Instinct (2010) (41 page)

‘Lord let me shoot true and straight deliver me from my enemy and let me continue to do your good work for as long as I have your strength amen.’

Two bullets ripped through the ends of a plant that
had attached itself to Webster’s wrists. One snapped completely and the other was left thin enough for him to tear his arm up and free.

Mills and Wainhouse hurriedly yanked him up to Level Two as more plants reached up for him.

‘Fuck! Fuuuuuck!’ Webster bellowed.

The others watched as he hobbled around, smashing any insects he could find with the butt of his rifle. Some were killed, some lost limbs, others were knocked over the edge and down into the plants of the floor below. Then he gave a massive, lung-emptying yell, which only stopped when he caught sight of what was poised at the edge of the top of the hole.

The wasps had arranged themselves in a row, like birds on a wire, and were silently watching their quarry.

‘Nobody move,’ said Laura.

‘Uh-oh,’ Taj said, shaking his head. Immediately he regretted opening his big mouth.

‘What?’ asked Andrew.

Taj couldn’t bring himself to answer.‘That’s another one dead, isn’t it?’ Andrew said, jabbing his finger at Carter’s blue dot.

‘Yeah, that’s another one dead.’

Andrew looked like he’d had the life punched out of him.

‘Don’t be makin’ that face,’ Taj said. ‘I thought we had a deal. Why you gonna think that’s your mom when there’s all these alive?’

‘But that’s easy for you to say. That’s not your mum down there. You didn’t see what I saw.’

‘OK, then, little man, this dead one here, it’s your mom.’

‘Don’t say that!’

‘Why not? It’s what you thinking.’

‘No it’s not!’

‘Yes it is. You looking like the whole world just caved in on you. You wouldn’t think that if this one here was Mills, would you?’

‘No, but …’

‘So you think your mom copped it.’

‘I bloody do not. Just shut up, will you?’

Taj gave Andrew half a smile. ‘Now that’s what I wanted to hear. That’s not her, am I right?’

Andrew’s voice was quiet and reluctant. ‘Yeah.’

‘Am. I. Right?’

Louder this time: ‘Yes. OK?’

‘Cool. And what you haven’t mentioned is the good news: Mills, Madison and Jacobs are down there and they all got together now. See?’ He pointed to the cluster of ‘live’ dots near the stairs of Level Two.

‘But if they got down, why haven’t they come back up? And why aren’t they moving?’

‘What do I look like – Superman? Gonna use my X-ray vision to see through that floor? There could be a million reasons. Like maybe one of ’em’s injured and they all checking him over. Or there’s something they need to work out about the climb before they get going. Jacobs and the others went down there fully strapped, so I’ll tell you one thing: it ain’t ’cos there’s a bug in the way.’

‘Maybe it’s got something to do with whoever just died.’

‘Oh … right … you think they having a memorial service. Maybe pouring out a forty for him.’

Andrew looked confused. He could hardly spot Taj’s sarcasm if he had no idea what he was talking about.

‘What’s a
forty
?’

‘You don’t want to know, my friend. All I’m saying is they ain’t organizing a wake.’

‘Maybe it’s Webster and they don’t know what to do without him.’

‘Maybe it’s Bishop and they don’t know what kind of party to throw.’

Andrew smiled and Taj felt that warm feeling again. Taking the kid from frightened despair to seeing the funny side of things in just a couple of minutes was a tough job well done.

Andrew looked at his watch, but it was pointless because the only time that mattered was the countdown on Taj’s wrist. ‘How long have they got?’

Taj looked at his watch, which showed they had twenty-three minutes left.

‘They got time,’ he said quietly. ‘Now keep watching the screen.’

Nobody dared move.

The wasps stayed at the lip of the hole, their eyes and antennae focused on Level Two. It was as if they knew their prey was somewhere in the vicinity but they couldn’t pinpoint where. The movement of the other insects provided a distraction which meant the humans could not be located with any accuracy.

It was hard to keep still with these creatures moving around them. Millipedes slithered between their legs, flies landed on their backs and spiders stumbled into them. The sound of beating wings had accumulated to a roar that brought to mind dozens of revving engines. Mosquitos swooped and arced through the air, criss-crossing with hornets, flies, beetles, termites and more. There were also the genetic corruptions, foul hybrids that flapped uncontrollably or walked like cripples, one or more of their legs or wings now useless.

Trying to stay still was a tall order.

‘What the fuck are they doing?’ asked Mills, looking up at the wasps. They were still the only insects to show any interest in the frozen humans.

‘Don’t move. Shut up,’ said Laura, barely opening her mouth.

A single wasp flew down and across them like a
general surveying the field before battle. It seemed to know they were down there and wanted to take a closer look.

‘The other insects are confusing them. They know we’re here but they can only make out moving objects. If you take a step they will recognize your shape and know where we are,’ she continued out of the corner of her mouth.

‘So we’re just going to stand here? We need to move,’ said Madison, his stifled voice like an amateur attempt at ventriloquism.

‘We move, we die,’ said Webster.

‘We got just over twenty minutes. We don’t move, we die,’ replied Jacobs.

‘We’ve got five hundred feet of stairs to climb before this place goes nuclear. I’ll take my chances with a fucking bug,’ Mills shouted quietly.

Before anyone could stop him, he turned around, crouched behind the others and scuttled back towards the stairs. Nobody else dared move even an inch.

Mills had not seen what these wasps could do. In fact, he had seen very little of what any of these creatures were capable of. He was used to clinical operations where they overcame the insects with state-of-the-art weaponry and relative ease.

Assuming he had the others as cover, he moved swiftly towards the stairs with enough weapons to ensure his escape.

The floor was covered in small mounds of dried termite nest that had survived the explosion. These
were difficult to see in the cloaking darkness, especially when combined with a frantic mess of oversized insects.

As Mills made his way through these obstacles he did not notice his boot treading on the tail of a centipede. The shifting movement made him lose balance and he went crashing to the floor with the full weight of his collection of guns and ammo.

Up to that point his escape had been obscured by the standing figures of Bishop and Webster. But now his position was clear and the wasps were keen to investigate.

In his arrogance and ignorance, Mills still didn’t recognize the danger he was in.

Then he heard that distinctive
spridding
sound getting louder. Even amongst other similar sounds it stood out: higher in pitch, louder in volume and more urgent in tone. But Mills simply dismissed it as the noise of any one of this menagerie taking to the air.

Collecting himself and cursing under his breath, he resumed his escape.

As he came to the entrance of the stairwell, he believed he was completely safe.

Then the sound came so much closer and was so much louder that he was forced to stop and listen.

With single-minded focus the wasp swept past the frozen people, its right antenna almost grazing George’s cheek, before speeding onwards.

No one could give a warning. The others remained still and silent, like a row of shop dummies.

A second later, the soft breeze of the wings was beating inches from Mills’s ear.

Finally he knew that the sound was meant for him and his spine collapsed from the inside.

As that ear-shredding
brrrrrrrrr
tore through his brain, the mandibles gripped like pliers, cutting sharp and swift into the base of his neck, the exact same place those exact same mandibles had gripped Van Arenn.

Then, as easily as before, the ovipositor slid in smoothly under the shoulder blade, the jaws passed the neck meat back into the mouth and the poison gushed through Mills’s bloodstream.

The others bristled as the company of wasps flew through them to feed on the carrion of the soldier. He was face down on the floor now, his expression that familiar confusion that froze before the frenzy took over.

Clothes were ripped from skin, and skin was ripped from muscle, which was ripped from bone. They feasted with the relish of animals that had waited a long time and worked very hard for their meal, taking satisfaction in a job, or part of a job, completed.

But now they were finished and they knew,
just knew
, there was more nearby.

There were now eight wasps crawling and hovering around the humans, extending their antennae to find the very specific signs of life they had been hard-wired to search out.

Laura shuddered. The wasp that had finished off Mills was stroking its antennae against her leg to see if
there was anything significant about those tiny spasms at her ankle.

It was still clumsily feeling its way, giving no indication it knew what it was touching. Laura shuddered again, harder this time.

The wasp showed more interest, as if a switch had ignited another part of its brain.

It started tentatively, the antenna fingering further up to the point where Laura’s left thigh joined the knee.

She did all she could to keep still, but her leg had begun to wobble.

It was the sign the wasp had been looking for. Gripping Laura’s trousers with its claws, it started a slow but purposeful ascent up the back of her thigh.

She tried not to scream but the shudder became stronger.

Laura was now gently but insistently rocking her entire body back and forth in a failing attempt to suppress the pounding horror.

She knew she was losing this battle, but the harder she tried to stay still, the more exaggerated her movements became.

Her face was riven with the contortions of silent desperation. The back-and-forth sway was now joined by a small wave of side-to-side motion.

And still the wasp continued its climb.

Laura could feel it on her lower back. It was hanging heavily off the bottom of her loose T-shirt.

Every so often a sharp burst of wingbeat would run another icicle of terror down her spine. The wasp
gripped harder with all its claws to keep balance and gain height.

Laura remembered how Van Arenn had been killed. If the wasp reached her trapezius, she knew she would die before she had the chance to see her son again. It was beyond a miracle that they had both survived this far. Now they were so close to being reunited, to end it like this was too much to bear.

The climb of the wasp was like a chilling countdown, every step another effort it no longer needed to make.

The others stood completely still, even Mike, the only one with a view of Laura’s back.

He was trying to think how he might prevent her death without harming the wasp and releasing the defence pheromone that would whip the others into furious action. They currently posed no threat, watching what was happening to Laura in a scrabbling, buzzing huddle.

At last the wasp reached Laura’s neck.

It would take two more steps before it was in position to sink its stinger into Laura’s shoulder. She shut her eyes tight and wondered how long she had to live.

If she was going to die then couldn’t she do something? Couldn’t she just reach around right now and jam her fingers into those black eyes or rip off a wing? The paralysis of fear meant she could not. Besides, she knew that doing anything like that would bring the livid attention of the rest of the swarm.

Now the wasp was in position. Laura’s face was soaked with tears and she finally gave a whimper.

This seemed to please the wasp. It took another step and climbed over Laura’s collarbone, moving its head as if sniffing at her neck.

The last embers of the nest fire were burning out nearby. They cast a sepia glow over Laura’s tortured face, the malevolent eyes of the insect just visible in the half shadow below.

She could feel one of the wings, surprisingly firm, tracing across the nape of her neck like the edge of a finger.

At last the wasp moved backwards over Laura’s collarbone and took a good look at what it was about to sink its mandibles into, almost as if it were raising a knife and fork.

Then the claws ripped out of Laura’s back and a furious buzzing burst from behind her.

She was still alive.

How could that be?

Slowly, she opened her eyes. There was no weight on her shoulder, no mandibles at her neck.

To her left there was a frantic thrash of wingbeat. She couldn’t see what was going on until a wasp rolled into one of the orange rectangles of firelight. It was obscured by three flies, which were pinning its wings down with their claws and snatching at its flesh with their mandibles.

Around them, the other wasps were trying to escape as more flies tore into them.

‘Robber flies,’ Mike whispered.

Laura peered closer, a huge smile covering her face.

‘What the hell’s a robber fly – except for my new best friend?’ asked Garrett.

‘Natural enemy of the wasp,’ said George.

‘They gonna win this?’ asked Webster.

‘Who cares?’ said Jacobs. ‘We’ve got eighteen minutes left to get up those stairs and on to the plane.’

Andrew and Taj watched as another dot turned blue. Andrew took on a look of desperate worry but Taj knocked it back with an admonishing glare which declared the subject closed.

Looking back at the screen, they couldn’t understand why the dots had stayed still for so long. Andrew knew they were near the stairs, so he wondered what was preventing them from escaping.

Taj kept taking subtle glances at his watch, wishing the passing seconds would slow down.