Wasp Season

by Jennifer Scoullar

  “Surprised to see me? You’re the thug that assaulted me in the car park, aren’t you? So now you’re a swindler and a bit of a back-door man as well. But you know, you’re pretty lucky, because right now, all I care about is damage control; getting you to confess to the police that you hacked into my accounts. How’d you do it? From my laptop? Maybe you were in bed with my girlfriend at the time?” Mark’s voice was thick with bitter sarcasm.

  “Anyhow, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. If you go directly to the police, now, I’ll try to make it as O.K. for you as I can. We can untangle this stupid mess with as little harm done as possible. I’ll even say that I know Helen put you up to it. That she’s got a screw loose. That you were being blackmailed or something. If you don’t, then pack your bags and prepare for some serious jail time. I’ll make sure they throw away the key.”

  Jason’s mind was racing at a million miles an hour, but the alcohol prevented him from effectively gathering his thoughts. Then he noticed something disturbing about Mark, or more specifically, about his shirt. It had what looked like blood stains across the front. Fear for Helen and loathing for Mark hit him in a single blind impulse.

  “If you’ve hurt her, I’ll kill you,” he declared in a low voice.

  Mark just laughed.

  “She’s not worth it mate. Don’t worry. She’ll be O.K. Although she’s not quite as pretty as she used to be. How do you fancy fucking a slut with a banged-up face?”

  Jason snapped. He lunged forward and attempted to throw a punch. This time, Mark was ready for him. Although not an experienced fighter, he had the advantage of a clear head. Stepping aside, he avoided the blow, leaving Jason unbalanced. As the confused man turned to face him, he managed to land his own punch to the stomach. With a great deal of satisfaction, he watched as Jason doubled over in pain. Capitalising on his advantage, he delivered another punch, this time a telling head-blow that sent his opponent reeling backwards into the wall. The back of Jason’s head smashed against a large painting, shattering its frame. A flying shard of glass cut him deeply above the eye. Multiple lacerations on his scalp left his thick hair sticky with steadily oozing blood. Jason slumped to a sitting position on the floor, a red stream pouring from above his brow. After a few moments, Mark came forward for a closer look at his defeated enemy. Jason’s left eye, barely open, filled with blood still spreading from his split temple. He looked in a very bad way.

  For the first time, Mark considered his own culpability in these events. Although according to his reasoning his partner and her lover had only got what they deserved, he was rational enough to recognise that the police might not see it in quite the same light. After all, they were bloodied and beaten, and he hadn’t so much as a scratch on him. Self defence might be a bit of a stretch. Crouching down in front of Mark, he thought perhaps he should try to stem the bleeding, and looked around for something to use as a pressure bandage.

  Mark never saw it coming. Jason, feeling about behind him for a piece of glass to use as a weapon, came across something much better. His cricket bat, lying on the floor against the wall. He firmly grasped it by the handle and, lining up his target with his one good eye, Jason swung it in a single smooth action, straight at Mark’s head.

  It collided with a sickening thud. Mark went out like the proverbial light, falling heavily to the floor. So incensed was Jason, that it took him all his self control to refrain from viciously kicking the prone man. But it was more important to get to Helen and in any case, he was developing the headache from hell. Curse his missing phone! She’d probably been trying to reach him, asking for help, trying to warn him. And he’d just waited uselessly at home like a sitting duck.

  Swearing under his breath, he grabbed his keys and stumbled outside, only to find Mark’s car parked directly behind his own, blocking his exit. Going back inside, he searched Mark’s pockets until he found his car keys. The hammering inside his head was growing rapidly worse as, still bleeding, he revved the car out of the driveway.

  Mark’s sports car was fast and powerful. Under other circumstances, it would have been a dream drive. But tonight it was more like a nightmare. With impaired reactions, Jason had a lot of trouble controlling the high-powered car, which seemed to reach tremendous speeds with the slightest touch of the throttle. Every now and then he had to wipe the blood out of his eyes as it threatened to completely obscure his vision. He barely noticed running the red light. The outside world seemed to fade. The squeal of brakes came to him, as if through a thick fog. Narrowly missing the entering traffic, he careened through the intersection, picking up speed. His thoughts were now nothing more than an incomprehensible collage of images of Helen. Mercifully, seconds later, blood-loss caused him to lapse into unconsciousness. Still accelerating, the convertible ran off the road, flipping over as it side-swiped a metal safety railing. Landing on its roof, it slid down a steep embankment, then slammed into a massive electrical power pylon. Instantly it burst into flames. The car and its occupant were incinerated in front of a small crowd of horrified passers by.

  CHAPTER 27

  It was almost time. From the sanctuary of her upstairs bedroom window, Beth watched the sun sink in a blood-red sky behind the distant mountain. It lingered interminably, sending rays of crimson far up into the twilight, as if struggling to remain aloft. Finally, abandoning the fight, it vanished, plunging all into darkness. In a few hours a full moon would rise, with the power to light the night. But until then only the brilliance of the stars pierced the blackness.

  Despite the setting of the sun, there followed no relief from the sultry heat of the day. Beth stood at her open window, acutely aware of an absence. The familiar night chorus was gone. For weeks now something had silenced the usual noisy nocturnal throng of cicada and frog calls. No crickets chirped in the garden. It seemed that even the resident Mopoke owl had fled. Except for the hum of mosquitos on the outside of the insect screen, the evening was eerily quiet.

  Beth was astonished at how the wasps, in such a short space of time, had fundamentally altered the natural scheme of things. Mosquitos, operating under the cover of darkness, thrived as never before. The wasps had eliminated most of their local, natural predators, such as spiders, from the garden. After her grim find by the dam, Beth was certain that even the frogs, another mosquito predator, had fallen victim to the wasps. Whatever the case, they were gone. Beth hated the silence.

  Convinced that it was finally dark enough, she went downstairs. Sarah was doing her homework and Rick was talking on the phone.

  ‘Who said only girls talk for hours,’ thought Beth, as she caught snippets of what sounded distinctly like gossip.

  “I’m going outside for a bit,” she informed her distracted children, who seemed to take absolutely no notice.

  Beth felt relieved. She was reluctant to tell anyone of her plans to fumigate the nest. It still felt like a shameful thing to do. She wanted to keep it secret.

  She collected the torch, covered neatly in its red cellophane, from the verandah table. Then she made her way to the woodpile, the way ahead illuminated by the strange, rosy glow of the torchlight. There, in the corner of the paddock, was the bucket containing the Carbaryl and protective clothing. Beth put the torch on the ground and stripped naked down to her underpants. She stood for a while, allowing the faint hint of a breeze to cool her by evaporating the moist sweat on her skin. She was vulnerable like this. If only Zenandra could read her mind, it would be an easy job for the wasps to kill her now, unprotected as she was. But of course Zenandra didn’t know. Up until recently Beth had almost been an ally, at least in spirit. At the thought of the pending attack she felt a chill, in spite of the sweltering night. Her skin developed goosebumps as she experienced an unexpected wave of fear.

  With nervous haste she put on the loose denim shirt and overalls and the beekeeper’s hat and veil. Lastly, she tightly buttoned her sleeves at the wrist and tried on the double-lined gauntlet gloves. Beth felt a little ridiculous. Instead of
vulnerable, she now seemed over prepared. Nevertheless, she continued to follow the instructions given to her by the council.

  ‘Always make sure you have a quick and easy escape passage away from the nest you are treating’.

  Pulling off her gloves, she went back to the fence next to the path, and opened the gate. If she needed to get out of the paddock in a hurry, she didn’t fancy having to stop to open it.

  Now all was ready. Taking a deep breath, Beth pulled the gloves back on and fitted the mask. She picked up her bucket and advanced right up to the nest entrance. A desire to get the dirty deed over and done with as soon as possible overtook her. Grabbing a tin of Carbaryl insecticidal dust, Beth smothered the cleverly concealed nest entrance with the cloying powder. Within seconds, wasps appeared at the surface. With a can of fast-knockdown residual insect spray, she squirted the unfortunate insects, causing them to fall to the ground, mortally stricken. They contracted into feebly struggling balls. Encouraged by the effect the poison had on the wasps, Beth grabbed the small hatchet and chopped at the ground, trying to gain more extensive access to the nest space. She alternated clouds of Carbaryl dust with floods of insect spray, whenever she encountered defenders. A sort of zeal descended on her as she continued to attack. Despite the mask, Beth was sometimes herself almost choked by the thick fog of powder. Even when she thought she had probably completed the task, she would go another round, alternately hatcheting, dusting and spraying.

  Inside the nest, the first indication of trouble was the vibration of footsteps overhead. Guard wasps, only lightly asleep even at night, swarmed out of the entrance hole to repel the attacker. Although primarily diurnal, wasps could see passably well at night. They erupted from the nest, incensed that their young royals should be threatened on the eve of their nuptials. Superbly confident as always, they had no way of knowing that their luck was about to run out.

  In the first seconds of the attack, the red light from Beth’s torch deceived their senses, giving them no indication of which direction the danger lay in. Immediately they faced an onslaught of toxic mist. The chemicals’ effect on the wasps was akin to that of a nerve gas attack on humans. The guard wasps first experienced a deterioration of their vision; vision that was already compromised by darkness. An intense headache soon followed, accompanied by nausea and convulsions. Violent tremors gripped their tiny bodies, as their nervous systems lost control and prevented the insects from performing coordinated movements. The active ingredient in the pesticide poisoned the wasps’ synapses, causing a tortured, continuous, unrestricted stimulation of their nerves. It was a slow death, taking some stronger individuals twenty minutes or more of desperate struggle before they too lapsed into a paralytic coma.

  As the poison penetrated further into the nest, the young queens and drones now met their fate. Too excited to sleep, many were still buzzing about the nest in anticipation of their virgin flight the next morning. As the effect of the poison took hold, they naively hoped that Zenandra could protect them. Those that could, fled towards their queen, convinced that they would be safe. The young royals died in front of her, suffering from dreadful, fatal tremors.

  Zenandra watched, slowly resigning herself to the death of the colony, and the fruitlessness of her life’s work. Her will to live saw her battle free of the doomed and damaged nest. She crawled towards the light of the stars. Zenandra recognised that she was dying, and strove for one last experience of freedom. In her mind existed an image of the night sky, remembered from long ago, before duty saw her nestbound. With painstaking slowness she clambered out of the nest and inched her way upwards towards the starlight.

  By this time, Beth had halted her attack. There was no longer much resistance. Dying wasps lay scattered everywhere. With one last hatchet chop, Beth broke through the surface above the buried tree hollow and saw the actual nest. It resembled a slightly squashed basketball. The stem was dislodged from the roof of the cavity, causing the whole thing to fall to the floor. Despite this, the extraordinary strength of the wasp-made paper gave the nest a good degree of resilience and it mostly held its form. The ground around it was littered with the vanquished wasps, not yet dead, but shrivelling and shuddering as their brilliant colours faded to grey.

  Despite her precarious situation, curiosity overtook Beth and she rashly removed the red cellophane from the lens of her torch. She could see clearly now. Leaning forward to more closely examine the nest, she somehow lost her footing on the uneven ground and landed, torch still in hand, prone on the ground, with her nose only inches from the destroyed nest. Fear gripped her, but then let her go, as she realised the insects were incapacitated. A wasp, much larger than the others, managed to crawl from the carnage towards Beth’s outstretched arm. With the last of her strength, Zenandra clambered onto Beth’s glove and curled up, trembling in the palm of her hand. By her size, and the state of her battered wings, Beth knew it was the old queen.

  Using only one arm, she pushed herself awkwardly to her feet, all the while cradling Zenandra tenderly in her glove. With her deadly fervour fully spent, Beth walked a little distance away from the nest, then sat down on the grass and wept. Thus Zenandra was spirited away from the scene of death and destruction to the quiet and beautiful peace of the warm, starry night. Grateful for this final service, Zenandra died, and her tiny spark of energy was released back into the universe.

  Slowly Beth’s weeping reduced to sobs. In the torch light she examined Zenandra’s little, wizened body and marvelled that this inconspicuous speck of life had such an influence upon her own, seemingly far more consequential life, over the course of the summer. Recognising that the old queen was finally dead, Beth dug a shallow furrow in the soil, and reverently deposited the insect’s body in the earth. With her finger she covered it over. After a minute or two she stood up, walked back, and shone her torch down into the collapsed pit. With her foot, she kicked some dry, crumbly clay over the crumpled, brown balloon and the withered wasps. Gathering her tools, she marched back home.

  Beth felt oddly desolate. Intellectually however, she understood that she’d acted properly, so she decided to try to put the task behind her. What a relief it would have been to be able to share the events of the evening; to debrief as it were. But there was no one, and for once she felt deeply alone. She stopped to lock the poison away in the shed and change out of her overalls before coming back inside. Sarah met her at the door with the phone.

  “It’s for you. I think its Grandma York.”

  It was immediately clear to Sarah that all was not well with her mother. Beth took the phone abruptly, thinking wryly to herself that perhaps the only thing worse than having nobody to talk to, was having Vanessa to talk to.

  “I think I’ll take the call upstairs,” she told her curious daughter.

  Sure enough, as she went upstairs, she recognised the distinctive voice of her mother-in-law.

  “Elizabeth, my dear, I need you to sit down. I have some terrible news for you I’m afraid.”

  Beth was frankly astonished to hear from Vanessa at all, and remained silent. There was a long pause.

  “There’s no easy way to tell you, I’m afraid. Mark is dead. He died this afternoon in a car accident.”

  Beth took Vanessa’s advice and sat down on the edge of the bed.

  “How?”

  “It was a single vehicle accident. The police seem to think that he lost control of his car for some reason and hit a pole. I’ve been told that the car burst into flames. Apparently there was no hope of saving him…”

  Vanessa’s usually controlled voice disintegrated into a sob.

  “I’m so terribly sorry,” was all that Beth could manage.

  “Of course you are Elizabeth, as are we all. You were always so good for Mark, and those poor dear children! We must all find courage and faith enough to be strong for them.”

  Despite the tragic circumstances, Beth still found her mother-in-law’s sympathy for Rick and Sarah a little insincere. After all, she had neit
her seen nor spoken to them since the separation. The fact was, that although during their marriage Vanessa had somewhat undermined Beth, by comparison to Helen she found her a highly desirable daughter-in-law.

  “I’ll let you know of the funeral arrangements as soon as I can confirm them. Such a terrible tragedy; such a terrible tragedy! Please give my love to my grandchildren. God bless you Elizabeth.”

  Again Vanessa’s voice broke a little. It still surprised Beth to hear such obvious emotion evident in the older woman’s speech. She was normally so imperturbable.

  “I’ll talk to the children. Thanks for letting me know. Of course, if there is anything I can do, please just ask.”

  “You are too kind. And with you and Mark just beginning to set things back on track too. It really is too tragic for words. Robert is just beside himself. He is in no state to make the necessary arrangements. I suppose I will just have to fill the breach! Try to rest, and I will call you tomorrow. Give our love to those dear children again, won’t you.”

  Beth sat, flabbergasted, for the longest time. A million thoughts crowded her head. How would she tell her kids? How would Helen cope? Would this change her life? Could she manage without Mark’s financial support? Would she miss him? What on earth was all that stuff about getting things back on track about? Clearly Mark had been misleading his mother about the state of their relationship. She wondered if he was genuinely deluded, or just mischief making. It didn’t look like she would ever know now.

  She tried to get her head around the news. Dead. Mark was dead. Mark, who always seemed so in control, so certain that he could make things turn out his way. Beth turned her thoughts to her children; his children too. They had just lost their father. She remembered what Vanessa said about the car bursting into flames and the full horror hit her. For the second time that night, Beth wept.

  CHAPTER 28

  The first shafts of sunlight filtered through the dusty venetian blinds, as Mark awoke. It took several minutes for him to emerge from the fog of sleep sufficiently, to recall why he had such an aching head. The events of the night before came back to him in a rush. He opened his eyes and moved cramped limbs. His stiff body sprawled awkwardly on hard floor boards and he had a severe crick in the neck, due to his head being jammed up all night against a television cabinet. An early morning children’s show blared loudly. Putting his hand to his head, he felt a very large bump. It reminded him of the lump a cartoon character might develop after a hammer attack.