Bee Week
A Novel by
Benjamin Graves
SMASHWORDS EDITION
PUBLISHED BY:
Benjamin Graves at Smashwords
Bee Week
Copyright © 2011 Benjamin Graves
Smashwords Edition License Notes
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******
Something Before the Story at the End of It
There are many bizarre stories out there, but this one, I assure you, is true. It may not sound like it, and sometimes I don't even believe it, but I've learned to accept that it is. No matter how many times I try to forget it, I can't, and that's mainly because I'm not really alive anymore. I'm not literally dead, but there's something happening to me at the moment which I can't really specify. Let's just say I'm not really who I was anymore, and I'm about to be even less than that. I kind of want to go over the rest of the story from the start so you can understand it. It may help me understand what's happening to me a little more as well. It's just that it all happened so fast. In the period of a week to be exact. It all felt like hours and maybe it was. I sort of lost track of time during it all, so it all feels jumbled, but I'll try to go over the entire thing as detailed as I can before I . . . die, in every mental sense of the word, if that makes sense.
The one thing I learned from this
thing this
experience that lasted for those countless hours or days
was this: You
don't need money when nothing is for sale. It was all I learned. I
know it's stupid. And I will die having come out of this thing with
only this little trivial lesson. Just this. It's pathetic.
A Day to Get Stung
This all got started on a pretty mundane day on my way home from school. It was three weeks before the end of my senior year of high school in late spring, considering in Illinois we only had around a month of real summer, weather-wise at least. So as I walked, I counted the panels on the sidewalk as I always did, listening to my iPod on the way home. And like always, I passed the Lake Wood Biological and Biochemical Research Center located approximately thirty feet from the back yard of my home. Its barbed wire fences surrounding it stood undisturbed by a single thing, and the one-story gray, windowless structure sat on the property atop a poorly maintained lawn and I never saw who lived or worked there ever step out or go in. For all I knew, it was abandoned. But here this laboratory stood, completely ignored by the neighborhood and everyone in it. And I seemed to be the only one who found this . . . odd.
I thought about the night a few weeks ago when I looked out my kitchen window at around eleven-thirty or so, and it was the first time I ever witnessed anything occur at the place. I saw a delivery truck, completely black and unmarked, deliver several steel boxes carried into the place by men wearing black uniforms and these enormous gas masks which looked too large for their faces. It was the first time I saw the gates open. They carried these boxes into the place casually and left just as much so. I thought about that on this day as well, walking past the place. Little did I know that it would be the last time this neighborhood would go about its normal business. Of course, I never even really knew what normal was until I was able to compare it to what would happen that day.
When I went inside my home, I set my backpack on the couch, dropping it on the family room floor as I did everyday, and turned on the TV, searching for something to watch that would interest me, since nothing on TV ever did anymore. It was all reruns, I noticed, during the weekdays. As long as the light was from the sun outdoors, all that was on the damn TV were repeats of reality shows, Maury paternity tests, and commercials for skin products, tampons, and men's hygiene products as well. Maybe there were commercials for generic remakes of toys from when I was a kid and diapers on the children's channels. All I knew was that the moment I clicked on that little circle with the line through it on the remote, my day became pointless. And it always was.
At eighteen you really don't know anything. No matter what you think you do, experience is everything. I thought life was all about school. I thought it was all about smoking pot to feel that high I thought I knew I'd never achieve in anything else. I thought the sky was blue for a reason. I thought the meaning of life was to fuck and have kids who would think the meaning of life was fucking when they were my age.
Hell, I thought that day would be normal.
Of course, I'm eighteen now, but I still don't know shit. I mean, the only thing I got out of this whole story was that stupid little piece of information I told you earlier. But on that day, one week or however long ago, I realized that everything I thought I knew meant jack shit. And I don't mean that everything I knew was useless, but almost all of it was. You never find out how smart you really are until you see how far your common sense gets you. Education means nothing when that's all you have. And you will see why.
On that day, my parents were out of town for the week on a personal vacation. They wouldn't be back until Monday afternoon. They went to Florida, and yes, that matters. Because that's where this thing ends. That's where I am now. And that's where I'll die. So, my parents were in Florida, and I was in Illinois, where this whole disaster started, in a town there where you'd least expect it. I sat at that TV, flipping through channels, wasting my day away, when I decided I'd go uptown to grab a milkshake. I just had this desire to buy a milkshake. Not sure why. Maybe it's because I saw that commercial two channels back for Slim-Fast. I wasn't even aware they had commercials for that shit anymore. But I wanted to leave my house just to get this milkshake from Uncle Joey's, a restaurant that had the worst sandwiches imaginable, and pretty much everything there tasted as though they had passed their expiration date, even if most of the products probably didn't have one. Their milkshakes were fan-fucking-tastic though. So enough about the place.
I decided to walk there, shutting off the useless television as soon as I did, and started heading out the back door of my house. That's when I noticed something different about that gray block of a building behind that fence. Beehives. There were several sitting there in a greenhouse of some sort in the back of the property away from the road with the trees behind the place concealing it from everyone but myself. There was no greenhouse there the previous day, or in the morning for that matter. I saw what looked like bees swarming all around, hugging the glass windows from the inside. One window looked as though it was made purely of bees; it was just a wall of them. I decided to ignore it, though, and walked out of the back porch of the house, away from the laboratory, as fast as I could. I actually heard the buzzing, and those windows looked thick enough to be soundproof. So I walked on the sidewalk, on up to the main part of town.
This is when things changed forever.
As I walked casually along my routine path, thinking nothing of anything, the buzzing got louder. And I don't mean a hum, louder, I mean like a fucking stereo-on-full-volume louder. It almost collapsed my eardrums, no exaggeration.
That's when I heard someone yell, for the first time hearing anyone say anything near that place, “Shit!”
At that moment, I knew that if I didn't run like an idiot, I wouldn't live to drink that milkshake. So, I ran. I just thought about getting to Uncle Joey's unharmed, without a scratch or sting or whatever. I just ran. But I made the mistake of looking behind me. While the huge cloud of yellow and black hung over the sky, climbing higher and higher, one single honeybee darted for me, separated from its herd.
“Why the hell is it chasing me?” I asked myself uselessly as I ran frantically.
The bee was too fast. It flew faster than I could ever hope to run, and when it landed on my back, it didn't hesitate to plunge its little ass-thorn in my shoulder bone. It hurt more than any bee sting I had ever endured. It was worse than a hot poker. It was a flamethrower. I screamed in pain, thinking, These aren't normal bees, I'm going to die, I'm dead, over and over again. The bee stopped chasing me and I realized it would die since bees can only sting once. But I wanted to get that stinger out of my back so bad, and I was about to stop running just to remove it. But when I looked behind me, slowing my run, I saw two more bees tailing me. I already had one dose of death. I didn't need two more. My feet never grew tired, the adrenaline keeping them on air.
I heard a call. I looked to my left toward the road, and here was this semi-truck driving beside me as I ran past all the middle class neighborhood homes from these two little one-inch monsters.
“Hey, bud. What are you runnin' from?” the truck driver called out to me.
“What do you think I'm running from?” I yelled.
“I dunno. You need a ride? Hop on!” He opened the passenger door as he kept driving.
And so I decided I would go for it. I yelled for him to keep the truck moving as I hopped on, and I jumped into the truck without hesitation. I didn't say a thing.
“What were you runnin' from, kid?” the trucker asked me.
I looked back through the window, watching the two bees follow the truck relentlessly, hitting the glass window repeatedly. The truck driver was completely oblivious to this little quarrel. That's when I looked in my sideview mirror and noticed a small hole surrounded by a metallic ring on the side of the truck. And it's at this moment that one of the bees slowed down, clinging to the side of the truck, and crawled into the hole. My eyes trailed to the driver's seat, and of course, of all the things to have in the cabin of a truck, was a hole right behind the driver's head, one which looked caved inward as though a bullet made it. I silently mouthed “What the fuck” and the driver just looked at me, concerned. I heard a faint buzzing, and that's when I truly realized the hole behind the driver's head was connected to the hole on the side of the truck by the cargo. The miniature antennae of the bee peeked out of the hole behind the driver, who simply stared at me with his eyebrows raised, and I told him, “We should get out.”
“What?” the driver asked me dimly.
“We should
” The bee was
completely out of the hole.
“What the hell you on, boy?”
I decided it was too late, and opened my door and jumped out. The other bee which had been following its partner was gone. I rolled onto the grass ditch beside the road, surprised at my grace, though not for long, seeing as I rolled face first in mud right after the fact. I heard a scream emanating from the truck, and as I cleared my eyes of mud from the ditch, sitting back up on the side of the puddle, it began to swerve as the scream grew louder and more desperate. The truck's wheels turned left to right erratically, the cargo behind it almost rocking to the point of toppling over, and a car swerved around the truck and barely missed it. The truck veered off the road with a single screech and the sound of an accelerator being aggravated by the push of the gas pedal, and it was headed toward a house facing the road. It crashed straight through the living room window, creating an almost perfectly square hole as the cargo went in with the truck itself, and it stopped as the second floor collapsed on top of it. I just noticed a fire hydrant was leaking, spraying water on the underside of the white cargo.
I thought it was over, but evidently it wasn't as a small spark flickered for a moment on the belly of the truck, and its front end exploded in the house, tossing splinters of wood mixed with glass and pink fluffy insulation through the air. The flames shot up into the air as well, setting the front of the house on fire and presumably the inside as well. The water from the hydrant still shot up, helplessly unable to put out the flames since the cargo shielded its forceful flow.
I was overwhelmed with shock. I looked around me, no bees. Not a dot flew in the air, and I breathed out in relief. I felt the spot on my back where I was stung, and it burned ferociously as soon as I thought about it.
I still wanted that milkshake. And I was gonna get it.
“Steffen?” a voice behind me said, a sound of slowing bike wheels approaching.
I turned around to face, of all people, Alex, a good friend of mine since middle school. He asked, incredibly calm as he watched the settled flames, “What the hell happened?”
“It's a long story.” Alex looked at me dumbly. “I know it just happened like a minute ago, but it's a lot of shit to go into, so I won't.”
“Did you cause this?”
“No.”
I wanted to tell him about the bees, but I decided it wouldn't do anything. He wouldn't believe me, not yet at least.
“So what are you up to?” he asked me.
“I was just getting a milkshake,” I told him.
“Where?”
“That milkshake place up the street? You know, Uncle Joey's. The place where they sell pretty much just shaved ice and milk shakes?”
“Oh yeah. That place. I hate that place, man.”
“Why?”
“Hey. Why don't we go to Costco instead?”
This idea struck me as one of the most nonsensical things I'd heard.
“Costco? But that's more than twice the distance, and I'm not walking there.”
“Oh, right. I've got the bike. But they've got kick-ass milkshakes.”
“So does Uncle Joey's.”
“Why don't you fuck him if you like him so much?”
“Why do you want to go to Costco so badly?”
He looked up in the air for a minute. “I don't know. That's where I was going until I saw this huge ass explosion.”
The flames burned continuously, showing no signs of extinguishing themselves. I just wanted to leave.
“Costco it is,” I muttered. “I'll see ya there.”
And so Alex rode off, and since I didn't have my own car or my parents' keys to borrow theirs, I had to walk the whole goddamn way to Costco, around the burning truck half in the middle of the road as police cars and ambulances showed up, cars parking along the side of the road with people getting out, and I kept walking through the main part of town, past Uncle Joey's and past all of the places that made sense to go to for a simple milkshake. Alex just had to go to a fucking Costco. To be honest, I still don't even know why I agreed to go there. The decision made no sense, but little did I know, it would make more sense than anything I did in my entire life. It would be the place where everything the following week would unfold. It would be where everything on Earth made sense, and it would be the reason I'm here in Florida now, telling you this story before Steffen is dead and something else is born. It is the place where I became part of . . . The Consumates. I won't spoil anything, though. I need to tell the whole story event by event, even if I'm so impatient as to have it all spill at once. It's been one long week.
I walked to Costco, not a bee in sight, and not one person looked affected by them or stung or anything, but I kept looking around, paranoid out of my mind. I was sweating as well, and since it was only late Spring and not above sixty degrees out, it wasn't the heat. Things were wrong. I could feel it. But all I did was walk to Costco, this warehouse of a store, for a milkshake. I assumed Alex was already there, maybe even had left by the time I'd arrive at the place. When I got there, however, I saw him leaning against the wall on the outside, finishing a hotdog with mustard and onions on it next to his bike. He spotted me.
“Hey, slow guy, what's up?” he called out to me.
“I walked,” I said. “You try it sometime.”
“You gonna get a milkshake, or what? This is my second hotdog, by the way.” He finished it in one more bite and with a mouthful of beef and bun said, “Letsh go.”
I followed him into the store and he showed me where I could buy a milkshake. So I went over to where the concessions area was and upon looking at the menu I noticed they charged twice as much as Uncle Joey's for a milkshake half the size I usually got there. I was already pissed off at Alex as he stood next to me, asking me if I was gonna buy it or not.
“Why did you wanna come here, anyway?” I asked him.
“I needed to buy some clothes for my Mom for Mother's Day.”
“Oh yeah. That's next week.”
“Yeah, I wanted to get something cheap. So why not . . . Costco? I'm also gonna pick up some candy. They sell that shit by the box in dozens here.”
“Yeah, I know. In bulk. Cool.”
“So, are you gonna buy the fucking milkshake or what?”
“Yes!” I snapped. “Jesus.”
I walked to the concessions booth, bought a chocolate milkshake, and drank it as I walked toward the store exit. It was no Uncle Joey's. Alex followed me relentlessly.
“What the hell are you doing?” he asked.
“I'm walking toward the exit. What does it look like I'm doing?” I replied.
“Why?”
“I've got nothing more to do here.”
“I have to get my Mom clothes for Mother's Day, though.”
“Then do it. Why do I have to be here for that?”
“Screw it. I'll do it tomorrow.”
The two of us walked out of the store into the parking lot as Alex took his bike from the bike rack. I saw a woman pushing her cart out in the parking lot suddenly clutch her arm. I heard her squeal for a second. I knew instantly what it was. Just then, a man holding his son's hand walking to his car grabbed his leg in pain. I saw a dark speck fly away.
“Dad, what happened?” the kid asked his father.
“I got stung by a bee or something,” the father said, shrugging it off.
The kid got stung at that moment, grabbing the back of his head and screaming. The man picked up his kid and jogged for his car.
“What the hell is with people getting stung so much?” Alex asked.
You have no idea, I wanted to say to him. But instead I said two words less, “No idea.”
“Well I guess I'll see ya tomorrow.”
I just remembered that the next day was the start of the weekend. It totally slipped my mind.
“Alright,” I said.
We both parted, going our own ways. I had to walk all the way back home, my milkshake melting even though it was only in the sixties outside. The crashed and exploded truck's fire was put out back in my neighborhood, a fire engine sitting beside it. The road was cleared on one side with the cargo off to the side of the road in the ditch in front of the house and orange traffic cones surrounded it. One black body bag was being carried out of the house by paramedics. I assumed it belonged to the truck driver. I also saw that there were two police cruisers and a ten foot tall, black boxy truck of some sort sitting in front of the research facility when I got home, men wearing squeaky-clean white quarantine uniforms walking to the back where the hive house was.
Of course, I tried to pretend I didn't see a thing and went in my house without question. I went back to the TV, entirely unsure of what to watch, since there was still nothing on, and then I heard a small yell, and I saw a man walking his schnauzer outside pass the research facility next door. A police officer made the man stand still, the dog sitting on the sidewalk, as a quarantine-suited man hopped out of the back of the black truck with a large black plastic bag of some sort. The police officer held the man still as the quarantine guy proceeded to take the bag and pull it over the man's torso, the man protesting in muffled panic. Another quarantine suit came from the back of the truck and helped carry the man into the back of the truck as well. One of them came back out and picked up the small dog and placed it in the back as well. Oddly enough, none of this was what struck me as strange or concerning. It was the raccoon mask-shaped bruise around the police officer's eyes, and his profuse sweating. That was what worried me.
And so I went upstairs to avoid witnessing anymore of this. I did not want anything out of the ordinary to happen. I played Left 4 Dead on my computer all afternoon in my room, until at about five in the evening I heard the doorbell ring. A chill went down my spine, but I had to answer the door. It couldn't be one of the quarantine guys. I looked out of my bedroom window over the front porch. I couldn't see who it was since the front porch was shielded by the lower roof. I started sweating. But I walked downstairs, regardless of my fear, wiped my forehead casually and opened the door. It was a man in a black suit. Definitely government issued.
“Hello?” I said, acting as though I hadn't a clue about the man and dog they bagged on the sidewalk, or the raccoon-faced police officer.
“Mr . . . Mayton?” he asked, looking down at a little clipboard he had, flipping the front sheet up. “A little young aren't you? To be a married homeowner?”
“With a son who's my age? I get that all the time.”
He just stood there, looking to the side for a second in annoyance. “Are your parents home?”
“No. Well . . . What if they were?”
“Then I'd need to speak with them. It's nothing serious. Just a little thing you should be a little cautious about.”
“Well, I'm eighteen, so technically I'm an adult, and current guardian of this place. Can't you tell me?”
“Okay. But I'd much rather speak with your parents.”
“They're out.”
“Out? Shopping?”
“Florida.”
“Oh. I see. Well, if you haven't noticed, there are a few more bees out and about than usual.”
“Really?” I said in sarcasm. “I hadn't noticed.”
“So I take it you've noticed?”
“When I say I hadn't noticed, I think I mean I hadn't noticed.” I couldn't help myself.
“We're just advising you to be a tad more careful when leaving your house. This bee season's going to be bad.”
“Well it is almost summer, so . . . ”
“Exactly.”
“So is that it? You're going door to door telling people to be careful of bees?” I was worried I was asking too many questions already.
“Yes, basically.”
“Do they sting more badly or something?” I knew I should have stopped.
“They just . . . hurt . . . more. There might be some flu-like symptoms associated with it soon afterward as well.”
“Oh. Okay.”
I was about to shut the door when the guy said, “You didn't happen to see anything happen next door did you? Earlier, several hours ago? A swarm of bees? Or the truck a little ways down the road crash into your neighbor's home and explode?”
“No. I just got back home from . . . tennis . . . rehearsal . . . practice.”
He just looked at me funny, raising his eyebrows and all that. I shut the door and he didn't say anything more, so I figured I was safe. What happened to normality?
I went upstairs, continued to play my game, and I noticed the burning from my bee sting on my back didn't hurt at all anymore. I went to bed that night, not entirely able to sleep all the way through. My life seemed so pointless all of a sudden. Flu-like symptoms? I didn't feel anything yet. I hoped I never would. I didn't want to look like Officer Raccoon Face I saw earlier. I thought about looking in the mirror constantly to see if I had that pattern, but I decided I needed sleep, even if I had to force myself to drift off.
More Than the Bee Sting Flu
I woke up on Saturday, feeling as though I had only gotten around two hours of sleep. Then it occurred to me that I probably had since I looked at the clock on my bedroom wall and it was only five in the morning. Here was to hoping that everything following me leaving my house to get a milkshake was a nightmare. It was what I needed. I didn't need all of what had happened to be real, no matter how exciting it was, how much it knocked my boredom away. I just didn't need that. I needed normality, even though it was what I hated my whole life. I never wanted it more than anything at that point. But those hopes were shattered almost immediately once I ate breakfast and looked outside the kitchen window. Two more black quarantine trucks sat in front of the research facility, five quarantine guys walking to the back of the house carrying black boxes. They disappeared around the back and I never saw them come out. Whatever.
I walked back to the TV with my bowl of Frosted Flakes and pushed the power button on the remote. The click of the TV screen activating and the concentrated bands of red, green-yellow, and blue lights went to work instantly to form an image of a cartoon kid picking his nose.
I changed the channel. Paid programming.
I changed the channel once more. Shopping channel.
Fuck it.
I tried to sleep there, on the couch. I hoped this was a dream within my dream, that I would wake up to find myself in my room where I started and there would not even be a research facility in the back yard. Unfortunately for me, my mind would not let me sleep. It wouldn't let me do anything but wander and think about what could possibly happen today.
After breakfast, there was nothing else to really do, and I couldn't stand being in the house, but I went upstairs again and went on the Internet. I wasn't able to do anything else, my mind too occupied with everything that happened yesterday to lose itself in a virtual game. So, there I sat, looking up “deadly bees” on the computer. Some part of me knew I wouldn't find anything, anything useful at least. It was a lost cause searching for this, because these bees didn't come from nature. They came from the depths of the labs next door, the inexplicable suburban research facility. And I knew these bees were not just any ordinary bees. They had something in their stings. The feeling I received when I felt it smack my back yesterday was that of no honeybee. It was something more.
The raccoon marking. I looked in the mirror in my bathroom once more. My face was normal, not a sweat bead or mask around my eyes. I felt fine. No flu even touched me. This is when I knew I was different from the others. This was also where I knew that maybe I was imagining all of this, that I was being paranoid and delusional, but I wasn't. I wished it was a delusion. I still wish it was.
I went back downstairs and turned on the TV to HBO, with episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm playing one after the other. I sat and watched, decided I couldn't focus on the show at all, and I leaned my head back on the couch, looking up at the clock above the TV. It was six in the morning. Shit.
Someone rang the doorbell at around ten in the morning. I woke up groggy-eyed and walked over to the door. The doorbell rang three more times as though a child were pressing it. I opened the door. I was expecting the man in the suit, but it was my fellow teenaged asshole friend Alex with his bike.
“What?” I said.
“Can't you just say 'hi' anymore?” he said.
“What do you want, man?”
“Wanna hang out? Bring your bike this time. We're gonna go to Costco so I can pick up those clothes, and then I was thinking we could go to Laser Quest.”
I was dying to live a normal day, so of course I said, “Sure.” But Laser Quest sounded lame.
“Bring your bike this time.”
“Saying it twice won't make me do it any faster.”
I moved to the garage and retrieved my bike. It was probably the first time in a year that I had pulled it out of the crevice between the lawnmower and snow blower. As I rode it out of the garage, all I could think was, What the fuck is with Alex and Costco?
“C'mon, man. Let's go!” Alex pushed me.
We rode our bikes to Costco first, which had just now opened, and on the way there I could've sworn I saw people with those raccoon markings around their eyes. The quarantine trucks were now surrounded off of the road by a cement wall which must have been built overnight. The truck which had crashed into the house was gone, with a blue tarp over the damaged front of the home. None of this was a dream. I kept hoping I would wake up, but then I yawned and realized you can't feel tired in a dream.
Once we got to Costco, we parked our bikes on the bike rack and walked in and Alex began to wander off.
“It'll just take a second, man,” he said.
I followed after him into the clothing section and he sort of disappeared somewhere in the maze of discounted shirts and pants. As I looked around, I figured maybe I could get something for myself. I flipped through the jeans on a rack, but as I flipped one over, there was a single honeybee on the leg of it. I put the pant leg back down.
“Hey, uh, Alex?” I called out.
No answer.
Then my eyes turned to the rest of the clothing racks, and I saw at least a dozen small yellow and black specks on the clothes. They were all over. Everywhere. I began breathing harder, and panicked right there. That's when I saw a man lying on the ground, not breathing, covered in bloody sores where his arm skin showed and his face, oozing this yellow pus out of each swollen lump and frothy foam was stale around his mouth, whose lips were vastly enlarged and purple. He was dead, and this paramedic was leaning over him, listening to his heart and checking his pulse uselessly. Then he shook his head and another paramedic appeared with a blue blanket and placed it over the man. No one else but me was witnessing this unfold, apparently, as not one other person was near me. Both paramedics carried this body onto a stretcher just outside of the clothing section and several people stopped walking past, looking concerned and shrugging it off as they continued to their destinations. No one seemed to notice the mass of bees gathered on all of the clothing.
“Hey, Steffen,” a woman's voice said behind me.
I turned around to face my English teacher and said, “Hi, Mrs. Wright.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Oh, just . . .” I looked back at the bees covering the clothing. “Just looking around.”
I noticed Mrs. Wright's husband looked ill. He had that raccoon-mask bruise around his eyes. Beads of sweat covered his face, and his shirt was drenched with perspiration. He looked . . . dead. No expression was visible on his face.
“My husband's a little sick,” Mrs. Wright said. “He got stung by a bee yesterday. They're everywhere lately.”
“I know,” I said. “It's crazy.”
“He came down with the flu shortly after. A man came to the door and told us that the bees might cause this. And then it happened. He got stung.”
“That sucks.”
I looked up at her giant of a husband, that eerily stoic face looking down at me. He said nothing.
“He's really quiet all of a sudden,” Mrs. Wright stated. “I don't understand it.”
I just stared at the guy. He nodded at me slowly when his wife wasn't looking and I flashed a look of confusion back. I wanted nothing more to do with this guy.
“Dude,” Alex called out from
behind me. “I got the clothes and
” He spotted
Mrs. Wright. “Oh, hi, Mrs. Wright.”
“Oh boy,” Mrs. Wright said, rolling her eyes. “Alex. When are you gonna make up that test you missed last week?”
“Um, how about Monday?”
“Sure. I'm sure you won't miss it,” Mrs. Wright said sarcastically.
I couldn't stop looking at her husband. I needed to get away from him. My eyes veered toward the bees on all of the clothing again. Still, no one noticed as they just sat there. One woman was looking through the clothes at the end of the section. She looked at all of the bees on the shirt she observed, and turned to her husband next to her.
“Look,” she said. “I love this three dimensional bee pattern. They look real, don't they?”
The husband nodded and said, “They sure do. They're fuzzy and everything.”
“Well, Steffen,” Mrs. Wright said, turning my attention back to her husband. “I'll see you later then?”
“Yep. See ya.” The husband winked at me, which I found odd, and that's when the two left.
“What the fuck was with her husband, man?” Alex whispered next to me. “He looked like he was about to die or something.”
“He has the flu,” I said. But that wasn't any normal flu. I knew it wasn't. Mr. Wright knew something about me. He sensed we were the same somehow, like he had a plan in his mind. Only I didn't know the plan.
The lights on the ceiling of the place began to flicker. Suddenly, I saw someone's legs crawl into a vent when no one was watching. Two hands closed the vent back up, and nothing else happened.
“So are we leaving, or what?” Alex asked me. He had a handful of women's clothing in his hand.
“Sure.”
We began to head for the exit, and I looked back at the bee-covered clothes and the woman still flipping through them. Not one of the bees attacked her. Not yet, anyhow.
The lights flickered once more, and that's when the lights shut off entirely. The entire Costco became flooded with darkness. Shutters closed on the doors to the store, shielding the light from outside, enveloping the entire store in opaque black. Alex started breathing harder. I heard him begin to hyperventilate and I began to as well.
From where the clothing section was
I heard a growing buzzing noise, and then the woman in there scream
out. And that's when I heard the buzz become deafening, like it was
yesterday, and I heard people scream in pain and terror all over the
store. Men, women and children all screamed out as well as Alex, and
this went on with the buzzing for a full minute as I just stood
motionless, helpless. I ducked down as I covered my head, thinking
the bees would sting me for sure, but nothing ever touched me.
Nothing even grazed my skin. It was just the consistent mix of
furious buzzing and screaming for an entire minute, when everything
fell silent almost as suddenly as the noise came about. Then there
was no sound. Nothing. That's when I saw the glow approach. I saw
several sets of eyes, at least a dozen or so, walk closer to me.
Immediately, I got up, deciding Alex was either dead or unconscious
either way unable
to be helped so
I felt my way around on racks of electronics and DVDs. At one point
as the red eyes walked slowly around the store, I saw a small glimpse
of a red light, almost like a flare, emanating from a vent. I
followed it. I began to run for it, feeling the boxes of cereal on
the shelf next to me as I got closer to the wall where it was
located. I was trying so hard not to breathe heavily enough to be
heard, but my adrenaline was kicking in and it was extremely hard to
refrain from doing so.
I looked into the vent when I got to it, hoping I could escape through it. I opened the cover carefully, and the glow became somewhat brighter, but not enough to determine where exactly it came from.
“Psst,” a voice said from within, pointing a gun at me from around a corner. “What's your name?”
“Steffen Mayton. I have no fucking idea what's happening.”
“All right. Come in.”
I crawled inside and followed the glow as it grew dimmer in front of me. Someone was holding a flair. I kept crawling, trying to figure out where we were going, if we were leaving the store or not, and I saw the glow of the flare fall into a drop in the vents followed by booted feet. My breathing was pretty relaxed until I saw this. I got nervous about dropping into a place I hadn't a clue about. But I followed regardless, going feet first instead of head. As I dropped down I landed in another vent and continued following this guy in front of me, realizing I should have gone head first so I could crawl forward. I had to crawl backward, my legs stupidly ahead. I probably looked like an idiot doing this. And that's when I crawled into a small room where I could actually stand, the light from the flare illuminating the entire metal compartment. I turned around and there were five people sitting on the floor of the compartment, all wearing hunting clothes and winter hats. The store tags were on all of the clothes, even the hats. The leader had tags still on one boot and his green-brown vest.
“Who are you?” the leader asked. The others looked at me, worried.
“I told you,” I said. “I'm Steffen Mayton.”
“Yes, I know, except that doesn't mean shit if we don't know that name.”
“Sorr
”
“Are you a celebrity?”
“Uh . . . no.”
“Well then how the hell should anyone who you don't know know who you are?” He stood there with his hands on his hips, still holding his pistol, which had an orange tag hanging from the trigger, while the others sat on the floor, slate faced.
“So,” I spoke, my voice hoarse. “Who are you guys?”
“We're the resistance to this mess,” the guy said. “My name's Dick Davidson.”
“And who are they?” I looked at the four people sitting. One was a woman who looked to be in her mid thirties, one was a man who looked the same age with a short beard, and the other two guys looked like they could be in their mid twenties. They all seemed paranoid and didn't appear to trust me, saying nothing and simply staring at me in suspicion. The leader, in his late fifties with the fuzz of a five o'clock shadow, aimed his pistol at me, the tag dangling from the trigger. I almost shit myself right there.
“So where are you from, may I ask?” said the man.
“I am from Lake Wood. Here,” I answered.
“How old are you?”
“Eighteen.”
He looked at me for a moment, searching my face closely for something. Then it occurred to me he was looking for that raccoon marking and the sweat. And then he asked, “Why didn't the bees sting you? They got everybody in there who wasn't already stung. I saw it.”
“Actually, sir, I did get stung. Yesterday.”
He paused. “Why did you just tell me that? I have a weapon aimed right at your face.”
“Because I'm not affected by it. I know what you're looking for. The whole raccoon mask thing and the constant sweating. But I never got any of that.”
“What do you mean?”
“I never got the fucking flu stuff. I got stung, it hurt like hell, and that was it. But I think those people think I'm one of them.”
“Let me tell you something, kid.” He aimed his gun closer to my face, the muzzle almost touching the bridge of my nose. Now I was sweating. “Those aren't people anymore. I realized that quick.”
“Then what are they? Zombies?”
“Not zombies. They're not dead. They're not stupid, either. But they're changed.”
“Changed to what?”
He aimed the gun down and turned the safety on, putting it in the back of his camouflage pants. Then he sat on the floor with the others. The fact that there was a compartment this spacious in a vent surprised me, and the only way out of it seemed to be two vents, the one Dick and I came in and another on the opposite wall. The only way we could see anything was because of that flare which Dick had propped up on the metal floor, hissing softly.
“We aren't sure what they change into,” Dick said. “It's only been two days since it all happened.”
“But they change,” I muttered.
“Yes. My wife was stung yesterday, a little while after I saw some trucks or something drive over by that goddamned research place across the street. I knew whatever they were doing in there couldn't have been good, but this is just fucked up.”
“What happened to your wife exactly?” I wanted to get to the point. I was constantly worried one of those raccoon-faces would find us.
“Well, a couple hours after those damned trucks showed up there, some asshole came to our door, this g-man son of a bitch, and told us to be careful of bees. He said they caused,” he shook his head, “flu-like symptoms. Like what the hell kind of bees are these, I asked the guy, and he tells me not to worry about that. But before I could stand up to the jackass, he left and I decided to take my wife out of town for the day to this nice little cottage we got further down south, a couple hours away.”
“And she got stung?”
“Let me finish the fucking story, kid! So we get ready to leave and the instant she leaves to go to the car, a few bees start flying toward us. I didn't really think anything of it, but they started buzzing around her specifically and then one of them stung her on the arm. Both flew away after that and she kept screaming at me to help her. I helped her back into the house since she decided not to leave, and I noticed the bee sting got bigger and bigger. It swelled up like a friggin' tennis ball. She wasn't allergic to bees, though, I didn't think, and she told me she wasn't.”
I heard faint moaning coming from behind the walls of the compartment. All of us turned our heads and shut up, listening in sheer silence as numerous voices began moaning all at once. We heard shuffling footsteps along with it.
“So,” Dick continued, facing me,
“anyway, I noticed Jackie got really
Jackie's her name
I noticed she got
sick with this flu the guy was talking about. She started getting
real cold and that's when she started sweating a little bit. A couple
hours later her clothes were soaked in it. The blanket covering her
was sopping wet too. I advised her to take a bath, and so she did.
She took a cold bath and she was in there for two hours.”
“Two hours?” one of the two younger guys asked.
“Yeah. I checked up on her when I realized how long she'd been in there, and she was just leaning back in the bath, staring up at the lights above her sink. That's when I noticed she was still sweating like crazy and she had this purple bruise around her eyes. She looked like she was wearing a robber's eye mask or something, like a raccoon.”
We all lowered our eyebrows, disturbed by the image.
“I asked her what was wrong
”
A loud moan from outside the room.
“Alright, fuck this,” Dick said, pulling out his gun. He got up, picking up the flare, and crawled into the vent we came through. He decided to drop the flare and told me to hang on to the flare as he began crawling, holding it out in his hand behind him. I took it from him and he went on crawling through the vent, not making a sound. The rest of us stayed silent and waited.
“So you're from here, huh?” one of the younger guys asked me.
“Yeah,” I said. “I actually live right by that research facility. I saw it happen.”
“You saw what happen?” He looked at me as though he wanted to kill me, suddenly.
“I saw the bees break out. That's when I got stung.”
“How come they didn't affect you? How come you're so different?”
“How should I know? Do I look like I would know?”
“Hey, guys!” Dick's voice whispered in a hiss at us from inside the vent. “Check this out. Look.” He crawled out of the vent and back into the compartment and looked at me. “Go check it out.”
“What?” I said.
“Just look.”
And so I crawled in the vent and faced out of the vent into the store, the cover still on. There was light coming from outside now, those shutters opened. I watched as infected people helped walk out the ones who got stung in the store. I saw Alex trudging past the clothing section to the exit of the store, dazed and covered in swollen stings, being assisted by two raccoon-faces on either side of him, their sweaty shirts dripping on the gray floor as they walked with him to the front doors. Alex moaned, with saliva dripping from his mouth onto the floor as he was being carried. I looked down on the ground and several people lay dead, covered in those pus-filled sores. Where are they taking them? And what happened to all the bees? Where did they all go?
I suddenly felt Dick tug at my pant leg from behind me from where the drop in the vent was and he said, “You better come back.”
I crawled my way back to the room, following behind Dick, and when we were back in the room, he asked me, “What do you think?”
I just looked at him and said, “Looked like they're taking the infected somewhere.”
“No shit. But did you notice something else?”
“The dead bodies?”
“There ya go.”
“So, some are allergic to bee stings.”
“Yes, but if they're helping those who're infected, what do you think they'll do to people who are allergic to bees once everyone's infected?”
The guy thinks I'm an idiot. “Kill them.”
“Wow. You're sharper than I thought.”
“So what are we going to do? I'm allergic to bees,” the woman sitting said.
“Well it looks like all of the infected are clearing the store,” Dick said, “taking people who just got infected somewhere to wait it out until they turn.”
“Turn to what?” one of the young guys asked.
“What the hell do you think? Those things.”
“Finish the story about your wife,” the middle-aged man encouraged Dick.
Dick sighed. “All right,” he said, “let me finish it up real quick for you.” He looked at me. “She was in the bathtub looking up at the light like she was in a daze or something. I asked her if she was okay, but she didn't respond to anything I said. So I went back out and waited about twenty minutes and then she came back out of the bathroom, dressed in her clothes. I asked her, 'Are you okay?' and she just looked at me and smiled really strangely. It wasn't her smile . . . And then she just walked over to the kitchen and took our entire loaf of Wonder Bread out of the fridge and ate the entire thing.”