10:10 A.M.
WITH A BELLOW, DARRYL sprinted, not away from the bees, but right into the middle of them. Paying no mind to the angry, buzzing swarm, he leaned down into the middle of it and hoisted Zion in his arms. Holding the boy to his chest, he ran back the way he had come. Barking, Blue followed.
“Everyone else—stop!” Wyatt yelled. “Stay as still as you can! Don’t run or wave your arms or try to get them off you. It’ll just make them madder.”
It took all of Natalia’s will to stop running, to stand stock-still when her heart was banging in her chest.
She felt a tiny tap on her cheek as a bee bounced off. Bees won’t hurt you if you don’t hurt them. That’s what Natalia’s mom had always said. But these bees had been hurt. And they were mad. She felt a sting just below the curve of her jaw. Another on her left hand. A third on her right calf.
The bees’ buzzing reached a crescendo, like a hundred people angrily humming some avant-garde piece of music, or a machine with something stuck in the gears grinding to a halt.
The only other noise was coming from Trask, who was shrieking.
Natalia didn’t move anything but her eyes. A few feet from her, AJ stood frozen mid-stride. Lisa had her hands cupped over her face, while Ryan was looking back over his shoulder. They reminded Natalia of a playground game she had loved in second grade. One person would spin in a tight circle, holding another player by the wrist, and then let go. The goal was to stay as still as a statue in whatever awkward position you ended up.
Slowly, the bees tightened in a dark cloud around their broken home. One by one they began to dip back inside the log.
As soon as she no longer saw yellow forms buzzing past her face, Natalia started to slowly turn in the direction Darryl had carried Zion. When that didn’t seem to aggravate the bees, she took a careful step and then another, keeping her torso stiff and her arms at her sides. With each step, she increased her speed, already dreading what she would find.
In a small clearing, Zion lay on his back, his eyes darting with panic. Darryl was murmuring assurances in a shaky voice. He was using a credit card to scrape off the remains of stingers from Zion’s ashen face. Bees, Natalia remembered, could only sting once, and then they died.
Had the bees just traded their lives for Zion’s?
As she dropped to her knees, the others began to gather around them. All of them were dotted with welts. Trask was still screaming and red-faced, inconsolable even after Lisa hastily pulled him from the child carrier.
If Zion had been stung on the extremities, a reaction might have taken hours. But Natalia counted at least a dozen welts on Zion’s face and neck, with more on his hands.
He was already wheezing. It was the same ragged sound Marco had made when he had his asthma attack.
“Now I’m the zombie,” Zion said to Marco. His voice rasped and shook.
“I’m sorry, buddy.” Marco bit his lip, looking like he was trying not to cry.
“Didn’t I tell you not to use his EpiPen?” Darryl demanded. “Now what are we going to do?” Natalia could hear tears in his voice, too.
“Wyatt, do you have any Benadryl in your first aid kit?” Natalia asked. Hers was back on the other side of a lake inside her discarded pack.
“I don’t.” His face was anguished. “I’m sorry.”
“Does anyone have any allergy pills on them?” she asked the others. But she was met only by blank, frightened stares. Even though they probably wouldn’t have done much, she would have given anything to have the ones in her first aid kit now. Because Darryl was right. They had gambled with Zion’s life—and they were losing.
Zion’s wheezing was getting even faster.
“Okay, Zion. Breathe with me.” Natalia exaggerated the sound of her breathing and slowed it down, the way she had with AJ. But this wasn’t a panic attack. And just like with Marco’s asthma, calming him down wouldn’t stop the reaction, just slow it down a bit.
It had only been a few minutes since Zion had been stung, but his lips were already swelling, pushing out from his face, like an actress who had resorted to far too much Botox. Natalia had heard the term bee-stung lips before. She had thought it meant what would happen if someone was stung on the lips. But now she understood it must refer to anaphylactic shock.
It wasn’t only his lips that were swelling. The hollows under Zion’s eyes were puffing up like pillows, pushing his eyes closed. Through the rapidly closing slits, his dark eyes darted back and forth, from Darryl’s face to Natalia’s.
“Maybe if we hurry we could get him to the road and call an ambulance,” Beatriz said.
Nobody answered. They didn’t have to. It was clearly just a wish. They were hours from a road. And every second Zion’s breathing grew more labored.
“You’ve killed him. You’ve all killed him.” Darryl pointed at AJ. “You knocked him down.” Next his finger pointed at Natalia and then Marco. “And you made me use Zion’s EpiPen on him. And now my grandson’s going to die.”
“Don’t talk like that,” Lisa said. “It was an accident. And there has to be something we can do.”
“I’m so sorry.” AJ’s voice shook.
“I would never have let them use the EpiPen if I thought Zion would need it.” Marco pushed back his hair from his eyes.
“Wait a minute,” Wyatt said. “Do you still have them? The EpiPens?”
“I stuck them in your pack so I could throw them away when we got back. But they’re both empty.”
“Maybe not,” Wyatt said. “A hiking buddy told me once there’s actually more than one dose per pen. He said in an emergency it’s possible to hack one to get more doses out of it.”
“So how do you do it?” AJ asked urgently.
“That’s the thing,” Wyatt admitted with a grimace. “He didn’t give me any specifics.”
Marco had already pulled one out of its box. “I’m pretty good at reverse engineering things.” His fingers scrabbled at the plastic instructions glued around the clear tube, obscuring the contents.
“Give it to me.” Beatriz held out her hand. “I’ve got longer fingernails.” With her now-battered purple-painted nails, she managed to scrape up a corner and then handed it back.
Marco carefully unpeeled the rest. Muttering under his breath, he peered into the translucent plastic housing. One finger traced a line in the air as he tried to figure it out.
Zion began to cough. Even the inhalations between coughs were wrong, squeaking and squealing.
“I don’t get why there would be extra medicine,” Beatriz said. “EpiPens are so expensive. Why would they waste a single drop?”
Wyatt answered like the engineer he planned on becoming. “Maybe there needs to be an extra volume of liquid in order to create enough pressure to push the right amount through. That’s just a guess. But it doesn’t matter why it’s there. Just that it is. If it is.”
“I think there might be some left, but it’s hard to be sure,” Marco said. “I’m going to have to take it apart.” He pointed at the back of the EpiPen. “Back here, there’s a spring. When you push it against the thigh, the spring forces the needle through clothes and skin and into the muscle. But we don’t need it. They were just trying to make it as hands-off and unintimidating to a layperson as possible.”
“Whatever you’re going to do, hurry,” Darryl said. Zion’s coughs were getting louder and lasting longer. His swollen face looked almost battered.
“Let me have your knife,” Marco said to Wyatt. He unfolded it and handed it over. After resting the tube on a flat stone, Marco poked the tip an inch down from the top. He cut it with a rocking motion, turning it, before he broke the top off with a pop. A black spring shot out of the back.
Gingerly, Marco slid out the syringe inside. On top was a covered needle. Inside the bottom of the syringe was a round black piece of rubber. And in between, as Wyatt’s friend had said, was more clear liquid and a small amount of air.
Marco pulled off the gray sheath covering the needle. “Okay, that black rubber stopper regulates the dose. If I draw the needle back”—he pointed the needle up until it drew air—“until the plunger is near the end of the glass tube, and then turn it all back over”—he pointed the needle down—“and depress the plunger, it will stop again at the stopper. And it will give the same amount it did originally. It looks like it holds four or five doses.”
“Are you sure about this?” Ryan said. “Obviously the manufacturer never intended someone to do that to an EpiPen.”
“I’m sure it will give him the right dose,” Marco said.
“And obviously the manufacturer also never intended for some kid to”—Wyatt lowered his voice—“die because he got stung by a bee.”
“Just do it!” AJ cried out. “Listen to how terrible he sounds! It can’t make anything worse than it already is.”
“Stop!” Darryl shielded Zion with his body. “What about that bubble? You’ll inject him with air. That bubble will stop his heart.”
“No, it won’t,” Natalia said. “This is going into the thigh muscle, not a vein.” Darryl didn’t look convinced, so she grabbed his hand. “I swear to you, even if there is a bubble of air it won’t hurt Zion. But not getting his medicine definitely will.”
As if to underline what she had said, Zion let out a strangled cough so awful that all the hairs on Natalia’s arms rose.
“Do it!” Darryl said.
Marco wrapped his fingers around the tube and jabbed the needle into Zion’s leg. And he pushed the plunger.