Chapter 1

Thank God! I almost got caught that time. If I had been just a few seconds slower getting my ass down behind this bush, I would have been feeding some fucking Wasp larva with my own body parts for the rest of a very short life. Now, if it will just buzz past me low enough, I'll rid the world of another of those damned aliens. Here she comes ... Got her! That spear through her guts will kill her for sure, and it will only take a few more seconds ... One less Wasp out of thousands, it's not much, but it's the best I can do by myself. Jimmy Johnson ran to the alien monster and pulled out his spear, delighting in the yellow fluid that passed for blood oozing from the creature. He also removed her antigravity belt and slung it over his shoulder. Later, he would find a way to wear it.

These creatures that were called "Wasps" for lack of a better name, had been on Earth for less than two months, but they had very nearly wiped out the human race. They looked so much like the earthly Yellow Jacket Wasp, except for their size, an average of three meters from their stinger to the end of their antennae, that the name stuck from the first day. Their wings were virtually useless for lift, but their antigravity belts made up for that. Their wings just aided in their movement in the horizontal direction. They must have evolved on a planet with insignificant gravity, because their body was too heavy for their wings to lift it off the ground in a 1g environment.

The Wasps were so dangerous to humans because of the way they raised their young. It was very similar to the way Earth Wasps operated. They stung their prey, which did not kill it, and injected an egg into the body of the still-living incubator. The egg hatched within a very few hours and the larva began to grow. It had a voracious appetite and began to eat its host from the moment it left the egg. It ate its way out of the body of its host when it was ready to morph into a Wasp, and the host died at last. The worst part of all this was that the host was conscious the whole time; you could tell because you could hear them scream in pain as they were eaten alive.

Other hosts would do in a pinch, but humans were the ideal host, which the Wasps found out only hours after landing and leaving their spaceships. It was not clear how so many Wasps could have existed in their spaceships, even though they were monstrous constructs. The spaceships were shaped like square-based pyramids, so it was appropriate that their first landing was in Egypt. They landed next to the Great Pyramid in Giza and dwarfed it in size.

The first ship to land simply sat in place for about four hours before a hatch opened half way up the wall of the ship. Government dignitaries, business tycoons, scientists, and tourists all flocked to the site, hoping to meet the aliens when they deigned to exit their ship. Of course, every possible TV network had cameras and commentators there, expecting to pontificate on a momentous occasion. Little did they know just how momentous the occasion would be! Without fanfare, the hatch opened and a single Wasp flew out. It seemed to look around for a moment before it moved to one side. Suddenly, Wasp after Wasp came boiling out of that hatch and three others spaced equally around the ship. There is no way of knowing how they made their selection, but each Wasp dove on a human and stung him/her without waiting for the human to react. The TV cameras caught all of this as it was happening and beamed the shocking pictures around the world.

The human fell to the ground, paralyzed, as soon as it was stung, the Wasp landed on top of the victim, paused for a moment, and then flew off, looking for another victim. The TV cameras kept rolling, capturing the horror of the moment. After all of the people surrounding the spaceship had been attacked, additional hatches opened and more Wasps came out, but these were not flying. Instead, they started to set up some sort of construction facility and started building what could only be called a nest.

Construction of the nest had hardly been begun when a new crew of Wasps came out of the spaceship and picked up the paralyzed humans lying about on the ground. These people were carried to the nest being constructed and taken inside. About 40 minutes later, human screams began issuing from the nest. By this time, all of the bodies lying on the ground had been moved to the nest. Shortly thereafter, Wasps began flying in, probably from Cairo, carrying more bodies to the nest. More screams could be heard over the TV net until the batteries finally ran down, or power was lost some other way.

Five and one-half hours after the first landing, other spaceships began landing in other parts of the world. The exact number was never known, but there were many. Military might was thrown against the Wasps in an effort to stop them, but the Wasps had a multitude of weapons which could disable the weapons of the humans, so very little damage was done to the Wasp ships or to the Wasps, themselves. The humans found that bullets were useless against Wasps, except to annoy them. Explosives would sometimes work, but they were hard to deliver against the Wasps excellent defenses. One nuclear weapon was used against a spaceship and the ship was destroyed, but so many people railed against the use of such weapons that it was the only one ever exploded. Such is the course of human stupidity—blocking the only effective weapon because people were aghast at such "barbarism!"

Bill Whatly had been on vacation when the Wasps landed. He spent three weeks in the boondocks at his fishing retreat that had no radio, no TV, and no telephone. Bill had left his cell phone behind because he was adamant about not being disturbed when he was communing with the fish. So he only found out about the Wasps 20 days after they had landed. Bill was an organic chemist who was a world authority on bug killers, so he was sought out by the government to help in the fight against the Wasps, but he was nowhere to be found.

He learned of the invasion when he stopped at a country service station for gas, a Moon Pie, and a Coke. There was nobody around, which was amazing, so he went into the store to ask what was going on. He called out, but got no response. He was about to leave when his eye was caught by a 13-day-old newspaper. The headline, "WASPS HIT BIRMINGHAM," was enough to make him pick up the paper and read the article. Quite a bit of the background was included in the article, so he was pretty well brought up to date on the emergency. Bill was appalled by the Wasp situation and wondered if he could have helped in the initial fight.

The electricity was still working, so he was able to fill up with gas and get his cold Coke, but the damned Moon Pies were all stale, but that probably happened before the Wasps even landed. As he drove toward Auburn University, where he was a tenured professor of organic chemistry, he considered what he might do to cope with the situation. Bill was no superman, but he was fit, both mentally and physically, so he was able to accept what had happened and look for survival methods. His mind was quick, and he never dwelled on matters which he could not control, so the Wasp situation did not drive him into a blue funk nor paralyze him with indecision. By a strange coincidence, he had been working for the last two years on a poison to kill wasps without affecting other creatures, particularly mammals.

In fact, the fishing vacation was in celebration for finally resolving the last problem he had with his formula. As Bill saw it, there was a three-fold problem: making enough of the poison, finding a delivery system, and doing the actual delivery. Bill thought he had the answer to all three problems, if he had enough time and help.

Production was no problem. He could make enough of the poison in his lab at Auburn to wipe out the Wasps. The poison was so powerful that less than a drop, if properly applied, was enough to kill an alien Wasp

He thought that a delivery method was at hand. If a tiny wad of cotton was dipped into the poison solution and inserted into the nose of a hollow-point .22 caliber bullet, that, if shot into the body of an alien Wasp, would be enough to kill it.