Bees (excerpt from FF)

“More like…bees,” Jon said, looking at the ceiling. “Like yellow jackets. You guys got yellow jackets in California?”
“Nah,” said Curtis. “South, near Mexico’s got killer bees, though. But I’ve never seen ‘em.”
“Scared the shit outta me,” said another Private from below Jon.
At that, a few other guys in the bunks around Jon laughed, but it was a laughter Jon could tell meant they were scared too.
A door opened, and a chair slid back as one of the Privates on fire guard for that hour jumped to his feet behind the desk at the far end of the barracks.
“At Ease!” he shouted in his best parade voice.
“Carry on,” came the hissed answer from Drill Sgt. Witt almost before the Private got the second word out. “Shut the fuck up, Private. You don’t yell ‘at ease’ when a Drill walks in at night. You just come to fuckin’ position of parade rest and shut your fuckin’ mouth. If I want everyone up, I’ll wake ‘em up my damn self.”
“Yes, Drill Sgt.” answered the skinny Private.
Jon could see the fire guard, straight as a board, at the corner of the barracks. The Drill Sgt. was blocked from view by a small portion of cinder-block wall that stretched six feet into the room. It had the devious effect of blocking the door from sight from almost everywhere except right in front of the door, and kept the Privates from seeing who was coming in until the person entering had walked a good way into the platoon’s barracks.
There was a light in that little foyer, and it stayed on all the time. That was one of the ten thousand pieces of information the Drill Sgts. had disseminated earlier that day—their first day “down range.” The light illuminated the fire guard, allowing Jon to see him twitching with anxiety even from his bunk, half way down the rectangular room.
With the light behind him, Drill Sgt. Witt was completely silhouetted when he walked past the fire guard and into the barracks proper. Even without being able to see his stern face, Jon was impressed. He looked like a black cut-out of the model Drill Sgt. His brown-round tilted ever-so-slightly forward, hands on his hips, with trousers impeccably pressed bloused in his shining black boots.
“I forgot to tell ya’ll,” he said. “If there’s a fire, get the fuck up, and get your asses downstairs and on that grass beside the pad by those pull-up bars.” He paused for a moment, then said, “Well, you fuckin’ hear me or what?”
“Yes Drill Sgt.” answered the 54 men of the platoon in unison.
“Fine then, get to sleep, ‘cause tomorrow I’m gonna fuckin’ hurt ya.”
With that, he turned and strode quickly past the fire guard desk and out the door.
Jon lay back in his bunk. His shoulders were aching from the smoking that started the moment the change of command ceremony ended and stopped only a half hour ago. There were breaks for lunch and dinner, but they were doing squats and pushups in line so frequently it was like the smoke session never stopped.
“Shit. I thought we were gonna get smoked again. Hey, what’d you say your name was?” asked the Private on the top bunk to Jon’s left.
“Anderson.”
“Anderson. I’m Curtis. What was you guys talking about before he came in?”
“Oh. We were sayin’ that after the change of command at Reception today the Drill Sgts. swarmed on us like wolves. But I was saying that it was more like bees. Like yellow jackets—they all come out their holes—like it’s outta nowhere and next thing you know you’re all covered with ‘em.”
“Fuck that,” said Curtis.
“One time, some friends and me found a spring in the woods. It was at the bottom of this little round hill,” said Jon. “On one side of the hill was this little cave—like a little half circle about three feet high at the tallest part of it. And there was water coming out of it—right out of the hill.”
“That sounds cool,” said the Private below Jon.
“Yeah. We thought so. Only thing was there were no trails that led to it. So we got it in our heads to make one.”
“How do you make a trail?” asked Curtis.
“Usually it takes time—lots of people or animals or whatever walking in the exact same line to do it. But we wanted to make one this one day so went home, got one of our other friends who has a machete to come with us.
“So we got this machete, and we’re walking down the street to the place where we go into and out of the woods and another friend sees us and asks what we’re doing. So we tell him and he says he’ll get this lawn mower he fixed up and we can run that over small bushes and stuff to chop them up.”
The air conditioning kicked on and Jon noticed there was a vent right above his bunk. For a few moments he thought himself lucky but it only took a few more sentences into his story for him to realize that the air coming out of a commercial grade H-VAC was very cold. “I’m gonna get sick if I have to sleep under this,” he thought.
Then he continued with his story:
“So he gets his mower—he’d always fixed his own dirt bikes and stuff, and I don’t know what he did to this mower to give it more power, but it sounded like there were two chainsaws under that thing when he turned it on. So we got one guy whacking everything in front of him with a machete, then the guy with the lawn mower. His name was Tommy. Tommy gets bored pushing the lawn mower over the leaves and sticks, straight up hill, so when we got to this easy level piece, he let his little brother do it. Me and my brothers, and another guy from our trailer park were all walking behind them, on the new trail pushing our mountain bikes.
“So we get to this part where we’re turning to go down hill and circle around to the spring when Tommy’s little brother just stops and says, ‘Bees.’
“So everyone stops and looks at him. But the lawn mower didn’t cut off because Tommy had taken the spring off the choke handle so you had to push it back manually. And he starts to jump, just a little at first, and says, ‘bees,’ again. Only he’s saying it kinda calm. Not like he’s being stung, but like he’s just pointing out anything. Then the guy in front of him, Brian, he starts swatting at the air and he yells, ‘mutha fucka! Bees! Yellow jackets!’
“He looks over at Tommy’s brother who’s spinning around behind the lawn mower, and it hits him. The lawn mower was sitting on top of a yellow jacket nest. The bees were coming out of the chute the grass is supposed to come out and stinging the first person they could find. So he drops his machete and starts running as fast as he can down the hill toward the spring. All of us did. I didn’t even get stung but as soon as he said that, I dropped my bike and hauled ass.
“Damn. We didn’t stop till we were at least half a mile away. We got down to the spring and looked back up the hill and there was Tommy’s brother, a couple seconds behind us, kinda jogging to catch up. He had little red marks on his face and arms, but he hadn’t started swelling yet, so we didn’t know how bad it was.”
“Holy shit. I would gone back and set that nest on fire,” said Curtis.
“Fuck that. We didn’t go back for like three hours. Tommy took his brother home and we walked home the long way which was about three miles.”
“Was there any bees on the lawnmower when you got back?” asked the meek voice below Jon.
“Nah. Like I said the lawnmower didn’t turn off by itself, so it probably just ran there till it was outta gas. That must have frightened them all off cause we didn’t see any when we went back for it and our bikes.”
“Damn, man.” said Curtis.
“Yeah. But I was just saying, the way those Drills came out of nowhere today, right when the last salute was given, that was just like those bees coming up out of the ground. Outta nowhere.”