The Sting of the Bee

by K E Lanning

  Duff threw back his head and laughed. “What’s wrong? Can’t face the grim reaper?” He raised a hand and continued in ecstasy. “It’s finally my turn.” He clasped his hand into a fist and shook it at Nick. “My turn to hurt you, to beat you, to destroy you. A tooth for a tooth, an eye for an eye.”

  Nick stared at him, eyes blinking in pain as if Duff had stuck him with a blade. Tears sprang to Lowry’s eyes watching Nick being crushed under the weight of sorrow—past and present.

  His mouth dropped open and in a thin whisper, Nick asked, “Why?”

  With his mouth like a gash across his face, Duff grunted, “Why? You ask why?” He crossed his arms and leaned toward his brother. “Mother sacrificed me for you—a pact with the devil, one soul for the other.”

  Nick flinched against Duff’s raw hatred. Lowry swallowed back the bile in her throat. Sweet revenge—one of the four basic food groups.

  Swaying with liquor and emotion, Duff grabbed the edge of the desk. He stared off into the darkness and his voice faltered with the memories of his childhood. “Beating upon beating, until all that was left was a broken body and a broken heart.” He ranted hoarsely, “Your past comes crying in the darkness when you can’t sleep and it pins you to the bed. You can’t run fast enough or far enough from the closed doors that shield the hidden acts, the acts that you never speak of in the daylight.”

  Lowry pinched her lips together to keep from crying out. The wounds Duff had suffered as a child had brought him to this shell of a man. No one should go through the childhood he had experienced. The act of parenting is not for the faint of heart or the damaged soul. The care of a child was the greatest responsibility of a human being.

  With a twitch of his head, Duff steadied himself. The hardness came back into his voice. “Then, there was Margaret . . .” With a demonic chuckle, Duff shook his head. “You didn’t think I knew? Oh, I beat that tidbit out of her, right after you left.”

  Nick’s lips tightened. “You bastard.”

  Duff’s eyebrows rose as he pulled up his shirt to reveal a scar that went down his side. “She gave me this little memento, so I’d remember to never touch her again.” A bitter smile flashed over his face.

  Duff straightened. “I swore, one day I would get you, Nick—if it took me a lifetime, I would get you. Do you think I followed you to this forsaken place for a job?” He grinned. “Or out of brotherly love?” He jabbed his finger at Nick. “Just as you took Margaret from me, I took the one thing you have truly loved—Antarctica.”

  A spasm moved across Nick’s face. He opened and closed his lips, seeming to fight for air, as if Duff had punched him in the gut. Tears welled up in Lowry’s eyes. Nothing could heal these wounds; they had turned gangrenous with neglect.

  “You have betrayed everything in your life and now you have betrayed Antarctica.” In a tired voice, Nick said, “You’re a sick man, Duff, very sick.”

  “Really?” Duff snickered. “Let’s see . . . it only took you, what, fifty years to figure that out?”

  Nick furrowed his brow. “I understand that you want to hurt me. Some of the punishment I deserve.” He reached his hand out to Duff. “But why hurt Lowry?”

  “Because she’s yours!” Duff sneered. “Have you ever done the math?”

  “No,” Nick murmured, dropping his gaze to the floor.

  Lowry rose and stepped from the shadows. She stared at Duff, her hands shaking with fury. “What kind of animal are you? I hope to God Nick is my father and not you.” She paced between the brothers and then pivoted to face Duff. Her mouth quivered in rage as she snarled, “Instead of destroying everyone around you, why don’t you just shoot yourself and put the rest of us out of our misery?”

  They stared at each other and she saw a fragment of regret in his face.

  Nick put his hand on her shoulder. “Let’s go. There’s nothing we can do here. The smell of putrefying soul is making me ill.”

  CHAPTER 30

  The nightmare had come true. The final election results were in and Durant had defeated Nick. It didn’t matter that it had been a narrow political loss. The real loss was truth and justice surrendering to greed and corruption.

  It was late when Lowry walked into Nick’s office. He’d asked her to meet him there, following his concession speech.

  Motionless, Nick sat at his desk, staring vacantly at the wall.

  With a barely perceptible cough, she stood waiting for him to acknowledge her presence. There wasn’t any comforting phrase to express; they both knew the consequences of his defeat.

  He glanced up at her with a slight smile. He cleared his throat and motioned to a chair. “I’m sure you are wondering why I asked you to meet me here so late.”

  She nodded, pulled out the chair and sat. Glancing at him, she clutched the edge of the chair at the strain evident in his face.

  “I want to give you something.” He lifted up a small metallic disc. “This disc contains my plans for Antarctica.”

  Lowry shook her head. “You can run again,” tapping her finger on the desk. “That loser will so incense the public, they’ll string him up in six months!”

  Nick shifted in his chair. He swept his unkempt hair out of his face, staring at a photo of Antarctica behind Lowry. “I came to Antarctica as a young man. I have traveled across her and came to know her like the lover I never had.”

  With a grimace, he refocused his dull eyes back onto Lowry. “It would be better for her if they strung him up tonight. Durant could do a lot of damage, permanent damage, in six months.” He stroked the stubble of beard on his face. “With him in charge, I’m afraid it will be the Rape of Antarctica. Durant is going to change the course of history as corruption strangles the free-enterprise system of this nation, and the world economic leaders are likely to withdraw their funds from a corrupt country. Someone said long ago, ‘Ruled by shady men, a nation itself becomes shady.’”

  Lowry slumped back in her chair, chewing her lip. Everything he said was true.

  Nick swayed and clutched the desk. “The craziness that has brought me here. My foolish youth led me to my foolish old age.” He looked at Lowry. “I want to tell you about Margaret.”

  Lowry inclined her head, holding up her hand to stop him, but he continued. “No, I want you to know everything.” Staring at the desk, he placed his hand on the surface, as if to hold himself up. He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. “The affair with Margaret was reprehensible. Especially since Duff and I were blood brothers in the family lies.” He sighed, his mouth twisting with the memories. “She came into my life when I was twenty. Their marriage wasn’t going well. Duff has always had a nasty habit of drinking too much and too often. I don’t even know how it happened. Her ache for love and my passion for her dragged us onto a path neither of us had meant to take.”

  He stared ahead of him. “It was dark. I was sitting on the bench in the garden behind their house. I heard someone crying and saw her walking along the path, escaping from another fight with her ‘loving’ husband. I can still see her beautiful face, streaked with tears. There was a red mark on her cheek—from a vicious slap. At first, she didn’t see me. I walked over to her and touched her face. Before I knew it, we were making love in the moonlight.”

  Nick dropped his gaze. “Afterwards, we felt empty. Not that empty is all that bad when you’re full of anger, hate, and unrequited passion. We might have fallen in love, had it been a different time and a different place.”

  Lowry bit her lip to keep from crying.

  Tears welled up in his eyes and his mouth sagged open. “That night, I lay in bed and the guilt of what I had done buried me. So I took a job I’d had been offered in my last year of college as a geologist for the first recon work on Antarctica. I had decided against it, not wanting to spend a minimum of five years in a remote hellhole. But now, I had to leave. It was either a mental hellhole or a physical one. I packed and left the next morning.”

  Nick slumped back into his
chair. “After your birth, your mother said they went to a cold war. Margaret raised you and Duff concentrated on his career when he had one. When you were five, I saw Margaret for the last time, and helped both of you move to Austin, and away from the floods in Houston.”

  His voice choked for a moment, then he continued. “Duff followed me to Antarctica for work but after Margaret died, he dragged you into a life not fit for a child.” He shook his head. “He was so self-absorbed, he couldn’t see what he was doing. The past has a bad habit of sticking to your ribs.”

  He met her eyes and reached across the desk. “I never married, never had a child to hold or love. When you came into my life, you were my salvation as a man and a human being. I taught you everything I could.

  “You were a sweet child. You’d been raised by Margaret, so you didn’t bear too many of Duff’s scars. You may or may not be my daughter by blood, but you are my daughter by love. I want you to take these plans and keep them for the day they’re needed. You’ll know when that day comes.”

  His head dropped into his hands. “The fate of a nation, changed by a childhood gone awry.” With listless eyes, he looked into her face. “Lowry, always remember, love is not a garnish on the plate. Without it, no sacrifice for others is made. No healthy children to carry on the family.”

  He fell silent.

  Lowry reached out and touched his hand. “Thank you for telling me this. Your love is a great deal of what saved me after my mother’s death.”

  His confession over, his face sagged with exhaustion.

  “It’s late. I’d better be going.” She hesitated as she reached for the disc. “Are you sure you want me to take this?”

  “Yes.” He swayed slightly, his eyes vacantly staring ahead.

  She walked to the door, paused and said, “Go home and get some sleep, Nick.”

  “Sure.”

  Distractedly, she walked to her hover and got in, sitting still for several minutes as she digested Nick’s words. Lowry pulled the hard drive he had given her from her pocket, and in the dimness of the streetlight, held up the shiny disc containing Nick’s vision of Antarctica. She put it back into her pocket, pondering Nick’s oddness tonight. Why had he been so insistent on giving her these plans?

  Something moved in front of her—Nick, coming out of his office. He walked briskly to his vehicle and jumped inside. With her brow furrowed, she wondered at his frenetic pace. Odd that he’s now so energetic. Shrugging, she shook her head. At least he’s going home.

  Nick sped off in the opposite direction of his house. Lowry’s mouth dropped open and she became alarmed. “What the—? Where could he be going at this time of the night?”

  She started the hover and followed him. She had to push it to catch up, but then saw the lights of his vehicle ahead of her.

  He turned to the right. She followed, but stayed back, curious as to his rendezvous.

  The traffic was terrible as they approached the new convention center, bustling with Durant’s victory party. The streets were packed with well-wishers and press.

  Nick parked and walked toward the hall.

  Lowry sat dumbfounded. Why would Nick be going to toast the newest evil since Stalin?

  She found a place to park and ran, trying to catch up to him. Ahead of her, Nick opened the door to the convention center, slipped into the crowd and disappeared. Lowry raced to the door, threw it open, and the raucous sound of victory hit her in the face.

  Lowry held her hand over her nose from the odor of cheap perfume and booze as she pushed through the crowd into the banquet room. She saw Nick for a second, then lost sight of him. Her eyes flitted back and forth over the gathering, ignoring the laughing faces and finger-pointing of those who recognized her. The roaches had all come out now that the election was over.

  Her heart pounded as she caught sight of Durant’s smile, sparkling in the spotlights of a dozen camera crews.

  Nick parted the crowd as he walked up to Durant. The camera crews drew back to capture his personal concession for the nightly news. Durant had a puzzled look of amazement at Nick’s appearance. Nick reached up and removed his cap to pay homage to the new leader of Antarctica.

  Lowry gasped at the flash of metal. Nick had a gun in his hand. Durant’s steel blue eyes pulsed with the shock of each bullet into his chest. The blood splattered Nick’s face. Durant toppled over—no longer the leader of a fledging country, just a rotting corpse.

  After the last echo of the shots died, an eerie silence fell. Then, with a deafening roar of screams and shouts, the crowd pummeled her, in its wild stampede out of the hall.

  Swept to the side of the room in the madness, Lowry gasped as the bodyguards turned on Nick, their faces horrible in their savagery. She cried out as Nick fell under the blows. He didn’t try to run. There was nowhere to hide.

  Into the darkness, Durant’s animals wrestled Nick outside. Lowry fought her way through the crowd, fearing the guards would kill him. As she burst through the doors, they slammed Nick onto the sidewalk, and one of the guards cracked his head with the butt of his rifle. Cursing, they kicked him in the stomach, and with each blow, Nick grunted in pain.

  Lowry held her hand to her cheek, screaming, “No, don’t kill him!”

  One of the men shouted, “She was in on it too. Get her!”

  “No, she had nothing to do with it, leave her alone!” Nick shouted through bloodied lips.

  The police sirens cried in the night. The men said, “Let’s go.” They kicked him into the street and stomped his face into the asphalt. “Maybe the police will run over his ass.” And with dirty looks toward Lowry, they ran back into the conference center to mourn the passing of their leader.

  Lowry ran to Nick and turned him over, biting her lip at the sight of his bruised and swollen face, streaked in red.

  Nick spit blood from his mouth stared angrily at her. With a wobble of his head, he yelled, “Why did you follow me? They might think you’re an accomplice!”

  A deafening wail of sirens, then an abrupt silence, and the police leapt out and ran to where Nick lay in the street. They hesitated, looking at each other. Their ashen faces betrayed the shock of realizing who their assassin was—their friend, and for many, a man they admired. They gently picked Nick up and placed him in the squad car, with Lowry beside him, and took them to the city jail.

  Nick spoke to the police officer, his swollen mouth slurring his words. “Lowry had nothing to do with this.”

  “Not for us to judge, Nick.”

  They photographed and fingerprinted Nick while Lowry was held in a cell. After an hour, they brought Nick back and put him in the cell beside her. He sat on the bed and dropped his mangled face into his hands, staring at the cement floor.

  Lowry waited, saying nothing.

  Nick exhaled. His face wooden as he met her eyes. “It’s funny, Lowry. It was almost like a dream—the crowd surrounding someone who looked like me, like a strange, out-of-body experience. I wondered if I would die tonight. It would be ironic to split the fare of the last boat ride with Durant.”

  With a shrug, he continued. “Even so, my life is over. It wasn’t quite the end I thought it was going to be.” He tilted his head. “You pay for those evil things you do in your life, sometimes a magnitude more than the original error.”

  His hands shook as he blinked, holding back his emotions. Then he broke and sobbed with abandon, his shoulders quivering with grief. Lowry cried with him, tears streaming down her face, wishing she could reach him and wrap her arms around her father.

  Nick got himself under control. In a voice drained of emotion, he said, “Duff must be very happy—his brother has joined the damned.”

  The sun began to rise. The first rays touched the high windowpane of his cell. Nick pointed at the Antarctic flag outside the jail, now at half-mast in the dim light of morning. “Thank god, the bastard is really dead!”

  CHAPTER 31

  The next day, the cleaning people discovered Duff’s dead bod
y, hanging by the neck in his office. In the arch of the room, he had threaded a rope around the hologram projector, still beaming an image of the Earth.

  Lowry stepped into the room, her insides twisting at the sight of him spiraling at the center of the globe, like Hades, keeper of the underworld. Weather patterns revolved around him, the clouds forming a virtual shroud around the creaking body. His tongue was stiff and black, hanging down the side of his bloated face.

  The two security guards shuffled their feet. She signaled and they cut him down, returning him to Antarctica in a stilted heap, his neck bizarrely twisted—a sign that his death was by a broken neck, rather than asphyxiation.

  “The one time he listened to me,” she whispered to herself. Dead. The man she had known as her father was dead.

  She felt a chill of guilt, staring at his body, with the twisting shadows from the hologram making the office look like a scene from a Halloween movie. But he had sold his soul long before she was a twinkle in her mother’s eye. At least he could do no more harm now, or so she hoped.

  They flicked off the hologram and in the stark office light, the reality of his dead body, lying so cold upon the floor, hit her and she swallowed back the vomit in her throat. Lowry balled her fist, resisting the urge to run from the room. It was not the time to break.

  She knelt and closed the half-opened lids of those sad gray eyes. Perhaps the evil haunting the family through the generations had died with him. “As we sow, so shall we reap,” she whispered to the pale ashen face.

  An absent father in her early life, traveling from job to job—an arrangement encouraged by her mother. After her death, Lowry had moved to Antarctica, and ironically, she now realized, Nick had become her pseudo-father.