Or maybe they just followed the most basic animal instinct. Flee. Survive.
But they were far too late. One had completed only half a turn before his craft tilted, righted itself, tilted again, and went down.
The second pilot didn’t even make it that far. One last explosion shook the camera and sent a fountain of smoke skyward.
The screen switched back to the president in his box. He was still standing. His eyes were wide, his mouth wrinkled and pursed. He looked dumbstruck. Uncomprehending.
Beside him, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was shouting. Others in the group inside the plastic enclosure were staring around, looking as stunned, as lost, as witnesses to calamity always do. The camera zoomed in to focus on a Secret Service agent, sunglasses gone, eyes and mouth stretched wide, yanking on the door from the inside.
“Fucking idiot,” Jack said. “Don’t open that.”
The screen went black.
Someone turned on the light in the room. People scrabbled for their phones, ran for their offices, tapped on their tablets. Desperate for information that would be no different from what they’d just seen for themselves, for reassurance that wouldn’t come.
One of Mariama’s two guards was turned away, listening over his earpiece. A moment later both turned and, at a run, headed down the hallway, as if she no longer existed.
Trey was calm again. His mind his own. The sweat was drying on the back of his neck. “It’s over,” he said.
Mariama’s eyes were again on his face. She opened her mouth to say something, but before she could speak, his telephone buzzed.
He took it out of his pocket. Saw it was Sheila calling.
He hit a button.
“Trey,” she said. Her voice a whisper.
His heart thudded. “What?”
“They’re here.”
FORTY-FOUR
TREY SAID, “WHERE are you?”
“With Kait and Mary. In the safe house.”
“I know that,” he said. “Where?”
“In the bathroom.”
“Are there any windows?”
“No.” He heard her take a breath. “We jammed a towel under the door. But there are dozens of them inside the house. Hundreds. Kait saw them coming.”
A pause. Then, her voice shaking for the first time, “Trey, we don’t know what to do.”
Trey didn’t, either. A call to the police would be sending unprepared cops into an ambush. And how could they make their own rescue attempt into anything more than a suicidal gesture?
Jack had disappeared, but Mariama was standing close, looking up into Trey’s face.
“My friends,” he said to her. “The thieves have them trapped.”
“Yes.” She seemed unsurprised. Calm. “Do you have a car?”
Trey said, “No.”
At the same moment, Jack came back down the hall. “Sure,” he said, spinning a key chain on one finger.
They looked at him. He shrugged. “I called in a favor.”
Trey said into the phone, “Sheila, we’re on our way. Two hours, tops.”
“But—”
“Trust me. We’ll figure something out.”
“Okay.” He could have kissed her for not asking questions. Then she said, “Damn! My phone is almost dead.”
By such slender threads our lives hang, Trey thought. “Just hold on, okay?” he said.
“We will.” Again her voice caught. “Trey—”
“On our way,” he said again and disconnected.
* * *
“WHERE ARE WE going?” Jack asked, handing Trey the keys as they moved down the hall.
Trey said, “Higgins Island on the Chesapeake.”
Jack nodded. “You have the address?”
Trey said yes.
“Good. I’ll plug it into my GPS. If you drive fast—”
Trey didn’t let him finish his sentence.
“I’ll drive fast,” he said.
* * *
JACK HAD BORROWED an Audi A3, which had no problem breaking the speed limit. Driving fast was even easier since Route 50 was nearly deserted. Only a few cars aimed out of town, and almost no one was heading in. The late-afternoon sky was a flat blue-gray and nearly empty as well, though near its apogee a jet caught the sun and seemed to catch fire.
“Humans,” Jack said from the backseat, “are so fucking predictable.”
Trey knew what he meant. When the world turned upside down, the eternal human tendency was to stay put. Hunker down.
Better to die at home, in your bed, than on unfamiliar turf.
“I’ll bet the supermarkets are out of bottled water already,” Jack said. “The people who make spring water, they just love catastrophes.”
Mariama, sitting in the passenger seat beside Trey, grimaced. “What’s the point in buying water in bottles?”
“So you have enough to drink before the water comes back on.”
Mariama laughed. “I guess that depends, no? On how long before the water starts to flow again?”
Trey thought about droughts that lasted five hundred years.
But Jack just grunted and said, under his breath, “Talk about your major buzzkill.”
* * *
TREY DROVE. THE D.C. suburbs fell away, and the landscape grew more rural. They passed open fields, farmhouses, interspersed with stretches of minimalls. The color of the light flattened as they drew nearer the coast, and they caught glimpses of rivers and bays, slate gray in the late-afternoon sun.
The few people in sight all seemed to be in a hurry as well. A hurry to get back home. Trey wondered how many of them would spend their last minutes or hours or—perhaps—few days in the houses they’d retreated to. In their castles. Cowering in windowless bathrooms or broom closets, or stepping forward to fight back, brave, foolhardy, doomed.
“So, when we get there,” Jack said, “what’s the plan?”
Trey said, “Any ideas?”
“Me?” Jack snorted. “Do I really look like a guy with a plan? You know what I am? I’m a dog chasing cars.”
Then, after a pause, “That’s a quote. From The Dark Knight. The Joker said it first.”
“When we get there,” Mariama said, “I’ll tell you what to do.”
* * *
THEIR ROUTE TOOK them across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. There were ducks on the water below and cormorants drying their wings on rocks close to shore.
“Oh.” Jack had been looking down at his phone, giving directions when necessary, but now he caught Trey’s eye in the rearview mirror. “They rescued the president.” He touched the screen. “Our republic is saved.”
Trey kept his attention on the road ahead.
“He’s in some bunker while the White House and residence are being”—Jack made a sound that was probably a laugh—“bug-proofed.”
At another time, Trey would have had plenty to say about this, starting with the impossibility of “bug-proofing” any building. Instead, he just shook his head.
“It wasn’t a rescue,” he said. “The thieves backed off.”
“Trey is right,” Mariama said.
Jack made a dissatisfied grunt. “Why? It’s their Sabbath? They have a prohibition against eating elected officials?”
“No. They weren’t ready for war,” Trey said.
Feeling Mariama’s gaze on his face.
“They’re still . . . building their strength,” he said.
Slave-making ants before a raid.
* * *
THEY LEFT THE highway and followed a series of smaller, winding roads heading south and back west toward the bay.
Approaching dusk, the light was watery, the air still and heavy. They drove through a small town, wooden buildings, empty streets, tourist shops closed for the se
ason. Beyond it, the houses were bigger and set farther from the road, more isolated from each other. Sometimes all that was visible was a gate and a long driveway disappearing into the woods. No sign of the building itself.
“Yeah,” Jack said. “Sure. I’d hide people here, too.”
He checked his GPS. “Make the next right.” Then, “About fifteen more minutes.”
Something different in his manner. The ever-present good humor draining away as they drew closer.
Trey said, “Why are they there? Why are they threatening Sheila and the rest now?”
Mariama stirred. “When they’re attacked, the thieves grow more . . . brazen.”
Jack grunted. “The attack happened in Florida. They’d get brazen a thousand miles away?”
“Everywhere,” Mariama said. “At once.”
Jack made a sound in his throat.
Trey said, “Sheila killed two larvae. Is that why they came? More revenge?”
“Yes. When they’re at sufficient strength, they go after anyone who harms them. You know this.”
“And anyone who happens to be in their vicinity.”
Mariama didn’t seem to think that worthy of an answer.
They drove in silence for a few moments. Then Jack said, his voice very quiet, “The thieves. They’re like Horton? They never forget?”
Mariama grunted.
“It’s not a matter of forgetting,” she said. “It’s in their blood. To them, it is always happening right now.”
Jack looked out the window. “Hell of a way to live,” he said.
* * *
“SHEILA’S PHONE BATTERY must be dead,” Jack said. “But her voice mail sounds cheery.”
“She said it was dying,” Trey said.
“Doesn’t matter. We’re almost there.” Jack pointed. “Next right. That’s it.”
They entered a curving gravel driveway. In the encroaching darkness, the trees seemed to huddle over the drive, blocking any view but the one directly ahead.
The two-hour drive from Washington had taken an hour and a half. It felt like they were nearing world’s end.
“The house is at the end of this drive,” Jack said. “About another third of a mile.”
Mariama draw in a deep breath through her nose.
“I hate that smell,” she said.
* * *
THE CHARACTERISTIC BITTER odor prickled Trey’s nostrils.
He could hear them, too. A familiar sound: the hum of wings, so high-pitched it seemed pure vibration, tickling somewhere in the center of his head.
But in this case multiplied a hundred times. A thousand.
The house, wood with weathered shingles, stood in front of them. It had been built on concrete posts and raised on stilts, with a wraparound deck overlooking the water beyond. Eight wooden steps led up to the front door, which hung open.
And then he saw movement on the lawn, on the drive, on the stairs.
A blur in the gloom. Glimpses of crimson. Flashes of black and green.
Jack said, his voice cracking a little at the edges, “Everyone’s window closed?”
And, “Would you shut the air vents up there, please?”
Hundreds of thieves, crawling here, flying in short loops there. Dozens whirling into the air like malevolent dust devils as the car crept up the driveway. Others swooping close to the windshield before spinning away again.
Those on the front walk, on the stairs, on the patchy gray lawn, had all turned to watch. A thousand compound eyes staring, or one eye divided into a thousand?
The voice inside Trey awoke. He’d been expecting it to all along the way, but it had waited until now.
He wondered if that had been its intention. To lull him into a trap. Because now, exerting its will, it seemed to drag him toward the car door. His brain seemed to split, half of it here, inside the car, and half outside among the creatures.
He brought the car to a stop beside a gas lamp atop a metal pole, ten feet from where the wooden stairs led up to the open door.
A dozen thieves settled on the hood and stared in at him. Trey shivered, a convulsive movement of his shoulders.
Inside, the voice radiated happiness. Wholeness.
Mariama put her hand on Trey’s arm, and after a moment he was able to pull himself back.
Behind them, Jack was staring out the window, his face a pale blotch in the darkness.
“Anybody got a spare Terminator?” he asked.
FORTY-FIVE
“I’LL GO IN, of course,” Mariama said.
Jack leaned forward and stared at her. “What? That’s insane. You won’t make it three steps across the yard.”
Mariama’s expression contained a trace of amusement. “They won’t attack me,” she said.
Jack shifted his gaze to watch thieves moving lightly along the outside of the window. “And why is that?”
“Listen.” Mariama’s voice hardened. “I have lived among these creatures all my life. I know more about them than you do. They will not sting me.”
Jack blinked. “Okay.”
Her expression softened a little. “In the Casamance, Trey saw that I was unharmed. I will explain why later, after your friends are safe.”
Trey said, “I’m coming with you.”
She began to shake her head. Then she stopped and looked up into his eyes. In a sudden, unexpected move, she placed her right palm against his shirt, below his rib cage.
“When did it happen?” she asked.
He knew what she was asking, knew he had to tell the truth.
“In July,” he said. “In Australia. Sheila—” He gestured at the house. “That was one of the larvae Sheila took out.”
Mariama’s eyes were still on his. “Trey,” she said. “You feel it, don’t you? The . . . consciousness.”
After a moment, he nodded.
“That’s good.” Her eyes brightened. “Right now, that’s good. Yes, you can come with me.”
“Without, you know, dying?” Jack asked.
Mariama looked back at him. “People like Trey—they confuse the thieves.” She switched her gaze to Trey. “It is hard for them to tell what you are—whether you are still a host.”
“And how about me?” Trey said. “Will I always be able to tell?”
She grimaced but did not answer.
* * *
“STAY WHERE YOU are,” Mariama told Jack. “Don’t do anything foolhardy, and you shouldn’t be in danger. The thieves are much more concerned about Trey and me.”
Jack gave a nod, but he didn’t seem reassured. He was breathing heavily, and Trey could see sweat on his face.
“The thieves will move away when Trey and I leave the car,” she went on. “Then they will come back, but no closer than they are now. Because of me, the inside of this car will seem . . . dangerous to them.”
“Okay,” Jack said.
“Just don’t provoke them.”
“Ha!”
She looked at Trey. “I will get out first and walk around to your side. That will give the thieves a chance to understand about me. When I reach you, come out. But do not move too fast.”
Trey said, “Got it.”
She swung open her door and stepped outside.
* * *
IN THE LIGHT of the gas lamp, Trey saw a cloud of wasps rise around Mariama. He waited for them to descend again and envelop her. For her to fall, to be dead before she hit the ground.
But it didn’t happen. The thieves rose, yes, but to escape. In an instant, the car hood and the windshield were wiped clean.
“Holy shit,” Jack said. “She is the Terminator.”
From his position behind the wheel, Trey caught a glimpse of Mariama’s expression. There was relief there, but a kind of fierce joy, too. The joy you take in le
arning that your power over an enemy is undiminished.
After a moment, she began to walk around the car. The thieves hovering within five feet of her retreated. The ones farther off, either in the air or on the ground, stayed where they were, but there was a tension in their posture that Trey hadn’t witnessed before.
He knew that he shouldn’t ascribe human emotions to them, but Trey thought he was seeing fear. The thieves were afraid of her.
Mariama reached his side of the car and looked in at him. When he nodded, she swung his door open and took a step back.
Trey breathed in. The voice of the hive mind had receded, and he could hear only his heart thudding and the hum of wings.
Steadily, but not too fast, he stepped out of the car, slammed the door behind him, and straightened.
Beyond Mariama, a cloud of wasps whirled. As Trey watched, one detached itself and flew directly at him. A blur. If it had tried to sting him, he would have had no defense. But it paused, hovering just in front of his face, dipping a little closer, pulling back.
He saw its abdomen pulsing as it spun away.
“We must hurry,” Mariama said.
* * *
TO TREY IT felt like being inside a dome. A shaken globe filled with black and crimson snow. Every step, the cloud whirled around them, up above, to the side, never closer than a half dozen feet. Taking a single glance behind him, he saw that a multitude of thieves had fallen again upon the car.
The sinking sun had disappeared behind a screen of haze near the horizon, turning crimson wings the color of dried blood. Somewhere not far away, a dog gave a sudden series of high-pitched yelps before falling silent.
Trey and Mariama walked. The wasps that had been staking out the pathway to the house and the stairs made way as they approached. Farther away, others rose on their spidery legs, twisting their heads to mark the humans’ progress.
The voice inside Trey stayed silent.
Mariama reached the foot of the staircase, Trey a step behind. Most of the stairs were now clear, but at the top a battalion of thieves held their ground. Others moved around the edges of the dark rectangle made by the open door. Farther inside, unseen wings hummed.
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