Vhiper hadn’t worked at the ice cream parlour long, but each time he walked in the doors he wished it was his last day.

It wasn’t so much the work he didn’t like, that was easy to deal with, it was the wasps that hung around the bins outside. One of his jobs was to take out the rubbish, which included empty syrup containers.

The midday sun had brought out more of the little creatures than usual, and Vhiper edged his way towards the bins, but before he even reached them, two of the striped devils were around his arms, searching for the sweetness that dripped around the container lids.

Viper dropped them to the ground and ran for the safety of the kitchen door.

Within seconds five or six more of them were buzzing around the plastic boxes, but all he could do was watch from the doorway. He knew he would have to go out there and pick them up, and the thought of it made him shiver. He closed the door so he could get the buzzing out of his head, but they still sang in his skull. Something tickled his ear, and he darted away so fast he didn’t see Carla come into the kitchen from the hallway.

He knocked the tray full of sundae dishes out of her hands with such force they spread out  across the room. A half full dish spat its contents at his face, and he wiped the ice cream away with the back of his hand.

"Hey Vhiper, watch where you’re going!"

He hardly heard her as he turned to scan the room, looking for any sign of a small humming insect. He heard the wings behind him again and twisted around sharply to see a bluebottle land on the shelf behind him.

It was only as the wave of relief hit him that he noticed the look on Carla’s face. She wasn’t laughing.

"Err sorry Carla," said, and immediately bent to pick up the scattered dishes.

"What on earth is the matter with you?" she asked.

He felt ridiculous confessing his fear to her, so instead he said, "I was just rushing back to help out, and I err, slipped on the tiles."

She looked down to the floor. "I don’t see how you slipped, the floor’s not wet."

He kept his eyes cast down as he piled the spilled dishes onto the tray. "Lucky all this stuff is plastic," he said, avoiding her remark.

"Hmm, suppose so," she answered, taking the tray from him as he stood up, then as she looked at him she grinned. "You have ice cream from your eye to your ear."

She moved towards the dishwasher and started to load it, glancing out of the window as she did.

Vhiper ignored the ice cream that was now starting to dry on his face. He realised she’d see the containers and would want to know what happened. He couldn’t admit to her, she’d think he was stupid. So he did the first thing he could think of to distract her.

"Hey Carla, I heard you dumped Mike."

She turned sharply. "Oh yes, so who told you that?"

He could tell from her voice she was annoyed, but it was worth it to keep her eyes from the spilled containers outside.

"Oh can’t remember who told me, but I heard he was really cut up about it."

She finished loading the machine and switched it on. Now, if only she wouldn’t look outside, and he could keep everyone else away until he had chance to pick them up.

It was going to be a busy afternoon.

Gerry picked up the shards of glass from the lab floor, although there were no windows in the room, there were ventilation ducts in the wall. He listened, waiting for the sound of wings buzzing.

Nothing.

He remembered the pig they’d used in the last experiment. Although the animal had lived, it had been so badly eaten away that they had had to destroy it.

The insects seemed to become more intelligent with each new hatching. They were certainly bigger, with larger heads, and the venom was becoming more potent. When let lose on the pig, it had only taken a dozen of the wasps four minutes to completely immobilise it, though they knew the animal still felt pain from its cries of agony.

The larvae had reproduced into adult wasps far quicker than the last time, emerging from the pig in greater numbers.

When Gerry had first joined the project he’d been told that the wasps were only being bred as a weapon against crop pests, and it was true they had been used to eradicate pests with great success. But the powers that be had decided they would benefit much more by having  these wasps as a agent of warfare. If they could be bred to attack human prey, they could wipe out entire cities within days, then they would simply move in with the wasp killer, and burn up the bodies.

They were close to their objective; very close.

Gerry wondered how long a human victim would live, he supposed it depended on which body organs the larvae attacked.

The Parasitic wasp: but bred to be bigger, cleverer, and deadlier than even their own origim.

And now they were out.

The girl who walked through the door looked like the twelve hour shift she’d worked. Gerry hoped she was going to tell him that the twenty one year old male who’d been admitted an  hour earlier had had a stroke, or that she had some perfectly other reasonable explanation. With his security clearance the casualty departments had been forced to give Gerry access to the new admissions records. He was hoping that this case had nothing  to do with the wasps , but the swilling in his gut told him it did.

"Hello Mr. Andrews, I believe you want some information?"

He moved towards her. "Yes, I need to know the cause of the paralysis of the male patient who was brought in recently."

She pushed a stray strand of black hair behind her ear, he sensed her resentment.

"Well Mr. Andrews, I’m not happy about discussing patient information with you." She glared at him, making no attempt to hide her annoyance before continuing. "No, we don’t know the cause of the condition, though we have found what appears to be an insect bite on the patients upper right arm, we are presently trying to find out if he’s been out of the country lately.

That was all he needed to know, they’d found a bite mark.

Vhiper spent the whole afternoon volunteering to take dishes to the kitchen so that nobody would see the spilt containers, but each time he looked out of the window the wasps were still there, buzzing around the sticky syrup.

The third time he loaded the dishwasher, he decided to face them.

Drawing in a breath he moved towards the door, opened it.

In a second he counted four of them. It angered him that he was so scared of these little insects, but at the same time, he couldn’t bring himself to move forward out of the doorway. But why should he   let them scare him. He was huge and they were little, he could always get a can of wasp killer and spray the evil little buggers.

But it was suddenly important that he face his fear, what if one of the girls in the shop found out how scared he was? He’d never live it down, he’d not be able to show his face again, and if the guys knew that would be it. There’d be wasp jokes everywhere he went, wasp pictures stuck everywhere.

They’d make up yellow and black wasp ice cream and call it a Vhiper.

No, he was going to face it. He was going to walk out there, pick up the empty cartons and put them in the bins.

He was.

He looked back into the kitchen and wondered whether to take the can of wasp killer anyway, just in case.

But in his mind he heard everyone laughing when they discovered his fear, and took one step out of the doorway.

He felt sick.

One foot in front of the other he told himself. Just pick up the cartons, put them in the bin, and walk back.

Easy.

Anyone could do it.

Every nerve in his body tingled; adrenaline rushed though his veins, electrifying his skin.

He could hear the buzzing, it amplified by hundreds filling his head until he could hear nothing else but white noise like a million vacuum cleaners all running at the same time.

Four wasps turned into four thousand in his mind.

Yellow, black, yellow, black.

He was close now, almost close enough to pick up the cartons, but now his feet refused to move any further. The blood stopped in his veins, as if the very existence of the wasps had stilled it.

He wanted to turn, but he couldn’t even do that. Having reached this far, there was no going back, but there also seemed to be no going forward either.

He knew somewhere deep down in the logical part of his brain, that he was much bigger than they were, and far more intelligent, he knew that if one landed on the floor his foot could squash it, mash it down to a yellow pulp on the concrete.

But they had one thing he didn’t.

A sting.

He’d rather have his teeth pulled one by one with no anaesthetic than be stung again.

He remembered being stung as a child, the swelling, the pain, and the buzzing around his head and the dizziness and sickness that went with it.

He felt like that now, and they hadn’t even stung him.

His vision blurred, he felt himself sway, his legs didn’t seem strong enough to hold him.

But this was stupid, he was going to beat this, once and for all .

He breathed deeply, trying to regulate the pattern; when he had control he forced himself one step closer.  Almost close enough to touch them. He was waiting for them to turn their attention to him, to swarm and attack him.

He couldn’t move, even though now his mind screamed from inside his skull to run.

Buzzing buzzing.

The noise blocked out every other sound.

He’d forgotten to wash the ice cream from his face, and now realised that wiping it wouldn’t  have been enough, they would go for it. The first insect darted towards him, then the second.  He wanted desperately to run, willed himself to.

Didn’t understand why his legs crumpled beneath him, or why he fell to the floor.

As they crawled over his face, sucking up the sweetness from his skin he realised he couldn’t move his hands either, couldn’t blink his eyes, they were frozen open.

Terror gripped tight as tiny legs crept up his cheek towards his right eye, then he saw it.

Yellow, black, yellow, black.

A long tongue dipped into his eye socket and sucked up the fluid.

Then from his inert left eye he saw something else.

A longer, slimmer body than the wasps, but twice the size of them. And not yellow and black  but a transparent red, with wings larger than its body. It seized one of his attackers and Vhiper saw the wasp freeze and fall to the ground next to his face. He watched in horror as the red injected something into the yellow, and when it was finished it came towards him.

"He’s in here Mr. Andrews."

Gerry Andrews walked into the intensive care unit to see Vhiper lying on the bed, obviously awake, but unable to speak or move a muscle. Gerry didn’t know if the poor sod would live, and if he did, he couldn’t know what life he would have left. The larvae were in his body now, devouring him from the inside out. When they’d fed enough they would break though, as they would with the other victim.

That was why he had instructions to move Vhiper now, to the secure medical unit at the project.

Although to the project he was just another case number, another experiment.

He went over to the bed, looked down at the figure lying there. He wondered if Vhiper realised he was being eaten alive.

They’d managed to catch all of the wasps, they’d all been around the syrup containers when Gerry and the others from the project had gone over the yard where Vhiper had been found.

They’d also scooped up the ordinary dead wasps that the reds had laid their larvae in. Hopefully there were only the two human cases, and it seemed that the venom had become even more potent now. The human cases weren’t even able to make a sound, nor move even a nerve to show their feelings.

Vhiper looked up at the stranger with dead eyes, but an alert mind.

Although he couldn’t move, he was aware of intense pain in his body, as if something was gnawing at his body organs, chewing away his ear canals. But he could do nothing about it, could tell no one.

At least the pig had been able to scream.

Because Vhiper’s fear is wasps.