An hour later Benjamin was retracing his way across the quad, two books under one arm. His trip to the library had been successful, and he couldn't wait to show Wolfe what he'd discovered-which was that he'd been absolutely correct: Seaton Morris's "hoax" was itself a hoax.
As he passed the biology building he saw a light on in the window of Edith Gadenhower's laboratory. He thought Wolfe must have finished with Arthur sooner than he expected and come to Edith's lab to ask more about Jeremy's visit, and he figured he might as well join him there.
When he entered the building it was almost preternaturally quiet. The only sound was his shoes squeaking on the linoleum hallway. He came to Edith's laboratory, saw that indeed a light was on inside, and entered.
He expected to hear Wolfe and Edith speaking, but silence reigned here as well.
"Mrs. Gadenhower?" he called out. There was no response. "Sam?" he tried again. Still nothing.
He rounded the corner into the area where Edith kept her hives behind the Plexiglas shields. At first, he saw no one. One of the fluorescent lights over a workbench was on, which accounted for the light through the window. And then he did hear something.
It was a low, muffled hum-like someone had left some electrical equipment on.
He stepped forward to the large lab bench that divided the room. As he did so, his shoes crunched on something. He looked down and saw broken glass scattered across the floor.
"Edith?" he called again.
And then he saw them.
Moving across the cabinets on the other side of the room, drifting up to the ceiling and around in irregular spirals, clumped together here and there along a workbench… bees.
Hundreds of them.
He stood frozen.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that one of the trapdoors in a Plexiglas shield was open. And now he could make out bees in twos and threes exiting through the small open door, moving in lazy tangents across the room, to a spot on the floor hidden from his sight by the lab bench.
He realized this was the spot from where the hum was emanating.
His first impulse was to turn and flee for the door, but he felt instinctively that any abrupt motion would attract the bees' attention.
He rose on tiptoe, trying to peer over the bench, to where the bees were congregating.
What he saw made him gasp-and then immediately catch his breath.
It was Edith Gadenhower.
She was lying on the floor, in her white lab coat. She was utterly still. And across her coat, in her hair, along the one bare arm that lay awkwardly out across the black-and-white tile… bees. Crawling, hovering, alighting and flying off again, dozens of them. She was surrounded by an aura of bees.
Mellifera scutellata, he thought suddenly. Africanized bees.
Killer bees.
Reflexively, Benjamin took a step backward. His shoe landed on a shard of glass, cracking it.
It was as if a wave passed across the surface of all those crawling, circling, floating spots of yellow and gold; almost as one, like faces in a startled crowd, they turned to him.
Benjamin spun around and ran. But as he did so he tripped over one of the high stools, and went crashing to the floor.
He nearly screamed-but then stopped at a horrifying vision of hordes of bees flying into his open mouth.
And then several things happened at once. Even as he raised his arm to shield his eyes from the first descending bees, he heard a shrill alarm-and then a sort of strangled hiss. A yellowish vapor began spraying from the ceiling. As its first tendrils reached him, his eyes and throat went icy hot with pain, and he found himself on his side, coughing and retching simultaneously.
The next few minutes were a blur. His eyes felt scalded, and a misty veil of tears obscured his vision… But he saw someone come into the lab, someone with a handkerchief over his mouth… Samuel Wolfe.
Wolfe grabbed Benjamin by his shoulders and began dragging him across the floor, toward the laboratory doors.