Hive

Hayes wasn’t sure what she was thinking. Maybe it was something good and maybe it was something bad. Regardless, she just didn’t say. The silence between them was heavy, but not uncomfortable. It seemed perfectly fine, perfectly acceptable, and that’s how Hayes knew this wasn’t what you might call a winter-camp fling. It was something more. Something with weight and volume and substance and he was almost glad that things were too crazy, too spooky for him to sit and think about the absolute truth of their relationship. Because, he figured, it might just have scared the shit out of him and sent him running into a hole like a rabbit with a hawk descending.

“Tell me something, Doc,” he said, pulling off his cigarette. “Be honest here. Do you think I’m losing it? No, don’t answer that too quickly. Ponder it. Do that for me. Because sometimes . . . I can’t read you. You no doubt know that some of the boys around here see you as some sort of ice-princess, a freezer for a heart and ice cubes for eyes. I think it’s some kind of wall you put up. A sort of protective barrier. I figure a woman like you that spends a lot of time marooned in camps full of men has to distance herself some way. So, really, I’m not judging you or insulting you in any way. But, like I say, I can’t read you sometimes. I wonder if maybe you’re thinking I’m a whacko or something, but are too polite to say so.”

He felt her hand slide into his, felt her long fingers find his own and grip them like they never wanted to let go. But she didn’t say anything. He could hear her breathing, hear the clock ticking on the shelf, the wind moaning through the compound. But nothing else.

So he said, “Sometimes I say things, I start spouting off about things, theories of mine, and you just don’t say anything. And I start to wonder why not. Start to wonder if maybe this all isn’t in my head and I’m having one of those . . . what do you call them?”

“Hysterical pregnancies?”

“Yeah, that’s it.”

“No, I don’t think you’re crazy. Not in the least. Sometimes I just don’t say anything because I need time to think things over and other times, well, I’m just amazed by a man like you. You’re so . . . intuitive, so impulsive, so instinctual. You’re not like other men I’ve known. I think that’s why even when we had no real proof about those aliens, I believed what you said. I didn’t doubt any of it for a moment.”

Hayes was flattered and embarrassed . . . he’d never realized he was those things. But, shit, she was right. He was a seat-of-the-pants kind of guy. Trusting his heart over his brain every time. Go figure.

“Tell me something, Jimmy,” she said then. “Nothing’s happened really since you plowed in that wall. Nobody’s been coming to me for sedatives, so I’m guessing our contagion of nightmares has dwindled in direct proportion to you freezing those things back up. But what about you? Have you had any dreams?”

“No. Not a one. I shut my eyes and I sleep like I’m drugged. There’s nothing. I don’t think I can remember having such deep sleep . . . least since I quit smoking dope.”

“That’s a good thing, isn’t it? Not having dreams? It’s a good indicator?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. My brain tells me we’re in the clear, maybe. But my guts are telling me that this is the calm before the storm. Whenever I try to talk to anybody here, I don’t know, I get a bad feeling from them. Something that goes beyond their avoidance of all this . . . something worse. I’m getting weird vibes from them that weren’t there before, Elaine. And it makes me feel . . . kind of freaky inside.”

He was having trouble putting it into words, but the feeling was always there. Like maybe the lot of them had already been assimilated into the communal mind of those things. That they were already lost to him. Whatever it was, it made his guts roll over, made him feel like he could vomit out his liver.

“Good. I’ve been feeling that way all day . . . like there’s nothing behind their eyes,” she admitted. “And all over camp . . . well, something’s making my skin crawl and I’m not sure what it is.”

Hayes stubbed out his cigarette. “I’m willing to bet we’re going to find out real soon. Because this isn’t over. I know it isn’t over. And I’m just waiting for the ball to drop.”

35

When the ball did in fact drop the next afternoon, Hayes was lucky enough ... or unlucky enough ... to have it pretty much drop at his feet. He and Sharkey and Cutchen had decided on a plan of attack which was to do absolutely nothing. Just to go about their jobs and to not even mention what had happened before and what might be happening now.

But to keep their eyes open and their minds, too.