The Bees: The Bees Return

The Bees Return

“There’s no point running,” I said, and slowed. Stopped to ease the stitch in my side.

Behind me, a tinkle of glass. Bees filtered in. Orderly, calm even.

“They’re coming for us,” the young man said. He stopped, just ahead of me. Panic widened his eyes.

I didn’t think they were. Instead of the furious swarm descending on us, as I’d expected, the bees were purposeful. They dropped down from the hole in the glass ceiling and disappeared into the crowd. The entire scene was peaceful, it transfixed me. There was something hypnotic about the flow of insects. From this distance they looked like a black stream of water, dripping down onto the people below.

"I don’t think they’ve seen us,” I said. “Either that, or they don’t care.”

My companion moved closer, and we watched from the top of the escalators. The bees were crawling on the people, settling on wherever the flesh was bare. Once each bee had found a decent spot, it settled down, wings buzzing intermittently.

“There’s someone down there.”

“There’s about a thousand people down there,” I answered, but then I saw. A kid of about twelve, their sex indeterminable, flapping around at the periphery of the crowd. The bees were rising, gathering around the child who grew ever more frantic.

I expected the bees to swarm and start stinging. I was wrong.

An elderly man next to the kid, reached out and grabbed the flailing figure by the neck. A young Asian woman by his side pulled the hood from the child’s head. Then the child was absorbed into the crowd.

I didn’t see what happened next.

There was a scream.

Then another.

And then, silence.

A small stream of blood crept from between the feet of the mob. It ran into the cracks between the faux crazy paving design on the floor.

“Fucking hell,” the young man coughed, swallowing bile.

“I think we should leave.”

We left. Quietly creeping down the escalator, stepping out into the cold sunshine.

I had no destination in mind, wondered whether I should return home, whether I should invite the young man to join me. I turned to him, was about to ask him.

I got no further.

From within the mall, a huge roar.

 And then a stampede.

We ran.

Ran down the street. The mob behind us, without looking I knew they were there. I could hear them, still roaring, the unattached bees still buzzing. My feet on the ground, rubber slapping the paving stones. I had no idea where I was running to.

"Car!” The young man yelled.

I didn’t know what he meant. For a moment I half expected some vehicle to come careening across the pedestrianised area towards us. Nothing was moving. The only cars in sight were all parked up, doors shut, sitting in bays with meters now expired.

The young man was younger than me, fitter and faster. He reached the line of parked cars first. Yanked on the driver side door handle. Locked. So was the next. As I reached him, and with the mob only twenty feet behind me, he pulled on a third. It sprang open and he slipped inside, reaching over to the back seat and flipping that lock open. I climbed into the car. Slammed the door.

“Was this wise?” I asked. “Are the keys in it?”

“Nope,” the young man’s head bobbed down below the dashboard. “Give me a minute.”

He didn’t require a minute. A few seconds later the engine turned over and he screeched the car away from the kerb. We left the roaring mob behind and I began to breathe again. My life saved by a car thief. It wouldn’t be the first time.

The Bees: Interlude

 Interlude

The young man beside me was no more than twenty years old. Rake thin, his black hair in tight rows on his head. He was dressed in sports clothing, inadequate for the weather,and bright white trainers. They seemed incongruent.

“Never seen nothing like this,” he said.

“I don’t think there’s ever been anything like this,” I answered. “Do you know any of... anyone here?”

The young man pointed into the crowd. “My mum, dad... grandma.”  I followed the line of his finger, spotted the family group. His relatives were standing together, all smartly dressed. His father was wearing a tie. As out of place as his son’s footwear.

We fell into silence, the young man and I, sitting almost companionably on the bench. The people standing did nothing. We watched them for over an hour. They took no notice of us, not even when the young man took out a tobacco tin and began to roll. He licked the cigarette paper and sealed the roll-up with a flourish. Then he offered it to me. It had been years since I smoked, but I took it. He handed over a lighter.

The smoke curled up into the air, above the heads of the mob. It didn’t seem to bother them.

I wondered how many of the mob were smokers. Whether the scent of cigarette smoke was reaching their nicotine receptors, awakening the craving. I wondered if any of them felt the hunger that must be gnawing, or the thirst. Did they feel pain?

Impulsively I leaned forward, towards the nearest dead-eyed person. A middle-aged woman, barely five feet tall and slender. I pinched her, grabbing the flesh of her forearm between my finger and thumb, squeezing hard. The flesh took a few seconds to settle back into place, it reddened a little. The woman blinked slowly. Did not turn.

“What did you do that for?”

“Just an experiment, I wanted to see what she’d do.”

“It don’t seem to matter what you do,” he said, “they’re dead from the neck up. Living zombies.”

“I’m not sure if they are dead or not. They were dead last night.”

The young guy seemed to consider this. “For real, definitely dead? Because, like there’s some things that look like dead, but ain’t, y’know?”

“I used to be a hospital porter,” I confided. “I know dead.”

“I’m a student,” he replied.

Welcome to the university of life, I thought, Post-apocalyptic studies. the post-post-modern era. ”What were you studying?”

“Media studies.”

Nothing of use then. It was going to be a long time before media was relevant again. If ever. Maybe I was being pessimistic. Maybe all this was some sort of group hysteria thing. Maybe they would all wake up and wonder what the hell had happened. Somehow, I doubted it.

“Can you hear that?”

“What?” I listened. All I could hear was the eerie whispering breathing of a thousand people. For the first time, I realised they were breathing in sync.

“Buzzing.”

I saw them before I heard them. Over the glass dome of the shopping centre roof, the grey sky darkened to black and the sound of millions of tiny, almost inaudible thuds as the bees hit the roof. Like rain, but fleshier. The mall grew dim, dark.

Then a strange scraping noise. Not metallic, but the sound of teeth on glass.

We didn’t wait for the bees to chew their way through the glass. We took to our heels and fled.

The Bees: Exodus

A very early post today (partying later with the Nano crowd!) Enjoy...

The Exodus

She stumbled at the gate. Pawing at the stiffened lock. In bare feet I tried to turn her, to lead her back into the house. As my toes and heels numbed, I realised my efforts were futile. Back inside I pulled on socks, boots, extra layers.

In the garden Elaine was still having trouble with the gate. And she wasn’t the only one.

A silent stream of people passed us. With dead eyes and limp arms they trudged. In twos and threes, a few larger groups. None of them acknowledged their companions, they moved less like driven cattle than iron filings pulled by a magnet. Some of them I recognised; neighbours, people I vaguely knew from the area. Entire families walking. A migration of the senseless.

Elaine gave up with the gate. Instead she walked at the fence. Gracelessly climbed over, slipping, falling to the pavement. She walked away without even a single backwards glance. Not at me. Not even at Joey.

My son followed in his mother’s footsteps. Too small to get his leg over the fence, he had to climb up a foot. I lifted him down, feeling his body chilled through his pyjamas. He didn’t notice his sudden weightlessness. As soon as his feet touched the ground he attempted to climb the fence again. A second time we played through this pantomime. A third.

Elaine had walked far up the street. Barely visible in the throng.

Where were they all going? I wasn’t going to find out standing in the garden. I’d already lost my wife, should I let my son go too? Should I take him back in the house, see if his restlessness abated? Perhaps he would eventually awaken properly?

I opened the gate and watched him walk through, taking his place, walking away.

I walked beside him. None of the others took any notice of me. they kept their distance, I was not jostled. We walked down the street, a silent mob, gathering more people as we trudged. At the end of my street, the crowd turned without discussion or communication, like a flock of birds they simply veered left, onto the main road. Swarming quietly past the abandoned cars and shunning the pavement. Down the road they marched, all the way into the town centre.

The town centre was eerily silent. Shutters rolled up, the mob reflected in dozens of dark windows, looking like the world’s most peaceful protest. Towards the mall and up the escalators in neat lines, filtered as neatly as water, flowing up the stilled steps to the unlocked but closed doors. As I stepped slowly up each step, I wondered how they were getting through the doors at the top. As I crested the escalator I was amazed. At each door, one of them stood, holding the door open.

We filtered into the deserted mall. Filled the space until they were packed in tight. A silent army of drones, standing. just standing.

Unable to take this weirdness any longer, I led Joey through the crowd, felt a sense of relief he was allowing me to lead him. I found a bench and sat, joey standing by my side, his hand still in mine.

I sat and i stared at all these people, who were standing, like Elaine and Joey had earlier in the bedroom. Standing, unmoving, unseeing, just waiting.

“I have no idea what’s going on,” a voice said beside me.

The Bees: Awakening

 I'm really enjoying writing this! Why did I not have this idea for my nano last month?!

Awakening

They stood. Not dead.

But this was not Elaine, this was not Joey. The people they had been, who I had loved; the woman I had lain next to for fifteen years, the son she had delivered into my arms ten years ago. These bodies, these soulless imposters, these were not my family.

Neither of them spoke. They stood on the bedroom carpet, swaying slightly. Neither of them looked at me, nor responded to my pleas. they simply stood, and they waited.

For two hours, they stood, as still as statuary.

I begged, I pleaded. I took Elaine’s hand and kissed it. I hugged my son. Nothing.

Finally I sat on the bed and watched them. The three of us a still and silent trio. Another hour passed, or maybe two. Snow drifted onto the window, turned to hail spattering on the glass. This startled me, but raised not a single flicker of emotion from them.

Them. As if I had already disowned them. Already began the process of Othering. Distancing myself from my former bonds, as they had been distanced from themselves. I wondered if there was anything left of their personalities. If they were actually even seeing through their deadened eyes, if the sound of my voice was triggering any recognition at all.

It seemed not.

I wasn’t sure whether they were alive or dead. They had certainly appeared dead earlier; no trace of a pulse, their chests still, lips blue. Now they certainly appeared to be living creatures, a steady - if slow - pulse and their breaths puffing vapour in the freezing bedroom, but apparently unconcerned by the near freezing temperature. I just didn’t understand how they had revived after so long, what had restarted their hearts, if not their sensibilities. I also didn’t understand why I was still alive. I had been the only one of the three of us who had not come down with the cold and blotchy rash virus. I supposed it was connected, though i couldn’t see how.

But, being alive, I still had needs. Unlike Them. I needed to eat, to excrete.

I went into the kitchen, picked up a can of beans and the opener. I had already placed the opener on the can, was just applying the pressure to puncture it. I stopped. It would be prudent to save the cans. And not only the cans, the packets too. I wondered how long cereal would last.

I wondered how long the tap water would flow.

Whilst eating the perishables in the fridge, I filled up every container I could find with water. Empty plastic milk cartons waiting for a recycling van that was never going to come, old sports bottles, a couple of fancy wine bottles Elaine had kept as ornaments.  It didn’t take long.

As I screwed the lid on the last milk carton, I heard movement from upstairs. Not quite footsteps, but shuffling. They were on the move.

They walked down the steps. Slowly, carefully. As if guided by the memory of tranversing these steps thousands of times before.  At the bottom they paused in the hall. Elaine raised her hand and reached blindly out for the lock. She fumbled with it, fingers loose and unco-ordinated, like an infant learning to grasp.

If the door had been locked and the key stowed away, maybe things would be different. But the key was in the lock, muppet keyring dangling. She opened the door. And then they left.

The Bees: Snow fall

Second installment of The Bees...

 Snow Fall

A light dusting of snow fell silently on my town. Just a few centimetres, barely enough to whiten the tarmac. Just enough to give the Christmas tree a genuine festive look. Just enough to render the corpses anonymous, their features indistinct. Like sculptures they lay, littering the streets, icy angels in Santa hats.

Like the snow, death had fallen swiftly, in silence, gently. The streets, full of bustling shoppers laden with bags, overexcited children, frustrated drivers and loitering teens. All these people, so much energy. As the snow fell the energy seemed to drain away and the people grew lethargic. Stopped. As if their time had slowed, their ticking clocks finally wound right down.

People dropped to the floor. The first couple drew attention, drew assistance. Frantic instructions to ring for ambulances. Sentences unfinished as the good Samaritans collapsed. Expressions of confusion and fear blanking, relaxing into death.

A curiously undramatic genocide.

I stood at the window and gazed upon this oddly peaceful tableau. My dead wife upstairs in our bed. My dead son beside her. As if sleeping, they rested peacefully together. They’d been preparing dinner when death took them. In the kitchen, soot now stained the ceiling above the hob, the ruined saucepan in the bin. They were already dead when the smoke alarm sang out its shrill lament.

Night fell. No-one came to retrieve the bodies.

On the TV there was news. No instructions, no explanations but the constant retelling of what I already knew. The net was ablaze with theories and panic. But not for long. Pretty soon most sites were displaying nothing but server errors. Then the connection died. The power lasted a little longer, but shortly before dawn, all the lights went out. I tipped the last drops of whiskey down my throat and regarded the blackness beyond the window. I wondered just how painful suicide would be.

Bottles and blister packs can fill a drawer, but the contents fit into a melamine Fireman Sam bowl with room to spare.  Bowl in hand, and a glass of water to wash them down, I returned to my family. I lay beside my son, reached over him to take my wife’s hand. Still warm, pliable.

She shivered.

Startled, I fell from the bed. Pills and caplets spilled to the floor, water dripped down the bedside table.

As dawn lightened the room, I watched as my son sat up. Blinked. A new day had begun.

The Bees

Prose today, as requested by a friend.  Not sure if this works, and I think it may spawn some sequels, so I'll tag it as such. Anyway... enjoy and feel free to comment...


The Bees

Nobody knew where they came from, and for a time, nobody cared.

Of course, they weren’t actually bees. Not wasps either. truth be told, it wasn’t even known if they were actually insects. But if it looks like a bee, swarms like a bee and stings like a bee then people tend to assume that’s what they are.

The first swarms appeared late last summer. They made the local papers, warranted a bit of a buzz on the Internet. That was all. Mostly the stories ran positive, tales of people enveloped by these swarms but walking away unharmed.

Nobody died.

It seemed they stung, but unlike bees, weren’t venomous. And also, unlike bees, they did not die afterwards. Few bees were found on the ground, nor tangled in clothes. The bee mortality was very low, the odd one may have been slapped by an irate palm, or trampled if they flew too close to their victims’ feet but in general, the bees swarmed, stung and then left.

A few specimens made the news. Blown up pictures of creatures that looked very much like certain types of bee, but could also have been wasps, or hornets or some sort of striped fly for all the general public could see. A few insect experts gave their opinions. They said the bees were not bees. They said they were unsure what species they were. Not a great deal was gleaned from these interviews. Or not a lot was passed on through the news, that’s for sure.

Of course, the Internet lit up. A new species of bee? A particularly belligerent but ultimately harmless sort of bee. Or so it seemed. The theories were batted around the web. They were genetically modified. They were alien. They were nano-technology. They were a mystery.

But no-one had died and eventually a new Royal baby was born, another scandal rocked the newspapers and a top talkshow host committed suicide on national TV and the conspiracy theorists found new fodder to chew. Such is the way of the world.

A couple of weeks after the first swarms came the epidemic.

It wasn’t noticeable at first. And, to be fair, it wasn’t a particularly memorable epidemic. Sufferers came down with a bit of a temperature, a headache, a snotty nose and running eyes. In short, it looked like every other winter cold; just enough to make a person feel rotten, not bad enough to be worth a few days off work. The only remarkable symptom at all was a vibrant blotchy red rash that started on the trunk and spread to the limbs. Over the course of the virus all the blotches merged and the rash faded away. Spectacular, but a mere annoyance in the grand scheme of things.

And nobody died, so who really cared? So half the population was walking around sneezing, looking like they had chess-board sunburn, but nobody was dead. Things carried on.

Until the swarms came again.

Again they massed, in city parks and crowded streets,  school playgrounds and outside shopping centres. And people marvelled as the insects flew among the flashing lights of the Christmas decorations and lit upon the branches of the towering town fir. And again they stung, but people stood and watched; knowing them to be painless stings, knowing they would walk away. Enjoying the spectacle of being a single unit in a dark swirling mass of tiny insects. People danced, can you imagine that? they watched and they danced and accepted the bees as a wondrous quirk.

And then these people went home and died.

Thousands of people. The memories of dancing still fresh in their brains, the last residues of snot still drying on binned tissues. They died.

And then people cared. At least, those still alive.

The others, the snotty and the stung, they may have cared, but they got up and walked around and it seemed nothing was on their minds but motion and food.

And, as you know, that’s when we became food.