ATOMIC TALES – Strange Invaders #40: Hive of the Queen Bee

Agent One, Raymond “Ray” Tyler

The Mount Carmel Tunnel in Zion. Utah is a marvel of engineering: a mile-long stretch of highway carved through the wall of a canyon with occasional galleries providing views of the spectacular scenery.

Unfortunately, it was now home to a swarm of giant mutant bees.

“Ready?” I asked Captain Fogerty of Spider Squadron’s Wolf Company. The brisk pre-dawn air smelled fresh and clean with a subtle-but-disturbing undercurrent of honey. We’d flown in and set up at night, while the bees all slept in their hive.

Fogerty surveyed the landscape and the tunnel entrance with his field glasses. “I’ve got snipers covering the gallery openings, my men are ready to fire up the smoke machines on the west exit, and my assault teams are primed to take the fight to the bugs from this end. Your gal set on air support?”

“Don’t worry about Agent Thirteen.” I already heard the drone of “Lucky” Lucy’s A-24 Banshee approaching as the eastern sky brightened. “She’ll cover us until the Orb Weaver wing arrives. You get the Compound T distributed?”

“Check. The Teragons sent six formulations to test. Each squad has two bug sprayers, a flamethrower, and the usual grease guns. Plus nets, too, in case we can nab some more specimens. Once we know what batch works best, we’ll flood the hive with it and turn this whole problem into goo.”

“Good.” I crossed my fingers. Doc Teragon would have preferred to do the final tests in her lab, but this hive wasn’t going to wait. “Agent One to Thirteen… Lucy… Can you read me? Over.”

“Barely, Ray. Must be a lot of bugs down there. You’re breaking up pretty bad. Over.”

Our USSB scientists hadn’t yet figured out the correlation between the mutant insects and radio interference, but once the bugs started moving, even our souped-up headsets had trouble staying in contact. “You all set, Lucy? Over.”

“Roger that. On time and on target, Ray. I’ll take down anything your boys on the ground miss. Thirteen, over and out.”

Lucy would be flying solo until Orb Weaver arrived, bringing along Ace Freeman and Shannon Teragon, but I knew she could handle it.

Fogerty focused his binoculars on the eastern hive entrance. Elements of Wolf Red and Blue platoons, packing Compound T, crouched in the rocky landscape to either side of the tunnel. The captain grinned. “Everything’s set. I just told the west squad to light the smokers. The enemy won’t be escaping that way. First of those birds shows its ugly face here, and we’ll blow ’em all to hell.”

We didn’t have long to wait. The sun had barely cleared the eastern mountain ridge when two honeybees the size of Volkswagen Beetles buzzed out of the tunnel.

“Fire at will!” Fogerty commanded, and his squads let loose with the prototype bug spray from flamethrower-like nozzle-guns.

One bug went down immediately, splashing into gooey armored fragments, but an M3 submachine gun “greaser” had to bring down the second. It flopped frantically on the bridge, slowly dissolving.

That death didn’t stop the next five from zooming out of the tunnel in formation like black and yellow MiGs. Compound T sprays killed or disabled four, but a sniper had to pick off the fifth as it tried to flee into the morning sky.

About then, smoke plumed over the mountainside, escaping through the tunnel’s viewing galleries. As more bees poured out of the hive’s mouth, others started flitting out those “windows.” Snipers got most of ’em, but…

“Lucy… Bees coming your way,” I called into my headset.

“Roger. I’m on—Zzzzzzt!” A moment of static. “Zzzz—of cake.”

I cursed the radio interference as a giant bee buzzed past our front line.

“Fogerty… Look out!” I cried as the escapee barreled into the Squadron’s captain, knocking him flat. The mutant’s terrible jaws snapped, and it stabbed with its stinger.

Fogerty and I pulled our guns and fired.

Bang! Bang! Blam!

The enormous insect slumped dead. Fogerty pushed off the carcass and gaped at the dagger-sized hole in the side of his fatigues.

“It get you?” I asked, my guts ice cold.

He shook his head. “Just my shirt, thank God. Those bast—! Tyler, duck!”

I ducked and he blasted a bee trying to make me a shish kabob.

As the dying monster flailed, I put a couple of shots into it, just for good measure.

Fogerty gave me a hand up.

“Thanks.”

The next hour became a hellacious firefight between the bees and our forces. The chatter of grease guns, the buzzing of giant insects, and the boom of grenades grew deafening. The morning air filled with flamethrower smoke, the stench of cordite, the vinegar-like odor of Compound T, and a smell like burnt honey.

As Thirteen cleared the last few from the sky, the bugs finally stopped coming, though angry buzzing still echoed from inside the darkened tunnel.

“We got ’em trapped now,” Captain Fogerty announced. “Sergeant Medford, which compound worked best against those brutes?”

The gruff sergeant checked a tally on his clipboard. “Formula three, captain.”

“Right. Prep the bug bombs with Formula Three. We’ll dose the hive just as soon as it’s ready.”

“You can’t do that, Captain.” The female medic’s voice seemed familiar, but not her uniform or long blonde hair.

Fogerty sneered. “What do you mean, I can’t, corporal? Who are you? You’re not from my squad.”

Before she could answer, I grabbed the interloper by the wrist and twisted her arm behind her back. “That’s because she’s a Russian spy.”

“Ray, you’re hurting me,” Tanya Ruhoff protested. ‘“But you can’t gas that hive. Sister Starlight is in there.”

You could have picked my jaw up off the ground. “What? Are you sure?”

“I’ve been tracking her movements through Larry Yavan. He’s holed up in Mount Carmel Junction, either relaying her information or waiting for further instructions.”

“Should we trust this commie, Agent One?”

“I don’t trust her, but… Why are you telling us this, Tanya?”

“Because you need to take Starlight alive. She could be the key to everything that’s happening.” Tanya’s level gaze didn’t look like she was lying.

“Or maybe the key to whatever you and your Soviet masters are cooking up,” I countered.

“Ray…!” She signed with exasperation. “You have to believe me.”

I was about to say I didn’t when a burst of new activity focused our attention on the tunnel entrance.

“Crush them, my sisters!” called the hideous creature at the forefront of a horde of extra-large giant bees. Fewer traces of humanity remained on Sister Starlight’s face than when she’d first transformed into the Queen Bee. The former cult leader looked nearly all bug now. Armored plates covered her face and body, and the wings on her back buzzed angrily. Her compound eyes sparkled as saliva dripped from her insect-like fangs.

She and her minions swarmed forward, a black-and-yellow tidal wave looking to crush our front line with sheer weight of numbers.

The sudden foray took the Spider Squadron members preparing to bug-bomb near the tunnel by surprise, but our soldiers quickly recovered. Gunfire blazed as deadly insects filled the air once more.

The Queen Bee avoided the firefight. Instead, she and her royal guard of three enormous mutants buzzed over the troops’ heads, heading straight for Captain Fogerty and me.

My twin Colts blasted one of her escorts out of the sky. Fogerty’s pistol accounted for another.

Unfortunately, that still left another giant bee and the Queen herself.

Sergeant Medford rushed to help his commander as Fogerty went down under the titanic insect’s bulk, but I had my own problems.

“Meddlesome pawn of our oppressors!” the thing that had been Sister Starlight screeched. “You won’t interfere with our plans again!”

She swiped at me, her fingers barbed with insect-like claws.

I backed away, barely in time, and her talons shredded the front of my jacket. I tripped as I retreated and fell hard onto my backside.

The Queen Bee hovered over me, wings a deafening buzz, hot saliva dripping from her inhuman fangs. I tried to raise my guns, but…

BAPH!

A cloud of white smoke exploded next to me, and a web of steel mesh expanded around my lunging foe.

“Whaaat?!” she shrieked, struggling in vain to escape as the specimen net tightened.

Tanya Ruhoff dropped the net gun at my side. “You’re welcome. Next time, maybe you’ll listen to me.” She turned and sprinted from the fray, quickly vanishing into the brush fire smoke inadvertently kindled by our flamethrowers.

I struggled to my feet. “Fogerty…?”

“I’m okay,” the captain replied. “Medford took one for me, though. I need to get him to medical.” He and the sergeant staggered toward the rear lines.

With their Queen Bee down, the rest of the giant insects quickly retreated into the tunnel—with Spider Squadron, and the bug bombs, hot on their heels.

“Release me!” the former Suzie Stern raved. “I am the chosen messenger of Metus! Soon all will bow before our rightful masters.”

I fetched a canister of Compound T from a nearby supply. “You’ll sing a different tune once you’re human again—I hope. Doc Teragon said a small dose of this should bring hybrids like you back to their senses.”

While fatal to bugs, the goop was only a mild irritant to humans, and it would completely reverse Sister Starlight’s Mansect-like mutations.

The humanoid bee’s compound eyes glared. “What are you doing…?”

I dabbed a bit of the formula on a rag and wiped some through the netting onto an exposed section of Sister Starlight’s chitinous forearm.

The Queen Bee shrieked as if I’d set her on fire. “Nooooooo…!”

But she didn’t change back, like Hedison had before he died. Instead, in just moments, my captive wasted away like the witch in The Wizard of Oz.

Almost before I could blink, nothing remained.

I stood slack-jawed.

“Well, Agent Tyler,” I muttered, “looks like you cocked this one up but good!”

THE END

About “Hive of the Queen Bee”

This tale is another part of the original bee ideas that I came up with way back at the start of the series. In the first Atomic Tales bee episode, I had the mutant bees lurking in an old tunnel, but what I had originally envisioned was swarms of bees flying in and out of a big tunnel in a city.

Trying to keep these stories “real” made me move the tunnel into a more remote location (no suitable big-city tunnels in the western U.S. that I could find during the 1950s), but the essence of that initial idea remains. The bees have taken over a well-used roadway, and the spectacular scenery of the actual location is just a bonus—as are the open air galleries in the Mount Carmel Tunnel’s sides. How cool is that?! (I must go there some day.)

After the earlier bee installment, bringing Sister Starlight/the Queen Bee in to command these insect forces seemed natural. It also gave me a surprising (I hope!) conclusion to her story. And of course, a hint of more developments to come.

The first version of this tale had more USSB agents than made the final cut. I realized after writing that draft that I was way over my self-imposed word count, and I’d have to keep cutting. (My maximum is about 1700 words, not only to keep things tight, but to not overtax Chris Mihm’s and my all-volunteer acting and production crew.)

Sorry, Shannon Teragon and Ace Freeman! I just couldn’t find enough room to squeeze you in. Though at least you got a passing mention.

I didn’t want to cut the interaction with Tanya/Tammy the spy, though. She’s not only fun to write, but she also gives our heroes information for this and future adventures—as well as presenting numerous problems for the USSB and for (her favorite) Agent One, Ray Tyler, too.

Plus, having Danielle, “Penny Dreadful,” voice Tanya is always a treat.

But then, I could say that about so many of my actors!

Thank you, cast and crew of the audio versions! I love each and every one of you!