the rearview mirror she could see the flames shooting into the night sky and some of the bees darting towards it and then away.
“Go on,” she growled under her breath. “Get in there you sons-of-bitches. Burn.”
In the backseat, Stacy said, “I think I feel it.”
Joe fought to get air into his lungs and rasped, “Pull...it...out.”
Rebecca winced a moment later when Joe let out a piercing scream. “Got it!” Stacy said triumphantly. “Shit! It’s...barbed!”
Catching a glimpse of the stinger in the mirror, Rebecca quickly returned her attention to the road. It was probably two feet long, black and had what appeared to be thorns all along its length. Definitely a nasty bit of work.
Stacy’s triumph was brief. “Now you’re bleeding. Shit!” To Rebecca, she said, “Do you have anything in here we can use to wrap his leg?”
“I don’t know,” she said apologetically. “This isn’t my car. Look around in the back.”
Turning in the seat, Stacy rummaged around but all she came up with was a wool blanket and an old blue and tan flannel shirt. She did the best she could with the shirt, binding Joe’s upper thigh with it before covering him with the blanket. A few hisses of pain escaped through Joe’s clenched teeth, but otherwise he was silent through the process.
“There,” Stacy said when she was finished. “That should help.”
Joe took a long ragged breath and said, “I guess I should mention I’m allergic to bee stings.”
Both women gasped, but he lifted a bloody hand to silence them. “All the Benadryl in the world won’t help this one. It’s a...doozy.”
“Jesus,” Rebecca whispered.
“We need to get him to a hospital,” Stacy said, her voice on the teetering edge of panic. “We need to go now!”
Rebecca licked her lips and shook her head slowly. “I’ve been driving for hours looking for a way out of town. So far, all the roads leading out are gone.”
“What do you mean ‘gone’?”
“I mean...gone. The sinkholes just swallowed them. I haven’t been able to find one completely intact yet and n
othing’s been passable.”
Stacy let out a long string of curses then fell silent for a few seconds. “Well..what about that clinic over on Poplar?”
Rebecca thought about it. “I haven’t been down that way yet, but I can try taking the long way around.” She didn’t say what she was really thinking: that it would be a miracle if the clinic was not only standing but operational as well. But, she supposed, what could it hurt to try?
“His face is getting all splotchy!” Stacy said suddenly. “Oh my God, what should I do?” When Rebecca didn’t reply, she yelled, “Drive faster!”
Pressing down slightly on the accelerator, Rebecca said, “I can’t drive too fast or the bees will come.”
“Who cares! Just go!”
“If they come,” Rebecca tried to explain patiently, “then we won’t even be able to get your friend out of the car.”
Joe’s breathing became even more labored and Lou let out a long, low whine. Beside them, Stacy began to cry.
Grim-faced, Rebecca drove on in the direction of the clinic, carefully weaving around abandoned vehicles and the occasional bodies of the dead, both human and otherwise.
CHAPTER 8
Not only was clinic gone, but the entire northwest corner of town had dissolved into mud, absorbed back into the earth from which it came. What lay beyond the hood of the Rover was a vast black field of empty space, a gorge with no bottom to be seen.
“It’s getting worse,” Rebecca said. She felt entirely defeated. If Joe was still breathing in the backseat, she couldn’t hear him over the soft sound of Stacy’s gentle weeping. That fact alone let her know that he probably wasn’t.
She put the Rover in reverse and slowly backed away from that vacant space, not daring to let herself think about the lives that must have been lost in the last twenty-four hours.
“My baby,” Stacy sobbed. “Oh, God, my poor baby.”
Rebecca’s heart broke for the young woman as she turned the Rover back in the direction they’d come from. She was about to ask if Stacy had been married to Joe when she felt the back left side of the Rover sink. Both she and Stacy screamed in terror as the land behind the vehicle began to collapse.
Grimacing, Rebecca stomped on the gas pedal, thanking the powers that be for front-wheel-drive and the Rover lurched forward, the back wheel bumping back up onto solid ground.
Stacy spun around to look out the rear window. “Fuck!” she shouted. “Drive! Drive drive, drive!”
Behind them, the new gorge was growing, ingesting the ground and everything on it with an insatiable appetite. Despite driving as fast as she could, the earth was disintegrating no more than a car length after they passed over it.
“SHIIIIIITTTTT!” Rebecca yelled, gripping the steering wheel with all her might. She was dimly aware of the pandemonium happening behind her, the girl screaming, the dog barking, the earth crumpling into nothingness, but she kept her eyes straight ahead, pushing the Rover on, leaning forward towards the dashboard as if it would make them move faster.
They hadn’t gotten far when another crevasse opened up in front of them, smaller than the one behind, but still wide enough to take them down into oblivion.
Rebecca jerked the wheel to the right, going off-road, over a median strip, across a patch of lawn and into a small apartment complex parking lot. Swerving around the building, narrowly avoiding parked cars, they exited the other side onto long abandoned train tracks, the Rover’s engine roaring its protest.
Keeping to the tracks, Rebecca didn’t dare slow down. Parallel to the tracks, the ground was vanishing on one side while the edge of the forest lay on the other.
“We’re so fucking screwed,” Stacy said, sounding almost calm now. “So fucking screwed.”
From the right, where the forest was, came the sound that Rebecca had come to know so well: falling trees. Faraway, but certainly not far enough.
“Come on!” Rebecca snarled savagely as she saw an opening on the left where there was still a section of ground wide enough to let them pass. The Rover veered that way, its occupants bouncing violently within it, but otherwise silent now.
As soon as she’d made the move, Rebecca saw that it had been a mistake and hit the brakes, causing the Rover to fishtail and throwing both Stacy and the dog forward. They each let out yelps of pain and fear and then the vehicle was still.
Nothing lay in front of them.
Nothing lay behind or to either side.
The Rover sat on an island of earth, perhaps 84 feet wide and 100 feet in length.
Rebecca had no idea what was holding up this scrap of land, but she was grateful for it, knowing it was not likely to last more than a few minutes at most.
Stacy said nothing, but she didn’t cry either. She simply sat looking out the passenger side window, her eyes full of wonder and resignation.
Thinking about Glen, Rebecca sighed and turned to look at her dog. “Come here, Lou,” she said and patted her lap. The dog obliged, hopping over the center console to sit on top of his mistress, panting, wearing much the same expression as Stacy wore.
Burying her face in his fur, Rebecca sniffed and murmured, “You’re a good boy, Lou. A good boy.” She could feel the dog’s heart beating strong and steady in his chest and this gave her comfort. “We’ll see Daddy soon.”
When she lifted her face again, the eastern horizon was blushing the palest shade of gray she’d ever seen and the creatures were buzzing back forth in all directions. Dozens of them, all going about their own mysterious business.
This is their world now, she thought.
She hoped somewhere the earth still belonged to people, but in her heart of hearts she suspected that even if it did, it wouldn’t be for much longer.
Watching the enormous digger bees, she absently scratched her dog’s neck and listened to the hum of a distant chopper flying somewhere over head. The sound gave her a slight twinge of hope, but she knew better. She supposed Stacy knew better as well. She prayed for the young woman’s sake that she did.
The ground lasted a good deal longer than Rebecca had thought it would. There was time to watch the sunrise and listen to more helicopters come and go, but they never came close enough to warrant getting out and trying to signal them.
The day dawned in much the same way the previous one had: gray and gloomy and with a profound sense of loneliness that broke hearts and inspired poets. After a while, it began to rain, but they were all used to that now. It had rained for so long before this whole mess it seemed only fitting that it would end the same way. This was the Pacific Northwest after all and for Rebecca’s money, there was no place more beautiful.
The patter of rain soothed her almost as much as the weight of her dog did and she wondered vaguely if it would lull her to sleep.
And then, it did.
About the Author
Gina Ranalli is the author of many books, including House of Fallen Trees, Praise the Dead and Mother Puncher. Visit her online at www.ginaranalli.com.