The Homing

by John Saul

  Marge and Jeff Larkin had already arrived, and Karen slid the Chrysler into the slot next to Marge’s Chevy. Her hand clamped firmly on Julie’s elbow, she led her daughter through the door into the waiting room.

  Marge and Jeff were sitting in the far corner, Jeff on the orange Naugahyde sofa, his mother on one of the matching chairs that faced it across a Formica-topped coffee table.

  They were neither talking to nor looking at each other, and Marge appeared almost as pale as Jeff. Ben was perched at the other end of the sofa, nervously flipping the pages of a comic book.

  “I’m sorry about all this,” Marge said, getting up and moving toward Karen. “I probably had a huge overreaction.”

  “It’s not your fault,” Karen assured her. “If you’re wrong, we’ll both feel a lot better, and if you’re right, at least we’ll know. Have you seen Dr. Filmore yet?”

  Marge nodded. “Just for a second. She waved to us, but I haven’t really talked to her yet. I think—” She fell silent as the door to the examining room opened and the doctor came out.

  If Dr. Filmore noticed the ashen complexions of the two teenagers, she gave no sign. “All right,” she said. “Which of you wants to come in first? Or would you like to talk to me together?”

  Julie’s eyes met Jeff’s, and Jeff stood up. Both Marge Larkin and Karen Owen watched carefully for any signs of nervousness in their children, but there were none. Together Jeff and Julie headed toward the inner office. When Karen and Marge started to follow, Ellen Filmore shook her head. “I don’t think we have an emergency here,” she said pointedly, “and if you don’t mind, I’d like to talk to the kids alone.” Leaving the two parents in the waiting room, she turned and followed Julie and Jeff into her office.

  “I assume you both know you’re here for a drug test,” she said, deliberately making the statement without preamble, in an attempt to catch them off guard.

  Julie nodded. “My mom thinks I’m doing them,” she said.

  “And you’re not?” Ellen asked.

  Julie shrugged. “I wouldn’t even know where to get anything around here.”

  “What about you?” Ellen asked, turning to Jeff.

  “I don’t hang out with kids who do drugs,” he said. “Sometimes I have a beer or two, but that’s all.”

  Ellen Filmore watched them carefully as she continued her questions. Certainly both of them looked pale, but their eyes didn’t have the dilation that was a prime indicator of drugs, and nothing in their manner made her think they were lying.

  “Do either of you have a problem giving me a urine sample?” she asked. Then: “And before you answer, let me tell you that I’ll have the results within thirty minutes, and there is no chance at all that the results will be wrong.”

  Julie looked up, and for the first time since she’d come in, smiled. “Where’s the jar?” she asked, almost flippantly.

  “In the bathroom.”

  Julie rose and started out of the examining room. “Roberto’s waiting for you,” the doctor went on. “He’ll be right outside the door while you put the sample in the jar.”

  Julie shrugged and continued on her way.

  “How about you?” Ellen asked Jeff. “Any problem taking the test?”

  “It’s fine with me,” Jeff replied.

  Ellen betrayed no sign of the relief she felt. Surely if they were on drugs they wouldn’t be nearly so relaxed about taking the urine test. “Okay,” she said. “Roll up your sleeve. Let’s take your blood pressure and see if we can find out what’s wrong with you.”

  Slowly and methodically Ellen began her examination of Jeff Larkin.

  Blood pressure and temperature.

  Lung capacity and reflexes.

  She looked in his eyes and ears, and down his throat.

  She took samples of his blood to send to the lab in San Luis Obispo, and asked him every question she could think of. Finally she sent him in to produce a urine sample.

  Then she repeated the examination process with Julie Spellman.

  Forty-five minutes later she was finished.

  Nothing abnormal.

  Not a trace of drugs of any kind.

  But Ellen Filmore still wasn’t satisfied.

  To her, both of them just plain looked sick.

  Totally baffled by the conflict between how the kids appeared and the results of her examination, she went out to speak to Karen Owen and Marge Larkin, who were waiting anxiously in the outer lobby.

  “Well, I’m pleased to be able to tell you that neither of them is on drugs,” she said, and gave Karen and Marge a moment to savor their relief. “The problem,” she went on, “is that I agree with you that something’s not right.” Out of the corner of her eye she saw the two adolescents glance at each other. “I can’t find any symptoms at all,” she went on. “Everything seems normal, except they don’t look quite right. Their complexions are too pale.” She shook her head. “If it were just Julie, I’d assume it’s a lingering reaction either to the bee sting or to the antidote. But that certainly doesn’t apply to Jeff. So what I want to do is send them to San Luis Obispo tomorrow.” As both their children groaned that it was a waste of time and there was nothing wrong with them, Marge and Karen stiffened with apprehension. Ellen Filmore hastened to reassure the worried parents. “Believe me, I don’t see this as an emergency, and if they look better tomorrow, maybe I’ll change my mind. But for now, I’d just feel better if they’d go over there to the hospital and get checked out. There’s a guy named Michael Callahan, and he’s really good.” She wrote the name on a prescription form and handed it to Karen. “Maybe he can find something I missed. But for tonight, take them home and try not to worry too much. All right?”

  After the two mothers had taken their children home, Ellen Filmore went back into her office to look once more at the results of the examinations she’d just given the two teenagers.

  Somehow, she’d missed something.

  Something she hadn’t seen, which she should have.

  But what?

  She didn’t know.

  And, worse, she didn’t know how to find out.

  Which meant that if there was some kind of new virus loose in Pleasant Valley, some new mutation that had infected Julie and Jeff, she didn’t know how to fight it.

  And that scared her.

  CHAPTER 17

  “Is it possible that Otto was right?” Karen asked.

  It was past ten, and Russell, already half undressed, tossed his shirt onto the back of the chair in the den where, despite all his arguments, Karen had settled in for the night.

  Though Kevin had insisted on sleeping in his own room upstairs, Molly and Julie were in sleeping bags on the living room floor, Molly making it an adventure, while Julie was playing the martyr, complaining that she didn’t see how she was supposed to go to San Luis Obispo in the morning if she couldn’t get any sleep tonight.

  “I’m not arguing,” Karen had finally told her. “I’m not even discussing it. Neither of you sleeps upstairs until those bees are gone, and that’s that.” Julie, sensing another grounding on the horizon, had let the matter drop, but Karen suspected she would get her revenge by letting Molly watch television as late as she wanted.

  Ten minutes ago, when they finally came into the den to go to bed themselves, Russell had hoped that the discussion of the bees was concluded, at least for tonight. Apparently, though, it wasn’t. “Right about what?” he asked as he opened the none-too-comfortable-looking sofa bed.

  “That Carl Henderson did something to the bees that we don’t know about.”

  Flopping down on the thin mattress and propping himself up on one elbow, Russell patted the bed in an invitation for Karen to sit down. “I’m not going to say it’s impossible that he was right,” he said. “I just don’t believe it. At least, I don’t believe that there’s some great plot going on, like Dad did. So for tonight, let’s just forget about everything and pretend we’re not even at home.” He glanced around the den. “This
is kind of fun,” he said, pulling her down so she was lying next to him. “We can pretend we’re in someone else’s house, and we’re all alone, and—”

  And then the door opened and Molly stood staring solemnly at them, clutching her teddy bear close to her chest.

  “I hear them again,” she said. “I’m scared.”

  Sighing, Russell rolled away from Karen and stood up, knowing instantly that any chance at romance was over for the night. “Bring her sleeping bag in here,” he told Karen. “I’ll go up and take a look, just to make you feel better.” But even as he headed up the stairs, he was certain that Molly had heard nothing at all, but simply decided she’d rather sleep with her mother than with her sister. Nor could Russell blame her for that, given the way Julie had been acting the last couple of days.

  Upstairs, just as he’d expected, nothing at all had changed.

  Kevin was in his room, already asleep, and when Russell pressed his ear to the wall that contained the swarm of bees, he could barely hear them.

  Less than five minutes after he’d left, he was back downstairs, and when he finally climbed into the sagging Hide-A-Bed in the den and gathered Karen into his arms, Molly was already sound asleep in her sleeping bag on the floor. “Everything’s fine up there,” he reported. “Whatever Molly heard, I don’t think it was coming from upstairs. In fact, it might not have been anywhere but in her imagination.”

  Karen snuggled close, feeling the strength of his body. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “It would have been fun, pretending we were all alone, wouldn’t it?”

  “Mmm-hmm,” Russell murmured, already falling asleep. A minute later he began to snore softly, and finally Karen, too, rolled over and buried her head in the pillow.

  She was too tired to worry anymore that night, and soon she drifted into a mercifully dreamless sleep.

  It was nearly two in the morning when Julie awoke the first time.

  She was feeling another one of those strange chills, but as she pulled the sleeping bag tighter around her body, she realized that she was hungry, too.

  Ravenously hungry, just as she’d been yesterday morning.

  She’d eaten a huge dinner—three helpings of the lasagna that her mother had pulled out of the oven when they’d finally gotten home from the doctor’s, and a big salad, and then a piece of pie.

  But still she was hungry.

  She slid out of the sleeping bag, pulled on the robe she’d left on the couch, and went into the kitchen. Rummaging in the refrigerator, she found the last piece of leftover pie, washed it down with a glass of milk, then, her appetite still unsated, began looking for something else. Fixing a sandwich, she finally turned out the kitchen lights and started back to the living room. But when she got to the foot of the stairs, she paused and gazed up into the darkness.

  From above, something seemed to be calling out, drawing her up toward the blackness on the second floor.

  Nothing she could see, nothing she could hear.

  But she could feel it.

  A vibration, resonating deep within her.

  Julie stood staring up into the darkness, feeling the beginnings of that terrible loss of control over her own mind beginning to play around the edges of her consciousness.

  She didn’t want to go upstairs, didn’t want to respond at all to the tingling sensation that was now spreading through her body or the strange compulsion that was drawing her to the stairs.

  She wanted to go back to the den, slip into her sleeping bag, and drift quickly into unconsciousness, where she would be free of the forces inside her.

  But a moment later—despite her own wishes—Julie walked up the stairs, almost as if in a trance, then down the hall and into her room.

  Stretching out on her own bed, she began eating the sandwich.

  As she ate, the vibration in her body became stronger. And now she could hear the droning hum coming from the wall. At last, the sandwich finished, she got up and went to the wall, pressing her ear against it.

  The humming in the wall resonated perfectly with the strange vibration in her own body, and she began to experience something she’d never felt before.

  It was as if she was actually feeling the droning of the bees.

  Was such a thing possible?

  The vibration grew steadily stronger, and Julie’s own consciousness began to drop away into some bottomless darkness.

  A barely audible whimper of fear emerging from her lips, she used the last of her willpower to push herself away from the wall and stagger to her bed.

  Then, as she lost control of her mind to the dark force within her, a sudden bout of feverish heat swept through her, and she stripped off her bathrobe and the nightgown beneath it.

  For a little while she drifted into oblivion.…

  Julie awoke again just before dawn, when the blackness of night was just beginning to fade into the gray of morning.

  For a second she felt nothing, then slowly realized that the odd vibration she’d experienced earlier was still there.

  But it was different now. Now it was coming neither from within her own body nor from the wall a few feet away.

  Now it was on her skin.

  She came further awake, and realized that the whole surface of her body felt charged with an electrical force.

  She lay still, waiting for the sensation to disappear as she came fully awake.

  It struck her that the droning hum of the bees was louder than ever.

  A cool breeze was blowing.

  Julie turned her head toward the window.

  The sheer curtains, which should have been billowing in the breeze, were hanging slack at the sides of the open window.

  Then Julie felt something else on her face, and her heart began to speed up as a memory surged up out of her subconscious.

  A memory from the other night, when she dreamed she’d been outside, naked, lying in the pasture, her body covered with millions of tiny red ants.

  But that had been a dream—she was certain of it!

  Now, though, dawn was breaking, and she was wideawake.

  Awake, but with that same feeling of millions of tiny creatures crawling over her skin.

  Suddenly an image came into her mind.

  Beehives!

  Beehives, on the hot afternoon when she’d first seen them.

  An afternoon so hot that hundreds of bees had stationed themselves on the ledge at the entrance to the hive, their wings beating as they fanned fresh air into the colony’s interior.

  Fanned air, creating a breeze.

  For several long minutes Julie held absolutely still. Of course she knew the idea that had come into her mind wasn’t possible, but try as she would, she couldn’t dismiss it.

  Finally she reached out, moving her arm very slowly, and switched on the bedside lamp.

  Bees were everywhere.

  Hovering in the air a few inches from her face.

  Crawling on the walls and across the ceiling.

  Covering her skin.

  A violent shudder came over her now that she could see them as well as feel them.

  They were clinging to her, their wings beating so fast her eyes could see only a blur.

  Yet at the same time that her terror of them began to grow once more, another part of her—that unnameable force that resided within her—responded to the breeze as it gently caressed her skin.

  And the morning brightened and the gray light of dawn slowly filled her room, and the entity within expanded, sapping the last of Julie’s will.

  Suddenly it was as it had been yesterday, when the bees swarmed over Greta and she’d known that somehow they had come in response to her own command, in response to that burst of strange energy she’d felt in her mind.

  She rose from the bed and went to look at herself in the mirror over her bureau.

  Her face was an undulating mask of insects, her features totally invisible, only her eyes still exposed, peering through an ever-shifting layer of bees that seemed to be moving i
n a pattern, almost as if they were performing some kind of ritual dance.

  Fascinated by the sight, Julie gazed into the mirror for several long minutes. Soon she began to understand that the bees weren’t individuals at all, but merely tiny parts of the swarm that together comprised a single being.

  A being that was communicating with her.

  The pattern of movement on Julie’s face kept shifting and changing, and slowly she felt something happening within her mind.

  She began to understand what the dance meant.

  Turning away from the mirror, her mind now totally surrendered to the will of the swarm, she left her room.

  The bees clung to her skin as she moved silently down the darkened hallway and descended the stairs.

  More of them gathered as she left the house by the back door and started walking across the yard.

  Soon they were streaming out of the house, erupting not only from the crack in the siding through which they’d first gained entry, but from the window of Julie’s room as well. Like a long ribbon fluttering on the morning breeze, the swarm trailed after Julie.

  As the morning sky slowly brightened and the first cocks began to crow, Julie Spellman started up into the low, rolling hills to the east of the farm, following a force of nature that neither she nor any other human could comprehend.

  The bees moved steadily on her face, and now Julie could feel their pattern on her skin, her nerves tingling as the insects’ legs stimulated them.

  The nerves sent messages to her brain that something inside her understood.

  And Julie walked on.

  Soon the low hum that had emanated from within the walls of the house was silenced. Obeying the command of their queen, the swarm had departed.

  CHAPTER 18

  “Mommy? Mommy!”

  Karen groaned, tried to pull the pillow over her head, then slowly opened her eyes. Molly’s face loomed in front of her. “What, honey?” she asked. “What is it? What time is it?”

  “I can’t find Julie,” Molly told her. “It’s almost six-thirty, and we should have fed Flicka and the rest of the horses by now, but I can’t find her!”