by James Axler
“The level of agreement in this ville is so absolute that it is fanatical,” Doc said. “It is like a hive mind.”
“And what happens next?” J.B. asked. “How do bees set up new homes?”
“They swarm,” Doc said. “A new queen is born one day, and she departs with a few members of the hive, swarming to a new location beyond the limits of the original hive’s domain.”
“This place is cut off by quakes and mountains,” J.B. said. “They’re all but impassable. That’s why the Trai need the mat-trans. The new queen must be reaching maturity. They’re gearing up to swarm.”
“Or new queens,” Doc said. “Plural.”
J.B. looked at Doc with concern. “Does that happen?”
Doc shrugged. “We might assume that it could. You have seen the way the young women flaunt themselves at the rallies. Tantalizing their would-be mates through... My goodness!”
“What?” J.B. demanded, seeing sudden realization cross the old man’s face. “And keep the noise down, Doc, okay?”
“Do you not see?” Doc said. “The dance. The... This...” He showed J.B. the dance that the Trai women performed at the gatherings, mimicking the way they thrust their butts out and shook them. “That’s a waggle dance.”
“A what?”
“It’s the way that bees communicate,” Doc explained. “The waggle dance conveys information to other bees. These people have adapted it into some form of mating ritual, most probably without even realizing it.”
“Human bees,” J.B. said sourly. “People thinking like insects.”
“And do you know, I have only now realized why the Melissas are so called,” Doc told him. “It is Latin—Melissopalynology is the study of pollen and spores in raw honey.”
“You know this how?” J.B. asked.
“I know Latin,” Doc explained. “It is an ancient language that operates by strict principles. Once one knows those principles, it is a simple process to break down compound words into their component parts and—”
“Yeah, fine,” J.B. interrupted with a raised hand. “Look, Doc, I’m a fugitive here and you will be soon, too. That means we need to move quickly if we’re going to get everyone out of here alive.”
“What are you proposing?” Doc questioned.
“You saw the way that Melissa fought me,” J.B. said. “These people are superstrong, superfast. They’re superhuman, and I guess that’s something to do with the honey they eat. Mildred told me about the medical properties they’ve tapped, used some miraculous salve on my hand where I cut it...”
“Honey can have very strong health benefits,” Doc confirmed.
“If these people swarm, then the whole of Deathlands and beyond could fall to an army of superstrong, human bees,” J.B. said. “Now, I’m not much of a one to worry about who’s chilling who out there, as long as it isn’t me who’s getting chilled, but hive people wiping out the rest of humanity—that’s going to end in a bad place for all of us.”
“I could return to the honey storage tower and break the vessels there,” Doc proposed, but already he could see it was a colossal task, one that he would be restrained from long before he could make any serious dent in the supplies. “No, forget that. I could not do enough.”
“No, not while you’re a fugitive,” J.B. said, “I need you to get Ryan and Krysty. You can still move freely. You should be able to get to them and convince them what’s going on.”
“Convince them how?” Doc asked. “You told me that you had already approached Ryan with your suspicions not eight hours previously.”
“Doc, I’ve known you for a long time,” J.B. said, “and even now you still come up with words I have never heard anyone else say. If anyone can find a way to convince Ryan, it’s you.”
“I am a modestly accomplished orator,” Doc said uncertainly. “But I would dearly regret ruining the life that Ryan and Krysty have begun to build here for themselves, a life of peace so richly deserved.”
“It’s time to piss on their parade, Doc,” J.B. said calmly. “The people here have become insects. In their reasoning. In their actions. Ryan and Krysty have been here only two weeks, same as you. You came back from that and they will, too, if you can convince them. Mebbe the Trai were beekeepers once who got this junk in their systems and stopped thinking rationally. You want that to happen to our friends?”
Doc nodded in understanding. “I shall find Ryan and I shall do my utmost to convince him. And what will you do?”
J.B. gestured toward the edge of the wooded area. “I’m going to get my weapons back,” he said. “I figure I’m going to need them.”
* * *
HIDING THE LEMAT blaster beneath the folds of his coat, Doc made his way at a brisk trot to the nearby shack that Ryan and Krysty occupied. There were people all around, hurrying to their designated roles. Doc saw them differently now, knowing that they were worker bees fulfilling the tasks given them by their queen. It was disconcerting, made more so by the fact that Doc dearly wanted to join them and fulfill his own designated role, and so enjoy the adoration of the Regina.
“No,” he muttered to himself, shaking his head. “You are not this. It is not you.” He hurried on, willing away the all-consuming desire to serve the Regina.
Doc didn’t stop hurrying until he had reached Ryan’s front door. Doc thought of his wife, Emily, and his children, Rachel and Jolyon, reminding himself that he was a man and not a drone, never that.
He knocked at door with the silver lion’s-head handle of his swordstick. Krysty opened the door a few seconds after, and she smiled when she saw Doc standing there.
“Doc Tanner, as I live and breathe,” Krysty said. “What are you doing here?”
Krysty was dressed in her usual ensemble, but she looked different to Doc, the way she had tied her hair back in a neat ponytail, hair that he knew was alive and that hurt her to cut or to fuss with overmuch. To see her looking prim and proper like this, her rough edges smoothed down, made Doc wonder at how much they had all changed without even realizing it during their stay in Heaven Falls.
“Krysty,” Doc said, barging his way none too gently into the house, “I need to speak with you and with Ryan on a matter of grave urgency. Is Ryan still here?”
Krysty seemed oblivious to Doc’s fretful manner and merely stood aside and let him in. “He’s just through in the kitchen, finishing up the dishes.”
Doc strode through the main room to where Ryan was standing at the countertop wiping two plates with a damp cloth.
“Ryan Cawdor doing dishes!” Doc observed. “Will wonders never cease!”
Ryan looked up. “Doc, you’re here early,” he said. “I was just leaving for the farm.”
“Forget that,” Doc told him. “We all need to talk, right away.”
Krysty had followed Doc through the shack and she stood on the far side of the counter, looking at him with concern. “What’s happening, Doc?” she asked.
“We have all been duped,” Doc stated.
* * *
MEANWHILE, J.B. QUIETLY made his way back to the cabin where he had lived for almost two weeks, sticking to the cover of the trees that ran parallel to the path. He slowed his pace when he got within sight of the cabin, scanning the door and windows, checking for signs of movement within. J.B. didn’t emerge from cover until he was almost to the shack, having waited a minute or so for the path to become clear of travelers. When he finally emerged, J.B. pulled the brim of his hat low over his eyes to try to disguise his features.
He trotted up to the front door and pushed it open without a knock of warning, striding across the main room even as Ricky and Mildred looked up from the two chairs that furnished the room. They were just starting to eat breakfast. Each held a plate, two slices of toast dripping with honey.
“J.B.!” Mildred crie
d. “What are you doing h—?”
J.B. lashed out, knocking the plate from her hand. It sailed into the wall above the hearth, crockery shattering, uneaten bread strewed across the floor. “Stop eating,” J.B. said. “Both of you. Now!”
Ricky looked dumbstruck by the command and by the appearance of the Armorer after he had been branded a violator. “Y-you shouldn’t be here, J.B.,” he stuttered.
J.B. reached down and snatched the plate from Ricky’s lap, even as the lad went to take a bite from his toast.
“Drop it,” he said. “For both your sakes, listen to me.”
Mildred got to her feet, her hands clenching into fists. “The Regina told us that you tried to chill Phyllida,” she said. “I saw with my own eyes the state you left that woman in. It’s down to advanced medicine that she’s alive now.”
J.B. turned to her. “She’s still alive?” he asked. “Black dust!”
“So you did do it!” Mildred said with a shock.
Before J.B. could explain, Mildred’s right fist snapped at him, knocking him right in the nose. He staggered back, his left hand going to his face.
“Violator!” Mildred cried, and Ricky took up the chant.
With his free hand, J.B. reached into his waistband at the small of his back and pulled Jak’s blaster loose, aiming it at Mildred and Ricky. “You both had better settle down,” he instructed. “We’ve got a lot to get through and not much time to do it in. Now, why don’t you sit by the fireplace and I’ll tell you all about how mixed up and wrong you’ve got it.”
Reluctantly, Mildred and Ricky sagged into their chairs, their eyes locked on the blaster in J.B.’s hand.
“That’s more like it,” J.B. said once they were seated. “Now, let’s see if I can get this right...”
And with that, J.B. began to explain his tale of the irradiated honey with its psychoactive properties, of how the society of the Trai had become entangled in the thought processes of the honeybees, and how the companions had become brainwashed into accepting the hive mind as normal.
Once he was done, J.B. backed away from his one-time friends and sat on the lockbox where they had stored their weapons. He waited, uncertain of how his one-time allies would respond.
* * *
“WE ARE IN considerable danger here,” Doc explained as he stood with Ryan and Krysty in the kitchen of their simple shack. “The people of Heaven Falls are under the mental command of an insidious power, one which has begun to enslave us, too, and which, I suspect, plans to take over the whole of the Deathlands.”
Astonished, Ryan placed the plate and dishcloth he held on the countertop. “What are you saying? This sounds like the kind of crap you spouted back when we first found you.”
“I can assure you that this is not crap,” Doc stated firmly. “All of us have been feeding on a psychoactive agent that has blunted our capacity for reason. I have seen evidence of this, and while I know how hard it must be to accept what I am saying, I must ask that you try.”
“Doc,” Krysty said gently, “did J.B. come speak to you?”
Doc nodded. “I did not believe him, either, but then I saw something that profoundly changed my mind.”
“What changed?” Ryan demanded.
Doc looked around the kitchen, his eyes searching for a cupboard or storage larder. “Do you have honey here in the house?” he asked.
“We just finished up some on toast for breakfast,” Krysty confirmed, bemused by the old man’s question.
“Where?” Doc demanded. “Where do you store the honey?”
Ryan reached under the counter and brought out a familiar clay pot, the exact same style of pot that Doc’s honey had been stored in. “If you’re staying to eat, I really have to get to work,” Ryan insisted. “You’re welcome to help yourself to whatever—”
“Ryan, no! Concentrate!” Doc demanded. He understood Ryan’s yearning to be at work, could feel that same call in his mind where the Regina had assigned him a crucial task that would demonstrate his love for her. “Do you still have your rad counter?”
Ryan nodded, his brow furrowed in confusion.
“Get it!” Doc commanded.
Ryan looked at the old man blankly, and Krysty shook her head sorrowfully. “Are you sure you’re all right, Doc?” she asked gently, clearly concerned for his sanity.
“Just get the rad counter,” Doc insisted. “Now!”
Taken aback by the vehemence in the old man’s voice, Ryan strode past him and reached for his coat where it hung on a hook beside the front door. He plucked at the rad counter as he strode back, a skeptical expression on his face.
“Okay, Doc,” Ryan said. “Here it is.”
The old man removed the muslin lid of the honeypot and used a spoon to scoop out a small portion of the russet-gold contents. The honey glistened there on the spoon, shimmering like liquid sunlight. “Test it,” Doc told them.
“What do you mean?” Krysty asked.
“The radiation content,” Doc said. “Test it.”
Ryan looked uncertain, but he leaned in with the simple rad counter and held it close to the spoon. In a moment, the circular, button-like display had flicked from green to the rich red danger zone.
“What is it?” Ryan asked as he watched the display change.
“The honey is irradiated,” Doc said. “Maybe all the food here is. That is certainly not beyond the realm of possibility. The radiation has been affecting our minds—and not just us. All of the Trai are in its thrall.”
Krysty gasped incredulously. “This sounds—”
“I know how it sounds,” Doc interrupted. “I, too, am struggling to accept the evidence that has been clearly presented to me. And the only reason I can come up with regarding the conflict I feel is that this is the truth, and that my conflict is with the way that this satanic substance has toyed with my emotions and my capacity for rational thought.”
Ryan and Krysty stared at Doc, their mouths agape.
“I am so sorry,” Doc told them.
“Why?” Krysty asked.
“Because you thought that you had found the perfect retreat,” Doc said, “the one thing that you have strived for—and that you have dearly deserved—for so long. I am sorry that I had to come here today and take that away, and I hope, when all of this is over, that you see that I was right to do so and that you will find it in yourselves to forgive me.”
Ryan stared at the open pot of honey, and he ran the rad counter over its lid, watching as the indicator light changed color. “This is hard to take in,” he admitted. “When J.B. came here last night, I thought he was insane.” He looked up at Doc then, as the rad counter went from orange to red over the mouth of the pot.
“Is it the truth, Doc, or are you insane, just like him?”
“John Barrymore is your oldest friend,” Doc replied. “If he was insane and you were in your right mind, you would stand by him and do all you could to help him regain his senses. The fact that you have not should tell you more than anything I can say.”
* * *
MILDRED AND RICKY were struck dumb by J.B.’s speech. They sat there staring at him for more than a minute, not saying a word. J.B.’s gaze flickered to the windows, making sure no more Melissas were coming to restrain or chill him.
Finally, Mildred spoke up, her voice cracking over the first few words. “Is this true, J.B.? Is the honey really a drug that’s got into our system and made us think in a different way?”
“I believe so,” J.B. told her. “I don’t have any more evidence than what I’ve seen with my eyes, and the fact that it’s hot with radiation. But, Millie, if I’m right and I left you behind, then it wouldn’t have been worth me being right.”
Mildred could not help but smile when she heard that. “That is the most romantic thing you have ever said
to me,” she said. “Kind of makes me wonder if you might not be in your right mind even now.”
“I oiled your blaster while it was in storage,” J.B. told her. “That’s proper romance in my book. Something that keeps you alive.”
“There are no blasters in Heaven Falls, J.B.”
“We’re about to overturn that law,” J.B. replied. “And we’re going to do it together, I hope.”
Mildred looked ponderous as she weighed J.B.’s revelations, while Ricky seemed torn. He idolized J.B. and had followed him into that mutie nightmare out in California two weeks ago. Whatever life he had discovered here, whatever the Trai had offered or promised, would it ever compare to the life of adventure that the Armorer led? Ricky didn’t think so.
“I’m with you, J.B.,” Ricky said, a look of anguish on his striking features.
“Good lad,” J.B. said. “Millie?”
“My head’s telling me not to trust you,” Mildred admitted, “but my heart knows you’d never lead me astray. I’m with you, J.B., but for goodness’ sake watch me, because if what you’ve told us is true, then this shit is rewiring my brain and I might just shoot you in the back when you turn around.”
“Point accepted,” J.B. said. Then he moved from his seat atop the lockbox and, crouching beside it, opened it up and withdrew their weapons. In a moment, Mildred and Ricky were armed for the first time in two weeks, while J.B. had his miniarsenal back. To the Armorer, it felt a lot like another old friend had returned to the fold.
* * *
“MY INSTINCT IS to fight,” Ryan admitted, his lone eye fixed in challenge on Doc. “To fight you, to fight for what me and Krysty have built here. To fight for the Regina and for the love she spreads.”
“Ryan, please...” Doc began, reaching surreptitiously for the LeMat blaster beneath the tails of his frock coat.
“I have spent my whole life fighting,” Ryan continued, “and now, finally, I’ve found somewhere where that’s not a way of life. And you know what—you’ve come to us with this story about brain poison in the food, and you’ve asked me to believe you and all I want to do is fight. But the thing is, I haven’t wanted to do that for weeks, not since we got here. And that’s not me. I know that and I should have seen it. You’re right—I would stand by J.B. and do all I could for him if I thought he had gone crazy, just as I would stand by Krysty and Jak and all of you. Just as I have stood by you.”
