Invasive Species (31 page)

But Mariama wasn't concerned with anything outside the car. Trey saw her turn on the overhead lights, saw her twist around in her seat. Wasps rose from all around her, fleeing through the open doors.

She climbed into the back, checking under the seats, in the storage compartments and seatback pockets and cup holders. Trey could see she'd done this before.

Once, then a second time, she paused. Her hand darted with the speed of a snake striking, and a moment later the smell of the thieves rose more strongly.

“Next time,” Mariama said, “leave when your friends do.”

She turned her head. “It's clear.”

Kait scrambled into the backseat beside her. Trey helped Mary in as well and slammed the door. Once the two of them were inside, Sheila climbed quickly through the driver's side into the passenger seat. As Trey got behind the wheel, he saw her look down at the ground, at Jack. She took a deep breath but said nothing.

Trey closed his door, put the car into reverse, and sped down the driveway, the tires kicking up gravel. Looking back one last time at the house, he saw movement at the edges of the headlights' beam, a last huge swirl in the darkness as the thieves rose to leave the abandoned building.

Pulling out into the quiet street, he aimed them back toward the mainland. A quarter of a mile ahead, at the intersection with a bigger road, he could see traffic. It seemed surreal, that people were still living their lives out here.

“Where to?” he asked.

“Someplace to eat,” Mariama said. “We all need some food. We have to be able to think.”

“I couldn't eat,” Mary said.

“You must.”

Kait was twisted around in her seat, looking back the way they'd come. “But won't they be following us?”

“No, I don't think so. Not as we are now.”

“Then we're safe?”

When no one answered, she frowned and shook her head, as if disappointed in herself.

“I won't ask that again,” she said.

THE FIRST PLACE
they found was a diner, with harsh fluorescent lighting, Formica tabletops, a white caddy containing little plastic containers of jams and jellies, paper placemats adorned with ads from local businesses, and a little can of worn crayons that Kait immediately reached for.

Even as she drew, her face turned away, Trey could tell that she was alert to every word they spoke.

The rest of them were quiet, numb, as they studied the menu, merely mentioning out loud what they might order. Yet even through his haze of shock and sorrow, Trey realized he was hungry. Mariama had been right: They were running on empty. They needed fuel.

Jack would have ordered half the dishes on the menu. He also would have filled the quiet with jokes, observations,
words
. He'd hated quiet above all else.

Sheila had been dead-silent throughout, her face clenched, her eyes dark. After they'd ordered, she looked up and said to Mariama, “I don't care how much of that potion you had. You should have saved some for Jack.”

Mariama, calm as always, returned the fierce gaze. But she seemed troubled as well.

“Jack shouldn't have mattered to them,” she said.

“But he did.”

“Yes, and I don't understand it.” She paused. “The last place the thieves would have wanted to be was in the car—not after I'd been there. The smell should have terrified them. Since he was just another human to them—of no special concern—he should have been safe.”

At that moment, Trey realized the truth. Understood it and felt a deep swerve toward sorrow.

“Oh, God,” he said. “It's my fault.”

Everyone looked at him. Taking a deep breath, he said, “Jack was of ‘special concern.' Mariama, he killed one, too. An adult. Back in July.”

He saw Mariama's face set.

“The one that came back with me from Australia, when I was infected.”

“I see,” she said.

Trey's voice sounded harsh in his own ears. “That means Jack was doomed, wasn't he? The moment we left the car, he was doomed.”

Mariama did not reply.

He looked down at the tabletop, at the pattern in the brown Formica, designed to mimic wood. Somewhere, most likely in China, there was a factory built to fabricate fabricated wood. Was it still open? Or were the workers hiding at home, and were the plastic molds crawling with wasps?

“I always thought when Jack went, he'd go down fighting,” he said. “With some grand, noble gesture, something brave and stupid. Not . . . this.”

“Trey,” Mariama said, “you're missing something.”

Sheila said, “Yes, you are.”

Trey raised his eyes.

“
You
might not have realized that the thieves would target Jack, but I am sure that
he
did,” Mariama said.

Trey was silent.

“And I think he knew what might happen to him.” She leaned toward him. “He knew that some thieves might get in when we opened the car door, or through the vents. He knew that it's nearly impossible to keep them out if they want to get in.

“He knew, but he kept quiet, because he wanted you to save the others. Because he understood that there was no other way: We couldn't bring him with us, we couldn't protect him when we went into the house, and you wouldn't have been willing to leave him to die. So he did what he had to do.”

Very softly from beside him, Sheila said, “She's right, Trey. That was Jack.”

She leaned closer. “A grand, noble gesture,” she said. “Something incredibly brave . . . but not stupid.”

Mariama nodded. “We should each have such an honorable death.”

*   *   *

THEY ATE IN
near silence. Burgers for Trey and Mary, gumbo for Mariama (“It reminds me of some of the soups we have at home,” she said), Caesar salad for Sheila, and chicken fingers with honey mustard for Kait. “I eat it everywhere,” she told them, “and compare.”

There was a television on the wall in the corner, but it was shut off. When they asked the waitress what news they had missed, she shrugged.

“The president will be back in the White House tomorrow,” she said. “He's gonna speak again then, but it'll just be words. And what good do words do?”

Besides that, she said, the news was filled with reported sightings of the wasps in places they hadn't been seen before. Only a few reports of attacks, virtually none confirmed, but people were staying inside, stores and schools were closed, businesses were shuttered.

The waitress looked around the diner. Only about a half dozen seats were occupied in a space that could have fit eighty.

“Some of us have to work, though,” she said. “What choice do I have? Bugs or no bugs, I bet the government is still planning to take its chunk out of my paycheck.”

When she was gone, Trey said, “All these reports. Are people just noticing them now, or are the thieves really showing up in new places?”

“The latter,” Mariama said without hesitation. “I told you they'd become more brazen, and that's what they're doing. They're testing us.”

“And next?” Sheila asked.

“Next? They're in no hurry. They'll wait to see how we respond.”

*   *   *

“CAN I ASK
you something?” Kait said to Mariama near the end of the meal. She had folded up her drawing and stowed it in a pocket and was now looking down on a huge piece of red velvet cake with gloppy icing and a scoop of melted ice cream.

The rest of them were drinking coffee.

“Of course,” Mariama said.

“How do you know that the poison is going to protect you?”

Mariama looked thoughtful. “As I told you, back in Senegal we have lived with these creatures for a long time. We could hardly help but learn something about them.”

Kait put her fork down with a little clatter and sat up straight in her chair.

“No,” she said. “That's not what I mean. I mean,
every time
you go where the thieves are, how do you know it will save you? How can you be sure it will work?”

Again a pause. Then Mariama said, “I can never be sure.”

“The wasp-things must hate you,” Kait said.

Mary said, “Kaitlin!”

“It's all right.” Mariama paused. “I don't know if they feel ‘hate,' but they definitely know who I am—and that I have killed many of them.”

Kait thought about this. “So you are being brave, too, whenever you go outside.” Her eyes widened. “Whenever you go
anywhere
.”

Mariama just smiled at her and didn't reply.

Mary stirred cream into her coffee. After saying little through the meal, she seemed to be regaining some focus.

“So, inside that locket of yours,” she said.

Mariama tilted her head. “Yes, what about it?”

“You brought the powder from Africa. Did you come all this way to save us? To save the world?”

Mariama's smile turned rueful. “I suppose,” she said. “I suppose that was what I was hoping to do—bring the sample to Trey, have him take it to the Centers for Disease Control. I thought they'd listen to him, the way they wouldn't to some unknown lady from Senegal. I dreamed they'd synthesize it, produce it in large quantities, and—yes—save the world.”

The amusement had left her face. “But it was a hopeless dream. Even if I hadn't been imprisoned, I would have been far too late. Bureaucracies don't work fast enough.”

She shrugged. “And now it doesn't matter anyway.”

Trey said, “Were the seeds going to save us, too?”

“Yes.” She reached up and took off the locket. Popped open the false back and carefully dropped the three red seeds onto the table. One of them rolled a few inches away, but Kait corralled it with two fingers and pushed it close to the others.

“You harvest the alkaloid from these seeds?” Sheila asked.

“It is also found in the leaves, but, yes, it's most concentrated in the fruit and the seed coverings.”

Trey thought it over. “So some mammals eat the fruit. The alkaloid doesn't harm them, and they absorb enough of it to protect them while they disperse the vine's seeds.”

Mariama nodded.

“I saw squirrels in those vines,” Trey said.

“Yes. They eat the fruit, are unharmed, and disperse the seeds. All a balance, with everyone getting what they need.”

“Except the wasps,” Sheila said.

Mariama shook her head. “It worked for them as well, historically. In a forest with so many mammals, so many primates, there've always been enough that didn't carry the poison. And the vine only grows in light gaps, so there were vast stretches of forest without it.” She grimaced. “Until about twenty years ago.”

“When logging arrived,” Trey said. “And hunting for bushmeat.”

“Yes. Fewer mammals and more light gaps. More vines. The balance was destroyed.”

Sheila said, “And presto, the thieves need to move to more hospitable turf. So they start to search.”

Mariama nodded.

“Only to find a world filled with hosts—and no vines. No alkaloids. No defense.”

Mariama said, “That's right.”

Trey looked down again at the seeds. “You brought the seeds so we could grow the plants here.”

“Yes, that was my plan. To help people grow their own protection.”

“Mariama Appleseed.”

Her smile turned into a sigh. “Now we must depend on our other plan.”

Trey thought: Yes.

The only one left that made any sense.

*   *   *

HE WAS WAITING
for the waitress to bring his credit card back, imagining the worldwide chaos that would ensue in the first ten minutes after the computers that approved credit-card transactions crashed, when Sheila said to Mariama, “There's one thing we're still not sure about. The ‘summoning.'”

A spasm of something that looked like disgust crossed Mariama's face. “You haven't encountered that?”

“No, not yet.”

Trey said, “Jack thought it might be a fungus.”

Mariama gave him a curious look.

“Like the fungi that infect the brains of ants and other insects—make them crawl to the top of bushes before dying. You must have seen them.”

“Of course.” Mariama's expression was bleak. “No, it's not a fungus. You will see.”

That was all she would say.

*   *   *

IT WAS KAIT
who broke the silence that followed. Her eyes on Mariama, she said, “You're a butterfly.”

Mariama smiled at her and said, “Thank you.”

The corners of Kait's mouth turned downward. “No. Listen. I read a story this year. What was it called, Grandma?”

“Which story?” Mary rolled her eyes. “You read so many.”

“The one about the dinosaurs. And the big gun.”

Trey said, “‘A Sound of Thunder,' by Ray Bradbury?”

“Right!” Kait looked back at Mariama. “Have you read it?”

Mariama shook her head.

“This man travels back in time to hunt dinosaurs. It's like a safari. You have to stay on a boardwalk and you're not allowed to kill anything there except a dinosaur, because all dinosaurs went extinct anyway. You understand? If you killed something else, it might change the future.”

Mariama, a little wide-eyed, said, “Yes?”

“Well, this man, he gets scared and runs off the boardwalk. When they get back to the future—” Her hands grasped at air. “I mean, their
present
, they find everything's different. The world is different. The man looks at his shoe and sees that when he went off the boardwalk, he'd stepped on a butterfly. That's all it took to change the future—one butterfly!”

After a moment, Mariama said, “Why is the story called ‘A Sound of Thunder'?”

“Because at the end this other man, the one who took him to hunt dinosaurs, he shoots him.” Again Kait frowned. “But that's not the point. I was talking about the story with my—”

She took in a quick breath, almost a gasp, and her eyes filled with sudden tears. Scowling, wiping the back of her hand across her face, she went on.

“I was talking with Ma about the story, and she said that with most things, it doesn't matter whether they live or die, it doesn't change anything.” Her chin lifted. “They matter to the people who love them, Ma said, but not to the future. Not like the butterfly in the story did.”

“I think I agree with your mother,” Trey said. “We're like—” He hesitated. “Like molecules of water in the ocean. Individually, we're just not that important.”

“Oh, but you are,” Kait said.

Everyone looked at her. Red spots appeared on her fair cheeks, but she went on.

“People like me and Grandma, we might only be important to each other—”

“And to us,” Sheila said.

Kait shook her head. “But you—” She pointed at Mariama. “You.” Sheila. “And you.” Trey.

“You three,” she said. “You're the butterflies.”

None of them knew what to say.

“So don't die,” Kait said. “Okay?”