The Sting of the Bee

by K E Lanning

  Lowry laughed. “Maybe you need to take the waters to cure your state of mind.” She shoved him into the pool.

  John plunged into the clear blue water. He opened his eyes and swam through the hot and cold currents swirling around the small pool. Turning back to where Lowry was sitting, he broke through the surface of the pond, with a broad grin. Then, he reached up and yanked her into the water.

  Lowry screamed. For a moment, she sank beneath the surface, then kicked off the rocks and came up behind him. Laughing, she dunked his head under the water.

  He twisted in the water and found his footing on a rock near the edge. John pulled her to him and they locked eyes. He ran his fingers through her hair and with a gentle touch, caressed her cheek. Uncertain, John hesitated, but she looked at him, lips open. He pulled her into a kiss, her lips soft and warm. With a moan, he kissed her hard and her body molded to his.

  John gently lifted her from the water and onto the blanket. He crawled out of the pool next to her and nuzzled her neck, then moved to her ear, her scent roiling over him. For a second, they broke apart and he stared at her. Breathless, she pulled him down into a deep kiss. His hands shook with pent-up desire as he stroked her body, slowly peeling off the rest of her clothes, while Lowry pulled off his. He laid a trail of kisses down her body and satisfied her desires. Then he found his way back to her mouth. He clutched her hair, pulled back her head and kissed her hard. Lowry wrapped herself around him, and they made love.

  Afterwards, they laid near the pond, the water and sweat drying on their skin. John’s breathing calmed and he kissed her cheek, then shifted onto his back, with Lowry’s head on his shoulder. He smoothed back her wet hair as her breath slowed, and with a little twitch, she fell asleep in his arms. Lowry’s warm body next to him, and he sighed, staring up at the small patch of sky above him.

  A shadow fell over the oasis as a cloud drifted past. In the dim light, a wave of guilt washed over him. The ache for love and his passion for Lowry had blinded him. In this beautiful Eden, he lay with Lowry, her skin soft and warm against his. A woman he barely knew.

  Helen had been a wonderful wife and mother; witty and loving. Emotionally, he had withered and died with her passing. Hadn’t she had been the love of his life? He clenched and unclenched his fist. How many true loves can one have?

  But he knew that Helen, a woman of grace and gentleness, would never want to immigrate to the wilderness of Antarctica.

  His insides felt like butterflies, but was this a sensation of love? His heart had been numb since Helen’s death, but the pain—and panic—of its resurgence was overwhelming. With one door closed, had another opened? He exhaled. Or was it a trapdoor beneath him?

  What would Ginnie’s reaction be to a blossoming relationship with another woman so soon after her mother had died? And his daughter meant everything to him.

  Ah, these consequences of desire.

  Lowry sighed in her sleep, and he swallowed hard as her breath touched his skin. He glanced at her lovely face and chewed his lip. He felt an animal magnetism with Lowry that he had never felt with Helen. Adventurous and brave, Lowry regarded the world with a quiet confidence, and yet there was an innocence about her that he found beguiling. John knew if he were younger he would feel intimidated by her.

  Lowry awoke with a start. She murmured, “How long did I sleep?”

  Shifting under her, John blinked at her, and then coughed and averted his gaze. “Not long.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, he caught the puzzled expression on her face.

  She propped herself onto her elbow, staring at him. “What’s wrong?”

  He turned his face away. “I’m sorry, but I’ve been feeling a bit—my wife’s death—”

  She put her hand on his arm and squeezed lightly. “I see. Don’t worry, John, I understand.”

  Startled by the intimacy, John sat up. “I think Ginnie will be getting back soon.” He slipped away from her, instantly missing her warm body. He grabbed his clothes and got dressed. “A little chill in the air,” he mumbled.

  Lowry replied in a thin voice, “Yeah, I noticed it, too.” Her face was pensive as she sat up, gathered her clothes and pulled them on. “We’d better start back. It’s getting late.”

  Silently, they packed everything, and as they mounted the horses, John kicked himself for ruining a lovely day. But what could he do? It was too soon. The remnants of Helen still haunted him. He swallowed hard—dearest Helen—and became lost in his thoughts as if Lowry wasn’t there.

  They reached the camp, and he dismounted, handing the reins of his horse to her. He cleared his throat and said, “Good luck during the Land Rush.”

  “Yeah. Thanks.” Lowry said, clipping a rope on his mount’s halter. She nudged her horse into a canter, and they disappeared behind the tents.

  CHAPTER 10

  A chill wind buffeted the tent, and shivering at a rickety camp table, John pulled a blanket over his shoulders. He closed his eyes and took deep breaths, trying to calm his pounding heart. Tomorrow was the Land Rush. Would all of his planning pay off? His papa always said it was better to be lucky than good. And luck he would need.

  He glanced at Ginnie, who lay sleeping on her cot. He not only had to worry about his hide, he had to think about Ginnie’s too. They could both die tomorrow. Or worse, something could happen to her and he would be left to confront unimaginable pain and guilt. He pushed the thoughts from his head. Why ruminate on the what-ifs?

  John studied the holomaps one last time, then took a swig of coffee and made a face. Cold as ice. I guess I’ve been sitting here longer than I thought. He needed to rest his body even if he couldn’t rest his mind. He turned out the lights, lay on the cot and tucked the blanket around him.

  To his irritation, thoughts of Lowry and their afternoon interlude surfaced. A surge of remorse swept over him. He closed his eyes and sent a question up to Helen. What am I supposed to do?

  Their marriage had faced many ups and downs. After the twin boys died, they had nearly divorced. Ginnie’s birth had healed their marriage. And now, Ginnie was all he had left. It was hard to look at his daughter and not think of Helen, making his guilt more difficult.

  There were empty rooms in his heart where the echoes of their love still existed. He remembered the words she had once said to him: “Life is God’s breath into a body. At some point, He has to inhale.”

  “Goodbye, Helen,” he whispered. A tear crept into his eye, and he wiped it away on the pillow case. He sighed, knowing in his heart, that Helen wouldn’t want him to grieve forever. It was time to move on.

  Still unable to sleep, John sat up in bed, reaching out to caress the small disc by his bed. He carried it everywhere, this holovideo of the graves of his wife and boys. He knew he might never return home and knew of no other way to visit them.

  John lay down again and rotated the disc in his hand. The light from the charger glinted on the smooth surface, and he finally faced his dilemma of conscience. An epiphany had hit him as he lay with Lowry.

  Helen’s death had freed him.

  Groaning, he clutched the disc in his fist, pressing it onto his forehead. If she hadn’t died, he would still be commuting every day to a job he hated. This was his true guilt: not wild sex with another woman, but the realization that his wife’s murder had allowed him to pursue his dream of a new life.

  Like a kick to the solar plexus, his insides twisted in pain and he curled into a fetal position on the cot. He had been a good husband and father, but Helen had known that he hated the chains of corporate life. They had spent weekends traveling to the countryside, but both knew it was only a dream to be fulfilled after retirement.

  John replaced the disc in his satchel beside the bed and stared up at the roof of the tent as it breathed in and out with the wind. He cocked his head, listening to a child crying in the darkness of the camp.

  After the child quieted, John lay in the darkness examining the arc of his life. At birth you’re king of the
hill, but honesty displaces ego, grain by grain. Life is a humbling experience.

  He was a stubborn and independent soul, desiring to live fully and without equivocation. He thought about his childhood; he hadn’t had many friends. Occasional overnight camping trips with a few good buddies and some painful first dates—life lessons learned and earned. Through it all he refused to be conventional. He had been an athlete, yet he studied science, wrote poetry, made love to a few girls. He grinned. Fewer than I want to admit. He imagined their faces: his first crush, Clarita, with curly dark hair, followed by wild, funny Stephanie in college, and lastly, his sweet, lovely Helen.

  He had stampeded through his twenties with the herd of society, and now he wondered why he’d been running. The momentum of a lifetime wasn’t easy to overcome. Like a hooker who needed the money, but hated the work, he hadn’t known how to get out of the corporate rat race.

  John touched the chain around his neck and felt for the Land Rush key. Despite everything, he hoped Helen would be proud of him for taking this last chance to fulfill his destiny. If only for an instant, he had unchained himself from the stifling culture in which he had been a square peg in a round hole.

  A gust popped the flap of the tent and his thoughts returned to the next day’s event. He clenched his fist. There was no second chance. He had to win his tract.

  He fell asleep, dreaming of a footrace along the shore of the ocean, with a devilish Durant on his left, flanked by a White Rabbit Buck and Mad Hatter Sergei. A throng of desperate souls threatened to overtake them no matter how fast they ran. When the shoreline turned, and the end was in sight, the racers were neck and neck. John laughed as he burst over the finish line, but just as he stopped to rest, the sunlight broke through the clouds. Shielding his eyes, he saw Lowry, with her long hair draped around her nude shoulders, standing on the rocks above him.

  CHAPTER 11

  The thin, crisp air stung John’s throat, and he squinted in the bright sun at the odd assemblage of humanity and vehicles sprawled around him. The Great Antarctic Land Rush banner hung between the temporary metal frame, the sides lined with neat rows of UN flags. News crews from across the globe staked out the territory beyond the starting gate, aiming their cameras toward the homesteaders to capture the onset of the race.

  Everywhere, people waited; they played cards, talked, anything to pass the time. A group of miners from Antarctica huddled together, casting dubious looks at the invading cast of characters. He recognized a couple of competitors from the ship: the young Japanese man with an acne-scarred face and the tall, middle-aged Nigerian sporting a leather jacket.

  Misfits from around the world, willing to fight for a new life. Faces around him had a hungry look as they sized up the competition. They had waited a lifetime for this chance, and no one wanted to be too friendly with someone they might end up killing later in the day.

  John flinched as a flag snapped in the wind, and then bent down by the buggy, clutching a handful of soil. He wondered if the authorities had fully thought out what they were doing. They’d decided to open the Antarctic territories with an Oklahoma-style race for land. A great PR event to show back home, but a big risk as well. Who knew how much blood would soak into the dirt today? Of course, the media would edit out anything too gory from the footage, with just enough blood to start the good folks back home salivating. The stakes were high—some land had good soil and water and some didn’t. There was no doubt on the viciousness of this race.

  Everyone here had an agenda. Most folks wanted to farm; there were government subsidies for those who chose that route. Farming would stabilize the fragile Antarctic ecosystem and was vital to the longevity of the continent’s habitation. Others were bent on setting up towns to supply all these madcap homesteaders. Towns, which didn’t exist one day, would be bustling the next. People had to eat, buy clothes, and do laundry. Humans never stop being human.

  John heard the snort of an animal and blinked in disbelief at the silhouette of a woman dismounting from a horse. “Lowry, you’re using a horse to win your homestead?” He momentarily forgot the barrier that had risen between them, due to his inept handling of his feelings.

  With a deadpan face, Lowry glanced at him. “Just wait until the gun goes off and when the terrain gets rough, you’ll wish you had one too.” She turned away and checked the girth of the saddle.

  He felt a thorn of disappointment in her look and heat rushed to his face. He clenched his teeth and looked down, pretending to check his tires. If she couldn’t understand his feelings, perhaps he’d made a mistake all the way around. Maybe she was a bitch. At least thinking so made it easier for him to not get involved with her. The last thing he needed was to get romantically entangled with someone the second he landed—especially with the emotional baggage he needed to sort through.

  John gazed again upon the scene, trying to cement it in his memory. People so desperate for a new life, they would leave their homes and families far away to try conquering a new world. The immigrants were already calling their homelands the Old World, psychologically breaking with what they once knew.

  “And here I am, a regular Davy Crockett,” he mumbled.

  The organizer of this party bellowed for everyone to line up at the starting line. The crowd burst into cheering and applause. Lowry fastened her helmet and vaulted onto the mare. John jumped into the buggy and then looked around for Ginnie. Where the hell had she gone?

  She squeezed through the crowd, yelling, “I’m coming!” and leapt into the passenger’s seat.

  “Buckle up, this ain’t no kiddie ride.”

  John inched the buggy closer to the starting line, toward the freedom he had left everything for. The band played a march, his heart thumping to the beat of the base drum.

  The announcer reviewed all the rules and regulations of the event. Referees lined up in front of the contestants to control them. John muttered, “Fat chance.”

  The droning voice wore on John’s nerves. His knuckles whitened as he gripped the steering wheel of the buggy. “Come on!” he said under his breath.

  The gun went off. John slammed the accelerator to the floorboard. The tires spun, then caught, and the buggy jumped forward. Lowry sprang by them on her horse, and he grunted an expletive.

  Ginnie rode shotgun, her duty to watch for interlopers and obstacles. They headed for their top choice, and by the looks of it, they had competition. Four groups all headed in the same direction—a contest to be the first to punch the locking key into the stake at the northwest corner of the tract.

  They barreled forward, bouncing over dry channels flanked by boulders. Even the hologram sessions hadn’t prepared him for the roughness of the land, but they continued at top speed. Racing into a narrow pass, the competitors squeezed closer as the walls narrowed.

  “Watch your left!” Ginnie shouted to him as the miners’ vehicle swerved toward them, challenging to be the frontrunners into the valley below the ridgeline. John had the pedal to the floor, but the miners had more juice and shot into the lead, their wheels throwing dust into John and Ginnie’s faces.

  “Dammit!” He gritted his teeth and followed them through the gap, the rest of the pack on their tail.

  The buggy jolted over a rough set of rocks, but they picked up speed down the slope.

  At the bottom of the valley, a sinuous river cut through marshy lowlands. Their route would take them away from the marsh. Getting stuck in the mud was not on his to-do list. As they reached the base of the hill, a three-wheeler painted with a Brazilian flag bore down upon them.

  John shouted, “Watch the three-wheeler on your right, Ginnie!”

  Over the din of racing vehicles, John heard a deep cracking sound, and gasped as the ground fractured under the weight of the three-wheeler, and like a trap door opening on a stage, the Brazilians disappeared as if they had never existed.

  “Permafrost!” John shouted. The expanding fissure zipped toward John and Ginnie’s buggy. John held the wheel tight, keepin
g the accelerator smashed to the floor. With speed and luck, perhaps they might dodge the cavern.

  With a shriek, Ginnie pointed. The ground was collapsing ahead of the buggy. The front wheels bounced over, but the rear tire slid off, dragging on the edge of the crack. They slammed forward into the shoulder harnesses.

  “No, no, no!” John yelled, as they spun to the side, pitching the buggy toward the deepening crevasse.

  A second more and the other three tires caught traction, popping the rear tire free, and the buggy careened ahead, shoving them back into the seats.

  Every cell in John’s body burned. He had never felt such exhilaration. Adrenaline shot through his limbs and he reverted to his animal instincts, thriving on power and speed. He blocked the Australian truck through a curve. At the crest of the next ridgeline, he flattened the pedal to the floor. John and Ginnie swept alongside the miners’ modified Jeep to their right.

  A wall of dust in the distance caught his eye. Perfect—a dust storm to make the race more interesting.

  “Tighten your goggles, Ginnie. Look at the horizon.”

  As the storm approached, he recalled a narrow pass into the next valley, which might shield them from the brunt of the storm. He chewed his lip. That would bring us to the southwest corner of the property . . . and then we’d cross the tract to reach the stake. The decision would make or break them.

  “We’re taking the scenic route, Ginnie.” He cut toward the alternate pass. They were committed. A team of rough women—in a rougher jalopy—made the break to the pass as well and had a slight jump on their buggy. Both vehicles raced toward the narrow opening—first in, first out. John closed the gap with the women, but then a pop came from the jalopy’s engine, with a blue flame shooting out the back of the vehicle.