"He's gonna take some pictures of my hand," Danny said gravely, "and then we're gonna sue the ass out of some people. Right, Dad?"
"Right," Jack said grimly. He had found the flash attachment, and he jabbed it onto the camera. "Hold it out, son. I figure about five thousand dollars a sting."
"What are you talking about?" Wendy nearly screamed.
"I'll tell you what," he said. "I followed the directions on that f**king bug bomb. We're going to sue them. The damn thing was defective. Had to have been. How else can you explain this?"
"Oh," she said in a small voice.
He took four pictures, pulling out each covered print for Wendy to time on the small locket watch she wore around her neck. Danny, fascinated with the idea that his stung hand might be worth thousands and thousands of dollars, began to lose some of his fright and take an active interest. The hand throbbed dully, and he had a small headache.
When Jack had put the camera away and spread the prints out on top of the dresser to dry, Wendy said: "Should we take him to the doctor tonight?"
"Not unless he's really in pain," Jack said. "If a person has a strong allergy to wasp venom, it hits within thirty seconds."
"Hits? What do you-"
"A coma. Or convulsions."
"Oh. Oh my Jesus." She cupped her hands over her elbows and hugged herself, looking pale and wan.
"How do you feel, son? Think you could sleep?"
Danny blinked at them. The nightmare had faded to a dull, featureless background in his mind, but he was still frightened.
"If I can sleep with you."
"Of course," Wendy said. "Oh honey, I'm so sorry."
"It's okay, Mommy."
She began to cry again, and Jack put his hands on her shoulders. "Wendy, I swear to you that I followed the directions."
"Will you get rid of it in the morning? Please?"
"Of course I will."
The three of them got in bed together, and Jack was about to snap off the light over the bed when he paused and pushed the covers back instead. "Want a picture of the nest, too."
"Come right back."
"I will."
He went to the dresser, got the camera and the last flashcube, and gave Danny a closed thumb-and-forefinger circle. Danny smiled and gave it back with his good hand.
Quite a kid he thought as he walked down to Danny's room. All of that and then some.
The overhead was still on. Jack crossed to the bunk setup, and as he glanced at the table beside it, his skin crawled into goose flesh. The short hairs on his neck prickled and tried to stand erect.
He could hardly see the nest through the clear Pyrex bowl. The inside of the glass was crawling with wasps. It was hard to tell how many. Fifty at least. Maybe a hundred.
His heart thudding slowly in his chest, he took his pictures and then set the camera down to wait for them to develop. He wiped his lips with the palm of his hand. One thought played over and over in his mind, echoing with
(You lost your temper. You lost your temper. You lost your temper.)
an almost superstitious dread. They had come back. He had killed the wasps but they had come back.
In his mind he heard himself screaming into his frightened, crying son's face: Don't stutter/
He wiped his lips again.
He went to Danny's worktable, rummaged in its drawers, and came up with a big jigsaw puzzle with a fiberboard backing. He took it over to the bedtable and carefully slid the bowl and the nest onto it. The wasps buzzed angrily inside their prison. Then, putting his hand firmly on top of the bowl so it wouldn't slip, he went out into the hall.
"Coming to bed, Jack?" Wendy asked.
"Coming to bed, Daddy?"
"Have to go downstairs for a minute," he said, making his voice light.
How had it happened? How in God's name?
The bomb sure hadn't been a dud. He had seen the thick white smoke start to puff out of it when he had pulled the ring. And when he had gone up two hours later, he had shaken a drift of small dead bodies out of the hole in the top.
Then how? Spontaneous regeneration?
That was crazy. Seventeenth-century bullshit. Insects didn't regenerate. And even if wasp eggs could mature full-grown insects in twelve hours, this wasn't the season in which the queen laid. That happened in April or May. Fall was their dying time.
A living contradiction, the wasps buzzed furiously under the bowl.