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Vhiper spent the whole afternoon taking dishes to the kitchen so nobody would see the spilt containers, but each time he looked out of the window the wasps were still there, buzzing around the sticky syrup.
The third time he loaded the dishwasher, he decided to face them.
Drawing in a breath he moved towards the door, opened it.
In a second he counted four of them. It angered him that he was so scared of these little insects, but at the same time, he couldn’t bring himself to move forward out of the doorway. But why should he let them scare him? He was huge and they were little, he could always get a can of wasp killer and spray the evil little buggers.
But it was suddenly important that he face his fear, what if one of the girls in the shop found out how scared he was? He’d never live it down, he’d not be able to show his face again, and if the guys knew that would be it. There’d be wasp jokes everywhere he went, wasp pictures stuck everywhere.
They’d make up yellow and black wasp ice cream and call it a Vhiper.
No, he was going to face it. He was going to walk out there, pick up the empty cartons and put them in the bins.
He was.
He looked back into the kitchen and wondered whether to take the can of wasp killer anyway, just in case.
But in his mind he heard everyone laughing when they discovered his fear, and took one step out of the doorway.
He felt sick.
One foot in front of the other he told himself. Just pick up the cartons, put them in the bin, and walk back.
Easy.
Anyone could do it.
Every nerve in his body tingled; adrenaline rushed though his veins, electrifying his skin.
He could hear the buzzing. It amplified by hundreds filling his head until he could hear nothing else but white noise like a million vacuum cleaners all running at the same time.
Four wasps turned into four thousand in his mind.
Yellow, black, yellow, black.
He was close now, almost close enough to pick up the cartons, but now his feet refused to move any further. The blood stopped in his veins, as if the very existence of the wasps had stilled it.
He wanted to turn but he couldn’t even do that. Having reached this far, there was no going back, but there also seemed to be no going forward.
He knew somewhere deep down in the logical part of his brain, that he was much bigger than they were, and far more intelligent, he knew that if one landed on the floor his foot could squash it, mash it down to a yellow pulp on the concrete.
But they had one thing he didn’t.
A sting.
He’d rather have his teeth pulled one by one with no anaesthetic than be stung again.
He remembered the wasp that got him when he was a child. The swelling, the pain, and the buzzing around his head and the dizziness and sickness that went with it.
He felt like that now, and they hadn’t even stung him.
His vision blurred, he swayed, his legs didn’t seem strong enough to hold him. This was stupid, he was going to beat this, once and for all.
He breathed deeply, trying to regulate the pattern; when he had control he forced himself one step closer. Almost close enough to touch them. He was waiting for them to turn their attention to him, to swarm and attack him.
He couldn’t move, even though his mind screamed from inside his skull to run.
Buzzing buzzing.
The noise blocked out every other sound.
He’d forgotten to wash the ice cream from his face, and now realised He saw that wiping it wouldn’t have been enough, they would go for it. The first insect darted towards him, then the second. He wanted desperately to run, willed himself to.
Didn’t understand why his legs crumpled beneath him, or why he fell to the floor.
As they crawled over his face, sucking up the sweetness from his skin he realised he couldn’t move his hands either, couldn’t blink his eyes, they were frozen open.
Terror gripped tight as tiny legs crept up his cheek towards his right eye. H saw it. Yellow, black, yellow, black.
A long tongue dipped into his eye socket and sucked up the fluid. Then from his inert left eye he saw something else.
A longer, slimmer body than the wasps, but twice the size. And not yellow and black but a transparent red, with wings larger than its body. It seized one of his attackers and Vhiper saw the wasp freeze and fall to the ground next to his face. The red injected something into the yellow, and when it was finished it bit his cheek.
"The new patient is in here Mr. Andrews."
Gerry Andrews walked into the intensive care unit to see the kid who’d been brought in from the ice-cream parlour lying on the bed, obviously awake, but unable to speak or move a muscle. Gerry didn’t know if the poor sod would live, and if he did, he couldn’t know what life he would have left. The larvae were in his body now, devouring him from the inside out. When they’d fed enough they would break though, as they would with the other victim.
That was why he had instructions to move Vhiper now, to the secure medical unit at the project.
Although to the project he was just another case number, another experiment.
He went over to the bed, looked down at the figure lying there. At least the kid didn’t realise he was being eaten alive.
They’d managed to catch all of the wasps; they’d all been around the syrup containers when Gerry and the others from the project had gone over the yard where Vhiper had been found.
They’d also scooped up the ordinary dead wasps that the reds had laid their larvae in. Hopefully there were only the two human cases, and it seemed that the venom had become even more potent now. The human cases weren’t even able to make a sound, nor move even a nerve to show their feelings.
Vhiper looked up at the stranger with dead eyes, but an alert mind.
Although he couldn’t move, he was aware of intense pain in his body, as if something was gnawing at his body organs, chewing away his ear canals. But he could do nothing about it, could tell no one.
At least the pig had been able to scream.
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