>>1136
I am a little envious that Iga gets to see the carnage unfold around us, while I'm bundled up in here. Not, you know, that envious, cause holy shit it sounds terrifying. Also, I hope she's okay. Eve, too. Maybe Karen. Hopefully they have the sense to run inside and lock the door as soon as my plan became evident.
There's a significant amount of screaming and running. We get stepped on a couple times, but nothing too bad. We aren't really in the path of egress, so we're pretty safe. Actually trampling us would require running towards the house, and even these people aren't that stupid. Still, I do my best to protect our heads and Eli's dangly bits from getting stepped on directly. Priorities.
It does go on longer than I expected. I figured people would flee the area post-haste and leave nothing but the sound of buzzing hornets, but they spend an inordinate amount of time screaming that's well within earshot. I don't know if they think they can fight the hornets, or they're trying to help other people who were less equipped or not smart enough to move when the buzzing started. It's like they forgot how to run away. I reassert that the group is collectively a genetic dead end.
Eventually, the sound does die down, and we're left with mostly the sound of the hornets, and our breathing. Eli is uncharacteristically quiet, considering what just happened.
"Are you okay, baby? You didn't get stung did you?" I ask.
There's a moment of silence.
"Are you-"
"I'm fine," he says, tersely.
"Okay. I'm getting a feeling that you're a little upset with me," I comment.
"You don't say?" he says with a sigh.
"I'm sorry baby, I wish I could've warned you, but the idea didn't occur to me until the heat of the moment. You can't predict genius," I explain.
He sighs again, but this is an 'I'm still annoyed, but not angry in any lasting way, and things'll be fine when we get out of this precarious situation' sigh. I'm quite familiar with it. He's no good at staying mad at me.
"How long?" he asks.
"For the hornets? Um, awhile. It can be hard to measure these things in an exact fashion," I reply.
"Got it. No idea," he asserts.
"That's not true," it absolutely is, "Hornets are fickle creatures, and these are non-standard hornets. They'll either return to the hive unit or die sometime in the next twenty minutes or hours, once they have no further hostile movement."
"Aren't they being drawn specifically to me, though?" he makes a relevant point.
"They are, but there's only so long they can be agitated before they need to rest," I tell him.
We just lay in silence for awhile, with nothing to do. Naturally, my mind keeps going, and I can't help but notice something a little strange when I reach into my pocket.
"Hey babe, wanna hear something funny?" I ask with a nervous laugh.
"I sure don't," he responds, so I continue.
"This," I pull up the remote control as if he can see much of it in the dim light under the tarp, "...Isn't the right remote."
He doesn't say anything, so he must expect me to go on, "It's actually, kind of, the remote for the device inside of Eve."
"Kind of?"
"Kind of in the scientific sense, meaning precisely," I elaborate.
"I see," he clears his throat, "This is the one that you sewed up inside her, with the bomb?"
"Implo-"
"Don't," he jumps on that one quickly.
"Right. Well evidently I did not, since it's in my hand right now, and not inside her uterus," I explain, but he isn't seeing the humor.
"So there was never any risk of her exploding?" he asks the obvious.
I bite my lip on the explosion-implosion subject, "Correct."
"And this is also what she thought she had a remote for, just now on the porch?" he asks.
"Also correct. No idea how she knows about that, or how she thought she had the controller for it," I reply, "I'm going to just assume this is Iga's fault, until further notice."
"And why did it do absolutely nothing when you hit the button, instead of killing us all in the most violent fashion imaginable?" he puts out a little hostility, again.
"Oh that," I clear my throat and open up the back of the remote, "No batteries."
"So does Eve have the remote for... whatever the hell you were trying to activate?"
"That's a solid hypothesis," I nod.
We fall back into silence. At least it isn't a hot day, or us being bundled up on the walk like a human burrito would be miserable. It's still not great, but at least we get to be close and alone, which is something that happens too infrequently, lately.
"Hey baby..." I say coyly, "Since we've got some time to kill, you wanna fool around?"
He lets the buzzing of very angry hornets answer for him.