The man they knew as Dipak Patel had received an incoming call on his disposable cell phone while he was still inside the transport vehicle with the four Marines. One of them remembered thinking it odd that the screen had lit up, but there had been no ringing sound. It had taken a full sixty traumatizing minutes for the wasps to die, with only the thick fabric of their suits and Patel’s body to sting.
No political demands had been made. No organizations had claimed responsibility. No rumors abounded on the internet. It was a perfectly coordinated plan with a motive cloaked in mystery.
More than five hundred people were dead already, and yet it felt like they were just marking the seconds until disaster finally struck on an almost apocalyptic scale.
Lauren pressed the power button. While she waited for the picture on the flat screen to bloom, she lined up the EpiPens on the coffee table and neurotically checked their expiration dates.
Her landline started to ring. A heartbeat later, so did her cell phone. Her pager followed and she heard the chime of incoming email from her laptop. By the time the television came to life, she already knew what must have happened.
An expansive overhead shot of Disney World. She saw the Magic Castle and Main Street USA, and the thousands of corpses lying on the asphalt, stretching as far as the eye could see.
“…in an unprecedented swarming attack that has apiologists struggling to explain…”
She changed the channel.
“…witnessing this live from Times Square…”
More bodies. Everywhere. Smoke roiled over the street from behind the shattered windows of upscale storefronts.
Again, she changed the channel.
“…on what authorities now speculate may have been a coordinated strike by…”
Men and women in suits littered Capitol Hill. Papers blew from open briefcases, the only sign of movement on the jerky footage, obviously shot from a helicopter.
“…have just learned that a radical Jihadist group has claimed responsibility…”
She clapped her hands over her ears to block out the ringing and beeping and chiming and the awful words of the frantic reporters. She saw images of the Mall of the Americas, the Vegas Strip, Atlantic City, Pike Place in Seattle. All locations that had defined America in life, now marked her passing. Bourbon Street, the San Diego Zoo, Centennial Olympic Park…
Lauren closed her eyes for a long moment before opening them once more.
She rose from the couch as if in a trance, walked to the front door, and pressed her eye to the peephole. The wood vibrated against her palms.
A black cloud swelled over the horizon, obliterating the midtown skyline, rushing outward over the units on the other side of the park.
Lauren ran for the safety of the mosquito netting and her protective suit as the ravenous thunderhead devoured her condo with a buzzing sound that drowned out her screams.