16 Chapter 16

In the midst of death, life never stopped. Or rather, the jobs that needed doing never stopped. I wondered if Heaven employed domestics to keep everything running smoothly. Or was that Hell, where you found yourself a housemaid for all of eternity to the toffs residing upstairs?

For one day, at least, Alice and I had managed to escape outside, enjoying the sunshine and gentle breezes. With our skin protected by thick gauze and gloves, we tackled the beehives. I wielded the smoker and kept the bees dreaming while Alice removed the frames and used a scraper to pry the honey free.

Alice kept up a steady chatter about her intensifying romance with Frank. I could see the appeal. Tall and handsome like Seth, but Frank seemed quicker to laugh and more comfortable in his skin. From Alice's waffling, it seemed he was handy in all manner of things. There were even scandalously delicious details she would need to confess under cover of dark, once the rest of the house was asleep. I had to know exactly what he was doing with his hands, because whenever I asked, Alice always dropped whatever she was holding, and turned red as the motorcar.

I had watched them together, and quite apart from the fact that they made a handsome couple, I approved of how he courted my friend. However, I wondered if I should wave my sword at him and threaten to severe a limb if he ever hurt her.

A bee approached the slumbering hive on an erratic path. He circled several times before landing and starting his complicated dance routine. A few woozy workers looped around over his head and then, one by one, the little squadron flew away, off on some unseen task. Funny little creatures, controlled by their queen. Yet each and every insect had a role to play to ensure the survival of the hive. Their master plan was invisible to the casual observer who saw only each bee in isolation. Yet if you stepped back and saw the hive as a whole, one entity with a myriad of individual parts?"Bees!" I yelled and dropped the smoker.

Alice yelped and jumped, assuming I had them under my veil. She stared at me, a frown just visible under her netting. "What is it? Did you get stung? Where?"

"No. No." I waved her away. "It's the bees. We keep thinking of them as vermin, but what if they aren't like rats at all? What if they're actually like bees?"

Ideas swooped and dived in my mind like elephant-sized insects. I pulled at the thick gloves on my hands as I walked back to the house. My skin itched as though what I held on the inside was too big to be contained, and I was in danger of exploding all over the countryside.

What I needed was to blurt the rampaging thoughts out to someone who would understand?Seth.

"You've completely lost me. What do vermin have in common with bees?" Alice tipped her hat back, following me away from the hives.

I tossed the protective layers to the ground as I walked, heedless that they would need to be retrieved. Excitement blasted through my body as I grasped at the idea. It all made sense. How could we have been so stupid to miss it?

"We look at them singularly. But what if they are drones, or workers? All a part of a hive?" It could explain so much, like why they were leaving the cities. Perhaps we saw the advance scouts, looking for a new home or food source? "I need to tell Seth. This could be pivotal."

"Of course you do." Alice laughed. "Off you go. I'll cover your absence. Somehow."

I waved and tore off across the field. My feet pounded all the way back to the house and I skidded around the side, my hand landing on the brick wall for balance as I raced around back.

Henry stood by the motorcycle, my sword in his hand.

"Oh, you are magnificent." I kissed his cheek and dropped the strap over my head and stuck my arm through so it settled against my back.

The faintest blush crept up from under Henry's collar, and he stared at his feet. A quick kick and the bike coughed, signalling it was ready. I shot away so fast, I sprayed gravel over the side of the house. Elizabeth would probably ask about the commotion, but in that moment, I didn't care. My sole focus was on racing down the road to Serenity House. At least today I wore clean clothes, mercifully kept that way by the apiary gear.

The bike skidded through the loose lime chip as I stopped by the grand entrance. Only now did I consider that this might not be my smartest move. What if word got back to Step-mother? She would want to know where I disappeared to in such a hurry. Alice said she would cover for me, and someone needing my sword was always a convenient excuse. But there were too many eyes and mouths feasting on Seth's every move.

I glanced around, house or outside? Would he be in his study? Just then, movement caught my eye from across the lawn?Seth, with a handful of men clustered around him. He raised a hand to me and smiled. My stomach dropped to my toes before slamming right to the top of my head, where it plummeted back to the right spot. I didn't need Alice to tell me I had it bad; I knew it from the wobbles in my knees that had nothing to do with the horrid suspension on Trusty.

"Ella, we saw you tearing along the lane." He turned to one of the men at his side. "We'll continue this later."

Brims of caps were touched as the men melted away. I bounced on my toes. I couldn't hold it in any longer.

"Bees," the word flew from my lips.

His smile widened and he raised an eyebrow. "Bees?"

Oh heck. He would think I was simple minded, racing here to tell him about bees. When I really needed him to show me about the birds and the bees. Concentrate, Ella. One monumental breakthrough at a time. I shook myself and threw my hands in the air. "Argh!"

Seth laughed as I spun round and round to dispel the excess energy, so that I might have a coherent conversation with him.

"We've been looking at the vermin, the turned, all wrong. We see them as individuals, but what if they are bees?" I needed him to see what formed in my mind.

His frown deepened. "You think the turned are bees? That they will turn brown and furry or that they sting?"

This was not going well. "No. Think of their behaviour and how they act, not as hundreds of single entities but as one."

He took my hand and drew me down toward the river to the old oak tree. He paced for a moment as he considered my idea. "The turned have left the cities, but attacks continue in the countryside. Do you think they follow some unseen purpose then, like bees?"

"Yes." Blissful relief warmed me, for he seemed to have grasped the thread in my ramblings. I leaned against the bark of the ancient tree to feel something solid at my back, while my mind soared with possibilities. "What if we are seeing scouts, looking for a new hive? What if there is a queen that directs their actions?"

"A queen?" His eyes widened and then he fell silent, mulling over the implications.

Far-fetched, I know, but was it really? The virus came from nowhere and animated the dead. If that was possible, then anything could be possible. More ideas cascaded through me. "To us they seemed senseless with no minds. But what if each was a tiny part of a much larger whole? What if each vermin is but a single brain cell to a larger entity?"

He blew out a whistle. "This could be an enormous discovery, Ella. I've been charting your sightings. If they're acting like bees, we must look for a deeper pattern. They may be radiating from a central hive. This is an absolutely brilliant deduction."

He caged me with his arms, one on either side of my head under the ancient tree. I basked in the heat of his praise. It really was quite a genius leap, especially if it were true.

"Clever, clever girl," he murmured before claiming my lips.

He kissed me with a thorough languidness, exploring every inch of my lips, tongue, and mouth. His calm blunted the edge of my manic mood, and my body followed his lead. I could kiss him until the edge of forever, if there were such a thing.

There was one idea gnawing at my insides that wouldn't keep quiet, as much as I sought to silence it with Seth's touch. I pulled back to regain my breath, meeting his steady gaze. "What do you think would be a queen vermin's purpose?"

He drew a hand down my cheek. "The War Office says the turned want to perpetuate the virus. So, following your theory, the bees would be looking for a better field of flowers to pollinate."

It sounded poetic when you thought of bees and fields full of flowers, rather than the horror of people torn and devoured by rotten corpses. "I thought the cities would be easier, with a higher concentration of people."

"But they are also better protected, and the turned are found and dealt with quicker. Out here, it takes more time to locate them. They couldn't congregate in large numbers in the cities without risking discovery."

Silence dropped as we both thought of the empty cottage and a missing family, except for a little girl wearing daisies.

"Come on, I'll show you what I have done with the information in your notebook." He held out his hand, and we walked back to the house.

In his study, the topographical map now had numerous coloured pins over the surface.

Seth explained. "Green pins are those who died in the initial pandemic. I have marked the place they died, rather than where they were buried."

The land behind the manse would have been a green minefield if he had; most were buried there in the mass graves or individual plots.

His finger moved to a different coloured pin. "Then I marked those who were turned, yellow for locals, blue for unidentified. Red is where you dispatched one of the turned."

From a distance it was pretty, the colours swirling around each other. Then my eye focused on the red; the final death brought by my sword. The map bled in response to the path I had cut. Bees still hummed through my mind. I took a step backwards, and then another, until I hit the opposite wall.

"What are you doing?" Seth asked.

"I want to ignore the individual detail and look at them as a whole. Imagine each pin represents a worker in a hive, heading out each morning in search of flowers. How would you find the location of the hive?"

He leaned on the wall next to me and crossed his arms, the two of us staring at the blobs of colour. "Bees would spread out in all directions from their hive. I would look for a circular concentration."

I let my mind wander, ignoring the blight of red, and concentrated on blue and yellow, like scattered daisies in the grass. One area drew my attention. Yellow and blue overlaid with drops of blood when I crossed their path and found, and then destroyed, their bodies.

"There." I crossed the distance and laid my hand over the map. One area to the east had a loose circle of pins with an empty spot in the middle. The rest appeared random, scattered like confetti. It was still an enormous area, easily some two hundred square acres, but we could narrow our hunt.

Seth stared at the spot with its concentric circles of hills and valleys. "It will still take some time to search, but we have a starting point. You are a genius." He dropped a kiss on my head.

I shrugged, but inside I glowed. "It's only a theory. We have yet to prove it."

"I need to notify London. This could be the breakthrough we have been searching for."

"Seth." I met his grey gaze. "What if there is a queen?" I chewed my bottom lip. The idea both intrigued and repulsed me. A queen bee was larger, fed by her attendants, and rarely left the hive. Would a queen vermin be similar? Would we find a woman running a Somerset hive, or a mother?

He held my gaze. "London will want such a creature captured."

Not quite what I meant. I really had no interest in rounding up vermin for the War Office to study. I was more concerned with what might drive a queen vermin. Were they all part of a hive intelligence, perhaps each diminished to a mere single spark in a collective conscious? Did they likewise share a single soul? Was that how they continued functioning, and why severing the head made them fall ?did the wound sever their connection to the hive? So many ideas and theories.

I looked back to the map, where the rings of colour now took on a different meaning. We just had to prove it, and somewhere in that area, we might find an answer.