The Calm Before The Swarm

III

Cranston led them out of the big top and into the wash of light where at least the breeze circulated the stench. Lauren breathed a sigh of relief. She had begun to feel increasingly uncomfortable under the blank stares of the dead that packed the bleachers. Consciously, she knew they weren't actually watching her, but that didn't alleviate the crawling sensation on her skin. She didn't suppose the fact that they had all been killed by some sort of wasp helped in that regard either.

The other agents closed rank around Cranston, forcing Lauren to stand on her toes to see between them.

Cranston rewound the recording to the start and pressed PLAY.

The shaky footage began with a close-up of a woman holding a toddler on her hip. The young boy bared a big grin for the camera. Behind them, Lauren saw the ticket booth down the hill through the grove of trees. They were standing at the edge of the parking lot while scores of people who had no idea what fate had in store for them funneled past.

The sound was a continuous low rumble metered by the excited cries of children and the occasional feline roar.

Cut to a jostling view of the inside of the fairgrounds. The woman now held the child's hand as they weaved through the crowd, passing games of chance stocked with stuffed animals bigger than the young boy, various attractions with greasy ticket collectors, and carts selling pretzels, snow cones, and glowing necklaces. The woman held up the child's hand and helped him wave to the camera.

Another cut and they were in a different section of the grounds. This time, Lauren could only assume, the woman held the camcorder while presumably the father piggybacked the boy, who clung to the man's forehead as though his life depended upon it. The man pointed off to his right and the lens followed. A pen had been cordoned off in a broad section of dirt. The sign on the fence promised camel rides for five dollars. A grungy man with a scraggly beard guided the camel in a circle by its reigns, much to the delight of the twin girls perched between its fur-capped humps.

The camera swung again to the right and zoomed in on another enclosure where several men raked hay into piles for the elephant troupe. One of the pachyderms thrust its trunk into the mound, gave it a twirl, and lifted a clump to its mouth. Another man appeared with a hose and sprayed down the smaller elephants in the rear. Flies buzzed around them, causing the enormous animals to flap their ears. Heaps of dung led all the way back to where a fourth elephant rested listlessly on its side. Two more men, who had obviously fallen in the mud several times, pushed and shoved at the behemoth in an effort to force it back to its feet. It didn't even appear capable of standing.

Lauren had a pretty good hunch as to why.

A small crowd had gathered off to the side to watch, among them a couple of teenagers smoking and passing back and forth a water bottle that made them wince with each swig of the spiked concoction, an elderly man with an ornate cane that appeared too short to be of any real use, and a visibly pregnant woman with coffee-colored skin who wore her raven-black hair in a ponytail and an expression of abject horror on her face.

Past the elephant's rear haunches, a man of Middle Eastern descent stood stock-still, staring down at the animal, his features devoid of emotion. He wore a faded ball cap low over his hooded eyes and what looked like a cattle prod in a sheath on one hip and a transceiver holstered on the other.

One of the men who had been trying to make the sick elephant stand rushed up to him, gesticulating wildly with his hands. The man with the ball cap glanced over at the spectators, his gaze lingering on one of them for a long moment, and then ushered the agitated handler toward an unmarked mobile trailer.

The recording darkened. A sudden flash forced the aperture to rectify its focus. The center ring was spread out below, partially obscured by the heads of the people in the row below the cameraman. The ringmaster stepped into the spotlight, but the camera panned left and focused on the young boy's face. He sat in his mother's lap, eyes bright, mouth open wide in wonder.

Cut to clowns piling out of a miniature car. Acrobats flipping and twirling from the high-wires. A lion tamer goading his maned charge with a whip and a chair. A tiger leaping through a ring of fire. A parade of elephants circling the ring.

There was a high-pitched squeal that degenerated into feedback.

The view snapped suddenly to the left. In the foreground, the young boy pressed his small hands to the sides of his head. Above his head, the camera focused on a bank of speakers mounted to the tent supports, then whipped back toward the ring, flashing past faces that had all turned toward the sound, hands clapped over their ears.

One of the elephants wobbled and fell. Several trainers raced to its side.

The field of view panned across the chaos. Clowns and other performers walked slowly into the center of the ring from where they'd been watching from the shadows, uncertain of exactly what was transpiring, but prepared to do whatever it took to keep the show going.

A shadowed figure hurried past the clowns toward the lone exit. It passed under the spotlight just long enough for Lauren to recognize the man with the cattle prod from the elephant pen.

The camera jerked back to where the ringmaster called for the audience's attention. Clowns cavorted around him and trapeze artists hurriedly scaled the posts toward their perches.

Abruptly, the squealing sound ceased.

The ringmaster smiled and laughed as though it were all part of the show.

Two men ran over and grabbed him by the jacket. The same men who had been tending to the lame elephant.

Screams erupted from everywhere at once.

The camera jerked to the left in time to capture a shot of what looked like static boiling out of the elephant's gut. Black dots expanded into a cloud, and the people in the row in front of the camera jumped up from their seats, eclipsing the view. Bodies hurtled past. Footsteps thundered on the bleachers. The screams grew louder and louder until they reached an awful crescendo that overwhelmed the recorder's microphone.

There was a loud clattering sound as the camera fell to the man's feet.

A dark, slender shape with spindly legs and a twitchy abdomen crawled across the lens.

The screams went on for what felt like an eternity before dissolving into a crackling buzz.

The aperture focused in and out on the blurry insect and the hand dangling from the bleachers beyond it.

After several moments, another high-pitched squeal sounded. Muffled this time, as though coming from far away.

The wasp flew away from the lens.

A buzzing drone faded until only the squawk of feedback remained.

And then there was only silence.