Hornets and Others

by Al Sarrantonio

  Beside him, Jimmy smiled grimly. "Didn't have to say you could find him, Bill. Everybody knows that story. I say there's nothing to it."

  "I said I'd find him and I meant it. Let's go," Bill said, and they turned once more upward.

  "Looks like the door from Twilight Zone," Paul said, but Jimmy hushed him as another creaking sound came. "That was you, idiot," Bill said, and he put his foot where Jimmy's had just been, producing another low crack of old worn wood.

  The door was huge to them—four panels, the two on the top smaller, like squinting eyes. The knob was cut crystal, tarnished, like the ones in Bill's grandmother's summer house; he wondered if he would be able to turn it since he had so much trouble with those others—but then that had been because he was only three and he couldn't open any doors without difficulty.

  "I hear somebody inside," Paul hissed, and they halted until Paul poked the two of them in the ribs, making them smother shouts. "Thought I did," Paul laughed.

  "Come on," Bill said.

  His hand was on the knob. It was just like those others, a thousand cut facets like imperfect prisms. It was slightly oval, fitting into the palm of his hand like a smooth Bay rock, a good one for skimming. He turned to smile at Paul and Jimmy, one step below him.

  "Go ahead," Paul said, grinning stupidly, and Jimmy stared at him unblinking.

  He turned the glass knob.

  The door swung inward, as if pulled back by weights and pulleys. For a moment he saw nothing in the room but grey-yellow light and dust: a small hexagonal skylight choked with dirt, plastered walls with great rivers and tributaries of cracks, flaking holes, dark wood molding at the ceiling sagging out of its nail holes, pieces of it gone here and there, the floor covered with a sheen of undisturbed dust—and then he saw a chair with an old man in it.

  "Holy shit," Bill said, and he reached for Jimmy and Paul but they weren't there. He heard their yells, their feet clattering down the stairway to the bar below.

  The man in the chair opened his eyes once, a flutter of ancient eyelids like a lizard's, and it was over. After me, only you, Bill heard, though he didn't see the old man's lips move.

  Bill blinked; time moved.

  "Jimmy? Paul?" he called out. He stood over the threshold, the smell of mustiness in his nostrils, the glaring dead light from the six-sided skylight throwing the color of mustard at him. The room was empty. The arms were gone from under his; again, as before, he heard the sound of steps moving down the stairway behind him. He looked down, saw his army boots, and he felt his fatigue coat buttoned high around his neck. The room spun, came still; he saw off in one solitary corner the empty chair, high-backed, seat worn smooth—

  "Jimmy! Paul!" he cried, knowing that his voice carried empty down the turning stairs, buried deep before it reached the floor below. "Jimmy..."

  He walked, and the chair held up its arms to him, and he embraced it...

  So that is what was. So long past, so many sour shines of moon and sun through my little window above. My eyes never open anymore...

  But you are here now. I hear you. On the stoop, hesitation at the door, and then you push it open. The smell of beer and smoke. No one looks up as you sneak past—how many of you are there—two? Four? It doesn't matter. Only one will enter. To the back, past the jukebox, up the steps. A hesitation, another.

  Come closer.

  The Beat

  "Dancing to a beat is as peculiarly human a habit as is the habit of artificially making a fire."

  —Edwin Denby

  FORMS IN MOTION AND THOUGHT

  Minnow was pulled through the City. Feeling the beat—thump, thump—rising from the cracked asphalt, through the soles of her boots, stabbing up into her feet, through the leg and up her chest, until—wham--out through the top of her head and hands—feeling this, even as her fingers began to snap by themselves—she felt despair and lethargy overtake her. Leave me be, she whispered under her breath, but the beat wouldn't go away. Like a third rail jolt, she was locked onto it.

  Snap, snap. It was as if her boots were metal and clamped to the magnet of the beat. It made her leap and dance. She flopped high into the air—came down, swuck, pulled like a piece of metal back to the magnet of the road again.

  She whirled from block to block. The sun was rising now over the jagged edge of a skyscraper. It would be another hot day, and Minnow groaned at the heat to come. In yawning black doorways, others were starting to stir, rising on wobbly legs and being overtaken by the beat again. The worst were the cripples and arthritics—their dancing was a tortuously forced one: each step bringing cries of pain as a thousand knifepricks rolled up and down their limbs.

  Minnow found herself now at the head of a grotesque conga line. It would be one of those days—the beat below was tapped into its sardonic circuit. When it felt playful, there was always trouble—burnings and perhaps other violence: perhaps even, Minnow thought with a shudder which quickly turned into a waving flourish by the beat, they would have another summer day like the one two years ago, with human head-topped flagpoles and the crack of overdanced bones filling the air long after the sun went down. Minnow doubted it—the beat had obviously been so drained by the whole onslaught that it had nearly shut down completely, its solar power reserves dried up—but maybe it had purged those circuits.

  With an effort, Minnow stole a glance behind, and was greeted with the sight of a thirty block-long kicking line of bodies all following her demented lead. Dip, rise, hands in the air, hands down, shout, kick, hands in the air—the conga wove back and forth up the street with a pulsed regularity. The dance went on for a long time, with only a short heaving break which found twenty or thirty dead dancers flopping to the ground, their source of animation removed. During the pause, a few live ones tried to run for the buildings, but it was useless: in a few minutes the beat called them back again and the dance resumed.

  This time they flapped and stepped their way in and out of buildings, a mile-long snake of human and halfhuman, climbing staircases and corking down fire escapes. One stairway broke under the heaving weight, but the dance went on, the bisected parts of the conga line rejoining outside the building. Minnow heard the screams of those who had been buried but were still dancing, under all that rubble...

  But as Minnow had prayed, the dance ended at nightfall. There would be no undue carnage, no burnt-alive bodies, after all. The beat had decided, at least for tonight, to take it easy on its fuel reserves. Despite the heat of the day, and the clarity of the air which had led Minnow to fear that a bad one was happening since the beat sucked in more juice when the skies were cleared, the whole thing shut down with the sun.

  Minnow, along with everyone else, dropped half dead to the pavement when the dance ended, and fell asleep on the spot. The human body was not made for punishment like this—sixteen hours of uninterrupted movement. Sometimes Minnow would try to fall asleep while dancing—the heat roasting into her and all—but sleep hardly ever came or, when it did, didn't stay long. And sometimes the beat knew this, and responded in kind...

  Minnow awoke and pulled herself to her feet. The soles of her boots were still humming. Unsteadily, she hurried to where the others would gather—it would be best to get there first. But when she pulled herself up the five flights of steps and pushed the flap of the door aside, she realized that she had slept longer than she'd thought. They were all there already.

  "We've got to do something tonight," said Cave, not waiting for Minnow to say anything. His mouth was as grim as the rest of him, and almost as hugely wide: Minnow remembered that there had been a time when Cave had laughed with that mouth but that was before the girl — Ginny? Rava? Whatever—had been pulled under by the beat. He wasn't a laugher anymore.

  "We thought you were dead, Minnow," said another voice from the corner. Minnow peered that way; it was Goat—a half-treacherous bastard who, it was rumored, had done as much killing during the night as the beat did during the day. It had been obvious for a long time that Goat had
set his eyes on Minnow's position, if not her body; and Minnow knew, along with everyone else, that there was only one outcome of that silent challenge: one less set of limbs for the beat to jerk around.

  Minnow flexed her legs, pointing her toes out at Goat's dark corner. "Sorry to disappoint you."

  There was uneasy laughter.

  From the other side of the room another voice spoke up. A new one. Soft and careful, and the face that did the talking was, like Goat's, hidden in shadow.

  "If you don't do something tonight there won't be another chance." All eyes swiveled toward the stranger.

  "And who are you?" asked Minnow in a neutral voice.

  The stranger leaned forward into a patch of weak light, and there was a gasp.

  "Call me Skull."

  His head was like his words. At first it looked to Minnow like it really was a skull, skin and organs stripped bare to bone: but, on a more careful look in the dimness she saw that he wore a mask, a tight-fitting death's head over his own.

  "Why the theatrics?" Minnow asked, in a tone more defensive than neutral now.

  "I have my reasons," the stranger said curtly. "I've been traveling a long time, started out from the other side of the continent, and I can tell you that things have already fallen apart over there. Have been, all across the country."

  "This destruction been following you, by any chance?" This from Goat.

  Skull worked his head slowly towards the other. There was a moment of silence.

  "Can't say. But I know what I saw." He turned back to Minnow, his voice softened again. "And what I saw was this. That thing below, that you call the beat here—it's called a lot of different things—it seems to have completely lost control, and is slowly and methodically killing off everything. I think it's eating itself alive, looking for something it wants. Have things been getting progressively worse lately?"

  There was a pause before Minnow answered, "Can't say they've gotten better."

  "It's what I've seen everywhere."

  Again a pause. "And you think it's going to happen here?"

  The stranger spoke very softly.

  "Tomorrow or the day after, at the latest."

  "Then what?"

  It was hard to tell whether the light in Skull's eyeholes came from real or reflected fires.

  "And then nothing. Nothing left."

  "Well, then we act. Tonight. How long do we have before sunrise, Copper?"

  A short, bright redheaded man at her left looked at an ancient time piece on his wrist. He shook it, cursed, "Wait a minute," he said, and scampered out of the room, returning a few minutes later.

  "By the stars, I'd say six hours."

  "Six hours." Minnow seemed to mull this over. "You say you don't think we have another day?"

  "I'd say no," replied Skull.

  "All right. We have a vague plan, you can come along if you like. We know how to get in down there, that's all. From then on we're on our own. You have anything to add?"

  "I've been down there once. All the way."

  Again a gasp.

  "You've been all the way down?"

  Softly. "Yes."

  "You'll lead with me. Copper and Cave behind. Goat and the rest after. Take whatever tools we have. Think you can get us all the way through, using our entrance?"

  Skull leaned back into his shadow. "No doubt. The system is a continuous grid; there's no one major focal point. Break them all, break any one, it all goes apart like a broken chain."

  Minnow couldn't help keeping the awe out of her voice; she feared her mouth was hanging open.

  "What is it like? What is the beat like?"

  There was quiet.

  "You'll see," he said, and then his death's head was silent.

  They found the hole with no trouble. Minnow had been afraid it would be covered, or worse yet, gone; but apparently the beat had not detected their advent the first time she and Copper had stumbled onto it after a day of fevered dancing, or, if it had, had not thought it worth its while to do anything about it.

  When she told Skull all this he merely grunted and led on.

  They had a few crude lights that Copper had wired together, ancient acid batteries goosed into life and connected to unbroken 25 watt bulbs. Those in the back carried tarred and oiled rags in case the batteries went dead.

  They went down steeply for awhile, first descending a vertical greasy ladder and then, after traversing a short tunnel, a long staircase that led down in a slow arc. There were puddles at intervals, and the smell of dead matter: Minnow turned to Skull but his head only seemed to grin at her in the sour light. There were rats, too, large ones; with red tight eyes like small laser tracks. They were bigger than the ones on the surface, some a good three feet long: Minnow commented that the reason the ones on the surface didn't grow bigger was that the beat got to them there.

  "I saw one dance itself to death one day, just before twilight," she said in hoarse whisper. "He was squealing like mad up on his hind legs, blood and spittle coming out of his mouth. You could see the strength seeping from his limbs. He kept dancing till the beat stopped. And then he seemed to fold up and blow away."

  "They have the beat down here, too," was all Skull said as they pushed on.

  They wound downward for about a half mile before Minnow motioned for them to halt. "Copper, how much time left?"

  The redhead gave his wristwatch a bang. "I'd estimate four hours, give or take a half hour." His eyes were huge with fear. "The way I see it, we'd barely have enough time to get back to the surface again. If we get caught under—"

  "We die, just like above," Skull cut in. "Let's move."

  They continued for another mile. The walls were slicker now, and there was an acrid smell in the air, like burning metal or wires.

  "Are we close?" Minnow asked.

  "I can't say. I think so."

  "I thought you said you were down here?"

  "Only once," Skull replied.

  One of the electric lanterns began to dim so they lit the other, but this too faded, victim of a fragile bulb. They went on by torchlight.

  Abruptly, the steps ended and their pathway ahead widened. Minnow saw that it was brighter around them, despite the weaker light of the torches.

  "There's something up ahead," she said unnecessarily.

  Skull didn't acknowledge, but only walked on.

  The five things were on them without warning. There was a shriek, and the torches were knocked aside by furiously flapping wings, leaving them all in a weird orange glow like sickly twilight.

  "Run ahead!" cried Skull, and they followed.

  The things—like huge hummingbirds with rotating metallic heads—followed them into a small amphitheater. This was the source of the light. It looked like a storage area or hexagonal locker: two of the walls were lined with storage bins and dusty metal cages, most of them empty. Tools and what looked like discarded uniforms jutted out of others.

  The hummingbirds forced them into a corner. They hung back a moment. Then, with frightening slowness, they began to move forward. Each had a finely honed set of whirring blades where its beak should be.

  "What the hell are they?" Minnow asked, pressing her back against the metal cabinet behind her. Her muscles tensed.

  "I don't know precisely," Skull answered. "Some sort of guard device, probably the only one still working. Maybe they're just outlaw machines." He gestured at all of them. "Spread out and wait for my signal. I should be able to draw them back away from you, and when I do, you run for the doorway behind us and move on."

  "What about you?" Minnow asked.

  "I'll catch up." He waved an arm. "Go!"

  Minnow hesitated, then moved quickly off to one side as she saw, with amazement, Skull leap straight at the hummingbirds. His jump was graceful, the gazelle-like arc of a ballet dancer—and in mid-leap he suddenly dropped to all fours. The hummingbirds seemed startled, and then, after hesitating a moment, fixed all their attention on Skull. Their wings dipped down, alo
ng with their deadly beaks; but by then Skull had rolled lithely off to the left and regained his footing, standing on his toes and bobbing lightly from side to side.

  Minnow stood transfixed in the doorway by his movement, and only when he shouted angrily did she duck back to the corridor where the others were waiting. They had managed to get out without any serious injuries, though Copper had sustained a large welt from bashing into a storage bin.

  They stopped halfway down the corridor, and waited. Ten minutes went by, and Minnow was just getting restless enough to start back toward the storage room when Skull appeared.

  "Are you all right?" She couldn't keep the note of concern out of her voice.

  He nodded curtly. "Let's move."

  Goat started to open his mouth but the look Skull turned on him made him stop.

  "I said let's go."

  Another hour and a half of forward and downward progress and they halted again. They were back in the same sort of tunnel they had started in; had passed two more storage areas, each larger than the last and both empty of hummingbirds or any other surprises.

  "How much time left?" Minnow asked hollowly.

  She already knew the answer.

  "Twenty minutes," Copper said in a dull voice.

  There was silence, and then Skull spoke.

  "I suggest we keep pushing," he said simply.

  No one moved.

  A sudden chill went through Minnow. Down here, a mile or so below the surface, it struck her like a hammerblow that she knew nothing about this man. He wore a mask, and sounded like he knew what he was talking about, and danced with a frightful grace she had never seen before—and that was all she knew about him. In twenty minutes the horrible dance would start again, as it did every dawning, and they would be trapped in a Skinner box on the word of someone they had trusted—she had trusted—for no other reason than that she had wanted someone to trust.

  "You knew we wouldn't make it," she said in a whisper.

  The twin caves where his eyes should be seemed to glow amber, then reverted back to dark tombs.