Her neck bulged from the hive, webbed with syrup. Her face had been sliced open vertically and horizontally, the cuts intersecting at her nose; the flesh was skinned back from the center of her face in four triangular flaps, stretched out and stitched to the comb. Her scalp was split down the center, the skin peeled back in thick folds; each fold had been anchored to the hive on thin metal armatures that must have once been part of Westlake’s lab equipment. Her naked skull bone was dull as chalk.
Alice’s body had been teased apart and strung all through the hive. Luke understood that without actually seeing all the evidence. Every limb and vein and nerve stem woven throughout the comb, tended to by diligent drone bees. Luke could only hope that she’d been dead before any of this began. He could only—
Al’s eyelids snapped open. Her eyes were so very white in the flayed redness of her face. They rolled down languidly to meet Luke’s horrified gaze. She smiled, her teeth ripped out. The grin of a newborn.
Luke felt no fear at the sight. That emotion had burned out quite suddenly, like an overloaded electrical switch. He felt nothing but an ineffable hopelessness—which in its way was so much worse than fear.
The buzz grew louder—hungrier. The whispers drummed into Luke’s skull. Bees jigged nimbly around his head, alighting on his ears and hair. They returned to Alice, too, landing daintily on her skull, their antennae dancing lightly on the raw bone. Alice threw her head back, her mouth open as if in laughter; the flaps of her scalp strained threateningly against the metal armatures.
The scalpel was back in Luke’s hand. He took a step toward Alice. Sensing his intent, the bees darted at his face, their wings paper-cutting his flesh. He slapped at them and caught one solidly; it fell to the floor with a squeal and Luke stepped on it, enjoying the sound of it pulping under his boot. The hive came alive. Drones emptied out of it, their fat bodies squeezing from the comb.
Luke would kill Alice. Slash her throat open—one swift sideways swipe to let the blood out. If these putrid things killed him for that, so be it. But he’d kill her before they finished him.
Alice’s eyes filled with red as they hemorrhaged blood. They became the same color as the bees’ eyes. Her lips formed a single word.
“No.”
Luke’s hand stilled. Bees alit on his arms, friendly now, nuzzling his flesh with their furry abdomens.
Alice smiled—it was the same one he’d seen on Abby’s face at the hospital after Zachary was born.
The smile of a new mother.
The bees lifted off his arms, whirring into the dark. Luke followed them with the flashlight—
He saw it then. The final horror.
A huge translucent sac hung pendulant from the underside of the hive. It was the size of a trash bag—this was Luke’s first, incredibly domestic thought. The big orange ones he’d stuff with autumn leaves after Zachary had finished jumping in the piles Luke had so diligently raked.
Instead of orange, this sac was milky, strung with blooms of red and blue veins. The bees zipped around it in protective patterns, a thousand insect nursemaids. A few large bees tiptoed over its surface, which was convulsing with unnatural birth.
The sac hung in close proximity to the hole—which was far bigger than even the one in Clayton’s lab. Light poured around its edges.
By that light Luke could see something moving inside the sac. Limbs strained against its membrane the way stray elbows and knees will push against the canvas of a tent. Luke could barely glimpse the fearsome outline of whatever lay inside.
The sac ruptured. Thick, veiny broth gushed out. Luke shone the flashlight up to Alice. Her face was dented, her nose and cheeks forming a horrifying concavity—the pressure of this unnatural birth was caving her skull in.
But she was laughing. High, breathless screams of laughter.
Luke backed toward the hatch. There was no saving her. No saving LB. No saving no saving no saving—
The bees formed a corona around his head, their bodies beating at his back. Something breached the sac. Luke didn’t get a good look at it, which was a mercy. Only a sense of some gaunt and nightmarish limb slitting its own womb apart with mechanical ruthlessness, making a sound like a thousand knuckles cracking as it tore and gouged.
Luke’s heels hit the lip of the hatch, spilling him into the main lab.
The hatch swung shut on Alice’s deformed, gibbering laughter.
18.
LUKE STARED DOWN at Clayton.
He did not know how he’d gotten here. Things had gone black after he’d left Westlake’s lab. The hands on the clock had melted, and next he’d found himself back here. He must have slipped into another dream-pool. All he remembered was this sense of having moved through a huge intestine. The walls flexing, pushing him through like a stubborn shred of last evening’s pot roast.
He’d lost the flashlight somewhere along the way. No matter: the station now pumped out a sick radiance all its own. The holes provided it.
His brother was propped awkwardly against the generator, which had been shoved almost flush to the wall. Had Clayton tried to sabotage it? Luke would kill him if he’d done that—that certainty rested easily in his mind. Kill him just as easy as breathing.
Clayton’s face glowed in the dim. He looked even more horrible, as if some nightmare creature had gunged down the tunnel and sucked the blood out of Clayton’s throat. Luke pictured Clay’s neck winnowing and withering until it was no thicker than a pipe cleaner. This image made Luke smile.
“You killed it. The dog.” Luke’s voice was flat and toneless. Very much like his mother’s voice, he noted.
Clayton’s eyelids cracked. “Whu?”
“The dog. Little Fly. You pushed him through.”
Clayton’s head lolled. “That’s what it was for.”
Luke kicked him. Not hard, but not softly, either. “Get up.”
“No.”
“They’re all dead. Alice. Hugo. Westlake. The dogs. All killed, all taken. We’re the only ones left.”
Are you sure they’re really dead, Luke? Are you sure you’re really so alone?
Luke kicked his brother again, harder this time. “Get your ass up. We have to at least try to get out of here.”
“You try, Lucas. You always were the trier.”
Things nattered and clicked beyond the tunnel bend. Luke’s guts turned over—the fear had been replaced with a churning nausea.
“I want to see the sun again,” Luke said, disgusted at his petulance—he sounded just as he had as a boy, begging to be let into Clay’s lab. “I want to talk to Abby. Just one more time. Tell her how sorry I am. How much I miss her, and miss our boy.”
“Go, then.”
“There’s nothing down here, Clayton. Can’t you see that? There never was. This was all a trick. We chased it down here. We were tricked. You were tricked.”
Clayton hung his head. “I can’t go, Lucas.”
Luke didn’t feel anger—it would be as senseless as being angry at a dog for digging up a yard or a mallard for flying south for the winter. Genius or not, Clayton remained a creature of stupid instinct.
“You’ll die, then, you dumb bastard.”
Clayton shifted. Had the cap of bandages sloughed off his wound? The position of Clayton’s body shielded the stump from view.
“Please, Clay. I’ve never asked you for anything. Just this once.”
The clicks and scratches grew more insistent. Luke knelt beside Clayton. He’d pick him up and drag him into the Challenger if he had to. He’d wrestle and punch and choke and bite if it came to that; the sonofabitch only had one hand, anyway, and was drugged to the gills.