CHAPTER ELEVEN
Nobody
VI
Long before Red Guy’s body stilled, the second larva metamorphosed into a second hornet, and the second chanter reached up to receive its sting. And even as that chanter stumbled and collapsed, a third came striding into the circle, and a third larva dropped down from the tunnel of light. And so it went. One by one, the crowd stepped forward to the altar to be stung. One by one, they bowed, they turned, they walked away—they died. Some made it twenty paces, others, only two; but all were stricken and fell, writhing, and all eventually went still. None screamed. None hesitated. Soon, the dead lay scattered in their hundreds. And still more waited to be stung. And all the while, the chant persisted, growing quieter and quieter as fewer and fewer voices remained to carry it.
Ink-hi-yah-ku-twa-vi…
Ink-hi-yah-ku-twa-vi…
Ink-hi-yah-ku-twa-vi…
…ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ…
As the chant diminished, the buzzing of the swarm intensified. There was a ghastly symmetry to the scene: for each dead chanter on the floor, a hornet hovered overhead. As above, so below. Black and yellow stripes, black and yellow stripes. The light of the Category-Q filtered down in dappled rainbows through the lenses of the insects’ wings, lending an incongruous beauty to the scene. Time played one of its classic tricks, making every second drag, while the whole grim spectacle seemed to unfold in a single motion.
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
The last chanter—a woman, by the pitch by her voice—went to the altar, as the last larva was born from the tunnel of light. The larva pupated in free fall, shedding and reabsorbing itself, head, thorax, and abdomen emerging, compound eyes inflating like black soap bubbles. Wings sprouted from its solidifying exoskeleton and caught the air, adding their buzz to the pervasive din. The woman reached up. The hornet’s wicked javelin extended, a drop of venom glinting at the tip.
Sting.
Bow.
The woman turned and wove her way back through the scattered corpses of her colleagues, carrying the chant alone. She moved as if really meant to go somewhere—like she expected to survive. Well, she didn’t. She made it farther than the average chanter had, nearly to the edge of the pavilion; then she pitched forward, as if an invisible buffalo had gored her from behind.
Just die, Wilburn thought numbly. But no, of course the stupid woman must hang on, rolling on the floor, flailing and kicking, choking out those six stupid syllables over and over:
Ink-hi-yah-ku-twa-vi…
Ink-hi-yah-ku-twa-vi…
Ink-hi-yah…
The chant perished with her final breath. Her heels drummed the floor… then stopped. Only Wilburn and the Girl in Black remained alive within the temple; they, and the hornet swarm, now many hundreds strong. The insects hovered in ascending ranks, like spectators in an amphitheater, motionless apart from their thrumming wings. No natural bugs ever behaved in such a fashion. It was the same spooky synchrony the chanters had exhibited, the same… single-mindedness…
Wilburn was struck by an impression so forceful that he didn’t doubt it for a millisecond. Single-mindedness—a single mind—like, literally. Just as each compound eye consisted of a multitude of eyes, so each hornet functioned as a cell in a greater organism, a collective entity, not physical, but metaphysical: mental, a consciousness… a presence… a vast, alien intelligence… Her.
Not the Girl in Black, certainly; the presence was distinctly feminine, and just as distinctly inhuman. This was a transcendent Her, a cosmic She—incredible, and terrible. And She wanted Wilburn, though he had no idea why. Wilburn could feel Her great eye upon him, an eye of many eyes… Eyes within eyes… His intuition raced ahead, leaving his rational faculties wheezing in the dust. Eyes within eyes… Minds within minds… Rituals within rituals… Balloons within balloons… Spells within spells… Hexagons within hexagons… Dreams within dreams… Cyclic repetition…