The Hive: Season 2

There's Always Two

For obvious reasons, Daddy did his level best to keep his illegal drug organization "solvent and secret." His words, not mine. It seemed like an unusual business strategy to me.
"I think you need to take a marketing class, Daddy."
"Marketing's for suckers. I don't need none of that fancy book learning."
"Plenty of millionaires say otherwise."
"'Manda. You know how I feel about rich people."
We both said the next thing together:
"Ain't nothing rich folk can do that I can't do better."
"Except," I added, "getting rich."
"Yeah, well, I never thought I'd get rich off of selling pot. All I want to do is make enough to keep us in hardtack and hog."
Despite his efforts to the contrary, word eventually spread about the superior quality of his weed. I remember one time a reggae band from Richmond pulled up to our house in a van that looked like someone had stolen it from a movie about a bunch of pot smoking hippies. Rainbows streaked the side, a moon-bubble poked out the top, and if that wasn't enough, someone had etched a white pot leaf on the spare tire cover on the back. Then there was the band's name: Jah Leaf. How they ever drove anywhere without getting pulled over was a mystery to me.
Daddy didn't normally do business out of the house, and for good reason, too. But he must've felt them boys was innocent enough because he greeted them like they was long lost friends. Brought them inside and smoked them out until two in the morning, sent them packing with four ounces of Spotsylvania Special and a head full of Johnny Cash.
Our visitors wasn't always so well-meaning, though.
The next time someone came calling—this was, oh, about three years after Momma died and two years before Ruth Grace Hogg broke my leg with a field hockey stick—I was watching Star Trek on the tube and Daddy was banging around in the kitchen trying to fix our refrigerator. That thing was always hanging on the drop edge of yonder, but he managed to keep it chugging along with a healthy application of used compressors and electrical tape. He stood up to stretch his back and, looking out the window, said, "'Manda, get up and go to your room."
"I'm watching Star Trek."
He was already at his gun safe.
"Dammit, 'Manda. I ain't got time to explain!"
I started to do as I was told when he yelled, "No! Stop! Get down!"
"You just told me to go to my room."
"Don't move. Get down."
"Which is it?"
"Get down!"
I'm assuming that if you're this far into the narrative, I don't have to tell you how hard-headed I could be. I blame my Daddy and my Nana, not to mention the contrary nature of rural people in general. In my mind, Daddy was acting weird, and it had to do with whatever he saw out in the yard. Was it a bear? A cougar? A puma? Hell, plenty of them had come across our property before and Daddy'd never thrown a hissy fit. Whatever it was, I'd be damned if I didn't get to take a look. Turns out it was something worse.
I went over to the front window, and there, leaning up against the fence as casual as they came, was a pothead.
He had shoulder-length hair and a big, bushy mustache, and he was wearing construction boots, blue Wranglers, a denim button-up, and a jeans jacket. He looked like an ad for cigarettes.
"Who's that guy?" I asked.
"'Manda, get away from the window!"
"Why?"
Daddy took a Magnum out of the safe and slapped a clip into it. I thought, "oh" and went over to the couch and sat down.
"Stay there."
"I ain't going nowhere."
He slammed out the front door and yelled, "Hey!" before firing off a couple of shots. I did what came natural to most people who found themselves unexpectedly in the presence of gunplay. I threw myself to the floor and covered my head.
"That's right!" Daddy cried. "Keep running! And don't come back!"
Then he stomped back into the house, through the living room, and straight out the back. Two seconds later he fired off three more rounds. "You think I'm stupid, boy! Tell whoever sent you I got plenty more bullets for them, too!"
When he came back in, he was muttering something about "young people these days." I got off the floor and watched as he popped the magazine out and un-chambered the live round.
"You get him?"
"Oh, hey 'Manda."
"'Oh, hey 'Manda?' Daddy, what the hell?"
"Don't say 'hell' babykins."
"Daddy, you just shot two men!"
"I didn't shoot nobody. I just put a scare in them, that's all."
"Oh. You sure?"
"'Manda, I think I'd know if I shot somebody."
"Well, who were they?"
"Just some boys who thought they could get the drop on me. That's the problem with this business. There's always someone out there who thinks he can take it all away."
"But there were two of them out there."
"There's always two, 'Manda. Remember that. There's always two."
I couldn't always remember every last word Daddy ever told me, but I remembered that. There's always two. It became real important to me after he was gone and I was all alone.
January was usually the second worst month for winter weather in Virginia. We didn't get straight up white-outs (that came in February), but it could get pretty snowy. Even when we had electricity and gasoline, a few feet of snow made it awfully difficult to get anything done. Basically shut the farm down now that we didn't. I was used to it. Grew up working through it. Ray and all his people had a harder time adjusting.
To make matters worse, it wasn't like Daddy and I planned for the end of the world. Sure we had a farm, but we grew just enough for the two of us and a little more to sell at the farmer's market as a cover for his pot business. If I was by myself, and if I didn't eat all that much, and if I could stretch what I canned into casseroles and chilis, and if I slaughtered a hog, and if the chickens doubled their egg output, I might have had enough to last a couple of people through March.
But it wasn't just a couple of people anymore. It was me, and Ray, and about ten others, including Timmy Carter, and Timmy Carter was one of the biggest human beings I'd ever seen. He wasn't fat, neither. It was all muscle. All two hundred and forty pounds of him. Gentle as a lamb, Timmy Carter was, but he needed three times the amount of fuel as the rest of us just to get through half a day.
That year, though, January didn't show us very much in the way of frozen precipitation. Oh, we had us a few two-inchers here and there but nothing too devastating. Lulled us into a false sense of security. Then the twelfth hit and things got interesting.
The storm started out innocent enough with the typical Nor' Easter people in our parts was used to, but that night it ramped up to an out and out cyclone, with winds so strong that I heard trees out in the woods cracking and crashing to the ground. By the next morning, we had half a foot of snow piled up, one of the walls had blown over, and a portion of the barn roof had ripped off and flown away. The storm didn't let up neither. That afternoon half a foot grew to two feet, then three. When evening came around, it was at least three and a half.
The barn had to be fixed, wasn't no question about that, but it was too dangerous to get up on the roof. Some of the guys went in and put up a ladder and nailed some scrap plywood to the inside, and that seemed like it would work, at least until the storm stopped. The wall, though, was an entirely different problem. There was no way we could fix it, not in the middle of a snow cyclone, so we decided to post guards.
It wasn't as bad as it sounds.
Earlier that month we built a little shack for anybody to use when they were minding the wall. It was a cozy little den, complete with a double door, a window, a couch, and a chair. We even outfitted it with an old cast iron stove Daddy'd stowed away in Maurice.
I was on guard duty with Gary T the second night of the storm. It was three in the morning, and I'd just got back down from the shack's roof where I'd been sweeping off the snow for the hundredth time. I came inside to see Gary T with his ear pressed up against the window. I went over to the stove to warm up, watching him the whole time.
"Your ear stuck to the glass or something?"
"Shh."
"The only reason I ask is because—"
"Shh! I think I heard something."
I turned my back to the stove, smiling as the heat swam up my jacket. I liked to get my pants nice and hot before sitting down on one of the old chairs. Then I'd balloon a wool blanket over the stove and use it to catch the heat and get nice and toasty.
"You feeling alright, Gary T?"
"I said—"
"I know what you said, but the only thing to hear out there is the wind howling."
"There's a woman."
"A what?"
"A woman. She's out there. She was crying for help."
My bones might already have been frozen and my blood might have felt like ice cream, but that didn't mean I couldn't get any colder because I did. I knew exactly what he was talking about. Gary T had heard the Wailing Woman of Spotsylvania County.
Legends abounded about that nasty old creature. Some said it took on the form of a beautiful young girl with long red hair and wearing a shimmering, silver dress. Some said it looked like a black-toothed old hag dressed in black rags. Still more said it appeared as a headless woman, naked from the waist up and carrying a bowl filled with blood.
The myth went something like this: Once there was a young girl who got engaged to a Confederate soldier who died in the Battle of Wilderness. After she died (of a broken heart, of course) her angry soul combed the woods, looking for victims to slake her thirst for revenge. She liked to mask her appearance in storms and gales, drawing her prey out of their homes by calling for help with the most pitiable of cries. She didn't care who she beguiled: men, woman, children. Once you heard her cry, you were done for. She lured you deeper and deeper into the woods until you were hopelessly lost, then disappeared in a wave of eerie laughter, leaving you to freeze or starve to death as you searched for an escape that could never be found.
"Gary T, I think maybe you need to get away from that window," I said.
"We've got to help her."
"Gary T, I was just out on the roof, and all I heard was the wind."
"There it is again! Didn't you hear it?"
"No."
"She needs me."
And before I could stop him, he pulled away from the window and burst out the door, leaving it wide open as he ran into the storm.
You all know I wasn't very old when this happened. Hadn't even graduated high school yet, so I didn't have the experience I might have needed to judge my reaction properly. Science tells us that a teenager's brain is akin to a toddler's. They're impulsive and thoughtless, always looking for the easy way out. But even though that was probably the case with me, I'd gone through enough crazy things in the last four months to reign all that in.
I liked Gary T. He was an okay guy. He generally did what he was supposed to do, and he hadn't tried to hit on me like a few of the others, men and women included. But I barely knew him, and if I'm being honest, my first impulse was not to go screaming out into the middle of a blizzard after someone I barely knew on the off-chance that he might actually listen to reason.
Then I thought about how Daddy might react if he was there with me. A part of me wanted to say he'd tell me to access my inner Nana, close the door, and warm myself up by the stove. Then again, this was the man who, when Gomer Gomez, someone he didn't like very much and didn't know very well, got himself attacked by aliens, drove out to help without even a pause. This was the man who, when Seb Mack, the no-good son of the white trashiest woman in the history of white trash women, told him his mama was going to sacrifice his little sisters to the same aliens, drove out to a trailer in the middle of nowhere when saving a Mack (little sister or not) was the last thing anybody wanted to do. This was a man who . . . well, I guess he learned his lesson after that because he had no compunction locking Lynn and Leo and Charlene up in the barn when they came stumbling out to our place.
Still. It didn't sit right with me. How would I explain to Ray and Timmy Carter and everybody else why I didn't do anything to help Gary T? Just thinking about looks they'd give me was enough to make me want to Rambo out into the woods.
"Where'd he go? I dunno. Said he heard a woman calling for help and sprinted out to save her. I didn't go after him because he was probably chasing a banshee, and everybody knows what happens when you . . . a banshee. You know, wails a whole bunch and lures people out into the woods to . . . okay, okay, well, just hear me out. This one's called the Wailing Women of Spotsylvania, and—"
Yeah, that wouldn't fly at all.
So I zipped up my jacket, checked my belt for my Bowie, pocketed my sidearm, and beat my arms against my chest three times.
"Okay, Amanda May," I said to myself. "Let's go save Gary T."

Turns out trying to track someone through a blizzard ain't the easiest thing to do. I don't know if you're familiar with the term "white-out conditions," but it don't concern office supplies. I first heard it in elementary school, which was the last time we had a blizzard. All I remember was a man on the TV standing in the middle of a swirling cloud of snow, his parka and mittens frosted twice over and once more for luck as it pelted and choked him, describing the storm as if nobody could look out a window and see it for themselves. He kept yelling "white-out conditions!".
"Daddy, what's that mean?" I asked.
"What, white-out conditions?"
"Yeah."
We watched the screen. A huge gust of wind nearly toppled the reporter, enveloping him in a thick blanket of snow. Daddy pointed at the TV.
"That."
That's pretty much what I ran out into. Gary T was nothing more than a gray shadow in front of me. Drifts five, six, seven feet tall had piled against the shack and the house and the wall. I called out his name, "Gary T!" but the wind swallowed my words, giving me a nice mouthful of snow for my effort.
I followed him as best I could out to our west field, the one where me and Daddy first saw Leo coming out of the woods. The wires were down and the fence post with the transformer, too. I saw Gary T, or his shadow, at least, crest a hill and drop out of sight. Fearing the worst, I picked up my pace. I reached the downed wires and stopped, turning around to see if I could see any of the farm buildings. I couldn't.
And that's when I heard it.
Not the Wailing Women but a rumble, as if a mountain was rolling through the country, heading right for me. I couldn't tell what direction it was coming from, in front of me, behind me, on either side of me. I'd heard about thunder-snow before, but I'd never actually heard it. This was too long and drawn out to be thunder anyway. It kept coming and coming, getting louder and louder, and now, instead of worrying about saving Gary T from an ice banshee, I was worrying about whatever it was that was heading my way.
I pushed through the snow and made it to the hill, but in my panic I didn't mind my steps and suddenly I was falling, tumbling down, rolling end over end. Didn't hurt a bit, really. Probably the softest fall I ever took. When I reached the bottom, I sat up and there was Gary T, about ten yards ahead of me.
"Gary T!" I yelled. "Get back here!"
He still wasn't no more than a blob in the storm, but I saw him turn around. The rumbling sound drew nearer, taking over even the noise of the wind. Then a huge shadow rolled through the field, and Gary T was gone. I pushed forward until I reached the spot where he was. A path had been cleared in the snow at least two car lengths wide, but Gary T was nowhere to be seen. And I swear on my Nana's dead, black heart that the next thing I'm about to tell you is true.
The storm stopped.
No warning. No clues. No nothing.
One second the wind was howling and the air was filled with a solid sheet of white and the next, nothing. Took my breath away. The storm clouds were still in the sky, but nothing came out of them. I stared around me in wonder. It was simply the most confounding thing I ever saw. Then I got a feeling like someone was watching me. You know that feeling. Everybody does. A cold, iciness that started in your belly and spread into your chest, then the creepy crawlies started creeping and crawling.
If I'd been in a movie, the soundtrack would have been a full chorus of strings winding higher and higher as I turned around to see what was behind me, but this wasn't a movie, this was real, and when I made the full 180 degree rotation, there was a girl standing there, her mouth open in a soundless wail, her eyes silver and bright, her dirty hair falling in a tangled mess over her shoulders. She grabbed me by the throat and started to squeeze.

I don't remember much of what happened next. Just flashes of images. Breaking the choke hold the way I was taught. Shoving the girl away. The rumbling roar coming back towards me. The storm ramping up again. Pushing through the snow as fast as I could, heading for a grove. Branches whipping against my face.
I shot a look over my shoulder and saw a huge, round shadow raging forward. The branches cut the snow blindness some, but the storm was so thick and the wind so heavy that I still couldn't see much at all. The shadow shot closer, cracking branches and uprooting trees as it rolled through the woods. I dodged as best I could, left and right, right and left, but the snow cut my speed, and the shadow gained on me. If I didn't get out of the way, it'd roll right over me.
I came to a hill and tried to run up, but my feet kept slipping and sliding until it was pointless to continue. I slid to the bottom and pulled my gun out of my pocket, simultaneously trying to bite my mitten off my right hand. I got to kneeling position and aimed into the storm. I was just about to fire when I felt a jolt of sickening energy, and then I was sinking, sinking down into the snow, and I realized there were two hands around my waist, pulling me in. I don't think I'd ever been as terrified in my life. For someone who faced down a gorilla like Ruth Grace Hogg, that's saying something. I screamed and accidentally fired off a wild shot, and then I was pulled into the earth . . . and dropped into a cave.
It was dark but warm, with a low, flickering fire providing an orange glow. The opening of the cave was covered in roots and thick vines, and I heard the shadow thing roll past like a freight train. Dirt shook from the ceiling and some roots waved overhead, and then it was gone, replaced by the calm hush of snow falling on the other side, and then, nothing. The storm was gone again. I was shaken but okay, more amazed at what had just happened than anything else.
A figure huddled against the wall in the shadows in the back of the cave. All I could see was bare skin and one glinting eye peeking out from a tangle of black, disheveled hair. I sat up and dusted the snow and dirt off my parka.
"Hello?"
Whoever it was shifted, and I saw a flash of a breast, a single, dirty foot. Was it the Wailing Woman? Why hadn't she killed me yet? I tried again.
"My name's Amanda. Amanda May Jett. Are you . . . . Are you okay?"
The girl started whimpering and I thought, oh Lord, here it comes. First she'd start to cry, and then before I could do anything about it, she'd cut my head clean off. I didn't know what to do. I backed up as far as I could to the cave's entrance without leaving. I didn't want to leave. That thing, whatever it was, was out there looking for me. But I didn't want to stay, neither, not if whatever or whoever was sniveling in the corner was going to take my skull for an ornament.
She started crawling for me, so I pointed my gun at her and she stopped. That settled it for me. No Wailing Woman I ever heard of cared about getting shot with no .357. This was some weirdo who apparently liked to run around naked in the woods in the middle of a blizzard.
"You want to tell me who you are?" I said. "Tell me what's going on here?"
She whimpered again and crept forward another foot so that her whole body was in the light of the fire. Then she parted her hair like a curtain, revealing the face it was hiding. Even features, big eyes, and about enough dirt on her skin to plant some flowers. But that wasn't what blew me away. What blew me away was . . . well, I wasn't too sure. You ever see someone and know that you knew them but had never met them before in your life? Is that déjà vu? Reincarnation? Spiritual serendipity?
Whatever it was, I knew her. I'd seen her before. I didn't know where or how or when, but I felt like we'd been—if not close, then, then . . . . I couldn't define it. She was fully in the light of the fire now, her tangled hair out of her face but hanging down over her body. She had a lot of hair. I lowered my gun.
"Do I know you?"
The girl tried to speak, but it was like she didn't have a tongue. She made strange noises from her throat, and her mouth worked, but no actual words came out. The fire popped and sent sparks into the air, and her eyes flitted back and forth, back and forth, as if she was trying to count each one. She sobbed when they faded, and I was halfway between feeling sorry for her and wondering when she was going to unhinge her jaw and swallow me whole.
"Hey, hey. Shhh." I kind of squat-walked forward, reaching out for her. "You're going to be okay, hear? You saved my life, and I've got a gun, see? You're going to be just fine. Can I?"
I touched her hair with my fingertips and zap! Another bolt of sickening energy hit me right in the gut. I felt like the strongest girl in the world and like I was about to vomit at the same time. I said, "oh" and went to my knees and the girl shrank away. The feeling left as soon as she did, and all of the sudden I knew who she was. I sat back on my knees, astonished.
"You . . . you're . . ."
"B-bonfire," the girl said. "E-escape."

I woke up curled up next to the smoking fire, shivering on the ground. To tell you the truth, I'd barely slept all night. Too cold. And the knowledge of what was out there and who the girl in the cave was weighed heavy on my mind. I'd given her my parka to cover herself, and she wrapped herself up in it and went to sleep on the other side of the fire. She was still there in the morning, a mass of knotty hair and two pale feet sticking out of either end of my parka. Looked like a human burrito. I pushed my way out of the vines and roots and into the daylight.
The world was cool and clear, as if nothing from the night before—the blizzard, the monster, Gary T—had ever happened. I investigated the groove the shadow had made in the snow, but it wasn't nothing more than a curvy indent. I thought I saw something sticking up out of it, something black and hard. Looked like . . . oh lord no. I went over and cleared the snow away from it and jerked back, feeling sick.
It was a boot.
Gary T's boot.
I started to dig out around it, but a few scoops in and the white snow had turned red. Blood red. It was all over my hands. I dug a little more, carefully this time, trying not to go too deep. The leg ended at the knee. After that, there was just . . . I didn't know what it was. Gary T, I guess, or what was left of him. It looked like he'd been shoved into a blender.
The girl came out soon after and we stood there looking at the mess of blood and guts and bone that used to be a human being. She must have been freezing there in her bare feet. I would have given her my boots if I could. Instead, I reached out to touch her shoulder, holding up my hands when she flinched.
"It's okay. It's okay."
She frowned at me.
"You got a name?" I asked. She kept frowning. "A name? What you're called? Uh, wie heißt du?"
I don't know why I asked her that in German. I'd taken two years of it in school, and for some reason I thought, well, maybe she ain't American. It didn't help. Her frown just deepened. I pointed at my chest and said, "Amanda, remember?" I pointed at her. "And you are?"
She shook her head.
"You don't know who you are, or you don't want to tell me?"
She nodded.
"Which one? You don't know who you—"
She was already nodding again.
"Okay. Alright. I get it. You understand English."
She nodded.
"Good, because the only other thing I remember from German class is Wir züchten Kühe für unseren eigenen Gebrauch. That means 'we're raising cows for our own use'. I don't think that'd help much in this situation."
She kept staring at me.
"Okay. Well, I gotta get back to my farm. I don't think you can stay out here. You want to come back with me?"
"F-farm?"
"I have a house and food. It's safe there. You'll be okay."
She still didn't answer. Some people are just hardheaded, you know? Daddy used to accuse me of being that way, but I'll tell you something: if I found myself naked in the middle of the woods in the middle of a blizzard and somebody gave me a parka and was nice to me and didn't shoot me when she could have and then invited me back to her house, I'd accept that invitation. But you could lead a horse to water and all that. Sometimes people don't know what's best for them. I shrugged and rolled my eyes.
"Alright then."
I was about ten steps away when I heard her come up behind me, but I waited until we were out of the woods to speak again.
"You're going to like my farm. It's got a wood stove and you can have your own room. And we got a dog. You like dogs?"
"M-m-Maggie May?"
I shot her a sharp look.
"How'd you know that?"
"Th-they're c-coming. F-f-for you.