Instinct (2010) (11 page)

‘Shit,’ she breathed.

Bishop pointed to the screen. ‘You see that empty bookcase? When Dr Heath moved to this lab, that was full of textbooks, research documents and other papers. He let the wasps break it all down so that he could study their nesting patterns.’

Laura was still taking in the scale of what she was seeing, but within a few seconds, there was something different to focus on: at least a dozen of these massive wasps were crawling out of the dark holes in the nest and on to the ceiling above Heath.

If he had noticed this development or found it troubling, it was not apparent. He continued to concentrate on his notebook as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening.

Laura felt a cold dread spreading through her. She knew what the wasps were about to do, but she could not turn away. Their behaviour was horrific yet fascinating.

One dropped from the ceiling, and in a single movement gripped Heath’s trapezius and sent its ovipositor into the space between his spine and his left shoulderblade. It happened so quickly Heath hadn’t even stopped writing as the poison washed into his blood.

Bishop spoke softly, attempting sensitivity and
empathy. ‘I was the one who found him. To begin with, I thought he wasn’t in the room, but it was very unusual for him not to be in his lab, so I took a closer look.’

Heath managed only to get to his feet before opening his mouth in an agonized scream that never arrived. He tried to steady himself on the back of the chair, but simply fell through it, landing on the floor to watch the swarm close on him.

‘Initially what I saw was the nest, which I assumed was under his control in some way. Then I looked on the floor and noticed a bone, one of his ribs, I think.’

The first wasps had aimed for the exposed flesh: the face, hands and ankles. They changed from skin to blood, to muscle, to bone in a matter of seconds as the wasps churned through Heath like chainsaws.

‘What was left of him was hidden behind one of the desks. We were only sure it was him because they hadn’t managed to destroy his watch, a very distinctive Patek Philippe.’

Spatters of red flew up from the frantic grind of mandibles, then landed in small, viscous splashes to join the pool of blood collecting beneath the skeleton.

‘I discovered that one of my best friends had been killed in the most terrible way. I imagine I felt as you do now.’

The footage cut to static as Bishop continued: ‘However, despite the terrible loss of someone we all regarded with great affection, I have not had the luxury of being able to mourn him as I would wish. This facility is in constant motion, and it is my
responsibility to ensure that even an event such as the one you have just seen causes as little disruption as possible. To that end, MEROS is now faced with some very serious problems, not least of which is that we are …’

‘Without an entomologist,’ said Laura numbly.

In the compression of this isolated underground complex there were fraught and incendiary aspects to the group dynamic. This was exacerbated by the fact that the personnel were divided down lines of deep and fundamental opposition: the soldiers represented the instinctive, physical side; low on intellect but possessed of a common sense learned from years in the field. The scientists, on the other hand, were intelligent, logical and considered; if they had a problem to solve, it would be done slowly and carefully, with thoughtful analysis of all the available facts. It was the heart versus the head, a battle that would never be resolved, played out daily. The soldiers cursed the scientists’ foot-dragging attention to detail, while the scientists pitied the soldiers’ impatience and their inability to find solutions that did not involve fists or a gun.

Each side looked down on the other, as they would have had they been the jocks and the nerds at school. The difference here was that each needed the others’ help – but no one wanted to admit it, so they just continued to exist in dysfunction and attrition, leaving half of any potential friendships out of bounds in a place where you needed every warm shoulder you could get.

The other aspect of MEROS that made things tick
along like a dynamite truck on a road full of potholes was the impossibility of keeping a secret. Either through guesswork, someone overhearing or deliberately wanting to get under someone else’s skin, anything of interest was soon known to everyone. With recent developments, something was in the air, and they couldn’t help but tilt their noses upwards and have a good, long sniff.

George Estrada, head of genetic sequence programming, was sitting in the canteen in front of an abandoned plate of warm chili. He looked up at Lisa Keller, who was trying to pick the beans out of hers, not wanting to consume any of the glutinous meat.

‘Yo, Lise … You seen Garrett lately?’ asked George quietly. He was dark, squat and toad-like, with wide brown lips that looked as if they’d been spread across his face with a palette knife. At forty-one, he was one of the older scientists, with a Buddha paunch and balding crown to prove it.

‘What do you mean?’ Lisa said as she completed her pile of beans. She had arrived at MEROS a picture of blond, all-American super-health, but the lack of sunshine and exercise had left her the colour of putty and her toned body slackened like overstretched elastic. The hair was still fair, but with weeds of grey hiding within the gold. Before George had a chance to answer, they both said hello to Mike Irwin, Lisa’s research assistant. He was on his way back to their table with his own plate of chili.

A frown dragged down Mike’s face as he caught the
musty odour of stale meat. He dropped his plate loudly on to the metal table and spoke as he ate.

‘Hey, either of you seen Garrett? She hasn’t been that pissed since Madison hid her
Playboy
.’ Still in his early twenties, he had piercings in his left nostril, right eyebrow and both ears. His dyed-black hair was spiked upwards, elongating still further his whippet body.

George smiled. ‘Yeah. It’s not just her. All the grunts are buzzing, and it’s been going on since before they went on mission.’

Lisa shrugged. ‘I’ve been pulling double days on prep, so I’ve barely seen them. They’re crabby? How can you tell?’

‘You know that pissed-off sneer they give us because they got concrete where their IQs should be? Well, it’s sneerier. They’re stomping around louder and talking in corners more and giving shittier looks when you catch them doing it,’ said George.

‘And your theory?’ Lisa asked Mike.

Mike wiped his mouth with a paper napkin and sat back in his chair. ‘It’s obvious. Someone died.’

George and Lisa looked at Mike in such a way that suggested elaboration was now essential.

‘There’s only so many things that can happen around here that will rile those guys: the food’s already shit; the work is shit – but, again, same old same old; it’s not love problems because they’re
all
sour, so unless they had a big orgy that went wrong, that theory is out. Which leaves us with death, backed up by this: when did you last see Roach?’

George furrowed his brow. ‘Roach … yeah, I haven’t seen Martin in a while, but Roach too. When did you last see either of them? They didn’t go out on mission, and that’s
really
strange.’ His slight Mexican brogue elongated
really
into a few seconds of wonder that hung in the dry air waiting for a response.

Lisa broke the silence in an urgent whisper. ‘Come on, that’s not enough. They could be on manoeuvres … or something.’

‘Manoeuvres?’ said Mike. ‘You think they go on manoeuvres? Unless they’ve got a bunch of bugs to clear up, they just man the surveillance room and dick around, maybe pump some iron if they’re feeling constructive. You seen Roach and Martin doing that lately? If not, they’ve disappeared, and knowing how hard recruitment to this place is, Bishop and Webster didn’t just can them. They had no choice but to let them go.’ He paused to lean in for effect. ‘In a fuckin’ coffin.’

‘Indeed, but if that were the only problem, we could continue as we are with little difficulty.’ Bishop frowned and leaned forward on to his desk.

‘The only record of David’s progress is in notebooks such as the one you saw him writing in. For ten years that hasn’t been a problem, but now his latest findings are in the room with the wasps, and without them we’re going in blind. Are they susceptible to cold, or immune to it? Are they going to die in two days’ time, or can they sustain themselves indefinitely? Is their poison the same as usual, or something more advanced? The answer to any question that might be of importance is in that notebook.’

With a hint of a smile, Laura looked off into the middle distance. There was something karmic about the quandary they were in. Years of messing with the ancestors of these creatures had created a generation ready and able to take revenge. The humans had all the control, the equipment and the science, and yet in just ten years the wasps had gained the upper hand. Laura couldn’t help doing what she did every day at work: admire them.

‘Do they differ from your usual wasps in any other ways?’ she asked.

‘Good question. One thing we avoid here is the nest
dynamic: queens, workers, etcetera. Removing that characteristic helps to keep them focused on their task. But when I went past the lab a couple of days ago, one of them behaved like it was …
in charge
. When it saw me, it immediately flew at the lab window, and the others quickly followed. Then, when it lost interest and fell back, the others did the same. We may have some unusual group-behaviour characteristics developing.’

‘You used the word “it”. Have you managed to breed the gender out of the subjects, or did you forget to use the word “she”?’

‘They are all female, of course, otherwise they’d have no ovipositors with which to sting.’

‘
Of course
.’

‘But we tend to refer to them as “it” down here, because they strike us as objects of manufacture rather than natural living creatures.’

‘That could be your first mistake, Mr Bishop. It sounds like these subjects have plenty of personality. You might want to remember that when you’re trying to predict their behaviour.’

‘Point taken. Thank you, Dr Trent. Anyway, to continue with the current facts : the first thing I did was call Major Webster and ask him to do what he could to contain the lab. He sent in two of our men – well, one male and one female – to retrieve the notebook and one of the wasps for study, and wipe out the rest. We didn’t think it would be any more problematic than usual mission containment, but just to make sure we pumped in a good dose of insecticide.

‘As it turned out, it was far from enough, and when the soldiers went in the wasps just … just
swarmed
on them as if the poison had had no effect.’ Bishop paused, then looked away.

‘So I locked them in.’

Laura let the horror show on her face.

‘If the wasps had been able to gain access to the rest of the compound, who knows what would have happened? In these situations, containment is all. We watched as no more than fifteen wasps chewed the meat off those soldiers in less than a minute. It was like watching starving piranhas.

‘The other soldiers were screaming to help their friends. Until I could get the door locked down it was touch and go whether they were going to break right in there and try to save them. They’re a tight unit, and if they didn’t hate me before that moment, they certainly did afterwards.

‘It’s not easy making those decisions, Dr Trent. Save lives by being an asshole, or place them in jeopardy by being the nice guy? No one considers the choice I had to make, just the consequences.’

‘Tough job.’

Bishop gave a small shrug. ‘I’m not telling you this to win your sympathy. I’m simply giving you an idea of the nightmarish time it’s been for everybody. Understandably, some of the soldiers wanted my head on a plate, and Webster had to step in to make sure that didn’t happen. Then they all had to fly on the mission you just observed. I guess that’s it with grunts – they’re
used to their buddies dying in battle then having to carry on.

‘But we are still left with the problem of what to do with the wasps, and the only knowledge we’ve gained is that they’re incredibly dangerous and disturbingly intelligent. We could try all kinds of substances and infusions to attempt to kill them, but without the research notes it’s damn near impossible to know for sure what, if anything, will work, so they’ve just … stayed there.’

‘Doesn’t that contain the problem? Let them starve.’

‘We would, except we don’t know how long they’ll be able to hold out. Did David increase their ability to hibernate? It’s certainly possible, and that makes things particularly difficult for us.’

‘Why “particularly”?’

‘Well … there’s a way out, and we think they might know it. The heating duct is beginning to interest them. Normally, of course, none of our creations could hope to breach the casing, but the strength and intelligence of these wasps … well, we’re concerned.’

‘And you can’t just seal it off?’

‘It’s a little more complicated than that. To seal it off, we have to shut it down, and that would put all the other experimental and holding labs at risk. Wasps are not keen on cold weather, as I’m sure you’re aware. That’s also the reason why we can’t freeze that lab alone: the temperature at MEROS is set at a constant 21 degrees. That is the optimal temperature for humans and wasps to co-exist. The central computer will only
allow the temperature to drop in an emergency, but that means freezing the entire facility. All ongoing experiments would be ruined, and there are many reasons why that would be less than ideal.’

‘And if these wasps breach the ventilation casing?’

‘Potentially, access to the rest of the complex and possibly the outside world, where they could attempt to procreate, and then … who knows?’ There was a full pause while Laura and Bishop looked around the room, both trying to avoid asking the inevitable question.

Laura broke the silence. ‘So how would I be able to help?’

Bishop pretended to think for a moment.