The Calm Before The Swarm

II

"Bees living in an elephant's guts?" Cranston scoffed. "I don't buy that for a second."

"The evidence is right here at your feet," Lauren said. She knelt over the viscera, removed a long pair of blunt forceps from her case, and tugged at the frayed mesentery. "Look at the edges. These aren't clean incisions, nor are they ragged tears. You see how they almost appear serrated? That was caused by mastication. Think about how many insects it must have taken to kill this many people so quickly. There had to be hundreds of thousands of them, maybe millions. They didn't just swarm in here through the tent flaps. I may not be an expert on bees, but I can't imagine them behaving like that. No. That many individuals? They had to be brought here in some sort of vessel. And I think that's exactly what we're looking at here."

"Your theory doesn't stand to reason. How in the world do you propose someone was able to make a two-ton pachyderm swallow millions of bees? How would they survive inside of it?"

"That's my job to figure out." She glanced up at Cranston. "Have you already photographed this elephant?"

"Yeah...why?"

Lauren removed a scalpel from her briefcase and slit open a length of the small bowel like she was gutting a snake. The inner mucosa was wrinkled and slimy, and dotted with brownish chyme. She sifted through the sludge until she found what she was looking for, pinched it with the forceps, and extricated it from the ileum.

"What is it?" Cranston asked.

She held up the forceps so he could see the small insect. It had curled in upon itself, the nub where its stinger had been tucked over the top of its head. Its long, slender wings iridesced with orange under the spotlight. Its body was jet black with rings such a deep shade of crimson they were nearly indistinguishable. A diminutive orange petiole articulated the tiny thorax with an abdomen that hooked under like a scorpion's tail in reverse. It had a triangular-shaped head with mandibles that looked like those of an ant on a much grander scale.

This was no bee.

Its body was more reminiscent of that of a wasp, sleek and dangerous, but wasps didn't lose their stingers like bees, and bees were hairy to facilitate the collection of pollen.

She slid the carcass into a collection bag and passed it to Cranston, who held it close to his face to study it.

"I don't get it," he said. "When a bee loses its stinger, it dies shortly thereafter, right? This one lost its stinger and died inside the elephant. So where are all of their bodies? They should be everywhere."

Lauren rose and snatched the bag back from him.

"They have to be somewhere around here. We just haven't found them yet. While you're looking, I'm going to see if I can figure out which species this might be, and how it ended up in the digestive tract of this animal."

She had a hunch, but she wasn't ready to share it. Not yet, anyway. Not until she knew for sure. And if she was right....

"Hey!" one of the gowned men called from the bleachers. He held a black rectangular object over his head. "Look what I found! And it's still recording!"

He clambered over the bodies and descended to the leveled dirt. Cranston hurried over to meet him. Lauren followed. They were joined by the group of agents in short measure.

Cranston took the camcorder from the forensics tech and turned it over and over in his hands.

Lauren heard it softly whir as it continued to record.

The Special Agent opened the three-inch side-flap view screen, then looked back at the tech.

"See if you can find any more of these." He pressed the STOP button and the red light over the lens darkened. He turned to face the rest of them. "Are you guys ready to do this?"