SWARM

POSTCARD #11.5 • The Color of Strawberries

Midafternoon sunlight pushes through the trees, dappling the road, making it dance. After a mile of silence Sammy looks up at his older brother. “How far do you think we’ve gone?”

Guy shrugs. “Hard to say. A hundred miles? Two hundred maybe.”

“Wow, really?”

“I don’t know. Feels like it.”

Sammy sighs. “I miss them.”

“Who?” Guy asks. “Mom and Dad?”

“Yeah.”

“So do I.”

Sammy looks down at his feet, then quietly says, “I’m starting to forget what they look like.”

Guy puts an arm around his kid brother and squeezes him tight. He waits a few beats before saying anything. “Do you remember when you were attacked by that bobcat?”

Sammy’s hand goes to the scar on his cheek. “Yeah. It was really scary.”

“Do you remember what Mom did?”

Sammy smiles a little. “She pulled it off with her bare hands and bashed its head in with a rock.”

“And do you remember what happened after?”

“The stitches?”

“No. What she said when she wiped the blood off.”

Sammy’s smile widens. “She said the scar will make me look handsome.”

Guy nods.

“And Dad brought home strawberries that night!” Sammy recalls.

Guy nods again.

Sammy’s eyes get that faraway look. “That was the first time I ever tasted strawberries. I didn’t know anything could be so sweet.”

“When you feel yourself starting to forget what Mom and Dad look like, just think of that day. And the strawberries.”

“Thanks, Guy. I feel a little better.”

Guy ruffles Sammy’s hair and stops at a cluster of flowers, bends to pick one, and lifts it to his nose. The scent is pungent, but not unpleasant.

Sammy spots the ruins first. “What’s that?” he asks, pointing down the road to a cluster of collapsing walls and sagging roofs. “Think there’s anything left in there?”

“Probably not.”

“Yeah,” Sammy agrees, knowing his older brother is probably right. He swats absently at something buzzing near his head.

Guy looks around, noting the sun’s position. “We’ve only got an hour or two of daylight left, but we can check it out. Who knows? Maybe there’ll be some hidden treasure.”

Sammy’s face lights up and he nods excitedly. “You mean it?”

“Sure,” Guy says, nodding, and tucks the flower behind his ear.

They approach slowly, scanning their surroundings, but see nothing alarming. Ambush seems unlikely. They haven’t seen another person for a week, maybe longer, but caution doesn’t cost anything but time, which they have in spades.

As they near the site ahead, details come into focus. Knee-high mounds covered in verdant green and sweetly scented blossoms are visible from a distance. They sit in the spaces between charred wooden frames, crumbling concrete foundations, and twists of rebar.

“Hey Guy, check this out!” Sammy holds up a rusting hammer. “In case we see any bobcats!”

Guy laughs. “Nice find, Sammy!”

Sammy beams at his brother’s praise and tucks the hammer into his belt.

Though devoid of people, the ghost town is far from dead. A robin sings from somewhere. Another answers. Daffodils and trilliums sprout up from cracks in the road. Budding leaves stud the new growth of an abandoned orchard. Blossoming cherry trees stipple the landscape with scatterings of pink and white.

“Have you ever seen anything like this before?” Sammy asks, looking around.

“No,” Guy answers, thinking of the volcanic wastes back east. He’d wondered before why his family had chosen that place to settle down, with its stink of sulfur and smoke, barren lava fields, and the rocky hills with their dwarf pines and thorny scrubs. There had been little to forage and less to hunt. What game there had been left plenty to be desired—feral, pathetic animals mutated by some long ago tragedy in a world of cascading failures.

“Ow!” Sammy cries, snapping Guy back to the present.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” Guy runs to his brother.

Pain scrunches Sammy’s face. He has one hand over his forearm, holding it close to his body. Tears leak from his eyes. He sucks a breath in through clenched teeth. “Something bit me. It hurts really bad.”

“Well, let’s take a look.”

Guy pulls Sammy’s hand away and sees an angry red welt beginning to form. “Did you see what it was?”

“No,” Sammy says between sobs.

“Let’s find someplace to sit and rest. Maybe you’ll feel better in a little bit.”

Sammy nods and lets his brother lead him to one of the crumbling foundations. “Sit here. Let me get the water.” Guy pulls the canteen from his pack and hands it to Sammy, who drinks eagerly.

“Whoa, careful. Not too much,” Guy says. “You’ll make yourself sick.”

Sammy lowers the canteen, leans his head back against the concrete wall, eyes closed and panting.

“Are you feeling any better?” Guy asks.

“A little, I think.” Sammy sounds like he’s on the verge of vomiting.

“Okay. Good. We’ll just wait here, let you catch your breath.”

Sammy nods, but his face has gone pale and sweat is forming on his upper lip and forehead.

Guy studies the lush foliage around them, thinking there must be something that can be foraged and used as medicine against whatever venom is working on Sammy. Unfortunately, the flora is foreign to him and he’s more likely to mix up a poison than a cure. If only he had a bit of ash from home, he could mix it into a paste like his mother used to do for the lava ant bites.

Sammy moans, jarring Guy from his thoughts.

An insect, its abdomen bright yellow with black patterning, lands on Sammy’s face. He raises a weak arm, weakly bats at the yellow jacket. It lifts for a moment, flies a few wandering circles around the boy’s head, then lights again. This time, when Sammy tries to lift his arm, it comes up only an inch or two before falling limply back at his side.

The welt on Sammy’s arm is larger. It’s gone from red to the deep purple of a bruise and has begun to spread, creeping like vines up his arm.

A buzz fills the air. Faint at first, almost inaudible, but rising.

What is that noise?

But Guy already has a pretty good idea. He looks at Sammy. It’s no longer just a single yellow jacket. Unease blossoms into panic. “Sammy, we need to get moving.”

Sammy looks at Guy through heavy-lidded, bloodshot eyes. “I don’t think I can.”

“You have to try!”

Sammy’s head lolls.

Guy bends and tries to lift the boy, but the dead weight is too heavy. Instead, he seizes Sammy’s wrists and starts backing away, dragging. He gets only a few feet when his foot crunches into one of the mounds and he goes down on his ass. When he moves to stand he sees the mound for what it really is—a desiccated corpse, covered in flowering vines, its papery insides swarming with yellow. All at once, the buzz that had been background noise a moment before is deafening and everywhere as the air fills with angry wasps.

“Sammy!”

But Sammy doesn’t answer, he’s enveloped by the swarm. His face and body are covered in rising welts and yellow jackets. Their abdomens rise and fall, pumping stingers full of venom into his unmoving body. When they begin to crawl into Sammy’s mouth, ears, and nostrils, Guy runs.

He sprints past the ruins, careful to avoid stepping on any more of the mounds. The buzz fades and the listing structures and crumbling walls recede into the distance behind him.

Guy runs for a mile before stopping to rest. Looking cautiously around for traces of the yellow danger, he runs a hand through sweaty hair. Something falls into his lap and he jumps, brushing at it to get it away from him. He breathes a sigh of relief when he sees it’s just the flower from earlier. He laughs nervously to himself and concentrates on his breathing, on trying to get the panic under control.

The nocturne begins when dusk shifts from blue to black—coyotes, crickets, frogs, even an owl or two, sing together in a nighttime choir. The sounds, once soothing, now set him on edge.

With time to think, Guy replays the day’s events. Tears well up in his eyes when he thinks about Sammy. He wipes them away, but can’t unsee his brother, paralyzed and covered in hundreds of the crawling, stinging insects.

How have I managed to avoid getting stung?

He resolves to return to the ruins in the morning, rationalizing that his brother might still be alive, though it seems doubtful. Either way, Guy needs to know for sure.

Instead of building a fire, he huddles under a tree and wraps himself in the blanket he and Sammy usually share. He brings it to his nose, breathes in the familiar scent of his brother, and cries himself to sleep.

In the dream that follows, Sammy lifts a bright red strawberry to his mouth. His face brightens when the sweetness hits his tongue. His expression falters. Pleasure becomes confusion. Then a grimace of pain. From the uneaten half of the berry crawls a striped yellow devil. It flies at Guy’s face. Another follows right behind. Then another. First a stream, then a swarm, stinging, paralyzing—creeping in and out of his eyes, ears, and nostrils.

Guy wakes screaming, batting at the imagined attackers. He sleeps no more that night. When the sun finally rises, he packs away the blanket and heads back the way he came. He pushes through the fear, determined to see his task through. The heavy gray bags beneath his eyes weigh each step.

When he gets back to where it all happened, the mound is still there, now with a gaping hole where his foot had broken through the brittle ribcage. The skull smiles at him in the golden light of the morning from beneath a veil of flowers. The hive is silent. Are they gone? If so, where have they gone to? Guy hopes he never finds out.

There is no body.

No body! Maybe he got away…

He feels his heart lift a little at the idea that his little brother might not be dead after all. Now it was just a matter of finding him.

“Sammy…” Guy’s voice is barely a whisper. “Sammy?” he tries again, a little louder this time. Then, steeling himself, forces the name out again, this time loud enough that Sammy should be able to hear if he’s nearby. “Sammy!”

He waits a moment and tries again. “Sammy!”

A rustling answers from behind a thick patch of blackberries. A figure steps out into the open.

Guy tenses. “Sammy? Is that you?”

The figure takes a clumsy step towards him, almost falls, regains his balance before going over.

“Sammy!” Guy says when he sees the pale scar against the swollen flesh of a face he no longer recognizes.

The boy takes another ponderous step, eyes fixated on Guy.

“Sammy?” He says again, fear creeping in to replace the relief.

Another step.

Slowly, Guy begins to back up, looking behind him to avoid making the same mistake twice. He holds up his hands, palms out. “Sammy, it’s me, Guy.”

The small figure takes another step towards him, opens its mouth. A yellow jacket crawls out and takes flight. Sammy’s expression strains as he forms the words. “Kill…me…”

Guy takes another step backward.

“Please…Guy…”

“Oh, Sammy,” Guy says, looking at the ambling body of his brother coming at him. “I’m so sorry…”

“Please…Kill…me…Guy…”

There are more yellow jackets now, a halo of them, circling Sammy’s head, pouring from his ears and mouth. There’s nothing Guy can do but run. He hurdles the last mound and leaves the small figure behind, still lurching after him.

When his legs begin to cramp, Guy slows, but keeps walking. He thinks he can keep this pace up for at least a couple of hours. He’ll figure out what to do later. For now, he has only one thing on his mind, and that’s to put as much distance between himself and that…thing behind him as he can.

Instead of diminishing as he moves, Guy’s fear grows until it drowns out everything else. He jumps at every sound, real or imagined. Every flicker is a yellow jacket and he, its next victim. Every rustle in the brush is another of those… hives. He hurries along. Ignores the cramps in his thighs until he collapses from exhaustion.

When a high-pitched whine passes close to his ear, Guy jerks. He yelps when a sharp pain lances the nape of his neck. His hand reflexively slaps at the place and his eyes widen in shock and terror when he feels the crunch and squish beneath his fingers. The guts and legs on the palm of his hand belong, not to a parasitic yellow jacket looking for a new hive, but a mosquito. He exhales. The smear of blood is the color of strawberries.

Too much blood.

Guy’s sense of relief begins to fade.

How much blood could one of these suck if it drank its fill?

He hears another high-pitched whine. It’s joined by another. Then another. The air fills with the sound of hundreds, maybe thousands of them. The ground dims, like it does when a cloud passes in front of the sun. In a way, that’s exactly what’s happening.

Guy looks up to see the swarm of mosquitoes hovering a few feet over his head and closing fast. He doesn’t have much energy left, but what he does have, he uses to scream.

—

This story is part of the Spring Fever! fiction event. You can explore the full index here: https://www.topinfiction.com/spring-fever