Chapter 40

DEATH

In War, whichever side may call itself the victor,

there are no winners, but all are losers.

NEVILLE CHAMBERLAIN

It was all coming together, again. She had brought the weirds a gift, and they had accepted it.

She had wondered if their strongest would challenge her; she had wondered how. Even the dam builders did not cooperate like weirds, and no grendel was so feeble. But their strongest, the killer, was being restrained and led away.

And now they gathered round her at a respectful distance, making the sounds they always made. The injured one had spoken to her in such a fashion. It was their way of passing their thoughts from one mind to another. Old Grendel knew she couldn't do that. She must find another way.

And now another sound was rising. For a moment she took it for the sound of their flyers. Then... her heart's desire was snatched from her again.

Not for a moment did she pause to regret. Old Grendel had marked the nest's water source when it came within her sight and scent. It was an elevated structure at the hub of a web of streets. She was in motion before any weird had noticed the sound of the Death Wind. With speed raging through her blood, she wove a path among the weirds, brushing one and another but hurting none. She ran straight to the tower and up one of the legs.

The water was covered with something rigid.

The Death Wind was a darkness across half the sky. She would never mistake that for storm clouds. A dark tendril was reaching down, in the fashion of a tornado, toward where the puzzle beasts laired.

She smashed through the cover and was into Shangri-La's cistern. She settled in, lifted her snorkel, and let the heat and speed seep from her blood. The water was humming, bathing her in the sound of the Death Wind.

Carlos swung Skeeter II around in a circle, calculating wind and the direction of the bee mass, and swung around back south. The wind blew northwest. Unless the bees were heading to a particular destination, they would drift with the wind. So it made sense to figure that they wanted the mountains—and that was north. They were heading away from the plains, away from the flooding. Fine. Justin had the cowl locked down tight. A few bees spattered against it, but these bees weren't on speed. They weren't in an emergency state. On speed they couldn't cover the distance to get their queens to safety. They could be counting on a few dry hours. The rhythm of this damned planet had to be as deeply ingrained as breathing.

He watched Skeeter IV emerge from the cloud for a minute. Justin said, "Evan's going to make it! He's—" Then the cloud closed around Skeeter Four, and the sparkling pinwheel of its rotor flared outward. Something—a cloud of bees ignited.

"Holy Mary mother of God—" Skeeter IV was the edge of a fireball. Bees exploded in a pop-pop-popping that they could hear even over the whip of their own rotors, a machine-gun crackle, their carapaced speed sacs igniting as if they were a swarm of flying firecrackers. Evan's skeeter juddered sideways as if slapped by a giant hand. Then it was entirely enshrouded in flame. All that rang through the radio was Evan's anguished scream as his doomed skeeter spiraled and plunged and smashed into the rock below.

Justin's hands gripped the rail in front of him, squeezed. He had cut his hand on something. The blood ran in a thin stream, drooling down his wrists.

Carlos swung clear of the cloud of bees, heading back to the camp.

In the instant the crowd's attention went to the approaching swarm, Aaron took sudden, violent action. He stamped Trish's instep, and wrenched himself free of her grip. He turned and drove his fist as hard as he could into Edgar's face, breaking his nose and sending blood squirting down his cheek. Trish threw herself on him, screaming, biting, striking.

Jessica still couldn't move, as if trapped in a slow-motion universe of overloaded emotions.

Trish had Aaron down, a long bloody furrow along his cheek. Her knee pounded into his groin over and over again. Blinded by the blood in his eyes, Edgar kicked wildly. Screaming, Aaron got his foot into Trish's chest and push-kicked her away. She flew five feet and slapped into the mud. Edgar got a kick in at Aaron's head, then screamed as the first of the bees reached him and bit, tearing a little wedge of flesh from his cheek.

He forgot about Aaron and ran toward the nearest dorm.

Trish fled toward the rec hall. Beneath it was a Kevlar reinforced shelter. Grendel-proof. Bee-proof? A mesh metal curtain hung across the doorway. Trish slipped through its folds. "Jessica!" she screamed from safety. A bee spattered against it, crawled, searching for a way in. She held her side, her face. They bled, where bees had bitten.

Jessica ran for the shelter. Aaron screamed, "Help me—"

And Jessica turned for a fatal moment. Aaron staggered up, and their eyes met. His arms went out to her—

A dark wind blew across her and covered Jessica in bees. Hair to ankles, all of her right side was twinkling black. She screamed, thrashed, tried to brush them away, tried to spit them out, tried to run. Aaron took two steps toward her, but it was too late.

Trish couldn't watch any more. She closed the door. Bees were clawing through the curtain.

Aaron took a step toward Jessica, out of his mind with pain, but... but he felt something, something that he had never felt before. He just couldn't let her die. He just couldn't—she was down in a mass of crawling black shapes. Her arm stretched out to him, scintillating black. She screamed. Bees crawled into her mouth. One burrowed out of her cheek. They were at her eyes. Aaron lurched away.

There were a few human shapes on the ground. Lucky ones were in Kevlar safety sacks, or wrapped in blankets. A few bee-ridden Star Born crawled blindly, being eaten alive. He slapped at his face as a bee went for his eyes. It bit his hand instead, nearly tearing off a finger joint. He had only seconds to live—

He saw the chamels. They were burying themselves deep in the mud and dung that filled their pen. Their exposed haunches shone Cadzie blue.

He dove for the mud pit, burrowing through the filth until he came up next to one of the chamels. Rolling in the muck, covering himself. Gouged in a hundred places, Aaron shuddered as chamel shit oozed into his wounds. His arm snaked up, grabbed the creature around the neck, held it close. This wasn't perfect. But the bees had other targets, horses and pigs and human beings. They might not find him. They couldn't find him. Oh, God, he hurt so much.

Jessica.

Jessica.

Wrapped in a blue blanket, Katya hammered on the mess hall's shelter door. The sound of the swarm was overwhelmingly loud, loud enough to drive rational thought from her mind. She had only been bitten twice, but the fear almost paralyzed her.

No response. She ran to a sheltered nook—a toolshed next to one of the dorms. In the mess hall, she saw a torch waving. Some idiot was trying to use fire to keep the bees at bay.

There was a sudden crackle, and five thousand bees just exploded. Fire and a machine-gun flashing pop-pop-pop and shredded crustaceans showered flame everywhere. Half of the camp was rain-drenched, and invulnerable. But half was unfinished, naked wood protected by tarps and then sun-dried for two days. That burned.

The acrid smoke stench wound its way into her nostrils, and she shut the door as tightly as she could. She pressed her hands against the wood. It was still damp. Oh, God. She hoped that was enough.