The Nest (9 page)

I was already rolling out a line of tape along the bottom of the door, but it wasn't sticking very well to the carpet. I felt sick, just thinking of the shape and sheer size of the nest, like something oozed out from an evil ice cream machine, wave after wave of goo, congealing on the floor and producing little larvae and pupae and wasps.

From the monitor came the sound of a baby wailing and crying, wanting to be born.

“It's going to be okay,” I said, touching Theo's sleeping head.

I started duct taping the left side of the door,
but only got halfway before a spurt of wasps flew out at me through the gaps. I fell back. With my free hand I grabbed the can of Raid and let fly. I sprayed the whole lot of them, hard and long, so that they fell out of the air like they were coated in cement.

Hurriedly I put the swimming goggles over my eyes and pulled the drawstrings of my hood tight. I made sure my jeans went over the rims of my hightops. The gardening gloves made my fingers feel a bit clumsy, but I could still work the spray nozzle.

“Sorry, Theo,” I said after blasting a second wave of wasps. I felt bad that his little lungs had to breathe in the spray. But I had no choice. I didn't dare put him down anywhere I couldn't see him.

From Nicole's room I heard a phone ringing and thought I must be imagining it. The phone line was dead. The wasps had chewed through it.
But when it rang again, I knew this was a sound I'd never heard in our house before. It was shriller, more like an old-fashioned alarm clock with a hammer that beat at two little bells. Nicole's toy phone.

Triiiiiing-triiiiiing! Triiiing-triiiiiing!

I had an overpowering urge to answer it but was worried that if I broke off from the door, too many wasps would get through and overwhelm me. I kept taping and spraying, but it wasn't doing much good. There were too many wasps now, and they kept coming. The nozzle of my can started to spit and fizzle. On the other side of the spare room door, the buzzing mounted—like the sound cicadas make at the end of summer before they die, the sound of high voltage and heat and death.

Triiiiiing-triiiiiing! Triiiing-a-liiiing-a-liiiing!

“Don't answer that, Steven,” said the queen from the monitor.

That was all I needed to hear. With a final blast of Raid, I dropped the empty can and bolted into Nicole's room. I saw the plastic phone, snatched up the receiver.

“The knife,” said the voice like a grindstone.

“The knife?”

“Use it,” the metal voice scraped out.

“How's a knife going to help me?” I shouted.

“Get a grip.”

“Hey, wait!” I said, but there was nothing more.

It didn't matter. I knew exactly what he was talking about. I was already rushing to my parents' room. I yanked open the drawer, dragged out the yellow pages, and took hold of the knife. My grip was good.

When I turned, there was a cloud of wasps in front of me. On instinct I slashed at them with the knife, cutting the air stroke after stroke, not knowing if it was doing one bit of good, until I saw the
wasps' severed bodies raining down on my shoes. The knife had been made for my hand. It was like a scythe of impossible sharpness, and I whirled left and right, cutting back and forth in a zigzag until there was not a single wasp left in the air before me. I was panting and sweating and triumphant.

“Come on, then!” I shouted. “Hah! See? See? Come on!”

With my free hand I reached around into my knapsack and grabbed my last can of Raid. I popped the top off, then strutted back down the hallway, knife raised, toward the spare room door, where another wave of wasps was gathering—and then I stopped.

From Theo's room, at the very end of the hall, came a rattling sound. I had a clear view of the window and saw the closed blind bulge as if pushed by a gust of wind, then knock back against the screen. With a
pop
, the blind bucked like it had been kicked from the outside. The screen clattered to the floor, and the wasps came. They came in a gray torrent around the edges of the blind and then right through it, their mandibles obliterating it into confetti.

I knew, even with my knife, there was no way I could fend them all off like this, coming at me now from two directions. I ran into my parents' bathroom, slammed the door, and locked it. I put the knife down in the sink and got to work. Along the bottom of the door, the duct tape stuck well to the tiles, way better than to the hall carpeting.

I moved on to the left side of the door. Done. Good. Right side. Done. Good. Across the top. Harder, nothing to stand on to reach it properly. But done. I had a single layer down on all sides now, and nothing was coming through yet. I
didn't stop. I laid down a second layer, then a third. Good. Still nothing. I held my breath a moment and heard only silence from the other side.

“You and me are going to be just fine,” I said to Theo.

I looked all around the bathroom, saw the fan vent. Standing on the toilet, I put three layers of duct tape over it. I was sweating pretty hard now, could feel little rivers flowing down my flanks from my armpits. My heart furnaced away, heating up the bathroom even more.

There were white venetian blinds over the window, and when I parted two of the slats, it was like peering into fog. A wall of wasps was swarming outside, and I could barely see the trees and rooftops through their translucent bodies.

I started taping around the window frame, and then right across the screen too, until it was entirely covered.

By now I was feeling pretty wobbly, and I sat down on the edge of the bathtub and stroked the baby's head and made shushing noises, even though he was still fast asleep. A good sleeper, our Theo. I opened up my knapsack and spread out all my gear within easy reach. The one good can of Raid. Flyswatter. The last roll of duct tape, getting skinny. I wished I had some energy bars. My hands shook. I went to the sink and got the knife. Just holding it made me feel better.

I drank some water from the tap. I taped over the drain hole, just in case. I watched the bottom of the door to make sure nothing was coming through. I just had to wait now. Wait for someone to come home—or at least see the house covered in wasps and call someone. Would it be the police? The ambulance? The firemen to spray down the house with a hose? But who could really stop them,
these wasps? This thought made my heart beat even harder. Who could clear them away in time?

Dry scratching from all around the door. I put down more tape. I hoped it would slow them. Surely their legs would get stuck to the sticky side and make it harder for their mandibles to chew through. Wouldn't it?

A distinct smell filled the house now—and it wasn't my body's smell, or the baby needing a change. It was a smell I recognized from my dreams in the nest. A pheromone. A wasp smell that the queen must have used to communicate with all her workers. I wondered if she was actually inside now, ordering them with her scent.

I rested my EpiPen on the edge of the sink. The doctor had showed me how to use it. Jab it into a bare leg, but in a pinch, any skin would do. I wondered how many wasp stings it was good for.

Rattling in the fan vent. I laid down another layer of tape. Standing on the toilet, I could see the tape pucker with the weight of their muscular little bodies—and then a pair of tiny mandibles cut through. I taped over the hole fast.

Outside the window the noise grew to a kind of frenzied growl. It was the sound of wood being pulped. I tried to figure out where the noise was loudest, and stretched the last of my duct tape there. I was out.

“Don't worry,” I said to the baby. “We're going to be okay.”

Back to the wall, I stood, knife in one hand, last can of Raid in the other.

I waited. I put a small towel over the baby's head, adjusted it so it wasn't covering his nose or mouth, so he could still breathe okay.

I saw the tape across the bottom of the door start to move, saw a head poke through, then another.
I kicked at them until there were too many getting through. Then I stepped back and adjusted my grip on the knife.

I cut them down as they came, the knife so unbelievably thin and sharp, slitting the air and the wasps with it. But it was different this time, I could tell right away. There were more of them, and they pushed harder.

I sprayed out a thick wall of Raid and fell back, then started slashing again in all directions, scything them down. They were coming in a thick gray torrent from the fan vent now too. I let fly with more Raid. In huge waves they came at me, and I blasted away until the air was foggy and I was coughing and retching. I worried the baby would suffocate.

The screen went, and the wasps poured through the window. I backed myself up into a corner. Even
through the spray they kept coming, and then there was nothing left in the can.

Back and forth I cut with the knife, but there were just too many now.

The wasps were on my clothing, against the swimming goggles. My hoodie was cinched tight around my face, but I could feel them on the fabric, trying to get underneath. I swatted them on my body and away from the baby, who was awake now, because I had to swat him on his little head too when the wasps landed there.

I felt the first sting on my ankle. They'd gotten up under my jeans. Then a second on my temple. They were inside my hoodie. I kept slashing with the knife, just trying to keep them away from the baby and myself. It was no good. Pain seared my right wrist and hand—so intense that I dropped the knife. I saw it hit the floor, and then I couldn't
see it anymore, because the wasps were all over it.

Another sting. They were trying to kill me this time. They didn't need me anymore. All they needed was the baby. My left eye was swelling shut. Another hot stab in my cheek. I lurched over to the sink, grabbed my EpiPen, and pulled off my glove. In the time it took to jab myself in the soft part of my wrist, I must have gotten stung six more times.

My heart surged, like pots banging in my chest. I was stamping on the wasps, slamming my back against them to crush them against the walls. Smashing them with my swollen fists. Doing a maniacal death dance in the fog. If I could just see the knife . . .

I couldn't catch my breath. My face felt fat. I could barely see through the goggles. More stings came, and more.

It was no good, no good. I was all stung and broken, and there were too many of them. I staggered into the bathtub and pulled the shower curtain shut—as if that would do anything, as if it would stop them for even one second. I crouched down in the tub and covered the baby with my body. I tried to seal him safely under me, my arms and legs all folded up tight so nothing could get to him. Like he was all tucked up in bed, and the floor could open and he could slide down and a door would close over him and nothing could get him. He was safe.

I felt them all over me, my back and my neck. They found ways in. And I just tried to keep my body tight and hard like a turtle shell over the baby.

I thought I heard a sound beyond the bathroom door, not a buzzing or a scraping but the peal of
a handbell. And then there was another terrible noise—and I realized it was me, rasping for breath, like trying to suck air through a straw.

And then my heart swelled up like a big balloon of darkness.

S
LOWLY
I
WOKE
,
SURROUNDED BY SOFT WALLS
, close on both sides and low overhead. It was like being wrapped up in bed with a duvet pulled over my head. I exhaled and felt warm and safe. I was still folded up, my arms and legs beneath me, head bowed. Like a baby in the womb.

The baby.

I realized Theo wasn't with me. I felt for him with my hand. I was more awake now. I managed to flip over onto my back. There was just enough room
to do that, the ceiling was so low, the walls so close. There was a give to them, but when I pushed harder and tried to dig in with my fingernails, they were surprisingly strong. It was very dim, just the grayest of light, and when I looked down to my feet, I saw a hexagonal opening, and taking up almost all of that opening was the queen's head.

From her mandibles glistened a thick paste as she laid down layer after layer, sealing me inside the cell.

“Hey!” I shouted, and tried to kick at her half-built wall.

Swiftly she swiveled and jabbed her long stinger into the cell, dripping venom. I backed up fast. She continued with her work.

“Where's the baby?” I shouted.

One of her long antennae snaked into the cell and touched my foot.

“The baby's fine. He's ready to be born.”

“I mean my baby—not your baby!”

“Don't you see how ridiculous this whole argument is?” she said, still working away swiftly. “And tiring. You must be so tired, Steven. You're fighting a losing battle. People lie and say they don't want perfect. But really they do. Perfect bodies and minds and comfy chairs and cars and vacations and boyfriends and girlfriends and pets and children. Above all, children. Why do we lie and say we don't? Because we're afraid people will think we're mean or vain or cruel. But we all want it. Me, I'm just helping it come true. I'm at least telling the truth. No liars here, no sir.”

“Let me out!”

“Just calm down and take a breath and stop trying. Stop fighting.”

“Don't hurt Theo!”

“I'd love to accommodate you. Really I would.
But things have been set in motion. People have said yes. Agreements have been made. There are procedures to be followed.”

“I'm going to stop you! I'm going to destroy your nest!”

“Oh my goodness, that will be difficult. Since you're dead.”

Instantly I felt like my chest was collapsing, like it was made from the paper of the nest and it was all crumbling inward. “What?”

“No one likes being the bearer of bad news. Gosh, you look really upset. Come on, now, don't take it so hard. Actually, you know what? You're not quite dead yet. Unconscious certainly, but I can still hear a pulse. The pitter-patter of tiny beats. Rather irregular. I wouldn't give you long. You've been stung a lot. Breathe, remember. Deep breaths! Come on now.”

“I'm not dying!” I shouted, feeling suddenly cold all through. Yet, like an echo through my limbs—or was it just a memory?—I felt my heart pumping faintly and erratically.

All the while, the queen was still building her wall, and there was only a little bit of her face showing now, her eyes and antennae.

“But you can still be useful to us, Steven,” she said. “Don't you worry. Once the baby was finished, there was really just one last thing for me to do. Do you know what that was?”

“No,” I wheezed.

“Lay one last egg. Make a new queen.”

She pulled back her antenna, and I caught a final glimpse of her busy mandibles before the hole was sealed over.

I kicked and shouted at the hexagonal wall.

“Let me out! Where's Theo? Theo!”

But nothing gave. They were master builders, these wasps, and whatever I was now, alive or dead, I didn't have the strength to break through my cell. Maybe I had already gone and died, because I felt so tired, though in a nice way. Like after a summer day spent bicycling or hiking and all your limbs were pleasantly sore and heavy.

Behind my head the cell wall moved. I reached back with a hand, pushed, and felt something shift a bit. With a surge of hope I clumsily flipped myself onto my stomach. With both hands I pushed. They went through up to the wrists, into a thick goo. Grunting in disgust, I pulled back and squinted at the wall. It wasn't a wall but a large sac I'd just punctured. Ooze seeped out. Within was something shapeless and white, and as big as me. Its two black dot eyes were fixed on me, and below them was a big hole of a mouth, rimmed with barbs.

I cried out and pushed myself back, but there was really nowhere to go. The cell was so small. My feet drummed against the queen's new wall, but it held. She'd sealed me inside with her egg, and now it had hatched and I was going to be the larva's first food.

Slowly it was wriggling out of its sac, moving its pasty grub-like body closer to me. I punched its face, and it flinched but then inched forward again, its big mouth wide, hungry for its food.

From behind me came a loud ripping. I wrenched my head round and saw something sharp pierce the hexagonal wall and cut a slash from one end to the other. I felt a push against my head and gave a shout. Turning back, I recoiled, and saw the larva's moist face pressed against mine, its mouth trying to fit itself around my skull. I squeezed myself farther back, as small as I could, and then heard a second ripping sound near my feet.

Two diagonal slashes in the wall made a jagged
X
. A dark shape thrust right through the center and started cracking the wall apart, piece by piece.

“Help!” I shouted—at whatever it was that wanted to come in.

I felt the larva's barbed teeth start to test their grip on my skull. I screamed and beat at it with my fists, but the thing was senseless and unstoppable. Something took hold of my ankles and pulled. I was dragged away from the larva and its mouth, dragged right out of the cell. I scrambled to my feet. I turned.

Facing me was the shape from all my nightmares. It was the thing I'd never looked at, standing waiting at the foot of my bed. But now it was right in front of me and I couldn't look away. My throat felt welded together. I couldn't breathe or make a sound.

It had no face, not really. Just a hint of one, like a little kid's scribbles inside a circle. The rest of it didn't even seem to have arms or legs, although in some shadowy fold of its body, I saw the flash of my knife.

The dark figure strode toward me, and I tensed, waiting for that sharpest of blades to go through me. I flinched as the knife lifted, but it stopped and seemed to hover in thin air. Around the handle I saw the shadowy suggestion of a hand. A hand with only four fingers, strangely splayed like a pincer.

“The knife man,” I said.

“Mr. Nobody,” he replied. “Take it.”

Gratefully I took the knife back into my hand.

“We've got to be quick,” he said.

He grabbed hold of me and pulled. I had to run to keep up. I realized we were not in the queen's nest outside my house—not the nest with the baby. This one was huge, like a cathedral of little empty cells, row after row, higher and higher. We were in the massive attic nest.

“Where are they all?” I asked. “The wasps?”

“Getting ready to carry their baby inside. And move yours out.”

We were rushing along narrow ridges, leaping over small canyons of cells. I didn't know where we were going.

“But . . . where am I . . . my body really?”

“In the bathtub, unconscious and dying.”

“But I'm not dead yet.” It was as much a demand as a question.

“You're still alive.”

We ran on through the maze of the nest. He seemed to know where he was going.

“But how are you here?” I called after him. “Are you . . .”

“Alive? No. I move in people's dreams mostly. I have to choose who can see me. Hurry now.”

I thought of him on my front lawn, the knife guy with his big scary blade, but our neighbor hadn't even seen him. None of them had. Only us. An unsettling thought suddenly came to me.

“That wasn't you, all these years, at the end of my bed?” I asked.

“No. That was only your imagination.”

“Oh. Good.”

“I only come to warn people, if I can.”

“About the wasps?”

I could see more of a shape to him now as he ran, shoulders, arms, legs.

“Yes.”

“But who are you really?” I asked.

“Just Mr. Nobody. I was replaced.”

I staggered after him, stunned. “It . . . it happened to you?”

“Many years ago.”

A wasp suddenly lunged toward us. My knife flashed out and cut the creature into twitching halves.

“I'm not alive,” said Mr. Nobody. “Scarcely was. The wasps can disperse me. I can't fight them. I can only give you the knife. And show you the way.”

“You mean the way out?”

We'd reached the outer wall of the vast nest, and I could see a bright narrow tunnel boring through the rafters of our house.

I suddenly realized where we were. “This goes into the other nest, doesn't it?”

“Yes.”

“What do we need to do?”

“The nest can't function without its queen.”

“And what about Theo?”

“To save him you will have to kill the queen.”

“Me?”

“It has to be you. I'm nothing.”

He was crawling on all fours into the tunnel. I followed. We arrived at a small ledge, the spot I'd become so familiar with after all my visits. Light shafted up from the narrow hole at the bottom of the nest. Hanging from its stalk was the upside-down baby, blinking and wailing. At the top of the nest a small team of wasps was frantically chewing away at the stalk. Taut from the baby's weight, it slowly started to fray.

And beneath the baby was a vast swarm of wasps, as dense as a thundercloud, landing all over it, their wings churning to take its weight.

Suddenly the queen was hovering before us, her stinger cocked high. Her long antennae snaked out and grazed me and Mr. Nobody.

“Oh, not you again,” she said dismissively to Mr. Nobody. “Honestly, some people do hold a grudge. Ladies! Over here, please!”

Wasps boiled up through the nest and instantly coated Mr. Nobody.

“Stop it!” I yelled. “Stop!”

With my knife I slashed at them. Bodies fell everywhere, but there were too many, a thousand spots of pale light—and I remembered that dream, the very first night I'd seen the wasps and thought they were angels. There had been a dark shape in the beginning of that dream, and I'd assumed it was my nightmare, but really it'd been only Mr. Nobody come to warn me, and the wasps had obliterated him, just like they were doing now, until his shadow was gone entirely. The writhing mass of wasps dispersed suddenly, as if instructed.

Only the queen remained, hovering before me, a
long antenna just touching the top of my head, the rest of her well beyond my reach. I swiped at her antenna, and each time she deftly lifted it higher, returning it only to speak to me.

“Oh, do put down the knife,” she said. “Stop being silly! Look. We're just going to carry the baby in now.”

It was impossible not to look. The hole at the bottom of the nest was dilating, letting more wasps fly inside to clamber over the baby's head and shoulders and arms. They would carry him right down out of the nest, through the open window, and into the empty crib.

“There's nothing you can do,” the queen said. “You're dying, Steven. In a few seconds you'll be just another Mr. Nobody!”

“I'm not dead yet,” I whispered.

She cocked her head. “You're right; you're not.”

And in a single swift movement, she swiveled in
midair and plunged her stinger into me. It went right through my chest, right through my heart and out between my shoulder blades.

“There you go,” she said. “That should do it.”

I felt the venom seeping in, and everything else out: my air, my thoughts, my strength. I was aware of a distant thumping, getting slower and slower.